Guardians of the Prince - CH 2.4

That day, we spent the morning in the garden, just as we had the day before, and after lunch was the prince’s nap time.

I set him down on a big cushion in the hearth room on the first floor, and let him sleep there. The way babies sleep is so cute, isn’t it, with their hands up like they’re cheering, and little tootsies out like a crab.

Once the prince went home to Lady Solamire, I wouldn’t get to see this cute sleeping face anymore.

Just as I was gently patting the prince’s golden hair, Mr Lahzt, in his white robe, popped his face in.

“He’s asleep huh? Good timing, you have a minute?”

“Sure.”

I left the prince with Mr Kahzam for a moment, and followed Mr Lahzt into the room with the Shu-ii. The curtains were drawn today, and the room was only dimly lit.

“I said before, right, that the shock of crossing space and time had you unconscious for a while. It was my intention to leave prince to you after you’d sufficiently recovered, but I’d like to examine your progress since then. It’s my responsibility after all, I’m the one who called you here.”

Oh that’s right, Mr Lahzt was part of the second queen’s team of personal physicians, wasn’t he. He looked after members of the royal family, he had to be excellent.

There was a writing desk in one corner of the room, with a mountain of books and papers piled up on it. Mr Lahzt sat down in the armchair there, so I took a seat in the chair in front of it, and he started the examination right from the top. He asked if I had any symptoms at the moment, and what was my medical history, and questions like that, all of which I answered.

Maybe it was because of all the romantic notions flying around yesterday when Mr Fatido came to visit, but I realized that at some point, I’d started to feel much less reserved around Mr Lahzt and Mr Kahzam.

Mr Lahzt took my left hand and inspected it closely. His long fingers traced my wrist, and just as I was starting to ruminate on it, the characters that wrapped around my wrist unwound into the summoning circle like they had the other day.

“”

“Oh… From when I came here. Is this a Shiino art, used to move across time and space?”

“Right. It’s called a Circle Art, but right here, the part of it that I used when I transferred you into this world, seems to have ended up transcribed onto you. I was wondering if I should just erase it, since we probably don’t need it, but it’ll hurt a bit, so I’d been putting it off. Shall I erase it now?”

“I can’t use them myself?”

I stared at the circle of green letters slowly rotating around me. Wait, this letter, I think I understand what it means… Like, to go back to your starting point, maybe…

I recklessly poked at the character, and the unwound letters wrapped back around my wrist.

“Woah, I can!”

Mr Lahzt’s eyes went wide. “You felt some resonance with the seals?”

“Uh, yes? I thought, one of the characters meant, like, to go back to the beginning? So I thought, Go back, and just touched it.”

“You might have the makings of a Shiinoce too, Koume, that would be a surprise. Although, given the fact that you can understand the Shin, maybe that should have tipped us off.”

“Really? Amazing! You don’t have to erase them then, right?”

The color was quite pretty, and it looked like a bracelet, they’d be fine where they were. Then I had a sudden thought.

“Speaking of, Mr Lahzt, will your job be okay without you? Not the epidemic, I mean, the second queen.”

Was it really okay for him to spend all his time here and never go to work? He smiled bitterly.

“I’m on extended leave.”

What a coincidence, I thought, for a bunch of people close to the second queen to take such clearly bizarre actions, weren’t people going to realize they were planning something?

And then I realized.

“No way, they pinned the responsibility on you?”

“You’re sharp. Yes, to be frank, I’m technically under house arrest. When the second queen gave birth, there was only me and the midwife there, so as it happens…”

Of course. When the second queen gave birth, he would have been on duty, just like any other night. Since he was part of the plan to conceal the prince. And because it was a stillbirth, he had to take responsibility for that. They had to keep the story up to the end.

“I’m taking contract work these days, things I can do from home. It’ll be a little while longer before I can make a complete comeback.”

“You didn’t even do anything wrong, Mr Lahzt.”

I looked down, and Mr Lahzt chuckled a little.

