After a while of conversing with the adults in the delegation, I heard a voice from behind me. It was Albert, talking to the twins. As expected of our party’s leader, he could do things I couldn’t without a second thought.
“Hey, what are your names? I’m Albert.”
“Leo.”
“Theo.”
“Huh? What was that? I can’t hear you if you speak at the same time.”
Albert tilted his head in confusion. In response, they both clicked their tongues in unison. Albert gritted his teeth and clenched his fists at the younger boys’ attitudes. I thought I’d have to intervene if he blew his top, but somehow reason prevailed, and he stomped toward me instead of losing his temper.
“…You controlled yourself,” I observed. “Well done, Al.”
“Stupid little shits!”
He stomped his foot again, huffing angrily. I was impressed he’d managed to hold himself back. Albert was impulsive. To me, that was definitely one of his strong points, but compatibility—or lack thereof—with someone else’s personality also mattered.
“Oooh, what’s happening? Fill me in.” Corinne, who’d been chatting with Cody a short distance away, returned when she sensed drama unfolding.
“They looked bored, so I tried to break the ice with them, but they just clicked their tongues at me.”
“Hmmm,” Corinne considered. “And you’re sure you aren’t the one who acted weird?”
“All I did was ask them to say their names again because the first time they said them at the same time, and I didn’t hear them. So how the heck does that warrant getting tongue-clicked at?”
“Oh, then, yeah, that is kinda rude. I’d probably react the same as you.” Even as Corinne agreed with Albert, her eyes remained on the twins in question. “Well, if a cute girl like me went over there, they’d probably start chatting away. Right, Haruka?”
“Oh, um, perhaps.”
That’s not how they seem to me though. I didn’t think being cute or girly mattered in this instance. But while Corinne was both of those things, I also knew arguing with her would make her mad, so I just nodded vaguely.
“Fine,” Albert said. “You go and try, then. I guarantee you it won’t work. And then I’ll laugh when you come back defeated.”
“Ha! Just you watch. What are you gonna give me if I do succeed?”
“No way, not happening. But on the suuuper off chance there is someone who can get them to open up like normal people, I’ll do whatever they want.”
“Remember, you said it.”
Should I tell them that the twins behind us are listening to this whole conversation? Or should I stay out of it? While I weighed my options, Corinne walked toward the boys with her usual winning smile.
And before I could say a word, they’d already clicked their tongues in irritation at her and sent her slinking back. No surprise there. This time, Corinne was the one at fault.
“So. How’d it turn out?” Albert taunted her, getting in her face. “Hey, Corinne. Didja ‘chat’ a lot with them? Hey, tell me. Hey.”
She just clenched her fists just as he had been doing a few minutes earlier.
“Um, Al,” I started. “I think you should stop…”
But the moment I reached out to intervene, Al took a powerful blow to his stomach with a muffled thud. He bent over silently, shaking all over. He endured the pain for a while, before eventually dropping to his knees and looking up with tears in his eyes.
“…You really shouldn’t provoke someone who’s angry,” I finished
“B-But she always…does it…to me…” Albert mumbled almost incoherently, like he was almost afraid she would hear. Corinne herself snorted derisively.
I flexed the hand I’d stretched out to stop him, then squatted down and gave him a pat on the back. I suppose that’s just how childhood friends are.
By the time Albert recovered, Corinne had calmed down. She spoke in a normal tone now. “The second tongue click came just a beat later and it totally broke me.”
“Yeah, definitely the killing blow. It hit me real bad too.”
They nodded to each other in agreement. Considering that they’d grown up together, it no longer surprised me when they were perfectly in sync like this. Maybe the same things made them both angry.
“What are you doing?”
Suddenly, Montana popped out from behind some bushes, munching on something, and walked over to me. Poking out from both his sleeves were branches with berries growing on them, so that was probably what he was eating. He handed me one of the small fruits, which I tossed into my mouth. The sweet and sour taste was delicious for a wild berry. It was almost winter, and I was surprised that such things still grew in the mountains at this time of year.
“Nothing, really,” Albert said. “Those twins over there just keep clicking their tongues at us whenever we try to talk to them.” He pointed behind him, munching on the berries Montana shared with him and not even trying to hide his displeasure.
“Really?”
Montana plucked some more fruit from one of his branches, walking backwards while eating it. The twins waited, looking annoyed. Their expressions seemed to say, “Ugh, not another one.”
