Editing City Series:Volume5a Chapter7 (section)

===Rosetta's Journal: Today's 2nd Entry===
 
I will now continue where I left off. Lady Beretta visited before lunch today. She leaned her ''bicyclette'' against the mansion's door with her bag on the luggage rack. She took my hand and said the following.

"Can I ask you one thing? I want you to run a stand at the school festival. There are going to be several different stands set up in the university yard and we'll all be eating and singing and dancing there. Just think of it as doing a bunch of unproductive things at the end of the month."

"I see. So it is like the Witch's Sabbath. That was in one of the picture books you gave me."

"Not quite. But I guess it's close enough."

"What do I need to do at this Sabbath? Chop up a sacrifice?"

"Unfortunately there won't be any sacrifices or sacramental bread there. Our department is managing a stand and this one girl who knows how to cook...how should I put this? There were some issues related to filial piety and she's had to drop out."

I do not know what filial piety means. But I asked if I would really be a sufficient replacement for that person.

"Of course. Mallette has been bragging about you. She keeps telling people that a girl who really knows how to cook has been visiting our ''appartement''."

Is knowing how to cook really something worth bragging about?

The two of us then entered the kitchen and made lunch. Lady Beretta said she would be visiting the library that afternoon. I have learned a lot about her after speaking with her over the past month. In America, she piloted Lourd de Marionnettes and helped a vigilante group in Image City – San Francisco. Her family runs a Belle de Marionnette maintenance factory. She came to France in order to give someone a letter.

But there are some things she will not tell me when I ask about them. Like why she cannot get along with Sir Phillip. Or why she looks after me so much.

There is a lot I do not know about her. But there is also a lot I do not know about myself. Who is my father? Why was I made? I simply do not know.

I think there are just some things that will never be known.

But I asked about Sir Phillip during our conversation today.

"Do you fight with Sir Phillip because he is important to you?"

She smiled a little without saying anything. It was not what I would normally describe as a small smile. I am not quite sure how to describe it.

Seeing that smile made me feel like something was caught in my chest.

It was a strange feeling. It was like I had stopped breathing. It was like something could not pass through my chest properly. I thought about the logical reason behind it and asked a question.

"Do you not fight with me or my master because we are not important to you?"

My thoughts here were much like a profit-and-loss calculation. I am not sure how to explain it. But it was like when I choose the best of the vegetables brought by the deliveryman and cook them first. It felt like she had made a decision like that.

It was a strange feeling. It was the feeling of being not chosen. I felt it when I thought Lady Beretta had chosen Sir Phillip over me. Happiness made my chest feel like it was opening up and this was the opposite. It felt like my chest was tightening up.

I realized that the opposite of happiness was not a good thing.

Lady Beretta stopped smiling when she saw my face. And she placed her hand on my head with a look of relief that was different from a smile.

"Unfortunately I can't exactly say I've acted like you or that old man are important to me. And it's all because I jumped into this mansion that one night. Rosetta. I have already gotten you and that old man caught up in all this and I have to take responsibility for that."

"Responsibility?"

"By not getting you involved in any more danger. By protecting you."

She smiled again there.

"That's the duty of a Lourd de Écrivain. But I can't protect everything."

"There are things not even you can protect?"

"It was because I was injured that I got you two involved. I can barely even protect myself in this war."

The word "war" stuck in my mind. Yes. The master had mentioned that France was about 70% occupied by a country called Germany. We are apparently being given some limited prosperity at their mercy.

I do not know what that means. But Lady Beretta is involved in it. She even bled. I doubt she wants to bleed for people like us who do not know what is happening.

Realizing that removed what was caught in my chest.

I apologized to Lady Beretta. She said nothing and simply rubbed my head.

It was a familiar feeling. Perhaps the father buried somewhere in my memories did the same thing to me before I became self-aware.

We then prepared a light meal in the kitchen.

I decided to chop up and fry the ''pommes de terre''. I noticed how they were all shaped differently.

And I realized something strange.

I am a machine. I can grow and evolve to become more human. But I am not completely human.

I am inferior to a human.

So why did I feel that emotion when I thought Lady Beretta was comparing me to Sir Phillip? I questioned the result of that comparison despite knowing that I am inferior. Why was that? I do not know.

Do the differently-shaped ''pommes de terre'' think things along those lines?

I felt like I would not be able to chop them up if I kept thinking about that. So I peeled them all and steamed them and crushed them. I then rolled them all into the same shape before adding bread crumbs and making them into small croquettes.

I finished frying them and sprinkled salt on them. That made them all the same shape.

I lined them up on a plate while telling Lady Beretta what had happened in the garden. She was very interested in the Fantasmé Renard story. She said that such things appear a lot in France. She told me a strange story about the Beast of Gévaudan.

Then I heard three sounds from Boulogne Forest. They sounded like stone being struck.

Lady Beretta did not even turn around and said they were gunshots. She said some of the Germans mistook the forest park for a hunting ground and hunted the animals there.

"That must seem horribly savage to the French."

She sounded exasperated. But there was also disapproval in the way she stated it. She is a participant in the war. I do not really understand what that means. But will I also be involved in the war if I begin to feel some kind of emotion in response to those gunshots?

Lady Beretta had a gunshot wound to her leg when she first visited the mansion. I had no emotional reaction to it then. But would I now?

I do not know.

That is what happened today.