Chapter 4: The Day of Reunion
1
And so, the ninth day of the white month had begun.
It was now my fifth morning stuck here in this manor.
No matter how things played out, this would be my final day making food for them. What awaited me next? Was it my own destruction, or a fateful reunion with my comrades...? Come hell or high water, I was determined it would be the latter as I headed to the kitchen.
“You’re not supposed to make the same sweet as yesterday or the day before,” Roy informed me.
That was quite the troublesome order. What could I make other than hotcakes and cookies?
“Hmm... Um, there’s a question I’d like to ask.”
“What is it this time?”
“Here in Genos, do people fry food in highly heated oil?”
“Fried food, is it? It’s not all that popular.”
“Ah, but it should be possible with the equipment here, right?”
Personally, I found it difficult maintaining that level of heat effectively with a firewood-fed stove. But as long as I didn’t need to worry about how much firewood I used, it wasn’t all that tough. The real tricky part was finely adjusting things to keep the fire at just the right level.
Guess it’s time for my last resort: making donuts. With this my repertoire is pretty much emptied out...
Making the batter wasn’t all that different between cake and donuts. Actually, it was more that that was pretty much all I knew how to do.
Umm, I’m pretty sure you use eggs here, too.
After mixing together kimyuus eggs, sugar, and karon milk, I added in fuwano flour bit by bit. Since I didn’t know how to utilize the kind of butter they had here all that well, I made samples where I mixed in milk fat, panam honey, and both.
Next came preparing the oil. Borrowing Roy’s knowledge and assistance, I went ahead and poured plenty of reten oil in a large pot. I didn’t know how much the stuff cost, but this much surely wouldn’t be cheap.
And then, I had to just keep on adding firewood. However, I took care not to go overboard. Since I wasn’t used to heating oil with this setup, I had to be as cautious as possible.
When frying donuts, somewhere between a medium and high heat was appropriate, if my memory was correct. I waited a couple dozen seconds after the heated oil started wavering, then I stuck in one of the wooden skewers I had been using in place of long chopsticks to check the temperature based on the number and size of the bubbles produced. It made me a little uneasy knowing that the material used wouldn’t be identical to the chopsticks I was familiar with, throwing things off, but even so all I could do was eyeball it.
To start with, I fried up a single small sample at a high heat for around 180 seconds or so.
After flattening out the dough into a disk shape, I slowly lowered it in, listening to it make a satisfying sizzling sound. However, it seemed like it might have been going a little slowly. Thanks to the different qualities of the oil compared to what I was used to, though, I found it hard to ascertain.
From there I increased the amount of firewood bit by bit and added in more samples one by one. And since the level of oil went down each time I added more batter, it made maintaining the temperature a truly herculean task.
Still, the volume of oil we used held back the impact of those changes, so I managed to more or less get the hang of it before I could break down whining about how hard it was. The key point was the realization that it was fine keeping it at a high flame, just not high enough so that the donuts would burn, which brought my practice to a close.
Yeah, I could make fried food with giba fat too. So this training won’t be a complete waste, at least.
The ones with both milk fat and honey had the best flavor out of the samples, so that was what I went with.
And so, I set about molding the dough once more.
With my limited knowledge on the subject, I ultimately came up with four varieties: A ring shape with a hole in the middle, a rounded ball, a straight stick shape, and one made by twisting thin little sticks around one another.
Since I was worried about them coming out raw, I went ahead and made all of them on the small side. And since there wasn’t any baking powder to be had, they honestly came out pretty tough. If I made them too big, that’d probably be difficult for the pampered little noble lady of the house, since her jaw strength probably wasn’t all that great.
Then the question was what to do about the toppings. I still had skim milk left to make custard cream out of, but that felt like it’d make me come across as a real one trick pony.
Ah, there were simple ones where they just sprinkled sugar on top, too.
And by melting down sugar and spreading it on top, then letting it dry, that could give it the proper taste and appearance. But at any rate, for now I had no choice but to keep trying anything and everything that came to mind.
