“Yes, that’s right. This brooch once belonged to my mother. It was her favorite, and she would wear it all the time, so I’m positive.”
Ruri was surprised. That meant the space that she was sorting through belonged to Gibeon’s mother.
“Please, I beg of you! I’ll pay you for it even if it takes my entire life, so please sell it to me,” Gibeon continued, sinking even deeper into his bow.
Ruri, at a loss, turned to Euclase for help. “Euclase-san...”
“It’s your decision, Ruri. Those are your possessions now, after all.”
“I mean, that’s easier said than done,” Ruri protested, since they were items she had sort of illegally obtained while helping Lydia. As far as ownership went, Gibeon was the last owner’s son, so he had the right to inherit it.
“I beg of you, please!” Gibeon pleaded again, serious in a way Ruri had never seen him. She couldn’t just tell him no after that. She didn’t have any real emotional attachment to the items, so it didn’t take long to decide to forgo selling them and just give him everything.
“Okay. Wait just a second,” Ruri said, bringing out all of the things she’d taken from the pocket space now believed to be owned by Gibeon’s mother. Thanks to her telling Lydia to keep everything together, she was able to bring out all of it without hesitation.
As Gibeon checked them each one by one, his gaze was drawn to the portrait of a woman, and he murmured under his breath, “Mother...”
Ruri and Euclase, with their superior dragonkin senses, could hear him. What could he be thinking now, staring at that painting with those lonely eyes? He was the prince of a nation that was no more. There were people dear to him whom he had lost along with said nation. He had no doubt experienced hardships that Ruri couldn’t even begin to fathom.
“Gibeon, they’re all yours. You don’t have to pay me back,” Ruri said, not minding because she was never hard-pressed for money as a Beloved. In fact, she’d started to feel bad that she had tried to lay claim to all of it of her own accord.
“Ruri...” Gibeon stared at her, overwhelmed. “Thank you.”
Ruri smiled back at him as he bowed so deep that his lower half made a perfect right angle. And that was the note she wished it had all ended on.
“But I would feel bad if I didn’t repay you at all for this, so I’ll pay with my body!” Gibeon said, coming toward Ruri and flinging off his top, but he was immediately blown away by Kotaro’s wind yet again. “Gwah!”
The attack was a tad stronger this time around, and Gibeon was sent tumbling across the floor, eventually stopping when his head met a wall, which sent his eyes spinning.
Seeing that, Ruri and Euclase simply let out a deep sigh.
✦ ✦ ✦
A few days later, Ruri entered the pocket space with tea and snacks. However, there was a twist this time around. While they usually had their tea parties in Ruri’s pocket space, they were holding it in Quartz’s space instead today. Quartz was still in Yadacain to create a cure for the poison that had taken the life of the Emperor.
There existed a cure via Pearl, the Queen of Yadacain, but it not only proved ineffective unless administered in the early stages, but it also tasted so horrid that it caused fainting. He said he would be assisting Pearl with improving the formula for a while.
As for why they were having a tea party in Quartz’s room, it was because that was the only way to invite Seraphie. A living being staying in the pocket space for an extended period of time would experience adverse effects, but Seraphie had no such problem since she was a ghost. However, unlike Ruri, who had a contract with Lydia, she wasn’t able to move between other people’s pocket spaces; she could only enter Quartz’s since she was always by his side.
The logical conclusion was to have the tea party in Quartz’s room, but since pocket spaces were also a place where you hid your private items, Ruri wasn’t sure if Quartz would give her permission. There might have been things that he wanted to keep secret. But after Lydia had passed the message to the Spirit of Light and the Spirit of Light had passed the message to Quartz, he had given her permission more easily than she’d expected. Apparently, Quartz wasn’t very concerned about privacy. It was possible that he didn’t have anything substantial inside in his space. Since he Quartz didn’t mind, Ruri didn’t mind either as she entered with tea and snacks.
