The Orengia Festival (2)
The morning of the festival broke.
Whether or not Alec was lost in his worries, time flowed on without a care, and no matter how fiercely he glared at the eastern mountains wishing he could freeze it in place, the sun rose without fail and bathed Cantatien in brilliant light.
Alec lay with his face buried in the pillow, quietly watching Yona change into her nun's habit.
Yona, showing about as much interest in what Alec might be thinking as one would in the weather, pulled the habit down over her head and methodically fastened the row of buttons that lined her sides from hip to armpit, straightening the garment into place.
Watching her, a question suddenly occurred to Alec.
Come to think of it, he had never once seen Yona wearing anything but that habit. She was always in her nun's garb — even the rare times she bought new clothes, they turned out to be more of the same. In all the time since he'd met her, it seemed she had never worn a single thing besides it.
She wound the Holy Shroud around her arm, seized the trailing end, and gave it a firm tug — the shroud snapped tight with a crisp hiss, cinched snugly into place.
Then she hooked the tucked end of the shroud onto the loop at the shoulder of her habit, and with that, Yona's change of clothes was complete.
"Yona."
"What."
She answered his call with a sour expression. She'd already been up and ready for ages, while Alec was still rolling around in bed like a slug, and frankly, it was getting on her nerves. He needed to get up so they could eat breakfast. What was his plan, exactly, lying there like that?
"Do you ever wear anything besides that habit?"
At that, Yona stared at him blankly. For a moment she thought, did I never tell him? — but no, she truly hadn't. There had never been any need to, no one had ever asked, and so there had been no reason to bring it up.
"I don't need to."
"Why not?"
In answer, Yona flipped up the hem of her habit.
For one heart-stopping instant, the slit of her thigh — barely, perilously covered by her underwear — flashed into view, and Alec stopped breathing. But whether by fortune or design, the hem held its ground, concealing her crotch and revealing only her thighs, showing him the inside of the habit.
"Because of this."
The inner surface of the habit Yona held up was crammed with patterns Alec had seen before.
Circuits designed to assist the circulation of Holy Power — that was what they were.
At a glance they resembled the sigils of the Heavenly God Religion, but unlike those, they weren't isolated one from another; each one's trailing lines connected seamlessly to the next, drawn so densely across the habit's interior that they filled every inch of it and then some.
"Those are holy circuits. The same ones engraved on my Holy Shroud."
"Ah."
Every garment a member of the clergy wore carried meaning. Just as the Holy Shroud bore circuits to aid the flow of divinity, the inside of the habit was inscribed with patterns that minimized the vaporization of holy energy and helped it circulate smoothly. It was thanks to those patterns that sacred power wasn't wastefully scattered into the open air.
"So that's why. But there's got to be a reason you wear only that."
Alec sat up in bed. He could have stayed lying down — partly because Yona's little skirt-flipping display had made lounging around feel awkward — but mostly it was time to start getting ready to head out.
"This is all I need. Why would I need a mountain of clothes? Something to wear, something to change into, something in the wash. Three sets and you're covered."
"So what you're saying is, there's no reason you can't wear other clothes when you're not fighting."
"Well... yeah, I suppose."
Alec felt like he'd just found his opening.
And the timing couldn't have been better. Starting today, the festival of Cantatien — the Orengia Festival — was beginning.
The Orengia flower was a sizable bloom. It was quite large overall, and for all that size it bore only five petals, which made each petal generous in its own right.
The flower itself was pure white, and its seeds were milky-white grains tipped with downy white filaments, so that whenever the wind stirred, they scattered all at once like a flurry of snowflakes — a truly magnificent sight.
To the east of Cantatien lay the great Orengia groves. The city's environment was ideal for growing the flowers, and every winter, when they bloomed, the festival held in their honor made Cantatien famous twice over.
"The flower language of this one is unrequited love, they say?"
"So I've heard."
Alec and Yona walked down the street, freshly changed.
The festival's fame was no exaggeration — for the city's size, the number of tourists was almost overwhelming. It was a spectacle in itself: everyone passing to and fro carried trinkets made from Orengia blossoms, or little handbags woven from Orengia stems.
