126 - Leonardo's Return
Three more days of bed rest. Just when I started to worry that he was running a bit later than planned, Leonardo finally returned from the Lugmilama Fortress.
"I'm home, Tina."
"Leo! Welco..."
Opening the door to the antechamber, Leonardo stepped into the living room. I tried to support myself on the lounge chair I'd been sitting on to go greet him, but a sharp pain shot from my elbow to my shoulder, and I lost my balance, collapsing onto the lounge chair.
"Owch!?"
"Tina?"
At my splatting collapse, Leonardo hurried across the room with long strides, startled. There were more guards in the room than before, but they didn't react to Leonardo, of course. Whether they already knew Leonardo's face or because Kalisa had let him in, they apparently judged he wasn't a target to eliminate. Since he was the original occupant of the room, that only made sense.
"Are you all right, Tina?"
He scooped me up and sat down on the lounge chair, placing me on his lap. It was such a natural gesture that I had no time to stop him, and normally I'd get angry and scold him saying I'm not a toddler, but today, since Leonardo had been gone for so long, I just let it happen. Every day had been noisy enough that I didn't have time to feel lonely, but still, even without realizing it, I suppose I had been feeling uneasy. Since I was on his lap anyway, I thought I'd go for a hug too, but when I raised my arms, my shoulder hurt again.
...Nothing goes my way!
I just wanted to hug my guardian after not seeing him for a while. But even just raising my arms a little made my shoulder throb with pain, and I felt frustrated. Pouting, I wrapped my free arm around Leonardo, and he noticed my discomfort and began checking my left shoulder.
"...Did you hurt your shoulder?"
"Not just my shoulder, more like half my body. I'm mostly fine now, but sometimes when I put weight on my hands or raise my arms, it throbs with pain."
The peak of the pain was on the second day. On the second day, the area I'd hit hurt so much that even turning over in bed was painful, but by the third day I could turn over if I was careful, and by the fourth day changing clothes was no longer agonizing. And now I'd already changed clothes and was sitting on the lounge chair in the living room, able to do embroidery even if slowly. If I wasn't careful it still hurt sometimes, but I might as well say I'd mostly recovered.
"What happened?"
After checking my shoulder and joints thoroughly, Leonardo's voice dropped a register. He must have realized it was quite a large area of bruising. It wasn't the kind of injury you'd get just by staying in your room doing embroidery.
"Didn't you ask anyone on your way here?"
"Mr. Cidur stopped me, saying he had something to tell me..."
Apparently he'd brushed him off, saying he wanted to see my face first, barely even greeting him.
...From Mr. Cidur's perspective, I think he wanted to apologize first, since it was the hotel's failure.
Still, even if Mr. Cidur had managed to report what happened to Leonardo, the conversation would have ended mid-way anyway. I felt like Leonardo would come here mid-conversation, wanting to confirm I was safe first. In that case, would I end up being the one to explain after all?
Having temporarily satisfied my need for Leonardo-presence, I pulled away and straightened my posture. Sitting on his lap felt kind of awkward, but I didn't think it was worth repositioning myself, so I stayed as I was.
"To put it simply... someone tried to kidnap me."
Kalisa had saved me right away, so it ended in failure. As I was reporting what happened to Leonardo, Kalisa started confessing that my injury was her fault for being inexperienced. As for me, I thought Kalisa's actions prioritized getting me back, so I had no intention of blaming her, nor did I see any need to. Kalisa asked Leonardo for punishment, but when I begged from his lap not to punish Kalisa, Leonardo gave a wry smile and patted my head.
"...I agree I should thank Kalisa. You protected Tina well. Thank you."
"...Rudo-sama, no, that's... I'm still so inexperienced. ...If I were as strong as Alisa, I would never have let the young lady get hurt..."
Kalisa's voice trembled, and then her face crumpled. She immediately lowered her face, hiding her expression, but if I had to guess, Kalisa might have been the most tense out of anyone these past few days. The employer's little sister had almost been kidnapped, and though she managed to get her back, she'd ended up injuring her instead. The fact that she'd been taking care of me more attentively than usual probably wasn't just because of my injury.
"Kalisa saved me, you know."
I slipped off Leonardo's lap and walked over to Kalisa. Kalisa didn't seem to want me to see her face, so as I approached, she bent her knees and bowed her head so I couldn't peek up at her from below.
...Don't get so worked up, it's okay.
Putting those feelings into my hand, I stroked Kalisa's head, which was at the perfect height for petting. She was usually a quiet, somewhat shy older sister type, but sometimes she seemed almost like a child, which worried me. Could she really manage outside the Mandez residence for a whole year from now?
...Well, not that my worrying does any good.
I felt like the most I could do was distract Kalisa if she got homesick. Other than that, maybe I could learn to be ladylike enough not to cause too much trouble.
After I'd patted Kalisa's head and calmed her down for a bit, Leonardo stood up. I thought he was going to change clothes, but his feet were headed toward the antechamber. Rather than washing off the travel sweat and changing his clothes, he seemed to intend to go hear the full story from Cidur.
"...Are you going out?"
"Yeah. I'll go get the details from Mr. Cidur first. Tina..."
He asked if I'd be okay alone, and I thought for a moment. Even if he said alone, Kalisa was right by my side, and Diet and Basilia were also around. Staying in the room on my own wasn't a hardship at all. Not at all, but somehow I felt lonely being apart from Leonardo again so soon after he'd just come home, so I furrowed my brow and made a sulky face.
