Risou no Himo Seikatsu - Volume 14 - Chapter Ep

Epilogue — A Private Discussion in the Inner Palace, or: A Spoiled Child’s Tantrum

The next day, Zenjirou had returned to Capua via teleportation and was in another private meeting—this time, in the living room of the main building, with only Aura and Freya present. None of the maids or Skaji were present. They were not even allowed to wait in the hall. This was completely and utterly restricted to the three of them.

Zenjirou had just finished relaying everything that had taken place, offering up the green stone plate as evidence.

“Nooo! Take me! Take me! Mee-eeee-ee!” Freya whined, throwing her limbs this way and that in a tantrum.

Are you two twins? Well, yeah, you are, Zenjirou thought. He couldn’t help but sympathize with and respect how much effort it must have taken to bring them up.

“Freya, come on, this isn’t going anywhere; get back on the sofa,” Zenjirou tried.

“Come, stand. This is not something we should have to do,” Aura scolded her.

“Nooo!”

Zenjirou took Freya’s right arm while Aura took her left to forcefully pull her up again. The princess was the spitting image of a child not getting her way.

Despite the apparent sobbing, they—mainly Aura—mercilessly pulled her back to the sofa and the tears stopped instantly.

“Uh, were you faking it?” Zenjirou had to ask, taken aback by how easily the display had stopped.

“No?” Freya half-asked. “I really was crying. I just got it out of my system.”

She’d cried out her unhappiness and then calmed herself. Zenjirou was honestly somewhat impressed with her self-control. He and Freya had known each other for several years now, and their trip on the Glasir’s Leaf meant that they had spent a long time in close proximity. Even so, there were times when he was surprised by seeing new sides to her now that they were officially married.

He felt that the very ability to see this was due to them getting closer through their marriage. He was all but certain that he never would have seen such a side to her had they not gotten married, and it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant feeling. However, what he had just seen was certainly not something that would be a massive deal if she refrained.

Either way, now that they were all back on the sofa, Zenjirou continued. “Just making sure, but can both of you read this? It looks like Japanese to me.”

The red-haired queen and bluish-silver-haired princess answered in turn.

“I can. It looks to be the local language to me.”

“It looks like my homeland’s language to me too.”

All three of them had looked at the plate placed in between them on the table. Despite the fact that they were looking at it at the same time, they were all seeing different languages. It was a strange feeling.

Still, when they thought about it, the conversations they exchanged on a daily basis were effectively the same thing. Even now, Aura was speaking in her local language, and the words sounded like Japanese to Zenjirou, while sounding like the northern tongue of the Northern Continent for Freya. Actually, consciously acknowledging that made it feel just as strange.

“Is automatic translation the only effect of this magic writing?” Aura asked.

Zenjirou nodded. “Apparently, yeah. Translation is all it is in this case, so you need to know how to read and write in at least one language. If someone is completely illiterate, it would be no help to them at all.”

It was very similar to the soul of language in that way. Still, Aura didn’t fail to pick up on the qualifier. “You said ‘in this case.’ Would there be magic writing where that is not the case?”

Zenjirou inclined his head for a moment before offering an unsure agreement. “I’m not certain, but I think there is, yes.”

He was caught up on it originally being a gem. The gem had been in the mysterious cat’s mouth. Gustav had picked it up and traced something on its surface, and it had unfolded into its current form.

Zenjirou wasn’t sure exactly what it was made from or how, but it felt like a thin sheet of transparent stone to him. It wouldn’t bend in the slightest, and he couldn’t scratch it. Obviously, he couldn’t fold it either. There had to be some kind of magic behind it morphing from a gem to a sheet.

“And you think that was due to the magic writing?” Freya asked once he had explained his observations. The look on her face was one of pure curiosity.

“Yeah. I didn’t get to see what happened up close, but it looked like King Gustav traced a letter on the gem. It makes me think there might be magic writing that can change a thing’s shape. It’s just a theory, though.”

“Would it be possible with a magic tool?” Aura asked. “If the Twin Kingdoms are to be believed, the Sharou family was once sheltered by Utgard, no?”

The question was one that Zenjirou had thought of before, so he could answer immediately. “I don’t think so. I couldn’t say for certain, but I think we can discount the possibility. After all, even if the Sharou family used to be there, they aren’t now, so any magic tools would be irreplaceable treasures. They wouldn’t be sending them out as invitations like this, at least.”

“True. But did all of the Sharou family come to the Southern Continent?”

“Huh?” Zenjirou had most definitely not expected that question.

“If the legends from both the Twin Kingdoms and Uppasala are true, then the Sharou family was sheltered by Utgard for a long time, and they left for the Southern Continent. Did every single member of the family leave them? Were there definitely no members of the family who hid themselves away in Utgard? That is what I would have done if I were the head of the family at the time. It would have ensured the bloodline did not die out.”