"Why is it unrequited love, though?"
"How would I know..."
Yona lifted the Orengia flower she'd absently been handed and gave it a sniff. The bloom was so large that, from where Alec walked beside her, half her face seemed to vanish into the petals.
"Smells wonderful."
"Right? The whole town's blanketed in the scent."
At that, Yona looked around and flared her nostrils, snuffling at the air. She'd noticed the fragrance hanging over the town ever since they'd first entered it — apparently it had been the Orengia blossoms all along.
"So where exactly are we going?"
Alec had simply told her to follow him because he had somewhere to take her. He'd already decided where they were headed when they left the inn together — he just hadn't told her beforehand. If he had, she'd have kicked up a fuss, demanding to know why she had to come along, and his whole day would have been spoiled before it began. Hence the secrecy.
"You'll see when we get there. You're not losing anything by it, so just come on."
He had already asked the innkeeper where the clothing shop was.
Alec walked along beside Yona, mentally rehearsing the route the innkeeper had described. The distance itself wasn't far — maybe ten minutes on foot from the inn — but with the crowds and the sheer abundance of things to gawk at, inspecting every last one of them as they went, they ended up losing a good deal of time.
At last, the two of them came to a stop in front of a clothing shop. Yona looked back and forth between Alec, standing rooted in place, and the shop before him, and her face twisted into a scowl.
"Don't tell me — you want to buy clothes? There aren't exactly a lot of outfits that suit a bald head, you know."
"Not my clothes, idiot. Your clothes."
"What? My clothes?"
Yona's eyes went wide. She'd assumed he was stopping here to shop for clothes — it just hadn't occurred to her that they'd be for her.
"Why mine? I have my habit."
"Sure, you have the habit. But that's all you have. You're going to walk around the festival dressed like that?"
"No, hold on — I've gotten around fine in it this whole time. Why are you suddenly hell-bent on buying me clothes now?"
Yona's eyes went wide, then her face scrunched up. Honestly, no matter how she turned it over, she couldn't find a single reason to buy clothes.
Undergarments she had plenty of. She'd bought a good stock of drawers and the coarse cloth bindings for her chest. But women's clothing? That was another matter entirely.
The habit was a skirt, yes — but she could wear it, grudgingly, as a professional necessity of the healer's trade. Women's clothes, though. That crossed a line. Putting them on would feel like truly admitting, truly accepting, that she was a woman — and for Yona, nothing could be more repugnant.
"Try wearing something other than the habit, just once. Everywhere we go it's nothing but 'Sister' this and 'Healer' that. What's wrong with dressing like an ordinary young woman for a change?"
"No — why should I? Am I ashamed of being a healer or something?"
There was a sharp edge to Yona's voice. Only then did Alec realize something had gone badly wrong.
"That's not what I meant. I just meant — instead of the habit, as a way to lift your spirits, try something different. It's the same for women and men alike. New clothes perk you up, that's all. You've been through so much lately — I'm just saying, buy yourself something nice and treat yourself a little."
"Then why clothes of all things? There's food, there's entertainment, there's a hundred other things. Why clothes?"
"Just calm down and hear me out."
Alec sighed inwardly. He hadn't expected the reaction to be this violent. But backing down now — retreating at all — would reduce everything he'd worked toward so far to foam on the water.
"Hah..."
Yona let out a long breath. The sharp, hostile glint in her upturned eyes softened, just a little.
"Fine. I'm calm. So talk. I get that 'lifting my spirits' is the reason I should buy clothes. I get it. It's just — this doesn't feel like it's purely for my sake. So be straight with me."
"...Because I want to see it."
"Okay."
And with that single word, Yona strode briskly into the shop.
Alec, thrown by her abrupt about-face, stood staring at her dumbly — until Yona turned back around to look at him.
"What are you doing? Aren't you coming in?"
It wasn't that her aversion to women's clothing had suddenly evaporated. Nor was this mere caprice on her part. It was simply an outpouring of something that could best be called gratitude — a feeling owed to Alec.
