Chapter 18

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 18

TITA was surprised by the girl’s boldness. She knew they would return to Adolunde with Ain—and how much Ain didn’t want to go back. Yuki was breathing heavily as if her anger hadn’t quite settled yet. Luca sighed from where he sat resting his chin on his hands and his elbows on the table.

Tita giggled. “Yuki, come now, calm down.”

“Eh?” Yuki looked at Tita with a red face. She must have gotten lost in the moment with all the excitement.

“Why don’t you sit? I’ll pour you some tea. Okay?” Tita suggested.

Yuki passively bobbed her little head and sat across from Luca at the table.

“You want a cup too, right? Luca?”

“Yes, please,” is all he answered.

“All right,” Tita responded. Nasette brought a tray from the small counter on the other side of the room. “Ah, thank you.”

“No problem. Was it okay to bring a cup for everyone?”

“Yes, that works just fine.” Tita took the tray from Nasette and poured the pot of boiling water over the tealeaves.

Nasette was incapable of preparing tea, so he always left it to her to carefully distribute the right number of tealeaves. In the past, Nasette once prepared a cup of black tea for Tita who—much to her embarrassment—was throwing a tantrum over the lack of good tea.

Nasette prepared a cup for her, but it was so bitter she spat the boiling tea all over him. He was utterly incapable of measuring out the tealeaves and timing how long they should steep. From that point on, Nasette only helped Tita by bringing her everything to do it herself.

Tita giggled as she remembered the past.

“You really haven’t changed, Luca. You are still as stubborn and dishonest about how you feel, as you were in the past.” His expression was unreadable, but the clearly disgruntled air exuding from him overlapped with the Luca she knew as a child. “You should just honestly tell them you don’t want to put them in danger; it would make your life far less stressful, you know?”

The black-haired girl’s violet eyes blinked in surprise at Tita. “Tita, what do you mean?”

“Hehe.”

“Tita,” Luca warned when he saw the vulpine-like smile on her face, but Tita pretended not to hear.

“You see, Yuki, in the past when everyone was still living in the castle together, the three of them were supposed to go on a hunting trip together. But Ain is the youngest of the three boys by several years, right? Well, Luca should have just told him it’s too dangerous to join them, but instead they told Ain he would ‘be in the way’ and left him behind. Things got messy afterward.” Tita clicked her nails against one of the teacups as she reminisced.

“Left behind, Ain hung out with me, but he really wanted to go hunting with them. He wanted to go hunting with the others so badly he decided to take me with him to the hunting grounds. We were severely scolded for hours by Luca and Nasette when they found us wandering around the woods.”

Yuki looked terribly apologetic after hearing how worried they were and apologized to Luca. Just when Tita thought Yuki was apologizing, she suddenly raged, “If that’s the case, why didn’t you just honestly say so! Ain was really excited and ended up following you there anyway!”

“That’s why I told him not to come with us from the start,” Luca countered.

“You didn’t explain yourself well-enough!”

Tita found their banter humorous and couldn’t hold back her giggle. The tea finished seeping, so she placed a cup in front of each of them. The subdued aroma of black tea with a hint of lavender wafted in the air.

“Ain said he wants to come because he’s worried about you, you know?” Yuki said to Luca.

“He’s always been a worry-wart. That’s why I don’t want him to know how dangerous these kinds of situations can get. He has no ability to protect himself if he gets pulled into a fight, and there’s a high chance I won’t always be able to protect him.”

Tita was surprised Luca actually revealed how he truly felt for once—she froze with her teacup halfway to her mouth. Only Yuki smiled broadly.

“…I see. I’m sorry for demanding something selfish. But I can’t stand going back and being in reach of that rotten, nasty man, so I’m coming with you either way,” Yuki stressed. Tita smiled at the girl’s strength.

It would be impossible for me to stay as strong as Yuki if I were in the same situation. Yuki said she’s from another world. I have no idea where exactly that is, but she must truly be from a distant continent if she views Adolunde and even Aridol as different. She told me she suddenly appeared in this land with all its cultural and lifestyle differences. And Luca took her in when she had nowhere else to go.

Tita heard all about Yuki’s world last night before they went to sleep. She learned Yuki was raised in a very convenient, peaceful, and prosperous country. And yet, regardless of her young age—as Tita still considered her around ten—she remained strong despite being dragged into a dreadful war.

Yuki even admitted to Tita about not knowing what war truly meant. Despite almost being used by Orga, getting kidnapped, and having her clothes ripped off her, she remained firm and unbroken. Tita envied Yuki’s strength.

Tita heard something clatter against the door. She couldn’t see who was on the other side of the closed door, but she had a pretty good idea. She smiled and walked over.

“You overheard, didn’t you?” She quietly opened the door to reveal a red-faced Ain standing there like a statue. He held both hands over his flushed cheeks.

“No, well, I was given a letter from a messenger when I went outside, so I turned back to deliver it, and…”

The flustered Ain was a nostalgic sight to Tita. His current distress overlapped with the time he frantically tried to make excuses when Luca caught them at the hunting grounds.

“I-I had no idea Prince Luca thought that way,” Ain stuttered.

“You truly are a foolish man,” Tita said to him.

“W-What do you mean I’m foolish?”

Tita giggled and handed him the teacup she hadn’t taken a sip from yet. Ain pouted as he took the cup off the saucer.

“You really are foolish.”

Because you aren’t honest with yourself, Tita thought.

Tita had been walking a dark road for a long, long time. The days she spent as a prisoner of war were grim, and every day was gray. She lived a life where she spent every moment hoping she wouldn’t be persecuted yet—praying for just one more day, fully aware she would be executed if Aridol returned to all-out war.

Ever since she escaped, her eyes could see nothing other than despair. She spent every day shuddering in fear of the day their pursuers would catch them—of the day they could no longer run. She desperately scraped together the fragments of fading memories of a warm and nostalgic past, and clung to them—dreaming every single day of a time she could smile again.

The area around her eyes warmed with unshed tears. Ain placed his empty cup back on its saucer, his eyes widening when he saw Tita’s face.

“Wh-Wh-Why are you crying!”

“Huh?” Unbeknown to her, tears were rolling down her cheeks. “Don’t look.” She quickly rubbed at her eyes with her sleeves.

“S-Something got in my eyes, is all! It’s nothing!” she emphasized.

I have to go somewhere dangerous again. The flustered young man in front of her was the one bringing her to that dangerous place.

But we don’t know whether anywhere is truly safe for us in the first place. If we are going to be pursued no matter where we go, at the very least I want to stay with the one responsible for those gentle memories. Perhaps I am the fool for thinking so?