Gazing Up At The River Of Stars (2)

“Because I’m with my bride today.”

At Kardia’s words, the women froze in place.

“Cute, isn’t she? I met her a little while ago and fell head over heels. I wooed her, and she agreed to be my bride.”

Kardia tilted his head toward Noi.

Wondering if he needed a sham fiancée for more than just the matchmaker old man, Noi widened her eyes—but shot her hand up energetically.

“Hello, I’m the bride! Pleased to make your acquaintance going forward!”

Her delivery turned a little stilted, but surely no one would mind. Noi answered crisply.

The women who had surrounded Kardia exchanged glances, their faces tightening just a touch.

“—W-we didn’t realize you were engaged.”

“You look quite young… Miss, how old are you?”

They were all adults. They must have thought Noi had won the place as Kardia’s bride by virtue of youth. Their gazes were tinged with frustration.

“I’m—”

When Noi started to answer, Kardia cut in as if to block her.

“Was it that you turn twelve this year?”

Noi stared, startled by Kardia’s answer.

Surely she wasn’t that young. The face she’d seen in the mirror looked like a girl of about fifteen.

But if he introduced her as twelve, she might well look twelve. At the very least, the women around them seemed to accept Kardia’s words.

“Uh, no—?!”

She tried to object in a fluster, but she herself wasn’t in a position to state her age definitively. Right—Noi was currently operating under the “amnesia” setup.

“M-my, well…”

“You…prefer rather…young girls…”

The temperature around them dropped.

Twelve was clearly not a marriageable age for a woman.

Jealous heat vanished from the women’s eyes; their faces went pale. They were completely put off.

Some of them might have had sisters or daughters about Noi’s age. Every gaze shifted from seeing him as a dashing traveler to seeing him as a dangerous man who would indiscriminately lay hands on children.

“N-no—that’s—not it!”

“—Ah! I was in the middle of an errand for home…”

“R-right! Me too!”

“Well then, Lord Dias, another time—”

“Ah, w-wait—ahhh…!!”

Noi’s objection was in vain. With brittle smiles, they each offered parting words and dispersed.

One woman even fixed Noi—held in Kardia’s arms—with a stern look and said, “If anything happens, come to my house.” It seemed a pretty face could easily shift in impression from object of longing to suspicious character. Witnessing the instant it happened, Noi watched the women’s retreating backs, mouth agape.

“Ah! Fifteen! Ornis told me that—didn’t he. Just remembered!”

Kardia said with a breezy smile.

Noi exhaled in relief, thinking Kardia himself had simply been mistaken. If he had truly believed she was twelve, there were all sorts of things he’d said and done that would have been problematic.

“W-was that really okay?”

A ridiculous misunderstanding had now been spread. Noi pointed toward the direction the women had gone.

“Hm? Was what?”

Beaming, Kardia was in great spirits. He seemed entirely unfazed by being mistaken by the village women for a pervert marrying a twelve-year-old, by their loss of interest, or by his tarnished reputation.

(Fengalow, for one, used to look blatantly pleased when women gathered and brag about it to me…)

She’d thought that was just how men were, but perhaps not. He had fled a mountain of prospect lists, after all. There must be something behind it.

Since Kardia’s smile truly looked happy, Noi let the matter drop.

A square lay just a short walk from the lake. Several shops built of stone and earth stood around it.

A shopkeeper dazedly manned a storefront; a housewife bought wheat. Children with freshly harvested, mud-caked vegetables on their backs and donkeys laden with heavy loads moved through the scene.

In the middle of the square stood a single statue.

(That’s unusual.)

In a big city, maybe—but in a rural town like this, erecting a statue was surprising.

They had split up from Ornis, who had gone ahead to the lord’s manor to make preparations. Walking with just Kardia, Noi stared intently at the statue.

Catching her gaze, Kardia nodded an “ah,” and walked toward it.

Up close, it appeared to be a woman. A goddess? A saint? Wondering who it might be, Noi peered at the inscription.

“This statue—exactly fifty years ago—the king at the time, Fengalow, distributed them across the country to pray for peace.”

“Fengalow!”

Hearing a name she knew in Kardia’s explanation, Noi started in surprise.

“You know him?”

Despite Noi shouting right beside him, Kardia paid it no mind and asked her.

“N-no, I don’t. I just thought the name sounded cool.”

“Did you.”

At her hastily concocted excuse, Kardia scrunched his face in deep distaste. He hadn’t looked this displeased once since she’d come to the world a hundred years later.

(…Right. To Kardia, Fengalow…)

To Noi, Fengalow was the sort of person she could never completely cut ties with, no matter what happened—childhood friend, senior disciple, dear friend. Whatever passed between them, they would never come to hate each other from the bottom of their hearts. He was like family.

But to Kardia, he wasn’t that.

To him, Fengalow was the one who bound him, stole his everyday life, treated him like livestock. Of course he hated him.

In contrast to Noi, who sagged, Kardia blew away the sour expression and smiled pleasantly, as if Fengalow no longer mattered at all.

“King Fengalow was an indecisive, mediocre ruler, but this statue was his greatest achievement. She’s the most fitting person in the world to invoke when praying for peace.”

Indecisive and mediocre.

Noi’s dry smile came easily; she could imagine it all too well. But something in Kardia’s tone gave her a distinctly bad feeling.

“No matter what crises might come, may her noble soul watch over the whole realm—so they raised these. —My bride, she’s likely the person from whom your name was taken: Noi Galenée, the mage called the First Sun.”

(Kneeeew it…!!)

Noi felt like collapsing face-first onto the ground. And what was with that grandiose epithet. It felt like every expression fell from her face and her soul drifted off to the next world.

“Bride?”

“Mm… mm…”

It was so much that she could barely manage a response.

For the moment, she wanted to visit Fengalow’s grave. She wouldn’t be satisfied without two or three solid punches.

(What the idiot hell was he thinking…!)

There was such a thing as being too much of a doting senior on his junior. What king in any world had statues of his junior sister-in-discipline put up across the country.

(Good thing Kardia called you mediocre! You’re a foolish king! A fool!)

The statue beautified the original by a wide margin. The eyes were larger, the bridge of the nose higher, and the waist seemed sculpted a good twenty percent slimmer. As if saying the real Noi wasn’t acceptable as she was—it made her angry.

“I really wanted one on the floating islet too, but I couldn’t very well deprive the ground-dwellers of their hope… That damn old man could have commissioned one extra.”

Kardia muttered and grumbled, and Noi pretended not to hear.