Colette’s Family
“I hope our Colette is serving little Mitsuha well…” said Erene.
“She’s an apprentice, remember? She’s still learning. It’ll be a long time before she’s ready to help her in a meaningful way,” answered Tobias.
Colette’s parents were at home having a conversation. Neither were the loud and chatty type, so the house instantly became quiet─a little lonely, even─when the bright and bubbly Colette wasn’t around.
They couldn’t be upset about the reason she was gone, however. Viscountess Yamano─the lord of the neighboring territory, the kingdom’s savior, the Lightning Archpriestess, and a dear friend of their daughter with whom she survived a near-death experience─had invited her to serve as a vassal candidate. That was an unthinkable success story for a child from a rural village. It would’ve been no less shocking if a prince on a white stallion appeared one day saying, “You’re the long-lost princess who went missing as an infant.”
“I still can’t believe that our Colette… Or that little Mitsuha became a noble─and not only that, became the viscountess of the land next to us and hired Colette. Truly unbelievable,” Tobias lauded.
“Hmm-hmm, me neither. It still feels like a dream,” agreed Erene.
The two stared into each other’s eyes.
“Colette will be just fine. She has her father’s strength, after all,” Erene said.
“And she has your wisdom and purity of heart, love.”
“Hmm-hmm.”
“Haha…”
They wrapped their arms around each other and giggled.
“Blegh!” a voice uttered out of nowhere. “I wish I could unhear that! I’m gonna barf…”
“Seriously. Dad summons us home because he’s got ‘something that needs to be discussed’ or whatever and the first thing we see when we get here is our parents making sweet talk… Gimme a break…”
A teenage girl and boy stood outside the door looking absolutely disgusted. There was only one public coach every few days scheduled to make a stop in this area. Naturally, the two caught the same one home, and upon opening the front door, they were subjected to the sight of an intimate and horribly sappy moment between their parents.
The teens were Colette’s older sister and brother. Her sister married and moved to a different village when she turned fifteen, and her brother had been working in the Bozes County capital since he was twelve. They’d both just come home for the first time in a while after being contacted by their father.
“Huh? Where’s Colette?” the two asked.
They apparently only caught the last part of the sweet nothings.
“WHAAAT?! C-Colette is friends with V-V-Viscountess Yamano, the Lightning Archpriestess?! And was hired by her as a vassal candidate?!”
Colette’s siblings were beyond flabbergasted.
“M-My baby sister…”
“That little Colette…”
“…is going to be a vassal of the Lightning Archpriestess!” they exclaimed.
The boy could only imagine what would happen if his employer found out. The same with the girl and the family she married into.
“We’re gonna get way too much attention! And it’ll be awkward!”
The fact that neither one of them thought of using their sister’s position to their advantage was quite telling of whose offspring they were. The daughter was living with her husband’s family in a nearby village, and the son was working in the county capital. They were both doing well enough in life to want to maintain the status quo.
“I trust my husband and my in-laws,” the daughter hesitated, “but there could be bad apples among their relatives. The village mayor and the other chairpersons are fine people too, but they’re still only human… Anyone could let themselves slip and act on impulse.”
The son grumbled, “My life’s gonna suck too if coworkers and clients start asking me to introduce them to the Lightning Archpriestess. That means there’s only one thing for us to do…”
“Let’s pretend we didn’t hear anything!” they chimed.
“We knew you’d say that!” Tobias and Erene saw it coming and laughed.
“You don’t need to go around telling people about Colette,” said Tobias, “but I thought it’d be best for you to know. I’d much rather you find out from us before someone else approached you. I didn’t want anyone taking advantage of your ignorance and tricking you or forcing you into making promises. It’s much safer for you to know than not.”
“That makes sense…”
They had no arguments against their father’s reasoning.
Colette was always a sprightly girl. She had her parents and her older sister and brother in her life, but there were no children in the village close to her age. Her siblings looked after her and played with her while their parents were working, but eventually, her sister moved out to get married and her brother left home around the same time to work in the capital.
It was undecided whether her brother would settle down in the capital area of Bozes County or return to the village to look after the household, but the absence of her siblings resulted in a period of terrible loneliness. It was at this time that Mitsuha appeared. Who could blame the poor little girl for growing so attached?
Colette had found Mitsuha on the brink of death and saved her by bringing her to the village, and Mitsuha immediately returned the favor by saving Colette from a pack of wolves. Of course she’d immediately feel devoted to her.
Never in her wildest dreams would she have guessed that Mitsuha was a noble─or rather, that she would soon become a noble. That was to say nothing of her becoming a hero to the kingdom and an envoy of the Goddess.
