Waiting in Silence
Thud.
Inside the training grounds.
Sweat trickled down the length of my body. Summer had well and truly set in, and even a repetition of the same daily routine left me wearier than usual. Still, five hours of training by the clock—I decided I could call that satisfying.
As if on cue, one of the knights nearby came over and handed me a canteen.
"Well done today, Your Highness."
As a child I could only manage an hour or two of practice, but as my body matured and began to properly reap the rewards of Limit-Breaking and rapid growth, five straight hours of training had become an easy feat. At first the knights, though they never said it outright, showed no small amount of discomfort over it.
But how could they simply stand by and watch while I trained myself so brutally? I could, of course, have trained somewhere else, but there was no properly suitable place during the day, which left the training grounds as my only real option. So I decided the first priority was making sure the knights felt no discomfort around me, and I put considerable effort into closing the distance between us.
It didn't take long. Sir Brand, the Knight Commander, was already on close terms with me, and simply approaching everyone in an easygoing way—without ever brandishing my authority as a prince—was enough to shrink that gap little by little.
"Would anyone care for a bit of this?"
Since I had changed my sleep pattern, I fell straight into bed after training. That meant lunch was a simple affair—a sandwich I made for myself—and I suspected this habit was the decisive reason we'd all grown close.
Useless past-life memories. Nothing in them but complaints.
Stretching briefly, I handed out the sandwiches I'd brought to the knights, quietly noting their reactions, and let out a soft laugh.
It being summer like this… I could go for shaved ice.
Simply crushing ice with brute force was utterly meaningless. To be worthwhile, it would have to be shaved fine as snowflakes, and since no such apparatus existed at the moment, I'd probably have to commission one. Most vendors used electric models, but manual, non-electric shavers did exist as well—and honestly, I didn't think building one would be that difficult.
The problem was finding a craftsman. Polaris came to mind first, naturally, but Polaris was, first and foremost, an art workshop. With the advent of artifacts, one could argue this world's convenience had caught up to my previous life—yet it was precisely because of that that craftsmen had fallen into decline and stagnation. Outside of architects, there were hardly any true specialists left in this line of work.
Artifacts may be consumable, though…
If, someday, I could use Eternity to make artifacts last forever, I might even be able to spark a revival of the craftsmen's trade. Which meant that once I entered the Academy, I would need to scout for talent—people capable of delivering goods made to my specifications.
"Delicious as always. I should ask Catherine to make me one of these."
"I'll ask Eileen, too. Care to head over together in a bit?"
Given their line of work, it was only natural that knights and maids crossed paths often, and plenty of couples had formed that way—but watching grown men make such a fuss over a mere sandwich stirred a faint embarrassment in me.
It was the feeling of watching one of those videos stuffed to the brim with forced, flag-waving propaganda.
I suppressed a small cough and turned toward the knight who was the lover of my personal maid, Mary.
"When are you planning to marry Mary?"
"Ah… her birthday is coming up soon, and I intend to confess to her then."
"Oooh…!"
The reaction from the surrounding knights was red-hot. Nothing in this world is quite as entertaining as someone else's love life, after all.
Well, to be fair…
Mary had long since passed the usual marrying age, and Sir Harun was no young man either—if anything, one could call this late.
"If you'll allow it, might I attend the wedding when the day comes and offer a toast?"
"The honor would be entirely mine, Your Highness!"
At his words I smiled brightly, finished my simple meal, and returned to my quarters.
"Here are the clothes for you to change into."
True to her role as my exclusive maid, Mary was already waiting for me with a fresh change of clothes prepared.
"Are things going well with Sir Harun?"
"Yes, quite well. It's been a while since Your Highness asked about me."
"Grilling you over every little detail would be a nuisance, so I refrain. But I do see Sir Harun regularly—if there's anything you'd like me to ask him on the sly, tell me now."
"Hmm… my birthday is coming up soon. I can't help worrying he might have forgotten it."
"I'll drop him a subtle hint. And for this birthday of yours, Mary, I intend to give you something splendid myself—so look forward to it."
"N-no, that's quite all right. Receiving gifts from Your Highness every time is a burden in its own way, you know."
Since Sir Harun was planning to propose, it seemed only right to commission a wedding dress made just for her—something worthy of the occasion. Even if people dressed up for weddings, the very concept of a wedding dress did not exist in this world. It would make her wedding something truly special.
"I have more than enough means to look after the people around me. Don't make it a burden."
"Understood. You'll be leaving for the Academy before long, so I suppose it will be good to keep at least a few keepsakes of Your Highness close. The place will feel terribly empty without you."
Hmm. By the time I finished at the Academy and returned, Mary would most likely have had a child of her own. If not that, then she would very probably be pregnant—too busy to even notice my absence, I imagined.
In any case, with my conversation with Mary concluded, I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes. My body, long accustomed to the altered sleep pattern, sank into drowsiness at once, even with the sun still plainly hanging in the sky.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
How long had I slept? I rubbed my eyes, still grappling with the dregs of drowsiness, and winced at the red light of the setting sun streaming past the window.
