Volume 5 Chapter 3 (1/2)

One day in the 3rd month, 1,547th year, Continental Calendar

h.e.l.lo, I'm the candidate to become Souma's first primary queen, Liscia Elfrieden.

On this day with the end of winter drawing near, and the coming spring beginning to make itself felt, all of Souma's fiance eswere gathered in a certain room in Parnam Castle. I, Liscia was one of them. The rest were Aisha the kochiji, Juna the lorelei, and Roroa, the former princess of Amidonia.

There was no sign of Souma here, and even the maids who were always waiting in the corner of the room had been asked to leave today. On top of that… this room was weird. There was a blackboard, desks, and four desks and chairs. The desks were lined up in a row, making it look almost like one of the cla.s.srooms at the Officers' Academy.

“Hey, Big Sister Cia?” Roroa asked. “What'd we all get called in here for today?”

“I couldn't tell you,” I said. “If anyone here would know…”

I looked over at Juna. However, Juna only looked down and shook her head.

“I'm sorry. Lately, even I'm not sure what goes through that lady's head.”

“If Madam Juna doesn't know, then the rest of us don't stand a chance of figuring it out.” Aisha rested her hands on the back of a chair, tilting her head to the side in puzzlement.

It was a fair a.s.sessment. That lady was completely unpredictable. Just what was she thinking this time?

Then the door to the room opened, and the one who had gathered us here arrived.

“I see everyone's here.”

It was the blue-haired sea serpent beauty, Excel Walter.

In addition to being the commander-in-chief of the National Defense Force, she was a beautiful woman who looked to be around twenty-five. With her blue tresses, from which tiny horns sprouted, trailing behind her as she walked, she had always been a picturesque beauty. But this time, she was carrying something in her hands, too: two bundles that were as thick as dictionaries. One was wrapped in white, the other in black.

Excel left the bundles on the lectern, then pulled out and donned a pair of spectacles and a square academic cap. “Now then, let's have you all take your seats.”

“U-Um… Grandmother?” Juna hesitantly raised her hand and asked.

“What is it?”

“Um… I thought you had good vision?”

“Oh, these spectacles? They're just ordinary gla.s.s, not corrective lenses.”

“Then why are you wearing them?”

“It gets me in the mood.”

Her mood?! That was the issue?! Wait, what was she about to start?!

In the end, we were each ushered into our seats by Excel with no clue what was going on. From Excel's perspective at the lectern, going from left to right, we were seated Aisha, Roroa, me, and Juna.

Excel started to write something on the blackboard. When I read it, it said:

“First Lecture — Bridal Training Course”

Yeah, I wasn't even sure where to start.

For one thing, by “first,” did she mean there were going to be several of these gatherings?! What was a bridal training lecture even supposed to be?! Then Excel tapped lightly on the lectern.

“Now, all of you will be becoming Souma's brides this year.”

““““…””””

We all got very quiet. We were ready for it, of course, and we even wanted it now, but having someone else point that fact out to us still felt a little embarra.s.sing.

Excel told us, “Though some of you will be primaries and some of you secondaries, the fundamental nature of things will be the same for all of you. There is a husband and a wife, they build a household, eventually children are born, and they become a family. If the family is harmonious, then they will be happy; if it is not, they will become unhappy. The problem is that if there is discord in the royal family, that leads directly to discord within the kingdom. Princess Liscia.”

“Y-Yes!” I responded and stood up without meaning to. It was just like being back in officers' school.

Excel gave me a serious look and asked, “Princess Liscia, you have no relatives outside of your father and mother, yes?”

“Uh… Yes. That's what I've been told.”

“Why is that?”

“When my mother's father… that is to say, the king before the last one died, there was a succession crisis, and nearly every member of the royal family but my mother was wiped out.”

“Yes. That was a painful time,” Excel said with a truly pained look on her face. “The three dukes and I distanced ourselves from that conflict. If our military forces had gotten involved, it would have turned into a civil war, after all. We were all desperate to keep our forces in check. Instead, there were bitter struggles within the royal house that set even the closest relatives against one another.”

“Um… was the problem in that conflict ultimately about who would take the throne?” Aisha raised her hand and asked.

Excel shook her head. “We think that was only a secondary factor. The first and foremost cause must have been the former king's policy of rapid expansion.”

“His expansionism?” Aisha asked.

“Yes. In the time of the king before the last one, our country launched a number of foreign wars that greatly expanded our territory. Meanwhile, the expanded territory sowed the seeds of conflict within the country. The occupier and the occupied; the conquerors and the conquered; the killers and the relatives of those killed… It gave birth to a lot of confrontational relations.h.i.+ps like that. There were interventions by other countries that had lost land, too.”

“…Well, my old man had it out for you all pretty bad,” Roroa, the former Princess of Amidonia, said with a shrug.

It was a bit of a relief that she said that like it had nothing to do with her. The Princ.i.p.ality of Amidonia had used corrupt n.o.bles to interfere in our affairs a number of times. What they'd done had caused a lot of trouble for me, but it was really just reaping what we had sown.

