Volume 3: Intermission – Hibiscus Love (2/5)
As Felbi swung his sword to rid it of the blood it’s been stained in, she called out to him. She had already mustered all of her courage to do just this. It was a courage on the level of jumping off the high walls of the kingdom. A leap of faith, so to speak. Such intense courage had her in cloud nine.
Courage was a wonderful thing.
“U-Umm! May I know your name?” She asked.
“Felbi. I’m your escort,” Felbi replied.
*GULP, resounded her throat as she swallowed her saliva. As Felbi turned to her with only one side of his face, she smiled at him with no reason to doubt that she was a charmer.
“M-My name is Rishan!Umm, what do you mean by ecsort?”
Rishan tried as hard as she could to make herself sound like a refined lady, but Felbi just responded as if nothing could be more normal.
“It’s a request from the beloved daughter of the God of Wind (Za Ruga), Pale.”
Suddenly, her smile froze. In their line of trade, one is referred to as the beloved daughter of a god when one is a genius.
“I-I see… That Pale-dono is?”
“A comrade-in-arms.”
There was a sense of nostalgia when Felbi said that as he turned to look at the distance. Rishan felt both relief and jealousy at that.
“I-Is that so? …Felbi-dono, where did you learn the sword from?”
Rishan tried to make herself as tall as she could.
It couldn’t be helped if she was a comrade-in-arms. In the end, she was a little girl who has never once gone to war… She never thought of lacking anywhere herself, but she at least understood the sword a little. She wanted to shift the conversation to something that she excelled at.
People would always gather around her at the dojos. If it was her, she should be able to do it. At least, that’s what she told herself.
“I’m self taught,” Felbi replied.
“Is your sword style called Garyu?” Rishan asked.
She was troubled. As soon as she roused herself, this was the result? Sometimes the world simply refused to turn as one wished. There were many sword dojos in the imperial capital of Elrain Kingdom, but she has never before heard of the style known as Garyu.
‘What to do? What to do?’ She panicked, but in the end, she decided to act as if she knew what Garyu was.
Yes, of course I know.
That Garyu, right!
There’s a dojo of that even at the imperial capital!
She said with her chest puffed up.
Meanwhile, Felbi found her entertaining and decided to play along. He was curious how far a child could bluff without falling apart.
It was then that Pale appeared. Felbi took so long to come back from the alley that she had begun to worry, and in the end, decided to show up. Of course, she could overhear them along the way, so she was able to grasp the situation at hand.
But despite that, she decided to show herself when it seemed like they were making no progress. She was a busy elf.
“Pale, huh.”
While Rishan was desperately trying to make herself taller and even put on two layers of cat fur over her, Felbi turned, and she followed suit. What she saw at the end of his gaze was the beautiful face of a sylph that could only be described as flawless.
“What are you doing, Felbi? Since when did you have a hobby of being teased by human children? And since when did you start attending a human dojo?”
Felbi shrugged his shoulders and curtly replied.
“I thought the girl was funny. That’s all.”
‘Shameless’, Pale seemed to say with those scornful eyes of hers, then she turned to Rishan.
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Rishan Noen. I am Pale Symphoria.”
The words coming out of Pale’s lips barely entered Rishan’s ears.
The feeling of defeat and shame that she was experiencing had already gone past what she could endure.
Because of that… That happened.
“!?”
While Pale was giving a kind, careful, and thorough explanation of the situation, tears started to accumulate in Rishan’s eyes. When the dam was about to break, Pale, who had made it her creed to be calm at all times, suddenly flinched.
“…iot.”
Pale took a step back after sensing danger from Rishan, who was looking down and shaking, while Felbi took a step, wondering what was going on. Although Pale and Felbi’s ability to sense danger in the battlefield was certain, when it came to relationships between people, there was a rather striking difference.
“Idiot!!!!”
Suddenly, a great scream exploded from within the alleys.
Rishan bolted off crying as she pushed Felbi aside. Meanwhile, the latter was covering his ear.
“Ugh, that stupid girl.”
Felbi held down his tingling ears while looking toward the direction the girl ran in. Immediately after, he turned to Pale, looking for affirmation, but she only looked at him coldly. Her gaze was so cold one could describe it as absolute zero.
“What?” Felbi asked.
“That was wrong of you,” Pale said.
“But, I…”
“That was wrong of you,” Pale said.
“I…”
“That was wrong of you,” Pale said
Her words grew more and more quiet, but the strength behind them grew more and more intense. She wasn’t planning on letting him argue or agree, it seemed.
“What should I do then?” Felbi asked.
“Chase after her, persuade her, and bring her back,” Pale commanded.
“Alright. That’s easy to understand.”
Now that his mission had been outlined into three items, Felbi ran after Rishan.