And so, I prepared myself to set about making the real deal... Only for a sudden, serious incident to occur. When I dropped the various lumps of dough in and kept an eye on them as they fried, one of them suddenly exploded.
“Whoa!”
The scalding hot oil wildly splashed upwards. Well, honestly it wasn’t all that much that made it outside of the pot, but it was enough to feel like a deadly danger when I was that up close and personal with it.
“Hot! Ah, hot!” I shouted, moving the vest away from my skin where the oil hit it. I really was lucky that it hadn’t hit my exposed hands or face.
“What are you doing, you idiot!” Roy yelled, tossing a hand towel he had dipped in the water jug and then wrung out.
Without a moment’s hesitation I slid that between my chest and clothing, then worked up my resolve to peer into the pot.
The one that exploded was the ball-shaped one, while the other three were sizzling away and turning a nice color.
With my long chopsticks, I went ahead and transferred them onto a wire mesh. Meanwhile, the ball-shaped one had taken on a strange form like a blooming flower as it danced about in the oil, so I fished it out too.
“Man, that was a shock... Apparently the dough expands too much on the inside with this shape, huh?”
I still didn’t know for certain what had caused it, but my best guess was this disaster had been the result of that shape being the hardest one to heat through.
“I’m the one who’s shocked here! Don’t go getting all crazy and dangerous right at the end like that!”
“I’m really sorry,” I said, turning toward Roy only to find him looking even paler than I was, with a hand gripping over his heart. Yeah, he really did look pretty darn shocked there. In fact, he was so rattled it made his face look a bit childish, and not so thorny anymore.
“It seems I was smart to make extra dough. I’ll be more careful with the second batch.”
“You’re doing it again?! Just make something else!”
“It’ll be fine. The problem must have been this rounded shape. I’ll go ahead and remake it into a ring instead.”
After removing the burning donut bits still left in the oil I adjusted the heat of the flames, then carefully submerged the fresh dough.
And sure enough, the disaster didn’t repeat itself. Apparently the ball shape really had been the issue.
“Geez, that was bad for my heart...” Roy muttered.
If you took it as fact that someone’s true nature showed in times of crisis, then maybe this young man wasn’t all that bad of a guy.
But at any rate, the second batch fried without incident, and so I set about trying all sorts of different toppings. And after testing the results, I decided that for the stick-and-twist types I’d cover them in melted sugar with a bit of panam honey mixed in, while for the ring ones I went with arow jam and custard cream.
If I had a bit more time on my hands I would have liked to try making some with jam or cream inside before frying them, but I couldn’t call it much of a lingering regret considering I didn’t even know when I’d be making sweets again in the future.
“Ah... These also have quite the mysterious taste...” Chiffon Chel stated with great satisfaction as she tested for poison.
Tonight’s dinner was now the only chance remaining for her to taste my cooking.
After she left along with the pages who delivered the food, I turned to face Roy.
“Um, would you like to try one too? I ended up making too many, after all.”
The young chef didn’t respond.
“I guess it was probably because they were fried in oil, but just taste testing was enough to fill me up. And since I’ll need to taste my own cooking experiments I’ll be making after this, I’d prefer to leave a bit of extra space in my stomach.”
“If you’re going to keep babbling about it, I guess I’ll accept. Still, you sure are different today...”
“Eh? Really?”
“Are you all worked up because you finally get to return home tomorrow? That’s the first time I’ve seen you make such a big mess of things, and yet you still look like you’re in a really good mood.”
According to Chiffon Chel, Roy was pretty much not acquainted in the least with his employer, Cyclaeus. And it seemed he couldn’t even imagine the old noble would be the complete monster that he was. Which meant apparently his impression was that even if Cyclaeus came back and realized what his daughter had done, the worst he’d do would be to send me home with some coins to keep me quiet.
As I thought to myself that I’d have nothing to worry about if that was the kind of conclusion things were heading toward, I replied, “That’s not true at all. That mistake earlier was entirely due to my inexperience. After all, I’m still ultimately just a novice.”
“If you’re a novice, then what does that make us...?”
I was a bit taken aback at hearing such a straightforward objection.
