The Last Vacation - 1
The wedding with Trixie. The revival of the World Tree and Constantina’s reappearance. Attending the Ecumenical Council at the Pope’s invitation. Learning of the triplet pregnancy during the honeymoon. The continent-shaking uproar over the hiring notice.
Even after all of that, summer vacation still refused to end.
Is this a dream?
I couldn’t help thinking it. I’d lived at a breathless pace and a great many things had truly happened, yet when I checked the calendar it was still summer break. There was even about a month left until the new term.
Strange. In the past, vacation always seemed to fly by the moment it began. This time it felt three times longer than usual. Had the headmaster slipped in some bonus time because it was the last vacation? How considerate of him.
The last vacation, huh.
I watched Titi romping through the garden with Yuris and Sophia and picked up a cookie.
At the closing ceremony I’d been too buried in wedding preparations to feel it properly, but this really was the final vacation of my life. Once it ended, the second semester would begin; once that ended, every member of the Baking Club would graduate and return to their own countries.
After that, there would no longer be any need for me to remain at the Academy under the title of Academy Inspector. With the major figures of every nation gone, the powder keg that the Academy had become would finally return to being a normal school.
The last.
The more I turned the word over, the more a clean sense of relief and a hollow emptiness existed side by side. When I first received this assignment I had only wanted it to end quickly. Now that the end was actually drawing near, my feelings were complicated—as if I had grown attached to the connections I’d made here.
I had certainly grown reasonably close to capable, normal people like the headmaster, the deputy headmaster, and Villar. Sharing the common lot of subordinates ground down by their superiors had helped.
And because I had gone to the Academy I had met Mar again, and met Rory and Lin as well. Growing closer to Erich, with whom things had been somewhat awkward, was a fine result too.
Not bad at all.
Looking back, those two and a half years at the Academy had left a deep mark on my life and been time well spent. If I had never taken the Academy Inspector post and had simply remained Audit Department Chief, what sort of person would I be now? At the very least I would not have been someone particularly interesting or happy.
Should I be grateful to those kids?
I let out a short laugh and drank the coffee I’d set beside the cookie. If those hopeless club members had never come all the way to the Imperial Academy, I would never have gone there either. In a way, it was thanks to them that I was who I was now—
Grateful my ass.
I had tried to enjoy a warm little reminiscence, but the moment I recalled the Class of ’77 members, goosebumps rose over my entire body. I had nearly romanticized them just because they had been quiet lately.
No matter how positively I tried to frame it, thanking those creatures was wrong. Every time they pulled one of their outrageous stunts I had cleaned up after them from behind the scenes; thinking of my present happiness as the price for that work was closer to the truth. Not a gift freely given, but a strict exchange of equivalents.
Live like normal people once you’re back in your own countries.
Still, the bond of advisor and club members remained, so I offered a quiet little prayer for them.
They had already caused more than enough trouble at the Academy. Once they graduated and returned home, I hoped they would simply live as ordinary princes and future saints. That would be the path that preserved both their dignity and their nations’ honor.
“Titi! You’re not supposed to eat that!”
— Kiiing…
“That pitiful face won’t work either!”
Apparently Titi had tried to chew on some garden flower; the puppy was receiving a scolding with a dejected expression.
Titi’s gaze slid slyly toward me, clearly hoping I would intervene, but since the puppy was clearly in the wrong I pretended not to notice. We fed Titi excellent meals made with fine ingredients every single day—why go tearing up innocent plants? Anyone watching would think we were starving the poor thing.
Could it be a vegetarian?
If that were truly the reason I could accept it. A preference that didn’t force itself on others deserved respect, didn’t it? Tonight I would try serving meat and vegetables together.
“You’re not even pretending to look.”
— Wang!
And that evening Titi ate only the meat without a moment’s hesitation and flopped over contentedly.
If that was going to be the case, what on earth had the garden plants been for?
Sun, Sky, and Grass had settled into Trixie’s arms not long ago and still showed almost no presence, yet First Snow was visibly growing bigger by the day.
“Karl, could you get me some strawberries?”
A child who grows that quickly also eats that much.
“Strawberries? All right, I’ll be right back.”
First Snow, who had been sleeping peacefully in Mar’s arms, must have woken; Mar, who had been calmly drinking tea, suddenly requested strawberries.
Finding a spring fruit in summer was difficult, yet with money and money and more money nothing was impossible. In a world that had magic, the word “seasonal” simply meant “the time when it is cheaper.”
“Anything else you need?”
“Mmm, I’m fine for now.”
“Really? Call me the moment something comes to mind.”
“Heehee, I will.”
The sight of Mar smiling bashfully nearly drew a bitter laugh from me. Had the words “for now” ever sounded so ominous?
