Chapter Three Hundred and Twenty-One: Upstart 2
“The answer is… Eren!”
At Fiene’s answer, Karen felt the back of her eyes grow hot, and her face crumpled.
“It sounds like my name…”
“Hehe, it does.”
They didn’t say outright that they’d chosen a name to resemble Karen’s. And they hadn’t been the ones to name her, either. It was common enough to follow whatever connections one had and ask someone of standing to be the name-giver.
One could simply say they had asked a member of the Alchemists’ Guild—someone they were already connected to through business—to give the child her name. And that guild member had simply drawn inspiration from the most successful alchemist among those she oversaw.
That made it perfectly fine. It was like taking a name after a hero’s. All Karen had to do now was become someone widely recognized as an alchemist worth looking up to—a hero, even. That way, she wouldn’t betray the thin thread of connection that Natalia, Fiene, and Linus had woven for her.
—And she would build a world where this child could live, even without magical power.
“Eren. May the goddess’s blessing be upon you.”
Karen gently pressed her forehead to the baby’s and squeezed her eyes shut, holding back tears, then returned Eren to Fiene’s arms.
“Thank you for letting me hold her… I should be going.”
“Don’t forget your fresh-fried Karen-bread, still piping hot.”
“I threw in a little extra, too.”
Karen took the large paper bag of bread, left behind enough money that the whole shop could have bought out every loaf with change to spare, and stepped out of the bakery. Then she glanced over at the two women who were trying to chat up Julius as he waited under the eaves.
“He’s my fiancé, by the way. You’ll have to give up.”
“Aww.”
“Alright, off you go.”
The women backed off for the moment, but lingered nearby, watching from a careful distance. Even with Karen right there as his fiancée, they apparently weren’t ready to let Julius go.
“Julius.”
“I’m sorry, Karen. I turned them down any number of times, but—”
“Women from the lower districts don’t give up when you turn them down gently.”
A woman from the adventurers’ world, for instance, had none of the restraint of a noblewoman—she’d sooner push a man up against a wall than take no for an answer. Only something as harsh as, "Go look in a mirror, ugly," would likely offend her enough to make her leave. But Karen didn’t want to see Julius say something like that. And while revealing his noble status would send them running, she didn’t need that kind of talk spreading around either.
The old Karen would not have been able to ignore the way those women kept drifting into the corner of her vision. She would have needed the sense of superiority—a way of papering over her own unease. She would have had to flaunt her relationship with Julius, had to overwhelm them with it.
But Karen chose to ignore them. She was able to ignore them now because something had changed between her and Julius. Because she understood that there was no way those women could slip between them.
And more than anything, she had something she wanted to say to Julius right now.
“Never mind them, Julius.”
“Yes?”
“Seeing that baby made me want children of my own.”
Karen said, gazing into the distance. Far, far away—to somewhere beyond the sky.
“—So I want to change the world as soon as possible. You’ll stay with me until then, right?”
Karen said it with complete seriousness, but no answer came back.
Puzzled, she shifted her gaze from the distant sky to Julius standing beside her—and found him beet red. Not just his face, but his ears, his neck, even his hands and arms had all gone crimson.
When he noticed Karen looking at him, Julius bowed his head and covered his face with his hands.
“I-I’m sorry. I do understand that you don’t mean it in that way, but… the way you said it…”
“Hold on a moment?! I admit it could be interpreted that way, but that’s really not what I was trying to say!”
“Yes… I could hear the conversation inside the shop, so I do understand the context… I really do… it’s just…”
Julius stood there beet red and soft-eyed, trailing off helplessly—and at that, the women who’d been trying to chat him up exchanged glances and walked away, looking thoroughly put off. To them, it might have looked pathetic, but the sight of Julius like that sent Karen’s heart fluttering.
“Ugh… when you make that face, Julius, it makes me embarrassed too…!”
“You were saying something serious, and I’ve gone and—I’m sorry. Of course, I intend to follow you, Karen.”
“I’m not saying I haven’t thought about that other thing either, but!”
Karen said it, just as red as he was.
“First, we have to get married, right?”
“…We only just got engaged, and yet I already want to marry you. But wait. The way this conversation is going, it’ll sound as though I’m only after your body, which is absolutely not the case!”
“I-I know that. …Though, I wouldn’t exactly mind if there were at least a little of that…”
As Karen mumbled and fidgeted, the door of the bakery they had just left swung open.
“You two, we can hear every word in here!”
“Not really the kind of conversation you should be having out here in broad daylight, is it? Well—be happy together.”
“Waah!”
“…My apologies.”
Julius’s face was not one that anyone could easily forget after seeing it once. So Fiene and Linus would certainly have remembered him as the nobleman who had appeared at the school reunion.
But the two of them showed no trace of being guarded around Julius now—they were just laughing, warmly. It was surely because something had changed between Karen and Julius.
Eren, who had woken up at some point, was smiling too, a sweet little smile, as though she couldn’t help but follow along with her parents’ happy faces.
No comments:
Post a Comment