Huh—That's Not a Cat, That's a Lion

Parties usually began late in the afternoon. Gather at midday and there was nothing to do but pass the refreshments, drink tea, visit the washroom, and pass the refreshments again.

Even so, for a provincial noble, arriving exactly on time merely because the party started late was a loss. You had to break the ice with the other guests and trade news beforehand if you meant to be fully prepared. Word reached the provinces late and thin, and if you hoped to chase even the coattails of the central nobility, you had to keep moving.

So the men sought out social clubs, took a light drink, and killed time over billiards and cards, while the women stopped into salons to gossip and mark who might make a friend—or a rival.

That was where the trouble started.

You had brought a dress, only to find in the salon that it matched someone else's. You had claimed the look first. Infuriating. But the moment you got the sense you were objectively losing on looks or breeding, there was nothing for ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it but to bolt for the nearest tailor.

For women who had come a long way and could not pack several gowns, the shop kept ready-made dresses on display in every sort of variation. It stood directly in front of the largest salon in Rostov—a truly underhanded partnership between tailor and salon-keeper.

And this was a party hosted at the Prime Minister's residence, with the entire nobility on the guest list. Thanks to that, even on the day itself the tailor's shop was packed with young ladies and matrons up from the provinces.

Into the middle of them appeared a woman of the martial world with a wavy pink ponytail.

They were already boiling over duplicate dress codes, and the sight of a vixen flaunting her figure just to catch the eye drove their irritation that much higher. The young ladies' gazes turned to awls and flew in a rapid volley, stabbing into that enormous chest and those hips.

She stuffed an awful lot in there.

Why not just go naked, if she's going to walk around like that?

With udders like those, she could raise a gorgon on milk.

A bitch like a pregnant milk cow. An ass the size of an orc's...

Every last one of those inner voices was aimed at the guest of honor of tonight's party: Lupin.

Lupin was neither a fool nor particularly dense. Put gaze and expression together, and she could read the feeling well enough.

No point shooting jealousy at someone married to a treasure chest. If anything, the ladies doing the envying ought to be careful—they might be the ones who get conquered.

...No. Their faces are a bit much. Their chests, too.

Somehow, not one of them had a larger chest than Lupin. Was Vatslava, in fact, one of the great beauties of the empire? Yegor was suspicious as well, having bitten on a line she had only tossed out for the fun of it. Strangely enough, a single month on the road was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠enough for Lupin to realize that everyone around her was unfairly good-looking.

In truth, while she was away the two of them had gone about together and drawn everyone's admiration—a bartender (slave) and a porter (contract labor) who got told things like, "Oh my, what a beautiful couple."

At any rate, the situation being what it was, Lupin could not help thinking of Teacher Kakavita and the young ladies.

The ones who dressed me up were decent, at least.

Reason, as a rule, outruns instinct. She might look like a vixen who bewitched people, but add the fact that she was a Grand Master, and most would look past the face to the background, offering the treatment and courtesy that background required. The present scene was a perfectly adequate example of that difference.

Word of Lupin was monopolized by a handful of people, the Rurikovich family among them, so the provincial young ladies who had rushed to the tailor's had no way of knowing any of it. To their eyes she was a fox—a wanton who had chosen an obscene outfit to lure men in a martial world packed with them.

Even Lupin, who usually failed to read a room and barged straight through it, could not get a word out in a space needled this densely. So she only muttered inwardly.

I'll just find a cape and go...

Her sealed Growth Value, Charm, was laughing. Supreme charm, they said, naturally called forth the reverence and respect of others. If only the day would come when Lupin grasped that truth...

About ten minutes later her turn came. Lupin took the reservation slip and stood before the tailor.

"Would you be Sir Yegor?"

"Yes. It's reserved under that name."

"Here you are. Please try it on over here."

The tailor responsible for the piece looked thoroughly satisfied. He kept stroking the pointed beard known as a schemer's whiskers, and he was half-excited besides. The masterpiece he had prepared was about to settle across Lupin's shoulders; his whole body had no choice but to flush hot. He insisted it was a natural virtue in a tailor. Colleagues and customers tolerated the proclivity only because of his skill.

"Now, now. Stand right here, and I'll help you into it."

"Huh? I can't just throw it on myself?"

"Not at all. Clothing must consider function, must it not? Of course everything is prepared so that you may don it alone. But this is the first wearing, so I, the maker, mean to demonstrate the method myself."

"Ahh. How kind of you."

"I took special care so that it would mount to the harness, and the manner of wearing it differs from an ordinary cape or shawl."

"Oho."

Click, click. Each time a fastener on the cape caught a ring of the harness, the tailor shivered. Lupin, for her part, was simply delighted. She was on the verge of obtaining a relic.

One of those moments when she wished the tailor would quit twerking and just finish mounting the thing.

...You're not mocking somebody's butt size right now, are you? Maybe I should hunt you down after you clock out and build you one the exact same size.

A vicious killing intent came flying in, but the tailor was already a breath from paradise. With the cape on, Lupin was as splendid as if a god had sculpted her.

