“’Sirius for a day,’ you say?” Father regarded me with a disapproving gaze after I made my request. “Vice-commander of the knight brigade is an important position indeed, but don’t you think being a king is even more impressive? Why not be ‘king for a day’ instead to learn how much my position entails? If the chancellor understood my worth, he wouldn’t try to impose such a demanding schedule on me.”
“But the king is an irreplaceable position, Father. I can’t just take it over for one day.”
Father slightly grimaced at my response. “Very true, Serafina. You’ve made a wonderful point. Next time the chancellor comes around, would you mind telling him that in the loudest voice you can muster? He seems to be under the impression he can work me as hard as he pleases because I’ve got a strong constitution.” Then, he mumbled something barely audible under this breath. “I wish he’d appreciate all my hard work…”
“I’ll do just that!” I chirped back, which seemed to put Father in a good mood because he told me that he’d let Commander Wezen know about my request to become “Sirius for a day.”
About a week later, I visited Sirius in his office. While he greeted me with a smile, his expression immediately grew weary the moment he saw what I was wearing.
“…Serafina, what is the meaning of that outfit?”
“Heh heh! What do you think?”
Mirach was standing behind me, and Sirius threw a glance in his direction before returning this gaze to me.
“That looks like the uniform of a member of the Horned Beast Knights. And judging from the adornments, it appears to be above the rank of captain…” Sirius trailed off mid-sentence, something he rarely ever did.
Turning to him, I clapped my hands excitedly. “Nothing escapes you, Sirius! Your powers of deduction are just amazing! So, who do you think I am?”
“Do I have to answer that question?” Sirius asked, looking as if he didn’t want to accept the obvious. Finally, he sighed and asked, “Are you supposed to be me?”
“Bingo!” I cheered, “How could you tell?!”
“The sword at your waist is the same as the one that I use.”
“Heh heh! Good observation! But this sword is even better than yours! Ta-da!”
I pulled a large sword-shaped candy out of the scabbard with a dramatic flourish. “This isn’t a sword—it’s candy! You can munch on it as much as you like when you get hungry.”
Seeing a candy version of his sword seemed to catch Sirius completely off guard, and he stared at it in shock.
“What a complete misuse of the head chef’s abilities.”
“Hm? What was that?” I couldn’t quite hear what Sirius had mumbled under his breath.
“I was just praising the head chef’s handiwork,” Sirius responded in his normal tone. “It’s so impressive that it could be mistaken for a real sword at first glance.”
“Wow, Sirius. You have such a good eye! With this, I’m completely ready to become ‘Sirius for a day’!”
Sirius observed me skeptically for a moment but then nodded in understanding.
“So that’s what this is. A new game of sorts. And quite an elaborate one if you’ve got a costume to go along with it.”
“A game? No, no, no. This is work! Fackt was ‘captain for a day’ not too long ago, remember? This is just the Sirius version of that.” Although I thought my explanation was very easy to understand, Sirius’s response slightly deviated from what I’d told him.
“So you’re imitating Fackt in order to play with the knights, then?”
Well, this wasn’t something you saw every day. Sirius was attempting to direct the conversation in a way that would get him the answer he desired. But unfortunately for him, I wasn’t planning to be steered off course.
“Nope! I talked to Father and Commander Wezen about all of this a while ago. They both want me to be the best Sirius I can be.”
That was the exact moment Sirius realized this was an “officially sanctioned task,” and his eyes widened in astonishment. “You received approval from the king and Commander Wezen?!” he gasped. “Then why didn’t either of them say a word about any of this to me?!”
“Huh?”
“They must’ve known I’d be against this idea and do everything I could to thwart the plan! Hats off to them for having such keen insight, I suppose.” Sirius squeezed his eyes shut and placed a hand to his forehead as he answered his own question.
“Sirius?”
He looked like he had the wind knocked out of him for a second, but when I called out his name to ask why, he opened his eyes again and shook his head at me.
“What does being ‘Sirius for a day’ even mean?”
“Well, it obviously means I’m going to take over every single one of your jobs! I’ve been watching you for sooo long, so I totally know how everything works. You can leave it all to me!” I declared, standing as tall as I could and confidently tapping my chest.
Something seemed to click in Sirius’s mind as he looked back at me. “Is that why you came to my office every day last week?! I assumed you had simply developed a taste for the candies kept in there. How could I have misread the situation so badly?” Sirius held his head in his hands as he murmured in a much lower voice, “I’ll have to be on high alert whenever you do anything out of the ordinary from now on.”
He stayed like that for a moment or two before seemingly snapping out of whatever funk he was in. With a quick shake of his head, he reached out and lifted me into the air. With me safely in his arms, he briskly walked toward his desk.
“It appears that this ‘Sirius for a day’ idea has already been set in irreversible motion, so…with that being the case, Vice-Commander Serafina, please take a seat.”
“Got it!” I beamed happily. Now I could finally start being Sirius.
Sirius gave a wry smile at my delighted expression before gently lowering me into the chair. As soon as I sat down, I realized the desk was perfectly aligned with the bottom of my face. What an excellent chin rest, I thought as I immediately utilized that function of the desk and grabbed a nearby piece of paper that was resting on top of it.
Mirach, who’d been assigned to guard me that day, called out my name in a scolding tone, but I was Sirius today, so I didn’t see the need to respond to him.
I glanced over the document. My tutor had been praising me a bit more lately, so I was sure I’d be able to decipher most of it, even if it contained some difficult words. But for whatever reason, the entire paper was written in Arteagian!
“Oh, boo!” I moaned loudly, “I’m pretty smart, so I was confident I could read the entire thing if it was in Návian, but Arteagian? That’s way beyond me!”
Well, that was the end of me trying to read that paper. In that case, I would have to try holding a pen instead, like most important people did. I stretched out my arm to grab one, but the pen stand was too far away for me to reach from where I was seated on the chair.
I groaned, straining as I stretched as far as I could to reach it, but a knock on the door interrupted me—it was Canopus.
“Princess Serafina, you forgot your sash,” he said, stepping into the room.
He produced a sash with Sirius for a Day written on it in big letters and helped me put it on over my left shoulder and around the right side of my waist.
“Thanks, Canopus!” I smiled brightly.
In contrast, Sirius’s expression darkened as he stared at my sash.
“Canopus, the scope of this ‘Sirius for a day’ thing is limited to the knight brigade, correct? If I’m not mistaken, I believe the goal is to raise awareness of my duties and manage how I’m perceived within the brigade, is it not?” he questioned sharply.