Sugar Apple Fairytale - Volume 7 - Chapter 5.2

Lulu looked comfortable. She was sleeping peacefully. Suddenly, for some reason, Challe found himself aggravated with her. He placed one knee up on the bed and leaned over her.

“Wake up, Lulu.”

Lulu opened her eyes. She looked startled to see Challe’s face so close at hand. Her eyes bulged in surprise.

“What?! What is the meaning of this, Challe?!”

“Apparently, you want to know if I might become your lover.”

“…Huh?”

Ignoring Lulu’s frown, Challe put his hand on her chin.

“I don’t know anything about you, since it’s only been two days. I’ll have to try everything.”

“W-wait!! I just remembered! I was teasing Anne. Is that what this is about?! Don’t tell me that Anne really asked you about this? Did she tell you something about me wanting to make you my lover?”

In a panic, Lulu put both hands on Challe’s shoulders and pushed him away.

“I got your message loud and clear from Anne,” Challe said. “We’ll give it a try.”

“You idiot! Don’t even think about trying something when you look and sound so disinterested! It’s perfectly obvious that you’re angry with me!”

When she said that, something finally clicked with Challe. He realized why Lulu was so aggravating and why he was so irritated and angry with her.

“I was just teasing Anne about that!” she continued. “It just slipped out because Anne was moping about so much. Anyway, back off. Even if you don’t really mean it, having your face so close is unnerving.”

Challe straightened up. Lulu breathed a sigh of relief and slowly sat up in the bed. As she combed through her disheveled hair, she smiled wryly.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think she was so simple. I don’t want to try you out as a lover. I’m six hundred years old, for God’s sake. I’ve completely lost any interest in such coarse matters as love and sex. However—”

Lulu looked up at Challe meaningfully.

“When I see how upset Anne’s request made you, I can tell you also have feelings for her.”

“What are you saying?”

“The fact that you got mad when Anne asked you about becoming my lover means that you’re in love with Anne, right?”

Challe frowned, not quite understanding. Lulu’s expression turned exasperated.

“Can’t you tell? You want to stay by Anne’s side so bad you can’t stand it, right? Don’t you feel a wild, urgent desire to pull her close to you?”

He couldn’t answer. Because she was exactly right.

Lulu seemed to take his silence as affirmation, and she continued. “That’s what we call love, you know. You’re in love with Anne.”

Love?!

Challe was dumbfounded.

I can’t be! In love—with the scarecrow…?

It was true that he found her charming and difficult to resist. And that sometimes he wanted to touch her so badly he couldn’t stand it.

Challe had long since realized that those feelings he had toward Anne were different from the feelings he’d harbored for Liz. But this was the first time he had heard that those special feelings went by the name of love.

“What’s the matter, Challe Fenn Challe? Your face is a little red.”

Lulu grinned suggestively. Challe was annoyed, but he couldn’t find the right words to say anything back. Challe immediately took a seat on the edge of Lulu’s bed.

“What’s wrong with it? Go ahead and fall in love. Fall in love, have fun, get hurt.”

“She’s…a human.”

“So what?”

“I’ll make her unhappy.”

At that answer, Lulu looked at him in confusion, then laughed loudly.

“You are an idiot! If it were a one-sided love, it might make the other person unhappy, but if you love each other, you don’t have to worry about that.”

“Even if we’re both in love, we’re a fairy and a human. Our lifespans are different, everything about us is different. Even if we love one another, she’ll reach the end of her life having only known my companionship. As a human, she will leave nothing behind.”

“And that’s why you’re such an idiot. It’s stupid to say she won’t leave anything behind. She’ll leave behind proof that she lived in all sorts of ways. The results of her actions, the things she creates, the memories of the time she spends with people. Her presence will linger in many forms. And the question of life spans is of little importance.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Think about it. Even though we were both fairies, King Riselva and I lived for vastly different spans of time. If it had been left to nature, however, King Riselva would have lived a lot longer than me. It’s the same for humans, surely. Even if you think you’ll live the same amount of time as someone else, it’s common for one partner’s life to be cut short by illness or accident. It’s like saying it wouldn’t be worth taking a spouse because your companion might get sick in the future or meet with some sort of accident.”

“You’re just rationalizing.”

“Maybe I am. But you know, the most important thing about being alive is the many happy experiences and memories we accumulate. It would be a terrible folly to allow fear and anger to rob us of those things. But anyway, I suppose the question is, assuming you two both love one another, what happy memories might you make together?”

Challe knew that Anne did not dislike him. But he wondered if she thought about him as anything more than a reliable friend. Earlier, when Challe had asked if Anne wanted him to become Lulu’s lover, Anne had nodded.

