The Sun Is Hot, the Sky Is High, and the Grass Is Green – 2
Once the school trip ended, summer vacation arrived in no time. Two years ago around this season the club members had thrown every kind of tantrum about remaining in the Empire, and last year the North had erupted into chaos. No matter how many times I turned it over in my mind, this year was clearly one overflowing with peace.
Of course the final exams still sat right before vacation, but I wasn't the one taking them. And since I wasn't about to sit at anyone's elbow like the Ghost Go King handing out kibitzing advice, I could safely pretend they didn't exist.
"There's nothing worth doing even if I go home for the summer. May I stay here? As a student, I'd at least like to see my Advisor's wedding with my own eyes."
"Absolutely not."
I shook my head firmly at Ryutis, who had chosen that moment to spout nonsense. Having a foreign royal among the guests—when he wasn't even of the Imperial line—would look far too strange.
Worse, if this fool set a precedent by attending Trixie's wedding as a guest, he was all too likely to show up punctually for the four ceremonies still to come. A foreign prince dropping by once every six months? Just imagining it was dreadful.
"Private feelings aside, it doesn't look good for a royal to attend a foreigner's wedding. I'll take the thought for the deed—just go home."
"Then I suppose there's no helping it."
When I laid out the reason without sugarcoating it, Ryutis muttered his regret and accepted it. He hadn't truly meant to stay, either, by the sound of it.
"In exchange, I'll send a gift that ought to please you again this time."
"Right. Thank you."
I nodded along at that. I could block him from coming as a guest by whatever means necessary, but a gift was something he could simply dispatch one-sidedly; there was no refusing it.
Besides, Ryutis had already sent a present for Mar's wedding. Sending one then and not now would look odd. It might even create the impression that Ryutis and Armein looked down on the Magic Lord for being a second wife.
That would be troublesome. If two nations grew awkward over something as petty as the presence or absence of a gift, there would be few spectacles more ridiculous.
"Well, whatever I send, I doubt it will measure up to Later's, though."
With a short laugh Ryutis turned his head, and I followed his gaze.
"As a mage rather than a royal, I offer my sincere congratulations. I hardly dare claim the right to represent the mages of the continent, but I believe every one of them shares this feeling."
There was Later, bowing deeply to Trixie as he offered his congratulations.
His posture was so meticulously courteous that it drew genuine admiration. Just as he had said, he was standing before Trixie not as a prince but as a single mage.
"I understand the Magic Council is also preparing a gift. Anything set before the name of the Magic Lord is meaningless, of course, but I would be grateful if you would accept it as a small token of respect from those who come after you."
"Of course. When people celebrate my personal joy as if it were their own, how could I treat that feeling lightly?"
Trixie smiled gently and answered Later's deference with elevated speech of her own. No matter how low he placed himself, Later was still a prince, and since the term was no longer in session the temporary instructor–student relationship had been set aside. Mutual honorifics were only proper.
"Hmm."
Watching them, Ryutis stroked his chin and looked at me.
"What is it?"
"Ah, nothing important. I was merely wondering whether Advisor might receive that sort of treatment himself if he lives another hundred years or so."
He had said it like a joke, but I flinched in spite of myself.
It was a future I could not simply dismiss. If I became an entrenched old monster of the trade who reigned for over a century the way Trixie had, foreign royalty would very likely bow their heads before me as well.
"Looking at pure numbers, there are more knights than mages, so Advisor might even be treated better!"
I managed a wry smile at Ryutis as he burst into laughter.
I wonder if that fool realizes that among the many futures laid out before me, the one he just described is also waiting.
The Continent's Best Swordsman, a hundred years aged.
Just imagining it made my chest feel grand and terrible. No—if I chose to extend my lifespan, it would not be a hundred years but a four-hundred-year-old Continent's Best Swordsman.
There was entrenched power, and then there was that.
When I returned to the mansion, Titi came bounding to greet me, panting under the spray of water the gardener was scattering.
"Woof!"
"What are you doing outside for once?"
I was a little surprised. The fact that a creature who hated the heat had deliberately stationed itself in the garden suggested it had been waiting for me to come home.
Every time I looked at it, I found myself doubting its intelligence. The little thing seemed to be operating at roughly the level of an ordinary child.
Did I end up bringing home a spirit beast?
I caught Titi as the now-considerably-grown puppy reared up on its hind legs, and I considered the question in earnest. I should have been suspicious from the moment the Retired Emperor raised it. This might not be a simple animal at all, but something closer to a spirit beast.
Yes—it was definitely a spirit beast. The other animals the Retired Emperor kept were stars of the Imperial Palace, were they not? If those were ordinary beasts, that would be remarkable enough in its own right, and if only Titi, raised among them, turned out to be a perfectly ordinary pup, that would be more astonishing still.
A spirit beast, huh.
When the time came, I would have to find Titi a good mate as well. If a spirit beast lived in our house, it was only right that its line should guard the family for generations to come.
"Welcome home, my lord."
