Anxiety from the Son of a Marquis

“Right, I’ll be leaving now.” Mary bent forward slightly in an elegant bow. “Take a nice, long look around the palace, George. I think that you’ll enjoy seeing the greenhouse. Some of the plants there are quite rare.”

She stood up straight again, and the gentle waves of her platinum-blonde hair bounced softly. Her gaze narrowed gently as she looked at me, and I saw myself in the marine-blue of her crystal clear eyes. Her thin pink lips formed a smile, and a mild blush appeared on the curves of her cheekbones.

When she turned her lovely smile to me, I felt my cheeks flush.

“Thank you...very much,” I answered briefly, forcing my voice out. I just about managed to keep it from squeaking.

It had only been a few days since I’d been reunited with my first crush, and her beauty shone even brighter than I remembered from back then. I couldn’t look directly at her.

I felt so pathetic I could cry. I wanted to be closer to her, but everything I did ended in failure.

“Teo, Lutz, I’ll hand the rest over to you both,” Mary said to the two sorcerers standing beside me.

“You can count on us.” The burly, dark-skinned boy held his head high as he answered.

“Make sure you go back to your room—no dillydallying,” the slim, silver-haired boy instructed sternly. But his eyes looked kind, and I doubted that he’d meant anything hostile.

As if confirming my hypothesis, Mary answered with a gentle smile and didn’t appear to have taken offense. “Sure, sure.”

There was a relaxed mood in the air; it felt as though there were no nobles or commoners here, but rather, just people. Though I was supposedly in the same place as them, for some reason, I felt like an outsider.

I watched Mary leave the room while grappling with a sense of longing.

“Right,” the silver-haired one said. The two sorcerers spun back around and wiped away the easy smiles they’d been wearing a moment ago.

The slim boy—Lutz—glanced at me with his indigo eyes, and his gaze poked through the gaps between the thin silver threads of his hair.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said. “We’ve got other things to do.”

His stare seemed piercing, and so did his tone. This hostility I was feeling...was it just my imagination?

The dark-skinned boy—Teo—flicked Lutz lightly on the back of the head.

“Don’t be rude,” he warned. “This is the princess’s important guest.” Then he addressed me. “I apologize for him. He’s not great with people, but he’s an okay guy.”

Teo wore an amicable smile when he apologized, but his eyes didn’t look amused.

“No, it’s fine.” I grinned as I replied, but on the inside, I was thinking, Looks like I’m not particularly welcome here. My smile might’ve appeared forced, but I think I should be forgiven for that.

***

We arrived at the greenhouse, although the awkward atmosphere was unnerving. By this point, my curiosity had been dwarfed by negative emotions, but after my first step inside the lush room, my somber feelings vanished instantaneously.

The walls were paned glass on all sides, and the size of the room exceeded my every expectation. It was twenty meters long—no, maybe more. Bricks demarcated the flower beds, and a variety of plants grew inside each space. Water flowed through narrow passages along the sides of the beds. There was also a multitude of potted plants positioned on shelves that had been erected in one corner of the room. Droplets of water on the plants glistened in the brilliantly reflected sunlight which shone through the domed ceiling.

“Spectacular.” My amazement spontaneously slipped out in words.

I hadn’t doubted that a palace greenhouse would be an extravagant structure, but this wondrous space far surpassed what I had imagined.

I surveyed my surroundings as I ventured toward the rear of the room. There, I found not just more canals, but also a pond. Round leaves and thin stalks protruded from the greenish water.

“Is that a sacred lotus?” I asked.

Teo positioned himself next to me as I gazed into the pond.

“It is,” he said. “You can make medicine out of it too.”

“You can?”

“Yes,” Teo replied. “We pick the fruit in autumn, then divide the fruit from the seeds inside. We lay them out separately to dry in the sun and in the shade. Of course, the leaves, stalks, and roots can all be made into medicine as well.”

“So each part of it is useful,” I remarked.

I took another peek into the murky water. While I gazed at the lotuses, Lutz walked over to my other side.

“As for their functions, the fruit can be used for analeptics, sedatives, and even for antidiarrheal drugs, while the leaves and stalks mainly become hemostatic medicines. You can eat the roots too.”

I turned to look at Lutz without thinking, surprised that he would give me such a thorough explanation.

“What?” he asked, returning my stare with an irritated glare from his half-open eyes. His scowl seemed to be saying, What do you think you’re looking at? So I flicked my gaze away and replied evasively.

“Nothing... Just, you two really know what you’re talking about.” I considered it best not to be stupidly honest and reply, I never imagined you’d actually give me the full guided tour.

“Obviously we do,” Lutz sighed. “We’ve been training to be sorcerers for over two years now, so of course we’re gonna know this much.”

“Huh,” Teo remarked. “That means we’ve known the princess for more than two years as well.”

“Mary?” My eyes shot wide open after hearing Teo speak. They actually met Mary so soon after coming to the palace to be apprentice sorcerers?