Surely she wouldn’t tell the person she loved that she wanted him to become involved with a different woman? But this was Anne they were talking about. He could imagine her taking Lulu at her word and suppressing her own feelings for Lulu’s sake.

How does she feel?

For the first time, he was curious about Anne’s feelings. He wondered who she loved.

He wondered if she even had those feelings, since she had always been so preoccupied with sugar candy.

“Don’t be afraid. Bring it up with her and find out how she feels. You’ve got a chance at love, so what are you worrying about?”

Lulu’s words sank into his chest and settled there. It felt like they were washing away the unhappy future that Lafalle had predicted for him.

“It’s no use holding back, Challe. That hesitation is exactly the thing that will make both of you unhappy. You know, I envy you. These last five hundred years of mine have been empty. I have nothing worth remembering. My physical safety was always guaranteed, and I had no complaints about how I was employed, but really, I was just passing the days. By comparison, the hundred years that I spent with King Riselva were flooded with color. There were hardships, sure, but thinking back on it now, even those are just one more color in the palette.”

At those words, which Lulu had spoken so nonchalantly, Challe felt an intense rage toward humankind that he had not felt for a long time.

Though her physical safety had been guaranteed, being forced to live an unchanging existence here for five hundred whole years was torture. It was all the more so because it had gone on for so long.

“Do you want me to threaten the queen and take your wing back, so you can escape?”

Lulu waved her hand dismissively.

“If you do that, Marguerite will surely be punished.”

“Surely you don’t care what happens to the human who has control of your wing?”

“I do care, unfortunately. She’s been a good conversation partner for me these last ten years. I’m quite fond of her.”

“Are you a fool? You’re just grateful to have someone to talk to since you were already imprisoned here.”

“You’re right about that. But I can’t help that I developed some fondness for her,” Lulu mumbled with a soft smile.

“But you tried to run away this afternoon. If you had escaped, the Silver Sugar Viscount would have taken the blame. You don’t mind that, do you?”

“That I don’t. He’s a tough character. If I were to run away, he would be the only person left who knew my techniques. They’d come down on him harshly, but they wouldn’t take his life.”

“If you’d left your wing behind when you ran, it would have been torn up immediately. Even if you’d escaped, you would have had several days to live at best. Why do that?”

“…My life will be over soon anyway. I wanted to have a little adventure. That’s all.”

“Eat some sugar candy. You should be able to make the best candy there is and eat it yourself.”

“I don’t want to go to those lengths to extend my life.”

“Why not?”

“No matter how long I live, in the end, my techniques and knowledge both are going to pass to humans, and then it’ll be over. I’ll hand something cultivated by fairies over to humans, and my life will end. Even if I live longer than this, I’ll never amount to more than that.”

Lulu must have felt dismayed that the silver sugar candy techniques that fairies had developed would ultimately end up in human hands. It was all the more frustrating because there were still fairies around as well.

She had given up on passing to other fairies the knowledge that they had cultivated among themselves. She was helpless to change that. But it was sapping her energy nevertheless.

Fairy things should be in fairy hands.

It wasn’t anger but calm determination that suddenly surfaced in Challe’s mind.

No one knew Riselva’s dying wishes. Even Challe and his two brother stones did not know what legacy he had entrusted to them. But assuming that it was something very important for the fairies, it was probably not his duty to make war against the humans.

Fairy things being passed on to fairies—that seemed much more important than war.

“That’s a serious face you’re making, Challe. You seem to have a lot of different things to think about. You should shut yourself away someplace quiet until your thoughts are collected. The top floor of this tower, for example, would be perfect.”

In the state he was in, even if Challe were by Anne’s side, his feelings would be in disarray, and he wouldn’t know what to say or do.

He needed to digest what Lulu and Lafalle had said. And he needed to consider the hopeless silver sugar fairy stretched out before his eyes, as well as the dying wishes of the fairy king who had entrusted the future to him, and his own feelings, of course. He had been putting off thinking about these things for long enough.

“Could I stay here for a while?”

“I don’t mind. Marguerite and the Silver Sugar Viscount only rarely show their faces here, and it’s not like they would say anything if they saw you in here anyway. But leave that talk aside for a minute. The guy over there, is he an acquaintance of yours?”

When Challe shifted his eyes over to the spiral staircase where Lulu was pointing, he saw Mithril Lid Pod standing there, trembling all over.

That fool!

He wanted to shout at Mithril, the unlawful trespasser, for shamelessly intruding here. But if he made an uproar, it would cause even greater pandemonium.

