Chapter 90: Plans for the Celebration

A savoury fragrance drifted softly through the air as a maid carried in baked sweets and tea. It seemed the buying from the travelling merchant was still going on.

Ren quietly left the living room. As he came near the study room, he saw Lewis and Royce talking. Royce was speaking as though pleading his case, as if something had happened.

“They won’t buy me a magic book! It’s Yuan, always Yuan!”

“It can’t be helped. They say we haven’t got much money. They can’t buy everything at once.”

“But I was born before Yuan! Why is it like this?!”

Royce had puffed out his cheeks and was flinging his anger about, and Lewis was soothing him.

Lewis, who seemed to have suddenly noticed Ren, looked over at him. Perhaps aware of where Lewis was looking, Royce turned his eyes that way too. The instant they met Ren’s, Royce knitted his brows in annoyance and turned pointedly aside.

“…Never mind, then!”

He flung out the one line like a parting shot and went clattering off at a run.

Lewis followed Royce’s back with his eyes for a moment, then let out a small sigh.

He glanced off down the corridor as if checking on the state of things in the living room, then turned back to face Ren.

“…It seems they’re going to hold a celebration for Yuan. Because he was granted the ‘Swordsmanship’ skill.”

“Eh…? A celebration? Didn’t we have one just the other day…?”

The day of the Blessing Ceremony, when Yuan and Yona were celebrated and a whole roast horn rabbit was served, was still fresh in his memory. When Ren tilted his head, Lewis shook his own.

“Relatives are coming, apparently.”

“Relatives…”

“It’ll be to show off Yuan’s skill, I expect. Though they may be celebrating Yona as well…”

“Yona said they bought her a dress.”

“I see…. Well, it’s a celebration for Yona too, then…”

Lewis flicked his eyes toward the direction Royce had run off in. After breathing out quietly, he fixed Ren with a hard stare.

“Looks like you were out somewhere again today. Are you training properly?”

“…Ummm…, yeah…”

Ren gave a rather vague answer. He had spent the whole day organising the guild’s reference room, so he had scarcely hunted at all. The only time he had used his skill was when he put the vividly green bird-type magical beast into a “Small Box.” Since he had turned back at the entrance of the forest, he hadn’t made any trail marker “Small Boxes” either. He didn’t know whether hunting counted as “training”, but he was using his skill at least a little, so it wasn’t as though he had done nothing whatsoever.

Lewis knitted his brows.

“Relatives are coming, you realise? You may well be told to show them your skill.”

“My skill? …It’s Yuan and Yona’s celebration, isn’t it?”

“It’s, but…. …We don’t even know what sort of relatives are coming.”

A rather gloomy expression came over Lewis’s face, and he let out a great breath.

Then he said, as though forcing the words out:

“…Royce is a bit off the mark. With a celebration on, with a merchant come to the house, what bothers me is that we can’t have so much as a single shirt bought for us. …It can’t be helped, since we haven’t the money, but still…”

He glanced at Ren.

“…Ren, did you have anything bought for you?”

“Eh? No.”

“I thought as much. I’ll tell you now, Royce and I got nothing either. …If Yona was bought a dress, then that’s good.”

“Ah, yeah…”

He remembered Yona’s face, smiling in the pale blue dress.

They were twins, and if Yuan had had a sword bought for him and Yona had had nothing, Yona might have been hurt. Ren felt relieved that it hadn’t turned out that way.

Then he suddenly remembered his sister Liese in her dress as well.

“Ah, but…, Liese-neesama had a dress bought for her, didn’t she.”

“She said it was one of Mother’s dresses made over.”

“Ah, was it.”

“Dresses, well, I don’t really understand them, but perhaps you’re stuck without one.”

Having said that much, Lewis went back off to his room.

“Relatives, eh…. …I wonder if Grandfather will come too…”

Ren murmured it under his breath. The entry he had seen in the guild’s reference room, saying that the lord had used a spear and a sword, had stayed on his mind.

He had heard that after passing the title to his father, his grandfather had been living somewhere else, but he didn’t know in any detail where. He had an impression of a face that always looked stern.

“If I could meet him, I’d like to ask about the ‘sword’…”

In the corridor, growing dim as the dusk closed in, Ren murmured it under his breath.