episode_0072

“Okay, if you do it like this, it cuts easily.”

The stem of the red flower, severed by Media’s scissors, was held in her hand and placed in the basket.

“Belka, would you like to try it too?”

“I don’t really have a place to use the flowers even if I pick them.”

At the continued urging, the girl looked at the flower and shook her head.

“Hee, usually most people want to pick them because they’re pretty.”

“But it’ll live longer if it stays like this.”

Usher felt elated as Belka said something similar to what he was thinking. Then, Media, who looked at him with narrowed eyes, handed the scissors to the girl.

“If the problem is that you don’t need them, how about thinking of it as helping me and picking them together? I usually pick a few flowers that bloom around this time and decorate the hallway.”

“…Okay, if it’s for that.”

Belka, seemingly convinced by her words, carefully held a flower blooming in the corner, as Media had done, as if supporting it, and cut the stem with the scissors.

“Wow! You’re good at it! This length is just right for putting in a vase.”

The girl doesn’t know what to do with herself, being praised so excessively for something so trivial. Usher’s elated mood immediately subsided. He didn’t know why he felt so uneasy, just watching without being able to join in, even though it wasn’t much different from the women in the village picking flowers and playing.

“What’s the big deal? You just cut it to the right length.”

“Tsk, tsk, you lack subtlety. Subtlety.”

Media looked at him as if he were hopeless. She was clearly beautiful beyond compare, so why was he getting so heated?

“If it’s not that big of a deal, why don’t you try cutting one?”

“Seriously! Belka, the scissors!”

Usher took the scissors from the girl and looked for a suitable flower. They picked flowers that bloomed in inconspicuous places so as not to spoil the appearance. He found a flower blooming inside and cut it to a length similar to the one Media had cut, based on what he had seen.

“Here! Isn’t this good enough?”

“The length is passable.”

See? It was really just a simple act that didn’t require much effort. But her next words were different.

“But look here. If you don’t cut along the node of the stem, it looks ugly.”

“It doesn’t seem that different.”

He couldn’t understand what difference that made. Once it was picked, it was all the same.

“Actually, it doesn’t mean anything?”

“What?”

“I just thought you wanted to get involved?”

Usher stared, speechless, as Media smiled and started picking flowers with Belka. He sighed, wondering what was wrong with this kid, and asked, feeling uneasy.

“By the way, if you pick flowers in this garden without permission, won’t the owner of this castle get angry?”

There were so many flowers blooming that it was hard to count them, and they were only picking ones that were not easily noticeable so as not to spoil the aesthetics of the garden, but he was still worried that it would give that man a pretext.

“You don’t have to worry about that.”

Media chuckled and looked at him as if he were funny.

“Because the owner of this castle is my father?”

“Huh?”

Usher now realized that Media’s hair and the man’s hair color at the banquet were the same. The reason he was late to realize it was because their atmospheres were so different. That man didn’t seem like he would bleed a drop of blood even if he was stabbed with a knife. She seemed sickly but was full of life, so apart from the hair color, they didn’t look alike.

“Not siblings?”

Above all, the man looked quite young. They only looked like siblings with a large age gap.

“Oh my, you might be arrested for treason if you say that in front of my father?”

“Cough, treason.”

He had expected it, but the man seemed to be someone even higher up than he thought. The more that was the case, the more his anxiety grew. Why on earth was he showing interest in the girl?

“This is enough, let’s go decorate the flowers.”

“Ah.”

Media, who had finished picking the flowers in the meantime, stood up, took Belka’s hand, and headed somewhere. He blankly watched their natural behavior, as if they had been friends for a long time, for a moment.

“Hey! Why are you taking Belka?!”

As the girl was led away by her, she looked back at Usher as if asking for help, and he ran after them.

“This time, you were too hasty.”

Meanwhile, there was a gaze watching the scene. The silver-haired man standing by the window glanced at the fussy dwarf chiding him and looked down at the garden again. The children who had been picking flowers and playing were already gone, but the scarlet flowers filling the garden were still there.

“Heath, how long has it been since Media smiled?”

The dwarf called Heath didn’t say anything, but he continued, as if he didn’t particularly expect an answer.

“Yes, I know. But I couldn’t calm down at all while watching. It was like meeting her again.”

Perhaps his daughter felt the same way. From the hair resembling the sunset to the fragrance, she resembled everything he loved.

“But why do you go around decorating each flower?”

Belka wasn’t particularly strong, and Media didn’t look particularly well, so Usher was able to catch up with them easily. He watched Media, who was putting the flowers one by one into vases placed by the sunny window, and asked.

“Isn’t decoration originally done to look good? More importantly, how long are you going to keep following us?”

“I won’t follow you if you let go of Belka!”

She was still holding Belka’s hand and wandering around the castle, even though she should have let go of it by now.

“Ugh! Persistent men aren’t popular!”

“I don’t care if I’m not popular!”

That’s how they were bickering and wandering around the castle.

“Found you! Guys!”

They turned around at the familiar voice and saw the castle maid who had bumped into Belka earlier. She was holding the mask that the girl had dropped, so she had been waiting for her to approach.

“What’s wrong? Anya?”

“Ah, Miss?”

She belatedly discovered Media and answered in surprise. Usher looked at Media, whose voice was colder than before. The vibrant appearance she had shown until now seemed like a lie.

“The children dropped their masks, so I came to bring them.”

“Mask?”

