“To tell the truth... our family has, for generations, been the family that mended the clothes of the soldiers on the northern front.”
Head Tailor Closer opened his mouth.
“During the war, we took up our needles at the risk of our lives. But once the war ended and peace came... do you know what the bastards in the capital called us? ‘Backwater menders from the North,’ they said.”
His fists trembled.
The years of being looked down on by dandies who had spent their time making dresses for noble ladies in the safe capital.
That inferiority and rage were exploding at this very moment.
“Before my eyes stands a man with the most perfect physique in the history of the Empire... and this man is going inland, into that arrogant capital.”
The head tailor looked up at me.
He was supposed to be a merchant, and yet only the eyes of an artist and a competitor, desperate to show his masterpiece to the world, swirled within his gaze.
“Into these clothes... I will stitch the name of our Closer family.”
“......”
“I’ll make those empty shells in the capital gape in shock when they see these clothes. This is my revenge, and my proof!”
He pressed the Behemoth leather to my chest and shouted.
“I don’t need money! I won’t take a single coin for the labor! Only, allow me to embroider my family crest on the lining.”
“Um... sir. Please calm down and....”
“Wear these clothes... and trample the capital’s bastards underfoot! With that magnificent body of yours!”
At his solemn cry, the other tailors around us also raised their fists with cries of “Oooh!”
Even the soldier customers in the shop had somehow united as one, cheering, “Show them! The power of the border!”
I stared at Kara with a bewildered expression.
Kara shrugged with a look that said, “This is fun,” and mouthed the words.
“It’s free, isn’t it? Just wear it.”
Well, the sheen of the Behemoth leather was far too fine to refuse.
More than anything, the word “free” struck the practical heart of a barbarian.
I had no idea what Count Eizen would say if he found out later, but for now, good things were good.
“All right. Since you’re going to make it anyway, please just make it sturdy. But...”
The instant my permission was given, the tailors didn’t even pretend to listen to the rest of my words. They let out a cheer and rushed at me.
“Now! Take his measurements again! Not even a one-millimeter error is allowed!”
“Bring the needles! The special needles for Behemoth!”
The clothing shop in the border city heated up in an instant, like a blazing furnace.
“Wait a moment.”
Only then did the biggest problem occur to me.
“The thing is, our schedule....”
Our travel and lodging schedule was entirely being handled by Count Eizen, our patron.
I didn’t know when the carriage arrangements would be finished, or when we had to depart.
I had clearly said earlier that we “couldn’t stay long.”
“Hey! Call a mage! We need to infuse mana and refine the leather!”
“Draft the pattern! Right now!”
I was doomed.
My voice didn’t seem to reach the artisans, whose eyes had already gone wild.
* * *
Jingle!
The shop door opened cheerfully, and a familiar voice rang out.
“Varg, Miss Kara. Have you found any clothes to your lik... hup!”
It was Count Eizen, returning after arranging the carriage.
But the moment he entered, he clapped a hand over his mouth.
The inside of the shop was, in every sense of the word, chaos.
Torn cloth was scattered across the floor, and around my bare back, tailors were clinging like a swarm of ants, chanting orders.
But what seized Eizen’s gaze above all was the behavior of Head Tailor Closer.
He was kneeling at my feet, clutching at the waistband of my trousers and sobbing his eyes out.
“Huweeeh! Please! Just once!”
“......What on earth is going on here?”
Count Eizen adjusted his glasses and asked me.
In his eyes dwelled the reasonable suspicion of, “Did Varg perhaps finally lose his temper?”
I shrugged as if to say I had been wronged.
“Um, Count. Please don’t misunderstand. This old man suddenly started acting like that....”
Before I could even finish speaking, the head tailor advanced toward Count Eizen on his knees.
“Count! You are Count Eizen, yes? Please, I beg of you!”
“No, what are you talking about?”
“One day... no, just five hours! Give me only five hours! I will stake my life on completing these clothes!”
The head tailor screamed with a solemn expression.
“The trousers... khh, I will yield the trousers to Eizenguard. But the upper garment! This Behemoth upper garment, at least, let me finish it with my own hands! On my family’s honor, I will create a masterpiece that will go down in history!”
