One morning, Arthur came to fulfill his promise of washing Mia's face, and after having breakfast with her, he was called away by the household butler.
Left in the house were Mia, with nothing to do, and Tina and Jenny, who were watching her to ensure she didn't find any chores to occupy herself with.
At first, Mia sat alone at the round wooden table, nibbling on snacks. After much persuasion from Mia, Tina and Jenny finally joined her, sitting around the table. With nothing else to do, what could the three of them do but chat?
"Tina, how long have you been at Moore Manor?" Mia asked, popping a sweet date into her mouth while glancing at Tina, who was eagerly munching on snacks.
Tina swallowed her food with difficulty, took a sip of tea, and answered, "Me? I've been here since I was little—probably over two hundred—ow!" Her careless reply earned her a sharp kick from Jenny under the table.
"What's wrong?" Mia, completely unaware of Tina's pain, thought she might have bitten her tongue.
"Nothing…" Tina grimaced, shooting a glance at Jenny, who was pretending nothing had happened while savoring her food. "Just got bitten by a giant mosquito." She knew she'd said something wrong, but did Jenny have to kick that hard?
"What! It's already so cold, and there are still mosquitoes?" Mia exclaimed.
Jenny, elegantly eating her food, smiled. "Miss Mia, the mosquitoes up north are cold-resistant."
"Oh." Mia actually believed Jenny's nonsense. "By the way, Tina, you mentioned something about 'two hundred' earlier—what was that about?"
Meeting Mia's curious gaze, Tina, now composed, began to bluff as if to cover up her earlier slip. "Miss Mia, that's just a local saying in the North Desert. What I meant to say was twenty years. Yes, twenty years."
"Twenty years!" Mia stared at her in shock for a long moment. "Then how old are you now?" Tina didn't look a day over seventeen!
"By human standards—ow!" Tina's shin suffered another kick from a certain someone.
"Got bitten by a mosquito again?" Mia instinctively assumed, seeing her reaction.
"Yep!" Tina nodded resentfully. "And it's the same mosquito."
"Wow! How do you know? You can even tell which mosquito bit you? That's amazing!" Mia said, genuinely impressed.
"Because this mosquito's bite really hurts…" Tina muttered, her eyes drifting toward Jenny, who was calmly pouring tea.
Jenny, acting as if nothing had happened, took a sip from her teacup and said leisurely, "How strange! Out of the three of us, why is it only you getting bitten? Maybe your skin's just extra itchy?" Out of Mia's sight, Jenny shot Tina a warning glance.
Realizing she'd almost slipped up again, Tina could only lower her head in silence.
"What's wrong?" Noticing Tina, who was usually so talkative, suddenly fall silent with her head lowered, Mia asked curiously, oblivious to the silent exchange of glances between the two.
"Miss Mia, don't worry. Tina's just stuffed from eating too much." So stuffed she keeps saying the wrong things.
"What about what she was saying earlier—" Mia was still curious about Tina's unfinished sentence.
"Oh, she meant to say that, by the North Desert's way of counting, Tina is twenty years old. Around here, we start counting age from the time someone's mother is pregnant," Jenny said with a smile, smoothly covering for Tina without missing a beat.
"So that means Tina and I are the same age!" Mia exclaimed, surprised. She had thought Tina was much younger. "What about you, Jenny?"
Jenny must be younger than Tina, right? She looked so petite and adorable, though her personality seemed more mature.
"Me?" Jenny raised an eyebrow. "I'm a year older than Tina—twenty-one."
"No way!" Mia found it hard to believe. It was already surprising that Tina was her age, but to think Jenny, who she assumed was younger, was actually a year older than her! "What about Arthur? How old is he?" Mia wondered, hoping this wouldn't be another shock.
"The leader's affairs? I'm not too sure about that. Besides, I think Miss Mia would be better off asking the leader himself," Jenny replied.
"Oh." Mia nodded understandingly. Of course, servants weren't supposed to gossip about their master's business. "But you can at least tell me when Arthur became the head of the Moore family, right?"
Tina, eager to answer, quickly piped up, "He was already the head of the Moore family before we came here."
Her quick response earned her a sharp glance from Jenny. Sure enough, Mia was so shocked she nearly jumped out of her seat. "So Arthur became the head of the Moore family at a really young age? I'm guessing he's no older than twenty-five now. Tina's been here for twenty years, and he was already the leader before you arrived. Does that mean Arthur was leading this huge family when he was only three or four years old?"
Her astonished words prompted Tina, who hadn't learned her lesson, to blurt out, "No way, back then the leader was already…" Her talkative mouth was promptly stuffed with a crispy mung bean cake.
Jenny, the one who'd shoved the cake into Tina's mouth, kept a radiant smile as she continued, "Miss Mia, what she means is that the leader was already sensible back then." Tina, choking on the cake, received another pointed glare from Jenny and immediately sat up straight.
In Jenny's mind, a big question loomed: How on earth did the leader choose Tina to serve Miss Mia?
"Even if little Arthur was sensible back then, letting such a young child manage such a massive family—" Mia trailed off, her tone filled with sympathy and heartache, though she didn't notice it herself.
"Miss Mia, there's nothing strange about it," Jenny said, taking another sip of tea, perhaps to balance out all the sweets. "The world is full of wonders." As she spoke, her eyes fixed on Mia, as if silently conveying something unspoken.