Epilogue

Seven days later, a figure with a status eclipsing even Zenjirou’s was within the ducal estate.

There was only one person with a higher rank than Zenjirou in his position of Prince Consort of Capua: Queen Aura herself.

The original plan had been for Zenjirou and everyone else to return in a special carriage, but apparently, the details of the swarm raptor subjugation contained in the missive sent via wyvern was a shock even to Aura. Enough so that she used all three of her maximum uses of teleportation within a day to go and fetch her husband.

The first to greet her upon her arrival was Rafaello Márquez.

“Good day, Your Majesty. This is a rather sudden visit,” he said.

The man was one of her prior candidates for marriage and had probably expected the situation to some extent. The only sign of his surprise was a slight widening of his eyes as he welcomed the queen.

“This is an unofficial visit. I will be returning at once with my husband, so you need not spread the news.”

“Understood, Your Majesty. I shall guide you to Sir Zenjirou.” With those words, he immediately moved off to lead her.

“Indeed.”

The two walked through the corridors of the estate somewhat more quickly than usual. Eventually, they reached Zenjirou’s room, and the middle-aged maid in a scarlet uniform gave them a refined curtsy.

“Welcome, Your Majesty. Sir Zenjirou is inside.”

“Very well. It sounds like you have been a considerable help to him, so allow me to offer my thanks.”

“It is more than I deserve, Your Majesty.”

Rafaello, having guided her this far, excused himself from Ines and Aura as they exchanged greetings.

“Ah, Rafaello. I hear you have done the same. My thanks to you as well.”

“Not at all, Your Majesty. I was aided very much by Sir Zenjirou’s wise decisions.” Rafaello left after offering those words to her.

“Tch,” Aura scowled unhappily upon hearing Rafaello evaluate her husband as “wise.” But she decided that it wasn’t the time to concern herself with that and faced the door of Zenjirou’s room once again.

The queen shot a look at Ines, who answered, “At once,” and gave a practiced knock on the door before calling inside, “Sir Zenjirou, your escort has arrived. May I show them in?”

A slightly confused voice answered her.

“An escort? Who? Well, regardless, sure thing.”

With the answer given, Ines slowly opened the door, and Aura stepped inside at the same time. Then the maid closed the door so as to not interfere with the couple’s meeting.

“What? No way—Aura?! How come?!” he cried out in surprise.

“As Ines just said, I am here to escort you home. I do not have much time to spend here, so we will be departing presently.”

As those words came through the door, Ines thought she could hear a clatter.

“Huh, right now?! Wait a minute; I need to get my stuff together.”

“Just bring the essentials. The rest will be returned with Ines and the others on the carriage.”

“Uh, got it. Just a sec. Uh, my clothes, the flashlight... Huh? Where’s my multitool?”

“Are you ready? You are? Then here we go. Send all things in the space that I envision to the place—”

“Wait, right now?! I need to calm down first!”

Eventually, nothing more was audible from inside.

When the silence was absolute, Ines waited another moment and knocked softly before opening the door and peering inside.

“Sir Zenjirou? Your Majesty?” she called, but she received no reply. The only sign that someone had been living in the room until just a moment before was the faint scent of a person and their warmth, but the resident in question had simply vanished. “It seems they are safely home,” she said with a soft smile as she stepped into the now-deserted chamber.

◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆

If Zenjirou’s departure was sudden, then so was his arrival. He had no real idea of the distance between the capital and Valentia. He had effectively been abducted by his wife back to the capital, but it would appear that her statement of there being no time was no falsehood. As soon as she had seen him to the inner palace, the queen had headed for the palace proper. They would have no time to sit and talk things through in full until the sun completely set.

“Phew, I might feel a bit pulled around, but it’s good to be home,” Zenjirou said once he’d bathed and had his fill of the inner palace’s cooking.

He was now in his pajamas and lounging on the sofa. The room was filled with bright, white light from the six LED lamps in the room. As night fell, he took some cold fruit juice from the fridge that also stood in the bright room and took a drink. Having been away made him appreciate electricity all the more.

That said, he couldn’t just laze around; he needed to speak with his beloved wife—Queen Aura. He hadn’t seen her for some time, and she was as beguiling as ever.

