Chapter 116: The Wardrobe Room

The sun was sinking and the sky beginning to turn red as he walked along with a trudging step.

The rucksack on his back was empty, so his load ought to have been lighter than usual, and yet his heart felt a little heavy.

“So the fees alone aren’t enough…”

He muttered it under his breath. The road up the gentle hill. There was nobody there to hear him. Little by little the mansion came into view.

The road to the Academy hadn’t been closed off altogether, but he understood now that, as things stood, it was still out of his reach.

“And the money’s nowhere near enough either. I heard you go to the Academy for six years…”

By what he had heard from Eugene, the Royal Capital Academy was attended for six years from the age of twelve. Besides the fees and the boarding, there was the cost of the journey to the Royal Capital, and a uniform, and so on.

“Haa…”

As he let out a small sigh, he noticed that something about the gate of the house wasn’t as it usually was. Two carriages stood in front of it. The gate was open and the carriages were going through into the grounds. Behind the carriages came people on horseback.

Guests invited to the celebration, Ren thought. He knew what they were here for, but it made him tense all the same.

“The Margrave, perhaps…”

He had been told that the reason he was to give up his room was so that the Margrave’s house could be put up in it. Guests other than the Margrave’s family might be coming too, but Ren’s own house was a baronial one. It was very likely that nobles of higher rank would be visiting.

Out of habit he went into the grounds by the back gate nearer the kitchen, and saw a whole row of carriages drawn up near the stables. Over by the annexe things were rather noisy.

“Hm? Whose boy is that?”

“One of the servants’ children, isn’t he?”

He caught men dressed like knights talking near the carriages. He felt eyes on him, vaguely.

(Eh? Do they mean me?)

His heart gave a jump and he looked down at what he was wearing. Everyday clothes bought at a shop in the village. He had no leather armour or anything of the sort on him, and the clothes were a plain colour, dyed with plants. He wouldn’t look like an adventurer, but he might not look like a noble’s child either. Ren felt uncomfortable under the eyes on him.

He went into the annexe at a slightly quicker step, meaning to make for his room, and then his grandmother’s voice came.

“Ren. With guests here, and you dressed like that. It’s rude. Go and change at once!”

“Eh…?”

His grandmother seemed to be showing guests round, and a woman and a boy standing near her were looking at Ren as well.

(Change, she says…)

Ren thought about asking his grandmother what she meant, but she had already begun speaking with the guests. Making for the storage room, Ren tilted his head.

“Change… What am I to do…”

The clothes Ren owned were in the “small box”, but every one of them was second-hand and bought in the village, and no great deal different from what he had on. Nobody had bought him clothes lately. Nor had he been given any hand-me-downs.

A clouded feeling was rising in him when Royce came running down the dim corridor from the other end.

“Ren-niisan!”

Royce came clattering up at a tremendous rate, with a face that looked at once angry and at a loss, and shouted.

“What about clothes!?”

“Eh?”

“Hand-me-downs! Ren-niisan, you never give me any!”

Royce glared sidelong at him. Looking at what Royce had on, it seemed better in quality than Ren’s, but it was everyday wear. It was a little wide across the shoulders.

“Eh… What you’re wearing, Royce — didn’t you get that from Lewis-niiue?”

Royce’s shoulders gave a small twitch. It seemed he had guessed right. Touching the sleeve where it hung loose, Royce spoke awkwardly.

“Lewis-niiue gave me this the other day, when I said my shirt had torn… And Ren-niisan doesn’t give me hand-me-downs…”

“But all I’ve got is worn out.”

The clothes he had grown out of he had left in the wardrobe in the room before he gave it up, but they were all frayed at the sleeve or otherwise the worse for wear. The clothes he had to pass on to Royce he had passed on a good while ago.

“Were you told those clothes wouldn’t do?”

“I was told to wear something for receiving guests… When nobody bought me a shirt the other day…!”

Royce looked down with a mortified face. The “nobody bought me a shirt” would be the day Ren had bought the spear from the travelling merchant.

(Should I’ve bought shirts and so on as well…)

He remembered that he hadn’t so much as asked the merchant whether he sold shirts. But then he didn’t really know what sort of clothes were the right ones either.

