The Dinner Promise and Another Promise (2)
The smell of alcohol hit Maru in waves the moment he stepped into the hall where the banquet had been held.
He walked quickly toward the far end of the room. The table was still littered with half-eaten food, but the chairs were empty. His gaze dropped, and he found Edward and Yosef sprawled unconscious across the floor.
"Mmnh... where d'you think you're... going... take another one... kuooooh..."
"Your Highness... if it's too much for you... give up the pride already... mmnh..."
Maru laughed in disbelief. "So who won?"
He bent down and shook them awake, but both men merely rolled over to the other side, showing no intention whatsoever of getting up.
"Edward! Edward! Come on, Yosef, get up!"
He shook them for a good ten minutes before deciding it was hopeless. He rose to his feet, resolved to simply send the servants to deal with them— propriety be damned, he'd suffer the embarrassment either way. He couldn't stand sharing the same air as these men a second longer.
"Fine. Suit yourselves."
The instant he turned to walk away, someone grabbed him by the ankle. Looking down, he found Edward awake after all. Still flat on the floor, clutching Maru's ankle, the prince forced open his parched lips.
"W-wait a moment...! Doesn't it occur to you that you're leaving behind something terribly, terribly important...?"
The moment the words left his mouth, Edward's head flopped back down. Then he resumed snoring.
Maru hoisted Edward and Yosef onto his shoulders, hauled them out of the banquet hall, tossed each of them onto his own bed, and left them to the servants.
"Ugh, the smell's soaked right into my clothes."
Back in his room, Maru sniffed at his own sleeve and checked the clock. Roughly two hours remained until his dinner appointment.
I should head over thirty minutes early. It's a promise with the Princess, after all.
He had the feeling he ought to start preparing now if he wanted to dress as nicely as possible. This didn't seem like just any meal thrown together for the sake of eating—it somehow had the air of an evening date. Showing up half-dressed would be an insult to a Princess who'd doubtless come out looking beautiful.
With that thought, Maru stripped off the clothes he was wearing. Clean body first, everything else after. He immediately summoned the servants and ordered them to fill the bathtub.
Thirty minutes later, Maru swept his wet black hair back from his face. It was long enough now that it clung to the nape of his neck. With no time to cut it lately, he'd been tying it back every day, and a shoulder-length bob cinched tight with a rubber band made itself into a ponytail whether he liked it or not.
Secretly, he hated it. Edward kept telling him it gave off an air of mystery and begged him not to cut it, but Maru thought it made him look like a woman. On the other hand, the servants kept insisting it suited him too, and their flattery was starting to get under his skin—he was seriously considering just leaving it.
Incidentally, when he'd lived with his mother, Maru's hairstyle had been a clean shave. He'd worn a heavy golden crown every single day, and his hair had felt like such a nuisance that he'd simply shaved it all off. As another aside, Maru's hair had always been black, even back when he possessed the Hero's Power.
"Let's see, let's see. What do I wear to charm the Princess?"
He was drying his hair and peering into the wardrobe when a knock sounded at the door.
"One moment, please."
Draping the robe that had been sitting over the back of a chair across his shoulders, he opened the door. A maid stood there respectfully, holding a covered silver tray.
"Forgive the intrusion, Lord Maru. Lady Kiera instructed me to deliver this to you."
"Kiera? I mean—Lady Kiera did?"
Maru stared blankly at the tray she held out in both hands. "What is it?"
"I couldn't say, my lord. Lady Kiera strictly forbade me from looking inside. She only told me to deliver it to you."
Is it a bomb?
Maru hesitated in the doorway for a long while, unsure whether to take it, before finally accepting it and closing the door.
"What trick is she playing now?"
Walking into the room without thinking, he lifted the lid—and a faint perfume tickled his nose as a woman's underwear came into view.
Maru stopped dead in his tracks.
"……"
Call it frozen in place; for a long moment he simply blinked down at the garments. Why on earth would she send him something like this? A beige bra and panties. They hadn't even been folded neatly—they lay crumpled on the tray just as if they'd been tossed off and dropped there.
With the tips of his fingers, he gingerly lifted the panties and turned them over this way and that. A damp stain was spreading through the middle of the crotch. Judging by how wet it still was, she must have just taken them off.
"Is she sending me the pair she wore all day today? Why?"
Hadn't Kiera's provocations ended at the banquet hall? Was she planning to keep going? For what reason? We're finished, you and I.
"Could this be her way of saying, 'I'm naked right now, so come running to my room'?"
Maru let out a long sigh and closed the lid. He set the tray on the desk and turned away.
"I won't be fooled again, Kiera. You're insane."
I know your nature better than anyone. Right now you're playing at missing me, but the moment we get close again, the same result is guaranteed to repeat. Once you're satisfied, you'll grow bored and throw me away like you always do. Not this time.
"Come on, focus. Pick out the clothes."
Erasing Kiera from his mind, Maru returned to what he'd been doing. Right now, the only thing that mattered was his dinner promise with Audrite.
But then—
The curtains billowed violently in a sudden wind, and Luciela appeared.
"My Lord, the monster has come ashore."
Maru clicked his tongue. Of all the times.
Luciela had been counting down the days to this very moment, which made refusing her request impossible. This was an emergency that might not recur if he let the moment slip past. He didn't want to go, but in the end he closed the wardrobe and headed for the armor stand instead.
