To Higher Places #3
After sending Raoul on ahead, I headed to the café with Rie and Senior Charles.
I ordered a hot chocolate for myself and another for Senior Charles, then gave Rie a rough summary of the conversation I'd just been having with Raoul.
"…Hmm. Professor Staffen saw it clearly. Your friend only managed to grasp one side of it."
As expected, Rie nodded in full agreement with Professor Staffen's assessment. Watching her face remain completely unchanged even when her own swordsmanship was called the worst of the worst, I could tell she already understood the greatest flaw in her technique.
"The swordsmen and knights I've sparred with have always said the same thing."
"That they never actually want to fight you with real blades?"
"…What? How did you know that?"
"We've crossed swords plenty of times. Something like that is obvious, isn't it? And even before that, I already knew your swordsmanship was more difficult and more unusual than any other style out there."
"Ah. Right… That's why you drew that diagram for Locke back then…"
Ordinarily she might have asked how I could render it all in a drawing after seeing it only a handful of times. But Rie already believed I had genuine talent for swordsmanship—and since I had even designed a style of my own, she no longer seemed to question how thoroughly I understood hers.
After that, Rie and I talked at length about her swordsmanship. Senior Charles barely spoke while she sipped her hot chocolate, and I knew it would take her at least ten minutes to finish the complimentary cookies as well, so the two of us could converse freely without worry.
"I'm suddenly curious—how did you end up devising a style like that entirely on your own? I at least had Brother Edwin as a collaborator, but you did it alone."
"It's similar to what you did, Lucian. I gathered every sword style in Lebechia and tried them all out one by one. The difference is that High-ranking Knight Edwin would have demonstrated the forms for you, whereas I performed every technique myself dozens of times. Once I'd forced every style into my body, I cut away everything unnecessary, stripped out anything too basic, and kept only what I needed."
Hearing that only confirmed that Professor Staffen had been right: her swordsmanship truly was the worst kind. A sword style that is always difficult or flashy is useless. To advance to the next stage, a practitioner needs passages that are simple—even obvious—so they can recognize them, step through them at least once, and move on. Yet Rie, whether from sheer innate genius or something else, had cut all of those parts away.
In other words, anyone hoping to follow her style would first need swordsmanship above a certain level, and would also need to be able to perform every sword style that existed in Lebechia to at least a competent degree. Trying to learn one technique would require several times the effort as a mandatory prerequisite. On top of that, Rie's style had been revised and refined exclusively for herself. In my case—and Brother Edwin's—we had deliberately left the slightest openings so that anyone who handled a sword could use the techniques. A skilled practitioner could fill those gaps on their own, and a style that never stood still, that kept evolving, was the only way stronger techniques and the people who would carry them forward could continue to appear.
"If you're asking why—it's obvious, isn't it? This swordsmanship is nothing more than my means of walking beside you, Lucian. It isn't something to show off the way other people do, and it isn't a technique for displaying a measure of strength."
"Still, I wish you'd paid just a little attention to that side of it. That's all. It feels like a waste."
"Then later, if we ever have the time—want to create a sword style together?"
At Rie's suggestion I let out an involuntary huh of surprise. Come to think of it, I had never once considered creating a sword style with her. If the skill of someone called a prospective Sword Master were combined with my eye for technique… why had I only just now realized that something extraordinary would almost certainly be born from it?
"What? You look like the thought never even crossed your mind."
"Well… yeah. You're right. Why didn't I ever think of that?"
"Probably because your own swordsmanship has been so terrible all this time that the idea of creating a style with me never occurred to you. I suspect that's the biggest reason."
Having said that, Rie took a sip of the tea in front of her. Then she added, "If you're interested, just say the word anytime. It does sound like it could be fun." Clearly the offer, too, was for my sake rather than her own.
"Then we'll have to name the style Arsch."
"…What is that bizarre name? No. Pick something else."
"Then Rie?"
"That's my name. I don't want it coming out of other people's mouths left and right."
"People already just say your name whenever they run into you."
"That's different from this. Absolutely not. I will never allow it."
Most people would desperately want their name attached to something. Rie, apparently, would rather die.
"All right, all right—please calm down. I was just teasing."
"Even teasing has limits. What a shameless idea."
"What's so wrong with a sword style that has your name in it?"
"No. If it had your name in it, Lucian, I might consider it."
"…No. Now that I think about it, that's definitely worse. Sorry. Forget I said anything."
"See? When you picture it yourself, it's incredibly weird, isn't it? And incredibly embarrassing?"
I let out a low groan and nodded meekly, and Rie laughed under her breath—a soft little kuk kuk. Meanwhile, Senior Charles had polished off her hot chocolate and cookies completely and wore a thoroughly satisfied expression as she hummed in contentment.
"All right, Senior Charles. As I mentioned earlier, today's topic is elven marriage customs."
