Epilogue 2: Welcome Home
— 11:00 in the morning on the 1st day of the 2nd month, 1,548th year, Continental Calendar — Parnam Castle —
On this day, I was with my family in the courtyard: my fiancées of Aisha, Juna, Roroa, and Naden, along with my little sister Tomoe and her friends Ichiha and Yuriga.
It was a cold day, but the skies were clear.
We were just staring into the open blue sky.
Ahh, I couldn’t calm down! I was restless and on edge. Time seemed to be flying by so fast.
My feet seemed to be floating off the ground, and even when I came to a stop, my heels would lift up for no reason.
In my head, I wanted to be calm, but my body and heart weren’t listening.
“Oh, geez! Calm down a little, would you?!” Unable to watch me any longer, Naden complained. “You’ve been acting too restless all this time. If you’re a king, act more dignified.”
“Nadie’s right,” Roroa said, hugging Naden from behind. “They’ll come back, whether you’re actin’ impatient or not.”
“Hey, Roroa, don’t hug me.” Naden tried to pry the nuisance off of her, but it had no effect.
“It’s fine, it’s fine!” Roroa said, playing around by clinging to her.
They were right, but... Still, I was beside myself with worry, so what else could I do? After all, today...
“Your fiancée and children who were visiting family come back today, right? Why do you have to be so tense?” Yuriga said, sounding exasperated.
That was right. Today was the day Liscia and the children would be returning to the castle.
I couldn’t go to pick her up because of my duties as the king, but the royal family’s wyvern gondola had already been sent for her. I had received word she’d be arriving soon, so we’d all come to greet her.
Yuriga shrugged her shoulders in resignation. “Besides, I’ve never even met this Lady Liscia person.”
“Isn’t that all the more reason you should pay your respects?” Tomoe shot back. “You and Ichiha are going to live in this castle, so you have to say hello to Big Sister, okay?”
“I... I know that.” Yuriga turned her head to look away.
With a wry smile at their antics, Ichiha curiously asked, “She’s the daughter of the former royal couple, and was the princess of Elfrieden, right? What is she like?”
“A gallant and beautiful princess,” Tomoe said confidently. “She’s the big sister I look up to.”
“If you want gallant, my brother is more than a match for her,” Yuriga scoffed.
“Murgh... You’re always so competitive, Yuriga!” Tomoe glared.
Ichiha quickly got in between them. “N-Now, now, both of you calm down.”
These kids were the same as ever.
Aisha, who had the best vision of anyone here, pointed into the sky and said, “It looks like they’re here.”
Spinning around to search where Aisha was pointing, I could see a gondola drawn by four wyverns coming toward us.
There was an escort of wyvern cavalry alongside it, too.
The gondola slowly approached, and eventually set down in the courtyard.
Once an attendant opened the door, Liscia in her usual uniform and Carla in her regular maid dress stepped out, each carrying a baby.
“We’re home, Souma, everyone,” Liscia said to all of us with a smile.
Her slightly longer than shoulder-length hair blew in the wind and sparkled.
It was my dear children and a woman I loved. I couldn’t help but stare at this scene, which was like happiness made manifest.
Eventually I came back to my senses, and rushed over to their side along with my fiancées.
“Welcome home, Liscia,” I said. “Sorry I couldn’t go pick you up.”
“Welcome home, Lady Liscia,” Aisha smiled. “I was eagerly awaiting your return.”
“Hee hee, it looks like the babies are sleeping,” Juna giggled.
“Ya got that right,” Roroa grinned. “Which of them’s the boy, and which is the girl?”
“The one Liscia is holding is the girl, and the one Carla is holding is the boy,” said Naden. “I can sort of tell by their magic.”
All of us were speaking to Liscia at once.
“Geez,” she said with a troubled smile. “I’m happy for the welcome, but calm down, all of you.”
Carla walked over to me and handed over the baby she was holding. “I have returned, master. Please take the young prince.”
“Welcome home, Carla,” I said, reaching out for the boy. “Good work guarding Liscia and keeping her company. But... when you call him the young prince, it suddenly makes me feel old. I mean, it’s not wrong, though.”
Even as I said that, I took my child, and...
“Wah...? Ahhhh!”
He suddenly burst out crying. Huh?! What was this, out of nowhere?!
I panicked, and tried to calm him with a, “There, there,” but there was no sign he was going to stop crying.
Even when everyone joined in with a, “What’s the matter,” and a, “Peekaboo!” nothing helped.
We were at a loss for what to do.
“Let Carla hold him,” Liscia suggested with a wry smile.
When I handed him back to Carla like I was told, the boy immediately stopped crying. Then, just like that, he dozed off again.
With an incredible look of relaxation. Was he that much happier in Carla’s arms than his own father’s?
“It seems he likes it in Carla’s arms,” Liscia said. “Sometimes he won’t stop crying while I handle him, but when Carla does it, he will.”
“As a parent, I’m getting jealous of Carla...” I complained.
