4. Imperial Capital Lumentium - 04
4. Imperial Capital Lumentium - 04
— I find you rather... familiar, you see. As if we have known each other for a very long time.
— Young Duke Estel, have you perhaps encountered me somewhere in the past?
Those were the Imperial Princess's exact words. That she found me, as a person, strangely familiar. And that she wondered whether we had met before.
...No matter how I turned it over, that question hadn't been born from simple curiosity. There had been a certainty resting in the Imperial Princess's eyes when she asked it. I'd stake a wager: the woman had not asked out of mere curiosity. She had undoubtedly asked to learn something from me. Without that, there was no way to explain the uncommon look in her eyes at the very last moment.
"..."
It went without saying, but no point of intersection could possibly exist between the bumpkin named Kain von Estel, born and raised without ever leaving the Estel Duchy, and the Imperial Princess, born and raised in Lumentium, the capital of the Empire. It takes two hands to clap, after all. How could two people living in completely different regions, walking completely different paths in life, have ever met in the past?
Not unless a string of absurdities happened in sequence: a witch who brought winter to the entire continent appearing, an expedition force being assembled to subjugate her, and the Imperial Princess and I having the rotten luck to be assigned to that very same expedition force.
"..."
All sorts of thoughts began flashing through my mind. The possibilities were plentiful. If I thought about it rationally, the Imperial Princess's words were likely just polite pleasantries. If not that, they say the capital's transient population easily exceeds a million, so there might well be someone around here who bears a resemblance to me. Were I to choose, that was the more realistic hypothesis.
...But what if—just the faintest, most dreadful possibility—the Imperial Princess truly remembered the future? What if, based on that memory, she had said those things to sound me out?
"..."
Sadly enough, I couldn't simply choose to leave the capital and return to House Estel right now. Because the Imperial Princess had formally invited me to the Founding Day Memorial Banquet. Naturally, at this point, after receiving a courteous invitation card in the name of the imperial household, ignoring her invitation was out of the question.
"Kain. Please stretch your arms out a bit. You're wrinkling your formal uniform."
That was when Aria, who was helping me into the uniform I would wear to the banquet, spoke. Brooding as I was, I had completely forgotten that Aria was even behind me, wrestling with the garments.
"Ah, sorry. Aria."
When I apologized to her with genuinely heartfelt words, Aria shook her head back and forth as if it were nothing.
"There's no need to say that to me. It's what I'm supposed to be doing!"
Aria, who was speaking to me, had similarly changed out of her usual maidservant attire and into a proper dress for the banquet.
"...But, Kain?"
"Hm?"
"Is it truly all right for someone like me to wear such fine clothes?"
Aria murmured as she lightly lifted the hem of her aquamarine dress. To be fair, the dress Aria wore was a touch too elegant for a commoner, yet at the same time, it was the sort of dress that would seem plain enough in the eyes of the nobility. In the first place, even if I wanted to buy something expensive, the Estel Ducal House lacked the budget for it.
Even dressed in such inexpensive clothes, however, Aria's figure was breathtakingly beautiful. Her lustrous white hair and the aquamarine dress matched so perfectly, as if a tailor had intended it from the very start, and even without a single piece of common jewelry on her person, Aria's whole being exuded a dignity that overwhelmed others. The sight made her look like a secluded princess visiting a foreign land.
"...Ah."
I hadn't quite realized it when she wore her maidservant attire every day, but seeing her so nicely dressed made it freshly apparent just how beautiful Aria was. Come to think of it, the witch who could be called Aria's grown-up version was also a stunning beauty. As expected, since she was this lovely ten years earlier, it made sense she would become such an exquisite beauty ten years later.
"...? Kain? What's the matter? Does someone like me really not suit clothes like this?"
A frown formed on Aria's face as she spoke, and I hurried to soothe her.
"No, not at all. They suit you incredibly well. I mean it."
When I answered her with complete sincerity, Aria's expression brightened instantly.
"...Really? Do they truly suit me?"
"Yeah."
When I affirmed without a sliver of hesitation, Aria smiled again, a soft laugh escaping her. The sight was so impossibly endearing that I let out a cough before I knew it. The original witch hadn't had this sort of personality, I thought. Had losing her memory truly changed her temperament this much?
It was then.
Creeeak—
The door opened. The person who walked in was none other than my father, Franz von Estel, dressed in the formal uniform of the duke for the first time in a long while.
"...It seems I've come at just the right time. Have you both finished preparing to head to the banquet hall?"
