Volume 2Chapter 4

Chapter 4 – A Tea Party for Two

By the time I’d given the magic lessons often enough to be used to going up to the palace, Her Highness invited me to a tea party. The official story is a tea party for three, Lady Elisabeth and Her Highness and Lady Catherine, except that Lady Elisabeth and Lady Catherine are having their tea somewhere else, so today’s tea party is apparently me and Her Highness on our own. A few trusted servants set it up, and the party itself is held with the whole place cleared.

Why the two of us, I don’t know, and there was never any question of my refusing an invitation from her, so the day arrived. I rode up to the palace with Lady Catherine as usual, and partway through I alone was shown out to a pavilion in the North Palace garden. Tea and sweets were already laid out there. The servant who’d brought me offered me a chair, so I sat and waited for Her Highness, and she came almost at once with a single guard. When she took her seat the guard withdrew far enough that nothing we said would carry.

“Leon. Thank you for coming today.”

“Your Highness. Thank you for inviting me to such a lovely tea party.”

Her Highness is in a grander dress than usual today, tea-party specification presumably, with a good deal of jewelry on as well. She’s very pretty, and that’s putting it mildly. It suits her enormously. And if she smiles on top of that, I’m finished.

The moment the thought went through my head she gave me a small bright smile. Ugh… I’ve got no defense against that. My heart is banging away where I can hear it. If I’m not careful I’m going to sit here gaping at her like an idiot.

“I wanted to talk with you properly, just the two of us. I am happy about today.”

“I am honored to be able to speak with Your Highness like this.”

At which Her Highness’s face took on a faint look of something not quite satisfied.

“Leon, I keep telling you that you may relax with me. I want to be better friends with you than this.”

“But… Your Highness is a princess. And the palace is a place that makes me nervous.”

“When I am the one saying that it is allowed, there is nothing to mind. And palace or not, there is nobody within hearing of us now.”

Lately she tells me to relax every single time. That she wants us to be closer makes me very happy, and I’d like to be closer too if I could, but the fact that she’s a princess still puts the brakes on me.

“Is it a nuisance to you, my wanting to be better friends with you…”

She dropped her eyes, and she looked lonely. …That’s not the face I want to put on her. I want her smiling, always.

“It is nothing of the kind. To have you think so makes me very glad. It is only that I am conscious of the eyes around us…”

“I see… Then let us do this! When it is only the two of us, you relax with me. How would that be?”

She put it to me with her face lit up, as though she’d just thought of something splendid. It’s true that when there’s nobody but the two of us, nobody can call it disrespect, and if she herself says it’s all right, then perhaps it is.

“Certainly. Then when it is only the two of us, I shall do that.”

“Truly?! I am very glad. Then call me Martine, and no formal speech.”

Her Highness smiled at me, thoroughly delighted. If getting to see that smile is what it takes, I’d do more or less anything… which may be a slightly dangerous state to be in.

“Certain—no… Right. Got it. I’ll call you Martine, then?”

“Oh. It feels as though Leon and I have really become friends. I am glad.”

Her Highness said it, no, Martine said it, and went a little red with embarrassment. When she makes a face like that I’m liable to go red myself.

“So Martine, you’re the same age as me, aren’t you?”

I forced the subject sideways to cover the awkwardness. I heard the other day that we’re the same age.

“I am. And Leon will be in the same year as me at the Royal Academy, so I am very much looking forward to enrolling.”

Right, the same year at the Academy too. I’ll be attending from the ducal house, so I’ll stand out horribly once I enroll. Not in the good way either, definitely the bad way. Since I promised to help build up the ducal house’s camp, there’s nothing to be done about it.

Still, every attribute stays hidden for now, so maybe I can get through it without standing out too much? No, better not to count on that… The last of the time I get to spend hidden and unremarkable runs until I enroll at the Royal Academy. After that I stand out at school as the commoner with a ducal house behind him, and once I graduate the every-attribute business goes public and I stand out as a noble. In short, I look like standing out forever. For now I’ll enjoy being an ordinary commoner while it lasts, because it won’t last.

“That reminds me, at the Royal Academy I’ll have to act like I’m meeting you and Lord Stephane for the first time, won’t I?”

I come here as Lady Catherine’s attendant, so an attendant who’s already on visiting terms with Martine and Lord Stephane would look very odd indeed.

“At the start it will have to be so, yes. But I should be lonely if I could not talk to you, so perhaps I shall make some opening for us to get to know one another quickly.”

Martine said it half to herself and sank into thinking. A commoner with a ducal house behind him who’s on good terms with a princess… That’s quite a position. I can’t make myself believe it’s mine.

