“Hey, Zenon, are you feeling alright?” asks Bella.
“I’m seasick.”
I thought I’d be fine today, regardless of this being my first proper sea voyage, since I have a relatively strong constitution and have no trouble with horseback riding and flying. My confidence didn’t last long. As I learned today, I get seasick easily.
It’s not that bad, since I have medicine for it on hand, but I dread to think how it’ll feel once the effect wears off.
“Oh my, that’s terrible! Just you wait, I’ll look after you.”
Bella clings to my arm in apparent concern.
“Think she’s after you?” asks Rockmann, causing her to freeze in place.
She’s a head shorter than me. As she looks up at me, I find her round eyes as pretty and unwavering as always.
“He’s perfect for the role of my prince. I’m thinking of suggesting him to my father. And don’t you have your hands full with Degnea?” counters Bella, flashing her tongue and glaring back at Alois.
She’s using me to see how Alois reacts, I’m sure. This ship is full of royals and nobles from various countries, and Vestanu’s prominent figures are present too. Seeing Degnea chase after Alois since this morning, some might have come to think the two of them are in a relationship. And it would be one thing if she went around using underhanded means to harass other women or kept throwing herself at Alois, but she bears sincere affection towards him, and all she does is approach him and talk. That makes it rather difficult for Alois to deal with her, especially given his gentlemanly nature.
Her older brother, the prince of Vestanu, is here too, and yet he looks like he doesn’t mind in the slightest and wants her to go on, which further complicates things. Alois keeps reprimanding her for getting too close, but it’s unclear whether she takes those words to heart.
“So it really does look wrong to everyone around...” utters Alois, looking troubled and shaking his head to Bella. “She’s a good friend.”
“Hmph. And whose color are your clothes, pray tell?” retorts Bella. “If you keep being like that, the one you really cherish will go away one day. And then Zenon will be mine...”
She tightens her grip on my arm. Despite my training, my humerus creaks, aching severely. How is this possible?
“I shall never allow it!” comes a woman’s high-pitched voice from one of the barrels piled up behind me.
Casting her gaze towards the source, Bella cheerfully laughs and waves her folding fan once she sees who’s there.
“Why hello there, Mislina. Have you put on some weight?”
“Would you listen to the words coming out of this woman’s mouth! And don’t think I don’t know you’ve been making eyes at my brothers!”
Mislina’s furious face pops out of one of the barrels. In spite of her anger, she climbs out of the barrel in a rather adorable way, holding up her dress with both hands as she gets her foot over the barrel’s edge and struggles to find her footing. Alois gives her a hand, which she holds without complaint; she thanks him, then resumes her glaring at Bella.
The two’s antagonism didn’t start today. Their quarrels are unsightly. Mislina sees Bella as something of a home-wrecker, as the latter keeps coming after her brothers at every social event (as Mislina herself complained before today’s wedding). Bella, on the other hand, is jealous of Mislina, who’s surrounded by such good men and can’t resist saying some nasty things (as Bella herself told me at the last dinner party). It’s hardly different from watching two children fight, and that’s not just my impression.
Is it something about this royal family that all my siblings and I have many friends we don’t have to mind our manners with?
“There’s no other woman whose company I don’t appreciate as much as yours,” says Mislina.
“Believe me, I feel the same way.”
Sounds to me like they actually get along swimmingly, but I’ll keep that to myself.
“We’re making a temporary stop; there’s people overboard!” announces the captain of the Seyre Willic, who suddenly appeared on deck.
A clamor rises as the crowd starts to wonder what’s going on. There’s married couples running from the stern to the bow, and many peer into the waters over the gunwales.
“What happened?” asks Mislina.
“It looks like we’ve hit a small tourist boat. They said there’s people floating on the water’s surface,” answers the first prince of Vestanu, Koch Jiol Vestanu, who was supposed to be far away but at some point must have slipped into our group. He points to the fore of the ship. “That aside, Degnea was looking for you.”
Koch swings his head as if to show off his beautiful white hair and smiles as he addresses Alois. He’s got a keen eye if he’s already figured out Alois is avoiding her.
“You’re a bad person,” says Mislina.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say Alois is like a fourth brother to her, which is why she seems to dislike Koch as well, since he keeps trying to pair Alois off with a bad match. Koch, however, doesn’t seem to think he’s doing anything wrong.