“Here.” Montana held out the branch to them, waiting patiently for a reaction, and even as they stared at him without accepting his peace offering, he continued walking backwards and holding out the branch. The path was uneven, but he skillfully maneuvered over all the stones and little holes in the ground.
“Stop it, that’s dangerous.”
“Stop it before you fall.”
In unison, the twins warned Montana about his dangerous manner of walking. To them, he must have looked younger than he was. Montana still didn’t stop, though, instead holding out the branch again and waving it in front of them.
“These berries are pretty tasty, you know.”
The twin on the right-hand side, Theo, reluctantly accepted Montana’s offering, and then Montana started walking next to him.
“I’m Montana.”
“Is that so?”
“I’m Montana.”
“Tsk, I heard you the first time.”
Montana repeated himself again, gazing intently at Theo’s face.
“I’m Montana.”
“All right, already, I get it, you weirdo! I’m Theo!”
“Nice to meet you, Theo.” Montana nodded, satisfied.
Albert, his arms folded, cocked his head so far in one direction that his whole upper body tilted sideways. “Jeez, he’s amazing,” he said. “How the heck did he get them to talk?”
“You better listen to everything Montana says from now on, Al,” Corinne quipped.
“Why?”
“You said you’d do anything for whoever got those twins to talk. Well, there’s your guy.”
“Nope, doesn’t count,” Albert insisted. “I made that promise with you.”
I smiled at their lighthearted bickering while I watched Montana and the twins. I wasn’t confident in my ability to talk to the twins either. In the first place, I’d never been particularly good at communication, and I may not have been as bad as that young knight, but I still didn’t know what to talk about with kids less than half my age. I genuinely admired Montana for being able to get them to introduce themselves.
“How old are you?”
“Thirteen. How about you?”
“I’m sixteen. I’m basically everyone’s older brother.”
“What? I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true. I’m older than those two, too.”
Montana was about two inches shorter than the twins. Leo, who seemed to be getting progressively more and more annoyed, interrupted Montana and Theo’s rambling conversation.
“Why are you only talking to Theo?” Leo asked.
“Do you want to talk with us too?”
Leo frowned as Montana looked inquiringly at him. “I don’t want to,” he said, “but it’s sort of weird that you’re only talking to him and not me.”
“I’m Montana.”
“A-And what do you want me to do about it?”
“I’m Montana.”
“F-Fine. I’m Leo.”
As Leo finally followed his twin’s example, Montana pulled another branch out from his sleeve and held it out to him. This is starting to get ridiculous. What in the world is going on with his sleeves?!
Leo finally accepted, but seemed to have trouble with such a long branch.
“You can break it,” Montana suggested.
“Are you sure?”
Montana beckoned Leo to give him the branch back, then snapped part of it off and handed it back to the twin.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Theo plucked a fruit from the branch and put it in his mouth, then glanced over at the branch Leo was holding.
“How come your branch looks nicer than mine?”
Leo switched the branch to his left hand as if to hide it, and stared back at Theo. “I’m not giving it to you,” he said. “It’s mine.”
“I never said I wanted it anyway.”
“You get along well,” said Montana.
“No, we don’t,” the twins said in unison.
“Yes, you do. See?”
The twins looked sideways at each other and smiled wryly.
“We’ve been together literally our whole lives, so I guess we’re closer than other siblings, right?” Leo said.
“I guess,” Theo replied. “Hey Montana, it’s hard to talk to you like this, so move between us.”
Now, the smiles on their faces were making them look like the children they were. How adorable. The group from Lejion gathered near us too, and the young knight from before—his name was Flad—stood there with his mouth hanging open.
“Um, what exactly did that boy do?” he whispered to me. “We’ve tried talking to the twins about all sorts of things, but they’ve always ignored us. Did he use magic or something?”
“It really does seem like magic, hm?” I turned around to look at them, but Montana and the twins were so engrossed in conversation they didn’t even notice me.
“Hm, maybe they let their guard down because he’s younger than them?”
“Montana is sixteen.”
His birthday had been the month after we met, so he was definitely older than Albert and the others. He did look really young, but the way he acted definitely made it obvious that he was older.
“But he’s so tiny.”
“Flad… Did you say something like that to those two? You know, remarks like that tend to annoy young people.”
“Ahhh, you know, I think I might have.”
That pretty much clued me in to why he didn’t get along with kids. As you get older, you forget about the things that bothered you when you were younger, so you have to be extra careful not to say something that might make your younger friends hate you.