"Help me put on my armor."
"Doesn't it look prettier with your hair down, as I said?"
"You're right. Long hair does go better with this dress."
In Audrite's room, the Princess sat before a mirror while her middle-aged lady-in-waiting styled her hair. Her face, as she chatted with the woman, was already aflutter with anticipation for the dinner to come.
"Your Highness, have you heard the news lately?"
"What news?"
"There's a rumor going around that a certain Madame Mary who lives on Burlave Street is remarkably good at reading love fortunes."
The Princess's lady-in-waiting was Baroness Osmond, a woman past forty. Running the brush through the royal hair with practiced hands, she continued.
"She's so uncannily accurate, they say that if any noble daughter wants to know what's become of her sweetheart these days, all she has to do is pay the woman a visit. Everyone's been crowding in there and refusing to leave."
"Pfft."
Audrite covered her mouth and laughed. "It must be terribly popular, then."
"A lady I know went to have her love fortune read just the other day, and the woman matched everything so perfectly it was almost eerie. Apparently she also knows a great deal about men, so she gives courtship advice as well. My friend came back with tips that would shock you if you heard them."
"Now I'm curious. What did she say?"
"Well, you see..."
Baroness Osmond leaned down and whispered into the seated Princess's ear.
"According to Madame Mary, if you want to seduce a man you love, you should either lower your head in front of him and let him catch a subtle glimpse of your chest, or pretend to fall and show him your calves and thighs—or else, while talking, smile and keep touching his arm or chest."
"Really?"
Audrite's face flushed red before she could stop it. "I could never do something like that. Not in a hundred years. I'd be too embarrassed."
"Why ever not? If you mean to win the man you love, that much should be nothing."
"Did you do things like that when you were courting your Baron?"
"Me? Back when I was a maiden, I didn't have to do a thing—my husband was all over me first, touching every part of me. The man is hopelessly impatient, you see."
"Pfft."
Audrite and Baroness Osmond burst out laughing at the same time.
"He poked and prodded at every inch of me so relentlessly I thought I'd wear out!"
"Hahaha."
The two were still laughing merrily when a knock sounded at the door. The Baroness hurried over and opened it. A maid sent by Maru stood outside.
"I was instructed to deliver a note to Her Highness the Princess."
"Sir Maru?"
Audrite walked to the door and took the note with her own hands. Unfolding it, she found a message saying that due to unavoidable circumstances, he would be unable to attend their dinner. Audrite's brow creased, and a deep disappointment settled over her.
"Honestly, who does that?"
She bolted straight out of her room and ran to Maru's, pounding on his door.
"It's me! It's me, Audrite! Open the door!"
Click.
The moment the lock turned, she didn't wait for the door to finish opening—she shoved it wide herself and marched inside.
"What is the meaning of this? Why would you break your prom—huh?"
She stopped mid-sentence, looking up at Maru in bewilderment. He stood there in blue armor, his hair tied back in a ponytail. And behind him, a portal the height of a man hung open in the air, and beside it stood a woman cloaked head to toe in a black robe, purple hair spilling long out from beneath her hood, lurking there with an air of dark menace.
"I'm sorry. Let's put dinner off until next time."
Maru offered a gentle smile. Audrite, who had been furious only moments before, found herself somehow cowed by the unexpected atmosphere in the room, and her voice sank.
"Where are you going...? May I not even ask that much?"
"I'll explain when I'm back. And since I broke my promise, I'll treat you to something even better than gyudon on the high street afterward."
Staring hard into Maru's smile, Audrite felt an unsettling anxiety well up inside her. The way he looked right now—somehow he resembled a warrior marching off to his own death. There was that much gravity hanging in the air about him.
"You... you will come back, won't you?"
"Yes. I'll come back."
Audrite nodded slowly. "I'll be waiting."
"When I return, you're taking me on that date."
"Yes..."
Maru gave a brief wave and vanished into the portal. Right behind him, the hooded woman curled her lips up at Audrite, then turned away and stepped through after him. The instant she did, the portal snapped shut.
"……"
As if nothing at all had happened, only silence filled the room.
"Who was that woman...?"
Audrite stood there all alone, and for a long while, she simply stared blankly at the empty air.
Behind a certain building, at that very hour, Natalie took a long, deep drag of her cigarette and exhaled, her face melting into bliss.
"Ahh... f*ck... heaven...!"
She'd been leaning against the wall, but little by little her hips slid down it until at last she crumpled to the ground. The intense rush shook her whole body; her limbs wouldn't obey her. Before long she was rolling around on the dirt.
"Two of these bastards aren't enough. Come at me four at a time. Heheh... heh..."
By the time her head cleared, a grim reality had landed right in front of her. She glared at her empty cigarette pack and swore.
"One stick left, dammit."
Smoke that last pathetic remnant, and where was she supposed to get more? Anywhere at all to score?
Anxiously chewing on her nails, Natalie suddenly remembered Maru.
"That bastard... he's the one who managed the Paradise Grass. I was going to cave his skull in the moment he so much as spoke to me first, but... hm."
A smile crept slowly across her lips.
"If I sweet-talk him right, maybe he'll slip me some out of old times' sake...?"