Then I turned to Hikaru-san and said, “You knew that was going to happen?”
“Eh, I had an inkling,” Hikaru-san shrugged. He was looking in the direction of Minori-san, who had a lopsided grin on her face and was muttering to herself. “I know just what they’re saying right now,” she rambled. “‘Jealous? I know it must burn you up to see me making nice with Petralka.’ ‘Feh! I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ ‘Hee hee! How I enjoy getting you all out of sorts.’”
“Oh, absolutely!” someone responded enthusiastically. It was Loek, standing there beside Minori-san. He looked like he was having fun—but did he really understand what she was saying? I know they say love is blind, but is it deaf, too? I was genuinely impressed that he could encounter Minori-san in that state of mind and not go running the other way in terror. Maybe he just didn’t make very good choices. I could only hope for his sake that this elf didn’t stray too far off the path of sanity.
Ahem. Anyway.
“Tell us, tell us! Did it go well?” Eric-san said.
“Well? Well...” I gave them my best ambiguous smile. At the tea party, I had really tried my hardest to speak up for Petralka, but all I’d managed to do was make her angry. Well probably wasn’t the word I would use to describe how it had gone. Then again, I could hardly just chortle, “Nope! Screwed it all up! ♪” Eric-san and Rydell-san’s grim expressions made that obvious.
“Yes. On the whole, I think it went quite nicely.”
“...Huh?”
“Did it indeed?! Wonderful! We knew we could count on you, Shinichi-dono!”
The dads were grinning and sharing looks of huge relief, but I was too busy staring at Hikaru-san in complete shock to appreciate it. I brought my hand up to cover my mouth and whispered to Hikaru-san so the dads wouldn’t hear us.
“Uh, Hikaru-san?”
“Yes, Shinichi-san?”
“Exactly what happened back there that you would describe as going quite nicely? Petralka was angrier than a swarm of bees!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say she was angry,” Hikaru-san said, sounding perfectly confident.
“You... wouldn’t?”
“I have to confess, Her Majesty didn’t look thrilled with my little script. But it seems like if the words come from your heart, Shinichi-san, then it doesn’t matter what words they are—they’ll reach her. Love does make fools of us all, I suppose. It was silly of me to think a rehearsed come-on was the right way to go.”
“Huh? What? I’m not following.”
Hikaru-san looked at me with exasperation, then finally said, “I have no interest in taking the time to explain it right now. Just take my word for it.”
His word. Great.
But Hikaru-san refused to give me any more hints. Instead, he turned back to the dads and said, “I’m chagrined to admit that the script I gave Shinichi-san didn’t work. But it seems error has been the handmaiden of good fortune today, and everything worked out to our advantage.”
“Ah! We are so grateful!” Eric-san and Rydell-san said, nodding. I really didn’t understand what was going on... but Hikaru-san usually knew what he was talking about. And it didn’t look like I was going to get anything else out of him for the time being.
“Now, obviously, I don’t think we’ve scuppered this wedding talk with just one little tea party. We have to stay on the alert. And how Regent Cordobal feels about the match will be of the utmost importance, as well.”
“He’s in love with Prince Rubert, obviously!” our resident fujoshi broke in.
Hikaru-san and I both understood that trying to talk to Minori-san in this condition wasn’t going to get us anywhere, so we tried our best to ignore her, though that didn’t get us very far, either.
“If we could bring Minister Cordobal to our side, it would help our cause immensely.”
“Those two are a complete item! You can tell just by looking at them!”
“Might you try feeling him out on the matter?”
“Oh yes, feel him! The virginal sweetness of Garius-san! I used to be so sure that Garius-san was a top, but just look at that expression! That’s the face of a bottom if you ever saw one, isn’t it?!”
“But if he says he agrees with the match, that would only make things worse...”
“Prince Rubert has to be the top! That easy smile! The look that says, I have you in the palm of my hand! That face is top, top, top!”
