It was another typical day in the sandy city of Alabasta, with the sunlight beating down so crisp and sharp, it felt like you could reach out and grab it.
“Haaa…” Fata exhaled heavily as he slurped grape juice from a ceramic goblet. “Love can be so complicated.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” Koza said, sounding somewhat blasé, as he popped a pastry into his mouth.
It was the middle of the day, and the pub was nearly empty. Behind the counter, Fata’s father was roasting some coffee beans.
“She turned me down, but I don’t regret loving Princess Vivi. I guess this is just one of those—whaddaya call ’em?—bittersweet moments.”
“You got it, Fata. That’s exactly right. Failure makes people stronger,” Chaka agreed earnestly.
Pell poured some tea from an ibrik and grinned. “I’m sure there will come a day when you’re proud of the fact that you expressed your feelings to Her Highness.”
“Yeah, I think so too,” Fata murmured stoically, and tossed back the rest of his grape juice.
Koza, Chaka, and Pell, the three main figures guarding the domain, sat around and listened to the young boy lament being spurned by a princess. The unlikeliness of this situation was completely lost on Fata’s eight-year-old mind.
“By the way, Koza,” Fata said, “how did you know that Princess Vivi would recognize my handwriting?”
“You dummy,” Koza laughed, ruffling Fata’s hair. “You’re way too young to understand the nuances of love.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Where is Fata, the boy who wrote this letter?” Vivi had asked.
The crowd around her had seemed stunned. Of course, they’d all assumed that Koza had written it—he had assumed responsibility, after all.
“Er, Your Highness…it was Koza who wrote that,” Pell pointed out in a helpful tone of voice. But Vivi just shook her head.
“No, it wasn’t,” she responded. “This is Fata’s hand-writing. He wrote me a letter before, with a drawing of me, so I recognize it. Koza’s handwriting is completely different.”
Yes. That’s the kind of person she is, Koza thought to himself, smiling inwardly. She didn’t need to love him to understand exactly who he was. After all, they’d known each other since they were kids.
As for Fata, once he was in the presence of Vivi herself, he froze up. Only when Koza nudged him forward with his foot did Fata hesitantly step toward her.
“Your Highness, um…” Fata began. It took many moments for Fata to quaveringly utter the words, “I love you,” but Vivi knelt down to meet him at eye level and waited patiently for them to come. And after he had summoned all of his courage to tell her his truth, she gave him a very sincere and thoughtful answer. It just wasn’t the answer Fata was hoping to hear.
“I’ve noticed that the princess has been gloomier as of late. She doesn’t seem to have much of an appetite,” a maid said idly to her friend.
The palace courtyard was full of maids and cooks and servants on their breaks, whiling away the time with gossip and chat.
The maid’s companion pounced on this piece of gossip. “Do you think it has something to do with the love letter?!”
“What?!” her friend reacted strongly, upping the ante. “You think what’s ailing Princess Vivi is…lovesickness?!”
Excited shrieks rang out through the courtyard, as the young maids tended to gravitate toward exciting and scandalous gossip. And so, what began as merely “Do you think so?” hypotheticals extended sneakily into the realm of known facts.
“I’m jealous of Her Highness. Koza seems so honest, and dedicated, and intelligent, and principled, and handsome, and…”
“Really? If I were to pick one, I’d go with Pell. He’s so kind and gentle.”
“I’ve got to go for Chaka! He’s so sincere and no-nonsense, and the power in that gaze of his! Oooh, it gives me the shivers!”
Vivi, who had no idea the sort of gossip that was being traded about her, was again sitting at the desk in her room, her eyes gliding over the pages of a book open before her, taking in none of the information. She was preoccupied—not thinking about Koza, but about the letter Fata had written her.
“Hmmm,” she sighed, resting her cheek on her fist.
Behind her, a familiar voice asked, “What are you sighing about?”
She spun around to see Koza, standing in the open doorway.
“Nothing. None of your business, at least.”
“What’s that mark up on the wall there? Did you take something down?” Koza said, walking into the room at a look from Vivi. He was nearly the only person in the world aside from her father who would dare to stroll right into the princess’s bedchamber. As he passed, the earthy scent of coffee wafted through the room. It was the special blend Fata’s father made.
“I had put up a picture from Fata,” Vivi replied. “He drew a picture of me.”
“You threw it away?” Koza asked.
“Of course not! I’ve stored it in a safe place.”
“But why’d you take it down?” Koza persisted.
“Because…” Vivi’s expression clouded, and she clenched the back of the chair with both hands. “I feel bad about what I did to Fata. It was very sweet that he wrote me that letter, but I of course don’t reciprocate his feelings, and I worry that might have hurt him. So I felt guilty about keeping it up on the wall, and I took it down. Even though it was a lovely drawing.”
Koza noticed a small hole in the wall where Vivi had pinned the drawing up with a tack.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” Koza remarked, exasperated and pleased. “Why take this so seriously? How can you run Alabasta if you’re fretting over a little boy who says he likes you? At the Reverie you’ll be dealing with powerful figures from all over the world.”
“Hmm,” Vivi sighed again. “You’re right.”
She understood what he was saying, but her heart was still conflicted. Vivi found it difficult to compartmentalize things that were important to her—to abandon them, or admit they were out of her control and stop worrying. She wanted every single person in the kingdom to be happy, and hated the thought of any of them suffering even slightly. It was an honest, deeply felt emotion.
Vivi frowned, mulling this over, while Koza smiled wryly to himself. She just had no idea, he realized, that even if the boy’s romance hadn’t panned out, he was already blessed simply to live in a kingdom where the princess cared about her people as much as Vivi did.