Brooks had come to celebrate Lacey’s birthday and drank tons of booze while boisterously laughing. Wayne accompanied him for just a little while. Lacey watched them with some envy as she sipped her own nonalcoholic beverage.
Time flies when you’re having fun. Brooks stayed over at the mansion for the night, and the next morning, he yelled “MY DISCIPLES ARE WAITING FOR ME TO COME BACK!!!” and left.
He had come and gone in a whirlwind. Lacey and Wayne sent him on his way and then went down to the village. Brooks had eaten through all the food they’d bought the day before, so they needed to make another grocery run.
∗ ∗ ∗
“Welcome, hero! Have a good time.”
“Wow, it’s the hero!”
Just walking around prompted greetings from adults and children alike. Wayne waved a hand to them with a strained smile. As usual in these cases, he had an embarrassed look on his face. Still, he wasn’t getting crowded like he would be in the capital, so he seemed surprisingly comfortable.
Well, that’s good, Lacey thought, but she was otherwise very agitated at the moment. Wayne was carrying everything they’d bought, so she’d at least stolen the bag of bread from him and was holding it tight. She couldn’t tell if that warm sensation she was feeling was coming from the freshly baked bread or from her own neck.
A wintry wind was blowing past and making the air chilly, but Lacey was so weirdly nervous that she didn’t even notice—the reason being that she didn’t have her hat.
Furthermore, she’d had Wayne clip the accessory he’d given her onto her hair again today. She almost wanted to scream for no reason or run away as fast as her legs could take her, but she gulped the feeling down and let the ponytail that Wayne had tied sway with each step.
It’s okay. Everything’s the same as normal. It’s no big deal. There’s nothing to worry about!
Just as she was telling herself this, Wayne spoke to her. “Hey, Lacey.”
“Yeek!” She jumped up a little.
“Uh, I just wanted to say that the bread’s still warm, so maybe you should keep the bag open.”
“Y-You’re right. It’ll get soggy! It’s okay. I know, I know.”
“Hm?”
“Wh-What is it now?!” Lacey answered, a little teary-eyed as she flapped the bag open, and deplored her continued overreactions.
“Nothing, I was just wondering what she’s doing there.” Wayne, carrying bags in his arms, gestured with his chin toward what he was staring at. Lacey followed his gaze. There was a small, curly-haired girl squatting down and industriously moving her arms around.
“What are you up to, Miss Ellie?” Lacey slowly approached and called out to her.
Ellie’s face snapped up. She patted the bottom of her skirt, stood up as tall as her short stature allowed, and huffed. “Oh, Lacey? Come on! I told you to just call me Ellie!”
“S-Sorry, Ellie...”
“I forgive you. Oh, the hero’s with you too. Hello, hero.” Ellie lifted up the hem of her skirt in a precocious little curtsy.
“Hello there,” Wayne responded with a smile.
“So you want to know what I’m doing? Just take a look.” Ellie, moving the conversation along at her own pace like usual, stretched her hand out and gestured toward their surroundings.
It was a completely ordinary road. It was a little distant from the center of town, so the houses were few and far between. Instead, there were a number of thick trees growing at the side of the road, and piles of crispy fallen leaves covered the ground.
“I’m looking for acorns.” As she explained, Ellie’s nostrils flared proudly and she bounced up and down a little. Her hair accessories were made out of acorns.
“Acorns...” Lacey then spontaneously repeated the word. “Huh? A-Acorns?”
“Yeah. It’s a shame though. There’s actually a better place where you can find tons of them. But it’s a little far from the village and the monster wards are less effective there, so it’s dangerous if you’re not with an adult. My dad always goes along with me, but he’s too busy today.” Ellie gave an unhappy sigh and fingered the pouch that was strung over her shoulder.
Seeing this, Lacey thought for a moment. She looked right and left and then murmured. “Hmm...” Lastly, she turned around and looked up at Wayne, who nodded at her with an awkward smile.
“U-Um, Ellie, will any adult do?”
∗ ∗ ∗
And so everyone gathered out front of Lacey’s mansion.
Wayne and Lacey were there, of course, having unloaded their shopping bags at the mansion. There was Ellie, who’d met them with a dramatic arms-folded pose. Behind her was Yorma, making the same pose, and Reeve, who was cackling at them. Lastly, there was Allen, with an indescribable look on his face.
This was more people than they’d bargained for. It was quite a crowd.
“More people means we can gather more acorns!” Ellie asserted with her chest puffed out.
“Yeah!” agreed the lovestruck Yorma, sticking his arms out toward her and wiggling them.
“We’re gonna go on a field trip and have a picnic, right? Heh heh, this is gonna be fun,” Reeve giggled.
