Episode 7
It was Madame Bovary who seized me and pulled me out as I was sinking into deep thought.
At some point, she had taken a seat, and was looking up at me with her chin propped on one hand.
“How long are you going to stand there like that? Didn’t you say there was something you needed?”
Her question brought my thoughts back to reality in an instant.
“Ah, yes. A souvenir modeled after Croizen’s guardian stone. I’d like to see it. I heard you had the closest one, Madame Bovary.”
“Hmm, I don’t know where you heard that, but you heard correctly. Wait a moment.”
Smiling at my answer, Madame Bovary went into the shop.
A little while later, she came back out carrying a long wooden box about one meter in length.
After placing the box on the glass display case, she carefully opened the lid and showed me the items inside.
“The farther right you go, the more expensive they are. Which one do you need? Most people usually buy something around the middle.”
Listening to Madame Bovary, I slowly examined the twenty or so red, transparent stones laid out in the box.
Shaped like hexagonal pillars with pointed ends, they were about the size of four of my fingers pressed together, and their length was about the same as my palm.
It was true that the farther right they went, the more closely they resembled the real thing.
It was said that the first imitations had been made as personal items in workshops by a few people who worshipped the family’s guardian stone.
As time passed and demand gradually grew, workshops here and there began producing them, and now they had become an item that jewelry shops were expected to carry.
A family’s guardian stone.
They were called that because they were passed down through certain families from generation to generation.
In this Kingdom of Calyps where I lived, aside from the Marquisate of Croizen, which possessed the red guardian stone symbolizing the power of attack, there were four other families that possessed guardian stones.
The Ducal House of Hubert with the black guardian stone symbolizing the power of annihilation, the Ducal House of Clemens with the silver guardian stone symbolizing the power of healing, the Ducal House of Osman with the blue guardian stone symbolizing the power of defense… where that bastard Leonard was, and lastly, the Basilio royal family with the golden guardian stone possessing the power of barriers.
As I was carefully examining the red guardian stones, Madame Bovary spoke as if in passing.
“By the way, I wonder why the red guardian stone still hasn’t manifested.”
“Indeed.”
When I answered indifferently while examining the guardian stone placed at the very end, Madame Bovary sighed and continued.
“According to the rumors, His Majesty hasn’t been in good health lately. Perhaps because of that, I hear monsters have been appearing far more frequently these days, and I can’t help worrying that they might show up here too.”
The monsters she spoke of were bizarre creatures that broke through the barrier from the Forest of Monsters and entered the kingdom.
The vast, seemingly endless forest surrounding the Kingdom of Calyps was called the Forest of Monsters, and it was said to be teeming with monsters.
The third head of the Basilio family, known as the founding king, established a kingdom in this place surrounded by the Forest of Monsters, and to protect the kingdom, he built a barrier with the power of the golden guardian stone.
Since then, the Basilio royal family had maintained the barrier for generations.
When I first heard that story, I had thought, “Why establish a kingdom in a place surrounded by the Forest of Monsters, of all places?”
Wasn’t it strange? There must have been other safe lands, yet they had chosen to build a kingdom here.
When I once said as much during a tea time in the past, what was it my half-sister had said?
“But in exchange, our Calyps doesn’t have natural disasters like droughts or floods, does it? Since it was a place blessed by nature, it must have seemed desirable as the site of a kingdom. And they had the power to protect it too.”
Hearing that, I remembered accepting it as reasonable and letting it pass.
That did not mean, however, that the royal family’s barrier protected the kingdom with one hundred percent certainty.
If the current king, who wielded the power of the barrier, was in poor health, or if the monsters were particularly dangerous, they would sometimes break through the barrier and enter Calyps.
And the ones tasked with dealing with such monsters were none other than the four great families.
Realizing that the barrier was not perfect, the founding king bestowed guardian stones upon the four families that had contributed to the founding of the nation, and entrusted them with exterminating the monsters.
Since then, the heads of the four great families had faced monsters alone, or in alliance with other families.
But with the head of the Croizen family, one of the two pillars of offensive power, absent for more than ten years, it was understandable that Madame Bovary was worried.