“Stop, stop, stop! You filthy, fermenting WAC!” We were never going to be able to have a conversation at this rate! “And that last thing you said is so dangerous!”
What did it even mean for a face to “be top”?! If it ever got out that Minori-san was using Prince Rubert as fodder for her hot man-on-man fantasies, they could probably execute her for offending royalty. Maybe Minori-san had started to forget about the danger, considering how indulgent Garius was toward BL stories.
“That’s enough of that!” I said, then looked toward Rydel-san and Eric-san. I didn’t expect them to let any of this out of this room, but there was still always a risk in letting Eldant people see this twisted side of Minori-san. “At least take that ring off your finger!” I instructed. That would at least stop the dads from understanding what she was saying. Although Loek and Romilda, who had learned some Japanese at school, might still pick something up.
“Oh, boo hoo hoo!” Minori-san griped. Maybe she was upset to have been interrupted when she was on such a roll. But nonetheless, she took the ring off.
Huh, cute. Minori-san already had such baby-like features that a bit of a tantrum from her was sort of adorable. But forget about that for a moment.
“I’ll have you know, I’m right, though!” Minori-san went on. “The fact that another BL lover just like me was stalking them proves it!” She clenched her fist.
“Another BL lover?” I said.
Minori-san chuckled triumphantly. “When Garius-san and Prince Rubert were meeting, all alone, she was there, hiding in the shadows not far away.”
“......Huh? It was just the two of them?” So how did she know about this?
“Here, look,” Minori-san said, then proudly showed me her phone. On the screen was a video showing one of the castle hallways. And indeed, you could see Garius and Rubert facing each other, no one else around. The video must have been taken with a wide-angle lens, because it showed a fairly large area, but the picture was slightly distorted.
“How did you—”
“I have cameras set up all over the castle.”
“Oh, that explains it. Wait, what?!” I exclaimed. “That’s sneak-shooting! And when did this start, anyway?!”
“Pretty early on,” Minori-san said, with no evident sense that she had done anything wrong. “Matoba-san asked me to set up a video surveillance system so we could see how the Eldant side felt about us. They’re watching us, too. Fair’s fair.”
Come to think of it, I did remember a bunch of weird owl-cyclops-things—magical creatures or sprites or something; I didn’t really understand—that had staked out our mansion in the early days.
Anyway, thank God I’d had Minori-san take off her ring.
“So, get a look at this person.” Minori-san zoomed in on a woman hiding in the shadows, apparently watching the two men.
“Is that...?”
“Uh-huh. One of Prince Rubert’s attendants.”
She was right: I recognized the woman from the tea party earlier. Her long hair was tied behind her head.
“You don’t think she’s just there to guard him?”
“But she’s always, like, looking at the two of them. I mean really looking.”
“Uh... okay.” So this woman was rotten, too.
“Trust me. I could be friends with that lady, for sure. Gosh, I wanna talk to her!” Minori-san clasped her hands in front of her chest, eyes sparkling. She looked like a young girl having an innocent daydream, but inside that ample bosom, I knew, beat a dark heart. Her smile was creeping its way from ear to ear.
“Mi—Minori-sensei! If it is talk, I will any time with you!”
“Hoo... hoo hoo hoo!”
Loek had apparently picked up on the words talk with, and tried to turn it into an opportunity for himself, but his words couldn’t reach Minori-san anymore. Shame for him.
“Minori-sensei, you look so funny when you are all excited,” Romilda laughed from beside the two blinking dads. I was actually pretty impressed that Romilda was able to cope with Minori-san in full fujoshi mode with just the word “funny.”
“Ahh, my chest is almost bursting! Oh, the pain... to moe until I can moe no more... it hurts...!”
I pried my attention away from Minori-san and looked over at Hikaru-san. Our eyes met, and we both let out long sighs.
I stepped out of the room, leaving everyone in there with Minori-san, still in her crazed state.
“Okay, where was the bathroom from here again?”