“Be... Behemoth, you say?”
Count Eizen’s eyes turned toward the black fabric lying on the table.
As an administrator, he too was someone who understood the value of goods better than anyone.
The count, grasping the situation at once, narrowed his eyes.
“This man has truly gone mad.”
Having witnessed the madness of an artisan, Count Eizen fell silent for a moment.
Every gaze in the shop focused on him.
Varg scratched his head with a troubled expression.
“Um... I told them it would be difficult because of the schedule, but they wouldn’t listen. I think the decision will have to be yours, Count.”
Count Eizen took a silver pocket watch from his breast.
Click.
The lid opened, and the ticking of the hour and minute hands sounded unusually loud.
“Hmm... five hours, is it.”
As he checked the time with an affectedly serious expression, the head tailor stared only at his mouth, not even daring to breathe.
He looked ready to bite his tongue and die on the spot if he was refused.
A moment later.
Snap.
Count Eizen closed the watch and gave a faint laugh.
“I was just getting hungry.”
“......Pardon?”
“There is an excellent restaurant nearby. I’ve been a regular there for twenty-five years. If we leisurely enjoy a meal there and return... the timing should be just right.”
At the count’s cool permission, the head tailor’s face filled with joy.
“Th-thank you! Count! Thank you!”
“However, five hours. If you are even one minute late, we leave without mercy.”
“Do not worry! I will finish it within four hours and fifty-nine minutes!”
The head tailor sprang to his feet and bellowed toward the workshop.
“You heard him! Everyone, begin work! From now on, no one goes to the bathroom! No one eats! No one drinks water!”
“Waaaaaaah!”
The tailors let out battle cries and began moving in perfect order.
The sight of them taking out magic stones while the seamstresses heated needles was almost like a battlefield.
Count Eizen shook his head and gestured to Kara and me.
“Let us go. If we stay here, we may end up being sewn as well.”
We left the clothing shop behind, abandoning the scene of madness.
Behind us, shouts of “Make those stitches tighter!” and “Raise the mana output!” played like background music.
And so our first meal in the border city proceeded with that blazing heat at our backs.
* * *
“Whew... I’m finally alive.”
The moment we left the clothing shop, I let out a sigh of relief.
Behind us, the tailors’ mad shouts and the sound of mana refinement were still ringing out.
Count Eizen hurriedly took his leave, saying, “Then I will see you in five hours. I shall go confirm the restaurant reservation first.”
He, too, had clearly been worn down by that madness.
A cold border wind blew through the streets, but it was far more refreshing than the heat inside the clothing shop.
“Varg, how do I look? It’s not strange, is it?”
Beside me, Kara asked shyly.
I turned my head to look at my lovely wife.
And for a moment, I lost my words.
“......”
She was wearing the Imperial Army’s informal dress uniform, which had just finished being altered.
Originally, it had been a male officer’s uniform.
But with the tailors’ godlike skill, it had been perfectly refitted to suit Kara’s body.
The black uniform contrasted with her pale skin, creating an even more bewitching atmosphere.
The waistline tucked in sharply, while the line of her hips fell with elegant grace.
Add to that the wild aura unique to a barbarian, and she was nothing short of a goddess Valkyrie descending upon the battlefield from myth.
Her appearance was so overwhelming that even passersby glanced at her.
I, on the other hand, had had my upper garment snatched away by the tailors, and so I was wearing a huge dark gray hooded robe borrowed from the shop.
I looked crude, as if I had roughly thrown on a bearskin.
I gave a small laugh and wrapped an arm around Kara’s waist.
“Wow... my dear, you really look like the commander of an Imperial knight order. Aren’t you a little too cool?”
“Really?”
“Yeah. With me beside you, it makes the perfect picture. A dignified knight and the bandit chief she captured in the forest.”
At my joke, Kara blushed and poked me in the side.
“Don’t tease me. I’m already embarrassed because the clothes cling so tightly.”
Kara carefully stroked her stomach with a worried expression.
“It’s fine now, but... by the time we enter the academy, my belly might be too big to wear this.”
Since it was still early in her pregnancy, it didn’t show yet, but once her belly began to swell, she wouldn’t be able to wear this tight uniform.
