Just as always, Carome’s home was obsessively clean. While the fact that it was adorned with the flowers she’d grown outside was all fine and well, the arrangement and types on display were so strikingly unchanged that it was just a bit frightening. Even the aroma of the tea she offered them was exactly as it had been, so much so that Watt found himself stricken with the strange suspicion that this might all be some big prank.
Just as methodical as ever, isn’t she? She was really popular back then, but most of the guys got too scared at how obsessive she was and ended up running off.
Looking at all this now, I bet she’s still single too. The thought crossed Watt’s mind, but he was wise enough now to refrain from saying that—he valued his life too much. As proof, Watt found himself on the receiving end of Carome’s sharp gaze from behind her glasses.
“You had a rude thought just then, didn’t you?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it!” Watt said. “There’s no way I’d ever think anything like that about a friend I’ve just reunited with!”
“You’ve got ‘lying’ written all over your face,” Carome replied. “Looks like you haven’t changed a bit—whether that’s a good thing or not is another matter.”
Watt sighed and took a sip of the tea he’d been offered. It was every bit as delicious as it had been last time.
“So when you say she’s your old friend, you mean you were friends back when you were a royal knight, right?” Anna asked.
“Somethin’ like that,” Watt answered. “But all that matters is that it looks like she’s still at it.”
“And just whose fault do you think that is?” Carome demanded. “More importantly, you have a lot you need to tell me. Like how in the world you wound up on the wanted list, what you’re doing together with Lady Anna, and who that kid you’re calling your disciple is.”
“Hey now, I’m not a ki—!”
“Yeah, yeah, I hear ya! Look, it’ll be a real pain to explain, so let’s save that for later,” Watt said, gently putting a stop to it when he noticed Meddié about to protest. “To put it nice and simple, Anna showed up outta nowhere—said she was mine and Cullina’s daughter. Some ruffians ended up coming after us ’cause of that, so I beat ’em up and then wound up on the wanted list.”
“There’s not a single part about that that’s even remotely ‘simple,’ just so you know,” Carome objected.
“Well then, maybe this’ll make more sense to you,” Watt replied. “The one who’s going after Anna is almost certainly a certain someone from the royal family.”
“The royal family,” Carome repeated back. “This has to be about Legalisbelm, any way you look at it. There’s no getting around it; we’ve got a headache and a half on our hands here. If you were going to show up out of nowhere seventeen years later, don’t you think you could’ve brought along a bit more of a considerate gift than all this?”
“I’m real sorry ’bout that,” Watt said. “But listen, I never woulda even thought about comin’ back to the capital till all this went down.”
“I figured you’d never come back either,” Carome retorted.
The two locked eyes. The first one to look away, however, was Watt. He knew full well that he’d been the one to leave after defiantly saying exactly what he’d thought. Anna and Meddié, meanwhile, were busy comparing the looks on their faces.
“Hey, Anna,” Meddié started, “master said that she was his peer back in the day, but do you think when it came to him, she...”
“Erm, Meddié,” Anna replied, “I think we shouldn’t say anything based on speculation.”
Anna had only just learned the other day that Watt was the former Top Knight of the Kingdom and had served as a royal knight. She knew of several royal knights, but she’d spent her days unaware of the fact that she had a friend in one of them.
Carome sighed and regained her composure. “And? You said you were attacked by ruffians, so just how big of a foe are we dealing with?”
“Well, we’re looking at a whole army in the service of some high-and-mighty noble,” Watt answered. “They had enough men to crush a city or two at the very least.”
The exasperation emerging on Carome’s face as she listened was clear. “You really haven’t grown up one bit, have you? You leave the royal knights, and what do you do but wind up raging against a whole army again?”
“Spare me the sermon!”
Anna took that opportunity to lean forward. “Oh. Did father always act like this?”
“Indeed he did, Princess,” Carome answered. “This one here? Just because he had some muscle to throw around, he took the bait for every fight that came his way. In an attack, he’d always be the first to charge right in. It didn’t matter whether it was a throng of monsters or a whole squadron—it didn’t faze him one bit. No matter how much Cullina and I warned him, he wasn’t about to listen to—”
“All right, all right, that’s enough! That’s all in the past, so can we leave it there?” Watt replied. “And besides, I was captain of the shock force! Going in first was my job!”
“You weren’t captain of the shock force—you were the captain of the knights,” Carome rebutted. “And everyone had to suffer for it because you refused to do a proper job commanding them!”
“Urk... It’s just, y’know! There were plenty of other people who were more cut out for commandin’ than me! You gotta have people in the roles they belong in, right?”
“Oh, is that so?” she shot back. “But you sure didn’t seem to have any problem butting your head into minor issues that weren’t even deserving of the Royal Knights’ attention! You’d always tell us to just leave everything that could be solved with brute force to you!”
“Hah hah, master hasn’t changed at all!” Meddié chimed in.
“Nah, all that was just the ‘folly of youth’ they talk about, see?” Watt said. “I don’t do anything stupid like that now!”
“But you didn’t even hesitate to come to my aid, father,” said Anna.