They arrived in town a good while before the festival was set to begin. Few stores were open, and while the main street was lined with market stalls and tents, nearly all of them were still setting up or hadn’t started preparing yet. There were also very few people walking around. The carriage Yui was on stopped before an inn that faced the main street, and they all piled out of the carriages.
“Yui, is this it?” Filiel asked.
“Yeah. I said to my papa that I wanted to watch the festival from inside, so he rented out this inn,” Yui said. “He reserved all the rooms, so it’ll be quiet, and no one will accidentally brush past you while you’re inside. You can enjoy the festival without worrying.”
Cecil and Carlo looked up at the inn, impressed. “So this is what her present was,” Cecil said. “I’m surprised he was able to reserve an entire inn right in the middle of the festival.”
“It’s a good location, and a nice building too,” Carlo added.
The inn was no luxury hotel, but it was a well-maintained building, and it had balconies with a good view of the main street. With the festival going on that very day, it wouldn’t have been strange for it to have been fully booked.
Yui frowned, embarrassed. “Ahh, yeah. I was fine with just a single room, but papa went all out...”
“That’s all I needed to hear,” Carlo said.
“Yeah, dad seems like he’d have a bunch of connections,” Cecil said. There was no way Layce wouldn’t enthusiastically give Yui whatever she asked for, and especially not when she requested things from him so rarely.
“All right, let’s go inside,” Alexis said. He started to head into the inn, and the others followed after him, but Yui hurriedly blocked their path.
“No, please wait!”
“What is it?” Alexis asked.
“If you all go inside now, then there won’t have been any point to leaving this early!”
“Do you have something planned?”
Yui ran over to one of the guards, who was unloading the carriages, and got something from him. When she returned to the group, she placed what was in her hand on the top of both Alexis’s and Filiel’s heads.
“A hat?” Alexis said.
“What’s this, Yui?” Filiel asked.
Everyone tilted their heads, confused by Yui’s behavior.
“If you’re going to the festival, you have to see the stalls!” she said.
“So why the hats?” Filiel asked.
“It’s because your faces stand out!” Yui said, as if it were only natural. Everyone, including the guards, was at a loss for how to respond. Certainly, if the two handsome brothers walked down the street with their faces exposed, they would attract attention, no matter how few people were outside. Cecil’s and Carlo’s looks were also eye-catching, but not as much as the two princes’. Also, with the knowledge about commoners’ lives they had gained from helping out at their grandfather’s bakery, they were able to act less noble than they usually did. However, Filiel and Alexis clearly comported themselves like nobles—they oozed an elite aura that clearly distinguished them from ordinary commoners. The hats were Yui’s solution to that problem, and she hoped to make them stand out just a bit less. However, from Filiel’s perspective, that wasn’t the issue.
“Hey, Yui,” Filiel said with a troubled look on his face. He was speaking like he was trying to reason with a small child. “You know that I can’t touch other people with my powerful magic. It may be early, and there might not be many people out, but there’s no guarantee I won’t bump into someone.” It was clear what he thought—because Yui had no problems with touching him, he figured that she didn’t fully understand the risks.
“I know! You don’t have to tell me again,” Yui said, irritated by Filiel’s assumption. She took his right hand and chanted a spell, and a magic circle appeared. Next, she etched a magic circle into her left hand.
Filiel gazed curiously at the magic circle on the back of his hand. “Yui, what is this? It’s similar to the one you used back then at the palace.”
“It isn’t similar—it’s the same. It’s a magic-blocking spell, and not letting magic come in also means keeping it from getting out,” Yui explained. “So, like I said, if you use this, you’ll be fine, even if you bump into someone. I spent all night before camp working on the spell, but I haven’t fully improved it, so it still has a pretty strict time limit. Still, there’s more than enough time to enjoy the stalls, so let’s go eat!”