As expected of the previous Dragon King, the room was far bigger than any room she had sorted so far. It reflected the size of Quartz’s mana reserve. Although she’d never seen it before, Ruri wondered if Jade’s room was about as big as this one. As she looked around the space, extremely interested, she locked eyes with Seraphie, who was already there.
“Seraphie! Hello. How have you been?”
Seraphie giggled in reply. “Oh, Ruri. It’s odd to ask a ghost how they’re doing.”
“You have a good point,” Ruri admitted, realizing that was a stupid question for a person with no corporeal form.
“But Quartz and Pearl are doing well. I do feel like Quartz is getting bossed around by Pearl, but they’re getting along, regardless. They also have the Spirit of Darkness as a chaperone.”
“That’s good to hear.” As Ruri and Seraphie continued their harmless conversation, they made sure not to look at a certain spot, but you could tell that they were actually extremely anxious just by looking at both of their eyes. Lydia, not reading the room, approached them.
“So, this is Seraphie?”
“Lydia, I was trying not to point that out,” Ruri said, her concern put to waste.
“I mean, it’s right in your face, so you’ll see it even if you don’t want to,” Seraphie replied.
“Yeah, but I tried not to touch upon it because I knew that...” Ruri trailed off, looking over at Seraphie, who was now wearing an awkward expression.
They were talking about something that had stood out to Ruri ever since she’d first entered Quartz’s room. It was Seraphie herself, encased in a huge glass cube. Her face was pale and lacking the vigor of a living being, and she was clad in a dress and jewelry, making her look like some sort of doll.
However, since Seraphie was in front of Ruri as a ghost, the figure in the glass case both was and wasn’t Seraphie. It was her remains. Seraphie had been buried after her death, but she had a history of being pillaged by grave robbers.
Ruri had heard that Quartz had made it so that Seraphie’s grave would never be ransacked again, but she never would have guessed that she would be kept like a decoration. Judging from the shock in Seraphie’s eyes, not even she had expected her body to be so heavily guarded. Her grave had been ransacked, but the culprits had only been after the jewelry that had adorned her body, so her form remained pristine.
“It’s kind of weird to see your own corpse like this...” Seraphie commented.
“Yes, it’s not something you see every day,” Ruri agreed, knowing that she was dealing with the dead. She grimaced as she realized she was getting a glimpse at the level of Quartz’s obsession with Seraphie.
“Ruri, sorry, but do you have a blanket or something?” asked Seraphie.
“What are you going to use it for?” Ruri replied, not sure what Seraphie was getting at.
Seraphie pointed her finger at her own body. “To hide that, obviously! We can’t have fun chatting together with that along for the ride, can we?! Don’t you mind it ruining the taste of the tea?!”
It was a harsh way to talk about her own body, but Ruri couldn’t envision enjoying food and drink in front of a dead body. The fact that it was in such immaculate condition, as if it could start moving at any moment, made it all the eerier.
“Lydia, there was one in my space, right? Can you bring it here?” Ruri asked.
“Yes,” Lydia replied, and in the blink of an eye, a pure white sheet appeared from thin air.
Ruri carefully covered the glass case so that the inside couldn’t be seen. With Seraphie’s body out of sight, she felt a little more at ease. “Do you think Quartz-sama is planning on keeping your body here forever, Seraphie-san?”
“If that’s the case, we’d erase her along with the space after his death.” Lydia raised an eyebrow, putting her hand on her face and tilting her head slightly. “Wouldn’t it be better to bury her in the world where the humans live?”
“Fair point,” Ruri said, turning to Seraphie.
The ghost let out a deep sigh before replying, “No, you’re right. I’ll talk it over with Quartz later. I personally would want to be buried next to his remains after he meets his end...”
“In that case, I’ll talk it over with Jade-sama and Euclase-san. I would like to be buried next to Jade-sama too, so I know how you feel. I mean, I’m definitely going to die first, but you know what I mean,” Ruri said.