Gathering Clouds (3)
If anyone claimed Yona had no interest in festivals, it would be a bald-faced lie.
There was no way someone as outgoing and chatty as Yona could hate a festival.
Evian had been a large city, nearly a metropolis, and while it was lively enough to be called the city of adventurers, it had never had anything like this. Then again, a city of adventurers was, in other words, a city of drifters — plenty of people settled down there, sure, but just as many wandered from place to place, so traditional events like festivals never really took root.
Besides, Yona was a people person through and through, so a festival like this was more than welcome. The moment she'd heard about it from a member of the village watch, her footsteps had turned remarkably light as they entered town — and that was no trick of Alec's imagination.
"Hearing it's a festival really does change the whole vibe."
"You've never been here before."
"It's just a feeling, you bald blockhead."
Watching Yona hum a little tune to herself, Alec found himself smiling without meaning to.
As the two of them wound their way through town hunting for an inn, the faces of the people passing by told the whole story: the festival was close at hand. Joy and delight, excitement and anticipation bloomed openly on every face, too unguarded to hide, ripening into happy smiles. These weren't painted-on grins — every single face brimmed with genuine pleasure.
"The atmosphere here is incredible."
Alec, too, was getting swept up in the city's mood, his face breaking into a wide, beaming grin. Even as he walked side by side with Yona, he kept grinning ear to ear, busy drinking in the sights all around them.
"Right? We never saw anything like this in Evian. Oh, wait a sec."
Yona stopped short, so Alec stopped too.
No festival would be complete without street stalls, and the spot where Yona had planted her feet was none other than a waffle stand. It was a far cry from the waffles in Yona's memory — the kind with a raised honeycomb grid pressed into them — these were basically just pancakes squashed flat. But a waffle was a waffle, and Yona caught herself salivating as she halted.
"What? You want one? Want me to buy it for you?"
When Alec sidled up and asked, Yona shot him a sidelong glare and scowled. Then she stuck out her tongue and fished a few coins out of her own pouch.
"I have my own money, you know. You think I mooch off you every single day? No way. Ma'am, two of these, please."
"Two it is! One moment, dear."
The proprietress was so robust she looked ready to burst, and she rubbed her hands clean on an apron that had once been white but was now blackened with grime before sliding two pancakes between a pair of irons and pressing down hard. Under the gentle heat of the brazier where the irons had been warming, the pancakes flattened in an instant. The batter squeezing out the edges crisped up nicely in the heat, and while the shape and taste were a long way from the waffles Yona remembered, it still made for a perfectly decent snack.
"Thank you for the food!"
Yona accepted the waffles with a smile so bright and full that even the vendor who'd just been paid couldn't help smiling back. The price: four coins. Not exactly cheap, but Yona didn't begrudge a single one.
She stacked the two waffles one atop the other to compare their sizes. Since they were pressed by hand, no two could possibly come out identical — and sure enough, they were different.
"Here, eat this one."
She held out the one that looked bigger.
"That one's bigger — why don't you eat it?"
"Look at you. You're twice my size. You should get the big one."
Alec took the waffle she offered. A gentle warmth came with it.
It wasn't as if Alec was oblivious. He knew perfectly well that Yona had been quietly looking after him all along. Whenever he'd forgotten to pack some piece of equipment, she'd hand hers over without a second thought; whether it was food or water, Yona always put him first. She'd say it was because if you stay alive, my odds of surviving go up too — but Alec had long suspected there was something more there, something beyond simple camaraderie.
Something like right now.
Something like the warmth of the waffle in her outstretched hand.
Cantatien was a wonderfully prosperous place to live. The Cantasia River flowed at its back, the Viridia Plain stretched out before it, and beyond that plain ran the Nashikus River — ideal conditions for farming, and with the rich woodlands of the Carpatia Forest nearby, the land was perfect for raising livestock as well.
And if you headed out toward Lizard Den, you'd find the sprawling colonies of the Orengia flower — the true star of this festival. The Orengia blossom was fairly large, and its five or six petals, thin and generous, gave it a rather lovely shape. The stems grew long and springy, the leaves broad and well-formed — a flower made for arrangements and bouquets.
Around this time of year, as deep winter approached, the Orengia flowers began to release their seeds. The seeds were white as well, so when the cold winter wind blew, they scattered in dazzling clouds of white — a truly spectacular sight, like snowflakes drifting through the air.
The Orengia Festival of Cantatien, held just as those seeds began to spread across the land, was about to begin.
"So these must be the Orengia flowers."