“To be honest, I appreciate the down time. I was always so busy. My wages’ve been cut, but Lady Solamire has been kind enough to pay me out of her own pocket, so actually I’m making a net profit. Kahzam too, I wrote him a medical certification beforehand, so he’s supposedly out on medical leave right now, down with a very difficult to treat illness. And we prepared an old age pension for the midwife. She was quite pleased actually, moved out to the countryside.”

I mirrored Mr Lahzt’s smile.

Disgrace is something that hounds a person, so it was possible this affair might even affect his future promotions. Surely he was well aware of that, even though he was talking like this.

“Oh, also,” Mr Lahzt said, writing something down on a piece of paper in his hand. “Just for the record, it was that old woman who looked after you in the beginning. Changed your clothes and things.”

“Ah…”

When I hadn’t been conscious? I had wondered if Mr Lahzt or Mr Kahzam…? Thank god.

But that relief was fleeting.

“Alright, take your clothes off.”

“Excuse me!?” My voice cracked. What– What!?

“Change into this. You can leave your underthings on.”

I was totally at a loss for words, but Mr Lahzt just handed me some blue clothing and went into the other room for a bit.

This– This was a shock, I thought, after all this, I’m going to have to show Mr Lahzt my naked body?

The blue clothes turned out to be a sleeveless, straight-lined dress, of an extremely thin cloth. It did up with buttons at the shoulders. This was definitely a piece of clothing to have a medical exam in.

I quickly put on the gown, folded the clothes I took off, and put them on the sofa in the corner of the room. I called out, and Mr Lahzt came back in.

“Alright then, stand over there for me.”

He had me stand on a rug that was in between the sofa and the floating Shu-ii. I was a little nervous about what was going to happen.

“Close your eyes, and then stay there for a while.”

I did as I was told, and felt something like warm water suddenly envelope my whole body. I tried to breathe in, and that warmth continued all the way into my lungs.

“Open your eyes.”

When I opened them…

“Woah–”

Bubbles rose up from my mouth, dispersed, and disappeared. I was inside the Shu-ii.

The surprise snatched the rug out from under me… Woah woah woah, that’s not just an expression, my feet are literally floating!

“It’s okay. Relax your muscles.”

Hearing Mr Lahzt’s quiet tones, I finally calmed down. I even managed to breathe normally. I gently bobbed in a prone position in the center of the Shu-ii.

On the other side of the water, Mr Lahzt put the fingertips of his right hand lightly on his glasses, rolled his sleeve up like he’d done yesterday, and then reached his left hand towards me. The fingers of his right hand touched one of the engraved Shin, and the whole line of seals unwound from his arm and floated up into the air, taking up their positions centered on his wrist – the Circle Art.

He touched his fingers to a number of the seals, and they left the Circle, leaping into the Shu-ii where I was, and then melting away.

I noticed they were coming alongside me now, some of them floating up to me like little individual bubbles. Mr Lahzt slowly walked around the Shu-ii, like he was checking on the seals. Was this how medical examinations worked here?

Hm, without all those blood draws, and barium swallows, and x-rays and stuff, this was kinda nice actually, peaceful. Just float around in some warm water, like a beauty treatment. I was starting to get sleepy.

As I was nodding off, I heard a knock. It came to me through the water, so it sounded kind of far away.

Mr Lahzt lifted an eyebrow.

“Don’t move,” he said to me, and left the room for a minute. I could hear Mr Kahzam muttering through the open door. I couldn’t understand what they were saying.

“What? It’s barely the next day.”

Just when I thought I heard Mr Lahzt’s voice, the door shut, and the room went silent. I started to nod off again…

“Mo-oh!”

I faintly heard the prince’s shrill cry. He’d woken up from his nap. But in this situation, Mr Kahzam would have to look after him, I guess. And then came another, farther distant voice.

“I’m here again, my little lord!”

I awoke with a start. Mr Fatido was back? The very next day! What was that about having learned from his past!?

What was I supposed to do now, what would he say this time, if he saw me with these thin clothes on like this, what would he make me do?