Seeing her up close in her red negligee-type nightwear made him want to skip the arduous chat and just move straight to bed, but such conversations were among the sad realities of being a royal. He decided to get the annoyances out of the way as soon as possible and make the time for them to be happy and shameful together.

With that in mind, he moved from his slouched position to a more upright one, facing his wife with good posture.

“Right, let’s get going then,” he said.

“Indeed. I would hear from you first. What possessed you? Whatever the particulars may be, you left the city walls and took command? Explain that in detail.”

Aura’s expression as she spoke was serious and held a great deal of suppressed emotion.

This was not something he could laugh off as a joke. While he’d not had any inclination to do so in the first place, her expression stressed that, and he began speaking with a practically unprecedentedly serious expression of his own.

“Sure. Where do I start? There’s the events with Princess Freya and then with the huge raptor. They’re separate topics but there is some connection there. Well, first of all...”

And thus began Zenjirou’s long, long explanation.

“...and I realized what danger I’d put myself in once I saw the raptors for the first time, even if it was just their bodies. I guess that’s about it?”

By the time he had finished conveying everything, around an hour and a half had passed.

“I...see.”

Aura had begun their discussion with an almost accusatory look, but as she listened, her expression had gradually changed. When she heard that Zenjirou had already chosen Rafaello to command the subjugation by the time she had sent Xavier, her face drained of color completely.

Regardless, she had composed herself after a few moments and listened to the whole of Zenjirou’s tale, which was perhaps to be expected of a queen.

“Yeah, that’s about the size of it. Back then, I was the full proxy of the Duke of Valentia, and you temporarily had none of those rights, did you? So I thought I couldn’t just follow your instructions straight off. Did I overthink it?” he asked cautiously, only to be answered with an expressionless shake of Aura’s head.

“No, you were correct in your judgment. If you had done as I directed and simply dismissed Rafaello and installed Xavier in his place, I would have taken a lot of grief from the feudal lords.”

“Phew, that’s great,” Zenjirou answered, smiling somewhat happily at his decision to help Aura. “But, well...I’m the prince consort, and you’re the queen, right? So I figured if I just ignored your instructions, that’d be bad too, so I tried to follow them as much as possible while keeping Rafaello in mind, and the only way I could think of was with me at the top. Sorry that I did something stupid and worried you.”

He lowered his head deeply, and she shook her head wordlessly before answering. “No...I should be the one apologizing. You did nothing but risk yourself in order to correct my blunder.”

There was no doubt that if Zenjirou had taken any other course, things would have gotten much more complicated. If he had followed her instructions and placed Xavier in the top position as she had instructed, the feudal lords would not have remained silent. Conversely, if he had completely ignored her orders and kept Rafaello in place, it would have resulted in Aura’s promise to Xavier being broken. That would have, in turn, led to Margrave Gaziel—supporting Xavier—refusing to remain silent and could have even required Aura to levy some kind of punishment on Zenjirou.

That wasn’t to say there were no issues with Zenjirou’s choice, but it was far less harmful than the other two options. It was, without a doubt, a fine move on his part.

However, even understanding that, she looked all the more seriously at him and spoke. “However, I will tell you this now: avoid doing such things again. Your decision this time was no mistake, and you achieved the best result conceivable, which I thank you deeply for. Even so, if it exposes you to danger. I would much prefer to make the mistake and deal with the political uproar.”

Her statement was by no means only driven by emotion. Zenjirou was currently the only adult male with their royal line’s lineal magic, and that was just how valuable his life was. Political blunders could be mitigated, and any uproar from the feudal lords would settle eventually. However, if they lost Zenjirou, Capua would lose at least a generation of their greatest goal of rebuilding the royal family.

Still, pragmatism aside, his wife’s almost painful level of concern got through to Zenjirou, and he nodded in answer. “Yeah, got it. I won’t do it again.”

“Right, thank you.”

Silence reigned for a while. Eventually, Zenjirou was the one to break it. “So, to change the topic a bit, we managed to arrange a trade agreement with Princess Freya, though I’m not sure whether I should say we finished it without incident or just with modest conditions.”