“Mithril Lid Pod, why are you here?”

“I saw you through the window. You and Anne were acting kind of strange. And then you left. I thought it was odd, so I went to check on things, and Anne was crying.”

Challe wondered why Anne was crying. It was curious. But first, he had to do something about Mithril.

“Go back to the room immediately, Mithril Lid Pod,” he commanded quietly. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

But Mithril started yelling.

“What are you gonna do after you send me back to the room, huh?! I misjudged you, Challe Fenn Challe! Just one day after you pin Anne down, you have a secret rendezvous with such a beautiful lady! Even if you are nothing but a pervert, I thought you’d at least take some sort of responsibility after holding a girl down like that! You’re unbelievable!”

Challe almost felt dizzy at Mithril’s outrageous accusations.

“Who held who down now?”

“You pinned Anne down! I saw you! Clearly, with these very eyes!”

“Oh, good going, Challe. It sounds like you don’t need any advice from me.”

Lulu seemed sincerely impressed, and Challe put his head in his hand. How on Earth was he going to explain that to anyone? He was exhausted just thinking about it.

As Anne cried, her turbulent emotions settled down bit by bit.

Challe had gone to Lulu. At first, that fact had made her feel like a thunderstorm was swirling in her chest. But eventually, that feeling gave way to a sort of flat resignation.

She wanted to do something for Lulu, who had been a prisoner for five hundred years. Considering it was humans who had kept her in chains, Anne felt that as a human, she ought to do something herself.

Lulu wanted her freedom, but she couldn’t have it, and she had been instructed to teach Anne and the other candy crafters her techniques. If that woman wanted Challe for a lover, then as long as Challe was all right with it, Anne thought he ought to be with her.

It’s stupid to stand here crying. This is a good thing.

If Challe could give Lulu a reason for living, then her life could still be extended.

As her tears came to a stop, Keith asked her comfortingly, “Are you all right, Anne?”

“…Yeah.”

When she answered him, she was startled to realize Keith was still holding her in his arms. He was warm. His soft bow tie was right in front of her eyes. She hurriedly leaped away from him.

“Ah, s-s-sorry, Keith!” she said in a panic. “Did I get your tie dirty?!”

“It’s not dirty, and you don’t have to apologize. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but…is Challe the reason you’re crying?”

“No, I’m just being stupid… It’s about Lulu’s life.”

Looking surprised, Keith answered her with a question. “Her life? Lulu seems to be unwell. Is that because she’s at the end of her life?”

Anne knew she had messed up, but it didn’t seem like she would have any luck trying to deceive Keith, perceptive as he was. She nodded.

“Lulu’s got just one or two months left.”

“No…”

Keith was at a loss for words. Anne looked up at him.

“Listen, Keith. Would you make some sugar candy for Lulu? If we do that, it will extend her life.”

“Where did you hear about that, Anne?”

A voice came from the dim hallway behind her. When she spun around in alarm, Hugh came walking toward them from the other end of the hallway into the castle keep. The look in his eyes was sharp, and his presence was clearly different from that of the friendly, kind man that they knew.

Anne faltered. “Well, I…”

But Keith quickly interrupted. “Is it true?” he demanded. “Is it true that Lulu has just one or two months left to live?”

“It’s true. It hasn’t got anything to do with you all, so I deliberately didn’t tell you, but now that the queen knows, there’s not really any need to hide it.”

“How can you say it has nothing to do with us? We’re talking about the last days of the person who will be teaching us!” In spite of herself, Anne raised her voice.

Hugh answered her with a blank expression.

“Anne, humans who think the way you do are a rare breed. Do you think the other four candy crafters are going to do anything for a fairy, who they see as someone to be used?”

“Even if she is a fairy, she’s still our teacher. And please don’t decide for yourself how we all think,” Keith said, challenging him.

Hugh shrugged.

“In that case, go tell the other three about how long Lulu’s got left. Discuss it among yourselves. All five of you.”

“All right, I will.” Keith nodded.

Hugh suddenly took Anne by the arm. “Keith, you go to the room upstairs. I’ve got something I want to ask Anne,” he said.

Hugh tugged at Anne’s arm and led her into the darkness down the corridor. He opened the door to a room that was not in use and closed it again once they were inside. The only thing filling the empty stone room was the light of the setting sun. The air was cold. The chill from the stone floor they were walking across passed through the soles of Anne’s shoes right into the bottoms of her feet.

Hugh’s harsh aura was frightening. Anne backed up until she was pressed against the cold stone wall. She felt cornered.