Sugar Apple Fairytale - Volume 7 - Chapter 4

Chapter 4

THE FAIRY’S APPRENTICES

“Oh no, no!! Sorry, sorry! Don’t pay any attention to me, you two! Go on, go on. Continue what you were doing. Do more, in fact. I’ll just take a little walk…”

Mithril quickly tried to pull his head back through the door, but Challe leaped off the bed, dashed over, and grabbed the little fairy by the scruff of the neck.

“Wait! What are you doing here?!”

“I’m sorry for interrupting, Challe Fenn Challe. Don’t get mad. I’m leaving, see? I’m surprised at what a lecher you are, but I’m sure this is all the result of my grand plan, so I’m happy to see it!”

“How did you manage to get it so wrong?”

“Oh, do I not have the right idea?”

Anne was still planted on the bed, while Challe was carrying Mithril by the scruff. He tossed the little fairy onto the bed, and Mithril rolled several times, then stood up, plunking right back down to sit in front of Anne. Then he raised a hand.

“Hi, Anne! Haven’t seen you for half a day!”

“Mithril Lid Pod…why are you here?”

“Weeell, the thing is, I was worried, awfully worried, about Challe Fenn Challe, who was summoned to the royal castle without knowing why. I thought that if push came to shove, I might have to rescue him, so I hid in the wagon and came along. I slipped out once there was no one else around, but this castle’s awful big. It took a while for me to find you two. Anyway, this castle is really amazing, Anne. There are so many people, and so many fairies, and so much food! I mean, that mushroom dish you had for dinner sure smelled good!” Eyes glistening, Mithril told them about what he had seen in the castle.

Challe gave him a cold look. “So in other words, you wanted to see the castle, so you tagged along?”

“Oh! That’s exactly…wrong! I was worried about you.”

“Are you stupid? If you get caught trespassing in the castle, your head will roll.”

“…………Huh?” Mithril suddenly turned pale and clung to Anne’s knee. “Anne?! Is that really true?” he asked.

“Probably. Just think about it…”

“Say what?! Th-th-this is bad! You two have got to hide me, right now! Please!”

Anne felt a headache coming on. Challe let out a sigh and looked down at Mithril, who was clinging to Anne. Thanks to the unexpected intruder, it seemed like he was not going to learn the reason for Anne’s tears after all.

“…I’m so embarrassed,” Anne grumbled gloomily as she walked down a hallway in the castle keep.

With Mithril Lid Pod having barged in the night before, she had somehow managed to leave things hanging with Challe. She had a feeling that if Challe had continued interrogating her about why she was crying, she wouldn’t have been able to lie to him.

She’d been surprised by Mithril’s intrusion and nervous because they needed to figure out some way to keep him from being discovered, but honestly, she was glad he’d shown up.

She was ashamed of herself to have cried about it in the first place. She rubbed her cheeks vigorously with both hands.

“I’ve got to pull it together.”

Anne felt like she ought to want to support Challe’s happiness. If she started weeping over things like this, there would be no end to it. She would end up causing Challe unnecessary worry.

The candy crafters were supposed to start receiving instruction from Lulu in the Cocoon Tower that morning. They had been ordered to bring their tools so that they could work with silver sugar, so Anne was carrying her leather tool case.

All candy crafters had a personal tool case. These typically consisted of long narrow strips of leather with pockets in which they could secure their spatulas, shaping knives, and the other tools needed for their handiwork before rolling the whole thing up to carry around.

Most candy crafters made their tools themselves. That way, the tools were easier for them to use.

They would whittle the wooden tools, making them a perfect fit for the size, bulk, and shape of their own hands and accounting for their own idiosyncrasies. Only when they needed steel blades or stone vessels did they entrust the work to an expert blacksmith or mason.

Anne had woken up before dawn, as was her habit.

Mithril had been snoring loudly in bed, and Challe had still been lying on his side on the sofa with his eyes closed. She had sneaked out of the room so as not to wake them.

Breakfast had been prepared for them in the combination dining and living room. There was bread and milk and fruit. Anne ate heartily without waiting for the other candy crafters, then hurried off toward the Cocoon Tower.

She knew that once she touched silver sugar, she would feel at ease and forget her troubles for a while.

“Viscount.”

As she was about to head down the passageway that led from the second floor of the castle keep to the first, Anne heard the voice of Queen Marguerite coming from downstairs. She froze.

What are you supposed to do if you meet a member of the royal family in the hallway in the morning?! Prostrate yourself?! That can’t be right… Kneel? And then what? Is it normal to greet them with Good morning? Or are we not supposed to speak to them?!

Her whole body was rigid. The very idea of a commoner like her unexpectedly running into a member of the royal family in the hallway in the morning took her straight past nervousness into absolute terror.

“Whatever is the matter this early in the morning?”

Next, she heard Hugh’s voice.

“Lulu will start teaching her skills to the candy crafters today, correct? I’m feeling nervous about it.”

“My teacher is just as confident as always, and I’ll be with the crafters as well. You don’t need to worry. More importantly, it would be distracting to have you there, Your Majesty, so if you would be so kind as to withdraw, I would appreciate it.”

Slowly and quietly, Anne peeked over the banister to spy on the lower floor.

She thought it might be rude not to show her face when she was this close, but on the other hand, it could be disrespectful to interrupt. At any rate, she hadn’t the faintest clue about the etiquette of aristocratic society.

Queen Marguerite and Hugh were standing in the hallway near the door. Marguerite was wearing a dress similar to the one she had worn the day before, but Hugh was in a modest brown jacket. Anne could tell from his outfit that he also had not been planning to see any royals. Perhaps the queen had come here to catch him off guard.

“Is there something that you would rather not allow me to see, Viscount?” the queen asked in a frigid tone of voice.

“Why should there be any such thing? Is there something arousing your suspicion?”

“These past few months, Lulu has been avoiding seeing me one-on-one. Whenever I tell her that I am going to see her, without fail, you are always there with her already. Then she makes up some clever excuse and immediately withdraws to her chambers. And then there’s the matter of that black-haired fairy. Lulu told me that she wanted to meet him because he was rumored to be stunningly beautiful, but that doesn’t seem like much of a reason to summon someone. I get the sense that you and Lulu are trying to hide something from me. But that is not admirable behavior in my subjects. Everything that relates to silver sugar fairies is my responsibility. I am acting as an agent of His Majesty the King.”

