Chapter 37
Noon sunlight spilled over the windowsill and onto Alina’s bed.
Alina, who had been forcing her eyes shut to reassure her father, gently opened them at the murmuring she heard outside.
“Mmm....”
The instant she opened her eyes, the intense sunlight stabbed at her vision.
Alina instinctively furrowed her brow.
But something was strange.
There was only one window, yet the openings through which the light entered appeared to multiply and overlap.
The world rippled as though she had opened her eyes underwater.
She had sunk into the mattress during her nap, unable even to move her head.
Even with the flattened pillow propping up her head.
‘...That’s right. It must be because I squeezed my eyes shut too tightly before opening them.’
Alina reached out to block the sunlight from the ceiling.
Whenever a shadow fell over them, her furrowed brow relaxed.
But even her fingers as seen by her eyes were blurry and overlapping.
Her five fingers spread into ten, then twenty, wavering like ghosts.
‘Ah....’
Fear settled into the child’s heart.
‘I’m... still not better.’
She remembered the conversation her father and the doctor had had that morning.
『It’s flash blindness caused by a sudden burst of intense light. It should improve with time.』
Flash blindness.
Ever since she had seen that frightening light yesterday, the world had changed like this.
Even with her father’s face right before her, she had reached out blindly with her fingertips.
Alina pulled the blanket up to the top of her head.
She fled into the darkness beneath it.
‘I mustn’t go out.’
Alina had always been a lively child who hated staying still in bed.
She wanted to run out right now and play a prank on Lonas, and press her ear to Kara’s belly to greet Yeppi.
But she couldn’t.
‘If I go out now... everyone will look at me sadly.’
If they saw her stumbling, unable to see properly because her eyes still hadn’t healed...
Her father, her big brother, Kara, and even her bear-like big brother Varg.
They would all look at her with sad eyes.
The look in Head Maid Masha’s eyes when she had seen Alina yesterday while bleeding.
The look in her father’s eyes when he had embraced her in tears.
That frightened her terribly.
She hated making people sad because of her.
Even though she wasn’t sleepy, Alina hugged her knees and curled up in the darkness beneath the blanket.
That was when it happened.
Murmur, murmur.
Voices came from outside the door.
‘......?’
Could they be having a serious conversation with the doctor about her eyes?
Alina started to cover her ears, but curiosity—the same curiosity that had injured her eyes—overcame her, and she slowly lowered her hands.
“This smells so good.”
“Shh! Alina is waking up. Be quiet.”
It was her father’s voice.
“Father’s voice is the loudest. And I’m telling you, she’s already awake.”
‘Gasp! How did Big Brother know?’
Lonas’s grumbling voice.
“No, her eyes are closed. There’s no need to bend down so far.... Huh.”
Varg’s deep laughter.
“Varg, crouch down too. You’re the tallest.”
She heard Kara’s gentle voice as well.
Fortunately, they weren’t talking about anything serious.
Voices full of cheer and excitement.
‘...I want to join them.’
She wanted to enter the safe, warm shelter the adults had made around her.
She wanted to step into the warm shadows.
But she still couldn’t find the courage to open the door.
‘If I go out, the mood will.... Everyone will look at me sadly because of me... because of me....’
Alina pulled the blanket over herself again and decided to pretend to sleep.
Click.
Then she heard the door open.
Someone came in.
Without knocking.
The silent signal only her father and big brother could use.
The presence of someone approaching carefully, muffling their footsteps.
‘D-don’t come, Dad....’
At that moment.
The moment Alina closed her eyes, the murmuring stopped, and her sense of smell, heightened by the silence,
caught a scent wafting through the gap in the blanket and opened her eyes.
“Huh...?”
A sweet, refreshing, nutty scent.
The scent she had wanted so badly to smell yesterday, but had been unable to properly catch before a fishy smell covered it up.
‘Could it be...?’
“Alina? Are you awake?”
Her father’s gentle voice.
Alina hesitated, then lowered the blanket slightly and poked only her head out.
Her vision was still blurry.
Her father’s voice trembled slightly.
‘Could Dad be looking at me with sad eyes right now...?’
She hated imagining the expression on her father’s face through the foggy world before her.
Right now, she could no longer read other people’s expressions with her eyes and had to conjure them alone in her mind.
And the expressions that emerged were always withered.
In the end, she lowered her head without seeing her father’s face.
But in that brief instant, something glowing red on the plate in her father’s hand stood out with perfect clarity.
“Look at this.”
Eisen approached the bedside and held out the plate.
“It’s a grapefruit tart.”
“......!”
“Big Brother Varg, Big Sister Kara, and... Big Sister Elysia made it themselves for you.”
They made it themselves?
That notoriously difficult grapefruit tart?
Alina, who had not wanted to show her eyes, lifted her head and widened her eyes.
Big brother and big sister, who looked as though they couldn’t cook a thing?
