Dancing In Moonlight (3)

“I heard you’d turned into a slug.”

A shadow fell over Kardia, who was slumped across the bed.

“Is this part of your scheme, too?”

“No.”

Noi sat down on the edge of Kardia’s bed.

“No scheme of mine works on you.”

The sulky voice came from Kardia, still facedown.

—It had been five full days since they’d last had a slow talk like this.

Ever since she had shown the Royal Court Mages the teleportation circle, her good-for-nothing days of idle wandering had completely changed.

After clearing rubble came sluicing out mud and river works; the domain had countless problems. For each one they spent their days proposing which circles might help and puzzling over them with the Court Mages.

Needless to say, Kardia—dragged into lordly duties—kept missing her.

“Being avoided by you has left my heart in tatters.”

Noi stroked Kardia’s head with her small hand. It hardly looked like the distance between a woman who had confessed and the man she confessed to.

“Was I avoiding you?”

“If not, then what would you call it? If you had even ten seconds free, you always came to me.”

Put like that, perhaps so.

These five days had been a whirl; even mealtimes hadn’t lined up, but it wasn’t as if she’d had no time at all. If Noi had truly meant to see Kardia, she surely could have made at least this much time to talk.

“…I see. So I was avoiding you.”

“Please don’t agree with that!”

The man who knew Noi better than Noi herself jerked upright in protest.

“You’re a troublesome man.”

“Have you come to dislike me?”

“No, no.”

Asking what he already knew—just like a child.

Noi smiled wryly and drew her hand back from his head. In that instant, Kardia looked up at her, as if clinging.

Noi hopped down from the bed. Kardia sluggishly raised his upper body.

“I’m going on a date now.”

“Wha!?”

Kardia shot up in an instant, then unleashed a barrage:

“With whom!? And where!?”

“Where shall we go?”

When Noi smiled, Kardia fell silent for a few seconds—then hurried to put on his shoes.

Noi watched him with a jaded gaze.

“My former fiancé was negligent. He took his bride—me—on exactly one date. And even then he forgot the promise and arrived terribly late.”

“What a dreadful man.”

“Truly.”

Noi left his bedroom; Kardia followed quietly behind.

It was already quite late. Normally, once Kardia lay down, he was a man who would not budge for calling, knocking, or shaking. That he rose so easily now was, to Noi, unthinkable.

Together, they slipped into the night.

Unlike the manor—where servants still bustled—the outside was wrapped in pitch darkness. Though she had lived in the mountains, Noi had grown up in the capital, and night’s dark felt deep.

Kardia wove a circle and conjured light. Lights like phosphorescent fireflies drifted softly around them.

Without a word, they began to walk. Without asking, both felt they knew their destination.

They went down the hill, through the village, and out into the square, then headed straight for the lake.

On the lake lay the floating isle.

By day, busyness and watchful eyes had let them pretend not to see it; now they gazed at it in silence.

The isle would never float again.

She knew that—but this place was full of good memories for Noi: the lake she had walked along with Kardia; the kitchen where she snacked while Ornis scolded; the fields where she had toiled, caked in mud—

Standing beside her, Kardia, too, stared at what had been the floating isle. The manor portion lay submerged at the bottom of the lake; the crown of the tree that had grown beside it was barely visible, if at all.

Noi pinched Kardia’s cloak between small fingers—and lifted one foot.

Kardia cast a spell on her shoes.

The lake was dark—nothing like the isle’s lake, once strewn with stars.

When Noi stepped out, ripples spread. Boing, boing—she walked across the surface, and ripples bloomed wherever she passed. Kardia followed behind.

At a certain spot, Noi stopped.

Then she peered into the water below.

“…The grave you made for me sank too.”

“—You noticed.”

“Mm. It was beautiful.”

Even squinting, they could not see into the black water. Kardia’s eyes softened faintly.

“But this is for the best. You don’t need a grave yet.”

“When I die, put me there.”

She said it because she meant it, from the bottom of her heart—only to be denied without a beat.

“Don’t say things like ‘when I die’!!”

“All right, all right.”

Exasperated with her troublesome disciple, Noi nodded.

She had said “date,” but had begun with the very topic she ought to avoid; flustered, she steered back on course.

“…How were the five days?”

“Lonely. What else?”

“Not that—about the domain, and the others.”

“Everything is proceeding without issue.”

“You really are…”

“How about you, Noi?”

Kardia asked from just a step away, as if she had no intention of chatting properly.

Autumn wind stirred Kardia’s hair and cast a dark shadow over the lake.

“Were you not lonely without me?”

Of course she had been.

Even surrounded by Court Mages, even with Aidoni sleeping beside her, Noi had always thought of Kardia.

Surely far more than he of her—she had ached for him.

What was he doing, what was he thinking?

(Would he miss me—even a little?)

Crushed under that feeling, she got through each day.

No matter how dizzy the busyness made her, walking the domain she searched for him with her eyes; back at the manor she pricked up her ears. Noi was always aware of Kardia.

(I wanted to see you—so badly.)

She had gone to him because she had reached her limit.

(I just—wanted to tell Kardia that I love him.)