Someone’s washed me. Someone’s brought me to my room. Someone’s put me to sleep on my bed. Someone’s pulled the blankets over me.
And someone’s whispering in my dreams.
Baseball? If you’re going to play baseball, then be a catcher—if soccer, then...um...game-maker? Someone who gives instructions to the team, anyway. Coach would be best.
An elementary school student can’t be the coach.
I guess so, that’s too bad. Aaaall right, Yuuri, catcher it is. If you don’t give the signal, the game doesn’t start.
“...If I don’t give the signal...the game doesn’t...”
“Are you awake, Your Majesty?”
I can dimly see the white ceiling above me. The uber-beauty with the gray hair peers at me. He’s smiling and biting his lip, his lilac eyes filled with tears, looking ready to burst out crying at any moment.
“...So...I’m dead?”
“Please do not say such inauspicious things. Right now everyone in the kingdom is concerned for Your Majesty’s health and praying for your recovery.”
“That’s pretty exaggerated.”
Günter draws back as if to say “Certainly not!”
“It is not exaggeration. You have been asleep for three days.”
“Three days?!”
“Yes. But you entered into a normal sleep this morning, and the physicians said that you would awaken once you’ve recovered from your fatigue. Do you feel any sort of strangeness anywhere?”
“I thought so, but actually I’m just hungry.”
Still, even though I got run down by a flame monster like that thing, I don’t have any conspicuous injuries or burns. Maybe I’m actually made of pretty tough stuff, or did someone throw in the towel for me?
“But truly, when Your Majesty used Water Sorcery, you amazed not only me, but Gwen and Conrart as well. When did you form a covenant with the elements of water? And they were such beautiful, magnificent snake avatars. When in the world did...”
“Water Sorcery? Elements, covenant? What are you talking about? Oh, right, is that girl okay?! That girl who was hit by the burning wolf.”
“Ah, yes, happily there was no danger to her life. Since Gwendal erected a barrier around her just before she was hit by Wolfram’s flames, she was only lightly brushed, I guess you could say, by the surge of the attack and thrust back.”
Gwendal? Aaah, I guess he’s a pretty decent guy after all.
“Yeah, still. Right, aaah, that’s great, I was pretty worried, what would I do if a girl were really burned—would it be my fault? Would it be my responsibility?! That’s when the blood went—whoosh!—up to my head...er? So what’d I get hit with?”
“Hit...no, oh no, Your Majesty—Your Majesty was the one to do all the hitting...”
“Come on, you don’t have to baby me. I never had any chance of winning that duel in the first place. I must’ve been so scared out of my mind that I totally blocked out my memories of it.”
I twist my head—crackle—to loosen my muscles and wait for the familiar ‘I thought that might be the case’ from Conrad. But those words never come. Because he’s not even in the vicinity.
“What happened to Conrad—work?”
“Indeed, work. Actually, a dispute arose in a village near the border, and he has set out with Gwendal to suppress it. Though he knew that Your Majesty’s condition was not serious, he must have felt that leaving you was like pulling his own teeth.”
So this country has idioms like pulling teeth and mongrels too.
Someone force-clears his throat from the open door.
The demonic prince, Wolfram, is standing there, looking sullen. Actually, he’s the Mazoku prince, but since he presumably hurt me that badly, I can’t think of any adjectives to give him but devilish or satanic. I want to stick him with something like Hades or Hell or Blood and turn his name into a B horror flick title.
With a small, rare chuckle, Günter tells me in an undertone, “After what happened, Wolfram was rebuked by Lady Cäli.”
“Huh, so that mom scolds her kids, too?”
“Provoking her anger is not something I would...”
“Stop going on about unnecessary details, Günter!”
The chastised third son approaches the bed with loud footsteps. He looks slightly up and away from me in a rather strained manner.
“I’ll leave you young people alone now,” the granther says suggestively, and leaves the room. Wait, don’t leave me alone with hiiiiim! is what I really want to say, but I look down silently and wait for my opponent’s move.
“You’ve got a ways to go!” Wolfram bites out brusquely.
“Huuuh?”
“I thought you might not be a total dunderhead after all, but if you’re going to faint after that paltry demonstration, you’ve still got a ways to go to become the Maou!” he says with arms crossed and chin in the air. He’s pretty self-important, this guy. “The next time you challenge me, you’d better put more power in it! ’Cause one or two of those uncool snakes of yours totally can’t win against my Fire Sorcery!”