“So… How many people know about Colette?” the son asked.
“Hmm… Everyone in the village, for starters. There’s no way anyone missed the news that Colette saved an unconscious girl in the woods, and then that girl saved her by wiping out a family of wolves, getting greatly injured in the process. Word of that incident has spread to other villages too.” Tobias turned to his daughter. “That includes yours, right?” She nodded. “As for Colette training to become a vassal, everyone in our village knows. However, the mayor warned us not to tell folks from other villages. I’m sure you can see why.”
His children nodded. It didn’t take a genius to understand why they wouldn’t want word of Colette’s new position to spread. Some would grow jealous and others would flock to the village asking for mediation with Mitsuha so they could get hired by her too. Some people might even assume that Mitsuha paid Tobias’s family a hefty sum to recruit Colette. There’d be no issues as long as the knowledge stayed in this village─all who lived here were as close as family and would never betray each other─but other villages might grow hostile if they learned of this village’s connection to the neighboring territory’s lord.
Tobias elaborated, “The people here didn’t learn that Mitsuha is an envoy of the Goddess and the savior of our kingdom until much later when the traveling merchants from the capital brought the news. We all know now, and Count Bozes does too. I doubt anyone else knows that Mitsuha’s young vassal candidate is from here aside from the viscountess herself and her direct subordinates.
“Typically, lords hire vassals and servants from among their own citizens, or headhunt for talented personnel in the capital. It would never occur to anyone that Mitsuha hired a village girl from another lord’s territory. No one will ever look at Colette, a vassal candidate of Viscountess Yamano, and connect her to this village.”
“That’s…a good point,” his son said. His daughter nodded.
“In short, this isn’t something we need to hide, but we shouldn’t go out of our way to tell people about it either,” Tobias concluded.
The siblings fell silent.
Colette wasn’t a fountain of knowledge─she never went to school, after all─but she was far from dumb. She brimmed with curiosity, and dove headfirst into any challenge without fear. Her ability to draw the most optimal conclusion out of the information she gathered was more than enough to describe her as “brilliant.” The cute, energetic girl was the pride and joy of the family.
No matter how clever Colette was, however, she was just a simple village girl.
When you’re raised as a villager, you’re expected to marry a villager from your own community or somewhere close by. Live as a villager, die as a villager.
That was the fate of all commoners born in the backwoods.
But by some mischievous twist of fate, Colette was given a chance to leap out of her small settlement. And not only that, to become a vassal candidate and the best friend of a new viscountess who was also the Goddess’s envoy. What else awaited her?
“I wonder how far she’ll go,” Erene pondered.
“We’re talking about Colette here.”
“I think we all know the answer to that…”
“The sky’s the limit!” the family chorused.
“You know what I’m worried about, though? That she’ll break some of the viscountess’s expensive furniture and tableware with that monstrous strength she inherited from you,” Erene fretted.
“Plus, she’s got a grip that could crush a person’s spine when she hugs with too much enthusiasm. Hopefully no one gets hurt. I’d hate for something to happen to Mitsuha,” mulled Tobias.
Their son, however, wasn’t concerned. “Come on, Mitsuha is the Goddess’s envoy. I’ll bet she could recover from a broken spine in no time.”
“Oh, good point!”
It was true. Healing a broken bone, a sliced nerve, an opened blood vessel, or a torn muscle wouldn’t be nearly as hard as regrowing a lost limb from nothing. One night of rest was all she needed to recover.
Unfortunately, only Mitsuha had that kind of healing power. If Colette were to glom on to anyone else, there would be some serious injuries.
Thankfully, Colette only launched her torpedo hugs at her family members and Mitsuha─although an adult wouldn’t get more than a bruise.
“Changing the topic,” said Tobias. “Lately I’ve been hearing more and more people call this village ‘Colette Village.’ Not just in our area─folks from the county capital, other territories, and the royal capital have been saying it too.”
“Don’t tell me…” Erene trailed off.
“Yep. It’s probably Mitsuha’s doing. We’ll have to hope no one makes the connection to her new vassal candidate…” Tobias said. “Actually, no. That’s not a concern at all! No lord would be able to name a village in a different territory after one of her servants, especially not if that territory’s lord outranks her. Besides, this village has a name already. And what parent names their daughter after their village? They might even take this as proof that she has nothing to do with this village. Also…” Tobias slumped his shoulders, “…our fellow villagers have started calling us ‘The Colette Family’ and ‘Colette’s house.’ No one here refers to us by my name anymore…”
Tobias sighed as he stared off longingly into the distance.