“By the way, why are you here, Zenon, and not the crown prince?”
Since he couldn’t get a satisfactory answer from Alois (or rather, Alois ignored him), he targets me instead and changes the topic.
Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, and there are those who must remain conscious of diplomatic relations while hiding the fact that they’re not very good at it; this man is one of them. He’s like a wicked version of Alois, with an even more difficult personality.
“My brother couldn’t fit it into his schedule, so father told me to go.”
“But everyone here is next in line for a position of power, or otherwise someone who will shoulder their kingdom’s future. Could it be that the king of Doran sees you as—”
What a rude man.
As soon as I open my mouth, about to protest, things get noisy on the ship.
“How gorgeous...”
“Is that skin glittering like a jewel or are my eyes playing a trick on me?”
“I’ve heard merpeople’s skin shines in the sun as beautifully as the waves.”
“But she has legs.”
“The man looks normal.”
“Everybody, please stand back. You never know what might happen.”
We’re left wondering what’s so unusual about the rescued people. From conversations in foreign languages reaching my ears, I learn that the tourists we’ve picked up are a man and a woman. In the meantime, Mislina and Bella are unable to keep their curiosity in check and make their way to the bow to join the curious crowd. Koch and Vega follow them. What are they hoping to gain from seeing who’s there? I can’t relate to lookie-loos.
“My! I know this woman!” comes Mislina’s voice after a while.
Just whom did she find there? I don’t normally join such crowds, but after hearing Mislina, Alois and I head to the bow as well. Once we get to an opening in the crowd and I see the rescued pair everyone’s staring at, my eyes open wide.
“That’s...”
Even Alois, who’s never shaken by anything, looks just as shocked.
“Y...eah...”
At the center of the crowd is a woman lying limp, struggling to lift her eyelids. It’s hot in the sun right now, but it’s as though she’s shivering in the cold.
“Miss... Miss...” calls out the vice-captain once she seems to come to her senses. He pats her shoulder.
Wet with seawater, the woman’s pure-white skin glistens in the sun. One could mistake that sheen for fish scales faintly glittering with prismatic colors. The extraordinary, unnatural beauty of that skin seizes the hearts of everyone present. Her white, revealing Seleinan outfit exposing her navel and her slender arms sways the hearts of the onlookers all the more.
Nobody gives so much as a glance to the rescued man by her side.
“Is she...a princess from somewhere?” utters Koch beside me, gazing with sparkling eyes at the woman. “It’s as if she’s adorned with gems down to the bones—no, as if she were one perfect gem, through and through,” he continues with lingering excitement and bated breath.
“Ngh...” The woman slightly opens her eyelids with long eyelashes.
The vice-captain, who’s helping her sit up, goes slightly red in the face—perhaps she’s regained awareness of her surroundings and exchanged looks with him.
“Miss... Or...Your Highness? H-How are you feeling?”
The vice-captain, a man by the name of Cascade, is transparently flustered. In front of him are moist green eyes; cheeks that have regained their reddish tinge; soft, pink lips; and long, wet hair as blue as a cloudless sky. The vice-captain draws close enough to her face that they can surely feel each other’s breathing, and, forgetting about everyone around, he draws his lips towards hers as if getting pulled in.
This isn’t good.
“Hey, Alois,” I call out to the man beside me.
He has a slight frown on his face. Once he notices me looking at him, he gives me a sidelong glance and puts on a smile, then moves his fingers behind his back. I’m guessing he intends to render the vice-captain motionless with his magic, or use some other kind of spell.
“Why am I...?” quietly utters the woman at the center of everyone’s attention, with no regard for the man’s approaching face.
She looks with surprise at the crowd surrounding her. It appears she’s not quite aware of the situation she’s in.
Then, she looks this way and opens her mouth wide.
“Agghh, Rockmann!”
Her gentle air gone without a trace, the woman yells like she’s seen a monster, startling the vice-captain beside her. She has a close connection to me and my friends.
It’s a woman who was never supposed to be here—Nanalie Persephone Hel.
“Good grief...” utters Alois.
“Of course something like this would...” I add.
I once asked Alois what made him fall in love.
“She has a great smile and laugh. Kind of catches me off guard.”
Don’t know what made me recall such a thing all of a sudden.
I exchange glances with Alois. Now that Nanalie is no longer in danger—as the vice-captain seems to back away—both of us let out utterly drawn-out sighs.