Unconscious Flirting (2)
The woman paused mid-pour and looked at me.
“...You mean me?”
“Yeah, you. Everyone else gets their wounds tended — who's looking after yours?”
“I seldom return from the field wounded.”
“You're a machine, you know that? Still, you must get tired.”
“An hour of sleep recovers that much and more.”
“Oh dear. Cutting back on sleep now, are we?”
My tongue clicked of its own accord.
There was always one of these people wherever you went. The type who'd sit alone in the office with the lights on after everyone else had gone home, telling themselves that if they just pushed a little further—
Damn it. It's like looking in a mirror.
“If you keep that up and collapse, you're the only one who loses out. Sit down and rest while you've got people around to pick up the slack.”
The woman set the bottle down and studied my face, wearing the look of someone examining a strange new creature.
“I am the center of everyone.”
“Can't the center sit down?”
“At the very least, I must never be seen weary.”
“Then tell them I ordered you to.”
“You?”
“Back in the Empire I met a drunkard once who nagged me to rest so relentlessly I had no choice in the matter.”
The corner of her mouth loosened into a smile.
“That does hold some appeal. But I tend not to listen unless someone nags at my side without pause.”
“Huh? You want me nagging at your side? I told you, I'm not going south.”
When I waved my hands in frantic refusal, she pulled her smile back.
“Well, you see, there's a saying where I come from. A far-off land. Children, the elderly, and women must be protected.”
“And you... mean to protect me?”
“I said I'm not going south. Besides, I can't fight. How exactly am I supposed to protect someone who arm-wrestles Ogres?”
“And yet?”
“Like you've been looking after me all night. Asking whether I've eaten, telling me to sit when I'm tired, pushing food my way when I've had too much to drink.”
“Every day?”
“See you every day, ask every day. What's so special about that?”
It would never actually happen, of course — but people at drinking tables do love to write checks their bodies can't cash.
The woman raised her cup and drained it in one swallow. The sound of the empty cup coming down was unusually loud.
“You would make a fine husband and father.”
“No chance. Who'd marry a stablehand?”
“One's work can change.”
“Nobody came calling when I was Personnel Section Chief either, so what's the difference.”
Saying it out loud only made it sadder. I lifted my head for another drink — and caught her reaching for the bottle again.
“Ah, I keep letting you pour. My turn this time.”
A drinking session is, by its very nature, about the give and take.
But maybe I was further gone than I thought. I reached for the bottle and ended up grabbing her hand wrapped around it instead.
Whoa.
The back of her hand was smooth, but the palm beneath my fingers was solid as oak.
So this is a hunter's hand?
And yet there was still a softness unique to her. Without thinking, I turned her palm over — calluses layered thick upon calluses.
“What do you think you're doing?”
“Your hands are like this too.”
I traced the edge of a callus lightly with my thumb. I'd nearly died from blisters just handling a shovel back in my demotion days — how rough a life must one live to callus like this?
“...The hands of all who grip a sword are thus. Nothing remarkable.”
“Doesn't it hurt?”
“That time is long past.”
“Still, it must have hurt, at first.”
Her gaze dropped to where my fingers had stopped. I stroked her palm once more, then let go.
“There. Tonight, I pour. A toast to the two of us — to people who've worked hard!”
I claimed the bottle and filled her cup first. I spilled a few drops, but for a drunk, that was respectable form.
Even as the cup filled, the woman was curling her fingers inward, staring at her own hand. Come to think of it, her face seemed a little flushed too.
Was touching her hand a mistake?
I darted a nervous glance her way and our eyes met. The lamplight caught in her pupils and made them glitter, and the sight was so lovely I laughed out loud.
“What are you laughing at?”
“You're beautiful.”
Her eyes wavered.
“...What is?”
“You.”
Craaack.
Something creaked somewhere. I looked down — the handle of the cup in her grip was bent out of true.
Maybe it's time to head home. I've had more than I thought.
Still.
“I'm glad I came here tonight.”
I clinked my cup lightly against hers.
But she didn't drink. She set the cup down and lifted her gaze slowly.
“Are you always like this with women?”
“Like what?”
“Taking their hands, calling them beautiful. Promising to look after them as long as you're together.”
“You think I say that to just anyone?”
“...Then?”
“Because it's you. Obviously.”
Where else would you find someone kind enough to sit through this much of my sob story over drinks?
And yet, even after hearing my answer, the woman just kept staring at me.
“If you say such things, what do you expect me to think?”
“Good thoughts?”
Her eyebrow arched upward.
“Is it not?”