“Umm... Whether or not a chef is fully trained comes down to every aspect of our practice taken together, judgment included, right? I mean, I carelessly charged ahead and took on a challenging task like frying when sweets-making really isn’t my strong suit, and sure enough, I failed. So I’d definitely say I’m still a novice.”
“Your mindset isn’t even worth kimyuus feed,” Roy muttered, looking away. “In fact, having that sort of disposition won’t earn you a single coin, and can even get you killed. Chefs just need to think about making delicious food and nothing else.”
“Hmm, but wouldn’t you say that sort of spirit is important when it comes to cooking up tasty dishes?”
“If that ‘spirit’ of yours leads you to go up against the wrong person, you won’t be able to work as a chef at all...”
That statement of his seriously bothered me.
And it also got me thinking... Just how large was the scale of the culinary world here within the walls of Genos’s castle town?
The odds that this man, the first active chef I had met, and the man who used to be one knew each other... they honestly might not have been all that low.
“However, I’ve got no intention of trying to cook in an environment with no spirit at all. If you told me to get used to something like that, or else become unable to ever cook again in my entire life... I’d never want to choose either.”
Roy shot me an astonished look in response.
With that expression, I became near certain that my hunch had hit the mark.
In all likelihood, Roy knew Mikel... A tragic man who had his life as a chef cut short when he defied Cyclaeus’s orders and paid for it by having the muscles in his arm severed.
In that case, just how exactly did Roy feel about serving under that wicked noble? I seriously wanted to ask him, but I just barely managed to exercise self-restraint instead. After all, I figured that wasn’t the sort of thing to go talking about lightly right in the middle of the enemy camp.
“Well then, please go ahead and dig in. I’ve got to get working on my own cooking experiments.”
◇
And then, the afternoon rolled around.
Roy had temporarily disappeared from the kitchen, but he finally returned when the bell rang out for the third hour.
“For today, anything is fine as long as you use kimyuus meat. But this time... it’ll be for five.”
“Five people? The master of the house didn’t return sooner than planned, did he?” I questioned, stricken by a strange sense of unease, but Roy shook his head.
“Apparently a visitor suddenly showed up. The son of some noble.”
If we were just talking about some random noble, he wouldn’t have anything to do with me, assuming he wasn’t an ally of Melfried’s. This just meant I had to focus my attention even further so I didn’t hear any complaints.
Well then, what should I make? I’ve done cream stew, omelettes, piccata, and meatballs, so what would be fitting for the finale...?
Then, it suddenly hit me. I wasn’t sure whether or not it was a perfect fit for the capper, but there was a fried dish I was far more skilled at making than donuts: deep-fried chicken.
Let’s see, I’ve got tau oil for the soy sauce, myamuu in place of ginger and garlic, fruit wine to use instead of cooking wine, no potato starch but I should be able to make the fuwano flour work... I’ve even got sheel to substitute in for the lemon. So there’s no issue in terms of ingredients.
I’d made up my mind. To start with, the pages had tried to throw out the oil I had only used once earlier in the day, but I stopped them, only to be left wondering what to do with it. And so, I’d top things off for this final night with one of my specialties.
If I could just get a hold of something like panko and some eggs at the forest’s edge, could I try out giba meat cutlets too? This sure is opening up my horizons, I thought as I combined the fruit wine and tau oil, then tossed in some chopped myamuu to make up a marinade. Into that, I placed the kimyuus leg and breast meat I had carefully rubbed with salt and pico leaves. Since the meat had been pickled in salt to begin with, just 30 minutes was more than enough time to soak.
In the meantime, I went about making the side dishes. I wanted some sort of vegetable in order to add a bit of color, for sure.
What about shredded tino, acting as a cabbage substitute instead of lettuce? But from what I heard, they didn’t eat raw vegetables much here in Genos.
But doesn’t that make it all the more worthwhile to show them just how tasty fresh vegetables can be?
Since I had reten oil and mamaria vinegar, it would be easy to make up a dressing. And why not prepare some mayonnaise while I was at it?
