A Stroll Through the Imperial Capital (4)
Fortunately for Clea, Ellie didn’t go off to have any bold encounters with some big shot afterward.
There was an incident where Ellie caught a pickpocket, and another where people in the middle of the street cried out, “Oh my, they’re Academy students! Huh! The most prestigious magic school of them all, the Academy!” but compared to what had happened before, those were nothing more than small-time happenings.
And Ellie did see the Imperial Palace, just as she had intended when they set out. More precisely, she walked a full circuit around the outside of its walls and then said, “With a structure like this, getting in would be hard after all.”
“Huh? Well, yeah… I guess?”
They ate street food practically every time something good enough to catch their eye appeared along the road.
“Ohh, this is amazing… bread wrapped around vegetables and meat and everything! Sir, I’ll have this one too!”
For the record, Ellie ate so deliciously in front of the stalls that every vendor she favored with her patronage sold out the entirety of what they had prepared for the day in no time at all.
By the time they had spent a full day walking, eating, and looking around like that, the sun had begun to sink toward evening.
The two of them hailed a carriage and set out for the Academy.
The ride back was quiet.
Ellie, who had walked and eaten to her heart’s content, was pleasantly drowsy, while Clea kept turning something over in her mind.
—Why do I have to explain it in such detail with my own mouth? I told you, it’s embarrassing.
—Well, because you wanted to tell me, Clea.
But the most important decisions were the ones that came not from the head, but from the body acting on its own.
“The Marquis House of Lacustrin.”
The girl’s voice quietly spread through the otherwise silent carriage.
“Originally, that house began with a manor granted by His Majesty the First Emperor to one of his concubines.”
In the Empire, there was a distinction between a queen and a consort. A queen was a lawful wife, while a consort meant a secondary wife or a concubine.
“The manor was managed by the consort’s younger brother and then passed down to his children, and after one generation it had become a marquisate family that ruled the manor as its own domain.”
Clea went on, looking out the window.
“In the meantime, our family kept producing imperial consorts one after another, and so it became an established tradition that any daughter of House Lacustrin was a potential consort of the Emperor. But never a candidate for Empress.”
It was common enough for a custom to guarantee one’s status while also becoming a shackle that kept one from ever rising beyond it.
“That’s why His Majesty brought up my mother, too. Back then, there was talk of her becoming the imperial consort of the late Emperor, and marriage negotiations were exchanged. In the end, it all fell through.”
Outside, the sun was setting.
“I’m in the same position as a potential consort, too. Even if I wanted to marry someone else, I’d first need His Majesty’s permission—that is, I’d have to receive his refusal to make me his consort. Only then would it be possible.”
A wry smile.
“That makes it hard for the other students to approach me recklessly, too. Of course His Majesty wouldn’t take me as his consort, but they’d still think, just in case, I might be the kind of girl he could choose.”
So, then.
“Something everybody knows, but I’m embarrassed to talk about—that’s what I meant.”
In truth, the moment she called it embarrassing, Clea had already trusted Ellie and shown her what was in her heart.
Being qualified to become an imperial consort was an honor. A blessing. To call it embarrassing was no different from insulting both her own house and the Emperor.
And so.
Clea had actually been drawn to Ellie from the very first time they met, and had been opening her heart to her ever since.
The way Ellie, despite being an orphan, stood her ground before Count Edwick with such composure and dignity was wonderful.
I wished I could be like that, too.
I envied her.
And I wanted to get closer to her, wanted to speak with her again.
It had been that way all along, from the very beginning.
Ellie listened to Clea’s belated confession with nothing more than a calm expression.
“I see.”
It was different from indifference.
You had reasons like that.
But they weren’t reasons that would stop us from becoming friends.
Then it’s fine. I understand.
That was the gentle, placid feeling in those words.
“...Ellie.”
Clea wanted to say something more, but if she did, it felt like she would trample all over Ellie’s thoughtfulness, so she kept her mouth shut.
A soft, bubbling warmth rose in her chest.
The carriage fell quiet again.
Far above, in the high heavens, the evening sun went down, and one by one the stars began to adorn the purple night sky as if they were jewels sewn into cloth.
Inside the carriage, just like the world outside, darkness deepened softly around them. The driver lit a lamp and hung it out front.
For Clea, the cramped space inside the carriage—hardly even two cubic meters by volume—felt like a tiny boat crossing the dark with Ellie alone.
And yet she didn’t feel anxious at all.
If Ellie were by her side, she thought she wouldn’t feel afraid even if she were dropped in the middle of a desert.
And in that warm silence, Clea realized something.
She wanted to keep traveling with Ellie from now on, to keep following wherever she went.
And if the day ever came when she had to leave, she wanted to remain by her side forever.
The words carrying that feeling slipped from between Clea’s lips.
“The stars are beautiful.”
In the dimming world as twilight faded, Ellie’s lips curved.
“Yeah.”
Clea suddenly felt embarrassed and closed her eyes.
.
.
.
“...Clea. Clea. We’re here. Wake up.”
“Mm? Ah...?”
Bl- blink.