Filiel was both exasperated and impressed that Yui had pulled an all-nighter in order to enjoy the camp to the fullest. It also showed just how excited she was to go out with him. Now that he looked like he understood the spell she’d cast on him, his gaze moved to Yui’s left hand, which he had also been wondering about. “Did you cast the same spell on yourself?”
“No, mine is a way to secure a continuous transfer of magic energy.” This spell was often used in a medical context—practitioners could share magic energy with patients experiencing severe side effects due to expending too much magic. Transferring energy required them to be touching each other, so Yui took Filiel’s hand. “If I hold your hand like this, your magic energy will flow into me.”
Now Carlo had a question. “If you’ve blocked all magic energy from escaping, then is it really necessary to transfer it to you?”
“Everyone always unconsciously emits magic energy, and completely blocking all of it means that magic energy will accumulate in the body,” Yui explained. “A normal person might be fine with that for a while, but El’s magic is too powerful, and he’ll quickly hit his limit, which is why I’m taking it in. Think about it this way: what happens if you keep pumping air into a balloon?”
“Well, it won’t be able to take it, and it’ll blow up...”
“And it would be terrible if that happened to El.”
Everyone imagining that scenario fell silent and looked unsettled. Filiel was especially terrified, and he gripped Yui’s hand like he never planned to let go.
“It’ll be okay, El,” Yui said. “That won’t happen if you only let go for a bit.”
Regardless of what she’d said, there was no way he’d be able to remain calm now that he knew there was a possibility he might pop.
In contrast to his scared brother, Alexis, who had been calm, was worried for Yui. “Will you be all right? This means that you’ll be continually receiving Filiel’s magic energy, right? I’ve heard that taking in magic can be quite tough. Isn’t it possible that your magic energy will increase too much, and your body won’t be able to handle it?” He had just recently experienced the power of Filiel’s magic energy firsthand, and the unimaginable pain and suffering it had caused made him more worried than the others.
“I’ll use the extra magic to maintain the spell, so I’ll be fine. And...”
“And?”
“Well, more importantly, let’s go to the stalls. We don’t have forever.”
Alexis thought it odd that Yui had cut the conversation short, but she was right—their time was limited. They all followed after her and headed toward the open market stalls.
“Tell me right away if you feel ill,” Alexis said. “Some of the guards have medical experience.”
“All right,” Yui said. Good, nobody noticed that I changed the subject, she thought, relieved.
Normally, when transferring magic, the one receiving tended to feel unpleasant due to the encroachment of foreign magic energy. In fact, Yui had tested the spell with Cecil and Carlo, and their energy had felt unpleasant and strange—she had even felt nauseated. That was magic energy taken from her siblings, whom she was in a close relationship with. But despite that, receiving Filiel’s magic energy didn’t make her feel bad at all. If anything, it made her feel fulfilled, like something that she had been lacking inside was being satisfied. This didn’t appear to be normal, and she’d tried looking into it, but she still didn’t know why it happened. There was no particular need to hide this, but somehow or another, she was hesitant to talk about it.
After that, they went around and visited the stalls while the spell’s effect persisted. Yui and Filiel held each other’s hands the entire time. Eliza usually would’ve been in the spot next to Filiel where Yui was, but she just watched them as they amicably held hands. The others knew how she was and about her history of intimidating women who had tried to approach Filiel in the past, so they were on guard for her to raise a fuss. Yet contrary to their expectations, she quietly tagged along with everyone else. There was a severity to her gaze, but she just quietly watched Yui and Filiel.
Rather than caring about the stalls, Filiel looked like he was happy just being able to walk around town without worrying about his surroundings. Alexis was enjoying himself more than anyone. Filiel had been taken to go out to the city dressed like a commoner several times by Theodore, but this seemed to be Alexis’s first time ever leaving the palace for anything other than official duties. He was admiring the fresh spectacle of a commoner festival, looking around everywhere, and curiously asking about various things. Whenever he spotted some food that caught his interest, he picked it up, bought it, and ate it. He showed no hesitation toward eating things he’d never seen before, and he was not at all reluctant to eat the same things that commoners ate.