The next day.
I’d asked Maria along, and we’d come out to the great forest. My stomach had been in an abnormal state ever since eating Anastasia’s cooking, but dwelling on that is how you lose. I’ve researched a great many things since I first took up the pursuit of magic, and I never once knew that antidote magic works on a stomachache from ordinary home cooking. Honestly surprising. Worth writing up as a paper sometime.
Joking aside. Maria was filling her basket with magic herbs, quick and practiced, in air thick with the smell of green.
“Hey, Ephthal? Why’d you suddenly decide we were out gathering magic herbs?”
Hmm. Telling Maria should be safe enough. Merlin had worked it out the moment she looked at the flow of Sheryl’s magic power, once she’d heard about the Ice God Emperor, so it’s the sort of thing anyone with the eyes for it can see.
“The thing is… Sheryl has a rather troublesome illness.”
“A troublesome illness?”
“Congenital. She burns an enormous amount of magic power simply to stay alive, and left alone, she’ll die. Does ‘spirit’ mean anything to you?”
“The breath of great nature, lurking in the air… no, gods. Elves are spirit-worshippers, so of course I know.”
“They’re much the same order of thing as the Azure Dragon or the Black Tortoise, the Four Sacred Beasts. Have you heard that spirits, being creatures of pure mind, will rarely take on flesh and imitate a human shape?”
Maria nodded, and I went on.
“And a spirit girl who took flesh in the material world on a whim fell in love. With Sheryl’s ancestor, the Ice God Emperor.”
Maria laughed, exasperated. “Hahaha.”
“Getting together with a god. The first Four Emperors really were an anything-goes crowd, starting with you.”
“Anyway, she has spirit blood in her ancestry, and she’s in a state where magic power depletion could kill her at any moment.”
Maria’s eyes went wide and round.
“You took that girl into the mansion knowing that?”
“That’s about the size of it, yes.”
“Haha. You really are strange. Same story with Anastasia, and the same with me. It practically looks like you go out and get yourself caught up in trouble.”
“Well… I’ve never managed to shake the habit of picking up strays.”
Merlin herself started out as an infant I picked up at the Demon King’s castle.
Maria laughed again, exasperated, thought about something for a while, and sighed.
“It’s lovely, though. Marrying a spirit… I could get starry-eyed over that.”
“Hm? Is this you saying you’d like to marry a spirit too?”
Maria puffed out a cheek, then shook her head like someone giving it up.
“When I was a kid, sure, I used to dream about fairy-tale things like that.”
“But…” And she fixed her eyes on my face and held them there. “Right now I have someone I actually like. Not some vague daydream. A real, live person.”
“…”
“…”
We looked at each other for a good few dozen seconds. Then Maria tipped her head back and looked at the sky through the gaps in the trees.
“Still, it really is lovely. Across species, across station. Two people who could never have happened, and they happened.”
“It might be, at that.”
“…Well. I’m in love across station myself, so when I hear a story like that I think it’s wonderful. And I think I’m jealous.”
“…”
“…”
Maria kept her eyes fixed on my face, as though she were waiting for me to say something. Then she shook her head again, giving it up—
“…Magic herbs, so you’re making some kind of medicine to top up magic power?”
Which was exactly my purpose, as it happens. I don’t know whether I’ll ever use it, but if Sheryl collapses I want to be able to give first aid at any hour, and that was why we were out here today.
“So why bring me along? You can do anything by yourself, can’t you?”
“You were raised in the forest. Just as I expected, you’re picking out the herb colonies beautifully. Reading the subtle shifts in the plant ecology, that sort of thing. I can’t work that way. You’re a real help.”
Nobody outdoes an elf at this sort of gathering. I learned that over and over back in my adventurers’ guild days, so bringing Maria along for exactly that reason is the honest truth.
“Well, well. What an honor, to be of use to the Thunder God Emperor-sama.”
The theatrical delivery, gesture and all, got a small laugh out of me.
“Huh. So Maria says honest things sometimes after all.”
“I can be honest sometimes… Actually, I’d say a good deal of the thorn has come out of me since I met you, hasn’t it?”
She puffed her cheek out, as though the suggestion offended her. Then something seemed to occur to her, and she closed her fist tight, like someone steeling herself.