“Snakes? Say what? Aren’t you here to apologize to me after getting scolded by your mother?! So what’s with the high-and-mighty attitude? You don’t look contrite at all!”
“Why should I apologize to you?”
“’Cause you go and change the rules, and use magic that I don’t know...augh... geez...”
I remember that I lost in the end. But I’ve totally forgotten the climax part. I lost, right? Probably? Even though Günter said I wasn’t beat up to comfort me.
“Oh whatever, it was a draw, a draw. And I did pretty good to get a draw, too.”
“A draw?! I was the last one standing, so I won! But you have nothing to be embarrassed about. There was never any doubt as to the outcome. If I’d been beaten by you, I wouldn’t be able to call myself scion of one of the Ten Aristocratic Houses.”
“...”
I only sigh, losing whatever energy I had for a retort. Maybe Wolfram’s in a good mood or something—he even gives his enemy praise.
“But flicking away my sword like that was pretty good. That’s the first time I’ve taken a blow like that. Is it swordsmanship from the world you grew up in?”
“Which? Oh, that bases-loaded homerun? No, that wasn’t swordsmanship or martial arts or anything like that. It was just an accident because the grip of that sword I borrowed felt like a bat’s, so I sorta took a swing out of habit.”
“Bat? Grip? Are they names of the weapons you’re accustomed to using?”
“Noooo, they’re not. Bats are baseball equipment—something that looks like a stick, and then you have the glove and the ball, and pitcher throws the ball and the batter hits it, and if the batter is successful, he becomes a runner, and the catcher kills the runner—”
“So it is a life-and-death contest after all.”
“That’s not what killing means! It’s way more fun and more exciting.”
“I don’t get what’s so fun about hitting a ball with a stick.”
“Aaaargh, you gotta actually see it to get how baseball’s interesting! Oh, but I can’t really show you by myself...I mean, in this world, the baseball population is me and Conrad and those kids...”
“I don’t want to hear about Conrart when you’re talking with me.”
Mention of the second son seems to darken the mood of the third.
“He went to his favorite human village.”
“Eh? Günter said something about a dispute or quarrel...?”
The children in the village near the border. Brandon, Howell, Emma, two more whose names I didn’t hear.
“Yeah, it’s land we lent to the refugees. Their early crop of barley ripens around this time, and they make an easy target for the neighboring village. They had a bumper crop last year, which probably makes it all the more dangerous for them this year.”
The blood suddenly boils in my veins. My blood pressure goes through the roof without warning, and I become light-headed. There’s a buzzing in my ears. Though I must still be sitting on the bed, I have the sensation that I’ve fallen into a bottomless pit.
“What, are you worried? Oh right, you’re half-human, too.”
“How...what’s the scale of the damage? It’s not so bad that people have died...is it...?”
“I’ve never heard of disputes without casualties...what, Yuuri, are you going to the bathroom?”
“No, I’m not!”
I drag my body out of bed on a wing and a prayer and, tottering from starvation and dehydration, look around the vicinity of my feet for shoes.
“If I don’t go, if I don’t make sure they’re okay—”
“Go, huh?? To the border? You want to see Conrart’s face that much?!”
“I’m worried about the children!”
His voice flattens in disinterest. “Right, you’re worried about the refugees?”
“Shut up, it doesn’t have anything to do with you!”
“What do you mean, it doesn’t have anything to do with me? Are you planning to go looking like that? Get some proper clothes on and brush your hair—you’ve got an incredible case of bed hair, it’s so messy! And you need to go at the right time—at least wait until dawn, and go drink and eat something. Oh yeah, don’t eat too much, or it’ll be turning around in your stomach.”
After going on and on, Wolfram calls towards the door. A different woman from the first one appears, and he commands her to bring food and clothes.
“All right.”
“A-all right what?”
The blond prince says arrogantly, “You want to go, don’t you? I’ll give you a ride.”
What’s with him being nice enough to offer me a ride when our relationship is just this side of absolute zero? Could he be scheming to take my life again by making me fall from the horse? If I let him give me a ride, would it be a good thing or a trap? In the several conflicted seconds I take to weigh the possibilities, Wolfram grows even more high-and-mighty.
“Anyhow, you can’t even ride a horse on your own—you’re a totally incompetent Maou, Yuuri! It’s no trouble for me, since my horse has no problems carrying extra luggage, but I guess you’re unsure about even that! Never in the history of the Maous has there been one as hopelessly wimpy as you!”
“D-don’t call me a wimp!”