306 - Side Story - Leonardo's Perspective - Little Lady (?) 5
After the War God Herkeles rites ended, I returned straight to the detached palace. I felt like a bit of the smell of alcohol had clung to me, but when I stopped by the detached palace, Tina made a gesture of sniffing the air. If I had gone out of my way to wash off the smell before coming back, she would suspect I had made a detour, just like if she caught me having stopped at the bathhouse. For tonight, it was better to come straight home and get on Tina's good side.
...Well, even if I came straight home, Tina would be asleep.
Whether I went out to the night festival or not, arriving at the detached palace would be past midnight, at a time when Tina should by all reasoning be asleep. I thought I would not be able to see my cute little sister's face again tonight. But when I stepped through the detached palace's doors, Tina came to greet me with a sleepy face.
"Could it be you waited up for my work to finish?"
I asked Tina, who had come to greet me, with a faint hope, but my sister is an honest one. Though she had a sleepy face, she flatly declared, "No, that is not it." She was a sister who mercilessly betrayed her big brother's expectations, but she still seemed to have something on her mind, clinging to my waist. We had only been apart for about four months, but I felt like Tina's head was a little closer. She must have grown taller in those four months. Tina was so cute I ended up picking her up, but then I made eye contact with Ms. Hartmann, who came out after Tina, and I did not miss the glint in her eyes.
...That was a face that said, 'Spoiling Tina again, I see.' I am going to get an earful about this later. No doubt about it.
Since I had just returned from the fortress, I was hoping to be spared a long lecture, but Tina said, "Leonardo Big Brother, carrying me is forbidden, you know," selling out her brother to protect herself. Since I was the one who picked Tina up, it might indeed be my fault, but I could not help thinking she could side with her big brother a little more.
Even as I thought such things, the fact that Elke showed up following Hermine told me something had happened at the detached palace. When I asked what was going on, Tina hung her head dejectedly and told me that Giselle and Petrona had gotten lost at the night festival.
...Petrona I could understand, but an adult getting lost?
I knew immediately that was strange. I could understand Petrona, still a child, getting lost, but there was no way an adult like Giselle would get lost. Unlike Petrona, Giselle was a noble's daughter living in the capital. Her home should be in the noble district, but she should have been going into the inner city since she was a child. Expecting her to know it from corner to corner might be too much considering she is a White Knight, but just going around the festival stalls would not take her into such convoluted paths.
...And Elke seemed too calm, as well.
In terms of having a friend who was lost, Elke should have been in the same situation as Tina, but Elke seemed more focused on soothing Tina than worrying about Petrona. She looked anxious, sure, but there was no sense of urgency.
When I went to the living room with Tina, who said she wanted to wait for Petrona, the hearth fire had not been lit. Apparently, children taken by spirits return through the hearth, so the hearth fire would not be lit until Petrona came back. When I said that must be cold, Tina told me about the kotatsu she had made in autumn. She said it was a table that stayed reasonably warm because she had put a cover over it so the heat would not escape.
...So that was why she wanted the hot water bottle, to use it for the kotatsu.
The hot water bottle placed in the center of the kotatsu gave off a faint warmth. Tina said they wore cloth shoes inside the kotatsu, but with the hot water bottle, it would certainly be warm enough.
We talked about what we had each been up to while waiting for Petrona to return. Tina said she would stay awake and wait, but she kept nodding off. When I thought she had fallen asleep completely and tried to carry her to bed, she would startle awake and say angrily, with a sleepy lisp, "I am not asleep, I am awake, I am!" insisting there was no need to carry her to bed since she was staying awake to wait for Petrona.
As we went on like that, it got close to dawn, and Aaron returned with Petrona. When he explained that Giselle was writing a report that doubled as a letter of self-reflection, Tina said, "Please do not be too hard on her," then took Petrona and the others and disappeared into the bedroom. Now that Petrona was back, she could finally sleep in peace, I supposed.
With Giselle absent, we decided to take turns on watch duty with Aaron tonight, leaving the first shift to him. There was someone I absolutely needed to confirm something about, who had appeared at the detached palace together with Aaron.
"...So why is our vice commander, who should be in Grenore, here in the capital?"
I grabbed Alf, who apparently was being treated as Alfred by Tina, and asked him straight out. I am not good at roundabout methods, and any tricky approach I tried against Alf would just get dodged and deflected. In that case, it was faster to throw a fastball straight down the middle from the start.
"As I thought, you see through me."
"No one other than my mother ever noticed," Alf said, shrugging his shoulders. Alf said no one other than his mother Clarice noticed, but I found it hard to believe that the sharp Christoph and Felicia had not realized. It was hard to believe, but perhaps they were letting it slide for some reason, or perhaps they considered it fortunate since Alf handled official duties more diligently than Alfred himself. Those two were one or two steps ahead of Alf.
"...I thought Tina was quite attached to you. Do you not notice that?"
"I have not seen any such reaction from her. The trick to imitating someone is to act a little exaggeratedly."
