Sun - 3
“……”
“……Mmph!”
Silence filled the room. She actually kissed me. Princess Amelia had leaned in close, eyes squeezed shut as her lips met mine. It was only a kiss on the lips, of course. Like a girl who… well, she is a girl. As if she had no idea what came next, she kept her eyes tightly closed and simply pressed her lips to mine. It was forced, but her embarrassment was only natural. Even through her dark skin, her face had turned a vivid red. The soft touch of her lips, the warmth of her body, the light weight pressing down on me… Now what?
The force pinning me down had loosened. I could break free easily if I tried, but doing so might shock the princess. I should at least be considerate about it. The next problem was figuring out who had walked in. I couldn’t see them from this angle no matter how I moved my eyes. Most likely a maid or servant. Or maybe Chloe. At the very least, it wasn’t some noble from another territory, but I still needed to check who it was, just in case.
“……”
“……”
In the quiet that hung over the room, our lips slowly parted. Watching Princess Amelia pull back with her eyes still shut and her face flushed, I started to say something, then stopped. After she had sent such clear signals, pretending not to notice would be difficult. I didn’t know the reason, but her feelings toward me were obvious. Teaching me her clan’s knowledge and even kissing me like this could only mean one thing. The problem was that she was still a minor. Her coming-of-age ceremony was probably only a year or two away. This world didn’t have a culture of asking ages, so there was almost no way to know for sure. People were usually judged only by whether they had reached adulthood or not, with additional details like whose heir they were or which family they belonged to.
For now, I managed to turn my head. Please.
“……I, I…!”
“Lady Irina?”
It was Irina who had appeared. She stood frozen in the doorway, pointing at us with a look of utter shock.
“Lady Irina?”
“I, I, I…!”
Seeing her stammer like a broken radio while trembling all over actually put me at ease. It wasn’t ideal, but at least it was better than being caught by someone else. Still, she kept repeating “I, I.” What was she trying to say? At least she hadn’t screamed. From the look of things, Princess Amelia had been staring at the floor, face red, idly tracing her own lips with her fingers. The whole scene felt like something straight out of a pure-hearted romance manga, so I turned my head toward Irina instead. Thankfully, no one else had shown up.
“I want a turn too!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold on!”
I yelped in alarm as Irina scattered sky-blue mana in every direction and floated toward me. I caught her with what little mana I had left.
* * *
“Not the first, not the second, but the third!”
After finally calming her down and closing the door, I reinforced the room’s mana barrier once more for good measure. In the meantime, she had been throwing a fit.
“The third! The third one! Me! Me, of all people?”
“……Lady Irina. Please calm down.”
“How am I supposed to calm down, Lord Leoric! I’m your fiancée!”
“Ah, yeah. Got it, got it. So just calm down.”
I soothed Irina as she kicked and struggled without a shred of dignity. In the end, I gave her a kiss too. Though since she wasn’t an adult yet, it was only a light peck, nothing deep. It suited the occasion. Honestly, even though she looked like a grown woman, I wasn’t some beast in heat. And with Princess Amelia watching right there, I wasn’t shameless enough to go further. She still seemed unsatisfied, though. She had spent nearly thirty minutes blushing and hesitating before finally kissing me, then another thirty minutes just standing there grinning afterward. Now that I had come back to my senses……
“But I’m still the fiancée!”
“The daughter of House Boraeng. The princess already knows. It’s not like you’re my real fiancée either, right?”
“Kyaaah!”
I held back a sigh at the sight of Irina yowling like a cat. Eventually, we tidied up the room and made our way to the table. As long as it wasn’t just the two of us alone in my room, it should be fine. We stepped out onto a quiet terrace and prepared some tea. Irina seemed to have calmed down a little; she sat with her head held stiffly high, glaring at Princess Amelia.
“So! What exactly were you two doing just now? Was it something indecent? Was it? Lord Leoric! Leaving me behind to do that with this little… I mean, with the princess!”
“Lady Irina. Watch your words, please. She’s royalty from another kingdom.”
At my scolding, Princess Amelia’s lips curled into a smirk, as if she had been waiting for the moment.
“……Hmph. Indeed. We were doing something we couldn’t tell others about.”
“Wh-what did you say!?”
“Please…… Princess Amelia.”
The conversation was going nowhere. I sighed as I looked between the two women glaring at each other again.
“It was nothing. We were just discussing my mana…… or rather, the power of the sun.”
“……Ah. That makes sense.”
