The Part-Time Girl at the Inn
"Please follow me."
With Sophia ushering her along, the moment Sylvia showed signs of climbing up to the second floor, Cloud inwardly panicked and scurried up to the third. No sooner had he arrived than he ran smack into a girl giving the corridor a vigorous mopping.
Large monolid eyes marked with sanpaku whites, a long fall of black hair—the girl had an exotic beauty, as though she'd stepped straight out of some distant land. She was of a people Cloud had never laid eyes on before.
It was this girl who now opened her mouth, wearing a thoroughly insolent expression.
"Who are you supposed to be? Why are you skulking around our inn looking all shifty?"
Seeing as this cheeky girl was scrubbing the corridor, Cloud took her for the inn's part-timer and decided to simply brush her off.
"If you don't want to get fired, keep your nose out of whatever the guests get up to. This mister, you see, gets pretty scary when his temper flares. Got that, brat?"
"Scary how, exactly? Is it your dick that's scary, mister?"
Whether she'd picked up the habit from the inn's patrons or not, the girl's mouth was plenty filthy. Cloud, dumbfounded, scrunched his face into a vicious scowl and met her eyes dead-on.
"That's right, you little punk. This mister doesn't give a damn about the law and can lay hands on minors too, so you'd best watch yourself. Hmm?"
The girl curled the corners of her mouth and snorted.
"Try it, then. If you think you can, go right ahead. How would you even lay a hand on me? Gonna jump me?"
For one instant Cloud flared up, seized by the impulse to grant this insolent brat a taste of the forbidden pleasure she had never once known in her life—but,
"I'm letting you off because it might trip the censors. Quit bluffing and make yourself scarce while I'm still asking nicely."
The girl shot back without yielding an inch.
"Censors? What in the world is 'censors' supposed to mean? Anyway, I don't do bluffing. If you can do it, then by all means, give it your best shot. And hold on—aren't you a thief who's been picking out the empty rooms of guests who stepped outside, planning to rob them? Be honest. Confess now and I'll go as easy on you as I can."
"This is utterly absurd..."
That he, a man of twenty-five, was trading barbs with a girl barely in her teens—in this situation, in this place, looking as he did—was pathetic.
And so...
He fired a dropkick straight at the girl's chest!
"Sorry for being such an immature old man!"
Cloud threw his entire weight behind the blow, hurling himself with everything he had. It was, he thought, a truly fine kick—clean enough to rank as the best he'd ever delivered.
But the girl—
"Just what I was hoping for!"
Twisting clear of Cloud's flying kick, she hammered her elbow down into his stomach.
"Gwahk!"
The end result: Cloud took a thorough working-over from the girl.
Thus several dozen minutes slipped by, and the two of them lay side by side in the corridor, heaving for breath. The girl was winded from all the hitting; Cloud, from all the getting hit.
"Haaah... haaah. Guess you had your own reasons you couldn't talk about, huh, mister."
"Yeah, I had reasons. Wheeze... wheeze..."
"So you weren't a suspicious character after all."
"I'm nothing but a pure country boy who only just arrived in the city."
"Hehe, turns out you're a decent sort after all."
"Heh heh, and you seem like a good girl yourself, now that I look."
Having quarreled and made up, the two of them now felt as close as friends who'd known each other for years.
"So you work here part-time?"
"Nope. I'm the owner's daughter?"
"What? You're Sophia's daughter?"
"Yep. Sophia's my mom. Name's Cecil, by the way."
"Cecil Tironde?"
"That's me."
"Then how come you look nothing like your mother? Is your father a foreigner?"
Cecil stared at the ceiling for a moment, weighing her words, then spoke.
"I'm not her birth daughter."
And then she added:
"My birth mother was a woman sold off as a slave from the far distant East back when I was a baby. After Mom died, or so the people around here tell me, Sophia scooped me up out of a pile of corpses where I'd been left to be thrown away."
Cecil was hardly the fragile sort who would drown in sorrow over old memories. She was matter-of-fact about it all.
Cloud gave a wry smile and turned his head to look at the girl lying beside him.
"No wonder you talk and act older than your years. So that's what you've been through."
"It's not much of a tale. I don't dwell on it. My real mom is Sophia, period—she's the one who's looked after me all this time. And my childhood holds nothing but happy memories. Happy memories with Sophia."
Cecil beamed at the recollection of days gone by, then promptly changed the subject.
"So what's your name, anyway?"
"Human."
"Hey, mister. That's a species, not a name."
Cloud smirked and tried again.
"My name is Cloud. Cloud New Kuu Sara von Asran."
"Quite the peculiar name you've got. Peculiar because it's way too long."
"Anyway, where'd you learn to fight? Leaping, kicking, stabbing—not bad at all."
"Trained myself."
"Yourself? How?"
"Just studied out of books. There's only me and Mom at home, so I'm the only one who can protect her, right? So I trained every single day."
"Wow. Aren't you something."
"Thanks to that, I've sent plenty of drunk rowdies' heads flying."
"Whoa."
After the two of them had whiled away the time trading stories, Cloud—thanks to Cecil—managed to slip out of the inn unseen, clear of Sylvia's watchful eye.