But I instead nodded with a relieved expression.
“That’s a relief.”
“What is?”
“To be honest, I didn’t like other guys staring, so I wanted to be the only one who got to see it.”
I pretended to look around with a serious expression.
In reality, soldiers passing by were staring at Kara in a daze.
I sent them a look that said, “She’s my woman,” then whispered in Kara’s ear.
“And... later, when your belly gets big enough to show a little, that will be even more alluring in its own way.”
“......!”
Kara’s ears turned bright red.
“Wh-what are you saying! Seriously! You’ve gotten even more shameless than before!”
Even as Kara slapped my back, she couldn’t quite hide the smile spreading across her lips.
We linked arms and walked through the streets of the border city.
Unfamiliar scenery, unfamiliar people.
But the warmth of our clasped hands was familiar and warm.
Even the troublesome five-hour wait was nothing more than a sweet date when spent with my beloved wife.
* * *
At the same time.
Across the street from where the barbarian couple was walking.
At an elegant two-story terrace café.
There sat a thoroughly sulky boy.
Splendid black hair and arrogant eyes.
Though he had yet to fully shed his boyishness, the noble air he exuded was anything but ordinary.
It was none other than Kairon von Northguard, the son of the Grand Duke of Northguard.
Clatter.
He set down his teacup irritably.
“Damn it, what kind of border inspection is this? It’s just a picnic.”
Kairon grumbled in a voice full of annoyance.
Around him, heavily armed escort knights had formed an impenetrable circle.
“Young master, please lower your voice. There are many eyes watching.”
“Let them watch! Can’t I even speak freely on my own land?”
Kairon pouted.
He had come on this inspection under the plausible pretext that getting a preliminary look at the military before entering the academy would help him with the military studies he would later learn there.
But the border inspection he had expected was not like this.
He had imagined climbing atop the great wall, and looking out over the snowy plains where savage beasts and barbarians swarmed.
He had dreamed of heroic adventures, swinging his sword and fighting ferocious beasts.
Reality, however, was overprotection itself.
“Young master, the wind atop the wall is cold and dangerous.”
“That area has too much dust, so please do not go there.”
“Barbarians are dangerous, so please do not even go near them.”
In the end, here he was, trapped in a safe café in the city, sipping black tea he had already drunk to death in the capital.
“So dull. So boring. I’m going to die of boredom!”
Kairon propped his chin on his hand and stared blankly down from the terrace.
The people passing by were all soldiers in drab uniforms.
Far from the splendid young ladies of the capital, this was a bleak city with not even anything worth looking at.
“...I want to go home.”
Just as he sighed and was about to turn his head.
Swoosh.
Something lodged itself in his languid field of vision.
The only being shining in that gray street.
“......!”
Kairon’s eyes widened.
A woman walking down the street.
A woman dressed in a pitch-black uniform, her silver hair scattering in the wind as she walked.
There was a huge man in rags beside her, but he did not enter Kairon’s eyes.
Only she did.
Thump!
A shock as if his heart had dropped.
The illusion that the world was flowing in slow motion.
The typical romance fantasy depiction of falling in love at first sight was being forcibly replayed inside Kairon’s brain.
Love at first sight.
That trite expression was not enough.
The “Compulsion of Fate,” activated by the original novel to correct this twisted trajectory.
“...Beautiful.”
Kairon murmured as if bewitched.
A wild beauty he had never felt from the gorgeously adorned young ladies of the capital.
And yet, an unapproachable nobility.
The romance of the border he had dreamed of.
Adventure.
It was all contained in that woman.
At the fierce vitality that seemed to blast open the stifling chest he had kept trapped under overprotection, his heart began to pound.
“That... that woman....”
Kairon sprang up from his seat.
At the sound of his chair toppling backward, the escort knights rushed over in alarm.
“Young master? What is the matter?”
“Move! That woman... I have to follow that woman!”
Kairon grabbed the railing and leaned out.
His eyes were already gleaming with the obsession of a beast that had found its prey.
Perhaps because now was similar to the timing in the original.
And despite the other party having become a married woman.
Fate was ignoring such things as setting errors and trying to force the two together anyway.
The gears of an ill-fated bond began turning once more with a creaking sound.