When You Open Your Eyes, the Pupils of Nirvana (1)
"Anyway, don't lay a hand on the princess. Got that?"
"Yes... Goddess. By the way, why do you talk to them like that...? You know—that timid little-girl way of speaking."
"Ah... that... well... I caught a whiff of Lellasion from the escort knight. So I just can't speak properly in front of him."
The goddess had smelled the distinctive oil used for tending weapons—Lellasion's unique scent—coming off Evan.
A goddess's senses far transcended the five human ones; they belonged to the realm of divine majesty. And because she was Lellasion's most devoted fan, the goddess simply could not maintain the confident bearing she showed before her own believers whenever she stood in front of Evan, who carried Lellasion's aura.
"Anyway, I'm leaving now. You go do your job."
"Pardon? Weren't we going to bring those two outside in for tea?"
"Do you even know how to make tea?"
"No? Do you, Goddess?"
"I don't either."
"......"
Until now Galardision and the goddess had always been the ones receiving tea, never once preparing it themselves. On top of that, Galardision insisted servants were a bother and kept neither maids nor butlers, so he possessed not the slightest capacity to entertain personages of the imperial princess and her escort's caliber.
"Then that settles it. Those two are already itching to drag me before the emperor anyway, and I need to ask His Majesty whether he's figured out what that princess is plotting."
"Ah... yes... Then shall I take a short vacation? I've been worked to the bone for the last two hundred years, so maybe fifty years or so..."
"What nonsense is that? You've got your own work to do. I'm a goddess and I'm not slacking off—why should you?"
"...The empire even has paid sabbatical months these days. Does my Goddess not grant her apostle any leave at all? This is tyranny!"
"Once this business is finished, I'll tell you that thing you've been so curious about. Just endure it this once."
"...You promise."
"Yes, yes. I'm going now, so no freeloading—do your job properly."
With a soft rustle—
In the residence of an astrologer, and the most reputed one in the empire at that, every room was naturally strewn with tools for casting fortunes. They ranged from little pouches of rice grains to full-scale spirit-summoning implements. The goddess picked up the pouch of bone powder and the black sheet of paper she had spotted on the entrance floor when she arrived, ready to examine the future she needed to divine.
White powder ground from dragon bone, saturated with the mana of the air, glimmered with a soft blue light.
"Aigoo...! Goddess, do you have any idea how precious that is...!!"
"...I'm the one who brought it for you. Quiet. When else are you going to get to watch me cast a fortune myself?"
"Now that you mention it...! Ooh!! Then please...! Please go ahead...!"
"Haa... I really wonder if I chose the wrong apostle..."
With a soft cascade—
The goddess scooped a generous handful of bone powder from the pouch, lifted the black paper, and held her closed fist above it so that her palm faced the sky. Then she let the powder sift down between her fingers.
It looked, at a glance, like a simple and meaningless bit of astrology—yet the meaning contained within it was anything but light.
Astrologer: one who reads the stars and divines the future. She had grasped the exact essence of that calling, taken up the black paper that served as a simplified canvas of the star-strewn night sky, and the dragon-bone powder that would become the stars embroidering it.
Dragon bone powder—whose very blood was mana—trickled slowly between the goddess's slender fingers until it covered most of the black sheet.
"See? On this 'ground' that represents the stars, you breathe mana into it like this..."
A soft surge—
It was accepted wisdom that anyone who possessed an overwhelming quantity of mana would have poor control over it. Yet the goddess twisted, separated, and radiated a volume of mana that rivaled the world itself as though it were no more than a handful, spreading a thin layer across the paper.
At once the bone powder that had seemed scattered at random began to shine: some points blazed as bright as the North Star, while others glowed with the faint light of stars already burned out.
The goddess moved her hand over the softly glowing powder, or breathed the faintest puff of air across it, reading the future.
"Mm... yes. I see."
"What did you see, Goddess?"
"Well. As expected, I was interfered with a little again this time... but I managed to peek at a bit of it."
"How... does it turn out...?"
"The woman I can't say... but on the man's side, either death or becoming a cripple. One of the two will absolutely happen."
"Still... why aren't they coming out...?"