"Mm. I know. But I've never been married myself, so I don't really know the details that well."
"I'm aware of that, of course. And it's fine if you just tell us what you've seen, heard, and felt. Digging into every little detail would only make things exhausting anyway."
"Got it."
"Ah—Senior Charles, may I ask something I'm curious about?"
Rie raised her hand slightly, speaking as if she were posing a question to a professor. When Senior Charles nodded for her to go ahead, Rie's face colored faintly and her eyes sparkled with what was clearly long-held curiosity.
"Do elves truly love only once in their entire lives? From what I've heard, elves choose a single spouse and carry their love for that person forever."
Ah—I'd heard that one too. Full exchange between Lebechia and the Minas Elf Kingdom had only begun relatively recently, so until then there had been no end of vague or fanciful stories about elves. One of them was that elves shared their love with only a single partner for their entire lives. Beings who lived far longer than humans—even after their children grew up and left their parents' shadow, husband and wife remained each other's eternal companions until the moment of death. It was a beautiful tale, and I knew of several poems that had drawn inspiration from it.
"No?"
"…Huh?"
But—but why, of all things, had the words that came from Senior Charles's mouth been No? instead of That's right?
"That's not it. Elves are the same as humans. Men and women stay together, and if their hearts don't match they fight and sometimes break up. Even after forming the bond of husband and wife, if one of them returns to the forest's embrace first, the other grieves for a while—and then, at some point, may meet another connection. Some elves even have affairs while they already have a partner."
"Whaaat? Really?"
"They have mistresses and lovers on the side."
"That's impossible! Weren't elves supposed to have a single-hearted, devoted love?"
"Humans live a hundred years at the absolute most, right? And even in that time, don't plenty of them meet many women—or many men? We elves, even the short-lived ones, live well over two hundred years."
"So because you live that long, you meet even more people of the opposite sex… is that it?"
"Yeah. No matter how wonderful your partner is, if you've still got a hundred years left to live, being alone gets lonely."
Hearing it put that way, the answer was strangely persuasive. Elves lived at least twice as long as humans—sometimes three times as long. Spending that entire span with only one woman, or only one man, until death really did sound difficult. The part about affairs and mistresses aside, the idea of meeting a new bond after being widowed and spending the remaining years together was just as surprising in its own way. But for Rie and me, who until now had always associated elves with a pure, single-hearted love, the reality was a little—no, honestly, quite a lot—disorienting.
"Of course, there are also elves who never forget the memory of their partner until the very end."
"Ah. S-see? I knew it."
"But humans are the same, aren't they? Someone can spend long years alone, missing a husband or wife who went first, and then draw their last breath that way. Looked at like that, humans and elves aren't different at all. That's how I see it."
Sometimes she seemed like a carefree child, and at other moments she felt like someone who had weathered every storm the world had to offer. Whatever this sensation was—the sense that Senior Charles grew harder to define with each passing day—I couldn't quite pin it down. Rie seemed to feel much the same; she could only manage a dazed little huh of her own.
"Ah, Lucian—marriage customs. As I told you last time, elves form the bond of husband and wife quietly. So even people who are truly close—even family, parents and siblings—aren't invited. Once the couple has finished forming their bond, they might introduce each other properly afterward, but that's about it."
"Wow… so it's really just the two of them swearing to become husband and wife?"
"There is one exception. If someone has received a great kindness from another person."
"You invite your benefactor, then."
"Yes. A benefactor must be invited so their blessing can be received. Depending on the case, the child born later may even be given the benefactor's name. And that benefactor sometimes becomes a godfather or godmother."
I had seen a similar custom somewhere in Lebechia before. And considering that the region in question bordered the Minas Elf Kingdom, it occurred to me that Lebechia and the Minas Elf Kingdom might have been exchanging influence—quietly, without anyone quite realizing it—for far longer than the present era.
After that I asked a few more questions, and Senior Charles answered within the bounds of what she knew. Rie sat beside us the whole time, letting out soft exclamations of wonder and delight.
"…All right. I think that's enough for today. Thank you, Senior Charles."
"Mm. I had fun too. Humans had some pretty strange ideas about us."
"Setting everything else aside, the part about elves having affairs was a genuine shock."
"We have whims too. Immoral sides as well. If you get caught up in the glamour and fail to see what's underneath, it can end badly, Lucian."
It was advice that managed to be impressive, faintly unsettling, and genuinely useful all at once. I could almost feel the presence of a true princess behind it, and found myself a little in awe.
"Lucian. There's something I'm curious about this time."
"Whether you can have another hot chocolate?"
"…That wasn't it, but now I'm curious about that too. Is it possible?"
"I can order you one more cup, sure. What else did you want to ask?"
I had half expected some endearing follow-up about whether cookies were possible too—but Senior Charles put on a rather serious expression and opened her mouth.
"Your magic."