Chapter 11: Disorder before the Welcome Party
The next day—the day of the welcome party—Ruri leisurely got out of bed and had breakfast. She had noticed that Jade wasn’t next to her when she woke up. According to the spirits, he had left the room before she awakened. Apparently, it was so that he could have breakfast with the other leaders. Ruri wished that he had woken her up while he was at it, but she had a hunch that the group would be discussing politics—something that they couldn’t do in front of her.
When she asked the person who brought her breakfast about the welcome party, they responded that it would be held in the evening, meaning she would have free time until then.
Although she was told that she could do whatever she wanted, Ruri had no idea what to do. She couldn’t very well go outside, so she decided to just stay in her room. However, she quickly became bored.
She looked out her window to see the delightful blue sky spread out before her. “Maybe I should go soak in some rays,” she said.
“Good idea!”
“Yay!”
“I’m comin’ too!”
Ruri took the spirits, who were pleased by the idea, out of the room. There she saw Ewan standing watch at the door.
“Huh? You’re here Ewan?” she asked.
“Of course I am. I have to serve as your bodyguard, after all.”
“Thank you,” Ruri said, talking to the other dragonkin guards there as well.
“Going somewhere?” Ewan inquired.
“Yep, I’m going to go sunbathing since it looks so nice outside.”
“Then I’ll come along with you,” Ewan said before going silent. He discussed something with the soldiers of the Nation of the Spirit King who were also around. Once they walked away, Ewan approached Ruri.
“Something the matter?” Ruri questioned.
“I asked them to let you have lunch outside since you’ll be out there anyway.”
“Oh, wow! You’re always making such thoughtful decisions, Ewan!”
“Heh heh, of course I am,” Ewan said proudly, his head held high.
Ruri took Kotaro, Rin, the smaller spirits, and Ewan to the courtyard. The courtyard was left in a natural state, but it was well-maintained and not overgrown with weeds. It was an unrefined area with an emphasis on the peacefulness nature had to offer. It reminded Ruri in some ways of the area of forest where Chelsie lived.
They lay down in the shade of a large tree, and Ruri reclined against Kotaro. As they relaxed with Rin and the other spirits, several women walked up to her from the opposite direction. Ruri carried on without concern, but Ewan exercised caution. That was when she spotted Spinel, the girl from yesterday, among the pack of girls. She wanted to avoid talking to Spinel if she could, but since Spinel had no way of knowing that, she came straight toward Ruri.
She stopped in front of Ruri. Knowing that she couldn’t remain lying down with Spinel right in front of her, Ruri sat up.
“Can I help you?” Ruri asked.
“I beg of you. Please separate from Master Jade,” Spinel pleaded.
For a moment, Ruri had no idea what the girl was asking. She’d been wondering what Spinel had come to say with multiple women in tow, but she definitely hadn’t expected Spinel to ask her to “separate from” her husband. Celestine would have been positively furious right about now. Ruri, on the other hand, was more exasperated than angry.
“No.”
“Huh...?” Spinel looked surprised—which surprised Ruri.
“I mean, there isn’t a fool alive who would separate from their spouse just because someone asked them nicely,” Ruri explained.
Ewan and the spirits all nodded in agreement. Ruri looked at their reaction and felt relieved that she wasn’t going insane.
Spinel’s eyes started to water as she clenched both of her hands and scrunched her small and slender shoulders together. This weak and innocent display would have triggered a man’s instinct to coddle and protect. That wasn’t going to work on Ruri, though. And it wasn’t going to work on Ewan, much less the spirits. They all gave her an icy glare.
Meanwhile, Spinel’s entourage circled her as if to protect her. This just made it look like Ruri was the one bullying her.
“Master Jade said that he would come to pick me up. You being Master Jade’s spouse is some kind of misunderstanding. I request that you return Master Jade to me.”
This remark tested even Ruri’s patience. “Jade-sama is not a thing. Return what to you? When did he become your property?”
“That...is not what I meant by...” Spinel trailed off, bursting into tears.
The girls around her immediately offered comforting words.
“Are you all right, Lady Spinel?”
“How utterly cruel.”
