Proof of Qualification #1
—Dark elves, treated as filth. Are they truly filth?
Of late, a short-lived but provocative topic had been stirring resentment among the people of our duchy—a reputation earned hunting monsters, and the results that followed from aiding territory folk in their hour of need.
It was charity without reward, closer to pure volunteer work than anything else, and precisely because of that, more and more people began to say they could feel the sincerity in it.
They taught the soldiers who protected the land practical combat skills built around archery, and they helped those for whom felling timber was beyond their strength.
Meeting a dark elf face-to-face was something that could leave both the human and the dark elf herself with an unpleasant taste. I knew full well that a gap carved out over long ages would not close so easily—but neither was it a wound that would stitch itself shut if left alone.
In the end, someone had to step forward.
I became that someone, bowing my head again and again as I tried to fill the gap. If I did not approach them myself, nothing would come of anything—so I threw myself into it with the mindset of a man who had already let go of everything.
Those who first met me were afraid, and astonished. A young man already rumored to be the Duke's kept man, going about bowing to every soul he met—they must have suspected some scheme. Or perhaps, they said, it was a simple and ugly form of harassment, a way to pick a fight over the supposed slighting of a noble.
I only heard those words after the distance between our hearts had narrowed somewhat.
Now I could feel that they respected me, and followed me in earnest. Unintentionally, it had become an occasion for my own reputation to rise—though honestly, what people thought of me scarcely mattered. Setting my abilities aside, the talk that I was Helena's pillar of a husband had been right all along.
At any rate, as the one who had brought the dark elf mercenaries in, I felt I had discharged a fairly large responsibility, and I was quietly proud of it. Thanks to that, the wine the women made had begun to sprout buds of praise across the territory.
"Ah. If only the weather would hurry up and turn warm…"
Helena murmured as though she were already longing for the day when winter's white wind would give way to a season thick with green. June would bring my birthday, and she seemed thoroughly excited at the thought of marrying then.
"You like it that much?"
"Mm. I do! It's declaring to the world that you're my man, officially. Of course you already are—but being bound by marriage is a different matter entirely."
"Fair enough."
I nodded as I set a cup of gently warmed herbal tea in front of her. Even if a thoroughly debauched life often continued after the wedding, they would still become a proper couple who had gone through the formal process. That meant more things to mind, and lines that had to be kept even if they were hollow at the core. If a marriage fell apart, it had to be because the other party had done wrong. You could not hand them the leverage yourself.
Given the nature of our bond, we seemed unlikely to run into trouble. We had simply reached a rather peculiar conclusion on the usual front of joining house to house. The idea was that I would marry into this ducal house not as Viscount Altram's son, but simply as Zion. As a result I was treated, for all practical purposes, as an outsider—and Chess threw herself into making a child to succeed Altram.
I had thought Lina, who had borne me, was suffering in all sorts of ways because of it. I was wrong. They had been sharing their love from the start, heir or no heir; the only difference this time was that they were not using contraception.
—Him? He only got more into it. He loved it.
At that brief testimony of Lina's, which I had heard on a visit to the Altram manor, my head could only hang of its own accord. Being of an age that understood everything, and still having the full, shameless details of those acts poured into my ears, was beyond absurd. Worse, they would lose track of time arguing over whether Helena and I had already slept together or not.
Bear Altram's child!
I shook my head, imagining the sort of thing Chess might have shouted from on top of the bed. Even if they were not quite elderly yet, a complicated feeling I could not put into words poked its head up. All's well that ends well, they say… but still.
"Shouldn't we start preparing for the wedding early?"
"We've still got months left. Aren't you worrying a little too soon?"
"Nnno. Not at all. Not soon at all. From now on I have to think about the rings, how many children we'll have, and what comes after that…"
Helena gazed at the ceiling with dreamy eyes, already picturing a road that still stretched a long way ahead. There were no wedding halls or churches here; the custom was to send invitations or word to those close to you and hold the ceremony at home—and even accounting for that, she was far too early. Still, I agreed that we ought to prepare step by step from now on. As her kept man, I had work of my own to do.
"Well then—I'll head over to the vineyard."
"Again?"
Helena's cheeks puffed out like a hamster that had stuffed its face full of food, as if she meant to say her good mood had been ruined. Stopping by once a day to check on their health was part of my routine, but she still looked thoroughly displeased. Whenever she did, I would brush a light kiss against her lips to soothe her—a peck, the sort of thing they call a bird kiss.
"I'll be back."
"Mm… Come back soon."
People said Helena was someone they respected yet found difficult, and so they approached her carefully—but to me, there was no one easier. Perhaps that was the fruit of years of careful training.
"Welcome."
When I rode up to the vineyard, Ellen came out of the house as if she had been waiting and greeted me warmly. She must have recognized the distant drum of hoofbeats long before I arrived.
"Yes. Nothing out of the ordinary today?"
"Thanks to you. By the way—why did you ask me to buy cloth and thread? Something going on?"