Allen bonked his head. “I’d feel bad about leaving you guys alone with these kids. Mr. Lanze is staying in the village today, so my parents said it’s okay to come along.”
“Okay. The more the merrier,” Lacey consented. “Let’s head out now.”
Each of the children had a backpack. They’d gotten permission from their parents and come as fast as they could with packed lunches, figuring that it was better to go out earlier in the day. Wayne had similarly cooked up the ingredients they’d bought earlier into a packed lunch, bringing them to the present. Perhaps going on a picnic and gathering acorns were actually rather similar.
Lacey asked the children to lead the way and they departed from the hill that the mansion stood on. Tee and Noi stayed behind to guard the fields. Tee chirped “kwee kwee” as it watched them go, and Lacey waved a hand back to it. She then happened to notice that Allen was staring at Wayne with a complicated look on his face.
They proceeded whichever way that Ellie pointed toward, walking across gentle slopes with a clear view. This would make it easy to spot a monster before it attacked, which made it a relatively safe road for ordinary villagers. Nonetheless, Lacey and Wayne stayed vigilant under the fair sky and flanked the children as they walked along.
They ended up at a vast field of acorns. Of course, they couldn’t actually be cultivated like that, but the whole place was so crammed with acorns buried among fallen leaves that it practically seemed like they had sprung up on the spot. The children shrieked with delight, stuck their hands up in the air, and charged on ahead. Lacey watched them, stunned.
“Ellie, take a look at this one! It’s super shiny!”
“Heh heh! Who cares, you should see this one! Mine’s got a cap!”
“Found one! It’s a pine cone!”
One of the kids had already started to collect other items. Oh well, as long as he’s having fun, Lacey thought with a warm smile. But Ellie swiftly came up to her and dragged her along by the hem of her clothes.
“Huh? Um, aaah, wahhh...”
“Why are you just watching? Start collecting, Lacey! We need as many hands as we can get!”
Lacey was getting pulled along so forcefully that her butt was sticking out ahead of the rest of her. “Wait, wait, Ellie! I can walk! I can walk on my own, so have mercy!”
“All right. Okay, we’re going to scavenge every last inch of this field!”
“Um, Ellie?”
“What is it?”
“This is a basic thing to ask, but what are we picking up acorns for?” Lacey inquired as she knelt down with Ellie and fiddled with an acorn she’d found. She was all too willing to help, but she wanted to know what the objective was.
If she didn’t know what the end goal was, she wouldn’t know what to do. From Lacey’s perspective, it was a perfectly sensible question.
But Ellie blinked repeatedly. “Huh?” She seemed baffled that anyone would even ask this. She looked up at Lacey with her large, innocent eyes. “Well, they’re acorns! Is there anyone in the world who doesn’t love collecting acorns?”
“What, this is a worldwide phenomenon?”
Ellie made it sound as natural as the sun rising in the morning and the moon shining at night. But Lacey had never collected acorns before, not even once. She’d never even considered it.
Her memories of the past were a little gloomy. But she hadn’t seen any need to tell Ellie about them before, so now she was at a loss for how to even bring it up. She flapped her mouth open and shut with a mixed look on her face, her eyebrows angled upward.
“Oh fine,” Ellie then said with a pout and turned away, misinterpreting her expression. “Hmph. I guess adults don’t understand what it feels like.”
“...”
“What? Got a problem with that?”
“An a-adu— Me? You think I’m an-an adult? Hee hee. Eheheh, ha ha ha ha ha.”
“Okay, I guess not,” she said, after a pause. “But you’re weirding me out.”
“Ah, s-sorry.” Lacey hurriedly pulled at her relaxed cheeks and lightly slapped them until they turned red.
Lacey was short, so she was often mistaken for being younger than she actually was. She didn’t really mind that, but getting directly told that she seemed like an adult made her heart race. She’d never been told that before. It made her happy to experience a small sign of her growth.
But when she told Ellie the truth that she still wasn’t an adult yet, the girl pouted again. “What are you talking about? I thought you came along here because you’re an adult.”
“Well... I thought it’d be okay since Wayne’s here too.”
“You’re more of an adult than me, to say the least.” Ellie then blushed. “I should’ve said it earlier, but thank you for bringing us.”
“You’re welcome...” Lacey answered, albeit with some faltering. Nonetheless, she tensed her hands, which rested on her knees.
“All right. Now I want to look for acorns too! Let’s find lots of them!”
“That’s the spirit!”
∗ ∗ ∗
A short way away from the girls, one of the boys and the young man were staring vacantly at the fallen leaves, hanging out back-to-back.