These boys had been present in Mary’s life for two years when I wasn’t. The thought pricked at my heart.

“Mary, is it?”

I’d unconsciously pressed a hand to my chest as my head sank, but Lutz’s low voice brought me back to reality.

I turned to my side and was met with a threatening glare. The depth of his dark mood was incomparable to what had come before. Lutz was glowering at me, his eyes cold and brows deeply furrowed.

“I thought I heard you call her that earlier,” Lutz said. “Guess I wasn’t hearing things. You know her well enough to call her by a nickname?”

“I, uhh... That’s not...”

“You’re not gonna say you’re her fiancé or something like that, are you?” Teo asked from my other side. He was smiling, but his flame-like eyes harbored no shred of warmth.

Despite feeling the intense pressure on either side of me, I only blushed and cast my head down. I knew that the situation called for a different reaction, but I wasn’t mature enough to respond in a levelheaded manner about whether I was engaged to my first love.

“I’m not her...fiancé.” My voice grew quiet near the end of my denial. I sensed suspicious looks coming from either side of me.

“Sounds like there’s more to it,” Lutz said.

“So you’re not her fiancé, but ‘fiancé’ isn’t far off the mark?” Teo asked, no longer smiling.

It seemed that my half-hearted approach had only aroused their displeasure even further. I shook my head from side to side. “I was one of her potential fiancés. It was a long time ago. The chances of that future coming to fruition have been dead for some time now.”

My lingering affection for her had prevented me from denying it immediately. Maybe somewhere in my heart, I’d been naive enough to reason that we’d be afforded another chance after we’d grown up, even if the idea had been put aside once already.

“One of her potential fiancés...? Does that mean that the princess is already engaged?!” Lutz cried out.

“No,” I said. “I doubt it. If Mary had entered an engagement, word would’ve spread to my family.”

“Oh... Thank God.” Lutz wiped the sweat from his brow. Teo, however, was still deep in thought, looking uncertain. “What’s wrong?” Lutz asked him.

“Hmm,” Teo mumbled. “Something seems odd.”

“What does?”

“The fact that the princess doesn’t have a fiancé. I think this subject is too complicated to just say ‘thank God’ and put an end to the conversation.”

“What?!” Lutz gripped my shoulder and pushed me out of the way so he could yell at his friend. “Have you lost your mind, Teo? ‘Thank God’ is exactly what we should be saying. We’re talking about the princess getting engaged, so don’t give me that! Or do you not care if she goes off to be with some nobody?!”

“We’re the nobodies here.” Teo squinted his eyes in frustration at Lutz’s outburst. However, his expression rapidly grew grave. “That’s not it. I don’t want the princess to leave and marry anybody either. But that’s not what I’m talking about.” With a hand on his forehead, Teo closed his eyes and shook his head. He grumbled in irritation and paused for a moment. “If she had multiple potential fiancés, how come none of them managed to become her real fiancé?”

“Because none of them were up to scratch?” Lutz gave a blunt answer to Teo’s question.

I smiled wryly at his directness. “I’m standing right here, you know? You really don’t mince your words.” I would rather him be a bit more oblique about it, but this was much more preferable to hearing disingenuous flattery.

“You think so?” Teo asked Lutz. “Putting aside my personal feelings, I can’t see any problems with him. He’s more friendly than I’d ever have expected from an heir to a marquis, and he hasn’t even pulled us up on how rude we’ve been to him.”

“You’re right,” Lutz conceded. “He’s not what I’d imagined he’d be. Like when he said he wanted to see the greenhouse, I assumed that was just him trying to spend some time with the princess, but it seemed like he was listening to our explanations in earnest.”

“And he didn’t shrink away from being together with us,” Teo continued. “We might only be apprentice sorcerers, but we’re sorcerers all the same.”

“Guess so,” Lutz agreed with Teo, although somewhat grudgingly. “But he still didn’t get picked.”

Just as their high praise started to cheer me up, those last words gouged at my heart.

Are you trying to build me up or break me down? Make up your minds!

“That’s my point,” Teo said. “Maybe there’s some other reason...something besides a problem with the potential fiancés.”

“Another reason? Like what?” Lutz tilted his head, looking as though Teo’s words were lost on him.

“I’m not sure...” Teo fell silent in response to Lutz’s question, but he looked troubled.

Lutz crossed his arms behind his head, and his eyes rolled around the room in deep thought.

“She probably just got too valuable,” he muttered briefly.

“What?” Teo asked.

“The princess is beautiful, and smart, and she’s good-natured too. I bet they came to think that she was too valuable to hand over to some noble kid,” Lutz said dispassionately.

“You’re something else, you know that?” Teo said, deflated. “You’re giving me a headache,” he murmured while holding his head in his hands.

A lighthearted atmosphere filled the room, but I felt an inexplicable unease.

“Too valuable...” I repeated Lutz’s words quietly.

The idea had seemed crazy, but it preyed upon my mind. I couldn’t bring myself to dismiss it as ridiculous.