“Oh...”

Zenjirou had completely missed that possibility. While the legends all said that the descendants of the White Empire had escaped to the Southern Continent, the Sharou family had been sheltered in Utgard for a long time, and the country had continued its isolation ever since. It was entirely possible that they still housed descendants of the bloodline.

Aura offered her husband some words of encouragement, as he had lost his own footing. “I was just stating the possibility, but in truth, I feel the likelihood is rather low. If a branch family had been left behind in Utgard, then it strikes me that the information would have been passed down through the Sharou family. The former king made no mention of the like when we met.”

Of course, Bruno was under no obligation to share everything, so there was a chance that he did know of such a branch family and simply hadn’t mentioned it. There was also the chance that the knowledge had been lost over the long years. Therefore, the only conclusion they could draw was one of uncertainty.

“I imagine Prince Francesco or Princess Bona could tell us whether it was a magic tool or not if they could see it,” Aura commented.

“We can’t. The two of you are the only ones I can tell about the magic writing. I promised King Gustav as much.”

Aura offered a nod of acknowledgment. Ordinarily, she would have preferred to prioritize mentioning it to the prince over keeping a verbal promise. However, as the promise hadn’t been made by Aura or one of her nobles, but by Zenjirou, things were different. Zenjirou’s diplomacy was founded on honesty more than anything else. While there had been some trickery to the Rite of Age, no promises had been broken. There was a significant value to that, and it would have been a shame to lose it to something of this magnitude. Losing trust was simple, but gaining it back was far less so.

“Very well; unless King Gustav or Utgard give their permission, we will not speak of it elsewhere. Freya? You cannot tell even Skaji. Likewise, I will tell no one; not even Espiridion or Fabio.”

“I understand,” Freya agreed, her expression even. This was a secret that neither would spill to even their closest confidants—the head mage Espiridion and the secretary Fabio for Aura, and the bodyguard Skaji for Freya.

“I admit the secrecy makes actually doing anything difficult, so when I’m in Utgard, I’ll try and get permission to tell at least one person from the Sharou family,” Zenjirou said, pulling the conversation back on track.

Now that the topic of the trip had returned, the look of seriousness on Freya’s face changed slightly.

“So, Sir Zenjirou, about your companion. Well...” she said, trailing off.

His wife’s questioning prompted him to look at his other wife for help. However, Aura simply nodded with a blank expression, adding no comment of her own. It seemed that the final decision would rest with him.

Zenjirou was at the center of the matter, and considering all three of their positions, he could understand the responsibility falling to him. Still, since he could easily see how what he was going to say would make things rather chaotic, he’d still had a fleeting hope that Aura might take the burden. It seemed, though, that he would just have to screw up his courage.

“Freya,” he said.

“Yes?” Her icy-blue eyes met his.

“I’m taking Prince Yngvi to Utgard. You are staying here,” he said quickly, getting it all out in a single breath.

There was a beat of silence before Freya slipped down from the sofa, lying on the floor. Then... “Noooo-oooh! I want to go! Me! Take me! Take me! Mee-eeee-ee!”

“I can’t,” Zenjirou said. “Considering our relationship with Uppasala, I can’t take you over him, can I?”

“Come now, Freya. Do not be so unreasonable. If you keep this up, there will be no ice cream for you tonight.”

Despite the logical argument from Zenjirou, and the threat from Aura, Freya’s tantrum didn’t abate.

“Nooo! Take me! Take me! Mee-eeee-ee!”

The whole scene looked less like a man and his two wives and more like a couple and their daughter.

“Bear with it, Freya. I’ll make up for it when I get back.”

“You cannot spoil her too much, Zenjirou.”

“Well, I know just how much she longs for adventure and the unknown.”

“Hm, I see your point,” Aura conceded after a moment. It sounded utterly absurd for a princess in her teens to captain a ship and undertake an intercontinental move, but her wanderlust had been strong enough to push that absurdity into reality.

“I’ll get you a gift for your patience,” Zenjirou offered. “A dress, some jewelry, something like that. Maybe even some of the gold work from Talajeh? Of course, if I find something interesting in Utgard, I’ll bring you back a souvenir as well.”

Aura’s understanding resulted in a wordless nod. Upon hearing that, Freya’s crying stopped immediately and her eyes drifted up to meet his.

“I would prefer a ship to dresses or jewels. Maybe even accelerating the development of the Alcott port...”

Her requests were of a completely different order of magnitude. They were requests that she absolutely could not make when only Zenjirou was present, if only due to the chance that he might agree. The result was perhaps what she should have expected.

“You are getting carried away!” Aura scolded her.

“Eeep!”

Aura had grabbed hold of the other woman’s collar and lifted her mercilessly up into the air.

To be continued in The Ideal Sponger Life 15.