23 - Urgent Messenger from the Fortress
Yurgen, who had said he would come again in about a week, arrived in the valley exactly seven days later.
Called by Leonardo, I stepped away from the mortar to find Yurgen standing there with a cart loaded with food.
...I think Yurgen-san is something like a vice commander, but isn't a vice commander a pretty important person? I don't think he's the kind of person who would be hauling cargo...?
Is it really all right to have him running deliveries this frequently? I had such doubts, but for now I greeted him with a childlike smile.
"Hello, Yurgen-san."
"Hey there, little miss, you're looking lively too!"
After laughing heartily with a kah-kah-kah, Yurgen patted my head. Since his body is large and he has strength, being patted without restraint made my vision sway and shake.
"You brought food for ush again today...?"
"This time, since the little miss is here, I've loaded up extra sugar and honey."
"Honey!?"
At the sudden appearance of my favorite thing, I rejoiced with pure, uncalculated delight. In this world, since I'm poor at speaking, I've made a point of responding with larger reactions. Rather than returning a flat, emotionless thank-you for a gift, even with clumsy words, expressing joy with your whole body probably makes the giver feel better too. That was the thinking behind my usual expressions of delight, but before Lord Honey, such calculations were blown clean away. Pure joy, pure gratitude erupted.
"Yurgen-san, you're shplendid!"
I clung tightly to Yurgen's thick leg and danced in circles around him. At this sudden encounter with honey, my reason had flown off somewhere. Sheer excitement.
If there's honey, what should I make? Should I eat it with the mountain of scone remnants from Leonardo's attempts? Should I pour it over French toast? Over the pancakes that have finally started rising properly lately? As my excitement settled while pondering various ways to enjoy honey, Yurgen dropped an even bigger bomb.
"Also, kids like candies, right? Here, take these too."
The round tin Yurgen handed me was decorated with lovely ornamentation. Since he said kids like candies and gave it to me, it probably contains candies. When I gave it a little shake, a clinking sound of objects bumping together came from inside. That sound alone sent my expectations for the candies soaring.
"Can I open it!?"
I shifted my gaze from the tin to Yurgen to get his permission. He did say he was giving it to me, but he is the giver. My words were a bit garbled from excitement, but never mind that.
"That's already yours, little miss. Go ahead and eat them as you like."
"I love you sho much, Yurgen-san!"
After hugging Yurgen's leg with maximum gratitude, I faced the challenge of the opening ceremony. Whether it required a trick or my fingers only slipped, the tin would not open easily. As I scratched at the side trying to slip a fingernail into the gap of the lid, Leonardo, expressionless, opened the tin for me.
...Hmm? Leonardo-san, is he angry about something?
His face was expressionless, but that made it all the scarier. His face, which seemed to look sullen, was frightening, and my elated heart rapidly returned to normal.
"Here, Tina. Say ahh."
"A-ahh."
Under normal circumstances, I would absolutely never do this without calculation, but the seemingly displeased Leonardo was scary, so I opened my mouth wide with an "ahh" as prompted. Since I'm a little girl now, something like "ahh" isn't really an embarrassing gesture. Though as someone with the memories of a full-grown adult from a past life, it was a genuinely complicated state of mind.
"Shweet... it'sh dewicious..."
At the candy tossed pop into my mouth, I pressed both hands to my cheeks. Of course my cheeks wouldn't actually fall off, but faced with the sweetly spreading happy flavor, I forgot Leonardo's sullen face and couldn't help breaking into a sloppy grin. A little girl hiding her cheeks in embarrassment is cute, but a little girl with a sloppy, leering smile is unsettling.
"Even if it's good, only one at a time, okay."
"Yesh."
The tin packed with candies, its lid still open, was handed to me, and I looked down at the round candies. Inside the transparent, clear candies were tiny flowers. I couldn't tell if they were real flowers or sugar confections.
...Delicious, and cute too.
In a happy mood I looked down at the candy, then looked up at Leonardo and Yurgen. This happiness ought to be shared. That's how much happiness is packed into these candies.
"Leonyaldo-san and you too, please. It'sh good."
