It was the first day of the Fowl Knight Festival, and after spending so much time scrambling to finish the preparations, it was moving to see it become a reality.
Gabriel headed to the village before the festival opened to have a final meeting with the mayor and the other organizational staff. After that, he had to welcome Prince Axel, who was arriving before noon.
It was going to be a busy day.
That morning, I had breakfast with my sister, my mother, my mother-in-law, and Mrs. Molière. Fortunately, everyone had slept well. Although I had been plagued by worries, tossing and turning on my bed for about an hour, I’d managed to fall fast asleep in the end by holding Wibble tight to my chest and closing my eyes. I had woken up in the morning feeling perfectly refreshed.
Today, my mother-in-law and Mrs. Molière were going to bring my mother to see the field of sweet violets. I had invited them to go to the festival with us, but they had declined, figuring that it would be far too crowded on the first day. They asked me which day would have fewer attendees, but I had no idea, seeing as how this was the first-ever Fowl Knight Festival.
My mother, who didn’t want to get jostled around among throngs of people, murmured, “Perhaps I’ll go next year instead.” I couldn’t help but agree that that would probably be for the best.
We split up to get ready, and as I was mulling over which dress to wear, my sister came to my room.
“Is something the matter, Adele?” I asked.
“I thought of an interesting idea, Francette. Would you hear me out?”
My sister had never proposed anything to me before. I nervously wondered what she was going to say.
“How about you and I swap clothes?” she asked.
“Does that mean...disguising ourselves as each other?”
“Yes! We did it once when we were little, didn’t we? I want to try it again.”
Thinking back on it, we had. My sister was two years older than me, but since I had grown faster, our physiques during childhood had been similar. We had taken advantage of that to switch clothes and pretend to be each other. Since our hair colors and facial features were different, the swap had been obvious at a glance. But our attendants and nannies had played along, acting as if they hadn’t noticed our ploy.
“People will be able to tell right away,” I said.
“I have a wig that I use for disguising myself in public, and I should be able to adjust my height with some heels.”
Even now, years later, I was still taller, but my sister was insisting that she could bridge the gap.
“If you walk around in high heels, you’ll quickly get tired,” I replied.
“I’m used to it. In the Empire, I wear them to my inspections.”
“I-I see.” Well, I couldn’t deny a request from my sister. “I don’t think we can do anything about the differences in our faces, though.”
“Makeup can solve everything. Just leave it to me.” She explained that she was good at disguising her attendant, who had to stand in for her on occasion, by applying the same makeup as her own. Today, she was going to show me that process. “We’ll never get an opportunity like this again!”
“But...” I wasn’t sure what to do. Thinking about it, if someone were to make an attempt on my sister’s life, I could be her substitute. That would be a good thing, wouldn’t it? But at the same time, I would be deceiving everyone around me. I was torn.
“Please, Francette!”
In the end, I let her pressure me into switching places.
“We might want to adjust the dress measurements a bit,” I said. As far as I could tell, my sister was slimmer than me. I didn’t know if I would fit in her clothes.
“Don’t worry. I had my dresses made a little larger, in case I ate too much during the trip.”
“That’s a relief.”
My sister brought me a bejeweled, luxurious dress, the many gems embedded upon it a specialty of the Empire. As for hers, I selected a duck-blue piece that had been the work of a tailor from the village.
“What a beautiful greenish shade of blue,” my sister remarked.
“I chose this fabric because it resembles the plumage of the ducks raised in the village,” I explained.
“Specifically for the Fowl Knight Festival?”
“Yes. I discussed it with the women in the village and decided to wear a duck-blue dress for the first day.”
“Are you sure you want to let me wear it today?”
“Of course.” I’d had several duck-blue dresses tailored, with the intention of wearing the color every day except during my wedding. So it wasn’t an issue for my sister to use this one.
“Let’s get changed right away, then.”
“Okay.”
My sister said she would lend me the wig her attendant used to masquerade as her, but I decided to have Wibble change into her hair color instead.
“You can use a slime as a wig? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Just watch.”
I introduced Wibble to my sister, who was surprised to see a slime that could understand and speak a human language.
“Nice to meet you, Fra’s sister!”
“Y-Yes, likewise.”
Wibble extended its tentacle, and my sister hesitantly exchanged the equivalent of a handshake with it.
My sister and I got changed in the same room. She called for her attendant, while I asked Coco to help me. In some spots, the duck-blue dress was too big for my sister, so the attendant had to take it in. On the other hand, my sister’s dress, which had intentionally been made larger, was the perfect size for me.
“Francette, the dress isn’t too big, is it?” my sister asked.
“No, um, it fits perfectly.”
“That’s great.”
Is it really? I couldn’t help but feel awfully depressed.
After donning the dress, I had Wibble imitate my sister’s hair, transforming to match its color and length. With instructions from my sister’s attendant, it mimicked a popular imperial hairdo.
“Not only can it turn into a wig, it can even style hair,” my sister remarked. “It’s so smart.”
“Yes, Wibble is amazing.”
“I’d like one for myself.”
There probably weren’t any other slimes as capable as Wibble. It had learned many things in its years spent with Gabriel. This slime was one of a kind.
“All right, I’m ready,” my sister said. She had finished changing into my duck-blue dress, and Coco had completed her makeup. At a glance, she did look like me—if she wore a hat, no one would realize she was someone else. “Not bad, right?”
“You look a lot more like me than I expected.”
Coco was a talented artist, skilled in every genre from cute caricatures to realistic portraits. She had probably treated my sister’s face as a canvas upon which to paint my features with makeup. I praised her, and she smiled shyly.
My makeup would be handled by my sister.
“Stay still, all right?” she said.
“I’m not a child. I know how to behave.”
“Oh, right. You were so rowdy when you were little, though. Sometimes I’d take my eyes off you for a second, and when I’d look back, you’d be gone. I would have to search for you with our nannies and attendants.”
I didn’t recall any of that, but it was probably true.
“You were a prodigy at hiding,” she continued. “We’d find you sleeping on top of dresses in a chest of drawers or tucked behind a curtain.”
“This hurts to listen to.”
By the time I was old enough to remember, my sister had already begun her queen training and had no time to play with me. But apparently, we’d spent more time together than I’d thought. Those days had surely been a lot of fun, yet I had no recollection of them whatsoever.
“You were so cute, I wanted to hug you like a stuffed animal, but you wouldn’t stay still at all,” my sister continued. “You were always running around like a puppy.”
“I-Is that so?”
While we were talking about our childhood, my sister finished my makeup. Her attendant brought me a full-length mirror.
“Wow!” I exclaimed. “I look just like you!” I was amazed by how well the disguise had turned out. From a distance, anyone would mistake me for my sister.
I normally wore heels, but those would expose that I wasn’t my sister, so I had flats prepared for me instead. Meanwhile, my sister opted for heels to make up for our height difference. No one would notice that we’d switched places.
“Hey, Fran, why don’t we keep this a secret from the knights escorting us?” my sister suggested.
“Wouldn’t that be incredibly dangerous?”
“It’ll be fine! We’ll never get a chance like this again.”
“All right, but we have to bring Coco and your attendant, since they know what’s going on.”
“Not a problem.”
I told Adele’s attendant not to leave my sister’s side no matter what. I also instructed Coco to follow me closely so that we wouldn’t get separated.