I turned around inside the Shu-ii, and started the breaststroke. I must have looked like a real idiot from the outside.

I turned diagonally, and swam on, somehow managed to get one hand out of the Shu-ii, and grabbed hold of the long fibers of the rug.

As I was pulling myself along, I heard eager footsteps, and my whole person tumbled out of the Shu-ii. As I fell, the Shin around my body disappeared.

Wiping off the water that had splashed onto me, I got to my feet immediately and took a few steps, looking around for somewhere I could hide, when a light popped on at my feet. The circle of light was made up of a row of seals, which floated up to rest on top of the rug. At the same time, the seals engraved on my left arm lit up too.

Hey, those are the ones from when I came from the Garden of Stars!

It felt like something was tugging on my left hand, and just as I put the palm of my hand on the floor, my whole field of vision went white–

–Next thing I knew, I was atop a sheer precipice. A great wide ocean spread out in front of me, and behind me was a forest–

I was just outside the Garden of Stars, on that one ledge.

No way, I teleported!

“Ugh… That’s cold!”

My clothes were soaked through, and the ocean breezes blew right through me.

I wanted to go back, but I also wanted to avoid knocking heads with Mr Fatido, especially in this condition. On the other hand though, I was going to catch a cold like this.

Without hesitation, I started for the treehouse. If I didn’t at least move my body, I’d freeze. If I could make it to the basin, I could get warm, and I know they’d said they’d picked up our stuff, but the stove was probably still there at least.

Two days ago, when Mori– Mr Kahzam had brought me out here to this precipice from the Garden of Stars, he’d cut a path through the bushes to make a little trail, but it seemed to have mysteriously disappeared. Even without it though, I was able to head straight into the forest without getting lost.

I could almost hear the host tree calling to me.

My feet were bare, so I chose my path carefully and kept going. I felt like I had been walking forever, but I knew basically how far it was, so I had to be getting close. Another half an hour, and I could see a light from the other side.

“Woah… What is this…?”

Standing at the edge of the basin, my eyes opened wide in surprise.

The basin had been just one giant field when we left, but now it was a lake. Had the spring overflowed? Some plants that looked a lot like ferns were waving in the water.

“It does accelerate the growth of living things… Amazing.”

It had changed so much in just two days.

“That’s why it’s a treehouse. You can’t build anything directly on the ground…”

Whoever’d built the treehouse had even put the bathrooms high up, they must have known this basin would become a lake. Maybe it had been built for some other purpose, besides being a place for the prince and I to live.

The lake was about knee-high at its deepest. I tucked my dress up and got into the water, cutting my way through the ferns to get to the treehouse. If it had been like this when I’d lived here, I definitely wouldn’t have been able to go outside and play ball with the prince.

I finally reached the stairs, and got into the treehouse. The table, the bench, and the stove of course, were still there, but other than that, it was pretty much empty. It did make me a little sad to see it like that.

At any rate, I took off my soaked dress and hung it on the chair, and then opened the stove door in just my long camisole. Just then I heard a noise, bam bam bam bam, and jerked my head up.

Footsteps. Someone running up the stairs at full speed!

Just as I whirled around, the door opened. It was a familiar panda-creature. With dark green eyes.

“What, Morio– I mean, Mr Kahzam!?”

Wait, I’m still in my underclothes!

Mr Kahzam (Morio) closed the distance between us in a single breath and hugged me tight. Japanese flew out of my mouth in a panicked rush.

“Wait wait wait, stop stop stop, you’re not even in human–”

He adjusted his grip to pick me up princess style, and I was cut off as my head got pressed into his shoulder. My face was buried in his soft fur.

Mr Kahzam grabbed my dress off the chair, and stepped out onto the balcony, still carrying my pale-faced self with him.

And then he jumped.

I clung to Mr Kahzam’s neck. He landed on the side of the basin, and the shock of it reverberated through my body. Water splashed up every time his hind legs brushed the surface of the pond.