Yona was no fool; she knew full well just how much goodwill Alec extended toward her. He supported her in every way, materially and otherwise, and when she'd faced Berbaria, he had endured agonizing pain to break his Geas and draw out his holy power to protect her.
I want to enjoy this festival — with you.
It was so she could enjoy the festival, the way Alec had said. So she could enjoy it together with him.
That was the kind of man Alec was. If he'd kept hiding behind some incomprehensible excuse about her mood or her spirits to the very end, she would have refused him to the very end in turn. But he had been honest. So she would meet that honesty.
Even so —
God, this is exhausting.
Yona sighed inwardly as she changed into her seventh outfit.
The blue dress, as it turned out, suffered from underdeveloped dyeing techniques — patches of uneven color bloomed here and there across the fabric. The knotted ties worked into the cloth were a nice touch for dye-work, but with the color so inconsistent, it was simply painful to look at.
The blue dress was out, then.
Alec, apparently of the same opinion, shook his head, and Yona stripped out of the dress in the fitting room, hung it on a hanger, and passed it outside. The clerk took the hanger and whisked the dress away, and Yona, re-tightening the chest binding that had come loose somewhere along the way, changed back into her habit and stepped out.
Alec, meanwhile, had returned from who-knew-where with an indigo skirt and a white linen shirt. He'd also brought along a padded vest that looked to be stuffed with a fairly thick layer of cotton, and stood waiting in front of the fitting room with the lot. As if that weren't enough, in his hand was a headband woven from dried Orengia stems — with little clay ornaments shaped like Orengia blossoms tucked between the weaves. It was actually rather well made.
"...You realize this is number eight, right?"
By now, one might think she'd done more than enough repaying of Alec's kindness.
Yona took the clothes he handed her without a word and disappeared back into the fitting room.
To be honest about how Alec felt — he had liked every single outfit Yona had tried on so far. The entire category of women's clothing was uncharted territory to him; knowing nothing, he only grew more uncertain. Yona's figure was so exceptional that anything looked good on her, but Alec, with his keen instincts, had been reading her face after each outfit, judging whether she liked it.
And by that measure, everything so far had failed her.
Then, when he finally told the increasingly sour-faced clerk to bring out the finest, most expensive pieces in the shop — the moment he saw her expression in that dress, he knew. That's the one.
"This one's not bad."
The sight of Yona emerging from the fitting room stole Alec's words for a moment.
A pale indigo pleated skirt and a thick white linen shirt. Over that, a padded vest dyed deep gray and stuffed with goose down. And to crown it all, the Orengia stem headband perched atop her head.
Alec's heart sang — that's it — and Yona seemed reasonably pleased with it herself, if her expression was anything to go by.
"We'll take this one."
Alec, unable to tear his eyes from her, heard himself say it to the clerk.
Yona understood the minds of men very well.
Walking beside a beauty so rare you might not see her like twice in a lifetime — even without arm in arm, the mere act of strolling together carried a very specific meaning in the eyes of other men, and she knew exactly what it was.
There had been a time she'd wanted that. But at the very least —
I never wanted to be the beauty a man gets to walk beside.
Yona thought this as she ignored the stares raining down from every direction. The swell of superiority and accomplishment she was supposed to be feeling right now was, without a doubt, being savored in full by the bald bastard walking beside her.
When she stole a sidelong glance at him, sure enough, Alec was twitching at the corners of his mouth, struggling to contain a grin that threatened to split his face in two.
"Hey. You happy?"
She jabbed him in the ribs, and he flinched and scrambled to compose his face. But then the smile came creeping back anyway, so apparently he genuinely was.
Well, obviously...
Had this bald idiot ever, in his entire life, walked beside a beauty like this? Had he ever soaked in the gaze of countless men, thick with envy and jealousy all tangled together?
She'd stake anything on it: never.
But arms linked — absolutely not.
Yona was already walking beside him wearing the women's clothing she'd despised and resisted with every fiber of her being, all to indulge his mood. Linking arms would be crossing the line.
Right here was the exact limit of what Yona could give.