I had to phrase it carefully. It was better to keep the knowledge passed down in the Bahnia clan a secret. At least Irina seemed to accept my explanation.
“That was truly incredible! Controlling such a massive sphere of light for so long. As expected of Lord Leoric!”
“Ah, yeah.”
That said, a sphere of light…… Irina’s words made me pause. It was the technique I called the Artificial Sun, but it wasn’t an actual sun. Strictly speaking, it was just a giant ball of light, as she said. I had only named it that because it resembled the sun in shape, radiated intense heat, and spread light outward from its core. That had been the intention from the start. And since it was made of mana, it also carried magical effects.
While I was lost in thought, Irina looked at me with sparkling eyes.
“You’ve truly broken free from the Franz family’s mana. I always believed that if it was you, Lord Leoric, you would find your own power!”
“What do you mean, ‘as expected’?”
Irina’s smile deepened at my question.
“You were the one who told me, Lord Leoric. Not to be bound by common sense or prejudice.”
“……Hmm?”
Had I said that? Irina held both hands out in front of her and slowly gathered mana. A blue light formed between her palms……
“The color’s lighter.”
I remembered House Boraeng’s mana being a deeper shade. Now it was almost sky blue. As Irina’s mana rippled, a cool breeze began to stir around her.
“This is the true power of the sky. At least, that’s what I believe.”
“The power of the sky……”
Princess Amelia also watched Irina with a serious expression.
“House Boraeng has been called the clan of sky mana since ancient times, rulers of the wind. But isn’t it strange? If it’s sky mana, why can it only create wind and allow flight?”
Sky mana. It wasn’t just about defying gravity to soar freely. The sky was everything above what we saw from the ground.
“Rain, snow, and hail fall from the sky. There are clouds. Lightning strikes down. And that’s not all. Something invisible drifts through the heavens. The more I learn, the more vast and boundless the sky seems. Right now, it’s still difficult, but one day I will create a calamity with my own hands.”
And above all else, a pale blue mana shimmered in Irina’s azure eyes. Those eyes turned toward me.
“And most importantly! The sun exists in the sky! In other words, Lord Leoric and I are one in body and soul! This is a sign that we must marry! Don’t you agree, Lord Leoric!”
“……Ah, sure.”
“……Hmm. Beneath the sun lies the sea. That is, the sea and Leoric Franz face each other. Since ancient times, the sun and the sea have been existences that cycle endlessly. Something that cannot be separated no matter how hard one tries—that is Leoric Franz and I.”
“Mmph! You don’t back down easily! As expected of royalty!”
“You are no ordinary count-level mage either. You possess remarkable talent.”
I had thought she was about to say something profound, but the two women were glaring at each other again. I looked away. Still, from what Irina had said, it seemed she had made some progress in exploring her mana as well. House Boraeng was probably conducting their own research, but this was likely why they remained at the count level. Their studies of flight and wind under the name “Sky Boraeng” had hit a wall at some point. Yet when viewed this way, natural phenomena were all interconnected. If they had shared their discoveries with one another, the scientific level of this world would have advanced tremendously.
“But still…… not to be bound by common sense or prejudice……”
Muttering the words I had once said to Irina, I suddenly thought of the sun. The technique I had created simply by imagining a shining sun. It was nothing more than a sphere that glowed like its namesake, and at some point I had started using it merely as a battery. Of course, if I unleashed it as is, it would still be a powerful technique. Just by existing, the sun granted beneficial effects to me and harmful ones to others while absorbing solar heat to replenish my mana in return. I could also use the heat radiating from it for attacks, and I could manipulate the light itself. I was already accustomed to doing so thanks to my golden mana. And in a dangerous situation, I could draw on the Artificial Sun’s energy for additional mana manipulation. But if I stopped being bound by common sense and prejudice, what then?
Starting from the sun, I slowly recalled associated words. Light. Gravity. Stars. The universe. The theory of relativity. Time and space. ……And mana. What exactly was mana in the first place? The fact that mana could be manifested just by imagining it, even without this knowledge, made the least sense. Until now, I had only viewed it as a raw material or energy source, but perhaps I should have been studying mana itself all along.
……No, this was getting complicated. I could think about it later. For now, the coming-of-age ceremony was over, so I might as well rest properly for a while.
“Kyaaah!”
“……Waaah.”
……No, why were these two acting up again? In the end, I calmed them both down, forcibly separated them, and ended things with a cup of tea. I now understood that putting the two of them together would always lead to a fight. This was exhausting. Truly exhausting. Dragging my tired body back to my room, I realized someone was waiting for me.