“Th-There isn’t anything I can do about it, you know?!” Carla, who was getting flack for something that wasn’t her fault, protested, but she couldn’t blame us.
Liscia walked over to the three kids who were a little ways away. “You must be Ichiha from the Duchy of Chima, and you must be Yuriga from Malmkhitan. I’ve heard about both of you from Souma. Welcome to the Kingdom of Friedonia.”
“N-Nice to meet you,” Ichiha said nervously. “I’m the youngest son of the House of Chima, Ichiha Chima.”
“I’m... Yuriga. It’s... a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
With Liscia suddenly talking to them, both the kids seemed a little tense.
With Ichiha, that was only to be expected, but wasn’t Yuriga being a little too tense? Her earlier bravado was gone entirely.
“What’s wrong, Yuriga?” Tomoe asked. “You’re all stiff.”
She seemed to find Yuriga’s reaction a mystery, too.
“Wh-What are you saying?” Yuriga shot back. “I am acting absolutely normal.”
“Are you?”
“Of course I am. You little squirt.”
“H-Hey, shtop thaaaat.”
Yuriga was stretching Tomoe’s cheeks again.
Seeing Yuriga like that, Liscia chuckled. “From what I’ve heard from Souma, you’re even more of a tomboy than that.”
“N-No, not at all...”
“They called me a tomboy princess, too, so I can relate,” Liscia said with a big smile. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Yuriga nodded quickly.
Oh, I got it. Because they were so similar, Yuriga might have gotten tense when she’d sensed the same sort of air she herself gave off.
It had felt like a bigger version of herself had shown up, the way you feel when an older cousin suddenly addresses you.
“Hey, Darlin’? I had a question,” Roroa said while pulling on the cheeks of the baby Carla was holding. “Do they have names already? I feel bad if you’re just gonna keep callin’ them ‘the boy’ and ‘the girl’ forever, ya know?”
“Hm? Ohh, I hadn’t told you yet. We did name them. Right, Liscia?”
“Yes. We decided Souma would name the boy, and I would name the girl.”
As Liscia, Carla and I stood in a line, we announced the children’s names to everyone.
First, the boy Carla was holding.
“This is Cian,” I said. “It seems like a lot of people use names that are close to their parents in this country, and he’s likely to rule this country as a blood relative of the Elfrieden royal family someday, so I gave him a name that established his link to Liscia.”
“Hee hee, Cian, is it? Well, that’s close to cyan, which means blue, so I can relate,” the blue-haired Juna said happily.
It seemed everyone liked the name, so... honestly, I was relieved.
Liscia showed the girl she was holding to everyone and said, “And for this girl’s name, I chose Kazuha.”
“Kazuha? Hey, you ended up choosin’ a name that sounds kinda like Tomoe or Kaede’s, huh?” Roroa asked.
“She’s right, it does have the same sort of sound as my name,” Tomoe said, giggling.
Yeah, but why did she choose that name? I wondered.
Liscia, with a soft smile, explained the origin of it.
“You know, because of a mistake early on, he ended up being called Souma, but Souma’s actual first name is Kazuya, right? When we’re married and he inherits the names of Amidonia and Elfrieden, he’ll be Souma A. Elfrieden, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what we decided on, right.”
“I felt sad knowing the name Kazuya would just disappear like that, so I gave this girl the name Kazuha. I thought I’d leave some proof that the name Kazuya did once exist,” Liscia said with a smile.
She’d chosen the name Kazuha out of consideration for me? Oh, crap. I was getting misty eyes.
If I burst into tears here, it’d be lame, so I held it in as well as I could.
“Kazuha, you say?” Aisha asked. “I think that’s a cute name.”
“I think it’s great,” Naden agreed. “It feels like a name from Souma’s world.”
It was kind of them to say that.
In the end, I had given a boy a name like Liscia’s, and Liscia had given a girl a name like mine.
It might seem too simple, but... you could feel a definite bond there, so we liked it. Hopefully the kids would like their names, too.
And so, turning around and pointing to the castle for the twins, I said, “Cian, Kazuha, can you see it? This is your home starting today.”
“They’re both asleep, so of course they can’t,” Liscia teased me.
Everyone laughed.
As I scratched my head in embarrassment, Liscia walked over to stand beside me.
“I was away for a while, but I see the castle’s more lively than ever.”
“We’ve got more family, and you’re back now, too, Liscia,” I smiled.
“Hee hee. And there are going to be even more new members after this, right?”
“I’m happy to have more kids, but I think I’ve got enough fiancées,” I said.
“I don’t know about that. Knowing you, you might just go with the flow again, right?”
“I can’t... deny that.”
I had a record here, after all. Like with Roroa, or with Naden.
While we were talking about that, Liscia leaned her head onto my shoulder. “No matter what happens after this, I’m sure we can overcome it.”
“You’re right.” I nodded. “If everyone’s with us, we definitely can.”
We smiled together, listening to the happy voices of our companions.
The spring, which would mark two years after I had been given the crown, was almost upon us.
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