When Alf recounted various troublesome acts Alfred had committed from Alfred's perspective, Tina apparently sympathized with Alf but never realized the man beside her was actually Alf. That made me worry a little about Tina's future, but Alf and Alfred did have similar faces to begin with. If they acted as each other, there would be few people who could tell them apart with absolute confidence.
"So, what were you doing tonight behind Tina's back? An adult raised in the capital being out with Giselle and not coming back until this hour is suspicious."
"You have heard about recent developments from Tina, right? This was the final stage of the undercover investigation Giselle and Ulrika were conducting."
Alf said they had disguised Petrona so her hair color would not be recognizable, used her as a decoy to kidnap her in Tina's place, and captured all the involved parties in one sweep. Petrona had been caught up in the commotion of the arrests and could not return until this hour, and Giselle was apparently in shock after finding even the names of her ill-reputed brothers and uncle among those captured. As if the crimes committed by her siblings were also her own crimes.
"...It was an undercover investigation, was it not? Giselle should not bear any blame."
"I told her that too, but she insists she wants to go into the cell with her relatives. I could not very well put her in the same cell, but she has been isolated until she calms down."
Hearing how Giselle was being handled put me at ease for now. This way, things would not end in a way that would make Tina sad. She seemed agitated from the shock of her relatives' betrayal, but she should calm down once time passed.
"Still, I never thought you would use a child as a decoy..."
"We explained the situation to both Petrona and Elke beforehand and asked for their cooperation. Elke was quite composed, was she not?"
"Too composed. Even I noticed something was off."
Thinking back on how Tina and Elke had been before Petrona returned, Elke's calm demeanor now made sense. Since she had been told the plan beforehand and agreed to cooperate, she could focus on soothing the unaware Tina. The reason they had not told Tina anything was probably because if she knew, she might insist on being the decoy herself. Setting aside the method, I would have made the same choice regarding whether to tell Tina beforehand or not.
"For now, I would say we have cleaned up most of the troublesome elements around Tina."
The unsettling Flower Peerage and Loyalty Peerage had been swept away, and Christoph seemed pleased as well. The ones caught tonight were people who tried to elevate themselves by bringing others down. They were people who would sooner or later have attempted some scheme and fallen from power anyway. We may have provoked them into action as part of the undercover investigation, but the actual crime they committed was their own responsibility. Giselle had no need to take it to heart.
"...Your skill is so impressive it is frightening."
If Alf said he had "cleaned them up," then they were truly cleaned up. Now I could leave the capital next spring with peace of mind.
I could, but there was still something that kept me from being unreservedly happy.
...May this scheming nature never rub off on Tina!
Having Alf as a model for learning how to navigate as a noble was about as good as it could get, but if Tina learned even the dark underside of nobility from him, my cute little sister would become the most fearsome sister around. I understood it was necessary for Tina to survive in noble society, but I also wanted her to stay just the way she was.
"Come to think of it, I am surprised you were willing to come to the capital."
"You do not want to come near the capital any more than I do. In my case, I had someone I did not want to get near take my place and hole up at the fortress."
Since Alf was pretending to be Alfred in the capital, it was only natural that Alfred was the one guarding the fortress in the town of Grenore. I had my doubts about stationing a prince near the border at this time of year, but if Alf and Alfred had agreed on it, it probably was not something for me to worry about. More honestly, I just did not want to get between them and have to deal with Alfred's jealousy.
"I would come to the capital anytime for Tina."
"Same here. For the sake of Tina, whom Aurelia treasured, having one or two people I am not comfortable with is nothing at all."
One of the people Alf was not comfortable with was, surprisingly enough, the first prince Elvis. To Alf, who had his own scheming side, Prince Elvis, that embodiment of goodwill, apparently seemed terrifying. He said that gentle smile, which showed not a hint of scheming against others, gave him an indescribable sense of defeat.
"...Oh, yes. Speaking of troublesome things around Tina, please keep an eye on Bertrand-dono's situation a while longer."
"Bertrand-dono's situation?"
"When Tina said she would give him her meritorious deeds if he would sever ties with her, he stubbornly refused to accept them. He is clumsy about it, but it seemed he wanted to regain his granddaughter herself more than a successor who could earn merits."
I blinked at Alf's words that Bertrand seemed willing to take steps toward Tina. What in the world did Tina do to Bertrand to draw such a conciliatory attitude from him? Or did he want to get his own family back that badly?
...Yes, I suppose. If I were in Bertrand-dono's position, I might want to get my family back, no matter what.
If someday Tina eloped with someone, and when I found her she had died leaving behind a child, I would want to take that child in. Even if half their blood came from the hateful man who stole my cute little sister from me, that child would still carry half of Tina. They would be no less my niece or nephew for it.
"...You do not have to make such a demonic face. The condition for reconciliation from Tina was being able to stay with you, you know."
Apparently Tina had said that even if she acknowledged Bertrand as her grandfather, she would not give up being together with me as my sister. As long as it was a distance where they would meet occasionally, she said she could accept him as a grandfather.
"A distance where they would meet occasionally... That would mean either Tina living in the capital, or in the Kantar domain, or Bertrand-dono frequently coming to the Grenore fortress, but..."