My head and heart felt notably lighter than they had yesterday, and my thoughts and hands felt like they were moving more smoothly as a result. Jeeda acting as a messenger hadn’t resulted in any immediate change in my circumstances, but even so, I had been able to let Ai Fa and everybody else know that I was still alive and well here in this world. And that sure did do a lot for my mental state.
Still, if help doesn’t arrive quickly enough, I’ll have no choice but to try to talk my way to freedom with Cyclaeus. But I’m living through this no matter what, I thought to myself, feeling that resolve from the depths of my heart as I started on the dressing.
I sautéed up some myamuu and diced aria using reten oil, then added just a bit of chitt seeds. As I moved those to a deep dish and let them cool, I went ahead and grated raw aria and myamuu, and added a 7:3 ratio mixture of mamaria vinegar and reten oil. Next, I stirred it all together and seasoned it with salt and sugar to taste.
Since I wanted to differentiate it from the thickness of mayonnaise, I decided to focus on the acidity and refreshing flavor. To give it a bit of a kick and a unique flavor overall, I had added chitt seeds and myamuu, which were similar to red peppers and garlic. And the taste on my first attempt actually came out pretty satisfying.
After that, I made the mayonnaise, then I headed to the pantry to pick out vegetables.
Shredded tino alone would definitely feel lacking. And so, I decided to add aria and nenon. I thinly sliced the onion-like aria and chopped up the carrot-esque nenon, then roughly mixed them together with the shredded tino in a bowl. Nenon didn’t have as strong of a flavor as carrots, so I added plenty in order to grant the dish a brilliant orange color.
Once that was all prepared, the time finally came for deep frying.
The marinade had seeped in well, so after pouring beaten egg over the top, I sprinkled on fuwano powder. As for the temperature of the oil, I went with around 180 degrees, the same as with the donuts. Relying on the knowledge I had picked up during the day, I placed the kimyuus breast in the oil, and once more a satisfying sizzling sound filled the kitchen.
I carefully monitored the changes in color to the surface of the meat, and when the instincts I cultivated back home told me the time was right, I went ahead and pulled it out.
It had ended up a splendid golden brown. Yup, this was exactly how long we cooked it back at home and in the shop.
But since all the ingredients were different, there was no guarantee it would be best in these circumstances too. And so, I moved it to the wire mesh to let the excess fat drip off, and then I cut into it.
At the very least, it definitely seemed to have been heated through.
I gave it a taste... And the wonderful piping hot oil and meat juices soon filled my mouth.
Since the fuwano flour was closer to wheat flour than potato starch, it had a notably softer crunch to it. On a personal level I found that difficult to accept, but it was still plenty tasty.
As for the meat, it was wonderfully tender. And there were no issues at all with how the marinade seasoned the dish, so it seemed like the same amount of deep frying as back home worked just fine here, too.
Thanks to that, I was feeling a great sense of satisfaction as I turned and said, “Would you like a taste too, Roy?”
“Hmph... You sure are brimming with confidence, there. Like I already said earlier, fried food hasn’t been all that popular in Genos lately.”
“Is that so? Back in my home country it was enough of a staple that it never went out of style.”
With a seriously cautious look on his face, Roy picked up the remaining chunk of fried kimyuus and tossed it into his mouth.
With his eyes shut he carefully chewed it, swallowed, opened his eyes and said, “Damn, it’s delicious...”
“Thank you. Well then, I’ll go ahead and wrap up.”
As I said, I started adding the chunks of breast and thigh meat into the pot one after another. Using the resulting bubbles, I adjusted the heat, finishing up each one in as close to five minute time chunks as possible.
I then plated the salad in a similar round clay dish before finishing by garnishing it with sheel fruit.
Since the flavors would end up mixing, I prepared separate ramekins for the dressing and mayonnaise.
With that, tonight’s dinner was complete.
“This is the last time I will be testing your cooking for poison, Sir Asuta...” Chiffon Chel said with her usual fairy-like smile as she brought the chunk of fried kimyuus to her mouth. “Ah... This is my first time eating a fried dish, but it is incredibly delicious...”
“Yeah, I love it too.”