“Can’t you consider Lady Spinel’s feelings?”
“There, there. Please do not cry, Lady Spinel.”
Ruri looked on, boggled by the farce they were putting on.
Ewan then turned around and met eyes with Ruri. Then they both nodded. Their minds were made up. They were going to run for it. Almost as if she were telepathically linked with Ewan, Ruri shot to her feet and slowly tried to move away. However, they quickly found her out.
“Wait a second, where might you be going?!”
“You’re trying to leave after making Lady Spinel cry? How cold-blooded!”
Ruri stopped in her tracks, perplexed. The Nation of the Spirit King’s people were supposed to be devoutly spirit-religious. Although it was slightly different here from the Nation of the Beast King, where they worshipped spirits, their treatment of those beloved by the spirits was appropriately polite. Even within the confines of the castle, they treated her better than Jade, the ruler of a whole nation. Despite that, Ruri felt no respect or esteem for Beloveds coming from the group of women.
Before she could figure out why that was, Ewan snapped at them first. “What do all of you think you’re doing? This person is our nation’s Beloved. Do you know just how rude you’re being to a Beloved right now?!”
Ruri thought that Ewan, of all people, shouldn’t be saying that, but she kept it to herself. Ewan had been extremely rude to Ruri at first due to his severe brother complex. Because of that, he wasn’t the least bit convincing, but seeing how none of these women would know that, Ruri remained silent. She did know how to take a hint.
The girls shuddered for a second before quickly firing back.
“And so what if she is a Beloved?!”
“Lady Spinel is the distinguished daughter of the head nobles!”
A Beloved was a far bigger deal than the noblemen of a single nation, no matter how you sliced it. But these girls were speaking as if Spinel had more pull instead.
“And who cares?!” Ewan yelled. “Don’t think that insolence toward a Beloved will be allowed just because you’re from some head noble family! The Spirit King will be hearing about this! You better be prepared for an appropriate punishment!”
“Punishment!” the girls clamored, showing real fear as they turned to Spinel for help.
Spinel walked up to the front and said, “Please stop picking on these women. Are you saying that a Beloved is that important?!”
Ewan looked at her, mouth agape. Ruri was also taken aback, but she had a resistance to people like this. And it was all thanks to Asahi. Because Ruri knew Asahi, a person who would repeatedly make the most incoherent and dunderheaded claims, Ruri was quick to come back to her senses.
“If you’re asking if they’re important, then yes, they are,” Ruri stated. “Important enough to make the king of a nation kneel before them, in fact. So what explains your attitudes? Are any of you truly citizens of this nation if you dare to throw mud in the face of the Spirit King? Even the people working in the markets know more about Beloveds than any of you.”
“We are nobles. Lumping us in with the commoners working in the city is insolence itself!” replied Spinel.
Ruri was at a loss for words. But she also realized something.
“Uh, Ewan, we might have a problem...”
“Huh? What problem?”
Ruri peeked over at Kotaro and Rin. Ewan, intrigued, followed her line of sight until he reached the two supreme-level spirits, who both looked absolutely livid. Still, Ewan could only see Kotaro and Rin because they had physical bodies. The spirits around them that Ewan couldn’t see were in battle mode, ready to pounce at the group of women at any moment.
“We gonna get ’em?”
“Let’s get ’em.”
“We should get ’em!”
“We should! We should!”
Ewan couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he had a good hunch from the expression on Ruri’s face.
“Is it bad? Is it bad?”
“It’s terrible...”
More spirits were gathering from out of nowhere even now as the two of them panicked. And none of the women in front of them were any the wiser. Ruri finally realized that none of the women could see them.
“A ‘Beloved’ is nothing more than a sham anyway!” Spinel declared. “I’ve never seen any ‘spirit.’ You rely on that to act like you’re someone important? Why, you’re simply blackmailing Master Jade with that, aren’t you?!”
“Hey, shut your trap!” Ewan angrily snapped, trying to keep her from inciting any more trouble with the spirits.
However, in Spinel’s eyes, it looked as though her statement hit the nail right on the head. “Aah, I see from how flustered you are that there really aren’t such things as Beloveds. Poor Master Jade. To think he would be so deceived.”