No, more than that—even the beautiful imperial princess she had met for the first time yesterday?
“F-for me...?”
“That’s right. Everyone rolled up their sleeves and pitched in. Mr. Patiss from the dessert shop came too.”
Alina sat up.
Then she looked toward the people standing by the door.
Her eyes were still dim.
Ever since seeing that frightening light yesterday, the last clear shape Alina had seen was that light itself.
The people’s forms still overlapped and rippled.
Big Brother Varg looked like a gigantic boulder.
Big Sister Kara and Big Sister Elysia looked like blurry shadows.
But.
Even through that blurry vision, certain things struck her with unusual clarity.
The white mark on Big Brother Varg’s cheek.
The white speck on the tip of Big Sister Kara’s nose.
And the white powder covering Big Sister Elysia’s forehead and hair.
‘...Flour.’
They hadn’t washed.
They hadn’t wiped it off.
Only because they wanted to show this to her quickly.
Because they wanted her to eat it while it was warm.
They had come running to her just as they were, a complete mess.
Looking at those white marks, Alina realized.
They weren’t looking at her sadly.
Nor were they pitying her.
They simply wanted to see her happy.
They were standing there looking ridiculous because they wanted to make her smile.
‘Ah....’
The worries that had made her tremble beneath the blanket—that the adults might look at her sadly, that she might become a burden—melted away like snow.
Relief.
Gratitude.
And the overwhelming feeling of being loved.
She hadn’t even tasted the tart’s sweetness yet.
But it already felt as though sweetness were spreading through her mouth.
Now it had no flavor,
couldn’t be used again,
and was merely an annoying flour mark that had to be brushed off if it got on clothes.
Those white traces melted the frozen child’s heart.
Tears welled in Alina’s eyes.
“......”
Varg and Kara exchanged bewildered glances.
“Huh? Alina? What’s wrong? Does it look like it tastes bad?”
“Or maybe...”
Hearing the adults’ worried voices, Alina shook her head vigorously.
And then.
“U... Waaah!”
Unable to hold back, she burst into loud sobs.
A child’s honest cry, spilling out because she was so grateful and happy.
“Waaah! Big Sister! Big Brother!”
Alina leaped from the bed and threw her arms around Kara and Varg.
“Thank you... sniff... I really wanted to eat it... Waaah! At first, I used Big Sister Kara as an excuse.... I wanted to eat it myself... so...”
“Oh, our Alina.”
Kara hugged Alina tightly, and I stroked Alina’s hair as well.
Elysia, Lonas, and even Eisen, who was holding the plate.
Everyone was smiling brightly as they watched Alina sob.
Adults covered in flour and a child covered in tears.
The bedroom at Eisengard filled with the sweet scent of tart and warm laughter.
A healing moment more effective than any miracle cure.
Tears shed from joy dampened the corners of Alina’s eyes.
For a fleeting instant, the tears veiled her pupils like dew.
And in that instant, the adults’ expressions came into sharp focus in her eyes.
The expressions of the adults smiling as they looked at her.
Warm shadows enveloped Alina.
* * *
After a good cry, Alina sat on the bed and picked up a fork.
A tart dampened by tears.
But it looked like the most delicious thing in the world.
Alina cut off a small piece of tart and held it out not to her own mouth, but to Kara.
“Big Sister, say ah. Yeppi has to eat too.”
“Huh? No, Alina, you eat.”
Kara declined, but Alina shook her head.
“Yeppi must be hungry. Hurry.”
“But it was made for you to eat....”
When Kara pretended to be troubled, Alina said seriously,
“No. I went to buy this yesterday because I wanted Yeppi to taste it.”
“......!”
Kara’s pupils trembled.
The child who had held on to the tart box even amid the terror of being kidnapped, thinking of the baby in her belly.
That beautiful heart was so precious and endearing.
Kara wiped at the corners of her eyes and accepted the tart Alina offered her.
“It’s delicious. Really delicious.”
Then Alina pointed at the two versions of the tart on the plate and laid out her own logic.
“Now, listen carefully, Yeppi. Big Sister is an adult now, so she’ll eat the bitter one. Yeppi is still a baby, so Yeppi needs to eat the sweet one.”
“Pfft.”
I burst out laughing despite myself.
Adults get the bitter one.
Babies get the sweet one.
Simple, but perfectly clear logic.
Of course, the fact that the “adult” she was referring to was Alina, who was still a child.
And that the “baby” she was referring to was Yeppi, who was still in Kara’s belly, made it impossible for me to hold back my laughter.
Since Kara would end up eating the Sweetie Version anyway.
“All right, I understand. Yeppi will eat the sweet one and grow big and strong.”
Kara played along with Alina and took another bite of the Sweetie Version.
“Wow, Yeppi really likes it! It feels like the baby’s kicking!”