They were everywhere. Flower shops, obviously, but every shop and street stall had cut Orengia blossoms tucked into vases and decorations at every corner — a lovely thing to see.
And so the two of them wandered on in search of an inn. There were plenty of inns in the city, but with tourists flooding in for the festival season, every single one was packed, and finding a room was proving anything but easy.
Alec eyed the darkening sky with quiet anxiety, while Yona — whether or not she read his mind — had picked up an Orengia flower and was gawking at it, marveling about how pretty it was. She had already bought herself a whole blossom for a coin.
"You said you were broke, and now you're buying flowers?"
"When else am I ever going to see these? Buy one at a time like this and you can look at it whenever you want. Don't be so grim about everything. We could die any day anyway — better to soak in pretty things while we can, so we won't have regrets."
Die any day.
The words hit Alec square in the gut.
I won't let you die. I will never watch you die. That's the whole reason I'm doing this. Nothing will ever kill you. You, of all people — never.
And me, too.
It must have been the outburst of some surging feeling. Alec blurted out words he never would have said in his right mind.
"I look at something pretty every single day."
"What? Looking at what? Don't be selfish and hog it — show me too."
Yona hadn't anticipated the words that followed in the slightest. She never suspected there was any hidden meaning behind Alec's claim that he saw something pretty every day. She never imagined what he might be feeling as he said it. She took the words at pure face value — exactly what they literally meant — and answered.
"...You can't."
Right. Of course. You can't ever see it.
Alec stopped dead in his tracks.
"The pretty thing I look at every day is you."
At that, Yona's steps halted too. For a moment, she simply couldn't process what Alec had said. The realization that the "pretty thing" Alec looked at every day was, in fact, Yona herself caused a brief hiccup in her brain.
"...Huh?"
"The pretty thing I look at every single day — that's you."
"What?"
Yona's face froze. Then her brow slowly furrowed, and scowling, she tucked the Orengia flower near the shoulder of her Holy Shroud and began slowly stroking her own arm.
"Hey. Baldy."
"...What?"
He'd considered it his masterstroke. From Alec's point of view, that line was more than enough to strike at a woman's heart — to crack open the door to Yona's feelings, or so he'd been absolutely certain. Yona's reaction, however, was deeply unimpressed.
"Never, ever use that line when you get a girlfriend. It's genuinely the worst."
"Th-that bad?"
"Yep. The absolute worst. I'm getting full-body chills."
She wasn't lying, apparently. Yona kept rubbing her shoulder, her scowl refusing to smooth out.
"I mean, what century did you dig that pickup line out of... Hey, Baldy. You know when my birthday is?"
"Your birthday?"
The sudden question caught Alec off guard. It wasn't that he didn't know Yona's birthday — but he knew perfectly well she wasn't asking whether he remembered the date.
"It's today. The day I met you, I was born anew."
"Ah."
Only then did Alec understand. That was the kind of line she meant — his was in the same league.
"That's exactly how I feel right now. So don't ever say stuff like that again. Got it?"
"Y-yeah... got it..."
"Let's go. We've got an inn to find."
Yona strode off ahead briskly, before Alec could even get another word in. Her shoulders were hunched and drooping, so Alec didn't notice — but the tips of her quickly retreating ears had flushed a telltale shade of pink.
"I'm sorry? There's only one room?"
The innkeeper wore an expression that practically demanded a sleazy heh heh heh as he rubbed his hands together, waiting for their answer. Alec's face betrayed nothing; only Yona looked somewhat flustered.
"As you can see, it's festival season. Rooms are very hard to come by right now."
The innkeeper wasn't wrong. The two of them had already been turned away from more than ten inns, and everywhere they went, all they'd heard was no vacancies.
But this — this was going a bit far.
"Well, it's fine, isn't it? Right, Alec?"
At Yona's question, Alec gave an awkward nod.
"We'll drop our stuff off and get ready to enjoy the festival. I'd hate to have spent all day hunting for inns only to ring in the celebration in some back alley wrapped in a bedroll. Am I wrong?"
There was something oddly sly in Yona's tone, but Alec thought about it for a moment and then nodded.
"Yeah, it's no big deal. We've already seen every inch of each other anyway — no point getting shy about it now."
Alec made up his mind. Being this flustered all over again was ridiculous, and above all, there was simply no way Alec could afford to stand there stuttering forever. To move forward, he had to take the steps forward. No matter how many failures lay in his path, Alec had to keep pressing ahead.
That vow he'd made — the one he was determined to see through to the very end — demanded that he never stop moving forward. He'd never once been in love in his entire life, but still, he had to advance.
That was who Alec was.