Date (4)
“Uh, wh-what…?!”
“……?”
What was that? Lia’s reaction was a little strange. Just a moment ago, she’d been nodding along, seeming to understand everything—that I had come to the underground labyrinth to lift the Curse of Misfortune afflicting her own body.
And yet now she looked as if every one of her expectations had gone completely off the rails, and she let out a shrill little scream, flustered to the core.
“C-Cain! What do you mean by that? You mean there’s a Curse of Misfortune on my body? On my body…?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“No way…! Y-you’re kidding me, right? You’re joking with me right now, aren’t you?”
Where the benevolent expression from a moment ago had gone, I had no idea. Lia had become a child ten years younger all at once, clinging to my sleeve and shaking it furiously.
At that pitiful sight, I almost wanted to tell her it had all been a joke, but unfortunately I couldn’t. It was the truth, after all.
Without saying a word, I shook my head and tapped the back of my neck, where the curse mark had appeared.
Startled, Lia hurriedly pulled out a small hand mirror. She adjusted the angle carefully and held it behind her neck, and when she spotted the clear black reverse-clover mark etched there, she let out a gasp and dropped the mirror.
“M-Mother…!”
I caught the falling mirror in midair and grabbed Lia around the waist before she could topple over from shock. Then I handed the mirror back to her. Lia’s lips trembled for a moment, and then, as if she had made up her mind, she clutched my sleeve tightly and asked,
“Um, Cain. Just in case, when did you find out that there was a Curse of Misfortune on my body?”
It had been on the day Lia and I went to see the fig tree, of course. But if I said that, it would sound too suspicious. The Curse of Misfortune was classified as forbidden magic, a curse for which no known dispelling method had been publicly established. If I claimed to have discovered the curse and immediately found someone who knew how to undo it, that would obviously be strange.
At the very least, a month would make more sense.
“I’ve got a decent eye for these things. I noticed it the very first day I met you, Lady Lia.”
“Then how did you find Grace, the mage hiding down in the underground labyrinth?”
“Finding people is a family trade secret. Even if it’s you, Lady Lia, I can’t tell you that.”
“……Ah.”
Lia pressed her lips together, her eyes darting around rapidly.
As though she were calculating something, she shifted her body little by little, flicking her gaze this way and that. Then she let out a strange little sound and a breathy, excited exhale.
“Th-then… why did Cain keep being so overprotective of me?”
“Because that’s my job.”
“……Why did you sometimes look at me with such a sad, distant expression?”
I couldn’t exactly say, Because I know you become a villainess in the future… so I kept my mouth shut.
Lia seemed to interpret my silence in a different way.
She gaped, mouth forming a small O, and blinked up at me with wide eyes.
“Don’t tell me… because I looked so pitiful, being afflicted with the Curse of Misfortune?”
“…….”
“Then I didn’t even realize it myself, and I was just being stupid and making weird assumptions all on my own…?”
Still muttering nonsense I couldn’t quite parse—what exactly she thought she’d assumed, I had no idea—Lia drooped her head.
Then, to hide her increasingly red cheeks, she spread her palms wide and covered her face, and like some wild little beast, she started pouring out words that never quite made it into language.
“Ahw, heh, huhh, ahh…!”
“Lady Lia, I’m not sure what exactly you’ve misunderstood, but you don’t need to be so embarrassed. Humans are creatures of misunderstanding, after all. It’s only natural for all sorts of confusion to pile up as you go through life—”
“D-don’t say it! Cain, just please don’t say another word—!”
* * *
“──So. What you’re saying, Cain, is that this mage Grace knows how to dispel the Curse of Misfortune, right?”
About ten minutes later, Lia, who had been clinging to me and wailing adorably, seemed to have recovered her composure. With a fairly calm expression, she glanced at Grace and said as much.
Even the way she folded her arms with those dainty little hands was probably meant to give off an aloof air, but considering she’d been throwing a tantrum in full cutesy mode just moments ago, there wasn’t a scrap of charisma to be found.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Hmm. Is that so? Then, Grace. Tell me the way to dispel the Curse of Misfortune.”
Lia and I both looked at Grace.
Grace, who had remained quietly kneeling like a sack of barley someone had abandoned, opened her mouth in fits and starts.
“W-well. I’m not sure where I should start explaining this, but… first, you do know that the Curse of Misfortune was created to curse a faithless lover, right?”
“Yes, I know that much. Why?”
“Well, that’s exactly the point. Because it was made to curse a lover who betrayed them, it can’t be dispelled by one person alone. It has to be done by two people, and not just anyone will do either. You need someone who can spend a long time with the afflicted person….”
Grace glanced back and forth between the two of us, then swallowed.
“W-would you like to hear more…?”
“Go on.”
I tilted my chin, and Grace continued her explanation.
“If you have someone like that, then the cursed person just has to kiss the person who’s willing to share the burden. Then the clover mark will split into two and be etched onto both of their bodies, and the progression of the Curse of Misfortune will stop.”
“……K-kiss?!”
Lia, who had only been listening quietly until then, flinched hard.
I crouched where I stood, narrowed my eyes, and looked at Grace.
“Is there no other way? If there is and you’re hiding it, I’ll tear your arms and legs—”
“N-no, there isn’t! Really, there isn’t! As far as I know, that’s everything! I can swear to it before the heavens—no, before all the results of my dark magic research so far!”