“You worry too much. We certainly—”

“Please don’t lie to me!”

Suddenly, the queen interrupted Hugh in a sharp tone.

“But we—”

Hugh sounded uncomfortable, and the queen talked right over him.

“Stop it. Tell me the truth, please. I want you to talk to me as you did long ago, like a friend.”

Anne heard Hugh sigh.

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“My teacher doesn’t want me to.”

“What are the two of you scheming? By any chance…are you trying to use the royal family’s plans to create successors for some purpose of your own? It was you who first proposed to His Majesty that we should train some successors after Lulu took to her bed, wasn’t it, Hugh? Are you planning something? Something you don’t want to tell me? If you are, then as your queen, I need to know it. If it results in harm to the royal family, I will have no choice but to deal with you and Lulu severely. Do you understand that?”

“As you say, I was the one who proposed that we train her successors. But I have no ulterior motive. I made my proposition purely because I fear that her techniques could be lost forever. Don’t worry. I would never act against the royal family.”

“And can I trust you both, Hugh?”

“I’d like you to trust us. The candy crafters are going to be getting up anytime now. Marguerite, please go. The crafters won’t be able to relax with the queen hanging around.”

“…Very well.”

The two of them walked off in different directions down the hallway, and Anne let out the breath that she had been holding. She clutched her tool case to her chest and leaned back against the wall. The stone wall was cool. She had gotten a glimpse of something that she wasn’t supposed to see. She wondered how Hugh and the queen had come to be on such familiar terms.

Anne walked down the hallway on the first floor of the castle keep, trying to keep her footsteps as quiet as possible, and emerged into the garden where the Cocoon Tower stood. The garden was bright with the glitter of lingering snow this morning, but it was a cold light. Anne shivered against the chill, then rushed without stopping into the Cocoon Tower.

The interior of the tower was also cold. But it was somewhat better just because she was sheltered from the elements.

The crafters had been told to assemble on the second floor, where a candy workshop was located.

Anne climbed timidly up the stairs and emerged into a round room a little bit smaller than the room on the first floor. She saw workbenches topped with stone slabs, mills, and stoves. There were flat stone platters and barrels of silver sugar. Surrounded by familiar things, Anne breathed a sigh of relief.

She walked into the center of the room and set her tool case down on one of the workbenches. Quietly, she sucked in a big breath.

It smells sweet. The scent of silver sugar.

The scent had permeated the stone walls, floor, and ceiling. Anne wondered how much time was needed for it to be transferred into something like stone.

Hugh said it’s been five hundred years. This place has been a workshop for five centuries.

And the beautiful fairy named Lulu had presumably been making sugar candy there for the past five hundred years. Anne shuddered when she realized that. Doing the same work, in the same place, day after day. And for five hundred years. It was a terrifying thought, a slow and drawn-out torment.

“You’re an early riser, child.”

Suddenly Anne heard a voice behind her and nearly leaped into the air. When she turned around, she saw Lulu Leaf Lean coming down the spiral staircase toward her. She was tying back her golden hair like a bunch of silk threads.

“Good morning. Um, you’re up early, too, Master.”

Anne greeted her nervously, and Lulu nodded in acknowledgment.

“When you get to be six hundred years old, you tend to get up early. Also, young lady, you can stop it with the ‘master’ stuff. You are here to study under me, yes, but it feels wrong to be called master.”

“Well then, I’ll call you teacher, like Hugh does.”

Lulu wrinkled her nose.

“That’s even worse. He calls me that to tease me by acting more deferential than he needs to. Lulu is fine. Call me Lulu.”

“Well then… Lulu?”

“What is it, child?”

“I’ve got a name, too. It’s Anne. Please call me that. I’m Anne Halford.”

“I see. Anne, is it? Then that’s what I’ll call you,” Lulu said, grinning.

Her smiling face was exceptionally beautiful, and yet she seemed straightforward and easy to get along with. Anne returned her smile automatically.

Even though she had apparently been locked up in the tower for five hundred whole years, Lulu was not at all as gloomy as one would expect. Moreover, she had been imprisoned there by humans, and yet here she was, smiling and chatting with a human.

She seemed to be kind and magnanimous. Her eyelashes, shining gold, were lovely. Challe had to be attracted to her, too, Anne thought.

A fairy woman like this would be a fitting match for him.

Lulu seemed like an ideal partner for Challe.

Anne was no Mithril Lid Pod, but she felt that, for the sake of Challe’s happiness, she should probably be rooting for them to fall in love. It had only been one day since they’d met, but from what she’d seen the night before, they seemed to get along. When she thought about it, she felt a throbbing pain in her chest, but she forced the sensation back down and repeated the following words in her mind like an incantation.

It’s the reasonable thing. The natural thing. The best thing for Challe.

“What’s the matter, Anne? Do I have something on my face?”

Anne was flustered by the question.

“Ah, no! Nothing…”

She started to answer, then suddenly remembered something important. She needed to know why Lulu had summoned Challe.

“Um, Lulu? Can I ask you something?”

“I’ll answer you if I can, sure.”

“Why did you ask for Challe to come here? How did you know about him?”

“Oh, is that it? Well, you see, I heard from the Silver Sugar Viscount that there was this beautiful fairy, and I wanted to meet him—that’s all. Surely it’s normal to want to see something beautiful.”

“So now that you’ve met Challe, what do you think?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well…for example, do you think he’s attractive? Or do you think you might want to be with him?”

Lulu crossed her arms and looked down at Anne with an amused expression. Lulu wasn’t quite as tall as Challe, but she was tall, and her line of sight was far above Anne’s.

“Does that mean you think Challe is attractive, and you want to be with him?”

“Huh?! N-not at all! Those were just some examples!”

Anne panicked at the thought that she might have inadvertently revealed her own feelings.

“I see. ‘Examples,’ huh? Hmm. Let me see. When I first met Challe, as you might expect, I thought he was very beautiful. Not bad. A good man. Someone who could be my lover.”

“Lover,” eh? I knew it. She would think that.

Anne’s face had gone flat, but Lulu was staring at her and smiling. The fairy looked even more amused.

“Assuming the obsidian fairy feels the same way, I intend to announce our courtship as early as tomorrow. How about it, Anne? Will you ask the obsidian fairy for me? Ask him if he will be my lover?”

“Y-yes.”

After answering, Anne took several deep breaths to calm her disordered feelings.