Set aside the youthful face, and there truly isn't a single rough edge. An outstanding figure.

He had thought so from the first moment he saw her. An overly provocative outfit only made a statue-like figure like Lupin's more sensual. Better, then, to hide the small of the back beneath a cape that usually hung smooth and close, split to either side so it would show when she moved and the cloth swayed. Wrap the shoulders lightly, add ornament and a little volume, and the gaze that belonged on the chest would scatter of its own accord. The cape broke the line of the body and laid a soft, lovely femininity over it. That way the youthful face did its work as well.

A design hexagon, pursued to the last. The crowning touch of all crowning touches!

"Well? How is it? Have a look in the mirror and turn once."

"Oh."

Lupin smiled, satisfied. Watching her, the tailor's face was just breaking into a matching beam———.

"Uh. Uh? The cape...?!"

Lupin set both hands on the winged garment she had just obtained and ordered the summoning released. At once it shattered into fragments too fine to suggest a shape. Each shard glittered like a star in the night sky, then drew together into a wave of light and vanished.

Everyone present drank that rapturous sight into their eyes. A moment before, they had been muttering to themselves—sow, slut, orc half-blood, curses of that sort. Everyone who witnessed the mysterious miracle went blank in the head.

"...Did you just see that?"

"You too?"

Formless Aura was, to ordinary people, rare in its very existence. Even so, they knew this much: the greatest trait of the miracle called Formless Aura was summoning and disappearance. There was even a superstition that treated a user of it like a talisman, a blessing conferred by the mere touch of a hand.

Several people swallowed hard and drew toward Lupin. Just once. Let me touch her just once.

Lupin called the cape back, settled it over her shoulders, and only then caught the presence at her back.

"Three weeks, or was it four... it really was a long job... hm?"

From beyond the fluttering cape, several hands were reaching for her. The approach was creepy enough to have been lifted from a zombie film.

"Eek! What the—?!"

Startled, Lupin sprang and landed atop the counter behind the tailor. She had jumped the way she always did, and yet for an instant she felt as if she were flying. It was nothing like the old sensation of forcing gravity aside and launching herself like a shell. This was like jumping on the moon. She felt she could stay aloft and kick ten times over.

Only the gravity on Lupin's body had gone strangely light.

"The specs on this thing are busted!"

She had not yet reached the realm of true flight. Still, a force that pushed back against gravity had appeared, and a single leap could now carry her farther and higher. Wouldn't the very way she used space have to change?

In high spirits, Lupin glided through the tailor's shop like a flying object whose physics engine had broken—out a window a full story up. She kicked off the sill with everything she had, into the sky over Novi Rostov.

"Yeehaw——!!"

Once Lupin had flown off beyond the blue, everyone who had been chasing her fetched up at the windowsill like dogs left behind by a chicken.

Across the main street, Yegor had been sipping coffee in a café, unable to step into a tailor's shop full of young ladies. He saw it and sprayed a mouthful of black coffee.

"......Did the café owner drug the coffee?"

He slapped his forehead and even rapped his own crown with a knuckle. Lupin was still flying perfectly well across the sky.

"Seems I'm not in my right mind. Didn't sleep last night."

He had spent the night in a scramble, paying off the person who had originally been meant to go and having a suit prepared that would actually fit. At this rate, could he even manage Lupin properly today? Yegor shook his head and knocked back what remained in the cup in a single swallow.

He was not the only one to witness the unidentified flying object. Emelin, Third Imperial Princess of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the Blumang Empire, had just arrived in the heart of Novi Rostov, and she too saw a person cutting a straight line across the sky.

A moment later she shouldered the colossal weapon she had been leaning against a streetlamp.

Creeeak.

The tilted lamp swung back into place and shivered.

"You see that just now?"

"Yes. Did Your Highness witness it as well?"

"To think a person can fly like that."

Beneath hair that waved softly pink, the black cape glittered strangely all on its own, as if it held a clear night sky.

An Apostle of the Calamity Star...?

The evidence was too thin to be sure. It was small, besides, and hard to make out. She would simply remember it.

Taking in once more the flier that was already shrinking to a dot, Emelin muttered.

"Come to think of it, Nursemaid. That rumor from earlier—how was it? Solid?"

"Yes. A few gold coins in the hand, and they talked freely. There are already twelve people who saw His Highness the Prince traveling in the company of two generously endowed women."

CRACK.

Emelin's colossal weapon drove straight down into the stone of the street. A massive blade, long enough to clear a grown man's height with room to spare—far too large to call a mere halberd. The perilous thing flashed in the sunlight, and passersby rubbed at their napes for no good reason and watched their step, like capital criminals waiting to be beheaded.

"His own sister hauls herself all the way out here, and the little brat is openly sporting two women at once..."

Crrrrunch.

The halberd chewed another head's depth into the ground.

"Face or what's below it, I'll have to smash one of them to pieces, won't I?"

"Would that not be a loss to the nation... no, to the world?"

Emelin growled at the lamenting nursemaid.

"Then he shouldn't have run from the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠imperial house in the first place. How many times does this make?"