While I was busy imagining little golden rice-cake puppies racing about with my children, the gardener who had been playing with Titi approached and bowed at the waist.
"Right. It's hot out—you've been working hard."
I patted his shoulder and offered a small word of encouragement. Working indoors was tiring enough in summer; how much worse must it be to tramp around outside the mansion from place to place?
Even so, I could hardly order garden work to stop in the season when the plants were growing most vigorously, so short of kind words and compensation there was little else to be done.
"It's lunchtime. Take a nap and come back out once it cools off a little. You'll collapse at this rate."
"I'm fine, my lord. I'm not the only one working hard."
"I'm saying this because you're the one most likely to drop outside."
I took the stubbornly insistent gardener by the shoulder and steered him into the mansion. It looked as though I would have to put a glass of wine on the lunch table before he would close his eyes without a fuss.
Fortunately, Servette had sent over a whole haul of wine; one bottle ought to do it.
Two, if he still looks fine.
A contest of strength between the gardener and alcohol.
The sound of footsteps drew steadily closer. The Academy's closing ceremony for the term would be finishing around now, so Karl had almost certainly come home.
In my heart I wanted to run out and greet him in the garden the way Titi had gone scampering outside, but with each passing week the swelling of my belly made itself more insistent, and I simply could not bring myself to go.
More precisely, I wanted to go and could not.
"My lady! You are not in a condition to be going outside!"
"We cannot put my lady and the young master through hardship in this heat. Please rest comfortably!"
The moment I so much as stirred, servants sprang up from every direction to stop me. I had no idea where all these people hid themselves when I was simply resting.
Of course it had not been this severe only a few weeks ago. I had avoided long outings as much as I could, but with a maid accompanying me a stroll beyond the mansion grounds had still been possible.
But time had passed until even loose clothing could no longer hide how full my belly had grown, and the household staff had grown sensitive to my every move. Was there a difference between vaguely knowing someone was pregnant and actually seeing the rounded belly?
...There is a difference.
I gently stroked my stomach. Even I, the one carrying the child, felt differently about it.
Knowing in the abstract that a baby rested in my arms and actually seeing the proof of it could never be the same. Watching my belly grow larger by the day, I could not help but marvel.
There was a child in here. My treasure—mine and Karl's first child.
"Ah."
Just then I felt First Snow give a little kick.
Had the baby sensed that Mama was thinking about them? How clever.
"Mar, I'm home."
I was smiling softly over that thought when Karl came in a moment later.
Behind him followed Sister Beatrix, then Luise, Irina, and last of all Titi.
They look like a family out of a fairy tale.
It was exactly the picture of a family that had reached its happy ending in a storybook.
"Welcome home. First Snow said they missed Daddy too."
...That fairy-tale family had been monogamous in form, but form was not what mattered, so I decided not to dwell on it.
Once vacation began, the mansion transformed into a meeting place.
Fortunately it was a familiar sensation, so it did not feel particularly strange. Things had been much the same right before I married Mar.
"Oh... ohhh..."
And the first person to arrive upon hearing that my vacation had started was my first father-in-law.
I never even sent an invitation.
Watching him carefully stroke Mar's belly with an expression of pure rapture, that thought crossed my mind. He had clearly said he would come once I sent an invitation, yet he had shown up of his own accord before I could so much as take out the paper.
I was confused. Had I somehow reserved an invitation without knowing it? No—I had no memory of anything of the sort.
"I'm sorry, son-in-law. We came far too suddenly, didn't we?"
As if she had read that very thought, my mother-in-law, who had come with him, spoke up.
"Please understand. He has always been especially fond of Mar, our youngest, and when he heard that his youngest was now carrying his youngest grandchild as well, he simply did not know what to do with himself. It's a wonder he held out this long."
"I understand completely. I would have done the same."
"Thank you. I'm glad my son-in-law has such a generous heart."
At my mother-in-law's soft chuckle I quietly shifted my gaze back to my father-in-law.
"Is anywhere uncomfortable? Are you eating properly? If the bed feels strange, we can go to Ulken—"
"I'm fine, Father. First Snow and I are both doing well."
"That is a relief, but still..."
Utterly unlike his usual stern, serious, and solemn air, my father-in-law kept dabbing at the corners of his eyes with a small handkerchief and would not leave Mar's side.
So this was paternal love.
My future.
My feelings were complicated and subtle. I suspected I would act much the same if my own daughter ever told me she was pregnant with my grandchild, but I had never expected to get a preview of the scene. Wasn't the practice running a little early?
"Come to think of it, how has your appetite been lately? When a woman is with child, there are often things she used to love that she can no longer eat."
"There are things I never used to want that suddenly come to mind, but I still eat everything I always liked just fine."
"A blessed case, then. It seems Enen holds His Apostle dear."
My father-in-law nodded in satisfaction, and even after that he did not take his hand from Mar's belly.
It left me with the strange feeling that something of mine had been taken away.
I was the one who took her first, though.
Perhaps for that reason, I could not bring myself to push my father-in-law aside.