When Clea opened her eyes in a daze, she was on the bench where Academy students waited for carriages.
“Huh...? Ah!?”
She shot upright, and her pale blue hair fluttered wildly.
“W-when did we get back? And when did I fall asleep?”
“One minute ago, and fifteen minutes ago, respectively. I paid the fare out of your wallet.”
That basically meant Ellie had just opened her bag whenever she pleased and used her wallet like it was her own, but neither Clea nor Ellie found anything strange about that.
“E-Ellie, I... did I say anything weird while I was asleep?”
“Anything weird? Not really?”
Whew. Thank goodness.
“You did drool a little, though.”
“!?!?”
Clea’s face went scarlet.
The tumultuous Saturday passed, and Sunday arrived. One by one, the students who had stayed up late playing the night before stumbled out of their beds and out of their rooms.
Tomorrow was Monday again.
Once the semester properly began, things would get busy, so maybe today was the last day they’d have this term to truly relax and play.
So there was this feeling written all over the faces of many students: somehow, some way, they had to make the most of it and have fun.
In truth, because they were freshmen, they were even more nervous than usual. The upperclassmen who had already spent a year here knew that within a semester there were easy days and truly brutal ones.
In any case, the first-years each went off to enjoy themselves in their own way—picnicking with friends, hiring carriages to head into the Imperial Capital, or simply rolling around in bed all day.
The five-person friend group that included Ellie also came to have a picnic on the academy lawn.
With a picnic mat that Isabel had bought at great expense, a tea set of gilded porcelain, and refreshments delivered all the way from the Imperial Capital by hired hands—costing sixty-four times what an ordinary meal did.
As the quick-witted may have already guessed, this gathering had come about through Isabel’s relentless enthusiasm, since one of her dreams had been to go on a picnic with friends.
Just how badly had she wanted it? She had spent all of Saturday preparing the gear and refreshments, and even laid out the clothes she would wear the next day in advance.
Of course she hadn’t been able to fall asleep right away, either; she had tossed and turned for a long while.
And yet…
Once the picnic actually began, she couldn’t help thinking: Is that all?
No matter how fine the blanket, grass was still lumpy. And sitting on the ground made her legs go numb before long. The refreshments were delicious, sure, but they probably would have tasted even better if they’d eaten them right after buying them yesterday.
And the friends she’d come with weren’t especially active participants in the picnic, either.
Philia was reading a book.
Clea was trying out knitting as a new hobby.
Stella was lying there blankly, staring up at the sky.
And Ellie, without a doubt the undisputed center of this group, was reading a common magic-language textbook.
She was studying. On this bright Sunday afternoon in autumn.
Not at all like the picnic she’d imagined, Isabel hesitantly appealed to her friends.
“Um...”
The problem, really, was that the picture of the picnic in her head had been far too beautiful. Everyone would sit in a circle and go, “Heehee, ohoho, and then what happened?” and “Ohoho, why yes, that was exactly how it was for me as well.”
Isabel decided she’d at least try speaking to someone first.
But who?
Philia? The girl she most wanted to befriend, but the memory of being rejected for so long was a painful bruise, a trauma.
Clea? That... difficult girl, impossible to approach carelessly.
Stella? For different reasons, she was no less difficult to approach.
“Um... Eliee...”
In the end, she tried speaking to her very first friend in life, but Ellie only looked apologetic as she glanced down at the book in her hands and said, “Sorry. I really need to finish this book today, so once I’m done I’ll play with you.”
...Tch.
Isabel stuck her tongue out in her heart. I went to all this trouble, and they’re all not even doing a proper picnic. Mean girls.
Feeling stupid for being the only one trying so hard, Isabel flopped down too. Fine, whatever. If you’re not going to have a pretty picnic, then I won’t try either. See if I ever invite you again! That was the mood in her chest.
But once she lay there and huffed away in sulky silence...
Somehow, she found that her mood wasn’t so bad after all.
In fact, not doing anything at all was weirdly, quietly enjoyable.
It had been a long time since she’d lain on her back and looked up at the sky like this. There was even that strange sensation of falling far, far upward.
She could hear her friends breathing beside her. The scent of girls’ skin mingled with the smell of grass and earth, and with the clear brightness unique to the crisp autumn air, teasing the tip of her nose.
Ellie and Philia’s page-turning fell slightly out of sync. A cloud with a curious shape drifted across the sky. Had Stella seen that cloud, too?
Now and then their skin brushed, and she felt body heat. Because it was the warmth of a friend, it felt especially comforting.
And because she wasn’t forcing anything anymore, the warm feeling of spending time with everyone seeped gently into the heart of the girl who had longed for human warmth.
Dazedly,
Isabel finally began to enjoy the picnic.
Then, all at once, she thought:
Maybe what really matters isn’t where you are or what you’re doing, but who you’re with.
It was a moment in which the girl grew just a little.
But why is Ellie reading that common magic-language textbook so seriously?
Just as Isabel was thinking she might ask later, the voice of another nearby student brushed her ear.
“Hey, doesn’t that orphan girl piss you off a little, honestly?”