Mr Kahzam rushed up the side of the basin without pausing for breath, and leapt into the forest a little bit out from the path towards the precipice. He smoothly hoisted us up to the tree tops and stayed there, putting his left hand to my mouth, and a right-hand finger – a panda finger, but still – to his mouth to indicate I should stay quiet. I nodded, my heart making the loudest noise I could hear anyway, and Mr Kahzam gently removed his hand from my mouth.

I had no idea what was going on, but eventually I started to hear a kind of rustling noise from the direction of the cliffs – there was a giant red monkey standing there. There were three of them.

The first monkey (his ears looked like wings) pointed at the treehouse, and then turned to the monkey at the back and I watched him make a gesture like he was about to say, “Come on!” Seeing that, I wondered if they might be transformed humans too.

I never imagined there’d be other people here. Now that I thought about it, though, I finally understood.

It would be dangerous if I was discovered!

If they saw any human shapes here, they might figure out that a child had been raised here. And if someone from the crown prince’s faction learned of it…

When I looked at Mr Kahzam, he nodded. His gaze suddenly dropped a little and stopped… and then quickly looked the other way.

Ah, I was still in my underclothes…

My body shape was basically a rectangle, not even good enough to invite praise such as, “You would look great in a kimono.” 1 An employee at an undergarment store had once managed the situation by telling me the chest was a manufactured thing anyway. But still, that just made this even more embarrassing.

I quickly hid my chest with my hands.

Mr Kahzam, trying not to look in my direction, peered over at the treehouse. The three monkeys climbed the stairs, entered the treehouse for a minute, and then immediately left again.

They then entered the lake and started slicing into the water with sickles in their hands. After they’d cut a certain amount, they gathered it and tied it into bundles. They were pretty good at it.

So, they came to cut down these plants? Or did they have some use for those leaves?

Mr Kahzam confirmed that the monkeys were absorbed in their work, and then started moving, quietly crossing from branch to branch, still holding on to me. Once we’d gotten quite a distance from the basin, we got onto the animal trail those monkeys had made and headed out of the forest at a swift pace.

“Thank you for coming to get me, Mr Kahzam,” I said, burying my face in the fur around his neck, and Mr Kahzam nodded. He was so warm. I wasn’t going to catch any cold like this.

The treehouse gradually faded into the distance. As I watched the animal trail behind us over Mr Kahzam’s shoulder, I started to feel anxious, like I wanted to go back there, like I didn’t want to get any further away.

“Hey, Mr. Kahzam.”

I pressed my forehead against his shoulder.

“My being able to go into the Garden of Stars, that’s because my existence in this world is ambiguous, isn’t it. You can’t even write my name in Shin. Kids can go in there because they’re not fixed people yet, it’s the same, isn’t it.”

Mr. Kahzam glanced at me.

“I just thought, I was feeling uneasy somehow. Like, there doesn’t seem to be any way to get me back to my original world right now, so I want to get back to the life I had here as quickly as I can.”

I would give it my all, so that I could.

I kept repeating it to myself, but that uneasiness didn’t go away.

We teleported again, and returned to the room with the Shu-ii in it.

Mr Kahzam lowered me to the floor, put his hand on my shoulder, and turned me around so I was facing away from him. I instantly felt a quiet electric thrill from behind me, and I could see that the ponga hand that had been on my shoulder had turned into a human hand.

Ah, Mr Kahzam had turned back to his human form… Wait, isn’t he still naked!?

“Is, uh, Mr Fatido still here?”

I put my best, “I’ll just look the other way for a bit” tone into it, and asked Mr Kahzam my question with my back still to him. His answer came among the sounds of rustling cloth.

“Probably. He said there was something he wanted to talk to you about, Kohme.”

And we’d already kept Mr Fatido waiting about an hour and a half. Even Mr Fatido wasn’t likely to come stomping into this particular room, and he hadn’t seemed in any big rush. But still, we’d have to get changed and go see him.

