Chapter 109: Moving Rooms

The next morning, Ren had wanted to go to the forest early and try the Simple Barrier. But the room move was set for the morning, so he waited, at least, for the servants to come and shift his bed to the storage room. Everything of importance was in the “small box”, so they could have carried it all out without him — but somehow he felt he wanted to see it through.

“I won’t! Why should I!”

A voice rang down the corridor. It was Royce.

Ren went to look, and found Royce glaring at Simon the steward. Royce, apparently noticing that Ren was watching, threw him a hard look.

“Young Master Royce. It’s as I explained to you yesterday. Guests will be staying with us…”

“There are plenty of rooms in the annexe!”

Royce stamped his foot on the floor.

Royce too, it seemed, had been told to give his room up for the guests to stay in.

The servants watching from a distance were murmuring among themselves. Simon looked troubled as well.

The steward, and the servants who had come to shift the furniture, all looked at a loss, and Ren stepped forward to break it up.

“Why do I have to move as well!”

At Royce’s words, Ren’s foot stopped dead against the floor.

…So it’s all right to move me?

The words snagged on something in him. Royce making a fuss was nothing so unusual. There had been times when Ren had talked him round. But going to soothe him now would be no use, it seemed to him.

I can’t solve it for him anyway… and Royce will only take it out on me…

It wasn’t as though Ren could ask them to leave Royce’s room alone, or find him a better one. If he went over to calm him, he had the feeling he would simply be on the receiving end of it.

“What is it? First thing in the morning…”

Lewis, hearing the commotion, had come to see. Behind Lewis, Yona and Yuan could be seen too.

Royce turned to Lewis as though appealing for help.

“Listen to this! They’re telling me to get out of my room because guests are coming!”

“Eh, is that so?”

Lewis seemed not to have been told beforehand, and his eyes widened. Then he looked to Simon to confirm it. Simon nodded slowly.

“A great many guests will be staying with us… It’s the Dowager’s instruction.”

As he said it, the steward turned his eyes to the far end of the corridor.

From the depths of the corridor came a dignified, and bitterly cold, presence.

His grandmother came walking towards them, his mother following behind her.

“What’s all this noise so early in the day?”

At a word from his grandmother, the air went taut for an instant. Lewis turned to face his grandmother and mother.

“Mother, Grandmother… did you give Royce instructions to leave his room?”

“It’s so that our guests may stay. Vacating Ren’s and Royce’s rooms is decided.”

His grandmother said it flatly. His mother’s eyes moved a little in agitation, and she looked at Ren and Royce.

“But Grandmother! There are guest rooms in the annexe, aren’t there!”

Royce protested with tears of frustration in his eyes.

“…On this occasion, the family of the Margrave’s house are coming in person. Naturally they’ll be given the inner guest bedrooms, which are of the highest standing. That being so, the family’s attendants and knights must be lodged in the main house as well, so that they may move at once. That your rooms be vacated is only to be expected.”

Faced with the ranking of the nobility, and the overwhelming prestige of the “Margrave’s house” she had come from, Royce could find no words.

Lewis put up a hand, hesitantly, and made a suggestion.

“Um… in that case, what if another bed were put in my room, and he shared with me?”

At Lewis’s suggestion the tension between Royce’s brows eased a little. Just then Yuan poked his head out from behind Lewis.

“Then why doesn’t Royce-niisan sleep in my room?”

Yuan said it with an innocent smile. Royce’s face flushed a deep red. His eyebrows shot up.

“What’s that supposed to mean! Of course you don’t have to move rooms, do you! …Forget it!”

Royce shouted it and ran off down the corridor.

“…”

Yuan watched him go with a bewildered look, and his grandmother sighed and shook her head.

“Leave him. And Lewis — put children in a room together at a moment’s notice and there will be noise at night and trouble for our guests. Sharing a room is out of the question. Simon, move Ren’s and Royce’s belongings as arranged.”

“Yes, my lady.”

At his grandmother’s word Lewis’s shoulders dropped a little, and Yuan stood there with a complicated look on his face. His mother only walked away after his grandmother’s cold back.

Ren, who had been watching from a little way off, let out a breath.

After the room move, and a breakfast eaten in a strangely oppressive atmosphere, Ren didn’t head out to hunt. He went straight to the Adventurers’ Guild instead.

“Oh, Ren-kun, good morning.”

As he came bursting into the Adventurers’ Guild, he saw Mikaila beyond the counter. She noticed him at once and waved.

“Good morning. Um… is Eugene-san here?”

“He’s indeed.”

Ren had decided to enter into the provisional contract. He had read the agreement over several times before signing, at least, but it felt like something he needed if anything was to change.

Only, it also felt a little as though he were acting on impulse.

Shown through to the reception room at the back of the guild, Ren came face to face with Eugene and gave a small bow.

“I’d like to go ahead with the provisional contract, please.”

“Thank you for giving it thought. And likewise.”

Eugene held out his hand to Ren. Shaking it, Ren thought how smooth it was, not rough at all.

“I mean to add one condition. Nothing to your disadvantage, I think, Ren-kun.”

“Eh?”

As Ren sat down on the long couch facing Eugene, Eugene laid a sheet of parchment on the table.

“I have arranged for a room to be set aside inside this guild as a workshop.”

“A workshop…?”

Ren followed the writing on the parchment for a while, then lifted his face and looked at Eugene. Eugene nodded.

“Carrying materials and finished articles about is labour, and things break on the way. And the goods you make need storing. Mind, it doesn’t mean you must do the making inside the workshop.”

“Does that mean…”

Ren blinked, and turned it over.

“…it’s a room I’m allowed to use?”

“Ah, that’s right.”

“Um…”

Ren spoke up, his heart beating a little quickly.

“At night… could I stay over as well?”

“Stay over?”

At Ren’s question, Eugene laughed.

“There’s no bed or anything of that sort. I doubt there’s the space to put one. But bring in a blanket or two and it wouldn’t be impossible.”

“Wow…”

Ren’s eyes lit up.

I can stay over! …could I even… live there?

Ren’s heart was pounding.

The hunting hut, too — if he could get the Simple Barrier magic tool working, he had been thinking he might be able to spend the night there. But the forest was crawling with magical beasts, and it wasn’t a place he had ever spent time in after dark. To stay there permanently made him a little uneasy.

He wouldn’t know what the workshop was like until he saw it, but a place to sleep that wasn’t the baronial house felt, to Ren, tremendously appealing.