Cloud made his way to the bustling plaza and sat down on a bench. Watching the passersby stream past, he sank into thought.
"I'll have to leave Valois tomorrow morning..."
Reading between the lines of what Sylvia had said, she appeared to be a noble residing in this very city. And with her so dead set on hunting him down—bounty posted, watchers assigned—lingering any longer in Valois was out of the question.
"Maybe I'll get myself a horse and be on my way."
But those tangled worries lasted only a moment. Watching the performances and food stalls spread across the plaza, the feverish energy of the crowds enjoying them, and the fresh, blooming faces of the young ladies drifting to and fro, Cloud's heart lifted all on its own.
"Ooh, now she's not bad."
Useless thoughts chased each other's tails in an unbroken line: nice figure, that one—wonder how old she is?
And so he wandered on with no particular destination, letting his eyes carry him where they would, until all at once his gaze snagged on one spot.
It was a play.
On the heels of the line came the clang, clang of stage swords meeting. The actresses standing on the stage, clad in resplendent armor, poured everything they had into every gesture and expression for the audience's sake.
Swept up in the play himself, Cloud leaned over and casually asked the man standing beside him.
"Who are Isabel and Ophelia? Are they real, living people?"
"Good grief, man—you mean you've never heard of those two heroines? The ones rumored to hold their own against a hundred royal guardian knights and fell dragons with a single hand?"
"Nope. I asked whether they actually exist."
"Heh heh, of course they're real. You're not from this continent, are you? Don't tell me you've lived somewhere remote, like an elf village?"
"Think whatever you like."
Cloud tossed off a careless reply and moved on. He'd been briefly intoxicated by the play—overacted, perhaps, but with real force behind it—and now a faintly bitter smile crossed his face at the passerby's condescending remark.
Just how long had he been living shut away at the bottom of a well?
In this world there existed a whole world that he alone had never known.
Looking to shake off the mood, he strolled over to the food stalls ringing the plaza's outskirts, intending to have a drink or two. Even in broad daylight drunks abounded, and the air roared with the humming and chatter of men and women, young and old alike. Cloud ducked into one stall, claimed a seat, and fell to drinking among them.
And after that...
By nightfall, the place where Cloud had settled had transformed into the most romantic, most beautiful den of temptation in the whole city. One and all, they hoped to spend a romantic night with the someone they'd met over drinks, drunk on the merry air of dancing and song.
"Ahaha, now that's drinking with real gusto!"
To a thunderclap of applause and cheers, Cloud brought his big, rough-hewn wooden mug crashing down onto the table.
"Wahahaha! One more! Still not enough! Hic!"
The patrons of the open-air tavern found his antics hilarious, and in the blink of an eye Cloud's mug stood brimming full again. He kept on drinking as dusk deepened into night. When he downed yet another mug in one long pull and set it down, the woman seated beside him speared a slice of apple with her fork and slipped it into his mouth with a cooing "Ahh~."
"Honey, the way you talk—it flows like a mountain stream. With that silver tongue of yours, you'd write a bestseller if you ever put it to paper."
Chomping away at the apple, Cloud rolled up his sleeve with plenty of bravado. Then, wrapping an arm snug around her waist and kneading her breast with his free hand, he said:
"I have zero intention of ever writing a novel."
"Why not?"
"Because this big boy happens to be quite the perverted man. If I wrote a novel, it wouldn't come out a novel—it'd come out smut. Wahahahaha!"
"Hahaha!"
At his answer she dissolved into giggles as though she'd just watched a comedy act. She'd been showing Cloud considerable favor all throughout the drinking.
When she'd laughed her fill, she fixed him with a deep, sultry gaze.
"So where do you usually have your fun, honey?"
"Fun?"
"What is it you do? What's your trade?"
"Whoa, whoa—don't stare at me with those shy, first-love eyes. I'm not half the man you're imagining."
She clutched her belly and burst out laughing all over again.
"You've been gliding past every question so smoothly, honey. Come on, straight answer. What do you do? Are you from this city?"
Judging that the moment had come, Cloud held her gaze and struck his most dashing pose.
"If you want to know about me, show me a little something first. There ought to be some give and take between us, no?"
"Oh, you."
Having caught his meaning, she rose from her seat first.
"It's a bit chilly here, and all these people are distracting. Shall we find somewhere quieter?"
"If we're going anyway, let's make it somewhere nice and cramped—so something good can happen."
Beside the food alley ran a snug, densely tree-lined lane, its streetlamps too few for the ground they had to cover. It grew quite dark once night fell, and with all the trees and thickets, a good number of couples came there with exactly one purpose in mind: trysts beneath the open sky.
Cloud was walking that very lane now, hand in hand with the woman. All around them, couples who'd arrived earlier were panting and pressing flesh together on every side.
Those sounds teased at both their ears.
Cloud picked out a suitable spot and leaned her back against the trunk of a tree.
Then, without troubling over who would make the first move, they kissed as they stripped each other's clothes away. Whether the buttons went flying or not was nobody's concern.