As mages were the sort of oddballs who valued their research results almost as much as their lives, and as I had also bound Grace with a Mana Oath to answer all of Lia’s and my questions honestly and thoroughly, there was no reason to believe she was lying.
……Which meant that the only way to dispel the Curse of Misfortune was truly through a kiss?
Before I knew it, my gaze had drifted sideways.
──Flinch!
When Lia’s eyes met mine, she jerked in surprise and fidgeted with her fingers awkwardly.
Then, as if she were trying to explain herself to someone, she looked not at me but at the wall and started mumbling.
“W-well… maybe if it’s just once. If I grit my teeth and close my eyes, it might be okay…? Cain is handsome, and he’s a little overprotective of me, but he’s also really gentlemanly sometimes…”
I was so dumbfounded by that logic that I was just about to say something when Grace added belatedly,
“Ah, and there are restrictions even after the curse is shared. The two people who share it have to keep their bodies pressed together for at least one hour every two days. If they don’t, the Curse of Misfortune will assume one of them has betrayed the other and resume its progress.”
“Wait. How long? How long do we have to do that?”
“It depends on how deep the caster’s grudge is, and how strong their magical ability was. If we assume the caster was a dark mage around my level….”
“Yeah, if we assume that?”
“Maybe, like, ten years? After that, the curse would probably disappear completely.”
“Wait, ten years? Ten years?”
Not one year, but ten? Thinking I must have misheard, I asked again, but Grace shook her head. Ten years was correct.
“Yes, but don’t worry too much. I’m a high-ranking mage who can use dark magic up to the sixth circle, after all. Mages at my level are not common even in our cult, so it won’t take as long as ten years.”
“……Cult?”
That was a word I’d heard somewhere before.
Instinctively, I murmured it and watched Grace’s reaction. She seemed to realize what she’d said, because she wore a stricken expression and glanced at me fearfully before hurriedly closing her mouth.
“Grace. The cult you just mentioned—don’t tell me you mean something connected to an evil god….”
“Um, Cain.”
Just as I was about to press her further, sensing something suspicious, Lia had already come up beside me and murmured softly. I straightened and rose to my feet.
“Yes, Lady Lia.”
“Th-even if it’s you, Cain, it would be too hard to stay with me for ten whole years, right? It’s a little embarrassing to ask, but maybe I should just ask Mother after all….”
“Ah, right. I forgot to mention it, but the Curse of Misfortune can only be shared between an opposite-sex pair of the same age. The princess who created the magic and her lover were the same age, so that restriction was built into it.”
“……What?”
Why was she only telling us such an important detail now?
I glared downward with my eyes alone, and Grace let out a terrified little “Hiiik!” and trembled.
Lia tugged lightly at my sleeve.
“C-Cain. I… I don’t know any boys besides you. What should I do?”
“…….”
That was her way of asking me to stay by her side, wasn’t it?
I already had a mission, and I was Lia’s escort knight, so it wasn’t as if I had a problem with that. But if she ever met someone else she could come to care for in the future, she might regret the choices she made today. Did she even realize that when she was saying this?
“Lady Lia, of course I want to help you, but you may end up regretting this decision later.”
“Regret…? Why would I?”
“Because, well, later on you might end up truly falling for some man.”
“I like Cain best, though?”
“And you might even have a fiancé chosen for you by your family. If I keep standing beside you under the pretense of being your escort knight, that would make things very difficult, wouldn’t it?”
“Then couldn’t Cain just become my fiancé later?”
“Lady Lia. For nobles, getting engaged means you’ll be married almost immediately after your coming-of-age ceremony. Are you really saying that knowing what that implies…?”
“Cain, do you not want to marry me?”
I, who had been responding with a deadpan face until now, finally lost my composure at that attack.
“……Marriage is something you do with someone you love.”
“I like Cain, though… Don’t tell me you don’t like me?”
“N-no. Of course I like you, Lady Lia.”
That wasn’t the kind of like I meant. Not like, but love. The problem was, I had no idea how to explain the difference between like and love to a ten-year-old girl.
Unable to come up with a good explanation right away, I hesitated, and for some reason Lia’s cheeks turned a cute shade of pink at my words.
“I-I see. Cain likes me too…?”
Shyly twisting her body and fiddling with the ends of her pink hair, Lia looked utterly adorable.
But that was one thing, and this was another. I was not some foolish man who promised the future on the basis of a passing emotion.
So, to keep from succumbing to Lia’s unconscious seduction, I steeled my heart and tried to brace myself, more determined than ever—
“Ah….”
“……Lady Lia!”
Just as I was preparing myself, I saw Lia’s knees go weak, and I hurriedly caught her around the waist.
“Lady Lia, are you all right?”
“Mm-hm, sorry. My legs just gave out all of a sudden….”
A strange sense of déjà vu washed over me, as if I had had this exact conversation not so long ago.
“……Grace. Don’t tell me the reason Lady Lia’s legs gave out is….”
“Um, I think it might be exactly that. Unless she has some separate chronic condition, the only explanation is that this is an anomaly caused by the Curse of Misfortune progressing—”
Enough. That was all I needed to hear. I looked sharply at Lia.
“Lady Lia, let’s do it.”
“Huh? Y-yes? Do what?”
“What do you mean, what?”
Perhaps because I was in too much of a hurry, the words about “to dispel the Curse of Misfortune” were left out. The next thing that came out of my mouth was this:
“Let’s kiss, you and I.”