Sigma’s day started early.
Every morning while his mother made breakfast, he did the laundry and woke up his younger sister. Once, he would have gone to his mentor’s woodwork studio after breakfast without fail, but nowadays he only did that twice a week. The rest of the time he spent studying at the church or doing odd jobs at the royal palace. Thanks to a chance meeting with a civil official, he had permission to enter the Royal Sorcery Department. The kingdom’s eminent sorcerers spent their days absorbed in research, and Sigma counted himself lucky that he could watch them at work.
It was there that he recently encountered a group of Egorovan visitors, including a member of foreign royalty.
They were surprisingly down-to-earth, but as they were chatting, a noble boy around his age got angry with him. The adults told him it wasn’t his fault, and the boy apologized, too, so Sigma decided that it was okay for him to go to the palace today. In fact, the sorcerers had actually asked him to come so that he could keep the assistant director in line while the Egorovans were around.
Ist was a bit of an odd duck, and communicating with others wasn’t exactly his forte, but Sigma didn’t mind him. As prone as he was to speaking out of the blue and acting on impulse, he was a fun person and talented sorcerer who never seemed to run out of ideas. As far as Sigma was concerned, the civil official who initially reached out to him was way more of a weirdo.
It was still early in the morning when he showed up at the Sorcery Department, and he didn’t see anyone around. Although some people would usually be napping around now after pulling an all-nighter, everyone was told to go home this week in order to keep things presentable while the Egorovans were around.
When Sigma checked the nap room just to see if anyone was there, he didn’t notice that a man in a familiar brown cloak was leaning against the wall.
“Good morning,” said a voice from behind him.
“Whoa!” Sigma jumped, startled. He hadn’t expected anyone to be there. “M-Mr. Kondo…”
The man peering down at the shocked Sigma with a drowsy face was the Royal Accounting Department’s assistant director—the number one weirdo in Sigma’s estimation.
Contrary to Seiichirou’s usual listless yet prim-and-proper appearance, his uniform was wrinkled, exposing part of his chest, and his hair was unkempt.
“M-Mr.…I mean, Sir, did you stay here last night?”
“Mm, I did. It was my first time. Pity there’s no shower room here.”
Realizing that Seiichirou had come to wash his face, Sigma nodded in understanding.
“Everyone here can use cleansing magic.”
This was how the Sorcery Department maintained a level of cleanliness, the clutter aside. Alas, this meant that this place was beyond Seiichirou’s reach as the ideal working environment.
“But what’s the matter? Did, um, something happen to make you stay here?” Sigma cocked his head in confusion.
As he peered down at the boy, a sudden thought occurred to Seiichirou.
“Just some things… Anyway, Sigma, you worked at a woodworking studio, yes? Do you still go there?”
“Huh? Um, yeah. I mean, yes. Not every day, though.”
“Then would you be able to put in a word there and…” Seiichirou crouched and whispered something into Sigma’s ear.
The boy nodded. “Yes, that would be simple. I could even do it right away… Sir.” Although he still struggled with speaking to authority figures, he was doing his best.
Seiichirou pulled a small coin out of his wallet and handed it to Sigma. It was worth about one hundred thousand yen in Japanese terms.
“Then can I leave it to you?”
“Whoa! I bet this is too much!”
“You can keep the change. Tell me if you need more. Thanks.”
As Sigma reluctantly pocketed the coin, the door to the Sorcery Department flew open violently.
“Ah! Found you, Sei!” The newcomer was much noisier than Sigma, the literal child. It was Norbert, whose crop of blond hair looked less than impeccable today. “I was looking for you!”
“What’s the matter, Norbert? Your hair is looking shabby.”
“I didn’t have time to style it! Darn it, Sei, why’d you run away from home?”
“…So I take it that Mr. Aresh has sent you sniffing for me like a dog.”
“Way to twist the knife! Ugh, and even Sigma is looking at me in disdain! Whyyyy?! Curse you, Sei and Commander Indolark! You guys didn’t have to involve me in your spat!”
“A…spat?” Sigma looked up at Seiichirou.
Faced with a child’s innocent gaze, Seiichirou was momentarily lost for words. “Not exactly,” he mustered finally.
“It’s a total lovers’ spat! I heard the details!”
“Ugh…he told you?”
“You think he’d squeeze me like a rag and not even tell me a thing? That’s beyond the pale! Although I did kind of have to put two and two together.”
It seemed that Norbert had asked about what led to Seiichirou fleeing the house in anger. Aresh said that he would have liked to come pick up Seiichirou himself, but he suspected that doing so would have added fuel to the fire. Which was correct.
“That makes me sound like the bad guy,” Seiichirou said.
“I don’t think you’re totally in the wrong, Sei, but wasn’t it mean of you to run out of Commander Indolark’s house? He’s worried about your condition.”
“…I didn’t run out. I’m just putting some space between us so that we can cool our heads.”
“Couldn’t you have just walked into a different room?”
“No. Our bedrooms are connected, and Aresh has the key… Oh.” Seiichirou stopped when he realized he had said a bit too much of the truth.
Sigma’s face had turned red and he was fidgeting restlessly. This wasn’t something for a child to hear.
Norbert winced. “Anyway, didn’t Commander Indolark say no to that offer?”
“That’s not the issue here.”
“Huh?”
Norbert had totally assumed that Seiichirou was anxious about the royal marriage offer. Then it occurred to him: Wait, Sei never gets emotional about anything. His nerves are made of orichalcum.
When Norbert recalled how Seiichirou was the kind of man who carefully weighed up each and every problem and devised countermeasures for all of them, his head tilted further in confusion. “So what got you so mad?”
“I was displeased with his sloppy communicating.”
“Huh?” Norbert said dumbly, upon being hit with the same words Seiichirou gave him whenever he screwed up at his job.
Was this whole thing about work?
“Communication is vital in everything,” Seiichirou said.
“Um…sure, but maybe he was trying not to worry you?”
“Me, worry? Rubbish. He turned down the offer. And if he were in a position where it was difficult to refuse, that would be all the more reason to inform me. We could have devised a plan.”
Seiichirou was right, in Norbert’s opinion. But…well. Something about what he was saying didn’t sit right with Norbert.
“Hmm, I…guess so? But maybe he wanted to sort it out by himself since it was his problem, and uh…” Norbert struggled to make his case, to which Seiichirou reacted with a sour expression.
He did not argue, however. It was not because he accepted Norbert’s logic. He simply thought it was pointless to debate the matter, and so he did not bother trying.
“I see how it is… He thinks little of me, and so does everyone else.”
“That’s not true…”
Having made his displeasure known, Seiichirou picked up his cloak, signaling the end of the conversation.
Norbert was not quite ready to back down here, not after being shaken from sleep by a communication spell well before his normal waking hours and getting dispatched on this mission.
“Yeah, Commander Indolark could have said more, but you’re not being reasonable, either.”
When Norbert imagined what it would be like to have a romantic partner with such a cold and dispassionate attitude…he would probably conclude that the other person did not love him. In that sense, Aresh had nerves of steel.
“…Shut up.”
Seiichirou flicked Norbert on the forehead. What an inscrutable fellow.