When I nodded to show that I agreed with her opinion, Madame Bovary opened her mouth again.
“In any case, it’s already been ten years, hasn’t it? Since the previous marquis passed away. If he truly wasn’t murdered by someone, as the rumors say, there should be no reason for the guardian stone not to have manifested by now. It isn’t as though there’s no direct heir.”
Just as Madame Bovary said, the guardian stones, called divine blessings, possessed the power to choose the person who would absorb them.
Of course, the guardian stones did not choose just anyone.
It was known that a guardian stone chose one of the direct descendants of the family, and only if there were no direct descendants would it choose someone from a collateral line.
As a result, naturally, the person chosen by the guardian stone became the head of the family or the king.
Once absorbed in that way, the guardian stone remained inside that person’s body until death, and only after they died would it return to its original place.
It had been the same when Marquis Croizen died. The moment he drew his last breath, the guardian stone had somehow returned to the “sacred room.”
Suddenly, the dead marquis—my father—came to mind.
Why had he not used his power to escape when the carriage overturned?
That was a question not only I, but everyone had had.
If he had used the power of the red guardian stone, the power of attack, he could have escaped without so much as a scratch, yet he had not been able to do so.
Because of that, some had even raised suspicions that someone had murdered the marquis.
Moreover, the fact that the returned guardian stone had not immediately manifested to my half-sister only fueled those suspicions.
It was known that if the bearer did not die from a natural disaster or the end of their lifespan, but was instead murdered by someone, the guardian stone would not manifest for a long time.
There was also one more condition for a guardian stone’s manifestation: the chosen person had to be at least seventeen years old.
No one knew the reason. They merely guessed that one had to be at least that age to use even a fraction of the guardian stone’s power.
At the time, my half-sister was nineteen, so she was fully qualified for the guardian stone to manifest.
So it was not strange that not only the marchioness and my half-sister, but everyone in the marquisate, suspected that the marquis had been murdered.
Of course, those suspicions disappeared when the guardian stone manifested to me on the day I turned seventeen.
‘If I had absorbed the guardian stone, I wouldn’t have been killed so easily.’
Once again, a self-mocking laugh surged up inside me.
When the power manifested in me instead of my half-sister, the first thing they did in their panic was hide the guardian stone. And they told me this.
“They say that if you absorb a guardian stone before becoming an adult, its power is weaker than if you absorb it after coming of age. We can’t have the abilities of our Croizen family head falling behind the other families, now can we? Just wait a little. When you turn nineteen and hold your coming-of-age ceremony, this will become yours.”
Ignorant not only about guardian stones, but about everything, I believed their words exactly as they were, and that faith ultimately gifted me death.
Of course, their words had not been entirely false.
There were indeed cases where someone had absorbed a guardian stone before coming of age and ended up with weakened power.
But they had not told me the truly important thing.
That if a certain period of time passed without the chosen person absorbing the guardian stone, their bond with the guardian stone would be severed. And once that happened, it no longer mattered whether the chosen person died naturally or was murdered.
That was why they had waited. For the day of my coming-of-age ceremony. For my bond with the guardian stone to be severed with certainty.
It was a horrifying truth I learned only after overhearing the conversation between the marchioness and Biat before I fled on the day of my coming-of-age ceremony.
As the painful memory of a dagger piercing my heart surfaced once more, my fists clenched of their own accord.
My heartbeat, as if screaming, filled my head, and cold sweat trickled down my back.
‘This time, I won’t let them do that.’
Gritting my teeth imperceptibly, I focused on the imitations before me.
I had to find one identical to the guardian stone left in my memory. An imitation that would take the place of the guardian stone that would be absorbed into my body.
After carefully checking even the last imitation, I raised my head and looked at Madame Bovary.
“Are these all you have here? I am looking for something identical to the real thing.”
The last one was the closest to the real thing, but this much would not be enough to fool their eyes.
Madame Bovary was definitely hiding something from me.