When I recommended them, saying the flavor of happiness, the two gave wry smiles and patted my head. They said they couldn't take candy away from a child making such a happy face.
...But they were so good, I wanted everyone to eat them together.
If they say they don't want any, there's no need to force them. I'll share some with Aurelia when she comes out of the workshop, I thought, closing the tin's lid. Feeling a swelling happiness, I shook the tin, and the candies clinked against each other. As I pressed my cheeks to hide the sloppy grin trying to spread across my lips, I faintly heard the sound of hoofbeats.
"Hmm?"
Maybe it was my imagination, I thought, straining my ears. Leonardo and Yurgen seemed to hear the hoofbeats clearly, as their gazes were pointed in the same direction. Following their line of sight, I looked toward the fence that led outside the property. The hoofbeats were coming from farther away. Narrowing my eyes at the road ahead, I could see the figure of a black knight on horseback in the distance.
...Huh? Is he wearing a mask?
His hair and armor were both black, but the black knight's face had a white portion. Not fair-skinned. It was distinctly "white."
"Ah, the fence..."
I noticed that the fence gate was still closed, with the horse charging in at full speed. If the gate isn't opened, the black knight can't enter the house's grounds. When I started walking to hurry and open the gate, Leonardo caught me by the shoulder.
"Leonyaldo-san? The fence, I'll open it. The horsie can't come in."
"It's dangerous, so you stay still, Tina. A fence like that is no problem."
It happened almost the instant Leonardo finished speaking. The horse carrying the black knight leapt high with a bounce and easily cleared the fence. Then, slowing down, the black knight came before Leonardo.
"An epidemic has broken out at Gurnol Fortress!"
For a moment I couldn't grasp the meaning of the message delivered without even a greeting. But that was only me, and Leonardo immediately sprang into action.
"Tina, guide Randol to the bath in the annex. It'll be cold water, but a knight can endure that much. I'll go inform Aurelia."
"Yurgen-san, should you wash thoroughly too?"
"Yurgen belongs to the Restham Knight Order. The direction is different from the villages and towns where infection has been confirmed."
So there's apparently no need to suspect Yurgen of infection. Accepting this easily, I guided the black knight to the annex as instructed. The bathtub wasn't yet filled with water, but Yurgen helped carry water.
Leonardo had said cold water was fine, but just in case I lit the bath furnace, and Aurelia emerged from the workshop. She handed me water and a small pill, saying, "Drink this, just in case." Yurgen, who was given medicine the same way, was receiving several other packets and explanations of the medicines. As I wondered what kind of medicine it was, Leonardo apparently thought I was reluctant to take it. He pressed me to take the medicine, saying I could have honey afterward. Completely treating me like a child.
...Well, I am a little girl right now, though.
My body is a little girl's, but I prided myself on being a woman with the memories of a full-grown adult inside. If it's medicine I need to take, I can take it without masking the taste with honey or anything.
"Mugh!?"
Without any doubt, I put the medicine in my mouth and immediately choked. It had a powerful otherworldly flavor, to the point that soup tasting only of seasonings was no comparison. No, a flavor from another dimension. Literally, a different dimension of disgustingness.
...Why is it this disgusting...?
At the sheer awfulness, I gulped down the water all at once. I had thought that as an adult, I wouldn't need anything to cleanse my palate, but palate-cleansing with honey was essential. Far too essential. As I wondered where this terrible taste came from, the word "sugar coating" floated into my mind. From my past life, the characters for "sugar-coated tablet" written on the outer box of medicine. I'd never paid it any mind in my past life, but if you read the characters for "sugar" and "clothing" literally, it probably meant medicine wrapped in a sweet sugar coating to make it easier to swallow.
...I never once consciously thought about that.
As I writhed in agony from the intense taste lingering on my tongue, Leonardo opened the tin I had just received earlier.
"Tina, ahh."
"Ahh."
At the candy tossed pop into my mouth, I rolled it around with my tongue, trying to quickly overwrite the awfully disgusting medicine taste. It felt like the moment the sweetness faded, the awfully disgusting medicine taste would come right back, so I had no leisure to enjoy the candy.
