Chapter 125
#125. Beggar Gritz - The Eccentric
“Today, I am free.”
Grace, a girl with striking gray hair, declared this in an extremely strict, solemn, and serious manner.
At Grace's words, the butler of House Carnelian respectfully bowed his head.
“Just as you instructed, Priestess.”
A calm tone and expression, elegant yet restrained movements.
She seemed to embody the dignity and authority of Carnelian, a grand lord and great landowner who was practically the ruler of this land, but Grace was not easily taken in.
“You mustn't attach a whole crowd of people to me just because I need attendants, and you mustn't secretly follow me from behind under the pretext of protecting me, either.”
“Of course not.”
“This is the reward the head of the family promised me. So please, absolutely, absolutely do not infringe on my day off. Understand?”
“I understand. Nothing like what you are worried about will happen.”
The butler made this declaration without the slightest sign of fluster or annoyance, despite Grace's persistent questioning.
Grace stared hard at him, then smiled sweetly and turned around.
“Then, I'll be off! Wow! I'm free!”
Her face bore such a fresh smile that, with just a little more, she looked as though she might start humming.
The Carnelian estate had been built quite far from the city.
The reason was that having the ruler's residence close to the bustling homes of the people would diminish its majesty.
It was a somewhat burdensome distance to travel without a horse or carriage, but Grace did not mind.
Only a year ago, she had wandered rough mountain paths without a care, gathering herbs and fruit.
Though her body had grown slightly less nimble than before due to her involuntary life at the estate, a walk of this distance could hardly be called an obstacle.
For several dozen minutes, she continued onward with an extremely elegant and composed appearance, though her speed was nearly that of a decent run.
When she stepped into the city, filled with energy and clamor, some of the passing pedestrians turned their eyes toward Grace.
Their reactions were the same in broad strokes, though the details varied.
First, they looked at Grace's face with gazes filled with goodwill, curiosity, or lust.
Then, after checking Grace's clothes, they tilted their heads or their expressions subtly soured as they hurriedly looked away.
As though they had seen something they shouldn't have, or wanted to avoid getting involved with her carelessly.
“…Hmm, should I go to the bakery first?”
After making this oddly lively and precise remark to herself, like an actress on a stage, Grace proceeded through the city as though she knew it well.
“Welcome! Bread fresh from the oven! It tastes best before it gets cold!”
A plump-looking middle-aged woman repeatedly called out to passersby.
More than a few dozen loaves of bread were displayed on the stand in front of her shop, and their slowly spreading aroma was wonderfully savory.
If a traveler from another city had seen this sight, they would have been unable to hide their surprise.
Fine breads that seemed fit only for noblemen's tables were being sold casually on the street.
Yet the citizens of the street seemed accustomed to it and bought the bread without a second thought, until at last it was Grace's turn.
“Now then, what kind of bread are you looki—ah.”
The baker's face momentarily froze in dismay when she saw Grace's face.
Then, apparently startled by her own reaction, she hurriedly composed herself and lowered her head.
“W-Welcome, Priestess.”
“Oh, don't call me Priestess. Just call me Grace, like before.”
Grace spoke naturally, as though she had not noticed the baker's reaction at all.
The baker hesitated for a moment, but when she saw Grace humming as she chose her bread, she soon regained her composure.
“All right, Grace. If you can't decide, shall I recommend some?”
“Please pick about ten for me! I'll choose the other ten myself.”
“I know you've always had a hearty appetite, but if you indulge yourself like that, you'll end up rolling down the hill.”
“I'm not eating them alone! I'm taking them to my younger siblings. So you have to pick good ones, okay?”
“Do they even know enough about taste to appreciate them? They'll obviously just stuff them into their mouths as fast as they can.”
“Ah! No hitting me with the truth!”
A warm, cheerful atmosphere flowed between Grace and the baker.
At the lively sight, even those who had been watching Grace with strange tension relaxed their gazes.
Carrying a large basket and an armful of bread, Grace headed west through the city.
Before long, she arrived at the border between the city and the forest, where two buildings with entirely different appearances stood side by side.
One was so old and shabby that it looked ready to collapse at any moment, while the other still appeared to be under construction, though its materials and workmanship would not have been out of place beside any decent mansion in the heart of the city.
A smile touched Grace's lips as she looked at the newly constructed building, but her eyes held a faint, wistful air.
“Huh? Sister Ray!”
“Yaaay! Sis!”
The high-pitched voices peculiar to children were accompanied by the cheerful patter of running feet.
Feeling the children approaching rapidly, Grace put on a mischievous expression and welcomed the younger siblings from the orphanage.
“Have you all been well? Did you listen to the matron?”
“Sis, what's that? Is it bread?”
“You're going to give us some, right? Right?”
Grace gave a wry smile at the children who ignored her question and only talked about what they wanted, then spoke.
“It is. But it's bread that only good children who listen can eat.”
“We listened!”
“We're good!”
“Yes, yes, good for you. But you'll get in trouble if you eat it whenever you want, so let's go inside first.”
“Okay!”
The children moved as fast as they could, as though the bread might disappear if they were even a moment too slow.
As Grace stepped into the older and more dilapidated of the two buildings, the news must have spread in that brief time, because the children scattered throughout the building all gathered at once.
There were roughly a dozen of them, and their reactions to Grace differed according to their ages: the younger they were, the more purely delighted they were to see her, while the older children wore remarkably complicated expressions.
Grace spoke mischievously to the girl who appeared to be the oldest.
“Giselle, my arm feels like it's about to fall off. Are you just going to stand there and watch instead of helping?”
“…Give it here.”
Giselle took the basket of bread from Grace and placed it on a high shelf, beyond the children's reach.