“Well, I shall think about it in various ways. Enrolling is still some way off.”

“I haven’t even passed the entrance exam yet.”

“But you will pass, will you not? Leon knows so many things…”

She got that far and then her face went difficult all at once and she stopped speaking.

“What’s wrong? Are you all right…?”

“Yes. …Leon, this is not easy to say, but there is something you are keeping hidden, is there not? I wondered whether you might tell me what it is. I have no wish at all to force it out of you. It is only that I thought you might be suffering with it.”

“Wh… why?”

“When you cured me, and I began to ask you why you had knowledge of that kind, there was a moment when your face looked sad. As though it hurt.”

…Seriously? Was I making a face like that? Though it’s true that remembering Japan still turns me sad. Part of what makes it hard is having nobody I can tell any of it to. Some small ordinary thing will come up in the day and I’ll think, we had these in Japan too, or, my family and I used to eat like this when I was little, and there’s nobody I can say it to. That gets to me badly.

“I cannot even imagine what it is you are carrying, but I can hear it and hold it. And if you tell me to keep it a secret, then of course it will be a secret between the two of us and I shall never speak of it anywhere. If you feel able to trust me, I think telling it would make you lighter.”

Martine finished and smiled at me gently, the way you would to somebody hurt. I felt that smile at my back like a hand pushing me forward. Martine isn’t the sort to break a promise. And she’d listen to it seriously, I know that. We haven’t known each other all that long, but I’ve met her enough times now to know the strength of the core under all that gentleness.

Martine I could tell. That’s what I find I think. And the truth is that carrying it alone any longer had reached its limit. I can never tell my family that I’m a different person inside their son, so telling Martine, who stands at a distance from my family, may be exactly the right thing.

“It’s going to sound absolutely wild. Will you hear it out…?”

“Of course.”

Her smile gave me the courage, and I said the thing I’ve kept secret all this time.

“The truth is… I have memories of living in another world.”

“…Another world. What do you mean by that?”

“How to put it… A country a very long way off, somewhere you couldn’t reach from this one in a whole lifetime. Something like that, I suppose.”

“Then Leon has memories of living in such a distant country.”

“Yeah. And not as Leon, as somebody else. I was born there and lived past being grown, and I think I got caught up in some kind of accident and died. And then I came to and I was the eight-year-old Leon in this world. So all my knowledge is knowledge I got in the world before.”

When I’d got that much out, Martine sat thinking with a serious face, working at it to understand. She didn’t say I was mad, or that it was impossible; that alone, that she was trying to take it seriously, feels like being rescued.

“I cannot picture it. I wonder whether such a thing can really happen. But if Leon has the memories then it must be able to… Is there some connection between those memories of yours and having every attribute?”

“That’s what I keep wondering myself. I think there might be a connection, but there’s no way for me to check.”

“…No. Leon, may I ask you this one question, only once more? You are not the Apostle, are you?”

“No. I’m not the Apostle. I’ve never met the goddess, at the very least.”

“So it is as I thought. It did not seem to me that Leon was lying.”

Martine nodded at my answer with the look of somebody whose mind is settled. If it didn’t seem to Martine that I was lying, then somebody out there thinks I am. Meaning somebody believes I really am the Apostle. Lord Alexis and the others, presumably. From what I’ve heard nobody but the Apostle has ever had every attribute, so being taken for one is fair enough.

“Do Lord Alexis and Lord Richard think I’m the Apostle?”

“It is hard to say it, but Father and the others did seem to think you were. That Leon has knowledge of every sort is because Leon is the Apostle, they said. The records that survive say the Apostle held knowledge of every kind and had the use of every attribute, and Leon is that, exactly.”

Fair enough that they suspect it, then. In fact it makes me start wondering whether I really am not… But if I were the Apostle the goddess would certainly have made some kind of approach to me, so I can’t be. In which case, what am I? Lately I keep going around that question with myself, and one of the things I’ve started thinking is that I might be a foreign body in this world. If that happens to be right, and the goddess finds me, would I get erased? It frightens me a little.

“Martine, there’s no chance of me being publicly announced as the Apostle, is there?”

“The man himself denies it, so that is out of the question. Father and the others merely think it privately.”

Right. Then I needn’t worry too much about it. If they proclaimed me the Apostle, I’d be someone who had taken the Apostle’s name falsely, and that’s what I wanted to avoid. I want to keep from being found by the goddess as long as I can. Whether there really is a goddess I don’t know, but there does seem to have been an Apostle in the past, so caution costs nothing.

“If it’s not going public, then I don’t mind the misunderstanding. Nobody wonders where I got my knowledge that way.”