She gave a short laugh and drank. Then she picked up a piece of meat and ate it, and grease smeared across her lips. I snatched up a napkin and dabbed at the corner of her mouth — and her eyes trembled so finely that I pulled my hand back and showed her the napkin instead.
“You had grease on you.”
“I am capable of wiping my own mouth.”
“Ah. Right. So you are.”
Why did I just do that?
The liquor must have been moving my hands faster than my brain. I laughed at my own absurdity and set the napkin down.
The woman touched the corner of her mouth with a fingertip. Her briefly parted lips closed, and the body that had been leaning back in her chair tipped forward.
“Rael.”
Her voice had dropped a shade lower as she said my name.
“What will you do when I leave?”
“I'll be sorry, I suppose.”
“Is that all?”
“Next time I'm in town, we meet again. Drinks on me then.”
A one-night acquaintance. That much was plenty.
She didn't answer for a long moment. Her eyes, which had been on my face, slid down to my lips — then came to rest on my hand lying flat on the table. Her fingers curled shut and opened again, and she murmured, low,
“...Leaving a person this shaken, and for what.”
“Sorry?”
“Nothing.”
She exhaled a short sigh. Then she took my hand from the table — and this time it was her thumb stroking slowly across the back of mine.
“You started this.”
“Started what?”
Instead of answering, she curled her lips upward.
“It is all your fault.”
Did I hear that right? What did I even do?
Just as I opened my mouth to object, she released my hand and picked up the bottle. The cup swayed — and filled to the very brink.
I moved to knock it back, then stopped myself.
“That's enough for me. Any more and I won't make it home.”
“You need not worry about the journey back.”
“You'll walk me there?”
“I will.”
“You're a kind one.”
Well then, there was no reason to refuse. I sipped at the last refill, propping my heavy head up with one hand. Even resting my chin on my palm became too much effort, so I folded my arms and laid my head on them instead. My belly was full, and my eyelids kept sliding shut.
“Have you no spouse?”
“Nope. If I did, I'd be eating dinner at home with them, not moping around in a place like this.”
A rustle of fabric came from across the table.
“No one waiting for you either?”
“In the morning... the warden's...”
She laughed softly. The scrape of her chair came closer.
“How convenient. Then I can take you with me without a hitch.”
“My lodgings... are right in front of the tavern...”
“Fear not. I shall see you delivered safely.”
What a genuinely kind person. I'd have to thank her when I woke up.
That was my last thought before consciousness left me.
Adelheid Varkan, the crimson-haired First Princess of the Varkan Kingdom, swept away the cup that sat beside the man's arm. She prodded his shoulder lightly; the only reply was a sleepy murmur. Even dead drunk, his hand wandered as if searching for his cup, so she caught the arm that was about to slide off the table and tucked it back in.
“He sleeps soundly enough that anyone could carry him off.”
She rested her chin on her hand and studied Rael's sleeping face.
In the early part of their conversation, she had planned to extend Rael a most courteous invitation to the South. She'd meant to introduce him to her treasury officials and diplomats, and had even been prepared to show him the kingdom's ledgers.
The South has its troubles. The Chancellor has grown old, and the foxes run rampant through the court.
She had never said as much to Rael, but Varkan was rotting from the inside. Yet cut out the tumors gnawing at the nation, and the country would collapse into chaos.
The Monster Mountain Range. While she held back the source of Varkan's rot, she needed someone to circulate the funds and run the household.
But somewhere along the way, her plan had changed.
The princess Adelheid was confident in her ability to kill. Even against a legendary dragon, she trusted herself to hold out half a day. But perhaps because every ounce of her talent had been poured into the blade —
She had no gift for ruling.
He refuses because the South is hot and humid — hardly manly of him. That much, I can forgive.
Adelheid poked the sleeping man's cheek and let out a rueful laugh. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined the weather would become an obstacle to acquiring a single person.
But take him she would. By any means necessary.
If she gathered the Empire's most eminent scholars, could any of them chart the kingdom's course as this man could? She didn't think so. The Empire's academics had no reason to spare Varkan a thought — and they were ever quick to dismiss the small peoples of the frontier.
“No. That isn't what moved me.”
What an absurd creature.
Adelheid curled the palm he had stroked shut — then caught herself about to touch her own lips and laughed awkwardly at her foolishness.
You are the first man ever to concern himself with my well-being.
She remembered Rael's face as he asked whether she grew tired. The voice that said he couldn't help her fight, but he could at least tell her to sit down.