Once she had finished testing for poison, Chiffon Chel hung her head in a deep bow.
“Well then, I will transport this food to the dining room... I will assist you until tomorrow morning, of course, but you have my thanks for everything up until now...”
“I haven’t done anything you’d need to thank me for,” I replied, but then I realized... She must have been thanking me for all the food I’d made so far.
However, it wouldn’t be proper for a slave tasked with testing for poison to say such things. Even so, the look in Chiffon Chel’s eyes told me she felt the need to say so.
“So you intend to remain here in the kitchen, even on the last day...?” Roy asked after Chiffon Chel and the pages left.
“Yes. I can’t go wasting time, after all. So please let me stay, if it’s alright.”
Roy just silently set about starting his own work.
Normally there were cooking assistants or whatever around, adding up to six people cooking dinner, but people stopped dropping by once I started staying in here. Apparently Lefreya thought it best to limit my contact with folks from around the manor as much as possible. From what I was told, Roy was making the main dish for dozens of people all on his own, while the other chefs made up the side dishes in another kitchen.
As expected, Roy’s cooking had a really complex flavor to it. But according to him, he was quite restricted in terms of the variety and amount of ingredients and seasonings he could employ. Apparently the supplies here were ultimately prepared for their employers, while the servants were only allowed a small share of the scraps.
On the other hand, there were essentially no restrictions on the ingredients and seasonings he used for his experiments. After all, he was only using a small amount for that, and besides, there wouldn’t be any value in him staying here in this manor if it weren’t for the experience he was building up.
From his behavior and what he had said, it seemed that for Roy polishing his skills was his primary job, while making food for the servants was just something he did in his free time.
This is a bit of a digression, but he actually hardly used any aria at all in his cooking. I got the feeling that was related to the fact that Kamyua Yoshu had once told me that they were seen as an ingredient for commoners and were hardly sold at all in the castle town as a result. They were of course well stocked here in this kitchen, but it seemed Roy didn’t see them as something worth using.
They’re nutritious and delicious, so they’re a fantastic ingredient regardless of what they may cost... I thought to myself as I watched Roy cook while also doing my own experimentation.
“So it’s a stew for today?”
Roy had just added some fuwano dumplings with tree nuts kneaded into them to what looked like the milk fat and herb soup he usually made for snack time.
As he glanced my way, he whispered, “If...” only to hold his tongue.
“What is it?” I tried asking back.
“If I sautéed fuwano flour with milk fat and mixed it into this... How do you think it would turn out...?” Roy questioned while looking away.
It seemed he was asking how it would go, adding white sauce like I prepared for the cream stew.
“Hmm...” I responded, crossing my arms as I thought it over. “I’m not sure. This dish uses quite a lot of milk fat to begin with, and I get the feeling that thickening it will only make it harder to eat.”
It wasn’t as if every dish improved in flavor by making it into a stew.
When he heard my response Roy said, “I see,” and started stirring the pot. “Your skill must have earned you quite a reputation in the post town...”
“Well, the giba meat’s been a big help there.”
“Is giba meat really edible? Isn’t that stuff so tough that only the people of the forest’s edge can chew it?”
“That’s not the case at all. It’s just a bit tougher than kimyuus meat. And it’s certainly no less tasty, as it’s delicious grilled, boiled, stewed, and however else you may like it.”
“I find it hard to believe idle gossip like that.”
Now that I thought about it, I might never see Roy ever again after leaving this kitchen for the evening. Was he trying to talk to me now because he found that a shame?
In that case, he should’ve just treated me normally from the very start.
It wasn’t as if I found Roy especially hard to deal with. He might have been a bit arrogant and standoffish, but if we had met more normally and built up an ordinary relationship, I figured we could have been good friends as fellow chefs.
That is, except for one matter I couldn’t overlook.
“Um, how exactly do you feel about people from Mahyudra?”
“Huh? Why’re you asking that, all of a sudden?”
I had been prepared to take that question back depending on how he reacted, but fortunately he seemed just taken off guard.
