Light and Shadow (3)
"Does this thing ever get any shorter?"
Kayak's grumbling seemed to speak for the whole party's mood.
Irritation was written all over their faces, as sour as his voice—but the sole exception was Rubina, perched up on Kayak's shoulder.
"Is that the Grand Duchy of Carpatia over there?"
"...Grand Duchy."
Yona was the only one among them who understood what a "Grand Bear-dom" was supposed to be, and she very nearly burst out laughing.
She fought down the laugh threatening to escape, corrected Rubina, and craned her neck to gaze ahead.
The line—truly a line—stretched on and on into the distance.
If every single one of those people was waiting to get into the Grand Duchy of Carpatia, it was long enough to make her think they'd all be better off unrolling their bedrolls right where they stood.
"Rubina, you cold?"
When James held out his arms, Rubina, who had been surveying their surroundings from Kayak's shoulder, immediately scrambled into them.
"I'm not cold."
"Good, glad to hear it."
"Cold or not, you'll be fine. Your shoulders will just stiffen up is all."
A day sooner than James had predicted—just two days past—and the border gate of the Grand Duchy of Carpatia had appeared beyond the horizon.
The Carpathia Empire of All Humanity, and at its heart the Grand Duchy of Carpatia—both the empire's center and a wealthy nation boasting its finest port, a hub for every kind of trade thanks to its coastline.
Unlike the distant Naiaso High Priest Union, or the Catus Empire with its utter lack of trade ports and its coastline crowded with nothing but naval fortresses, the Grand Duchy of Carpatia welcomed merchant ships freely. Its prosperity had been inevitable.
By land and by sea alike, the Grand Duchy was always, invariably, packed with people.
"How many?"
"Four. And a child."
"Whose child?"
"Those two over there. Their daughter."
Kayak's finger pointed back and forth between Yona and Alec.
The gate guard, turning four adventurer tags over in his hands to inspect them, also looked back and forth between Yona and Alec.
"Hair color doesn't match, though."
Yona's hair was a dull, lusterless milk-white, while Rubina's was black, so it was a fair remark.
At which point Alec pointed at his own head.
Nothing there at all. Smooth, gleaming baldness.
"Ah, my hair used to be black. Originally, I mean."
"Was it, now? Then why'd you go bald?"
"I'm an adventurer, see. Hair can block your vision at the worst times, and if something grabs you by it, you're in serious trouble."
Even watching Alec grin sheepishly, the guard didn't seem able to banish his suspicion entirely.
As he leaned down to peer at Rubina, she quietly looked up at his face in return.
It wasn't a face you could call handsome by any stretch—and above all, there was the black mole smack in the middle of his forehead, with a single strand of hair growing straight out of it.
Rubina looked up at that face for a moment longer, then tugged at Yona's sleeve, little hands pat-patting.
"Um—Mama, this mister has a hair growing out of his mole."
That one remark was enough to fluster Yona and Alec, Kayak and James, all of them at once.
"N-no, I'm sorry... I'm so sorry!"
The guard's face stiffened visibly, and Yona panicked, clapping a hand firmly over Rubina's mouth.
But Rubina was faster still, pointing at Alec's head.
"Daddy doesn't even have one."
Pfffht—
The gate guard burst out laughing.
The tension broke, and Yona's expression softened along with the mood.
"That is a real problem, though. Ought to just pluck the thing. Anyway, you're fine. Go on in."
It was a mercy the guard didn't fuss any further.
Before his permission had even finished leaving his mouth, the barricade of thick, interlocked timber swung open.
Past the barricade and through the gate, the interior of the Grand Duchy of Carpatia revealed itself under a sky already thick with darkness.
Buildings stacked high from nothing but stone brick laid upon stone brick made it plain just how wealthy this country was.
Not a single wooden structure in sight—every building raised purely of brick put them in a different category altogether from the wooden houses common in Evian and every village they'd passed through since.
Whether from an added coat of plaster or something else, the rough-hewn outer walls somehow lent the buildings a charm of their own.
And wooden streetlamps lined the road from the city gate onward, each studded with luminescent stones the size of a grown man's fist, so that even at night the streets were bright enough to take in without the least inconvenience.
