Sugar Apple Fairytale - Volume 5 - Chapter 2.2

“It’s always my father this, my father that. My father told me I could do as I pleased until I got married, didn’t he? He let me have Challe, too. His reason for taking away Challe’s wing was that I locked him up and spent all my time with him. I won’t do that again. Gladys can walk around freely, and I won’t be with him constantly. Even you approved of Challe, Elliott. If Challe was fine, then surely Gladys is, too. I bought him because I wanted to buy him. I wanted him, so I bought him! That’s all there is to it! You’ve never paid any attention to me, so don’t you dare start criticizing me now!”

She wanted him? But it doesn’t look that way.

Bridget didn’t seem the least bit happy. It was like she had only bought the fairy in order to rebel against her father and Elliott.

Bridget probably couldn’t do anything about her feelings. Anne got the sense that she was reaching out recklessly with both arms, desperately struggling forward, searching for something.

“Bridget…” Anne wanted her to settle down a little and take a moment. That’s what she was going to say.

But Bridget shook her head fiercely, flatly interrupting her. “I particularly don’t want to hear any criticism from you, Anne.”

“Bridget, is there a problem with me being here?” Gladys sounded perplexed from his place behind her.

“No problem at all.” Bridget glared at Elliott and Anne in turn as if to silence them. However, she avoided looking in Challe’s direction. “I’ll tell my father about Gladys myself.”

“Wait.” Elliott raised his hand slightly. “Glen’s heart can’t take sudden news like that. I’ll go in first and inform him. Then, Bridget, you can tell him in your own words. Okay?”

“…Fine.”

“All right, let’s go, then. He’s on the third floor.”

Elliott turned on his heel and started to ascend the staircase. Bridget signaled Gladys with her eyes, then marched up the stairs after Elliott.

Watching Gladys’s wing rippling down his back, Mithril said, “That guy’s also a gemstone fairy like you, isn’t he, Challe Fenn Challe?”

The moment Mithril said Challe’s name, Gladys stopped in his tracks and turned around, startled.

“Challe Fenn Challe…?” Gladys repeated the name as if he’d discovered something unexpected. He stared at Challe. “Obsidian? …No, it couldn’t be…”

“You need something?” Challe smirked, still leaning against the wall. There was a glint in his eye, like he was daring Gladys to continue.

That seemed to bring Gladys back to himself.

“No… No, nothing at all.” His answer was halting, as if he was holding something back. Then he started walking again, following Bridget.

Anne looked over at Challe. “Someone you know?”

Challe’s eyes followed Gladys as he ascended the stairs. “Never met him before.”

Mithril put his chin in his hand and cocked his head. “I can tell that he’s a gemstone, but I’m not sure which type. Unlike Challe Fenn Challe, he’s hard to place. I’m usually good at guessing other fairies’ types, too.”

“He’s probably an opal,” said Challe. “Every one of them has a different coloration depending on the specific stone they were born from. Moreover, the way he reflects the light—he’s got so many colors. Opals tend to be ambiguous like that.”

Following Elliott, Bridget and Gladys reached the third floor and disappeared.

Once they were gone, a feeling like impatience suddenly welled up inside Anne. She got the impression that if someone didn’t confront Bridget here and now, she would only grow harder to reach.

Bridget was assigned a room on the third floor of the west wing. The fairy, whom she called Gladys, had been given a room on the third floor as well.

Good job, Elliott.

The sun was setting. The sky was dyed a light pink, and the clouds were disappearing behind a distant mountain range, as if it were swallowing them up. Challe was on the top floor of the western tower. The wind blew through his hair. It felt nice.

A spiral staircase ran up the center of the tower, and there were windows set at regular intervals.

At the top, the structure opened into a single small room. The space was completely empty, but when Challe opened the window and gazed out at the landscape below, he could see the king’s castle and the Church of Saint Lewiston Bell, as well as the whole city of Lewiston.

Naturally, Glen had not been happy about Bridget buying a pet fairy. Apparently, as soon as he saw Bridget’s face, he had ordered her to return the fairy to the dealer immediately. But she had been stubborn. “I don’t want to do what you say anymore, Father,” she had said and refused to budge. In the end, it was decided that Gladys would be staying at Hollyleaf Castle, much to Elliott’s displeasure.

Just then, Challe heard footsteps coming up the spiral staircase. He turned around to see Gladys. After spotting Challe, Gladys said the other fairy’s name as if checking to make sure he had it right.

“Challe Fenn Challe…was it?”

Gladys slowly approached him. The beads decorating his coat made a clear sound every time he took a step. The lace attached at his wrists, collar, and hem fluttered. It was all very beguiling, coupled with his delicately colored hair. The clothes seemed to have been made deliberately to complement his fine features.

Challe turned his gaze back to the landscape, but Gladys didn’t seem to care and moved to stand beside him.

“I was walking around, looking at the interior of the castle. This tower is nice. It’s so pleasant.” He smiled at Challe. “Have you not been given a human name? That’s rare. Who’s your owner?”

Gladys was a gemstone fairy like Challe. Unlike fairies of other types, something about Gladys’s presence was sharp and cold. Perhaps it was the aura of a kindred spirit. Challe found it somehow nostalgic. But that didn’t mean he felt any affection toward Gladys.

“I have no master,” he said. “My wing is in my own hands. I live with the humans, and if I am asked, I may even do some work. But that’s for me to decide.”