But after Anne agreed, Lulu stared at her and asked, “What’s wrong? Would that be all right with you?”

For some reason, Lulu seemed dissatisfied. Anne was about to ask her what she was unhappy about when Hugh entered from downstairs.

“You’re here early, Anne,” he said, coming up the stairs. “And I’m glad to see you up bright and early as always, my dear teacher.”

Looking at his face, Anne felt more than a little anxious. She thought back to what she had witnessed between the queen and Hugh a short time earlier; it was like there was a completely different side of him that she had never seen before.

“What’s the matter, Anne? You’re making a weird face.”

“Oh? Nothing.”

“She saw your ugly mug on what was looking to be a perfectly refreshing morning, so now she’s probably feeling rather ill.”

Hugh merely shrugged at Lulu’s insult.

“What terrible things you say to your charming pupil, O teacher of mine.”

“I’ve never found you charming, not once.”

“Well, I’m so sorry to hear that. Starting today, you’ll have five brand-new pupils, and I have no doubt they’ll be more charming than me. Don’t you worry.”

Hugh’s mannerisms were completely different now than when he’d been wearing the formal attire of the Silver Sugar Viscount the day before. Clearly, he drew a line between life as the Viscount and life as Hugh Mercury.

When she heard Hugh mention her pupils, Lulu snorted and turned away from him. “Well, I gave you my word, so I am going to teach them my techniques. I’m not pleased or amused to be taking on pupils, but…I suppose it is my duty.”

For an instant, Anne saw a flash of sadness in Lulu’s eyes. Even though he must have seen it as well, Hugh only said flatly, “That it is, my dear teacher.”

“Oh whoa, you’re early! Are we late? I didn’t think we got the time wrong, but…”

Elliott suddenly popped his head up the staircase. Killean was with him, too.

“Good morning, Mr. Collins, Mr. Killean.”

Elliott casually waved at Anne’s greeting as he approached them. Wearing his usual easy grin, he bowed to Hugh as well.

“Good morning, Viscount.” He turned to Lulu. “We met yesterday, but I haven’t introduced myself yet. I’m Elliott Collins. How should I address you?”

When Elliott came over to Lulu, he extended his hand, looking for a handshake.

“Call me Lulu. And I’ll call all of you by your names as well.”

“All right then, Lulu. Pleased to meet you. It’s a privilege.”

After Elliott exchanged a handshake with her, Killean stepped forward next and took Lulu’s hand.

“I’m John Killean, proxy maestro to the Mercury Workshop faction.”

“I hear your name from time to time from the Silver Sugar Viscount. He says that you’re not very flexible, but your skills are reliable.”

Killean looked pleased to hear that the Viscount had mentioned him to Lulu.

When Killean finished his handshake, Hugh looked around at the three crafters.

“What about the other two? Did they run away?”

“Don’t worry, we didn’t run,” Keith answered from the stairs. “Good morning, Viscount. And I feel that I must point out that we are not at all late. We’re exactly on time. You’re simply all too early.”

Behind Keith as he came up the stairs was Stella, looking sleepy and unwell. Keith glanced at Anne and smiled. It was his usual grin.

Then Keith walked straight over to Lulu and bowed deeply. “I am Keith Powell. I believe my father once received instruction from you.”

“Powell would be… Oh, him? You’re the son of Edward, the Silver Sugar Viscount before Hugh? I see, you do have a similar presence. I am Lulu.”

Keith bowed once more and looked at Stella. The candy crafter was standing absentmindedly in a corner of the room. He must not be a morning person. He looked sleepy, and his head wasn’t moving much; he didn’t seem the least bit interested in anything, even Lulu. As if there was nothing to be done about him, Keith let out a little sigh.

In a casual tone, Lulu directed a question to Stella.

“You over there, are you interested in becoming my pupil?”

“Pupil, huh…?”

Once she spoke to him, Stella looked as though he were noticing Lulu for the first time. Gently rubbing his eyes, he responded sleepily, “Sure, assuming that a fairy like you knows something that’s worth me learning.”

“What a charmer. Your name?”

“Now I have to introduce myself? At this hour? What a pain.”

At his response, Hugh frowned.

“Knox. And if he won’t wake up, perhaps I ought to dash some water over him?”

“No, I don’t mind, Silver Sugar Viscount,” Lulu replied. Her eyes were filled with obvious confidence. “And you, Mr. Nobody, can see for yourself whether I know anything that’s worth learning.”

Stella started to say something back. He was probably offended that she had called him Nobody. But before he could say anything, Lulu took a step forward and addressed the whole group in a calm voice.

“Elliott, John, Anne, Keith, and Nobody.”

Everyone’s eyes were on Lulu. Stella didn’t look pleased to have been called Nobody again, but he was paying for his own mistakes. Lulu didn’t seem to care how he felt, and she continued.

“You brought your crafting tools, right? First, show me what you can do. There are barrels of silver sugar along the wall. Use it to make candy. I want something about the size of your palm. Use color. You can make whatever shape you like. Make something you’re good at.”

Stifling a yawn, Stella started moving sluggishly. Naturally, the other candy crafters moved much more quickly. Along one wall of the workshop was a chaotic lineup of tools. There were some that were familiar and some they didn’t even recognize. The crafters took a cursory look around, searching for the tools they would need in the jumble, and started collecting them.

Anne scooped silver sugar from one of the barrels using a stone bowl and headed for one of the workbenches. Keith and Stella went over to the same workbench. Elliott and Killean set up at the workbench behind Anne.

Anne scooped cold water from another barrel and mixed it into the silver sugar spread on top of her workbench. She started kneading it with both hands, and her eyes went wide at the feel of it.

She raised her head and looked at Keith and Stella, who were at the same workbench. She saw the same surprise on their faces.

“The texture of this silver sugar is different,” Killean mumbled from the workbench behind her.

Just as he’d said, the texture of this silver sugar was quite different from what she was used to. This silver sugar had a powdery softness to it. The grains were finer than anything Anne or the others had used before.

When they added cold water and began to knead, the silver sugar took on a glossy luster.

While they were doing that, Hugh carried in a wooden box full of vials of colored powder. The crafters each took the two or three vials they would need and returned to their workbenches. They added the colors and got to kneading.

Anne untied the cord on the tool case she had brought with her and laid her tools out on the workbench.

I think I want to make a flower.