Mr Kahzam led me quietly up to the second floor, where I went into my room and changed into my camisole, which hadn’t completely dried. My hair was almost dry though. When I went back into the hall, Mr. Kahzam was waiting.

“We told Lord Fatido that you’d gone out on a walk by yourself, Ma– Kohme, and that I’d go fetch you. We’ll go out through the back door, and then circle around to come in through the front entrance.”

And so as he said, we snuck around to the back entrance and went outside. Cutting between the trees, we walked a short distance from the villa.

“Before, what were those creatures cutting the grass?” I asked as we walked through the underbrush, and Mr Kahzam answered me briefly.

“Those were Shin researchers. That grass has special qualities, so they take it home with them and use it as the raw materials for paper. You can’t keep the seals in storage very long without it. So once a year, every year, they head to the Garden of Stars during this season. The grass grows dramatically longer in those winds.”

“I see. Now that  I think of it, Mr Lahzt did say something like ‘Just in time,’ didn’t he. That must have been what he was talking about?”

“Yes. Even if prince was delayed in learning to speak, we had to get you out of there by yesterday at the absolute latest.”

I nodded.

Still though, it really had grown. The prince’s growth was nothing by comparison. Maybe plants grow faster than humans?

“So, that treehouse wasn’t built for the prince then…?”

“Right, it’s a rest spot, the researchers use it when they come to cut the grass.”

That made sense. I imagined them sitting on the treehouse bench, drinking tea, and laughed before I could stop myself.

We came back in through the entrance and headed for the hearth room to find Mr Fatido, along with Mr Lahzt and the prince.

The prince instantly jumped up and came over to me, and then looked at me questioningly. Did he smell the secret on me? Mr Lahzt looked over at me and nodded slightly.

“I’m glad to see you safe,” Mr Fatido said, standing up and coming over to me. I lowered my head before he could try to grab my hands this time.

“I’m sorry, I’m a bit unsteady… And I’ve made you wait so long.”

“No no, you must be tired. The truth is, I’m here because I wanted to speak with you about some plans I’ve thought up,” Mr Fatido said, offering me a seat on the sofa. Ah, when he said he’d thought of something upon seeing my face? About the prince’s adoptive parents?

“I was thinking of a story something along these lines. A beautiful woman named Mami, comes from a far off country to a certain place. One day, by chance, she meets me, and we become close. By and by, she falls pregnant.”

Full throttle, right from the word go, huh.

“She’s so humble. ‘Lord Fatido, you’re the king’s younger brother-in-law, someone like me could never be your equal!’ She holds back tears, conceals her pregnancy from me, and gives birth to our child in secret. But I can’t forget her, and in the end, I go searching for her, and I learn that I have a son.”

Mr Fatido turned to the prince and me and spread his arms wide.

“Oh my, this child looks a bit like my older sister, Solamire. She just lost a child, perhaps he can become her foster son. My sister will surely help me raise him, if I come to her with this child. And the child’s nurse would earn a place in the palace too, right by my side as his guardian. That way she can stay by my side forever, we won’t have to worry about anything so silly as social status! She’ll cry tears of joy, and we’ll live happily ever after.”

There it was, Planning My Future For Me, the sequel.

So, wait. If we really made all this reality…

“In other words, we’d claim she was the prince’s real mother, and she would continue to raise him?” Mr Lahzt asked in my place.

Mr Fatido nodded strongly. “I thought of it yesterday, watching Mami with the kid. Good idea, right?”

I was so upset I was trembling, but I understood how compelling the fairy tale was.

No one in the Crown Prince’s faction who was familiar with Mr Fatido would be suspicious. They’d just think, Yup, that’s Fatido for you. And if the prince was supposed to be Solamire’s nephew, that would explain why they looked alike.

And with this plan, it would put me into the picture as a known quantity, and give me a job, namely the prince’s nurse. It had merit.

I had been wondering if I might end up living somewhere far away, with no connection to the prince at all. That part, at least, was very attractive.

But didn’t it also mean everyone would think of me as Mr Fatido’s wife? Or maybe his lover?