"God, why do I have to play mom to some kid?"
"Otherwise they wouldn't let us in, so what can you do?"
"What exactly are you so pleased about, grinning like that?"
Yona clearly wasn't thrilled about the excuse she'd fed the gate guard earlier.
And no wonder—he still thought of himself as a man, one whose body just happened to be female, and pretending to be married to Alec sat about as well with him as a hairball.
"I for one am delighted. We're already known as a married adventurer couple in Evian—maybe we should keep it up here too?"
"Say that garbage one more time."
Yona smacked the back of Alec's head with a resounding crack.
"Big Sis, hitting people is bad."
Rubina had slipped in between them at some point, hands planted primly on her hips, glaring up at Yona.
Over the past few days she'd apparently gotten comfortable, and more and more she was starting to look like an ordinary child her age again.
"See, Rubina's got a point. You shouldn't keep hitting Alec on the head."
"Shouldn't? Says who? I want to."
"No. Uncle James said you shouldn't hit sick people."
"Sick people? What's sick about this baldy? Nothing hurts on him at all."
"Uncle Kayak said Alec's hair all fell out because his head hurts."
"...Rubina?"
"That's why Big Sis Yona keeps casting healing on Alec's head, isn't it?"
Trading one ridiculous joke after another that wasn't funny in the least, they walked on through the night-shrouded streets of Carpatia.
Everywhere their eyes fell, the rows of streetlamps kept the way lit—night or not, walking was no trouble at all.
"Still, it's impressive, isn't it?"
"I'd say so. It's the most prosperous nation in the empire, after all."
"It's even more amazing than the textbooks made it look."
This was Yona's first time in Carpatia too.
She'd been taught about the Carpathia Empire of All Humanity back in her training at the cathedral, but hearing about a place and standing in it, seeing it with her own eyes, were different things entirely.
"Right, let's grab an inn first. Impressive or not, you'll freeze to death sleeping in the street just the same."
"You know a place?"
"Nope. We'll have to find out."
In a city this size, finding where the inns clustered wasn't a difficult task.
Follow the heavy foot traffic and you'll find a bar, and nine times out of ten the bar doubles as an inn or has one nearby.
The only problem was that the city was so large that even the busiest districts weren't easy to pinpoint, so for lack of a better strategy, they simply started walking toward wherever the loudest noise was coming from.
Before long, sure enough, they found a tavern with every lamp blazing, doing brisk business even at this hour.
"Dinner. And a room."
"How many?"
A man with an odd look about him—long hair swept back and tied up—glanced Yona over as he asked.
He looked ready to ask what, exactly, any second now, so Alec shot Yona a sidelong look, but to his surprise she didn't seem bothered in the slightest.
"Four adults. One child."
"We've no room that big."
The numbers didn't work out.
Yona, Alec, Kayak, James, and Rubina.
Even if Yona and Rubina shared a room, that left Kayak, James, and Alec—one of whom would have to take a single, which meant renting three rooms, which meant wasting money.
"I'll take a room with Rubina and Alec, and Kayak and James can share one. Done."
"He finally admits we're a married adventuring couple—oof!"
"Want to repeat that?"
Having driven a fist hard into Alec's side, Yona turned to Kayak and James.
"Two rooms, then. Fine by you two, right?"
No need to wait for an answer—Yona turned straight to the innkeeper.
"Two rooms with baths, and dinner. We'll eat in our rooms."
She had absolutely no desire to sit down to a meal in the middle of all that sweaty, smelly man-flesh.
...What exactly is happening right now?
Somehow, someway, Yona had maneuvered things so that Alec ended up sharing a room with her.
Yes, Rubina was there with them—but at the moment, Rubina had vanished from Alec's mind completely.
Only one thought filled his skull to bursting: he was going to spend the night in the same room as Yona.
Worse, from the bathroom fitted into one corner of the room came the unmistakable sound of someone bathing.
The sound of Yona bathing.
Rubina's voice was mixed in there too, but Alec's ears filtered it out automatically.
He looked down at his own hand.
If he flexed his fingers just so—like this, and like this—the sensation came flooding back, vivid as the moment itself.