Gladys opened his eyes wide. “Is that why you’re not called by a human name? But if you have control of your own wing, why are you with the humans? Do you have some purpose for staying?”

“Never mind my situation. Your background seems no less mysterious.”

“It does?”

Gladys’s hair was constantly shifting in color. No sooner did it appear green than it changed to a pale blue. And wherever it was struck by the rays of the setting sun, it became yellowish gold. Like perfumed oil floating on the surface of water, it had a gleaming shimmer to it that changed at a dizzying pace.

Challe shot him a sidelong glance, carefully observing Gladys’s expression. “You don’t look like the kind of fairy a girl could afford with pocket money.”

Challe, who had been constantly bought and sold by fairy dealers, had a good grasp on the prices that fairies fetched at a market. There was no way that such a handsome, attractive fairy could have been purchased with whatever Bridget had.

But Bridget hadn’t appeared to be lying. If she had truly bought Gladys with her own money, Challe was at a loss as to how.

“Well, I suppose we can chalk it up to her enthusiasm,” said Gladys. “She was very keen to have me and really bargained for me, you know. The fairy dealer was swayed by her ardor, that’s all.”

“Fairy dealers aren’t the type of people who are swayed by ardor. They only bend to money.” Challe stared fixedly at the other fairy, and Gladys smiled evasively.

“I don’t have any exceptional powers, and I’ve always played a fool. In fact, the reason I met Bridget was that I pretended to mistake the place I was being sent to on an errand, and I just happened to go to her house. But it was a stroke of good fortune—she saw me and took a liking to me. She seemed like the sort of person I wouldn’t mind having as an owner. She seemed decent. It appears the fairy dealer didn’t know what to do with me, either, having been unable to find a buyer for so long. Plus, Bridget is the daughter of a famous man. Since she was so enthusiastic, I suppose the dealer was simply inclined to sell.”

“You are a gemstone fairy. You ought to have the power to create sharp objects. You don’t have any combat ability?”

“Unfortunately, I cannot fight. Would you like to see?”

Gladys turned his right palm upward and spread his hand out in front of his chest.

Glittering specks of light gathered there, a mixture of faint blues and greens. The light coalesced into a thin line across Gladys’s palm, forming a feeble, bluish-green needle about the length of his middle finger.

“See? This is all I can do.”

It didn’t seem like he was suppressing his power. Evidently, that was the limit of what he could make.

Gladys casually waved his right hand, and the bluish-green needle disappeared. “Can’t fight with that, can I?”

“Humans are ruthless. Even if you’re a fool, even if you can’t fight, as long as you look pretty, they’ll make you into a pet fairy. In fact, some actually prefer you to have looks rather than fighting prowess. There are plenty of people who want to buy a pretty fairy for large sums of money.”

For a warrior fairy, Challe had been sold for an extraordinarily low price. That was mostly due to his foul mouth, which potential buyers had found unpleasant.

Another factor was that an owner couldn’t let their guard down when dealing with a warrior fairy. If a human tries to use such a fairy for any purpose other than fighting and isn’t careful, they are sure to meet a painful end. Fairies of this kind are valuable and functional, but on the other hand, they are considered very dangerous.

Since Challe couldn’t be sold as anything else, his foul mouth had lowered his value. There weren’t many owners who wanted to be subject to constant abuse from a fairy they had bought for protection.

But if he’d had no fighting skill, his value would have shot up, even with his foul mouth. If he had been easy to control, his range of uses would have expanded. His beauty would have made him prized as a pet fairy. He’d been told this often by fairy dealers. All of them had said that, with his appearance, he’d surely have sold quickly and for a high price if only he’d been powerless.

“You’re saying they still couldn’t find a buyer for you?” asked Challe. “I find that hard to believe.”

“What kind of people bought and sold you, Challe? Were you hurt very badly? No one wanted to buy me. That’s the truth.”

“What kind of idiots were you bought and sold by? Humans aren’t that naive.”

Gladys looked down and snickered. “For someone who stays with humans of his own free will, you don’t trust them very much. As I thought, you must have been hurt. I’m sure whatever you went through was terrible.”

Gladys lifted his head again and narrowed his eyes. Those eyes, a swirl of soft, shifting colors, seemed to be concealing something, like a landscape wrapped in fog.

“You are straightforward and forceful,” Gladys continued. “And you stare too much. You look at the humans with such beautiful black eyes, and yet they can have no control over you. That’s why they get angry. You ought to keep your stare more vacant, as if you’re not looking anywhere in particular, like I do. But why is someone like you staying with humans? Which one do you want to be with? I’m curious.”

“I don’t feel like satisfying your curiosity.”

At Challe’s refusal, Gladys lowered his eyebrows teasingly and said, “We’re both gemstone fairies. I rarely meet another of my kind, so I thought this was my chance to make a friend. But it seems you’re unwilling.”

“If you’re not hiding or lying about anything, then we can be friends. We can even be drinking companions.”

“I’m hiding nothing. I’m not lying. I swear.”

“Oaths sworn by lips alone are easy to make.”

“You’re very wary, Challe Fenn Challe. That’s a good thing. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t live long.” With one last smile, Gladys turned his back on Challe.

A gust blew in, and Challe’s hair and the hem of his jacket flapped wildly. The wind whistled in his ears. With his hand, he pinned a lock of hair against his cheek.

Ambiguous in all respects. That’s their nature.

He wasn’t sure whether he needed to be so wary. But he was certain that the other fairy was more than he appeared.

Opal, eh?