Eeeh… That was distasteful. But it was hard to object to a plan so perfect.

“How about it, Mami?”

“I, hmm… I mean, uh.”

While I blushed under Mr Fatido’s flattery, Mr Lahzt spoke. “Pardon me, but I do have a question.”

“Oh, what’s that?” Mr Fatido said, clearly in charge of the situation.

“If we carry out this little fairy tale, the general outline entails you delivering yourself to the royal palace with wife and son in tow. Lady Solamire is already hard pressed, what with herself and all her relatives in danger. Given the current situation, I imagine that any such behavior will give rise to a new wave of suspicion within the Crown Prince’s faction. You don’t think it might be best to not?”

I almost started clapping on pure reflex. That’s right, that’s right!

Mr Fatido groaned, and Mr Kahzam took the opportunity to break his silence and add something in his customary understated way.

“If we said that we’d been searching for a child who looks like Lady Solamire to become her foster child, it might be best for a blood relation not so close to Her Highness as you are Lord Fatido to be the proxy parent. I mean, someone who doesn’t have the same political clout that you do, sir.”

Of course! That would be better than someone who’s a complete third party, like me. And they would still be some relation, so it would make total sense for the prince to look like Lady Solamire.

“And so one of you will take over as father, is that what you’re saying?” Mr Fatido said, a bit pouty. That was true, though, Mr Lahzt and Mr Kahzam were distant relatives not only of the shape-note siblings, but of the prince too.

“Well if Mr Lahzt or Mr Kahzam were the parents, no one else would have to be let in on the secret,” I blurted out, and Mr Fatido’s eyes went wide.

“You would be okay with that, Mami!? Which of these two would be your husband!?”

“Excuse me!?”

Oh crap, that was right! This was a story in which I was the prince’s real mom, wasn’t it!? I’d have to play husband and wife with whomever was the dad!

Reflexively, I looked at Mr Lahzt and Mr Kahzam, and the instant my gaze met theirs, both of them jerked their gazes to the floor. What exactly did that mean?

Mr Fatido continued. “If Mami’s going to play the mother, that pretty much cuts down on who we can ask to play the father. Even if we want to say the father’s died, we have to think about his background.”

“Well let’s think about it first then! There’s got to be someone who’s a distant relation, who’s conveniently deceased, and who isn’t totally rotten, to play the father.”

Man, worse and worse things just keep flying out of my mouth.

“Ah, no, that’s not what I mean. Listen, I’m fine, I don’t need to play the mother. We should just do whatever’s best for the prince. That’s right, didn’t you say something about the prince’s older sister’s maid in the beginning? Wasn’t the plan to have one of her relatives be the proxy parents? Maybe we should just stick to that, yeah?”

I was clenching my fists.

“Well,” Mr Fatido said, “if we use her as a proxy parent, we’ll need someone else to be the nurse. The nurse we’d decided on before the kid was born was rejected in the end, right before the birth. I’m sure you’ve heard the story?”

“Ah, yes. She tried to injure the prince, I think?”

“Indeed. Afterwards, we decided to announce that the child had been stillborn, but the idea that my sister wanted to adopt spread through the palace immediately afterwards. Tellner, Haluria’s nurse, would end up trying to serve in both roles at the same time if she were to become the adopted child’s nurse as well. But if you were thinking you’d like to be the kid’s nurse…” Mr Fatido said to me, but I was completely lost.

That’s right… There already was a proper nurse, this Tellner. She’d raised the prince’s older sister, surely everyone in the palace already trusted her.

I’d been suddenly dragged into this world, but to be honest, I did want to be the prince’s nurse… But it just seemed so…

Not realizing my hesitancy, Mr Fatido continued. “If we were to take that route, we’d have to think seriously about Mami’s background.”

For a moment at least, Mr Fatido was unusually silent. And then, stroking his chin, he looked directly at me. “Please forgive me for getting so bluntly to the matter at hand. Nurses are normally women with children. Do you have any children, Mami? I’ve heard how you cared for prince, so you do seem to know something about child rearing…”

“Lord Fatido,” Mr Kahzam said in a restraining tone.