She was Varkan's Swordmaster. Everyone asked what she had killed the moment she returned. Where would she go next, when did she plan to depart — that was all they ever wanted to know.
Rael had been the first man to push a plate toward her, to share meat with her, to feed her by hand.
“Women and children must be protected”...
Once she said it aloud, her heart had hardened into resolve. Adelheid pulled on her gauntlets and rose from her seat. She looped an arm around the man's waist and hauled him up; jarred awake, he mumbled something.
“Need to go home...”
“Yes. Let's go home.”
Whether that home was the one the man imagined, she couldn't say — but it would become his true home before long. And then, naturally enough, he would build her a safe kingdom for the sake of the child that would be born there.
Adelheid tossed a few silver coins to the tavern keeper and stepped out into the night. Behind her, the man — believing he was being taken home — let his head drop in easy relief.
She hoisted his slack body onto her shoulder and walked along the roadside.
So light. And so cold.
She wondered how someone this frail ever expected to look after anyone else — but then, that was no obstacle at all.
Keep prodding him without pause, and he'll learn to feel mana soon enough.
Once a body could sense and channel mana, it naturally grew strong and hale.
And yet, one thing puzzled her.
I definitely sent mana into him.
She recalled the moment their hands had touched in the tavern. Just then, by the smallest of margins, Adelheid had fed a trickle of mana into Rael — a petty act of spite, meant to shock him back to his senses.
Nothing had happened. The mana that slipped in along his fingertips dissolved somewhere around his elbow, like water poured onto sand.
It was happening again even now. She fed mana through the arm supporting the man, and it vanished without so much as a ripple — a bucket poured into a bottomless drum. His body drank it up before it could even pool.
Like soil starved for nutrients.
What a strange body.
She had never seen one that couldn't hold mana. But there was no need to hurry. Keep him close, stimulate him little by little, and a response would surely come.
Relentless tempering — that was the South's proudest area of expertise.
Blame me not, stablehand of the Empire. All of this is the work of your own glib tongue.
The more she looked at him, the more she liked the man. His foolishness in refusing to quit even after being demoted from Personnel Section Chief to stablehand. His idiocy in meeting a Swordmaster's killing glare without flinching. His naivety in vowing to look after the elderly along with women and children.
And to crown it all — the small-hearted tenderness of worrying about the safety of the South's most dangerous woman.
Truly a gem of a man, aren't you.
His foolishness was tenacity; his idiocy, magnanimity. He was kind to the point of naivety, and considerate on top of it all.
It's all your fault. So don't you dare resent me.
No spouse, he'd said — nothing to untangle, then. He didn't want to come south, but as if she cared.
She was the woman they called the strongest of the South. A Swordmaster. There had never been a thing she wanted that she couldn't take, and no hardship had ever — not once — bested her.
I have decided that I want you.
Adelheid walked through the night streets. The heat, he would get used to in time. She need only make him grow attached — and once a child took root in his belly, he would never leave.
“Kazik.”
“Your orders, Your Highness.”
“Shake off that spell-caster clinging to the boy, then rejoin me.”
“Yes, ma'am!”
A chill presence flickered at her back. Cold fingertips trailing down her nape — a distinctly unpleasant sensation. And threaded through it, a familiar scent: lily of the valley.
Exactly the aura she'd felt once before, when she'd chanced upon the Second Imperial Princess.
The sorceress playing at being a dignified imperial princess. The woman who proclaimed neutrality while keeping her true designs an utter mystery.
And here I thought she was quietly confined.
She had even planted her own agent on him, no less.
Adelheid glanced back at the man slung over her shoulder. He rebuffed every noble's request, yet accepted the Second Princess's opinions without fail. Simply because he was a capable subordinate?
Well. Even Adelheid had coveted his talent at first.
If she treasured him so dearly, she should have kept him at her side.
The sleeping man began to slip, and Adelheid readjusted her grip on him.
Even if she is the Tower Master, I will not surrender what has come into my hands.
Curling her lips into a smile, Adelheid stamped her foot against the ground.
— THOOM.
“Wh-what the—? An earthquake?”
“An earthquake? Since when do we get earthquakes in the capital? And why is only this spot cracked?”
“Jeez. Should've sprung for better materials.”
People gathered in twos and threes at the sudden commotion, staring at the collapsed pavement and trading theories of every kind.
But that in the midst of it all, one man and one woman had vanished —
The Empire never noticed.
Rael. I have no intention of parting from you with a promise of “next time,” the way you would.
A dark night, the moonlight itself smothered by cloud.
Adelheid, cleaving through the sky, smiled quietly.