...Yuuta Hiraga-san! If you're going to develop medicine, properly develop sugar coating too!! It's disgusting! This is way too disgusting!!
As I was silently complaining about the saint in my heart, Aurelia finished her explanation to Yurgen. This was a medicine effective in the very earliest stages of the currently spreading epidemic, and what she gave Yurgen was apparently necessary to prevent him from carrying the disease back to town. Having come into contact with the black knight who brought word of the outbreak at the fortress, he was given medicine as a precaution. The reason I was made to take medicine was the same. Incidentally, Leonardo was apparently made to drink it immediately when he went to fetch Aurelia.
...I wanted to see Leonardo-san writhing from the awfully disgusting medicine.
Watching Yurgen drink the medicine with a grimace, I realized I was the only one who had shown the disgrace of choking. When I offered him the candy he had earlier refused, this time he accepted it apologetically.
...So it really is disgusting even for adults.
As Yurgen tossed the candy into his mouth, Leonardo's hand reached out too. It hadn't shown on his face, but his mouth had apparently also been in dire straits.
When the thoroughly washed black knight emerged from the bath, Aurelia gave him medicine too and had him put on a new mask. The masks they had been using up to now served both to prevent infection and, in the event of infection, to contain the disease from spreading. They had given him medicine effective in the earliest stages, but it was better to be doubly cautious.
"...The first to fall ill was Jean-Jacques."
In a muffled voice through the mask, the black knight related the details of the epidemic that had broken out at the fortress. The occasional clattering sound of candy hitting teeth mixed in because the black knight was also masking the medicine's vicious taste with a candy.
"Jean-Jacques, huh... We'll need to close his regular brothel immediately. If the prostitutes get infected, it'll spread throughout the town in no time."
"By Vice Commander Alf's orders, the brothel closure has already been completed. Jean-Jacques's regular eatery and tavern have also been closed."
From the two's conversation, I recalled Jean-Jacques's face. He was certainly among the knights who came to the village. An overbearing... or to put it nicely, a rough-and-tumble knight.
...That guy, he was careful enough about infection not to pick me up or anything, so how did he get infected?
And on top of that, even though we who came to the valley wary of infection haven't shown any symptoms at all, it's strange for Jean-Jacques to develop it. How on earth did he contract the disease?
"How many medicines were completed?"
"None has been completed. There is only stock."
The exchanges in English were a regular occurrence, but not understanding the content being discussed made me restless. As I grew vaguely uneasy and looked back and forth between Aurelia's and Leonardo's faces, Leonardo's large hand came to rest on my head.
...That probably means "don't worry," right?
What I learned later was that they apparently gave all the previously made medicine to the black knight who had come to report the fortress's emergency. He wrote down the materials Aurelia read aloud as a list and returned to the fortress. For materials that could be purchased, buying them was faster than searching. Right now, the medicine was urgently needed above all else. Yurgen was also entrusted with a list of materials by Aurelia and returned to town.
...No follow-up report has come.
It had only been two days since sending the urgent messenger back. I don't know how this country's transportation network works, nor do I know how far away the fortress is. I know I'm just impatient, and I know that my fretting won't help in the slightest. But I can't seem to settle down. I can't settle down, but even someone like me has things she can do. They're nothing more than small tasks, but following Aurelia's instructions, using the mortar to turn sand into powder, watching the heat of a pot containing some kind of chemical. The process of turning raw materials into ingredients. Even if only by a tiny bit, the work should go faster than if Aurelia made everything alone.
So I tell myself, and again today I watch the pot intently. Outside, Leonardo silently uses the stone mill to turn sand into powder.
[Author's Note]
The way Tina clings tightly to the old man's leg in pure joy, she's adapting quite a bit to this world. The danger zone where overreactions are starting to become habit. Before long she might even start kissing Leonardo on the cheek... probably.
The conversation with Aurelia, which to Tina sounded like mechanical noise. (How many medicines were completed?) How many medicines were completed?
(None have been completed. There is only stock.) None has been completed. There is only stock.