Snowy winters held plenty of beauty in their own right. But Anne was growing tired of frosty fields of white and was beginning to long for flowers, butterflies, greenery, and other such bright and colorful things.

Anne mixed red powder into the silver sugar little by little, making a soft pink color. She rolled it out thin using a small rolling pin and cut out flower petals one by one with a paring knife. Once she’d cut out the petals, she used a needle to add texture by carving veins onto their surfaces.

Keith was making a tiny fairy. He seemed to excel at making handsome statuettes. The figurine had an elegant face and really drew the eye.

Stella was sitting in a chair and setting about his work slowly. He appeared to be making a crown. There was no gusto in his expression, but still, he was one of the candy crafters Hugh had chosen. His crown was modeled after climbing rose vines, and the vines traced graceful curves to form an elegant design. The sculpture appeared to be based on his own aesthetic sensibilities rather than something he had seen before. If there had been a smith in the room who worked with silver and gold, they probably would have wanted to make Stella’s exact design into a real crown.

Killean was making the Church of Saint Lewiston Bell. He seemed to be attempting to accurately reproduce the patterns on the church’s roof tiles and pillars. He was painstakingly replicating the detailed stone reliefs.

And Elliott was making butterflies. He was working quickly, and unlike the others, each of whom was concentrating on making a single sculpture, he was nimbly producing a whole flock of butterflies using only his fingertips. They were all different colors, and the transparent hues of their wings exhibited astonishing delicacy.

Each had their own idiosyncrasies in the way they made candy. But without a doubt, their skills were top class.

Anne felt elated as she glanced around at the others’ fingers and faces as they continued working.

The five of them sometimes got irritated and butted heads over certain things, but being here with fellow candy crafters felt genuinely amazing.

Lulu wandered leisurely around the workbenches, observing the crafters at work. The expression on her face looked content, but at the same time, she seemed a little disdainful of their efforts.

Hugh was watching the crafters from over by the wall.

Lulu was about to walk past Anne when her eyes fell on Anne’s open tool case, and she came to a stop.

Anne’s usual habit was to spread her tool case out in front of herself so she could see all the tools at a glance, from one end to the other. When she did that, she could quickly find the tool she needed, which made her work easier. But when she really got going, she grew too impatient to put the tools she had taken out back into their spots and just abandoned them nearby. By the time she finished working on something, most of her tools were usually jumbled up.

But now her work was still in the early stages, so her tools were still neatly arranged.

Lulu looked surprised for a moment, then reached for one of the tools sitting snugly in their pockets in the tool case.

“Hey, Anne… This is…”

Lulu picked up the tool and was briefly at a loss for words.

The tool she was holding had a wooden handle, at the narrow end of which was a needle that had been curved into a hook. The handle was about as slender as Anne’s index finger, but it had slight indentations to make it easy to grip. It was well used and had a glossy black patina. And at the end of the handle was a small engraving, a simple design that looked like a sugar apple.

“Where did you get this tool?”

“I got it from Mama. She got it from her teacher.”

When Anne had first started making sugar candies, she had assembled a collection of tools. She’d made the ones she needed a few at a time. When her collection was almost as large as her mother’s, Anne had noticed this particular tool in her mother’s tool case. She hadn’t known how to use it.

When she’d asked how it was used, her mother had shrugged. “I got that from my teacher, who wasn’t very kind and never told me how to use it. I’ll give it to you, since I don’t use it anyway,” she’d said before popping it into Anne’s tool case.

“You say your mother received it from her teacher? Did you ever learn that teacher’s name?”

“No. And I don’t know how Mama learned to make sugar candies.”

“Hmm. I see.”

Lulu stared intensely at the tool for a little while.

“Um, Lulu? What is it?”

“Never mind, it’s nothing.”

Lulu replaced the tool in the case, turned around crisply, and moved to a spot where she could look out over all the candy crafters.

“That’s enough. Everyone, stop working. The Silver Sugar Viscount didn’t choose you for nothing. I’m relieved to see that you all have skills, in your own way. Your abilities are perfectly sufficient for making ordinary sugar candy. There’s not much I can do to help you there. However—”

Lulu signaled Hugh with her eyes. At her cue, Hugh picked up an object that had been sitting in a corner of the room that was nearly tall enough to reach his knees. Anne assumed that it was probably a sugar candy sculpture, but it had a protective cloth covering over it, so she couldn’t say for sure. Hugh set it on a shelf near the window.

“Nevertheless, the sculptures that you create do not represent the full potential of sugar candy. A sculpture made by a silver sugar fairy, using the very best techniques, contains almost limitless power. Such sculptures are rare, owing to the incredible amount of time and labor they require. But they represent the very essence of the candy craft, and any silver sugar fairy who cannot make one of these is said to be no silver sugar fairy at all. Look. Over by the window.”

The instant Lulu finished speaking, Hugh removed the cloth from the candy sculpture that he had placed near the window.

“What…is that…?” Stella mumbled.

Keith gasped, and Elliott squinted as if it were dazzlingly bright. Reflexively, Killean made the sign of the cross in front of his chest. Anne simply stared in amazement. She couldn’t pull her eyes away.

It was a flag. It was made out of sugar candy, so it didn’t move, of course. But it was twisted in such a way as to give the impression it was fluttering.

The most incredible thing about it was that the flag seemed to be translucent. The light passed through it, illuminating it brilliantly.

Normally, if a candy crafter stretched their silver sugar dough thin enough, light could show through it as if through frosted glass. But this flag was glowing as if the light from behind it were actually emanating from the sugar candy itself. That was how strong the illumination was. The light did not lose any intensity as it passed through the flag.

Depicted on the flag was the crest of the Millsland royal family. The colors were vivid and bright, just like when light passing through water broke into seven colors on a lake bed.

“It’s like you wove a rainbow…,” Anne mumbled with a sigh.

Beside her, Keith was overcome with shock as he said, “How did you get it to turn out like that?”

Light passing through water or a prism will split into seven colors. The candy was so vibrant it was like Lulu had woven it from beams of light.

Crafters normally made sugar candy by adding colors to white silver sugar dough, then making a sculpture out of it. No matter how cleverly the colors were produced, the shades either turned out flat but intense or soft and washed out. It was one or the other.

Anne had never seen such vivid coloring before. She also couldn’t believe that a sugar candy sculpture was letting through so much light. It was as if Lulu had mixed beads of light into her silver sugar dough.

“This is a piece of sugar candy made using the greatest techniques of the silver sugar fairies,” Lulu said proudly.

