“Sorry, but I’ll have to turn you down.”
Things didn’t go anywhere near as well as I’d thought. He had complimented the painting of the sun setting over the village, but that was a completely separate matter.
“You...won’t come?” Nito asked.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t have any interest in those kinds of gatherings.”
Nito was sitting next to me, and I felt her shoulders droop. Her idea had worked on Paula, but not on Monty. A simple, earnest request and bowing of her head wouldn’t get an agreement from him. Before I acted, I locked eyes with Charolles—sitting on Nito’s other side—to check. She’d stopped me earlier, so I’d wanted to make sure this time, but she just waved me on.
“Monty, would you be interested in hearing some wonderful singing?”
“Oh?” he replied, an intrigued note in his voice.
“Her song’s so beautiful that it’ll have you hooked by the first note. If the world hadn’t ended up like this, this songstress’s talent would have never been discovered.”
It was carefully indirect, but all true. Jill had come to the theater because of the world falling to ruin. Because there were no more people around to notice her powers, she could finally sing a little as well. She had a talent she would never have allowed people to know otherwise, a beautiful voice only audible due to the world ending. Putting it like that was a bit trite, sure, but I’d used that phrasing exactly because it was the kind of thing that always stirred people’s hearts.
Monty snorted.
“Playing on my curiosity, I see?”
“Well, you’re always bored at night, right? That won’t be the case tonight, at least. I guarantee it.”
I had no hope of reading the beady-eyed guinea pig’s expression, so I simply swallowed anxiously and waited as Monty stroked his whiskers.
“You would make a good con artist,” he said eventually. “They’re always using snatches of conversation to find weaknesses and ways to tempt people.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“You can take it however you wish,” Monty said, picking the invitation up off the table. “I shall prevail upon you after all, young lady, for that song.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, and Nito patted me on the knee in thanks. We’d managed to get everyone to agree to come to the festival now.
However, we still had something else to do here—gathering the lantern flowers from around the lake. These strange, glowing, floating flowers were almost the whole point of the Lantern Flower Festival. When we asked Monty about it, he told us they grew on the slope behind his house.
We stood and left, but as we were walking out, I gave a quick excuse about forgetting something and needing to split off. I couldn’t think of a better way of doing it. Nito and Charolles both looked pretty doubtfully at me, but they didn’t question it too much. Honestly, they’d probably let it slide because my excuse was so transparent. They were both really grown up in that way.
I watched them head off to collect the flowers and then went back into the house. Monty was sitting on the sofa and perusing a book, round glasses perched on his long nose.
“You didn’t really tell them that you’d forgotten something so you could double back, did you?”
I hadn’t thought he’d hear me through the window. Maybe he was just guessing? I forced a laugh and brushed him off.
“Nah, I’d never do that.”
“My eyes might be going, but my ears are still sharp,” he retorted. “I heard you loud and clear, and I take back what I said about your talents earlier.”
Maybe he really did hear me, then.
I fought back the urge to make a quip and sat back down on the sofa. Monty kept his eyes on the book. At least that made it easier for me to say what I needed to, and it meant that I could leave out most of the preamble.
“I heard about things with Charolles—about how you wrote the story.”
“I did. Quite a while ago now.”
“Let me just ask straight up. Is there really no continuation?”
“That Charolles girl isn’t anyone close to me. I have no obligation to be kind to her, nor to provide her with an honest answer.”
That was neither an agreement nor a denial. He took his glasses off and placed them on the open book.
“I do have some familiarity with you, though,” he continued. “Allow me to ask something in turn. Why are you interested in that story’s ending?”
It took me a little time to come up with an answer.
“I’m not, at least not in the ending itself. It’s just that Charolles thinks so highly of it, but now it’s lost to her, and I can’t help but wonder if there’s anything to be done.”
“Wanting to help someone close to you is a laudable goal. But I have no obligation to assist with that, do I? I don’t make a habit of making others feel good.”
