Side Story:
Serafina and the Captains’ Dinner Party
(THREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO)
“FIND LOTS OF MONSTERS today?”
A familiar voice called out to me while I ate lunch on the sunny terrace. I hadn’t heard Sirius approach, but now he stood looking down at the food on the table.
“Three salads, two meat dishes, three fish dishes, a soup, and a mountain of desserts… You have quite the appetite.”
“What can I say? I’m in good health,” I replied, unruffled.
The corner of his lips quirked. He sat down next to me and said, “I still haven’t received the report on this morning’s monster extermination trip, but I’m guessing you encountered a fair amount of the beasts, judging by your appetite.”
“…I’m afraid I don’t see how the two correlate.” I wiped my mouth with a napkin.
He laughed. “Ha ha ha, you don’t, do you? Well, for some inexplicable reason, your mana and your stomach seem to be connected. You’re always hungry after you use a great deal of mana, and you somehow recover once you eat your fill.”
“Oho ho ho. Oh Sirius, you can be so silly sometimes. I recently talked with some other saints and learned very few think to top off their mana by eating. So do you really think someone like me would do something so crass? Even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t admit it…”
Sirius tousled my hair like I was a child.
“So you finally realized. You’re ten years late, but I suppose we can consider that remarkable in your case. You’re wrong about one thing though: The number of saints who top off their mana by eating isn’t ‘very few.’ It’s just you.”
“Huh?”
Well, that was news. But…it certainly explained why the other saints seemed to walk on eggshells when they tried to explain things to me.
“Your mana reserves are phenomenal. The second-greatest saint has less than a quarter of your mana. On top of that, there aren’t any other saints who can use up all their mana so quickly.”
“Oh, is that so? I had no idea.”
His smirk softened. “It’s possible to forcibly recover mana by drinking a magic restoration potion, but it doesn’t compare to natural recovery. Your massive mana reserves probably take a huge toll on your body, so you compensate by eating a lot. Speaking of which…” He abruptly changed the topic. “You gave a captain some healing potions the other day, didn’t you?”
“Oh, right. I did.”
A few days ago, I was carrying a wooden box of healing potions down the corridor, feeling a bit bummed that I had made way too many, when I happened across the Fifth Knight Brigade’s Captain Alnair. I asked if he would mind taking a few off my hands, but before I could finish, he shouted, “Gladly!” I ended up giving him the whole box.
“You could find those sort of healing potions anywhere, but I figured more wouldn’t hurt given how dangerous knights’ jobs are. I hope they get some use out of them.”
Sirius raised an eyebrow. “You realize your healing potions are special items only the royal family can use, right? They aren’t something you can ‘find anywhere,’ as you say.”
“Huh?”
My healing potions usually went to my brothers, but they certainly weren’t limited to the royal family alone. The ones my brothers didn’t use went to the royal guard, the townsfolk, and others.
Sirius seemed to realize what I was thinking. “Officially, at least, only the royal family may use them, but no one would dare defy the noble Great Saint’s wishes, so everyone overlooks the healing potions you distribute yourself.”
“Wh-what, really? I had no idea!” I said, eyes wide.
…Wait, but that means I could keep distributing healing potions to everyone and pretend I didn’t know I was breaking the rules.
I grinned mischievously at my great idea. Sirius merely sighed.
“Moving along… The captains are so grateful to receive healing potions from you that they want to invite you to a formal dinner. Of course, they fail to realize a dinner with the one and only Great Saint will be an honor for them, not you. Please forgive the idiots. It’s my own fault for not keeping them in line.”
From the way he covered for them, I could tell Sirius loved his knights. Not that that was anything new.
“Is that so? Then I’ll gladly take them up on the offer!”
And thus, I would have dinner with the captains the following week.
One week later, I headed to the captains-only dining hall wearing a plain dress, Sirius at my side. I’d requested we use their dining hall so I could get a glimpse at their normal lives.
The doors swung open from the inside as we approached. Our four familiar captains stood crammed at the entrance: Second Knight Brigade Captain Hadar, Third Mage Knight Brigade Captain Tsih, Fifth Knight Brigade Captain Alnair, and Sixth Knight Brigade Captain Elnath. Their medals gleamed proudly on the breasts of their uniforms.
Though they welcomed me warmly, their faces were tense, and they gritted their teeth through the usual courtesies. These people were more comfortable with a sword than a salad fork—a formal dinner took them out of their element. So I appreciated them going to all this trouble for me.
I handed a pink package to Tsih, who stood near the entrance. “Thank you for your invitation. I made cookies for everyone. Feel free to share them.”
“C-cookies? Y-y-you made cookies?? All for me?!”
Alnair punched Tsih in the stomach…or so I thought. Tsih didn’t react much at all, his eyes only bulging slightly, so I must have seen wrong.
“Tsih, keep your sleep talk to yourself or I’ll mash you to a pulp.”
I could also swear I heard someone whisper a threat, but surely that was just my imagination.
I blinked to steady myself, while Alnair pushed Tsih into the background and said, “Did you by chance make these yourself, Lady Serafina?”
Maybe he worried I’d messed them up. “I did, but don’t worry. I make sweets often, even if I do get told it’s not a hobby befitting a princess. They should be palatable. Of course, they don’t compare to store-bought cookies, so you don’t need to force yourself to eat them.”
“Understood! I’ll savor the smell and preserve them for eternity!” Hadar said.
“I’ll pass them down as a family heirloom!” Elnath said.
“…Actually, please just eat them.”
Once greetings were out of the way, the captains led me and Sirius to the table at the center of the room. I exclaimed at the extravagant spread laid out before me.
“Oh my, what a feast!”
Dishes of all sorts cluttered the table from edge to edge.
“We spent the last three days holed up in the forest hunting all the delicious monsters we could find!” Hadar said in his booming voice.
The other captains hastened to elaborate.
“And it’s not just meat! We collected a bunch of delicious-looking fruits and some honey as well!”
“Our chefs used the ingredients to make all these carefully thought-out dishes!”
“And we all made sure to take baths to get the stench off us, then changed into new knight uniforms!”
I smiled at all this care and effort just for me. “Thank you, everyone! I’m looking forward to this dinner!”
Once Sirius and I sat, the captains served us, putting a little of each dish onto our plates. I eagerly took up my knife and fork, eyeing the incredible spread, then froze before I could dig in.
I’d been out on another monster extermination trip this morning and used a lot of magic, so I was plenty famished. I’d planned to snack a little before coming here so I wouldn’t eat too much at dinner, but we returned later than I expected, and I only had time to bathe and change clothes.