“The Silver Sugar Viscount is required to learn how to make candy like this,” Hugh said to the dumbfounded crafters.

At the sound of his voice, the crafters startled and turned their gazes on him.

“Though it’s also rare for the Viscount to make anything like this,” he added. “Only for His Majesty’s coronation ceremony or when he’s praying for victory in a war. We make them only for such special occasions.”

How do you wind up with colors like those? How do you make the light pass straight through like that? How do you get the candy like that? How did she do it?

Anne’s heart was pounding wildly.

I want to know.

“I will teach you the skills to make candy of this caliber,” Lulu said solemnly. “There are two main elements. One is color. And the other is the way you compose the candy sculpture. With the techniques at your disposal now, you could never create this sculpture, even if you spent a hundred years kneading the sugar and another hundred building it. You have to know how it’s done.”

Then she grinned brightly. “We’ll start with point number one, color. Why don’t we go out for a while to look at the color of silver sugar, okay? Consider it a field trip.”

The candy crafters rushed back to their rooms to get their capes and coats.

Anne would also need to bring Challe along with her. That was because Lulu had suggested, “It’s dull being the only fairy. Let’s have Challe accompany us as our bodyguard.”

When Anne got back to her room and told him that, Challe stood up from where he had been sitting by the window, looking irritated. As soon as Challe moved, Mithril also hopped to his feet on the bed.

“Can I go with you, too?!”

Challe answered him with a cold look in his eye. “Have you forgotten that you’re an illegal trespasser?”

“Oh, th-th-th-that’s right! I’ll stay hidden instead. Have a good time!”

Reminded of his situation, Mithril buried himself under the blanket in a panic.

Once Anne and Challe left the room together, Challe muttered, “Mithril seems liable to go wandering around and forget he isn’t supposed to be here.”

“I hope he doesn’t forget, but…there’s no way…”

Anne had a feeling that Mithril, who was immensely curious about the royal castle, was quite likely to get caught carelessly roaming around the castle. But his one saving grace was that there were lots of domestic workers and servants about, so if he acted the part, there was a good chance no one would recognize him as an intruder.

When they arrived at the carriage house next to the stables, they could see several wagons parked in the center. Among them was a carriage with the Silver Sugar Viscount’s crest painted on it.

The other candy crafters seemed to have already boarded the carriage, and only Hugh and Salim had yet to get in.

Hugh waved casually when he saw Anne and Challe. But his expression immediately clouded. Following his gaze, Anne saw that the Earl of Downing was walking over, directly behind her and Challe.

The Earl of Downing was the chief retainer of the Kingdom of Highland and had loyally served the Millsland royal family since the reign of the previous king. He had been the one to push for the accession of the current king, Edmond II.

He came to a halt.

“You… I knew it…”

The earl fixed his gaze on Challe.

Hugh hurried over and stood in front of the earl.

“Lord Downing, can I be of service?”

“When I learned that the queen had granted a fairy and a group of candy crafters access to the Cocoon Tower, I grew worried. I went to the first castle keep, but there was no one there. I heard that you were planning an outing and came here to see, but… So the one they summoned was this fellow, huh? We met out in the wilderness. Why was he called over?”

The Earl of Downing gave Hugh an unsparing look.

“The silver sugar fairy told me to summon him,” Hugh replied. “Apparently, she heard rumors of his beauty and wanted to meet him.”

“She wanted to meet him, you say? That makes no sense. Even out in that wasteland, I had a feeling something strange was going on with the fairies, but… Who are you, fairy?”

A chill ran up Anne’s spine. She wondered what this old retainer would do if he learned that Challe was meant to become the fairy king. This man was the most trusted retainer of the Millsland royal family, and he had completely eradicated the other two branches of Ancestor King Cedric’s bloodline on the grounds of preserving the stability of the kingdom. After the current monarch, Edmond II, took the throne as a child, the earl had waged a preemptive war to guarantee the reign of the young king. In light of his distinguished service, he commanded great authority in the kingdom, almost equal to that of the royal family.

Challe’s face remained blank as he answered the earl.

“Challe Fenn Challe. I’m a fairy. And this girl’s bodyguard.”

The Earl of Downing still looked suspicious, but after a moment, he simply waved his hand.

“Very well. Go on, then.”

Hugh and Anne bowed to the earl and urged Challe toward the wagons.

The Earl of Downing had permitted them to go, but Anne was certain that he was still wary of Challe. The old retainer, who had long supported and protected the royal family, wasn’t likely to overlook even the smallest sign of danger.

Anne was sure he would be keeping an eye on them.

Challe isn’t out to hurt humans like Lafalle was, but still…

She wished she could get the other people to understand, but the moment they heard that he was a fairy who had been born to become the fairy king, they would react with fear and anger and would probably turn against him. Because of that, Anne didn’t want Challe to reveal the truth of his birth. She wanted to make him keep it a secret forever and live a happy life.

But she was also perfectly aware of her own selfishness in thinking only about Challe’s happiness.

She knew that the fairies were in dire need of a king who could realize their hopes.

The five candy crafters and Lulu all rode together in the Silver Sugar Viscount’s large carriage, which could seat six people.

Hugh accompanied the carriage on horseback with his bodyguard Salim at his side. Challe was also traveling with the two of them on horseback.

After the carriage left the castle grounds, it passed through the center of Lewiston and took the road south.

Though she had expected Hugh to accompany them, Anne was surprised that Lulu was allowed to leave the castle. She had been confined there for five hundred years, but apparently she could still go out.

Of course, Hugh and Salim were keeping a watchful eye on her. And because she was a fairy, the royal family probably also felt sure that she couldn’t do anything imprudent as long as they were in possession of her wing.

Anne was slightly relieved to see that the royal family did not treat Lulu like a typical prisoner. Judging from what she had seen, it seemed likely that Lulu would be permitted to live with a partner in the royal castle if she asked.

Pretending to look out the window at the scenery, Anne stared at Challe’s back as he rode along on a horse a little bit ahead of the carriage.

That morning, Lulu had said that she might want Challe to be her lover.

If Challe and Lulu got engaged, the vow that Challe had made to protect Anne would become an obstacle. To keep from getting in their way, Anne needed to work hard at her job and find someone she could love, allowing Challe to leave her side without breaking his vow.

I need to fall for someone like I’ve fallen for Challe, but…

Even Challe had told her to find somebody to love. Anne knew she had to follow his advice.