To be honest, I was only partially answering the call of nature. Partly I just wanted to get away from a conversation that didn’t seem to be going anywhere—at least nowhere I could see. I wanted to get the proverbial breath of fresh air.
I’d been to the castle often enough by now to have a general idea of where the bathrooms were. On the first floor, you could even take a pretty good guess where they were based simply on the way the rest of the building was designed.
I went down the hallway, bowing to the occasional knight or bureaucrat that I passed.
“Hm...?” Over in a corner, hiding in the shadows... I thought I saw someone. “Is that...?”
She was small of stature, so she could hide almost anywhere. But one thing she couldn’t conceal was that long silver hair. It was as bright as if it had been made of real silver. I knew two people with hair like that—but only one was short.
“Pe—”
I almost called out to her, but then I stopped myself. I had left her royally peeved just a few minutes ago, and anyway, Petralka thought she was hiding. The polite thing to do would probably be just to walk past. Even if I did sort of wonder what the Empress of the Holy Eldant Empire was doing here of all places. I was just pretending to walk nonchalantly by when—
“Shinichi!” Petralka called my name. I reflexively turned, and our eyes met. She raised an eyebrow. “Hrm. What are you doing in this place?”
“That’s my line! Er... I mean, uh...”
Just for a beat, Petralka watched me struggle for words. Then she gestured me over as if a thought had suddenly occurred to her. “Shinichi, come here.”
“Huh? But—”
“Do not argue, just come here.” A hint of annoyance entered her voice.
Oof. That was a direct order from the empress. No running away from this one. I went over and joined Petralka in the shadowy corner. I was never going to be completely hidden here, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.
“Shinichi...” Petralka said, almost in a whisper. “All of... that... earlier. Is that how you really feel?”
“Guh? No, look, I just—” I scrambled for something to say. It looked like Petralka still hadn’t forgotten about the whole “loli” business. This was bad news... “Your Majesty, you were completely within your rights to be upset with me, uh, most honorably...” I braced myself to get slugged at any time.
Had I meant what I’d said? Sure I had. Even I realized maybe I had gone a little overboard with the way I’d said it, but I really did think Petralka was cute, and I still thought the way I had put it got a lot closer to what was in my heart than some fill-in-the-blank compliments you could give to anyone. Even if... well, okay, I had gone over the top. Yes. Sorry.
“I promise I wasn’t making fun of you,” I said. “Petralka, I think... I mean, really...”
“Is that so?” Petralka asked after a moment, nodding. And then she gave me the slightest smile.
Huh...?
“H-Hey, what...? Are you...?”
Petralka studied a spot on the floor as she said shyly, “Let it be said... that we were... in f-fact, happy to hear it. Ahem.”
Wait, so... not mad?
I looked at Petralka in surprise, and she went on, “Although your grotesque display earlier remains sickening.”
“That hurts, Your Majesty...” I grant that it was the sort of thing a passing policeman would have arrested me for! Really! But I was genuinely trying to express what I truly... You know what? Never mind about that right now.
“We, being who we are, have forgiven you for it. But we warn you against saying such things to any other woman. You would be lucky simply to find yourself in her ill graces, and not on the end of her sword.”
“S-So you’re saying you’ll let it go?”
“We will let it go. You should be grateful to us for our magnanimous and merciful nature.”
“S-Sure...”
Maybe Petralka really did understand that I had been sincerely trying to compliment her, in my own way.
Geez... I knew it was way, way late to be thinking about this, but what must Prince Rubert have thought about my little speech? What if he took my attempt to set him straight about Petralka’s virtues as a declaration of war? What if it sounded like I was saying, “I know her better than you”?
Okay, so maybe there was no what if about it. It had been pretty clear that my message was: “You don’t understand! You don’t understand at all!!” But it really was because I wanted him to know Petralka better. I thought Petralka needed someone around her who would fight for her not as the empress, but as a young woman. And if Prince Rubert didn’t understand that, then I thought he should withdraw his proposal. That’s what I had wanted to get across with my outburst.
