After a few days of Zelos and Merlyn living nearby, I felt like we had really been able to break the ice with them. Of course, that didn’t mean we were eating meals together every day; they were doing their best to scrape by on their own. By now, they had gotten tired of living in tents and were building their own houses.
“How’s progress?” I asked.
“Oh, hey, Arata,” Zelos said. “It’s coming along, I guess.”
He had just chopped down a large tree and was cutting it into neat planks. He was shirtless and had a towel wrapped around his head, making him look less like a magician and more like a carpenter.
“Phew, the heat is killing me,” he said. As a magician, he could strengthen his body with mana, but he still looked somewhat worn out, and sweat was dripping from his face. He used his towel to wipe it off, then sat down on a nearby log.
“Oh, what about Merlyn?” I asked him.
“She said she was tired, and that she was going to the river. Seems Reina’s with her too.”
“Really? Those two sure are getting along lately.”
“Uhh, well, Merlyn, she’s...” Zelos trailed off.
“She’s what?”
I waited for Zelos to continue from where he had unnaturally stopped, but he looked at me and fell silent. His expression was hard to describe, as if he were unsure whether he should tell me. Finally, he opened his mouth.
“No, it’s not for me to say... Basically, it seems like she has some things on her mind about what happened recently. She’s giving a lot of advice to Reina, apparently.”
“Hmm?”
The recent event he was referring to was probably Mina’s incursion. But that confused me—what had happened that might have brought Reina and Merlyn closer to each other? As I tilted my head, Zelos looked at me with slight irritation.
“What’s with that look?” I said.
“Oh, nothing. I’m just thinking that Reina must have it rough too, that’s all.”
“I don’t really get it, but... Well, whatever. I’m free right now, so I’ll lend you a hand.”
“Hey, thanks. Then, can you go get together the trees I chopped down in that area?”
I went and picked up the logs one by one, gathering them under my arms. As I did, I used the wind magic I had learned when building our house to shave the surface of the logs, turning them into smooth, cylindrical pieces of wood that sparkled as if they had been polished. These were the same as the logs in the fence protecting the area around our house. I had done the same thing to dozens of logs when building it, so I was used to this sort of work.
“Sheesh, you did that like it was nothing,” Zelos said.
“It’s because Reina doesn’t tolerate anything less than this...”
“O-Oh... I see...”
If I cut corners, the perfectionist Reina would immediately point it out. She only brought it up because she knew I could do it, of course, but she was just as terrifying at those times as when she was cooking.
“A word of advice, Zelos...” I said solemnly.
He silently gulped.
“On this island, you can’t do anything to defy Reina. And if you make her angry when she’s cooking...”
I momentarily imagined what might happen if Reina stopped preparing food. First of all, Luna would get angry at whoever caused it. Then, Tailtiu, Elga, and Gaius would show up too, maybe even Suzaku if you were unlucky.
“It’ll really be awful, so just be careful,” I added.
“G-Got it...”
Zelos may have held a higher position than her on the continent, but that meant nothing on this island. If someone defied Reina here, I would suffer, of course, and so would Luna and Tailtiu. This was something I wanted to firmly impress upon Zelos—Reina was at the very top of this island’s ecosystem.