“I mean, I was born in a foreign nation myself, so I don’t really have any understanding of the whole discord between Selva and Mahyudra. Do you hate northerners as members of an enemy nation?”
“You sure are hard to predict. But no, I don’t hate them. Slaves are just slaves.”
“I can’t say I fully understand that whole slavery thing either. This is an earnest question, but doesn’t it give you a guilty conscience, treating people you have no particular grudge against so poorly?”
“That sure is a gloomy issue to raise... Why are you bringing something like that up now?”
“There’s the matter with Chiffon Chel, of course. And also... I have an acquaintance with mixed blood from the north and west, too.” It had been a while since I had seen it, but Kamyua Yoshu’s aloof face sprung to mind. “I can’t quite say he’s the sort I can like and respect from the depths of my heart, but he’s a pretty charming guy. And I can’t help but feel he wouldn’t have ended up with such an inscrutable personality if it weren’t for the unfortunate treatment faced by people of mixed blood. So to be perfectly blunt, I truly can’t stand the idea of judging someone based on their birth.”
“But... citizens of Selva are used as slaves in Mahyudra, too. There’s no logic to just blaming us for that.”
“I’m not trying to blame anyone. I just question it. If folks still felt a deep hatred toward northerners even in Genos, located so far from Mahyudra, I could at least understand it on a logical level.”
Roy stopped cooking and turned to shoot me a real fed-up look.
“Let me just say, I’ve never gone and whipped a slave or anything. The only ones permitted to do something like that are their noble owners.”
“But you tried to throw a jar at one, right?”
“That was because she said all that ridiculous crap! Actually... Looking back now, I don’t think she said anything wrong at all...” At that point, Roy suddenly broke out in a childish wail, “What the heck? Since this is the last time we’ll be seeing each other, you worked up the nerve to complain at me? If you don’t like my way of doing things, then just come out and say it!”
“That’s not it. I really am just asking questions. I figure it’ll be good for me to have heard some opinions from westerners, for the future as well. But if I upset you, then I’m sorry.”
Roy stood there silently with a sulky look on his face.
And I was feeling bad about running my mouth when I apparently shouldn’t have, so I got back to my own cooking.
It was then that the door to the kitchen swung open, as if it had been waiting for a break in the conversation.
“Sir Asuta, if I may have a bit of your time... Lady Lefreya is calling for you...”
Naturally, that was Chiffon Chel.
“So is she finally going to give her impressions now that she’s had that one last dinner? If she would just release me afterwards, I’d certainly be glad.”
“No... It seems tonight’s guest is insisting on talking with you, Sir Asuta...”
“Huh? But he’s the son of some noble, right?”
“Yes... The second son of Count Daleim, Polarth...”
To me, every last noble but Melfried was an enemy. And even Melfried wasn’t a true ally so much as someone we had managed to form a united front with.
“I’d honestly like to refrain. I’m not in a position where I’d really like to become better acquainted with nobles.”
“You’re going to refuse a summons from a noble? That sort of thing will get you whipped for sure, even when we’re not talking about Lady Lefreya,” Roy chimed in, still wearing a sulky look. “Besides, he must like your cooking and want to pay you for it, right? You probably can’t expect a silver coin from the second son of Daleim, but there still shouldn’t be any issue accepting that, right?”
It seemed the ruling nobles weren’t all that loved and respected by the people here in this town, either.
Still, I couldn’t exactly go taking things quite that lightly.
“B-But I was kidnapped by force. Isn’t it sort of odd to have someone like that meet a guest?”
“I don’t know anything about that. Isn’t it possible the guest’s just been praising you and she wants to brag? Besides, even if he learns of that, it’s not like the second son of the Daleim house can go opposing the Turan household.”
This was all just sounding less and less advantageous to me.
“At any rate, if Lady Lefreya’s already granted her permission, I doubt you’ve got a right to refuse. So hurry up and get going.”
And so, after giving a sigh, I ended up accompanying Chiffon Chel and the soldiers down the hallway.
For me, the fact that Lefreya gave her permission under the circumstances was what was bugging me most of all.