I knew well enough that a pregnant woman’s appetite swung wildly; I had picked up that knowledge here and there. I also knew that those mercurial cravings and morning sickness were something like a pregnant woman’s inescapable fate, beyond any amount of effort to control.
Knowing it with the head and moving the body were different matters, however. There had been times I brought apples because she said she wanted them, only for her taste to switch to tangerines in the meantime, leaving me to chew the apples alone. The Mar who wanted strawberries right now could become someone completely different in five minutes.
The mood swings are something else too.
Before setting out on the strawberry expedition I carefully stroked Mar’s belly where adorable First Snow rested.
It would be a lie to say being at the mercy of those whims wasn’t tiring, yet I didn’t dislike it either. Mar, who almost never asked for anything first, was leaning on me thanks to First Snow, and as an expectant father it was only natural to fetch whatever the child wanted to eat.
…Though I did hope she would go a little easier on the midnight steak requests. That might be fine for First Snow, but it was hard on Mar. Eating steak at dawn and then falling asleep made for a miserable morning.
“Ah, Karl.”
“Hm?”
“Um… kiwis too, please.”
Mar’s face as she said it was oddly flushed. She had just told me with her own mouth that she needed nothing else, only to reverse herself about thirty seconds later; she looked embarrassed.
I felt no irritation at all. On the contrary, I was simply glad—First Snow must have stimulated Mar’s appetite right away out of consideration for this father of hers.
Already being a filial child before even being born.
Whose child was this, to be so precious?
Watching Karl vanish the instant he heard my request left me both grateful and apologetic.
He always answered so readily to tasks that could easily have been bothersome, always indulging demands that even I recognized as fickle.
He doesn’t even need to go himself.
And though he was a noble who could set the servants moving with a single word, he still went in person.
Unless the situation required cooking, Karl never passed my requests on to anyone else. No matter how distant the item, he went himself; no matter how rare, he searched it out himself.
At first that behavior had been so surprising and flustering that I tried my hardest to endure whatever I craved. How was I supposed to open my mouth when the man would leap out of bed the moment I said anything?
But the more I forced myself to hold back, the more obvious it became, and in the end he caught me.
“A child is a couple’s treasure—it doesn’t sit right that only Mar has to suffer. Besides, if I want to be able to tell First Snow later that Daddy fed you too, I have to do at least this much.”
Laughing, he stroked my hair; I could only nod blankly. That was also when I realized it was possible to fall for the same person all over again.
Mother had said a husband looked most splendid during the newlywed period, yet even allowing for that, Karl was far too dashing and kind. How could a noble show such a side? Who would ever believe that man was one of the Empire’s powerful figures who had risen so young?
“You think so too, don’t you?”
I stroked my belly and spoke to First Snow; the baby answered with a little kick.
Laughter escaped me at the uncanny timing. I had no way of knowing whether First Snow had truly heard me and done it on purpose. I knew a simple coincidence was far more likely.
Even so, somehow I could feel that First Snow shared my thoughts—that the baby liked this father of ours.
“…Ah.”
After stroking my belly for a long while I let out a soft exclamation.
Something else I wanted to eat had just appeared.
I found the kiwis quickly enough, but strawberries were surprisingly nowhere in sight.
“If we’re talking about the lower classes of the Imperial Capital, they’re on the level of the provincial middle class. People like that live together—why would they bother hunting down fruit that’s out of season? Even for a small dessert they choose by taste.”
Completely stumped, I had contacted my senior in married life, the Second Division Chief, and that was the reply I received.
It was a hard answer to understand, yet I decided to accept it. He already had experience suffering through his own wife’s morning sickness ahead of me, and his family was involved in distribution as well. It wouldn’t be strange if he knew circumstances I did not.
“Still, it’s not as if there’s zero demand, so if you dig around you’ll find some.”
“What about the quality?”
“Naturally excellent. Anyone selling shoddy goods in the Capital wouldn’t even be able to keep a foothold here in the first place.”
The confident reply brought relief. All right, so they existed somewhere in the Capital. That was enough.
“Ah, Chief.”
“What?”
“Rather than going to the trouble of hunting them down one by one and turning the Capital markets upside down yourself, why not simply sign a contract with our house?”
I turned the idea over for a moment. Signing a contract with the Second Division Chief’s family would probably make it easy to locate foods I couldn’t find, just as he said.
But concluding even a small-scale contract with a noble house rather than some ordinary merchant or shop felt awkward. How much could Mar possibly eat during her pregnancy that I would need a house-level agreement—
“You have six wives, so it looks like you’ll be doing this for years on end.”
“Send the contract.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Second Division Chief had reminded me of the part I had momentarily forgotten.
With six wives becoming pregnant, and those pregnancies not ending after only one each, I would have to endure this hardship for years, just as he said.
So this is the weight of being the head of the household.
It was far too heavy.