“We'll all eat together once everyone who went out to work comes back, so wait.”
A few of the children grumbled at the one-sided declaration, but they all fell silent when Giselle glared at them.
At that age, an older brother or sister only a few years older could be more frightening than an adult many years their senior.
Giselle then signaled to the children her age with her eyes, and when they led the younger children away, only Giselle and Grace remained.
Seeing that perfectly disciplined control, Grace whistled in admiration.
“Giselle, I'm really glad I'm your older sister. If I were your younger sister, I don't think I'd be able to breathe.”
“I'm glad too. If you were my younger sister, I think my head would hurt from cleaning up after all the trouble you'd cause.”
“That was too harsh! Sob, sob.”
Grace pretended to cry, saying she was hurt, but Giselle looked at her with bitter eyes before speaking.
“Why did you buy things like that? If you have money to spare, spend it on yourself.”
“Don't worry. I eat perfectly well even without things like that. Look, can't you see that my figure and complexion have improved? Sometimes even I get startled when I look in the mirror. ‘Wait, who is this beautiful girl?!’”
“We eat well now too. And we wear good clothes. The house is still old, but we'll move once construction is finished.”
“Are you just going to completely ignore my beautiful-girl comment? If you don't point it out, you're making me feel awkward.”
…….
Grace kept repeating jokes as though trying to liven up the atmosphere, but Giselle's face did not easily relax.
Grace waved her finger from side to side and clicked her tongue at her younger sister.
“You worry too easily. All the rumors going around the city are nonsense. If the stories about human sacrifices were true, do you think I could come wandering here all alone like this? They'd have stuck guards all over me.”
“It seemed that way when you came six months ago.”
“The past is the past.”
“…Really?”
“Yes, it's all jealousy, I'm telling you. They can't sit in this position themselves, so they spread nasty rumors for no reason. Don't let them sway you. Tell the others that, too.”
At Grace's repeated persuasion, even Giselle, who had initially looked skeptical, slowly began to show on her face that she was thinking, ‘Could that be true?’
Grace inwardly sighed with relief, thinking that she might somehow manage to fool her with this.
That worked for about three seconds.
BANG!
With the loud sound of the door being thrown open, someone strode toward the two of them.
The person who appeared was an elderly woman whose faded, graying hair was particularly striking.
The matron of the orphanage and practically a mother to Grace, she stared intently at Grace before abruptly pulling her into her arms without giving Grace a chance to say anything.
Then came the sobbing.
The sobs were far too sorrowful and guilt-ridden to be those of someone merely greeting a daughter who had returned after a long absence, and Giselle's face—which had seemed somewhat persuaded—soured again into an expression that said, ‘Just as I thought.’
The matron had charged in with every door flung wide open, so even the children peeking in from the other side began sniffling one by one.
“Sob, h-hic.”
“Waaaah!”
Sorrow was much like a terrible contagious disease.
The children who knew what had happened quietly reddened their eyes, while those who did not simply began crying because everyone around them was crying.
Before long, the orphanage had become a sea of tears, and Grace alone let out a sigh.
Life truly was not easy.
***
“Haaaaaaah.”
It was around the time the sun was beginning to set.
As she wandered the streets, Grace unconsciously let out a deep sigh.
She almost never lost her lively, cheerful attitude, but faced with the disaster that had turned her long-awaited trip home into a scene of mass sobbing rather than a pleasant memory, she could hardly keep from complaining.
Otherwise, why would she have fled the orphanage as though running away because she felt too burdened to stay any longer?
“…Where should I go?”
Grace fell into thought.
Since things had turned out this way, she had no choice but to abandon her original plan of lingering at the orphanage until the last possible moment.
But this outfit was a problem: she was not even allowed to change out of it without permission if she wanted to spend time somewhere in the city. And with plenty of time still left, she did not want to return to the Carnelian estate without purpose, either.
Unable to do one thing or the other, she simply kept walking toward places beyond the reach of people's eyes. How long had she been walking like that?
Suddenly, something strange entered Grace's field of vision.
‘An oak barrel?’
A large wooden cask commonly made using oak as its material.
The oak barrel itself was not particularly rare or strange.
Even without going all the way to a brewery, any household with reasonably decent living conditions would have one or two in its storeroom.
But it was a different story if that oak barrel was outside rather than indoors, and rolling across the ground all by itself.
No matter how she looked at it, wasn't it incredibly suspicious?
As she stared intently at it, wondering what in the world it could be, the oak barrel suddenly stopped moving with a clunk.
‘It must have gotten caught on a hill.’
The alleys in this city were neither especially flat nor clean.
There were slopes and step-like differences in elevation here and there, and it was common for all sorts of trash to be scattered across the ground.
In the first place, that meant an oak barrel was not built in a way that allowed it to roll anywhere on its own.
If some sort of beast was inside the oak barrel and had been rolling it along, perhaps it would soon leap out.
As Grace watched the oak barrel pensively with that expectation, something really did suddenly pop out from inside.
It was not an animal like a cat or dog, however, but a human arm and a wooden staff.
“…Huh?”
Whether or not it was aware of Grace's bewilderment, the mysterious oddball tapped the walls and ground here and there as though checking its surroundings, then drove the staff forcefully into the ground and lifted the oak barrel itself.
A large oak barrel shot into the air, using nothing but a slender staff as a leg—a sight that was bizarre beyond belief.
While Grace stood frozen with her mouth open, the oak barrel nimbly vaulted over the hill blocking its way, then began rolling across the ground again.
“W-Wait!”
Grace remained frozen for a moment, but when she saw the mysterious oak barrel disappear from view, she hurried after it.
If she did not confirm the identity of that bizarre creature, she felt she would be too curious to sleep properly that night.