But at the moment, Challe was right there in front of her, and she felt like there was no one else in the world whom she could love like she did him. No matter how she tried to control her heart, it yearned for Challe.

Stella was gazing out the window on the opposite side of the carriage from Anne. He hadn’t complained about getting in the carriage or about leaving the castle. He appeared to be unenthusiastic about everything, but he did seem to possess a sense of curiosity.

Any candy crafter, no matter the circumstances, would have been eager to learn after seeing Lulu’s incredible sugar candy and hearing that she would teach them the techniques required to make it.

They passed tranquil scenery outside the city, the forest spreading out on both sides of the road. The trees of the forest were bare for the winter, and tightly packed snow lingered at their bases.

“How wonderful it is to ride in a carriage with such an exceptional beauty! The boys back at the workshop aren’t going to believe that our teacher was such a beautiful lady.”

Elliott had both hands behind his head and was smiling foolishly at Lulu.

“Oh?” said Lulu, giving him a curious look. “You’re rather promising, for a human, Elliott!”

“Don’t try to flatter her! It’s pathetic,” Stella said. He sounded like he was already fed up with Elliott.

But Elliott kept the same grin on his face. “Huh? But these are my true feelings. And it’s a fact.”

“I don’t mind,” Lulu said, looking smug. “Oh, do go on, Elliott. The rest of you don’t need to hold back, either—you can each take a turn praising me.” The single wing at her back was tinged a faintly glistening gold.

Keith smiled wryly. “It’s hard to offer praise when you outright demand it.”

Killean, on the other hand, very seriously adjusted his monocle and scrutinized Lulu, as if observing a stone. He nodded. “Mm. Well then, allow me,” he said in a stiff monotone. “Certainly, you are beautiful. Exquisite. The greatest beauty in all of Highland.”

“Very good.”

Even though Killean’s heart hadn’t been in it, Lulu made a childish but happy expression, and Anne suppressed a laugh.

“You really are lovely, Lulu. I want to become as beautiful as you someday, too.”

“Even if you lived a thousand years, you wouldn’t be able to catch up to her,” Stella said cruelly, without even looking over from the window.

“Aw…that’s true, but…”

“How about you praise me a little, too, Mr. Nobody?” Lulu demanded. “You’re my pupil as well, aren’t you?”

“If you’d been listening earlier, you’d know not to call me Mr. Nobody…!”

Stella started to raise his voice but broke into a coughing fit. Keith rushed to rub his back. Lulu frowned a little.

“Oh, are you all right, Nobody? You poor thing. It seems like you’re in bad shape.”

Stella managed to glare at Lulu despite his coughing fit, so Anne tugged at the sleeve of Lulu’s dress.

“Um, Lulu? Calling him Nobody is making it even worse.”

“Oh, is it? He doesn’t like being called that, eh? Well, allow me to apologize, Mr. Nobody.”

Lulu was obviously doing it on purpose.

Once his coughing settled down, Stella, between gasps for breath, said defiantly, “I’ve got no praise for someone like you. Plus, when did I ever say I was all right with being your pupil?”

Lulu was teasing Stella. A smile rose to her lips. “You’re very difficult, you know that?”

“Anyway, if all this foolish talk is finished, you might tell us where it is we’re going,” Killean said seriously as he wiped his monocle with a handkerchief.

“We’re going to see the sugar apple trees that the royal family uses,” Lulu answered readily.

“What do you mean?” Anne asked.

Keith explained, “The silver sugar that the Silver Sugar Viscount refines is harvested from sugar apple trees that are used exclusively by the royal family. Every autumn, my father would spend several days away from the castle harvesting sugar apples. In order to secure silver sugar for the royal family, certain swaths of sugar apple forest are reserved for the private use of the royal family. They’re off-limits to ordinary people, or so I’ve heard.”

“He’s exactly right. And there’s a reason why the royal family has fenced off those sections of sugar apple forest.”

Lulu looked around at the crafters in the carriage.

“Now, all of you. The colors in the candy sculpture that I showed you and the colors in the sculptures that you made were different, yes? Why do you think that is?”

After thinking for a moment, Anne answered honestly, “I don’t know.”

Elliott also shrugged, as if to say that he didn’t have the faintest idea.

But the three intellectuals—Keith, Killean, and Stella—fell silent, perhaps because it annoyed them to admit outright that there was something they didn’t know.

“Well, it’s got to be because the quality of our colored powders was different. The powders that the Silver Sugar Viscount prepared must have had weak pigments.”

After a few moments, Stella made this assertion, as if he had seen through some sort of cunning trick.

“Those were the same powders that the Silver Sugar Viscount uses for the royal family. There are no higher-quality colors than those.”

After Lulu negated Stella’s theory, Keith raised his head.

“Did you mix something into the silver sugar to improve the color?”

“I do not adulterate my silver sugar like that. It would taste awful. The only taste that a fairy like me can perceive is the taste of silver sugar, you know. The sweetness would fade if we mixed things in.”

Without hesitation, Killean then asked, “Is it that you’re using special colored powders made with a formula that we don’t know, Lulu?”

“That’s wrong, too. You all keep going in circles around the same point. That’s why no one has ever grasped this technique, even after five hundred years. You can’t see the essence of it. Humans can’t understand the reality of candy making, yet I still have to teach it to them?”

Lulu sighed. She seemed disappointed in her poor students.

Anne leaned forward in curiosity. “And fairies can understand it better than humans can?” she asked.

“Of course. Silver sugar and sugar candy are directly connected to a fairy’s body and soul.”

“Well then, wouldn’t it be better for you to show your techniques to some fairies as well, Lulu? Wouldn’t that result in the best candy crafters?”

“The royal family thought the same thing about one or two hundred years ago. The human king in those days sent in several fairies to become new silver sugar fairies and told us to teach our techniques to them. They made a certain degree of progress, but that was all. Ultimately, none of them became new silver sugar fairies.”

“Why was that?”

“It must be the same way with you humans. If you captured other humans from somewhere, tossed them into a workshop, and made them train, would they become amazing candy crafters? No, they’d master a certain number of skills but make little progress beyond that. Someone needs to have the right disposition for being a candy crafter. That’s how it is for fairies. In the case of humans, those of you with ambition get together, so someone with the right temperament for it is bound to exist within the group. After the death of the fairy king, humans stopped letting fairies do the work of candy crafting. That meant they were oblivious to which fairies had the knack for it.”