So that’s why, when I laid out all that knowledge in the magic lessons, not one of them asked where it came from. They thought I was the Apostle.

“Ha, that is quite true. Let Father think whatever he likes.”

The way she laughed when she said it took some of the tightness out of the air.

“Leon, I shall not press you if you would rather not talk. But if you ever want to tell somebody, tell me, as much as you like. About your memories of the world you lived in before, too. I shall hear all of it. I cannot picture it well, but I can listen.”

Why does she keep finding the words that let me off the hook like that? I’m truly glad I met Martine. And glad that I could save her.

“Martine, thank you. Really. …So, will you listen? There’s a lot of it I want to say.”

“Yes, of course.”

Her gentle smile loosened my tongue.

“Where to start… Food, obviously.”

“Was the food of your world before different from this one?”

“Yeah. Some of it was similar, but the world before was further along, I guess. And there were more kinds.”

“How interesting. I should like to eat the food of Leon’s previous world.”

“Actually, pancakes are food from the world before.”

“Are they! Those were truly delicious. If they were as good as that, I am all the more curious about your previous world’s cooking. Is there nothing else you could make?”

Things I could actually make in this world are the difficult part… Things I want to eat come to mind by the dozen. Ramen and sushi, curry, soba, udon, pasta, pizza, fried rice. I want every one of them, and I gave up on making any of them myself long ago.

“It’s just that I’m vague about the methods, so there’s a limit to what I can make on my own.”

“If the rough method and a picture of the finished dish are known, the palace cooks will make it. Is there nothing you know that far?”

If rough is good enough, there might be. Something I could make from what this world has… pasta, surely.

“There’s a dish called pasta I might be able to manage. You don’t have it in this world, do you?”

“It is a dish I have never heard of. I am very curious. Would you write the recipe out for me?”

“Sure, but won’t somebody ask who came up with it?”

“That will be quite all right. I am the First Princess, after all.”

Martine said it with a slightly pleased look. When she makes that face she looks her own age, and that’s cute in a different way. My own memories run to having lived to adulthood, but I’ve been Leon for over a year now and lately my heart feels as though it’s matched itself to my body. I’m still Ryosuke Ichigaya as a person, of course. It’s more as though that same person had been made young again. So nothing feels strange to me any more about being nine years old.

“That’s fair. All right, I’ll write it.”

“Thank you!”

Which is also why Martine doesn’t strike me as a cute child so much as a cute girl, in the ordinary way. And she isn’t only pretty; there’s a great deal in her I can respect, and thinking along those lines is probably dangerous. I shook the thought off and decided to concentrate on remembering how pasta is made.

“Bring me paper and a pen.”

Martine rang a bell, called over the guard standing away from us and gave the order. The guard gave a small nod and withdrew again.

“They will bring paper, so if you would write it on that.”

“Got it. I’d better remember it properly.”

“Ha, but even if there are vague parts, the cooks will bring it out well. It may come out a little different from the one in Leon’s memory, and that would be its own kind of fun.”

“That’s true, yeah.”

What she said took a weight off me. We waited a while, and then the guard came back with paper and a pen, handed them to Martine and withdrew to her place again.

“Leon, on this, if you would.”

“Right.”

Pasta starts with the noodles, and for now I know that wheat flour does the job. Beyond that… it was oil and egg and salt. I made it with my mother exactly once. But I don’t remember a single quantity. I can work it out from the picture I half remember. Flour, four scoops taken up in both hands, near enough. There wasn’t much oil, so let’s say a little under half a spoon. One egg, and a pinch of salt. Can it possibly work as loose as that? I’ll write down that the quantities are for them to try and adjust.

Anyway, mix those four, knead them and let them come together. And the rest of it I remember, because I worked hard at it. Once it’s mixed and holding as one lump, dust it with flour and rest it about ten minutes. After it has rested, roll it with a round wooden rod to a thickness of about two millimeters, dust it with flour again and fold it in three. Then cut it into thin strips at the end. That was it, I’m fairly sure. And the width at the end, about two millimeters will do. After that there’s nothing left but boiling it. Boiling time, call it five minutes or so, and I’ll write that the best boiling time changes with the noodle. That’s the noodles done.

That leaves the sauce, and which pasta to make. The noodles that come out of this will be the slightly thick, chewy fresh sort. In that case tomato suits it better than a plain salt dressing. Or cream.

Hmm. Tomato today. Tomatoes should be in good condition this time of year, so I’ll write that I’d like a tomato sauce with bacon or chicken in it. Then toss the sauce through the pasta and it’s done.

There. Finished. A lot of it is vague, but a professional cook should manage.

“Martine, I’ve written it.”