Ren turned it over a little.

“…Shall we ask Lewis-niiue…”

Asking Simon the steward might have been the proper thing, but Ren was curious about what sort of clothes Lewis wore, and he thought that if anybody had hand-me-downs the right size it would be Lewis.

He set off at a trot towards the main house. Royce came along behind him.

Royce, who had done nothing lately but be rude to him, was walking along at his back, which felt strange, and when Ren glanced round, Royce turned his eyes away with a huff.

“…”

Ren gave a small shrug.

“Ah, Ren-niisama…!”

Yona, in a pale yellow-green dress, caught sight of Ren and came running. As she got close, she seemed to notice Royce behind him.

“Ah, Royce-niisama too?”

“Yona’s in a dress, then.”

Royce said it with a touch of irritation. Yona blinked and blinked, and pinched up the hem of her dress to show it.

“Yes. It’s the dress I wore at the ‘Blessing Ceremony’. I only changed the ribbon.”

She turned her head towards them so they could see the ribbon.

“The ‘Blessing Ceremony’… Royce, what did you wear that time?”

“Eh… I don’t remember…”

Ren had no memory of wearing anything particularly different from usual at Yuan and Yona’s Blessing Ceremony. The two of them had been in formal dress, as it was their ceremony, but Royce may well have been in everyday clothes, the same as Ren.

“Is something the matter with clothes?”

Yona tilted her head and looked at Ren, puzzled. Ren shook his head quietly.

“It’s nothing. That ribbon goes with the dress. It suits you.”

“Ehehe. It’s the same colour as the ribbon at my waist. And my shoes.”

Yona laughed innocently.

“…Have you seen Lewis-niiue?”

“He went running off towards the back a little while ago.”

“I see. Thank you.”

Ren thanked Yona and went the way she had pointed, and found Lewis. He was standing in front of the door at the very end of the corridor.

“Lewis-niiue!”

At Ren’s call Lewis turned round. He had a lamp in one hand. He beckoned to them.

“This way.”

“Eh?”

Ren went over without understanding what he meant, and found Lewis about to open the door.

“You came looking for something to wear, didn’t you?”

“Eh? How did you know?”

“Because that’s what I’m here for. I heard from Simon there’s a wardrobe room with old clothes put away in it, and borrowed the key.”

“Old clothes?”

“Father’s and so on, I should think. Or Grandfather’s.”

“Really…”

Hearing “his father’s or his grandfather’s clothes”, what he pictured was adult clothing. But when they went into the wardrobe room and opened the first box, what came out was a child’s knight’s outfit.

Royce’s eyes lit up.

“Eh? That’s splendid!”

“Isn’t it small?”

“…Mm…”

Taken out and held up, it was plainly a size for a young child. But he felt a little hope rise in him all the same.

“Does that mean Father’s clothes from when he was a child are here?”

“So it seems. Formal dress and the like ought to be here, they said.”

The knight’s outfit was carefully folded again and put back in its box. Going carefully through the other boxes, clothes did indeed come out that were of a finer sort than what they wore day to day. They were larger than the knight’s outfit they had seen first, but not a size they could wear, and Royce made a dissatisfied noise.

“We can’t wear them, can we.”

“There’ll be other sizes if we look.”

“That’s not what I mean. They could have let me wear them before I got too big for them.”

“There wasn’t an occasion for wearing clothes like this, I expect.”

“But I wanted to try. Something like a knight’s clothes.”

Royce grumbled on. It was late in the day to be complaining, Ren thought, a little exasperated with him — and then something struck him.

“Hm? Did Father have occasion to wear clothes like this?”

“I wonder. It may have been Grandfather… There certainly are a fair number of them. …Oh, what about this one…?”

Lewis brought out a garment whose cloth looked fine even by lamplight. The sleeves of the shirt swayed as it hung.

“Eh? Aren’t these sleeves rather flouncy?”

“Isn’t that what formal dress is like?”

“Really…”

The first one they had looked at had sleeves that flared out like a trumpet; the next one brought out had frills round the chest. They looked fine enough, but which was the right answer was hard to say.

For the moment they held them up to their shoulders, sorted out the ones that looked as though they would fit, and picked out several.