“Hey, Ephthal? You’ve kissed Anastasia before, haven’t you.”
What is this girl starting on now, out of nowhere. I froze where I stood.
“Hey. Ephthal?”
Maria walked up to me, opened both arms, and pulled me into a hug.
“Wait—Maria?”
She’s small, so her face came up around my chest. She held me tight, slid both hands around behind my neck, and stretched up on her toes, and as her face came closer, against my lips—something warm.
“That’s thanks for saving me. It doesn’t mean anything more than that.”
Maria dropped back onto her heels and her face drew away.
“…Elves have a custom like that, don’t they. If I remember rightly.”
Elves are a people who take obligation seriously, and they have some strange customs. When someone of the opposite sex saves your life, for instance, a kiss like that is one way of showing gratitude. Bridget sprang exactly this on me once, long ago, and it left me weak in the knees. To be fair, I didn’t know it was a custom at the time, so it landed as a complete ambush, which is a good part of why it worked.
“So, um, Ephthal? The other day… I said I’d grant you a favor as thanks for saving me, right? That promise is a separate account from what just happened. The favor’s still very much alive. So, if you’re going to spend the favor?”
Maria looked up at me through her lashes with a challenging smile.
“…I wouldn’t mind kissing you one more time.”
“…”
“…”
“A kiss isn’t something you get by asking for a favor.”
“If you ask, then once more… no. As many times as you want.”
“Maria. Are you… serious about this?”
“I don’t say things like this as a joke.”
“That sort of thing is… what lovers do. Thanks for a rescue, favors owed, I don’t need any of it. Honestly, all of that sits on my shoulders more than I can stand.”
“Picking up strays might be an ordinary day for you, but it isn’t for the person who got saved. It’s a special thing… and it’s not a matter you get to smooth over and forget.”
“Like I said, I don’t need it. And least of all asking, as a favor, for something lovers do…”
“I wouldn’t say this to someone I disliked, either.”
That got a small jolt out of me. I genuinely can’t read this girl’s intentions. No. Running for that exit would be cruel to her, wouldn’t it.
So Maria said the decisive thing, exactly as I’d expected her to. Without letting the challenge slip out of her face, spirited to the last.
“You’re kind to everybody as though it were nothing at all, and anything crooked, you knock flat by force. That’s why—I fell for you.”
Troublesome, this. I’d been making a point of not noticing until now, but the truth is that her… that the repeated attacks she’s thrown at me, almost all of them dead straight, have been landing. Only slightly. But they have been doing damage.
“When I said I’d grant you any favor, that’s what I meant by it. You can spend it on something else, obviously. But if the order is a million kisses, that’s completely fine by me.”
“…”
“‘Become my lover’ works. Or ‘marry me.’ An order like that would be fine too.”
“…You really are direct.”
“Haha. Well, I do live exactly as my feelings take me, as I please, you see.”
And troublesomely enough, I don’t dislike girls like this. Honestly, she plays dirty, I thought, and sighed. Maria gave a big nod, wearing the clear, bright face of someone who has finished everything she came to do.
“Take your time thinking it over. As for what you want the favor to be, you can tell me any time up to graduation.”
“…And if I end up asking you for something worthless?”
“I’ll be really mad. And then I’ll go and cry about it on my own.”
No hesitation at all. Saying that with a beaming smile leaves me really stuck, you know?
This had turned into a real problem. I don’t have the slightest intention of messing with how she feels, but there’s no escaping it now. Or rather, she has no intention of letting me escape, which is why she’s been coming at me this hard, all this time. Even this conversation comes down to wanting it settled in black and white, whether it ends well or badly. The whole run of it is about as Maria as Maria gets.
“Hey. Ephthal? Back then, you said it, didn’t you. That in a few more years I’d grow into your type of woman.”
I did say that. I said exactly that, all right, but…
Maria finally let go of me and gave a mischievous smile.
“The one who lit the fire was… you. So none of this is my fault.”
In the end I had no choice but to admit this was a seed I’d planted myself. In mental age, though, the gap between us is literally wider than granddaughter to grandfather. I let out a deep, deep sigh.