In the past, after seeing the imitation she possessed, the marchioness had told my half-sister that it was astonishingly identical to the guardian stone, and that if the two were placed side by side, even she would not be able to tell them apart.
Just as I was thinking that she must not have brought out the proper imitation because it was expensive, Madame Bovary, who had been staring intently at me, opened her mouth.
“Hmm~ Have you perhaps seen the Croizen marquisate’s guardian stone in person? You speak as though you have.”
“……!”
That was a mistake….
I bit my lower lip lightly.
Even to my own ears, saying that I was looking for something identical to the real thing sounded as though I knew what the real thing looked like.
“I only heard about it from my sister. She said the Croizen family’s guardian stone is transparent and clear without a single impurity, and that its color is extremely deep. But the ones here don’t seem to be quite like that.”
When I answered in a low voice, trying my best to feign calm, I could feel Madame Bovary staring hard at me.
If I avoided her gaze because I felt pressured, I thought it would only make her suspicious, so I met her eyes as nonchalantly as I could.
A moment later, a strange smile appeared on Madame Bovary’s lips.
“I thought you were only pretty, but you’re quite an interesting child. Yes, you’re right. Wait a moment.”
Rising from her chair, she went inside again.
A little while later, she returned with a small box in her hand. It was a box just large enough to hold a single imitation.
Madame Bovary opened the lid of the box and showed me what was inside.
“Will this do?”
The imitation she showed me was identical to the guardian stone that remained in my memory.
The transparent red stone, untainted by even the slightest impurity, shone brilliantly like the real thing.
A satisfied smile naturally spread across my lips at finally obtaining what I wanted.
“Yes. How much is this?”
I roughly knew the price, but when I deliberately asked as if I didn’t, Madam Bovary told me the price with that same strange smile still on her face.
“280 cart. But I’ll give it to you for 250 cart.”
“250 cart?”
I was inwardly surprised.
The 280 cart she had first mentioned. That was the price I knew for this counterfeit.
When I had come to buy accessories with my half-sister, I had once seen a man and Madam Bovary haggling over the price of this counterfeit.
Back then, she had asked for 280 cart without yielding an inch, and in the end, the man had given up and left.
But to think she would give it to me for 250 cart…….
Rather than gratitude, suspicion came first.
I hadn’t even asked her to lower the price, so why had Madam Bovary offered it for less than the original price?
While I was hesitating, Madam Bovary spoke with a grin.
“There’s nothing I can do if you think it’s expensive. You can’t get something like this anywhere else, can you? Besides, I lowered it by 30 cart. It’s very rare for me to lower the price first like this, child.”
“Why are you lowering the price? Is it because I look like I have no money?”
I wanted to know the reason.
It was nice to buy it cheaply, but if I didn’t know why she was lowering the price, it would continue to nag at me.
At my question, Madam Bovary sat back down in her chair, propped her chin on her hand, and looked at me.
“For some reason, the way you look right now reminds me of myself when I was young. Ah, I don’t mean your appearance. You’ll surely grow up to be a beauty who can’t even be compared to me. It’s not your appearance—it’s your eyes that resemble mine. The way you have the will to do something. I suppose my heart grew soft. Besides, the color of your eyes weighs on my mind, too.”
As I quietly listened to her words, I froze completely at the word “beauty.” So I didn’t properly hear what came after.
Of course, the word “beauty” could be used for men too, but it didn’t seem like she had used it with that intention.
Could it be that she found out?
My eyes shook unconsciously with anxiety. Then, Madam Bovary’s laughter was heard.
“Now you finally look like a child your age. Just fifteen? Sixteen? You still seem young, yet you carried yourself like such an old soul that I was surprised.”
“…….”
I’m turning seventeen soon, you know?
I swallowed the words that had nearly burst out and remained silent. But Madam Bovary seemed to read the displeasure in my eyes and continued speaking with a light laugh.
“I’m sorry if I underestimated your age. Dressed as a boy, you might look younger. Ah, you don’t need to worry about your male disguise. I only noticed because I have exceptionally good instincts; most people won’t be able to tell. So, are you going to buy this?”