Media looked at Belka as if confirming those words, and the girl nodded.

“Give me the mask. And no matter how urgent it is, don’t raise your voice in the hallway.”

“Yes, I understand.”

She handed the mask to Belka and hurried away from here without even receiving a thank you.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“No, I just think you’re definitely family.”

“Of course.”

Usher realized that her teasing him until now had actually been a great favor, and he thought he should be a little more careful, but only for a moment.

“Hey! I can’t open this door!”

He banged on the firmly closed door and grumbled.

“But you can’t just let a man into a woman’s room, can you?”

This was Media’s room. Her words were certainly convincing, but the problem was that she had taken Belka in with her.

“Then let Belka out!”

“I don’t want to, because I’m going to play with her now.”

“Ugh! Seriously!”

In the end, he realized that there was no way to open the door no matter how much he knocked, and he leaned against the door and slumped down. He was wondering how to get the girl out when he saw Donar approaching.

“Mister? Are you done with dinner?”

“It ended while you guys were out playing. But why are you sitting there so pitifully?”

“No, listen to me!”

Usher told him everything that had happened so far, feeling wronged.

“The young lady must have missed having a friend of the same age. She won’t be here forever, and she’ll need same-sex friends to play with sometimes.”

“Ugh, that’s.”

He wanted to say that it was different from that, but it was too ambiguous to put into words, so he had no choice but to accept it.

“It just so happens that I had something to talk to you about, so this worked out well.”

“Yes? Why me?”

“Hey, wouldn’t you like to try knight training?”

“Knight training?”

As far as Usher knew, knights were soldiers who made fighting their profession. There were many monsters that attacked countries and villages, and they were the ones who protected people and property from them.

“Why me?”

Usher didn’t particularly want to become a knight. He didn’t particularly like fighting, and he didn’t have enough attachment to the country to risk his life for it. In the first place, this was the first time he had been here.

“I’m not telling you to become a knight, just try training.”

He wondered what that meant. Didn’t being trained under a knight itself mean being treated as a trainee knight?

“Well, that’s true. You don’t necessarily become a knight just because you’ve been trained as one? Unless you pass the hosted exam or receive a title.”

According to Donar, there were many people who only received training and did other jobs. It seemed that most of them switched to mercenaries for the money.

“You’re traveling around, so you’re in big trouble if you don’t even know how to fight? You have someone to protect, don’t you?”

“Ah.”

Come to think of it, that was true. He needed to learn how to fight, even for the sake of the girl who would be traveling with him. How much helplessness had he suffered because of Mac, Pann, and Rogi? Recalling that fact, he made a quick decision. First, he approached the still firmly closed door.

“Belka! I’ll come back for you later! And you! If anything happens to Belka!”

No answer came back, but since they were both women, it didn’t seem like there would be any particular problem, and he knew she would hear him, so he followed Donar.

“He’s finally gone.”

Media confirmed that the door was no longer shaking and that no voices could be heard from beyond, and sat on the bed in the room. There, Belka was sitting, as she had suggested.

“Where’s Usher?”

“He said he’ll come back for me later. So, in the meantime, let’s have fun!”

“Um, I’m sorry. I’ve never played with other kids before. I don’t know what to do.”

Media looked at her in surprise, taken aback by the girl’s uncertain words.

“Oh my, then what did you do where you used to be?”

“Well, I slept, or listened to the sound of the wind or rain. Maybe talked to Usher when he came to visit?”

Belka seemed to be thinking hard about what she had done, but all she could come up with were a few things.

“Wow! There was someone who lived even more boringly than me. By any chance, were you a young lady from somewhere?”

“That’s not it. I just lived alone in a place with no people.”

“…Weren’t you lonely?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been alone from the beginning.”

Belka tilted her head as Media stared at her with a loss for words. She didn’t even seem to realize what she was saying, so Media tried to think of another topic.

“Then how did you meet Usher?”

“I remember it was seven years ago. When Usher came to the place where I was.”

She said that when she first met him, she only thought that she had been discovered.

“Discovered?”

“Yes, I vaguely knew that I shouldn’t be seen by people. At first, I was scared and kept hiding…”

She couldn’t stop him from coming to visit, and she didn’t want to stop him, so eventually she got used to it.

“I didn’t want to be alone anymore.”

The girl who said that was smiling as if she had obtained all the precious jewels in the world. Media was momentarily lost in thought at the sincere emotions revealed on the girl’s face.

“So that’s why you fell in love?”

“W, well.”

Media felt her own cheeks turn red as she saw the girl’s face, which was turning red at her question, as she barely regained her senses. It was easy to see that they had an unusual relationship because they didn’t even try to hide it, but their affection for each other, as if they were embracing each other, was like something she admired, yet it resembled something she missed. All the more so.

“I’m still jealous.”

Media murmured in a small voice so that Belka couldn’t hear her. Still, she smiled more brightly, as if glossing over the situation, at the girl’s puzzled look, as she had heard her voice, however faintly.

“So you’re dating?”

“Agh.”

“How far have you gone? Surely not that kind of thing?”

“Hiccup!”

The shy girl’s reaction was overly honest.

“N, no way, have you already done that kind of thing?”

“Woo-ooh.”

“What was it like?!”

“Ugh, don’t ask me that.”

Media was excited and held her cheeks in her hands, asking about her experiences, but unfortunately, she couldn’t get the answers she wanted.