The last option was hardly realistic. For that to be possible, it would be simpler for Bertrand to hand over the family headship to Tina's cousin and move to Grenore himself. And in that case, it would hardly be occasional meetings.
...Indeed, it seemed we would have to wait and see for a while.
Tina, who had fallen asleep near dawn, woke up past noon. Since she had been tired from last night, Elke and Petrona were still on leave. Usually they ate at different times in separate rooms, but today they were having what was supposed to be breakfast as lunch, together with Tina's friends. Tina looked a bit listless as she nibbled on her Nassaworuku, as if she had not fully recovered from her fatigue.
"There is a festival on today, lots of things happening in the city. Want to go together?"
"I am tired from yesterday, so I do not want to go out to the festival."
I tried inviting her to go out with her big brother for the first time in a while, but Tina turned me down. However, considering Tina's stamina, the sleep she had gotten after last night's commotion was more like a nap, so I could not very well insist. I should not measure her stamina by my own standards.
"The festival lasts three days, though..."
"Come to think of it, I feel like I have only ever seen the opening night festival of the Divine King Festival...?"
"What do you do during it?" Tina asked, showing a bit of interest, so I told her about the Divine King Festival in the capital. It had been a few years since I had last seen the capital's Divine King Festival myself, but festivals do not change that much in just a few years, so it should be fine.
"Let us see. The knights only perform the War God Herkeles rites at midnight when the Divine King Festival begins, but Christoph-sama holds rites at the Seat of Spirits for three days."
"Is he really performing rites for three full days, I wonder?"
I tried telling Tina how amazing Christoph-sama was, teaching her about the king's duties, but her reaction was lukewarm. She seemed suspicious that he was slacking off under the pretext of performing rites.
...Well, he does shut himself up in the Seat of Spirits during the rites, so I suppose no one can really tell what he is doing.
Still, was it really appropriate to suspect the king of slacking off? These rites were performed by the king for the land and the people living in it. Not something to make light of. When I urged her to reconsider, Tina nodded obediently. She agreed that it was not good to be suspicious of everything from the start.
...But she was suspicious from the start, was she not.
I thought about how I could make Tina understand the difficulty of the king's duties and come to respect Christoph, then remembered something. Tina had seen the rites inside the closed Seat of Spirits during the Recollection Festival. Which meant there might have been something that made Tina suspicious of Christoph from the very beginning.
...Come to think of it, on the way back from the Recollection Festival, Tina had taken out some sweets from her clothes that I did not remember giving her. She had said she got them from someone named Chris.
Chris was a nickname for Christoph. I was surprised they had gotten so friendly, but I never imagined they would become so close that she would suspect from the start whether he was really performing the rites.
"The commoners in the inner city are not much different from the Harvest Festival or Spring Blossom Festival. There are more stalls than usual, and traveling performers and bards put on shows. Aside from that, it depends on each church. The Menhishumi Church in the capital puts on puppet shows based on myths."
After the Menhishumi Church's puppet show ended, they would hand out baked sweets to the children, so as a child I used to go see it every year with my friends from the orphanage. There were also a few brides and grooms each year who wanted to get married on the day the new year began, so I would follow the priests dispatched from the Sopdejania Church, which governed law and order, and get served celebratory meals.
...All my memories are about food.
I tried to recall my childhood memories of the Divine King Festival from when I lived in the capital, but my thoughts kept drifting toward food. Not as much as Tina, but I was always hungry back then, so the meals served at the various churches during each season's festivals were one of my few pleasures. Since so many of my memories involved food, I recalled the Divine King Festivals I would rather not remember, the ones from after I became a knight.
...After becoming a knight, I was on guard duty.
The only difference was whether it was inside the royal castle or in the noble district. That was it. I had few memories that might interest Tina.
"...For now, let us just take it easy at the detached palace today."
"Yes, let us. Please take your time relaxing."
Giving up on forcing an invitation, Tina smiled adorably at me and moved from her seat. I thought it would be easier to talk across the table, but apparently Tina preferred sitting next to me.
Last night she had only told me things that needed reporting as recent news, but today she talked about nothing but trivial matters. About how Kalisa had made her a big black dog stuffed toy, and how she had named it 'Curry Rice,' and how she had received a lovely jewelry box from Basilia. Not reports, just Tina's happy memories.
...Having a little sister is really nice.
Listening to Tina talk as she recalled all sorts of things, I felt my heart warm at the thought that I had come home to a house with family. My heart, rough from the Lugmilama fortress, the demon frontier, was healed just by my sister's presence, and then in the next moment, cast down into despair.
"Oh, I found it! The fountain with Leonardo Big Brother naked and holding a pot!"
My little sister shows no mercy, only to me.
So that is how it was. Alfred-sama was actually Alf-san. Reading back with that in mind, you will notice 'elder sister' was 'Felicia elder sister,' and references to 'father' were avoided. Kokumaro was more attached to Alf than to Alfred, after all.
Typos and errors to be fixed another day.