“Really? Hehehe.”
Alina proudly took a bite of the Bitter Version meant for herself, pleased that she had taken care of Yeppi.
“Mmm...! Delici—”
Her brow furrowed.
“It’s bitter....”
The natural bitterness of grapefruit was too much for a seven-year-old child.
To say nothing of the fact that the tart had been made by three complete beginners rather than a true master like Patiss.
Adults might have found it all right, but it was still bitter to a child’s palate.
But Alina did not spit it out; she swallowed it bravely and smiled.
“I’m an adult now too! I can eat it!”
Everyone in the room burst out laughing at the sight.
* * *
After the happy tea time ended.
Count Eisen and Lonas went to the entrance to see dessert master Patiss off.
“We paid Mr. Patiss generously. He’s discreet, so he won’t tell anyone about what happened today.”
Count Eisen said this when he returned, adjusting his shirt collar.
“For now, we haven’t told Mr. Patiss that she is the Imperial Princess. We simply presented her as an important guest.”
“You handled that well, Mr. Varg.”
We went to the study and took our seats.
It was time to address the practical matters.
Lonas yawned and dropped into a chair.
“All right, then, let’s get to the main issue. While we were sleeping, did you manage to learn anything from that scatterbrain... I mean, Her Highness the Imperial Princess?”
The Eisen father and son fixed their gazes on me.
Even after an all-night interrogation, the kidnappers were only underlings, and we couldn’t identify the mastermind behind them.
The only clue was whatever Princess Elysia herself had said.
What I had learned while baking with the princess was important.
I sighed, looking troubled.
“Haa... Nothing.”
“What? Nothing at all? Even after baking tarts? Even after going through all that?”
Lonas made an incredulous face.
“The only information I got was... ‘Her Highness the Princess has a talent for baking and wants to open a dessert shop someday,’ more or less...?”
“......”
Eisen and Lonas simultaneously pressed their hands to their foreheads.
Utter disbelief.
I had nothing to say either.
I had been swept up in her pace and buffeted around so frantically that the important interrogation had ended up taking a back seat.
“Oh, and she did confess to one thing belatedly.”
I added the only fact I could safely mention as I dredged through my memory.
“Actually, she says she came to Eisengard to obtain a recommendation letter for Academy admission. She wanted to get a recommendation from His Grace the Grand Duke of Northgard through you, Count.”
“A recommendation letter....”
Eisen nodded.
“I suppose that makes sense, given how precarious her position is within the Imperial Family.”
At that moment, Elysia, who had been gauging the atmosphere from a corner of the study, approached hesitantly.
“Hehe... I’m sorry. That really is all I know....”
Elysia lowered her head with an awkward smile.
“Given my status, there are already plenty of people who want to come after me... and as a bastard, I have no guards and no information... Running headfirst into things with nothing to rely on is simply my everyday life.”
There was a bitterness in her voice like the Bitter Version.
‘......’
I stared intently at Elysia.
Was it an act, or was it sincere?
Which side was the real Elysia?
That suspicion was how I had looked at Elysia throughout the interrogation.
And what I had learned was...
Only confusion about Elysia.
But one thing was certain: she, too, was struggling desperately to survive.
‘All that worrying was pointless. I was overthinking it.’
I had watched Elysia warily and doubted her based on information only I knew, but perhaps she, too, was a victim swept up in a vast destiny just like us.
Eisen comforted her in a gentle voice.
“None of this is Your Highness’s fault. There’s no need to apologize. As for the recommendation letter, I’ll speak to His Grace the Grand Duke on your behalf.”
“Really? Thank you, Count!”
“That reminds me... If the kidnapping hadn’t happened, we would have welcomed you at our estate yesterday.”
Eisen clicked his tongue regretfully.
“Moreover, when we sent the documents and letter to the ducal household yesterday, we could have added one more line and reported the situation to His Grace the Grand Duke more quickly. The timing was unfortunate.”
‘The letter.’
My heart leaped for an instant at that word.
My gaze turned of its own accord toward the northern sky outside the window.
The postscript I had sent to Kairen through Eisen’s letter yesterday, asking him to speak with his brother Karl.
‘Come to think of it... did the letter arrive safely?’
I had completely forgotten amid the chaos of Elysia and Alina’s kidnapping.
But that letter was the key to changing the original story’s entire course—something far more important than this kidnapping.
The only hope of stopping Karl’s suicide and preventing Kairen’s descent into darkness.
‘Kairen... please stay by your brother’s side. Don’t go off doing anything else.’
You have to save your brother.
That’s the only way all of us can smile, even for a little while.
My gaze, mingling foreboding and hope, fixed on the northern sky.
Beyond the window, the landscape of the snowstorm-swept Northgard Grand Duchy seemed to shimmer.
Spring had already arrived.
Although it had been a little chilly until yesterday, noon was warm today.