“……Yes.”
The shock of being found out seemed greater than I had thought.
Blinking my eyes a few times, I found myself already outside Esther Shop. In one hand was a box containing the counterfeit, and in the other hand was change.
Madam Bovary’s voice, which I had heard as I left, echoed in my head.
“If you need anything, come anytime. I’ll give it to you especially cheap. But I hope you’ll come in your original form then.”
A strange person…….
That was how I defined Madam Bovary.
Since I had missed the latter part of her words, I couldn’t know exactly why she had taken a liking to me, but what had been in her eyes was clearly goodwill.
If I were to come back here in my original appearance, I thought I would like to have a serious conversation with Madam Bovary.
After standing blankly for a moment, I started and looked around hurriedly. I wondered if Rakein had returned.
I had to take the counterfeit out of the box and put it in my pocket, but it would be troublesome if he saw.
Fortunately, he was nowhere to be seen.
‘Let’s hurry.’
This was something I should have taken care of inside Esther Shop before coming out. I had forgotten because my mind had momentarily gone blank after Madam Bovary saw through my disguise.
I quickly stuffed the change in my left hand into my pants pocket and opened the box lid.
To prevent leaving fingerprints on the counterfeit, I shook out my folded sleeve to make it long.
After grasping the counterfeit with my sleeve cuff and carefully placing it in the opposite pocket from where I had put the change, I could finally feel at ease.
Since the pants were large, the pockets were deep, so from the outside, it wasn’t obvious that something was inside.
‘But where did Lord Hekeuseu go?’
As I rolled my sleeve back up, I looked around again. There had been enough time for him to go to Baker Pawnshop and come back, but he was still nowhere to be seen.
Since even the horse was gone, it seemed he hadn’t come back at all.
‘Did he return because he had business?’
I briefly thought so, but if it were the him I knew, no matter how urgent it was, he would have said something before leaving.
Nor did it seem likely that someone would have picked a fight with a swordsman renowned even in the Empire.
In the end, guessing that he had run into someone on the way, I fell into brief thought about whether to wait for him here or quickly visit the bookstore right next door.
The bookstore was in an alley one block away from Esther Shop.
‘I’ll just go and come back quickly.’
As soon as I decided to go alone, a laugh suddenly escaped me.
Of the three places I had planned to stop by in town, the bookstore was the only one I could visit with him without issue; yet now that I was about to go, it felt ironic that he wasn’t there.
Looking around once more, I moved my steps toward the bookstore. Just in case he returned in the meantime, my steps were faster than usual.
***
Bent over so deeply that his forehead nearly touched the desk, examining the purple gem with a magnifying glass, the corners of Roman’s mouth curved up into a long arc.
“A pumpkin rolled right into my patch, vine and all. To think it’s a fairy’s gem.”
He was so pleased that the corners of his mouth were practically touching his ears.
At first, he hadn’t been certain. The color and shape were as he had heard, but he didn’t know whether a fairy’s magic circle existed inside the gem.
Without that, it would be nothing more than a pretty stone.
“To think a boy in such shabby clothes would possess such a rare thing. Well, he was an extremely beautiful boy. Pretty enough that you could believe him to be a girl if you dressed him in women’s clothes.”
He had been talking with the boy, but all his attention had been directed at the purple gem hanging from the necklace. He was itching to find out whether it was truly a fairy’s gem.
He had been on pins and needles, worried that the boy might not leave it behind and leave, claiming it was his mother’s keepsake.
“It would be best to put this up for the upcoming auction. No matter the price, high-ranking nobles will line up to buy it.”
He had never intended to keep his promise to the boy from the start.
He planned to sell it at a high price and then send the boy back with a suitable amount of money, claiming he had lost it.
As Roman was grinning to himself at the thought of the wealth the fairy’s gem would bring him, he turned his head at the sound of a ringing bell.
“Welco—... Oh my, if it isn’t Sir Hekeuseu?”
Startled by the unexpected visitor, Roman sprang to his feet.
Rakein Hekeuseu, called the Sword of Croizen, was standing before his eyes.