I was grateful that Roroa, as an Amidonian princess, was taking the stance that it didn't matter to her. If Roroa, who looked up to me as her “big sister,” ended up resenting me because of a dispute between our countries… I'd be sad about that.

Excel nodded and continued. “Those seeds of discord need to be slowly removed, but

the rapid expansion didn't allow for that.”

Eventually, the old king had died, and the lingering seeds of discord had germinated into the succession crisis. If the people they hated supported one royal, people would back another opposing horse in the race. That was how the dispute over the succession had turned into a proxy war for all of the discord in the kingdom.

“That was why it turned into such a quagmire.” Excel sighed sadly then looked straight at us. “Fortunately, His Majesty Souma's reign is not so dangerous as that of that predecessor of his. The reason that the country is unshaken even after absorbing Amidonia is that he has worked diligently to create a solid enough base to prevent that. He is not as glamorous as the first king, but rated on the stability of his reign alone, he is the best king this country has ever had. That's why, even once His Majesty Souma is no longer on the throne, there won't be an ugly succession war like that one.”

That was Excel's appraisal of Souma's reign. Yeah. I agreed with her.

I might think the way he reigned was too roundabout at times, but he was carefully and cautiously moving this country forward. If you considered that he'd been summoned as a hero, I didn't think there'd ever been such a plain and ordinary hero before. Even so, Souma made me feel secure. Though he himself was weak, he made me feel like I was being protected by something big.

Excel banged on the blackboard. “That said, we mustn't get complacent! It must never be forgotten that if there are cracks between king and queen, or even between queen and queen, there will be those who appear to take advantage of them. For the sake of the country, you must build a harmonious relations.h.i.+p between husband and wife, and a harmonious household. To help you do that, I will have you take my ‘Bridal Training Course.'”

I could more or less accept what she was forcefully saying. But what was this “Bridal Training Course” that she kept on leading up to?

“Um… why are you the one lecturing us anyway, d.u.c.h.ess Walter?” I asked.

Excel giggled and gave me a confident smile. “I don't look it, but I've been alive for five hundred years. I've fallen for my share of gentlemen in that time, but death has always been the only thing that could separate us. I've always made sure to have at least one child with each of them, too.”

That was… Okay, yeah, that might be kind of amazing. Now that she mentioned it, Excel only looked like she was in her mid-twenties, but she was a woman who had experienced childbirth. She even had granddaughters like Juna, after all.

Excel puffed up her ample bosom with pride. “I will teach all of you how, as queens… no, as women… to stay with the man you love until death do you part. How you should act as a wife; the way gentlemen think; and everything from how to support your husband, to ways to perform your nightly ‘duties' in the bedroom in a way that makes your marital relations go more smoothly.”

N-Nightly duties…

The moment we heard those words come up, we all gave pretty blatant reactions. We all must have imagined times we'd be in that sort of situation with Souma.

Roroa was blus.h.i.+ng with a wry smile, while Juna's cheeks turned pink and she covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes wandering. Aisha, meanwhile, had a goofy, happy look on her face, so it was obvious what she was thinking about.

…I could feel my own cheeks burning, too.

When she saw our reactions, Excel coughed politely. “I believe I will have you all start learning about such things now. I already have His Majesty Souma taking individual lessons with me, after all.”

The moment she said that, Juna looked as shocked as I felt.

Some weeks ago, Souma had taken Juna with him and left the royal capital. That was when Excel had drugged Juna, and when she was alone with Souma, she had… well… she had given him some lessons on what men and women get up to at night. I was the only one Juna had told about that. I'd been keeping it a secret from Aisha and Roroa. That was because if they found out, they were bound to cause a scene.

Juna had asked me, as the one who had been with Souma the longest, to subtly ask him what had happened during the time they were together.

“Um, princess…” Juna leaned in and whispered in my ear so that Aisha and Roroa couldn't hear. “So… what did His Majesty say about that time?”

“The thing is, Souma says he doesn't remember it,” I whispered back.

“He doesn't remember?”

“Yeah. He remembers taking lectures about, um… h-how babies are made, but everything after that is a blur.”

When I had asked him about that day, Souma had tilted his head to the side and said:

“I remember everything about the super embarra.s.sing lecture she gave me, but… I don't remember a thing after that. No, it's not so much that I don't remember, but that my mind is refusing to let me recall it, maybe?… Honestly, what did happen then? I know I was embarra.s.sed by the lessons, and I was feeling really parched… Excel gave me a drink and… It's no good, I can't remember anything after that…… No, I feel like it's best that I don't remember.”

Souma had tried to squeeze out what he could remember of it, but in the end, he'd seemed to come up empty. It didn't feel like he was hiding something from me or trying to dodge the issue, though. He seemed like he had truly lost his memory, or sealed it away.