Even more spirits gathered until the number was well out of hand.
“Punish anyone who picks on Ruri!”
“Bring down the hammer on anyone who speaks bad of Ruri!”
“Take down anyone who calls Ruri a liar!”
“Whoa! No, don’t, don’t!”
Just as Ruri was trying to contain the massive group of irritable spirits, a godsend arrived.
“What are you doing over there?” asked Lapis, the Beloved of the Nation of the Spirit King. “I was wondering what happened to get the spirits so upset...” He glared at Spinel with his father’s patented stare.
“This girl was pickin’ on Ruri!”
“She said that spirits don’t exist!”
“She said that Beloveds are liars!”
Lapis once again glared at Spinel, having gotten the gist from the spirits’ comments.
“Regardless of what you may think, disrespect toward another nation’s Beloved is not allowed. I’ll explain it in easier terms for you pack of morons to understand. She is the Dragon Queen. Any insolence you show her, the first wife of the Dragon King, is considered an act of treason against the Nation of the Dragon King. If you don’t want to be arrested for disrespecting royalty, then disperse at once!”
Spinel grunted, her face twisting in frustration, but she gave Lapis a quick bow and walked off.
Ruri breathed a sigh of relief.
“I’m sorry for my countrymen’s actions,” Lapis apologized.
“Oh, don’t worry. Thank you for coming to the rescue. If you hadn’t come, then...” Ruri trailed off, looking over at the sea of still displeased-looking spirits. They’d been one step away from total disaster. She flashed him an awkward smile. “So hey, by any chance, can none of those girls see the spirits?”
“No, most likely not. The Nation of the Spirit King is similar to the Nation of the Dragon King in that the ratio of humans and demi-humans is about fifty-fifty. That group that just left was human. Since they have no mana, they can’t see the spirits.”
“But the Nation of the Spirit King’s people believe in both spirits and Beloveds, so how did they turn out like that?”
“Because the Nation of the Spirit King is not monolithic. Most of them believe in spirits, and worship and adore them. That is why they all treat me, a Beloved, like family. But there are also those with little faith in the spirits, who doubt what they can’t see. The families of those girls and Spinel’s family fall in that category. Since their parents don’t believe in them, neither do they.”
“Huh? But isn’t that problematic? Her parents are the head nobles, aren’t they? The person who leads the nobles of the nation not believing in spirits or Beloveds?”
“No. With the House of Morga, the head of the house poses no problem. Neither does his first wife nor their children. However, Spinel’s mother, the second wife, is a human from a foreign nation and does not believe in ‘invisible’ spirits. Spinel was raised and coddled by that mother of hers, so Spinel took after her and also insists that spirits don’t exist. Not only that, but she was raised to get whatever she wanted as well, so she is the type to genuinely think that the world revolves around her. The fact that she thinks that way with no ill will makes it even worse.”
“Ah, I see,” Ruri said. She now understood why Spinel would ask her to break up with Jade; Spinel had a history of always getting what she wanted.
“That aside, you sure do know a lot, Lapis,” Ruri noted.
“Well, yeah, I’m a Beloved,” Lapis replied. “I can get any information if I feel so inclined. As for Spinel, her mother has been very persistent about making her daughter my first wife, so I’m pretty in the know because I did some digging on who they were.”
“If she’s looking to make her daughter your wife, then she must be one ambitious mother.”
Lapis nodded. “I wouldn’t doubt it if you told me that this whole ‘the Dragon King coming to pick her up’ story was the second wife essentially brainwashing her child into believing it to be true.”
It seemed that the Nation of the Spirit King had its own set of problems.
After having lunch with Lapis, Ruri told Awain about what had happened. He bowed in apology, but she informed him that everything was all right because Lapis had helped her out. Still, the Spirit King decided that letting Spinel go unpunished wouldn’t suffice, so he would deliver her punishment.
In the meantime, he sent notice to the head of the House of Morga that Spinel was not to attend the welcome party. Thanks to that, the party calmly proceeded, and a fun time was had by all.
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