They were huge... no, seriously, they were absolutely massive...
Alec was a warrior himself, and apart from standing next to a hulking lizardman like Kayak, he was tall and built like a fortress.
As a Guard by trade his strength was his livelihood, and naturally his hands were as big as pot lids.
And yet Yona's chest had overflowed those hands completely—a sheer, overwhelming mass of it.
I shouldn't have just politely stepped back when she told me to.
- Get off, you little bastard... you're heavy.
Startled by that icy voice of hers, he'd clambered down right away—and that had been his mistake.
Honestly, he knew he shouldn't think this way, but he should have savored that sensation longer, drunk it in.
No—
Maybe, when that golden opportunity had landed right in his lap, he should have had the nerve to knead away shamelessly and call it a Breast Kneading Voucher.
- That's right. Don't come crying after you've loved it into ruin.
Aaaaargh!
Alec raked his nails across his scalp.
Red scratches bloomed briefly on that bare, hairless dome, then faded away.
How was I supposed to know it would all just disappear?!
A silent scream.
The splashing continued.
He'd paid extra for a room with a bath, and now that he could finally enjoy a hot-water soak for once, it seemed she fully intended to get her money's worth.
Ugh, damn it, damn it all!
And listening to that splashing water—wasn't it only making his imagination run wilder?
Open that one wooden door, and behind it was Yona.
Yona, with not a stitch of clothing on.
Open just that one wooden door, and Yona would be—
And then the wooden door opened.
"Hey, Baldy."
Steam spilled out through the opening, and there stood Yona, freshly emerged, her body wrapped haphazardly in a thick cloth.
"Wh-wha—what?!"
"What are you so startled about? Dry her off, and wring out her hair."
Yona pushed Rubina out with an air of perfect nonchalance.
Rubina's face was flushed scarlet, steam practically billowing off her, and scrubbed clean like this she really was adorable, he had to admit.
"And hand me my nun's habit. In that backpack—there's a spare in there. Give me that one too."
"Uh, uhh..."
"Oh, and my underclothes are in there with it. Hand those over too."
"Un-underclothes...?"
Alec's face went red, though he hadn't even bathed.
Underclothes. Underclothes... Looking at her bare body was out of the question, but was handing over her underthings somehow okay?
"Hey, the water's getting cold. Move it. I've got laundry to do."
Yona scowled, but Alec still couldn't move a muscle.
Partly because if he shifted now, his current posture was going to become a very awkward problem.
"Ugh, for crying out loud... a man, and this hopeless..."
Yona twisted her face in disgust and stalked out of the bathroom.
Then she went to her bed and started digging through her backpack, and since the cloth she'd been holding was never quite generous enough to begin with, the moment her grip loosened, it slid straight down to the floor.
"Always making everything so difficult, honestly..."
"Uh, uhh..."
Alec couldn't manage a single coherent word.
He had his reasons. Yona had her back to him, rummaging through her backpack—but even that alone was devastating.
Those narrow shoulders.
Shoulder blades standing out in sharp relief.
That slender waist.
The generous curve of hip flaring out in a sweeping line from that slender waist.
And the flawless white of her rear.
Pale, milk-smooth, a pair of perfect moon-round curves he could not, by any force of will, tear his eyes from.
And most damning of all—with every movement she made, that heavy swell of her chest peeked out from her side, visible even from behind—
Alec, breath forgotten, stared blankly at her back.
"Honestly. Such a pain, this man..."
It didn't last long.
Fishing her underclothes and nun's habit out of the backpack, Yona set them on the bed, hauled the fallen cloth back up to cover herself, and walked straight into the bathroom, shutting the wooden door behind her.
"Big Sis Yona's chest is really, really big."
"...I know."
"Big Sis Yona is really, really slim."
"I know that too."
"Big Sis Yona is super, super pretty."
"I know that very well."
"How do you know?"
"Because this old man's known Big Sis Yona a lot longer than you have."
"Then does the old man like Big Sis Yona?"
It was that question, of all Rubina's questions, that Alec could not bring himself to answer.
Perhaps, in truth, he simply chose not to.