Ellen tilted her head as she looked at me after I dismounted. Yesterday I had asked her, without explanation, to purchase various fabrics including silk and thread—so of course she would be curious. I had also been in her debt for a long time; now seemed as good a moment as any to bring it up.
"Yes. I'm going to make a dress."
"A dress…? You know how to make dresses? You're a noble."
"Our family's a little unusual. If Lady Helena had been a man, I probably would have practiced making formalwear for gentlemen instead."
If Helena had been a man in the first place, there would have been no reason for me to be born on this continent at all—but I decided not to press that point. I had never told anyone, and there was no reason to. Bringing it up would only make things awkward.
A noble making clothes was, without question, an exceptional thing. Had I not been raised in a household that trained its children in every form of service far removed from noble life, I would not have been able to sew a hole in a sock, let alone a dress. But what was I to do? I had been born into that exceptional house, spent long years mastering domestic work I had no natural connection to until I reached a professional level, and was still learning even now.
"Even so… you don't really need to make it yourself, do you?"
I stopped short before I could go in to look at the fabrics prepared inside the log house, caught by Ellen's question. I could not ignore a voice that truly seemed not to understand—and eyes that, for some reason, trembled so hard.
"I don't. I could just order the design I want from a specialist shop and buy it."
"Then why…?"
"I simply want to."
There was no grand reason. I only wanted to see Helena wearing a dress made to my own taste. I wanted to craft the sort of wrapping that would show off her purity and her colors at once—something that would stir desire on sight, that would make someone want to devour her then and there. I could not have done it before, but now I could. I had the skill for it, and so I thought I would try my hand at it lightly while things lined up so well. It was a hobby made possible by the fact that work was not busy at present—but I meant to start now, in preparation for the day when tasks began to pile up.
"I see. So that's it."
Ellen opened the door for me without protest, though a thick, ambivalent shadow hung over her expression. Her lips moved as if she wanted to ask something, but in the end no voice came out. Because of that I felt a strange unease—but only for a moment. Soon I was exchanging cheerful greetings with the other dark elves who welcomed me, receiving a few words of encouragement in the light atmosphere, and heading straight for the corner where the cloth was stacked.
A square table for cutting. A simple freestanding rack for hanging clothes. Cloth laid out on the table, needles and thread, and every other tool needed for sewing, all arranged at neat angles. I offered them fresh thanks for their thoroughness, resolved to repay them somehow later, however modestly, and lifted the fabric that would serve as the base. I knew Helena's measurements better than anyone from holding her every day; that, at least, would not be a problem.
"With just that kid around, you'd never starve wherever you went. Right?"
"…Yeah. True enough."
A few days into my immersion in making a wedding dress, having deliberately come all the way to the dark elves' cabin because I wanted to surprise her—Olivia looked at the dress slowly taking shape with an expression of pure envy. She had never in her life seen a human man make a dress with his own hands.
On the continent, those who made women's dresses were necessarily women, and so the case of a man sewing one and presenting it was almost unheard of. Seamstressing itself was largely the domain of women with delicate hands—and it was work that required a certain amount of physical contact besides.
Ellen offered a halfhearted agreement to Olivia's admiration, but even that heartwarming sight only left her more depressed than ever. How long had she lived with her head bowed before a cruel reality? Feeling emotions like a child's all over again struck her as pathetic in the extreme. What should have been a simple moment of surprise had begun to twist into something dark and heavy.
"What's wrong? Are you feeling sick?"
"No. It's nothing like that. Maybe it's just the winter."
"…Really?"
Olivia, and every other dark elf there, were women who had watched over Ellen from closer than anyone. They had built a bond more like family than family itself—and would go on living that way. Of course they would read the settled gloom in Ellen's feelings and worry.
"Really. Nothing's wrong. I've just been watching too many fairy-tale scenes, and I started wondering if any of this was real."
"Well, yeah. Outside of stories, who does something like that? And yet it happened for real. No wonder it throws you."
Olivia and the rest of the dark elf band found themselves chuckling under their breath as they quietly watched Zion's profile. They were freshly reminded that the talk of a noble raised mainly in the arts of support had been no exaggeration.
It ached. She did not know why, but her heart ached. Ellen rested a hand against her chest—heavier than usual, tight as if fog had settled there—and fixed her gaze on the tips of the man's fingers. The sewing, as delicate as any seamstress's, and the affection visible in every line of the form, were almost painful just to look at.
Was this truly all right?
Olivia stole a sidelong glance at Ellen and saw that thoroughly subdued light in her eyes—then sighed as if there were nothing to be done, and began chatting with the others again. Not long ago she had half-jokingly told Ellen to go after him, but she knew full well how hard that would be. However much their surroundings had improved, Ellen had lived a life worn thin, surrendering in advance.
So then—how could she give her the qualification, the barest chance to try?
Even while she laughed and talked, Olivia thought of nothing else. She was their benefactor, and she did not want to see that head hang low.