…Black tea?
A faint scent of black tea drifted into my nose, and puzzlement followed. Was my mother in the room? I raised myself up in a half-dreaming haze, and beyond my bleary vision I saw a woman with blue hair seated in a chair, sipping tea.
Her presence was as serene and pure as a lake deep in a quiet forest, and at the same time immaculately, gracefully antique. The aura itself bore a certain resemblance to my mother's—but her unmistakably different hair color meant what welled up from somewhere beyond my reason was a settled, gentle longing and gladness.
"Lapis. When did you get here?"
Having washed my face simply by channeling the power of Kotodama through a current of water, I sat up and greeted her warmly.
"It hasn't been long since I arrived. I hope I haven't intruded? I was careful not to wake you…"
I shook my head. Come to think of it, five months had already slipped by, and one semester of the Academy had come to an end. There had been a time when I felt their absence keenly, but as I gradually grew used to it, I hadn't even noticed our reunion drawing this near.
"And what, exactly, am I? Invisible to the naked eye?"
No sooner had the thought crossed my mind—Lapis here, so surely Aria had come too—than a familiar voice slid into my ear. I turned toward the window and there she sat: Aria, dressed in a uniform clearly different from anything she'd worn before, the standard issue of the Academy's Magic Department.
"Welcome back."
The uniform suited Aria's platinum blonde hair wonderfully. Sitting there at the window steeped in sunset light, she looked like nothing so much as a masterpiece hanging in a gallery.
"I'm home."
A bearing grown more mature still. Watching her platinum hair flutter in the soft breeze drifting through the open window, I walked over slowly and smoothed it with my hand.
"This, at least, hasn't changed with time."
Her skill at arranging her own hair remained exactly where it had been in childhood. So I set it right for her myself, and at the sound of a knock at the door a moment later, I turned my head.
"Your Highness. His Majesty is asking for you."
"Father is?"
Wondering what could be about, I left the two of them behind and made for the door.
"I'll be right back."
"We'll be waiting. Take care, Rohen."
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Watching the door close behind him, Aria let down the hair Rohen had just fixed for her—and tied it back up again.
"You really are a spoiled child, aren't you, Princess?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You could manage your own hair perfectly well. You did that on purpose, didn't you?"
Aria offered no denial, only turned her head toward the window. Lapis was right—living alone at the Academy, she had naturally picked up the knack. And yet she had deliberately undone her hair before stepping into Rohen's room.
And sure enough, feeling her heart stir at Rohen's long-missed, gentle touch as he arranged it for her—well, lying about that would be pointless.
What Aria disliked was that Lapis had read such a shallow little scheme. The fact that she'd called it out so openly, and the way it somehow felt as though Lapis was placing herself above her, both grated.
"You two… really are close as siblings, aren't you?"
"Jealous, are we?"
Lapis shook her head. It would be a lie to claim she felt no jealousy at all, but it was nothing so ugly as all that. After all, the two of them were brother and sister, and she was the fiancée. In a way, she considered that fact a mercy.
I can see right through you.
But from Lapis's expression and her unhurried, easy gestures, Aria could roughly guess what she was thinking.
So we're… siblings, are we.
Unexpectedly, the night of her coming-of-age ceremony surfaced in her mind. That fireplay, which had gone rather too far, had left its embers in Aria as well—not only in Rohen. And those embers had never been extinguished since, smoldering on in silence with a faint crackle all this while.
If Lapis was mistaken about anything, it was this: whatever Rohen and she were, they were siblings only in the sense of half-mingled blood—nothing more. By that measure, the emotion she'd felt facing Rohen again after so long was, at most, the relief of longing fulfilled. Or else…
Letting the thought dissolve into a soft blur, Aria laughed quietly to herself and looked down at her own chest. Not as generous as Lapis's, perhaps, but the close-fitting cut of the uniform made her considerably pronounced all the same.
Maybe that was why, recalling how Rohen had failed to keep his gaze properly managed—how it had drifted, now and then, toward her chest—Aria rested her chin on her hand where she sat by the window.
Life beyond the palace had been far harder than her narrow existence within it. Worse, in the other kingdoms the rumors about her had been distorted almost past recognition, so no one approached her in friendship. Even the empire's own scions came only to be seduced by her face, or scheming to revive their houses on the premise of marriage. The imperial elite knew perfectly well that nothing would ever come of the relationship between Rohen and her—so what more delectable instrument could there be than a princess branded a traitor's daughter?
You told me… to go find someone who would look at me—straight and true, at the person I am.
But in the end, even now, the only person like that was you. Thinking so, Aria laid her head softly against her drawn-up knees and gazed at Rohen's bed.
At some point, it had stopped being about wringing a different look from the people around her. She was striving now because she wanted Rohen's acknowledgment—because she wanted to stand beside him as an equal…
"…"
"…"
In that room, with the two women left behind, no further words passed between them. They simply held their silence, and both waited, docile and quiet, for Rohen to return.