Time continued to pass, and when my fourth birthday was near, I made a request to my parents at the dinner table.
“Can I have an empty book for my birthday this year? Preferably one with a lot of pages.”
It was the first time I’d asked my parents for anything. They both looked surprised for a moment, but then Rook frowned.
“Yuri, what would you do with something like that?” he asked.
“It’s for a diary... I want to write down my thoughts.”
“Oh,” Rook exclaimed as he turned to Suzuya. “He can write already, can he?”
“Of course,” she replied. “In fact, I’ve nothing left to teach him.”
Suzuya was my language teacher, but there really wasn’t much more I could learn from her. That wasn’t to say that I’d gained a flawless command of the language, however—my mom’s knowledge was simply limited.
Suzuya had grown up on a farm, and Rook was a descendant of nobility. Her family’s farm wasn’t particularly prosperous, and her family name wasn’t even well-known locally. She was from a run-of-the-mill agricultural background, and she’d been raised like any other peasant.
Peasants in this country didn’t go to school, and religious institutions didn’t offer them any education either. At the very least, no education system of any sort existed in the area where Suzuya had grown up. She’d probably learned to read and write after marrying Rook—an unusual marriage in these parts, motivated by love—while they enjoyed life as newlyweds. She could write her own name and had no trouble reading signposts by the side of the road or the circular notices we occasionally received, but she was no scholar. Rook was technically a noble, so our home held a few books on law and some simple history books, but Suzuya couldn’t read them because they used difficult words.
At any rate, I wanted a blank book so I could write down the knowledge from my life in Japan before my memories faded and were lost forever.
“Please. If you’ll buy it for me, I won’t ask for any birthday presents next year or the year after,” I begged while bowing my head low.
“The thing is, books are a lot more expensive than you seem to think,” Rook replied. I sensed his tone slipping into his trademark lecture-from-dad mode.
“You’re right...” At times like this, my only option was to play the humble yes-man.
“It’s not that I mind buying it, it’s just that we’re not talking about a toy here. If you’re just going to scribble in it, it won’t be worth the money.”
Rook was absolutely right about that. The paper here was nothing like the printer paper or traditional washi found in Japan. All that existed was parchment made by removing the fur from an animal’s hide. Animal hides could be sold as furs just as they were, and making them into parchment required the extra trouble of stripping the hair, scraping the surface to create a thin sheet, and then cutting it into squares.
Needless to say, a stack of sheets that took so much labor to produce would fetch a high price once bound together in a book. I didn’t know how much they cost precisely, but I estimated that a book would be made from about ten hides, so I wouldn’t have been surprised if the value was somewhere between four to five hundred thousand Japanese yen. Obviously, blank books were less expensive since no one had spent time writing any text inside, but they would still cost a pretty penny.
I wasn’t asking for something as cheap as a new gaming console. I doubt many parents would have bought such a costly item at the request of a four-year-old who probably wouldn’t use it anyway. I’d told them I’d use it as a diary, but most parents would figure the child would use it for their doodles and tell them to just draw on wood instead.
But I wanted one despite all that.
Fortunately, mom had my back. “Darling, let’s buy it for him. Yuri is always doing chores around the house. I’ve never known him to want anything so badly.”
That’s right. You tell him.
“I know,” Rook said, “but a book would cost us four or five thousand ruga.”
“Oh... It’s that much?” Suzuya looked surprised.
Maybe surprised was putting it too lightly—astonished or aghast might have better described her expression.
Up until this point, I’d lived out in the sticks and I’d never actually been shopping, so I didn’t know how much four thousand ruga was. I wondered how many loaves of bread we could buy with that amount.
“Yes,” Rook continued. “Just think of the mountain of toys we could buy with a few thousand ruga. Why spend it all on a book?”
“I’ve thought hard about it and decided I don’t want toys,” I told him.
Toys are the last thing I need. They’ll all be wooden blocks or something.
“Please,” I persisted. “I’ll do whatever chores you give me. And I promise I won’t waste it.”
“Are you sure?” Rook asked.
Oh?!
“Absolutely sure.” I tried to look as serious as I possibly could, though I doubt my little face made much of an impact.
“All right...” Rook agreed. “You can start by working hard to help your mom. I’ll ask you to help on the ranch soon too. Promise you’ll do those things, and I’ll buy it.”
“Really? I promise.” I agreed without a second thought. I’d run out of new words to learn, so I was bored at home anyway.
“You really promise?” Dad didn’t look convinced. “This is a man’s promise.”
“Darling, you worry too much.” Mom came to my aid once more. “Yuri is the type of boy who keeps his promises.”
Judging by the tone of her voice, she had full confidence in me. That was actually a little worrying in itself—if anything, I was a lowlife.
“H-He is?” Rook replied.
“You’ll be buying the book in the capital, won’t you? Why not take Yuri there with you next time?” Suzuya suggested.
“To Sibiak?” he asked.
“It’s the first time Yuri has ever asked for anything, so he must really want it. If that’s the case, I think it’s best for him to pick it out himself. I’d hate to see him disappointed if you come home with the wrong thing.”
Nice backup. Mom’s absolutely right. Otherwise he might pick up the equivalent of a coloring book when what I want is a blank journal.
“That’s a good point. It’ll be a good chance to show Yuri the city too... I’ll be delivering a kingeagle next week. How about we go then?”
Seriously?
I’d just heard them use the word “Sibiak,” which, if memory served, was the name of our country’s royal capital.
I get to go to the capital? That’s more than I hoped for.
“I’d be delighted. Please take me with you. And thank you.” I broke out into a smile before I could stop myself.
When my parents saw the grin on their son’s face, they both smiled warmly back.
✧✧✧
A week later, I was riding a kingeagle with my dad toward the capital. It was further than I’d ever flown before. We crossed mountains, rivers, and several smaller communities until we came across something bigger—much bigger. It was undoubtedly a capital city.
Without having to be asked, Rook made the kingeagle fly in a circle around the city of Sibiak so I could take it in.
The place where I now lived was known as the Shiyalta Kingdom, and Sibiak was its royal capital.
I’d been imagining a large fortified city built on a plain or hilltop, but what I saw here was completely different. It was far from being fortified—in fact, there were no walls around the city at all. It simply extended across a flat region of land.
Sibiak was a city built along the banks of a great river, which had an island in the center. The river island formed a solid foundation, and the prominent towers of the castle built upon it appeared to soar to great heights even when viewed from the sky. It had to be the Sibiak Castle that I’d heard about in stories. And given that this was a kingdom, one would assume that a monarch lived inside. There was nothing primitive about the castle’s appearance—the whole thing was white, as if it had been decorated with delicate cosmetic stonework. The design wasn’t so much imposing as it was graceful.
Although the city had been allowed to spread out unimpeded, its sections—neatly divided by highways that formed precise, straight lines—suggested that this was a planned city. As someone who’d always been fascinated by medieval towns, I fell in love with this beautiful capital at first sight.
After we made a full circle around Sibiak, the kingeagle aimed its wings toward the island where the castle stood.
Once we were closer, I saw that the island was defended by a fairly high stone wall that ran along its circumference. I didn’t spot a place where a boat could dock, which meant that the bridge on to the island was its only entry point. The island itself was basically a fortress. Perhaps the city had been built with the notion that it needed no defensive walls as long as it was possible to hole up in the castle during a crisis.
I saw park-like areas lined with many trees dotted around here and there, and there was something resembling a military base near the island’s edge. The inner regions of the city included low buildings that looked like residences. As you’d expect from the center of any royal capital, the buildings were packed closely together.