Chapter Three Hundred and Nineteen: Visiting the Grave
“—You coming here is a rare sight.”
“Lyos.”
In the royal capital of Earthfill, Karen and Julius had a chance encounter with Lyos just as he was leaving the commoners’ communal cemetery on the outskirts of the city, and Karen’s eyes went wide.
Although Karen had become one of the lords of Ehlertt territory, her land was still largely wilderness. Helfried had offered to send people to clear the land and prepare a manor for her. Having left the children in Harald and Ottilie’s care, Karen had returned to the capital together with Julius.
To make all the necessary preparations—and to visit the grave.
At that moment, Julius pulled Karen close. Drawing her nearly all the way into an embrace from behind, he fixed Lyos with a glare. Seeing Julius openly display the hostility he had always concealed behind a smile, Lyos made a deeply uncomfortable expression.
“I would greatly appreciate it if you could refrain from looking at me that way, as I have absolutely never had that sort of relationship with that woman.”
“More importantly, Lyos, why are you at the cemetery at such an odd time?”
In this country, commoners’ grave visits were customarily held at year’s end. Of course, people visited graves on other days as well, but the period closest to what Karen remembered as Obon from her past life fell at year’s end.
“Are you really going to keep talking to me while you’re standing like that…? Well, fine. You know how the knights are dispatched to dungeons across the various territories at year’s end, don’t you? This year was especially busy—I only just finished my duties and made it back.”
Dungeons had collapsed all across the land this year. Not every territory had the knights and adventurers needed to contain those collapses on their own. So the Royal Knights had indeed been run ragged.
“I see. You must be exhausted. Lyos… you came to visit Ms. Frieda’s grave?”
“Yes. And your father’s, while I was at it.”
“What?”
“—You wouldn’t have known, but up until now, my mother had been tending your father’s grave in your place. I’m not saying this because I want your gratitude, so don’t trouble yourself over it.”
With that, Lyos promptly turned and walked away. Karen stood there, blinking, then made her way toward her father’s grave—the one she hadn’t visited in years. She had worried she might not even remember where it was. And yet she found it without much trouble at all, and despite the fact that she had not once visited since her father’s death, the grave was clean.
There were even flowers laid as an offering. A proper bouquet, the kind typically used for grave visits in this world. Everything was perfectly tidy. Preparing flowers and even cleaning the grave made Lyos seem like a remarkably responsible adult.
It was so unexpected that Lyos had done all this that Karen could only stare down at it, mouth slightly open.
She herself hadn’t even brought flowers. Julius had brought some, but still.
“…Karen?”
Julius called to her with a look of concern. Karen started, then stumbled through an explanation.
“Ah, right. Um… I’ve never actually come to visit my father’s grave before.”
“Was it too painful? If so, you could have said—we could have postponed the visit to your father. I could have come alone to—”
“No, that’s not it—it’s just…”
She couldn’t immediately find the words. As she looked up at Julius, searching for them, a loud "Oh!" rang out from behind her.
“You’re visiting a grave? That’s a rare sight, Sis!”
“Lyos said the exact same thing.”
“Yuck!”
It was Thor. He, too, had returned to the capital from Ehlertt together with Karen.
“Wow, Thor, you even brought flowers… and Lyos brought some too… Am I the only one who’s failing as a functioning adult here…”
“I brought some, so couldn’t we say it’s from both of us?”
Julius offered her that kindness, but Karen had never had any such intention, and the fact that she had been out-adulted by Lyos in the basic decency department landed like a real blow.
Thor shrugged and said to her:
“Well, you don’t think Dad’s dead, so of course you wouldn’t bring any.”
“You don’t think he’s dead? Is your father perhaps still alive?”
“No! Um, well…”
“Dad disappeared in a dungeon, and they never found his body or even any of his belongings, so Sis has always believed he might still be alive. I mean, normally everyone would conclude he died.”
“Right, right. By any normal standard, everyone’d tell you he’s dead.”
But Karen had always had a feeling her father was still alive. She was perfectly aware it might just be wishful thinking. It was simply that when the news of her father’s disappearance had reached her, believing that had been how she’d gotten through it.
And she had kept on believing ever since. But to an outside observer, what Karen was doing looked like—well.
“So this is kind of… a delusion, I guess…”
“You believe there’s a chance Dad’s alive, so don’t call it a delusion.”
Thor said that, then deliberately stepped between Karen and Julius, placed the flowers at the gravestone, and spoke:
“I said I’d be transferring my registration to Himmel Barony in Ehlertt, but before that, I’m going to clear the fortieth floor of the royal capital dungeon. Once I’ve done that, I’ll move to Himmel territory for good, so have the adventurers’ guild set up by then.”
“If you clear the fortieth floor, you’ll be almost within reach of S-rank.”
“My promotion to A-rank is still under review, though.”
“It’s only a matter of time, isn’t it? Your sister is very proud.”
“Not as proud as a brother whose sister became a landed noble, I’d think.”
“What a close pair of siblings.”
Julius muttered sulkily, having been elbowed out of the conversation by the two of them as they heaped praise on each other. Karen pressed close to Julius’s side and murmured:
“The fortieth floor… that would be the Fairy Realm.”
That territory was already too deep for Karen to gather information from adventurers she might run into in the adventurers’ district. The only knowledge she had of the fortieth floor came from the founding myths of the Kingdom of Earthfill.
The fortieth floor—the Fairy Realm. The floor said to be home to a pegasus.
“…If Dad’s still alive, the only possibility is that he somehow wandered into the Fairy Realm on the fortieth floor. If I clear the fortieth floor and still don’t find him, then you need to give up too, Sis.”
“Huh!? Are you rushing to clear it because you’re looking for Dad—!?”
“Any adventurer aims to clear the dungeon as fast as they can, don’t they? Besides, I think Dad is probably dead.”
Even so, perhaps it wasn’t entirely unrelated. Karen stared up at Thor, stunned.
“Don’t tell me… you became an adventurer for my sake? So that I could finally give up on Dad—”
Had she unknowingly led her younger brother down a dangerous path?
Thor answered her question instantly:
“No, I’ve pretty much always planned on being an adventurer since I was a kid, and I do it because dungeon-conquering is genuinely fun.”
“Because it’s fun…”
Karen couldn’t help repeating it back to him.
“Yeah, seriously—it’s great, just going around killing monsters left and right.”
“Oh. Right, yeah. Now that you mention it. Most of the guys who grew up in the adventurers’ district are pretty much like that.”
Karen felt a wave of relief as she remembered the obvious fact she’d carelessly forgotten.
“It is precisely because Karen grew up in a place like this that she has the depth of heart to have accepted someone like me. I offer my deepest gratitude to the adventurers’ district, to the father who raised her, to her brother Thor, and to everything else that shaped her. Karen and I are engaged, and we will marry in the future. Please continue to watch over us kindly, Father.”
“Dad, doesn’t this guy kind of piss you off?”
When Julius offered his prayer of gratitude to the gravestone, Thor turned to the same gravestone seeking agreement.
Karen still did not believe her father lay resting there, but it was so funny that before she knew it, she was laughing until tears ran down her face.
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