"I can stay home alone, but I'd rather be together."
"...It might not be the kind of talk a child should hear."
"I'm technically one of the people involved, so I'd like to hear whatever's said."
As I said this, I lowered the arm that had been stroking Kalisa's head and grabbed Leonardo's hand. Honestly, I looked up with a somewhat forceful will that said I'd follow even if he said no, but from Leonardo's perspective, there was a little girl at his feet looking up at him, which meant he was being gazed at with upturned eyes. If an adorable younger sister looked up at you with pleading upturned eyes, there probably weren't many older brothers who could say no.
Leonardo let out a deep sigh, then picked me up.
"...Come to think of it, you made some friends, didn't you."
He brought this up while carrying me, and I tilted my head in puzzlement. When I thought of friends, Mirshe and Nils came to mind, but they should be in Grenore, not Lagarette. So who... I thought, and then furrowed my brow deeply. When Leonardo had come back, Diet and Basilia had been in the room, as usual.
"If you mean Diet and the others, they just barged in, that's all."
I haven't become friends with them, I said, spotting some stubble on Leonardo's chin and pulling at it. Ever since I'd been unintentionally moved to Mandez, my beloved custom-made shoes were gone, so even if I wanted to kick his feet in a little retaliation, it wasn't very effective. Compared to kicking with the ordinary shoes I was wearing now, pulling at his stubble a bit felt much more effective.
"If they barged in... Kalisa would kick them out."
"Well, I said I'd play Reversi with them up to three times a day, so until they've played three times, they seem to count as guests."
"Three times?"
"Well, you see..."
Since Leonardo looked confused, I tried explaining a bit more carefully. The first time I met them was after seeing Leonardo off, and after that they attacked me saying "Let's play!" When I drove them off, an old gentleman claiming to be his great-grandfather invited me to dinner, and the next day they attacked again so Kalisa drove them off. At that time, it seemed the medicine had worked a bit too well, so I let my compassion get the better of me and said I'd play with them up to three times a day, I explained. I left out the part about the puddle for Diet's dignity.
"...By the way, Diet's great-grandfather might be someone you know, Leo."
"Huh? Is that so?"
"His name is Ethel-sama..."
"...Ethel?"
Leonardo was clearly confused, as if a certain person came to mind from the name. His cheek twitched slightly, and his eyes began to dart around as if trying to deny his own thoughts.
"It seems Diet's real name is Dietfried."
"Dietfried... So that child was a 'sama'."
When leaving the room, he'd patted Diet and Basilia's heads just like he did with Teo and Mirshe, casually saying things like "Thanks for playing with my little sister," but now he seemed to understand whose head he'd been patting. He scratched his hair in a slightly rough gesture, as if to cover up his embarrassment.
"But to think Ethelbert-sama was staying here... Really, he's someone you run into at the strangest times in the oddest places."
"Strange places? Where did you meet him before?"
"The first time I saw him was when I was a kid, in the slums of the capital... He was wearing beggar's clothes, eating bread at the orphanage I was in."
"B-beggar's...?"
I didn't know how many years ago the change of kings was, but if it was Leonardo's childhood, there was a chance Ethel was still the reigning monarch. For someone of royal blood to enter an orphanage dressed as a beggar, what kind of situation was that?
...Ah, playing at being the retired Mito lord? In this world it's called 'Nikubenki', right?
How considerate of him to have his three attendants use role names as pseudonyms and play at being a retired lord on a world-improving mission. I thought "Sukebei" was really too much, so I tried asking him about it once, but Sukebei himself dodged the question. When I, a former Japanese person, heard it, it sounded just like "sukebei" (lecherous) and made me feel unbearably awkward, but apparently in this world "Sukebei" doesn't sound like it means "lecherous." It seems there's a similar word meaning "thin hair," but Sukebei's hair is thick and full, so he didn't seem to have any particular objection to the name "Sukebei."
"...Come to think of it, it was around right after I saw Ethelbert-sama that the orphanage director was replaced for embezzlement or something."
...So the retired lord act was actually effective after all.
Shocked by this revelation, I lowered my arm from pulling his stubble and stared intently at Leonardo's face. I never imagined Ethel's Mito-retired-lord act actually had real accomplishments.
"I only found out that old man from back then was the former king at my knight investiture ceremony."
"How did you recognize that a beggar was the former king?"
"No, I'd completely forgotten... but he remembered my face."
...What can I say, aren't the royals of this country way too eccentric?
Alfred, who loved Alf so much he even made himself look like Alf, the current king who was supposedly even more powerful than Alfred, and the former king who should be his father, who personally went undercover dressed as a beggar to investigate the slums' orphanage, and remembered the face of an orphan he met back then even years later... I could absolutely never pull that off.
...At this rate, Diet was starting to seem like a standard, sensible prince.
Which was clearly mistaken if I thought about it calmly. But the other royals were so completely over-the-top that my senses had gone a bit numb.
A short chapter, but I'll cut it here. My break was too long, and my sense is a bit off. My pace might not return for a while. I want to go back to Grenore soon.
I'll fix typos and errors another day. I found some typos and errors and fixed them.
Happy New Year. I look forward to your continued support this year.