“Couldn’t we just hire lots of fairy apprentices into the workshops we have now, then? If we do that, we’re bound to find some fairies with talent among them, right?”

Anne’s voice was full of enthusiasm.

That’s it! That would be wonderful!

If fairies possessed a keener intuition for the work than humans did, and there was a possibility that they could become better candy crafters than humans, then they ought to try it. It would be ideal if humans and fairies could work the same jobs without discrimination and develop respect for one another.

If only there were a workshop like that.

Anne and Keith had promised they were going to establish a workshop together; it would be great if they could make it into a place like that.

Lulu looked stunned, like she had heard something she couldn’t believe.

Stella snorted out a laugh. “Let fairies into a workshop? Fairy candy crafters? I’ve never heard of such a thing!”

“But in fact, you have. There’s one right in front of your eyes. Lulu is a candy crafter.”

“Not that I blame you, but you’re much too inclined to take the fairies’ side, you know that? You favor them because you’re in love with that fairy you’ve been dragging around with you, the one you call your friend, right?”

“No way!”

Anne flushed with embarrassment at his spiteful words, and her voice cracked as she answered.

In an attempt to cover for her, Keith turned to Stella with a stern look on his face. “Stella, that was rude! Anne was simply pointing out the possibility, that’s all.”

The soft, kind expression had disappeared from Keith’s face, replaced by hardness and determination.

“Keith, you’re too quick to take Anne’s side. Are you in love with her?”

“Why is that the only thing you can talk about?” Keith snapped.

Then Elliott grinned foolishly and leaned forward. “What’s goin’ on? Are we talking about love?” he asked slyly. “You really like love stories, right, Stella dear? Ladies always do.”

“Who are you calling a lady?”

Anne was relieved that Stella had responded to Elliott. He must have also noticed the hostility between Keith and Stella and tried to defuse the situation in his own way.

Stella glared at Elliott like he was cursing him from the depths of his heart, but Elliott looked entirely unbothered.

“Come on, it’s all right,” Elliott said. “I just adore love stories, too, you know?”

“What exactly is all right? Besides, I never asked what you liked.”

“Don’t be so cold! Let’s have fun telling love stories, Stella darling. Have you got a girlfriend? By the way, my fiancée ran out on me, so I’m looking for one myself.”

“I never asked.”

Elliott and Stella went back and forth along this silly line of conversation until Killean said with exasperation, “Stop it already. Are you children?”

Lulu smiled slightly. “You really are a hopeless bunch of students.”

The five candy crafters had nothing to say in response to her insult. Just then, the door to the carriage suddenly opened—it was Hugh. The carriage had come to a stop without anyone noticing.

“All right, we’re here. Everyone, put on your coats and get out.”

Exhaling white puffs of breath, Hugh jerked his chin and directed them to step out.

Lulu was the first to stand.

“Very well, then. I’m just here to do my duty. Let me show you all the true colors of silver sugar.”

They had arrived at an expansive grove of sugar apple trees.

“Wow! It goes on and on!”

Anne struggled to walk through the snow as she marveled at the scenery.

Spreading out as far as the eye could see were short sugar apple trees with slim, pale trunks and branches that were even slimmer, the thickness of a child’s little finger.

Sugar apple trees had never taken successfully to domestication, no matter how hard humans tried to cultivate them. If someone wanted sugar apples, they had no choice but to find a tree growing wild in nature and harvest the fruit there. And because the trees grew wild, one rarely saw groves of them on this scale.

As far as Keith knew, this sugar apple grove was the largest in the kingdom.

A low fence had been constructed around the orchard for protection. Here and there were little brick buildings, thin wisps of smoke rising from their chimneys. The soldiers who protected the grove were stationed there all year round.

Anne stopped to look around at the grove of trees. Joy danced in her eyes.

A normal girl probably would have been delighted to look at dresses or jewelry, but Anne’s eyes were twinkling as she stood in the middle of a grove of sugar apple trees bare for the winter.

She was a little strange, but even so, she was dainty and charming from afar, no taller than the little sugar apple trees. Like a puppy or a kitten. And yet—

—Sometimes, when I’m looking at Anne, I get overwhelmingly anxious and impatient.

As Keith was absorbed in his thoughts, someone wrapped their arms around his neck from behind, hugging him tightly.

“Whatcha lookin’ at?”

The person who had come up behind him was Stella.

“Stop it, Stella. You’re heavy.”

“She’s your rival, right? Anne, I mean. I’ve heard all sorts of things about the last Royal Candy Fair.”

“You should have entered, too, you know, Stella.”

“I was sick, so I couldn’t. It’s their fault for holding it every year during such a cold season.”

Without fail, Stella always fell ill around the time of the Royal Candy Fair. It seemed to have something to do with the changing seasons, but he always chalked it up to bad luck.

“Autumn isn’t really that cold, though.”

“Never mind that. More importantly, about earlier. What’s the deal with you taking Anne’s side over mine?”

“That’s because you were basically picking a fight over nothing. I just sided with the person who was in the right.”

“Staying above it all, as always.”

Stella released his hold on Keith and peered into his eyes. Then Stella opened his gray eyes a little wider, revealing a hint of amusement.

“Oh, but this is unexpected. You can’t hide that, can you?” Stella smiled slyly and lightly clapped Keith on the shoulders. “I’ve never seen that look in your eyes before, Keith. You’ve always been so suave and sophisticated. What happened to you? Now you look like you want something real bad.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Keith didn’t understand what Stella was implying. But the contempt in his voice was crystal clear. After he’d angrily answered Stella with a question, Stella shrugged.

“Oh, nothiiing, I mean just what I said. You want to make Anne yours, right?”

At Stella’s vulgar and direct way of phrasing his question, Keith suddenly flared with embarrassment. “I do get anxious with her around,” he admitted. “And I feel impatient. I’ll own up to that. But it makes sense. We’re both candy crafters, and she makes me want to keep working hard so that I can keep up with her. That’s what she is to me. And nothing more. Keep your weird suspicions to yourself. I’m going on ahead.”

Keith turned around and walked off angrily, kicking up snow as he went.

What the heck is he talking about?

Lulu showed the crafters to one of the small brick buildings near where their carriage had stopped.

The snow came up to about their knees here, but it was solid enough to walk on. Fresh snow had fallen on top of the old, frozen snow, so they were still buried up to their ankles, but they forged ahead, kicking it up as they went.