Well, considering how simpleminded she can be, she may have just given permission without really thinking it through... She couldn’t be planning to hand me over to the count’s house or whatever, right?
Something like that, which Jeeda wouldn’t know of, would never make it to my comrades at the forest’s edge or Zasshuma. No matter how I looked at it, getting moved away from this manor would essentially be a death sentence for me.
If that really is what she’s plotting, I’ll lie my ass off as hard as I need to in order to stay here.
Sad as it might be, I just couldn’t imagine this being a rescue attempt from Zasshuma or Melfried. Though Kamyua Yoshu had told me Melfried had allies among the other nobles working with him, I figured they wouldn’t be able to move till tomorrow morning at the earliest.
Such thoughts ran through my head as we walked the labyrinthine halls, and before long a familiar set of extravagant doors stood before us. Apparently the lady of the house and her guests had been enjoying their dinner in that room with the chandelier and the four stone statues.
“Before we enter, allow me to make one thing clear. Though you will be conversing with the guest, you are absolutely not to reveal your name or background,” one of the soldiers guiding me stated, which I scowled in response to.
“If that’s what I’m being told, I’ll obey, but isn’t it rude not to introduce yourself when faced with a noble guest?”
“That isn’t for you to worry about,” the man replied in a monotone voice, then he called out through the doors, “I have brought the chef from overseas!”
With that, the doors opened.
There were indeed five people seated there, as well as Mussel standing guard.
Naturally, Lefreya sat at the head of the table. She was in a pure white dress like the other day, this one having just as many frills as before on the apron portion stretching up to her chest as she occupied that couch that could hold up to four people.
To her right sat Diel and her father. Diel had on a cobalt blue dress that was far simpler than Lefreya’s but still clearly of high class, and was sitting quietly in her chair. She was holding back her bangs with a silver hair accessory again today, and looked rather adorable. She wasn’t even looking my way, just sitting with a demure look on her face.
Since Diel was still here in the room, she must have been fed some sort of lie saying I had been properly hired or something.
At any rate, next to her sat a man I assumed was her father, who I was seeing for the first time. He had the small yet robust build you would expect from a southerner, and was wearing a high-quality collared tunic and pants that looked like slacks. His mustache and hair were plain dark brown rather than speckled like his daughter’s, and he had striking, stubborn-looking green eyes.
Across from them were today’s guests.
One was a man, and he certainly did have the appearance of a noble.
His outfit wasn’t especially extravagant, but he had an embroidered sash around his cream colored frock, and he nonchalantly wore shining accessories made with gemstones and silver around his arms and neck. The young man’s dark brown hair was combed down smoothly against his head, and while he wasn’t quite obese he was certainly a bit on the portly side.
His skin was naturally that of a westerner, and his eyes were a deep brown. This was undoubtedly the second son of Count Daleim, Polarth.
However...
To be honest, it took me a good while to look over the other people in the room in much detail.
And that was because my gaze was fixed on the woman next to Polarth, from the very moment I entered the room.
She was quite young, as well as extraordinarily beautiful. In addition to a silver breastplate, she had on a gorgeous long skirt that stretched from her hips downwards. And what could be seen of her legs through the slit in the side was positively captivating.
On her shoulders she wore a shawl embroidered with complex patterns, but her taut waist was entirely exposed.
Her long hair had silver and jewels tastefully braided into it. And the crescent-shaped bits of silver dangling from her ears were shining especially brilliantly in the light from the chandelier.
On top of all that, her fingers had numerous rings, and her wrists had thin silver bracelets swaying about them. If she weren’t so beautiful, that level of extravagance would have come across as unpleasant.
However, she really was stunning.
I had never met anyone so lovely as her before in all seventeen years of my life.
To top it all off...
The woman had long blonde hair, blue eyes filled with more strength than anyone else, and skin the color of creamy chocolate.
“It seems there’s no mistake,” the woman said in a voice that wasn’t especially loud, but was as firm as steel. “That man is a member of my house, Asuta of the Fa clan. With that fact made clear, I ask that you allow me to return with him,” Ai Fa stated in a commanding tone, clad in that gorgeous attire.
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