I wasn’t out to interfere with Petralka’s marriage. But if she was going to get married, I wanted it to make her happy. Sure, I would be sad if she got married and had to distance herself from me. But if it really made her happy, then any match would absolutely have my blessing.
Er... what am I saying? It’s almost like I...
“Shinichi?” Petralka was giving me a curious look. Right in the face. With her face. So close to my face... So close... Too close, Petralka! With the two of us hiding in the shadows, practically shoulder to shoulder, I could almost feel her body heat, the breath from her lips. Somehow, that made me extremely shy.
Why, though? She’d sat on my knees to read manga before, so why was I getting all anxious now?
“B-By the way,” I said, “why are we hiding?” I hoped the question would keep her from noticing how nervous I was.
A frown passed over Petralka’s face. “There is too much talk. All around us, it is nothing but chatter.”
“Talk? Chatter?”
“After... what happened. Our retainers descended upon us, jabbering about every minor detail of this betrothal to Prince Rubert.”
“Ahh...”
That’s right—Loek and Romilda’s parents had said something about trying to persuade Petralka themselves. They weren’t the only demi-human ministers, and they were probably all getting together to try to stop Petralka from marrying Rubert. But the whole fact that they were so desperate to stop the marriage implied that there were at least some people among the human members of the court who were eager to see it go on. Eldant and Zwelberich had a history of intermarriage, and it seemed likely that some princess of Zwelberich somewhere along the line had brought some of her own ministers with her to Eldant. They’d put down roots and now naturally advocated for continued closeness between the two nations.
Hmmm...
“It was all too much, and we fled.” Petralka sounded like she might heave a giant sigh at any moment.
“Um, Petralka?”
“What?”
“Are you going to marry Prince Rubert?”
“Well...” She seemed a bit lost for words; she looked away from me. Was she embarrassed? No, maybe not. Just for a second, I thought Petralka really liked Prince Rubert, and was seriously thinking about marrying him. But this seemed like... the opposite.
Obviously, it wasn’t that she hated Rubert. She was just setting aside her own feelings to figure out what she should do as Empress of the Holy Eldant Empire. The fate of her nation rode on her choice: should she form a marital connection, or not? At just seventeen years of age, she was being asked to make a life-altering decision, not even based on what she wanted, but on what would be best for her country. Not based on whom she loved, but on who would be the most beneficial to her nation. It was a huge choice to have to make. And a terrible one.
“...Say, Shinichi,” Petralka began, as if she couldn’t take the silence between us any longer.
“Yeah?”
“There is something we wish to ask you.”
“Ask me?” What could she possibly want to ask me? “I don’t know if I’ll be much help, but... ask away.” Even though I didn’t think I had much to offer an empress by way of advice.
“Ahem, well then... Mn. Ahem.” She cleared her throat delicately, and then, without looking at me, she said, “Suppose there was—hypothetically, you understand—but suppose there was a person whom one could absolutely not marry for reasons of... position.”
“Position?” Did she mean like in Romeo and Juliet? Like, someone you couldn’t marry because they belonged to an enemy group?
“This person and you... by no means do you hate each other, in fact... you think rather well of each other. Or... or so you assume, at least...” Suddenly, Petralka sounded a lot less confident.
“What are you getting at, Petralka...?” All this stuff about “thinking well of each other” and “assuming.” It was sounding less hypothetical by the minute. In fact, it sounded like she had someone in mind. Like maybe...
“We are not talking about ourselves, you understand! We are asking for a friend!”
“Oh, uh, sure.” I nodded vigorously, deeply relieved for some reason. So this was all about some friend of hers, after all. Was it normal to blush so hard when you were asking about a friend’s situation, though? I guess it just went to show how innocent Petralka was when it came to love. Gosh, she was sweet.
...Hey, wait a second.
A friend?
Outbreak Company: Volume 12 Page 11