Oh, right… I’d never talked about my own life, of course he was worried about whether I’d ever cared for any children in my original world.

I’d been cautious thus far, but even my real name had been revealed already, at least to Mr Lahzt and Mr Kahzam. I felt like it might be okay to tell these people my story… maybe.

I made the decision, and smiled. “I’m sorry, I haven’t talked about that at all. I have younger sisters, two of them.”

With my sisters’ faces floating through my head, I explained. “The youngest is sixteen years younger than me, but our mother died quite young, and I’ve been acting as her mother instead, since she was a baby. So, I do have a little bit of child rearing experience.”

Nanao… I wondered how she was doing. She must be worried… She probably cried. Koaya was with her, but Koaya must be worried too.

My heart started to hurt again.

“Ah, of course, a much younger sister, no wonder you seem so familiar with children,” Mr Fatido said, nodding. I muffled the pain in my heart and replied.

“Yes. She’s nine now.”

“Nine? Wait, you’re sixteen years older, Mami, you must be twenty five!?”

“Uh, that’s right?”

What was he so surprised about? And Mr Kahzam was awfully quiet.

“I assumed you were about twenty or so,” Mr Fatido said, and I understood why they all looked so surprised. Asian women do tend to look young.

Mr Lahzt muttered to himself. “Twenty five… So the age my Shu-ii determined was just… I’ll have to adjust it…”

“Wait, did the Shu-ii think I was older or younger than twenty five!? Actually, don’t tell me!”

Mr Lahzt grinned. Jeez, I thought a doctor was supposed to protect their patient’s privacy!

“If she’s your younger sister, she must be a cute little girl. She’s in school?”

I nodded at Mr Fatido, who seemed relaxed. “That’s right,” I said. Wow, I thought, this is surprisingly easy to talk about.

And then Mr Fatido once again blundered easily onto a personal subject. “So then, are you married?”

“No. I’m single.”

Instantly, the atmosphere got awkward, but I smiled through it.

My family consisted of myself, Koaya, Nanao, and my father, who was in securities and hardly ever home. My mother’s health started to fail after she gave birth to Nanao when she was forty, and she passed away several years after that from an unrelated illness.

I was the eldest at sixteen, and I wanted to put my mom at ease while she was sick in bed, so I fought hard to help out with Nanao.

“There are people who get married and have kids at sixteen. I can take Mom’s place!”

I cared for Nanao with everything I had. It wasn’t quite as simple as I’d declared, but I gave it my all. Even when I was covered in sweat and tears, I didn’t quit.

Then my mother died just when I should have been going out to look for a job, or maybe going to cram school, and instead I ended up just sort of waffling, and I spent all my time looking after Nanao.

After she started elementary school, I started working part-time at a bookstore. Just about the time I started to think that maybe I’d become a fully fledged member of society, that maybe I’d become a proper adult, one of the frequent customers at the bookstore approached and confessed to me, and we started dating.

It was my first time really dating a man. He worked at the same company as my father, although he had a completely different personality, and I felt safe around him, and so I devoted myself to him, pampered him. Every day was fresh and new, and I felt like feelings that had long slept within me were being shaken awake.

A little while passed like that, and Koaya, who’d gone to a junior college and then started working, started talking about getting married. Koaya and her husband could live with us, so I was relieved, I felt like I was someone she could rely on. Father was as much a workaholic as he’d ever been, and despite the fact that he had a young daughter, his company had transferred him overseas, alone, and so we ended up a household full of women. Of course there were occasional problems, but we got on.

Right around that time, I thought to myself, Maybe I’ll get married right after Koaya, and Koaya joked about it too, but…

During the wedding ceremony, Nanao kept looking at me, worried, and I think in the end, she did feel a bit depressed.

It turned out Nanao had been watching. She’d seen the exact moment when I’d had my heart broken.