Chapter 17 - Volume 1 (2/2)

「……Ah, so this is a Delia.」

Unaware of Arche’s internal struggles, Agedilus nodded as if he understood somehow. And then, he gazed at the smooth red berry.

Just like that, her employer kept his silence, and with Arche being Arche, she didn’t say anything either. In the end, a silence fell over them.

But she couldn’t stay like that forever. The one who ran out of patience first was, as expected, Arche.

「Um, I’m sorry for going too far and doing something unnecessary! I’ll be sure to take them back home properly!」

She suddenly apologized, bowing her head and moving to take away the red berries. But that white hand, as if transparent, stopped that.

「No.」

With just one word, that beautiful voice shook softly in Arche’s eardrums.

「Thank you.」

「Huh?」

Those were very short words. That voice was soft like a whisper. In that beautiful voice befitting his beautiful face, were unusually clear emotions. Even though his voice was usually just indifferent to her, in this voice she could clearly see joy.

But what was even more of a shock to Arche was:

——He… Smiled?

It was truly a small, slight smile, as if prone to fading away unnoticed. But Arche had faced him countless times now; for her, this change in Agedilus’s expression was a dramatic one.

His indescribable beauty didn’t change. But that beautiful face of his that usually seemed like a doll or a night fairy’s, that beautiful face certainly became human. Just like the moment they were both wide-eyed when they first met.

That was when Arche realized. She realized that before she knew it, she’d fallen in love. The being in front of her was the one she longed for.

She didn’t know exactly when it happened. From the moment she saw his human-like expression when they first met, his face wouldn’t leave her mind. Even if he didn’t have that black hair, she thought he was unbelievably beautiful.

Right as she started looking after his medicinal plants garden, she would be stopped and thoroughly scorned at by aristocrats. They wore ornaments and accessories as if to highlight the difference between her and their social status.

But whenever they did, that gentlemen would show up for her. They would go pale, faces stiffening at the sudden arrival of the royal palace’s head magician.

He would say unthinkable things to them like, 「Well, you don’t seem like a nice worried girl, do you? Ah, perhaps no one’s made you realize your own place until now. If so, go ahead. Well, if you can is another matter.」

That way of speaking wasn’t just looking down upon the nobles, but on Arche too. But she realized afterwards, that he really was saving her there.

「Well, you don’t seem like a nice worried girl, do you?」 「Ah, perhaps no one’s made you realize your own place until now.」 After she thought a lot about it, she realized that could be interpreted as him saying Arche was the more valuable one compared to the aristocrat.

And that last line he added, 「Well, if you can is another matter」 basically meant 「If you do, I won’t show you any mercy.」

She might have been excessively self-conscious about it. Basically, he was annoyedly saying, 「Don’t waste my time.」

But his pace as he walked her to the medicinal plants garden, holding her arm, was more relaxed than usual.

When they arrived at the garden, he told her as she cast her eyes downward, 「If anything happens, call my name. Most of them will run away right there. There’ll probably be some on the contrary that’ll say more, but they’ll get tired either way so just listen quietly to them until they do.」

It wasn’t just that. When she said, 「Thank you,」 in return, he said, 「So it’s not just your ears, even your head is just for show?」 But his sunrise-colored eyes quivered as if perplexed.

She didn’t know which moment it was. It might have been all of them, it might have been for some other reason. It didn’t matter which it was. As long as that reality that she liked him was clear, she was fine with it.

Even if he had black hair, even if he was beautiful enough it seemed like he wasn’t the same kind of human as her, even if everyone all over the country feared him. Despite all that.

——I love him.

Since the day she realized it, Arche changed.

She started caring about her appearance more than she ever had until then. It wouldn’t even pass as flattery if you say her walnut hair matched her; she always avoided unfastening it but now she started to let it extend freely. She brushed it countless times without getting tired of it, smoothening it with perfumed oil.

She had freckles from being in the sun everyday; she had never cared about them but now she started to fret over them, using her sharply increased salary to buy popular face and beauty lotions to use. She started frequently using ointment on her hands rough from gardening, and changed her clothes to ones that were more feminine but still didn’t bother her while working.

She wanted to become beautiful. She knew that no doubt the only one who could stand next to that beautiful being was the country’s princess, but still. She knew how absurd and ridiculous her feelings were, but she still just wanted to get a little closer to him.

It’s not like she was bothered by having to do all that. In fact, she inevitably thought it was fun. ‘When will he come to the garden again?’ ‘When will he sit in that arbor again?’ Even the time she spent thinking about that was fun.

As she started doing all that, the palace guards started inviting her for tea, and the youngsters in the neighborhood would give her small presents. But those were trivial things for Arche. 「Is it because I’ve gotten prettier than before?」 She thought that just once, and no further progress was made in that area.

More importantly, the person she wanted to notice her the most simply ordered her to harvest the plants or take care of them. She was greatly concerned that he didn’t seem to have noticed her change one bit.

He was the type not to say things, so maybe if she kept trying he’d say something one day. That’s what she thought as she put effort into looking after the plants, looking after her appearance, and looking after her spirit.

It happened then.

The demon king supposed to have been sealed away long ago came back; the chivalric order of knights the king sent to defeat him were utterly crushed. Young people from all over the country gathered until finally, the hero appeared. And then, Agedilus was chosen to go on the journey with him.

The news that he was one of the people chosen to go with the hero spread around Arche’s surroundings in the blink of an eye. Arche too, had to accept it as reality.

That party of heros, called the world’s last hope. But there were still some people that whispered uneasily, 「What if they fail?」

But Arche somehow strangely knew that that gentleman would be alright.