My father spoke with an expressionless face, his gaze sweeping over Aria and me once. Yet I noticed how his eyes, just for the briefest moment, wavered slightly when they looked upon Aria. It seemed that even a great man like my father could not easily maintain his composure when faced with her.
"I will be entering the banquet hall together with His Majesty. So, Aria, I entrust Kain to your care at the hall. And Kain."
"Yes, Father."
"Do not cause trouble today. I beg of you."
"..."
****
The Founding Day Memorial Banquet was a banquet held to commemorate the empire's founding a thousand years ago with the blessings of dragons. The banquet lasted three whole days. The first day was for the empire's glory that had lasted the past thousand years, the second day for the boundless glory of the Emperor who was now guiding the empire in the right direction, and the third day was to pray that the empire's glory would continue for another thousand years.
Nobles' banquets were not, originally, the dream-filled, romantic affairs that commoners imagined. The purpose for which nobles held banquets was to create a justifiable pretext for people to gather, and when people gathered in one place, dark, avaricious talk inevitably came and went.
But today the atmosphere was markedly different. Because a piece of gossip more tantalizing than talk of gold and power had spread widely among the nobles. That gossip was none other than a sticky love story.
And regrettably, I couldn't call it a story to my liking. Because the protagonist of that accursed story was myself. To be precise, somewhere the information had leaked, and the news that Sarah and I were breaking our engagement was sweeping through the entire capital. For the first time in my life, I was so thoroughly the center of attention, and I was tasting an emotion that was nothing short of deeply unpleasant.
"Oh-ho, that young man there, so he's the one from the rumors?"
"Hmm, is Sarah Sernad not a beauty who ranks among the top five on the continent? Yet rumors say the young man was the one who first rejected Sarah Sernad."
"This is but a rumor, mind you, but they say the young man resolved to break his engagement with Sarah Sernad in order to be betrothed to the woman he truly loves. And because that woman is of a truly noble standing, she would not tolerate Sarah Sernad remaining by his side — so the talk goes."
"Utterly preposterous. Is Sarah Sernad not the only daughter of House Sernad? There would be no more than ten women in the empire of higher standing than her."
"That aside, the woman the Young Duke Estel has accompanying him is quite the beauty herself. Seeing her in a dress, she seems to be the daughter of some house — has there been a young lady with white hair in the empire?"
From the very moment Aria and I entered the banquet hall until now, not a single instant passed without the stares of others upon me. Worse, the voices chattering away as they pleased while looking at me were so loud that their words stabbed into my ears whether I wanted to hear them or not, giving me a headache that felt as though I might go mad at any moment. Aria, too, perhaps finding the atmosphere oddly unsettling, held my hand tightly and showed no intention of moving away from me.
And the nobles packed nearby were again running their mouths as they pleased at the sight of Aria doing so. Frankly, I was consumed with the desire to bolt out of this banquet hall this very instant, but since I didn't even want to imagine what would happen if I left before a banquet personally hosted by the Imperial Princess began, I had no recourse but to grit my teeth and endure their nonsense.
And it was then.
"..."
"..."
Suddenly, an eerily complete silence descended upon the banquet hall. Even the nobles who had been so busy spouting all sorts of nonsense about me from a distance stopped wagging their tongues, their eyes rolling this way as they stared. And I could see their gazes thickly laden with anticipation and interest in what was to come.
I turned my head slowly, pointedly ignoring the indescribably ominous feeling I felt. And then clearly reflected in my eyes was the sight of a certain woman staring in my direction, her face rigid.
Gulp—
I couldn't tell whose throat the sound had come from, but the silence filling this place was so deep that even that small noise seemed to resonate through the entire hall. And every spectator was brimming with anticipation for the messy, melodramatic affair that was about to unfold.
"...Kain."
A voice I knew all too well slipped from the woman's lips. Yet the voice was a good ten times colder than the voice I knew so well. So cold that even the phrase 'cutting like a north wind in the dead of winter' felt insufficient.
Why she was here—I could only resent the heavens. Or rather, it felt as though some sort of malice was at work.
"...Sarah."
Once again, I had no choice. I let out a low sigh and looked straight at Sarah Sernad, the woman I could call my former fiancée.
"...?"
And Aria, who had no way of understanding how this situation was unfolding, was looking alternately between Sarah and me with an expression of complete bewilderment.
It was the moment of the sticky three-way confrontation that everyone present had so eagerly been waiting for.