Zenjirou had originally left for Valentia in order to meet with the princess from the Northern Continent. The latter half of the visit had been engulfed in panic over the swarm raptors, so it had stuck out much less, but it was the main thrust of their meeting in another way than the issue of the raptors had been.

“Indeed. Direct trade with a country on the Northern Continent without interference from any others on our own continent. Our prospects have considerably expanded. We were also successful in participating in the ship’s repair as well, no? We will not know until we can speak with the specialists, but we may even gain at least domestic ships of a significantly larger size during my reign.” As Aura spoke, her eyes took on a completely different light, full of ambition.

“This is just my impression, but that princess is no ordinary person, so you need to take care. It feels like if you let your guard down, she’ll take your legs out from under you,” Zenjirou replied, making sure to add his own warning.

On the surface, Freya was certainly a model princess, exceedingly amiable and graceful. However, considering she had left alone on this intercontinental voyage, she was certainly no ordinary royal. She claimed that her goal was to make gains for her homeland, but they didn’t know the circumstances behind her choice to determine if that was all or if she intended to get benefits for her own country by preying on Capua.

“Very well, I shall take care. However, she gifted us these ‘goats’ as a celebration of Carlos’s birth, did she not? I shall have to thank her when we meet.”

“Yeah. Honestly, that’s the best thing I gained out of this. Ah, they’re still in Valentia, though, so I’ll have to get them moved here. Who do we get to look after them? There’s no one in the country familiar with rearing mammals, is there?”

He’d heard that goat husbandry was relatively simple, but it would still be more than a complete amateur could handle. As Zenjirou fretted, Aura answered with a smile.

“We shall send someone to Princess Freya to learn. This is the first time you have actively sought anything. I would be all too happy to make preparations.”

“Thank you, Aura!”

Her claim that she would be all too happy was no falsehood. This was quite literally the first time he had actively said he wanted something since they had married. As long as it wasn’t excessive, Aura had wanted to do such a thing for him for some time.

“Also, I used the local sand and shellfish to make silica sand and slaked lime. They’ll probably bring it back, so try it out for making glass.”

Of course, most of the substance had been used to wipe out the scents of the raptors, so there might not be any left. But as he told her that, Aura smiled happily.

“Oh, I suppose that would be your souvenir from Valentia. Very well, I shall look forward to the attempt.”

The words “souvenir from Valentia” sparked something in his head for some reason.

“Yeah, that’s...ri...ght...? Am I forgetting something?”

It was an awful sensation, the certainty that he was leaving something out but not knowing exactly what it was he had forgotten. Zenjirou tilted his head back and forth with that feeling assailing him, trying to recall what he was forgetting.

“Forgetting something?” Aura asked. “What is it, something important?”

“Hmm, maybe? I can’t remember that either. You had just mentioned souvenirs when I thought about it.”

“Souvenirs? Did you intend to bring any for people other than me?”

She had been going to make a joke that he wasn’t to have an affair, and that if he felt the need, he should take a concubine, but he’d already stopped listening.

“I remembered...” he said in a strangled whisper, pale-faced. “Coral and pearls. I forgot Prince Francesco and Princess Bona’s souvenirs!”

He had promised to bring back materials for their jewelry from the port town. However, he had completely forgotten while he was there.

“Argh, what do I do?! It was a promise between royals! I’m sorry, Aura, but I need you to send me back tomorrow!”

“Calm down, we can get coral and pearls here as well,” Aura said soothingly, but Zenjirou recoiled.

“I can’t do that! That’s like buying your foreign souvenirs from Narita airport! It’s entirely against the point!”

“Okay, calm down. I cannot understand your example in the slightest. In which case, we can send a wyvern to Ines and Rafaello. We cannot simply use teleportation willy-nilly!”

“Ahh, but the duty of acquiring souvenirs holds that the giver must take responsibility for choosing the gifts themselves! Prince Francesco, Princess Bona, I’m so sorry!” Zenjirou continued, ignoring Aura’s confused attempts to calm him as he offered penitence for his transgressions.

To be continued in The Ideal Sponger Life 6.