"They're a goddess and her priest, so they must have plenty of accumulated stories to share. Some gods and priests are said to be like parent and child, after all."
"I see..."
In truth, Bazaks, God of Compassion and Bountiful Harvest, was famous for regarding his priests as sons and daughters, and for being regarded by his faithful as a father in return. Bazaks never addressed his followers by name or rank, only as "son" or "daughter," and the priests answered by calling him Father as they worshipped him.
The parents who gave you life and the Father to whom you devoted yourself were, it seemed, two different things.
"Well then, Sir Evan. Waiting for the goddess is getting dull. Shall we play a game?"
"A game... you say?"
"Yes. It's a pastime passed down for generations in the western reaches of the empire. It's called the Three Questions of Truth. Each of us asks the other one question, and the one who is asked must answer with absolute honesty. You get a single veto. How about it?"
"Hmm... but isn't that a game that falls apart the moment one side simply lies?"
"Well, that's true enough... but you wouldn't lie to me, Sir Evan, so as long as I don't lie either, it should be fine, shouldn't it? Besides, if you lie in the Three Questions of Truth without using your veto, the gods themselves are said to deliver divine punishment. Something about insulting a game that began with the gods."
"Uh... that very goddess is right next door, after all... Well, it does sound entertaining. Then please, Your Highness, ask first."
"Mm..."
We stood facing each other at a moderate distance before the gate of Galardision's house, each of us turning over in our minds the questions we wanted to put to the other.
Her Highness furrowed her delicate brow for a moment in thought, then the corners of her lips curved in a small smile as the question came to her.
"Sir Evan... have you ever been intimate with a woman?"
".....Excuse me?"
"You heard me. Answer, please."
Of course the vibrations of Her Highness's voice had traveled through the medium of air, entered my ear canal, set my eardrum trembling, stimulated the hair cells of the cochlea and the auditory nerve, and been recognized as sound by my brain.
But recognizing a sound and understanding it were two slightly different matters.
I stared at her, half-stunned and more than a little incredulous that she would ask something so lowbrow—yet she met my gaze with a shameless face and demanded an answer.
"...Do I really have to answer that?"
"You don't have to. But then the next two questions will require absolute honesty."
"Haa... I haven't. To put it bluntly, I'm a virgin."
I ruthlessly crushed the blasphemous thought that none of this would have happened if Her Highness had simply accepted my vacation request or my resignation ages ago.
No—no matter that she was my superior, I was still a man, and I was far from uninterested in such things. If anything, my interest ran rather high.
What most people managed between fifteen and eighteen I still hadn't managed at nearly twenty, and the frustration was real; taking care of it alone was embarrassing. Last time my little sister had caught me, and we hadn't spoken for a month.
A war hero and the scion of a marquisate sneaking into the pleasure quarter because he couldn't get married and needed to slake his desires—the disgrace would be beyond words.
On top of that, I genuinely wanted to give my first time to someone I truly loved.
"Hmm... is that so..."
"...Your Highness has no business asking such a thing."
"Heh. I'm a flower raised in a greenhouse, after all. Now it's your turn to ask a question, Sir Evan."
"Hmm..."
Honestly, there wasn't much I was curious about regarding Her Highness. That wasn't because I had no interest in her or never thought about her.
It was simply that we had spent nearly three years closer than family, so I already knew almost everything worth knowing.
Her stride, the foods she liked and disliked, her temperament—I knew every detail.
"Well... then what does Your Highness think of Princess Rio?"
"Sister Rio? Aha... because Sister Rio is 'that way'?"
"Well, isn't it a little unusual? Having someone like that so close by."
"True enough. But it doesn't bother me or anything. If anything I feel a little envious? She's doing what she wants, after all. Even giving up the throne for it."
"Well, that's true."
Princess Rio might look like a carefree young lady who had abandoned any claim to the throne just to wander about and enjoy herself, yet the power she currently held was so great that if she ever decided to challenge for the crown again, her place in the line of succession would shoot straight upward overnight.
The only reason she didn't was simply that she didn't feel like it.
"My turn to ask next, yes? Mm... Sir Evan, is there someone you love right now? Not as family or a friend—someone you love as a man loves a woman."