“Leon, thank you! Next let us have a tea party that doubles as a tasting for this dish. I am looking forward to it.”

“That sounds great. So am I.”

She was so obviously happy about it that I ended up smiling along with her.

“Then, and I am sorry for it, shall we close for today? We are already past the time we were given.”

“Oh, are we. Then that’s today done. See you at the next lesson.”

“Yes. I am looking forward to that as well.”

And that was the end of the tea party. It was so enjoyable, and it took something off my heart, and it was a genuinely happy stretch of time.

⁂

Today, nearly two weeks after that, the second tea party for two is under way. I’ve just this moment taken my seat in the same pavilion as last time. The food is already laid out in front of me. It must have come straight from the kitchen, because a little steam is coming off it and it looks wonderful. There’s a smell coming over that opens a hole in my stomach.

“Your Highness, that looks delicious.”

“Leon, it is only the two of us, so no formal speech.”

Right, of course. There’s been no occasion since to be alone with her, so I forgot.

“Sorry. I use it all the time, so it’s habit.”

“If only we could talk like this with people around as well. It is frustrating.”

“That’d be hard to pull off, yeah…”

There can hardly be anybody in this country who’s entitled to speak to Martine without formal speech, princess that she is.

“No… there cannot.”

Her face changed and went a little lonely, and I opened my mouth in a hurry to get it back to a smile.

“The future’s unknowable, though. And never mind the gloomy stuff, let’s talk about the food first. It’d be a crime to let it go cold.”

She heard that and came back to a smile.

“Ha, that is quite true. Then let us eat without more delay. The head cook was tremendously keen about the new recipe. He said it had come out to his satisfaction. Today is the first time I am eating it as well.”

“Wait, really?”

“I told them not to serve it at any meal until this tea party. Since we had the chance, I wanted to share the surprise with Leon.”

Martine smiled a little shyly as she said it. I’m very glad, and more than that I’m embarrassed, and it makes my ears warm.

“Thanks. That makes me happy.”

“There is no need to thank me for it. This smell. It does open the stomach.”

Martine seemed to have embarrassed herself too, and turned the subject.

“Yeah, the smell’s been getting to me since I sat down. My stomach’s going to start making noises.”

“Then let us eat without more delay.”

“Yeah. Itadakimasu.”

I picked up the fork and spoon that had been set out and wound a mouthful of pasta onto the fork, and got it straight into my mouth. Oh… that’s good. The tomato has its sharpness, and salt and herbs and the rest have brought it into balance. The pasta is chewy and superb. It’s a little different from the taste in Japan, but on its own terms it’s fantastic. The head cook is amazing.

I looked over at Martine, and her face had gone soft, so it must be good for her too. I’m glad she likes it.

“Leon, this is very good!”

“I’m glad. Your cooks really are skilled, aren’t they. It’s pretty close to the taste I remember.”

“Is it. So I am eating the food of Leon’s previous world at this moment. That makes me happy somehow.”

That she should be happy about that fact makes me happy. Martine really is a good girl. Good girl may not be quite the right way to put it, but nothing else comes to mind that fits.

After that we talked a little and gave ourselves up to eating for a while.

“Leon, that was truly delicious. Are there no other recipes you could reproduce?”

“Hmm. There are plenty of dishes I can think of, but once you narrow it to things this world could make right away and that I actually remember the recipe for… there isn’t much.”

“I understand. Leon, do your best and remember more of them!”

Martine said it laughing. I’d like to remember them, but a lot of it is gone and a lot of it I never knew. And there’s too much this world is missing. Soy sauce, miso, noodle broth: without the seasonings it’s difficult. Wait. Which reminds me, I’ve never asked any of the nobility whether soy sauce or miso exists. Could there be a miracle where they turn out to exist and simply be expensive? I asked Martine with a bit too much excitement.

“Martine, does this world have soy sauce or miso? They’re seasonings!”

“Th-that is quite a rush of enthusiasm. Are they so delicious? Hmm. But I have never heard of them. I shall check with the cooks and with Father, just in case.”

“Right… thanks. They’re made from a bean called the soybean.”

“The soybean. I shall ask.”

“Please do!”

Lord Alexis might know, actually. That they exist in some distant country, or something. What would I do. If they exist I want them whatever they cost. I want to go to that country! My heart’s racing about it already.

“Then I shall tell you the result at the next lesson.”

“Yeah!”

So I fidgeted my way through to the day of the next lesson, and at the palace I’d finally reached I was given the answer. That nobody knew of any seasonings called soy sauce or miso.

It knocked me flat. I’d let myself hope a little that they might exist, which made it worse. I have no idea how soy sauce and miso are made! What am I supposed to do!