In the bright glare, their breaths came out white.

Fairies didn’t feel the cold, and Lulu was wearing a thin dress that made Anne shiver just looking at it. She was hardly tripped up by the snow at all, possibly because fairies weighed about half as much as humans. Compared to Anne, who was trudging along clumsily with a great deal of effort, Lulu cut an elegant figure as she floated along in her thin white dress. The wing at her back was nearly colorless and looked faintly golden as the sun’s rays passed through it.

Challe was with Salim, following Anne and the others.

When they reached the building, Lulu gave an order to Hugh.

“Open the door.”

Using one of the keys on the key ring at his hip, Hugh undid the lock set in the wooden door.

He opened the door. There was no sunshine inside, and it was cold and smelled of earth. A large number of barrels stood in rows on the stone-paved floor.

“All right, go in. Open the lid of a barrel and take a look.”

At Lulu’s insistence, the candy crafters stepped into the hut. She offered them no explanation as to what was inside the barrels.

Anne doubted that there would be anything terrible inside, but still, she opened the lid with hesitation. Inside was a liquid. It was a deep-blue color, dark enough to almost be indigo.

A short distance away, Keith opened the lid of a different barrel, but inside this one was a liquid that was such a deep red it almost looked black. The liquid inside the barrel that Elliott opened on the other side of Keith was such a deep yellow it almost looked brown. Stella’s barrel contained red. Killean’s was blue. Each of the barrels they had opened was filled with colored liquid.

The crafters looked at Lulu in confusion.

“What is this, Lulu?” Killean asked.

The fairy stepped into the building and stopped next to Anne.

“You know the flowers that signal the arrival of spring?”

The flowers in question were dainty, charming flowering bushes with thin petals and slender stalks that grew in clusters across the fields in the springtime.

They were delicate flowers, but their petals came in vivid shades of red, yellow, and blue, and when the fields were filled with these colors, the common people knew that spring had come.

“This is what you get when you collect petals of those flowers and boil them down. Right after a harvest is finished, you apply this liquid at the bases of sugar apple trees. You keep applying it for the whole year, throughout winter, spring, and summer. I’ve heard that this work is done by the soldiers protecting this place under the direction of the Silver Sugar Viscount, but we used to have companions who would do that job. They were called color fairies. Once autumn arrives, you harvest the sugar apples.”

Lulu stealthily reached for the slit in her dress. She appeared to pull something out from inside, but Anne couldn’t see it very well because the room was so dim. Just for a moment, the object in her hand glinted, reflecting the light streaming in through the door.

“Sugar apples that have been given this blue liquid for a whole year produce silver sugar in a vivid blue when you harvest them.”

Anne was shocked and looked down at the liquid in her barrel.

“Blue silver sugar?”

“That’s right. If you give them red, you get red. Give yellow, you get yellow. The silver sugar itself takes on the color. You all should know that you can make any color so long as you have red, blue, and yellow. The colored powders come in a tremendous array of colors. Do you know why that is? To mix in colored powder is, after all, to introduce a foreign substance to your silver sugar. Mix in too much, and your colors become muddy, and you won’t get the color you were going for. So you use a huge range of colored powders and try to get them close to your ideal colors. But if the silver sugar itself is vividly colored, then the colors will not get muddy. You can make any color you wish by combining silver sugars.”

Anne had never before considered the possibility of coloring the silver sugar itself.

Silver sugar was normally white, something to which you added color after the fact. But as Lulu had said, that entailed mixing a foreign substance into the sugar. It was such a basic principle, yet it had never occurred to her.

Give color to the silver sugar.

Anne started to tremble in silent excitement. The other crafters also looked down at the colors from the spring flowers in awe. There was a greedy twinkle in their eyes. Something they hadn’t known about before had been revealed to them.

At their level of expertise, they had been confident that they knew everything there was to know about sugar candy. In fact, nobody knew more human techniques for producing sugar candy than they did, and there was no one more skilled at using these techniques than they were. But that was not the limit of the craft.

There were techniques and theories about producing sugar candy that humans did not know. They could obtain more knowledge, new knowledge. That would develop the candy crafting even further. They’d thought they had reached their limits, but now their potential was expanding right before their eyes.

“…Blue silver sugar…red, yellow… Who came up with such a thing?”

When Stella asked this, Lulu turned to him.

“Fairies,” she answered him solemnly.

The response was weighty, like she was delivering the word of God. She spoke only the truth, without a single embellishment.

Still looking down at the liquid, Keith smiled bitterly. “So this is the practical application of that experiment where you tint white flowers with colored water? We did that when I was in school.”

Elliott scratched his head, making a mess of his red hair. “No additives. I see now. We’ve been mixing stuff in.”

“Magnificent,” Killean offered simply.

Lulu watched the crafters’ quiet excitement with an inscrutable look on her face. And then—

“The true nature of things always eludes humans,” she declared coldly.

Just then, Lulu yanked Anne’s upper arm. Before Anne could even be surprised, Lulu brought Anne against her chest and held a knife used for sugar candy crafting up to her neck.

“Huh…? Lulu?” Anne was bewildered.

“I’m sorry, Anne,” Lulu said gently. “Please be my hostage, just for a little while.”

“Lulu?”

Hugh started to step forward, and Salim and Challe readied themselves to attack.

“No one move.”

With her cutting tone, Lulu brought everyone to a halt.

Hugh remained calm. His voice was even quiet as he asked, “What do you think you’re doing, Lulu?”

“I’ve been serving humans for five hundred years. I think it’s about time I get a vacation.”

“Have you forgotten? The queen still has your wing. Even if you run away, you’ll die immediately.”

“I haven’t forgotten. However…now that I’ve come this far, isn’t it all the same, whether I get my wing torn to pieces and vanish or wait like this for death? If those are my choices, I want freedom, even if it’s only for a few moments.”

Lulu moved steadily toward the door of the little building, pulling Anne with her.

Hugh frowned slightly. He looked hurt by Lulu’s words.

“Give her here,” Challe growled. He looked ready to pounce. “Let Anne go, Lulu.”

Lulu laughed. “Do you want to come with us, Challe? With your strength, we ought to make it pretty far. That’s why I went out of my way to ask you to come with us today. I just want to be free in my final days. Help me, please.”

Challe scowled.

“Did you just say these are your final days, Lulu?”