His bluntness was very him, and almost refreshing to hear. He picked up his glasses and went to put them back on his nose.
“That story must be important to you.”
He stopped, glasses still held aloft, and directed his beady gaze at me.
“I don’t know anything about working as an author, so I apologize if I’m wrong and sound way too full of myself,” I added.
I’d come to this world, but hadn’t become a hero or a mage or anything. I wasn’t special in any way, and the world was already long dead regardless, with nothing I could do about it. However, if one thing about me had changed since coming here, it was that I’d realized the point in telling people how I felt. It was extremely hard to do, but that just made it all the more worthwhile. Saying how I felt invited them to do the same, and that sharing was what built bonds between people.
“For you, it might be nothing more than a bundle of paper you wrote on long ago. But Charolles lost herself in that story. She saw herself in that mouse-knight. Despite how many years it’s been, she’s carried your story with her, cradling it within her heart. Even as the world fell apart around her, she used the little time she had left to search for the continuation of it.”
I was always nervous when I let out my feelings like this. I always worried about how to get them across, and what the other person would think of me—even whether they’d reject me, rendering it all meaningless. The words I wanted to say were always the unvarnished truth, straight from my heart.
“If there’s someone that treasures a story you created even more than you do, can you really say there is no connection between the two of you? Isn’t it that kind of person that you write for in the first place?”
My ears felt hot. I could feel my blood rushing into my cheeks and all through my face. I didn’t know whether I was right or not. I could only hope that I’d get through to him and that my words would ring true.
“You do have some obligation to give her an honest answer. She loves the story that you brought into being. So you need to take responsibility for that. If you still call yourself an author, you should show her the entirety of that story.”
Monty just closed his book and placed his glasses on top of it.
“You think that I treasure the end of that story and am keeping it to myself?” he asked.
“I don’t think it matters.”
He looked back at me, puzzled.
“If you have it, show her. If not, write it. You’re an author, aren’t you?”
He covered his mouth with one small hand. Eventually, a laugh made its way past that barrier. More laughter escaped intermittently, making a sound almost like purring. It seemed like it might go on for a while, but then he took a deep breath and slowly let it out again.
“It’s been too long since I’ve heard something so honest.”
“Honest?” I asked after a hesitant pause.
“Like nothing else is,” he affirmed. “Very well, I understand what you’re trying to say. I’ll consider it.”
I resisted the urge to ask what he meant. If Monty said he’d think about it, then he would. I’d said everything I’d thought of the night before, anyway. I couldn’t say anything more. All I could do was trust that I’d done my best, though I didn’t know how it’d turn out. I bowed my head and stood up to leave.
Once I’d stepped outside, I took a deep breath. Thinking back on the conversation, I felt more embarrassed than accomplished. Not to mention, I seemed to be drenched in sweat.
“Keisuke!”
I turned at the sound of my name. The other two were on their way back. Nito raced over, pouting up at me.
“Why didn’t you come? It was so pretty. There were white flowers everywhere!”
“I got caught up in conversation with Monty. Are those the lantern flowers?”
Nito was carrying a crown made of white flowers. She held it up in front of her face to show it to me.
“Yes, they are. Charolles taught me how to make this!”
“It looks much better than I’d expect from a first attempt. Guess you’re good at flower weaving as well.”
“It seems so,” she answered. “Even I was surprised.”
The sight of Nito proudly puffing her chest out was just so precious that all the tension rushed out of me. Charolles arrived just then, a smile on her lips. Nito suddenly turned her gaze to the flower crown and then held it out to me.
“It’s my greatest work, so you can have it.”
“An honor indeed,” I replied, bending down.
She stretched up ever so slightly and put it on my head. I straightened to give her a proper look at me.
“Does it suit me, then?”
“Hmm... Maybe I should take it back?”
“Hey!”
“Just kidding.”
Nito’s bright laughter filled the air around us, and before we’d realized it, Charolles and I were laughing along with her.