Just what in the world happened to Souma after his cla.s.sroom lesson? I wondered about that…

“Now, in marriage, as in war, intel is key,” Excel lectured. “Once you know what your partner thinks of you, how they look at you, you can begin to get a feel for how you should act. If you can catch them off guard, and show them a gap between their impression of you and how you act in a way that isn't displeasing, that can help keep things from getting boring. Know your partner, know what they look at, and your marriage will never be in danger.”

Aisha raised her hand. “You are right, I do wonder what His Majesty thinks of me. But His Majesty is not here, and if we called him, do you think he would be willing to come?”

Excel gave her a wicked grin. I… had a bad feeling about that.

“Have no worries. I have this right here.”

When she said that, Excel unwrapped the white bundle. Inside were a number of white notebooks. Excel gave one of them to each of us.

The cover of mine said “Top Secret” and “Not to be Taken Outside.” This was beyond suspicious…

“Um, d.u.c.h.ess Walter, just what are these notebooks…?” I asked hesitantly.

Excel flipped through her own notebook and said, “Hee hee. About the white notebooks I just gave you, you see… Why, they have what His Majesty Souma thinks about each of you written in them!”

““““Wha?!”””” Everyone looked down at their notebooks in unison.

In this notebook?! No, but… How?

Excel explained it with a strangely glossy and gleaming smile. “These notebooks contain the things I heard from His Majesty during his ‘private lesson.' When we finished with the cla.s.sroom lecture, his majesty said he was feeling parched, so I gave him some juice mixed with tequeur. When I asked him all sorts of questions after that, he was very eloquent.”

So that was it! Juna and I looked at one another, despite ourselves.

Tequeur was a very strong alcohol. It had a light flavor, and would go completely unnoticed mixed in with a gla.s.s of juice. Souma must have drunk a lot without realizing it, then been thoroughly interrogated by Excel about his feelings for each of us. The embarra.s.sment of it all must have caused him to suppress the memory of it.

While I was thinking about that, I looked at the notebook in front of me. If Excel was telling the truth, that meant this note contained the secret feelings Souma normally kept hidden away deep inside his heart.

Oh… When I think about it, my heart suddenly starts racing…

I wanted to know, but maybe also kind of didn't… but I did want to know, after all. I mean, I cared enough about Souma that I'd want to know what he thought about us.

While I was thinking about that, Excel, unconcerned with our hesitation, opened her book and continued.

“Now, as I said earlier, the secret to a harmonious marital relations.h.i.+p is to know your partner, and to know how they see you. Let's look at how His Majesty Souma looks at

each of you. First… Roroa.”

“Meowhat?!” Roroa reacted like a startled cat.

“First we will begin with his appraisal of Roroa.”

“Wh-Why me?! Shouldn't you be doin' the head fiance e,Big Sister Liscia, first?”

“There isn't any particular reason for it,” Excel said. “I simply thought we would start with the person who first met His Majesty the most recently.”

“Well, sure, I'm the newcomer here, but… Well, it beats goin' last, I guess.” Roroa seemed to have reluctantly accepted it.

…Huh? I was going last, then? Urgh… That meant the tension would last longer or me, and I didn't like that…

Excel pushed her spectacles up, then looked down at her notebook. “Now then, this is His Majesty Souma's appraisal of Roroa.”

“Wh-What's this? I'm gettin' weirdly tense.”

“Ahem… According to His Majesty, ‘I like how Roroa's so bright and friendly. It's amazing how she manages to get in close with whoever she's talking to. She can be a bit black-hearted, but that's just one of her charms. It makes me happy seeing her treat Liscia like her big sister. Besides, Roroa's financial sense is out of this world. To be completely honest, the kingdom's economy couldn't run like it does now without Roroa and Colbert. I'm grateful to have her with me, and to have her as my fiance e.'”

“O-Oh…” Roroa put her head down on the desk. She was covering her bright red cheeks with her hands. “This… This is pretty darned embarra.s.sin',” Roroa said, writhing a little.

Yeah, I was a little embarra.s.sed just hearing it. Souma wasn't the type to come out and say this stuff to us straight, so when he came out with his unvarnished feelings and said things like, “I love you,” or, “I'm grateful to have you at my side,” it really made an impact. Now that it had come to this, I was suddenly very interested in what he thought about me.

While we were agonizing over what was to come, Excel continued reading with an

expression like it was no big deal. “Furthermore, when I asked His Majesty, ‘Do you have anything on your mind when it comes to Roroa?' his answer was, ‘I know it was a war, but it still bothers me that I killed her father.'”

“Wha?!” Roroa stopped writing in embarra.s.sment and immediately snapped back to her senses.

“‘It was a kill-or-be-killed situation, but I'm still her father's killer. Roroa says they weren't close, but what if that isn't how she really feels, and she actually doesn't want to marry me… There are times I worry about that,' he said.”

“I-Is he stupid?!” Roroa shouted.

I felt like I'd had ice cold water dumped over my head, too. Oh, right… I realized. If these were Souma's true feelings, it would include the insecurities he didn't normally show us. To think he'd felt that way about Roroa… I'd never have noticed.