Return.

Ugli composed his expression and offered his farewell.

“Sorry for bothering you while you’re working. Well, I’ll be on my way…”

“I don’t mind. Come inside and we’ll have some tea together.”

“You’re not the owner of the room.”

Giving Jack’s hair a playful tousle, Ugli turned back the way he’d come. Jack watched until the tall figure of his sweetheart shrank to a dot at the end of the corridor and vanished from view. Only then did he turn and knock on the door.

“Pardon me.”

“Come in.”

The well-oiled hinges swung the door open smoothly, without so much as a creak.

“I brought the flowers!”

“Thank you — and on such a cold day, too.”

“Is there a day around here that isn’t cold?”

Jack fluttered over to the desk and tossed down the bundle he had been cradling so preciously, as if showing off a prize.

A purple and grayish-green lump landed on the glossy wooden surface with a wet splat.

“What is this.”

“Flowers.”

Jack, having just set the bundle down, now had grass-juice smeared all over his clothes, the kind he was already worrying wouldn’t come out in the wash.

The clump of plants, crushed flat from being clutched the whole way, had had all its soft parts mashed to pulp, leaving only the tough inner fibers exposed.

“They’re awfully strange-looking flowers.”

“They didn’t originally look like this.”

“Ah, that explains it!”

Aspara gently touched the mass.

The poor flowers, which had frozen and thawed inside the storehouse, had frozen again on the way over and were now in the middle of thawing a second time; there was no other word for the result except slop.

“This is…”

But what drew Aspara’s eye was the tough fibrous material still left inside. Frozen and thawed over and over, the frostbloom herb’s fibers had taken on a springy, smooth quality, quite different from those in her pressed flower.

“Jack—”

“Yes?”

“I’m going to ask you the same question I asked this morning, one more time.”

Around that same time, Gus was hard at work in his office.

He had slacked off a bit in the morning, and so the afternoon had brought a backlog of duties crashing down on him the moment it started, leaving no room for idle thoughts.

Gus examined one of the reports strewn across his desk.

It was a matter that had come in while he’d been away at the banquet, information about a group of migrants who had crossed the border.

“Who are these.”

“Wanderers from the central kingdom, sir.”

“Hmph.”

Wanderers.

It happened now and then: bands of foreigners crossing over, treating the north as some vast, ungoverned wilderness.

From the northerners’ perspective, they were a considerable nuisance. Their identities could not be verified, and being from the central kingdom, they commonly looked down on the “barbarians’” culture, leaving them with little to no will to assimilate.

There were times when the castle would help them found a village, if only to keep them from degenerating into a band of brigands, but even that was often met with contemptuous looks.

“They are not criminals, sir. It seems they are farmers who fled to escape excessive taxation.”

“Dispose of them.”

“All of them, sir?”

The attendant spoke back with a startled look.

With a harmless group like this, the standard practice was to keep watch and ensure they committed no crimes on this land. Especially of late, since Aspara’s arrival had made multilingual personnel a precious commodity.

“While my own people are starving, there is no room for more mouths.”

A land of hunger and poverty. A barbarian’s land, unfit for Aspara.

Gus answered as he recalled the insult Flower had thrown at him.

“Understood. Then shall we drive them toward the ice-free port—”

“No.”

The castle lord did not lift his eyes from the papers.

“Send the archers.”

“With respect… they are not so dangerous a group. Taking the longer view…”

“Use fire arrows, and leave the bodies where they fall.”

Gus rolled his grey eyes up from the documents to meet the attendant’s.

The man flinched and straightened his posture.

“It shall serve as a warning — that vermin are not to use this land as an asylum for criminals any longer.”

The attendant bowed his head and withdrew, orders in hand.

Alone in the room, the castle lord rehearsed once more the resolution he had steeled himself with back at Flower’s estate.

…I only need to turn it into a proper nation.

That vow he repeated to himself again and again, tracing the crest engraved on his seal with a fingertip.

…A land worthy of her. A land I would want to live in until the day I die…

Knock, knock.

The clear sound of wood broke into his heavy-sunken thoughts.

Who is it now, Gus thought, and spoke in a low voice.

“Enter.”

The door opened to admit the two attendants he had been seeing an unusual amount of lately: Ugli and Star.

“What is it.”

Ugli, unable to delay the storehouse report any longer, had bribed Star with sweets to accompany him.

But Castle Lord Gus had no need to know that.

“I’ve come to make a report, sir.”

“My lord, has the matter from this morning been resolved?”

Gus flinched.

“I am working at the moment. But… well, I do have an idea.”

“What is it?”

“…I’ve heard that in the southern kingdoms there is a custom of exchanging a ring on the fourth finger of the left hand as a token of pledged affection.”

He said this as he recalled the jewelry he had seen in abundance at the recent banquet.

“Wow, a ring as a gift?”

“Yes. However, if each party wears one on their own finger, then either might take it off as they please, is that not so.”

“Well, that’s true.”

“Therefore, in the sense that my devotion would rest not in my own hand but in hers…”

Oh-ho. With the unusual feeling that the bashful castle lord was about to come out with a decent idea for once, Ugli leaned in to listen.

“I was thinking… of cutting off my ring finger and offering it to her.”

Is he out of his mind.

“Wah, that’s so romantic!”

Star, what is wrong with you too.

Ugli could feel it: the pink-tinged bashfulness and the swell of pride radiating off the supposedly dignified castle lord.

He was apparently thinking romantic enough to die for.

“Your finger.”

“Yes. I would gift her a pair of rings, but one of them would stay fitted on my finger — so that my lady could keep it with her always…”

“My lord, I have the utmost respect for you, but…”

Ugli cut in, sobering at the pink aura radiating off the two barbarians.

“Please refrain, if at all possible, from doing any deep thinking on your own.”

“Huh? Why? Isn’t it romantic? Besides, the castle lord uses a one-handed sword and a targe — a shield strapped to the arm, not held in the hand — so it wouldn’t really be much of a problem.”

“Right. I thought it was rather a fine idea myself.”

“When I say don’t, just don’t.”

Gus, looking slightly deflated, fiddled with his fingers for a moment, then seemed at last to remember that Ugli was in the room and composed his expression into one of gravity.

“Now then — what was it you came about.”

“Ah.”

Only then did Ugli remember why he had come here himself.

“It concerns the storehouse, sir. There is a matter I must report.”

Ugli relayed the damage that had occurred in the storehouse.

Briefly and plainly, he reported that the entire stock filling one storehouse had spoiled, and that there were fortunately no orders pending immediate dispatch, so it should pose no major problem for trade.

Upon hearing the situation, Gus knit his brows.

Thanks to the frostbloom herb venture, Aspara had been pleased of late, and so he seemed to find the circumstances especially irksome.

“The fault is mine, sir.”

“Enough. From now on, anything related to that matter — you are to report directly to my wife.”

Whether it was the timing, or whether bringing Star along had been the right call, mercifully it seemed things were going to pass without major incident.

“Then the stock is…”

“Regrettably, we’ll have to dispose of it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re disposing of the flowers? If that’s the case, it might be better to use them as firewood than just throw them away.”

“I see. Then I’ll have them moved to the incinerator.”

Gus nodded.

“So…?”

“Yeah, I think it’ll work.”

Aspara had discovered a use for the sagging clump of fibers. And a greater use, at that, than the stock had held before its ruin.

“I’ll have to look more carefully to say for sure, but if it works, it would really be something. It’s light, and really tough, and I think it’d take dye well too…”

It was Jack who had vouched for it: that fabric could most likely be woven from this mass that looked like food scraps.

For the first time in a while, Aspara felt a stirring of elation.

What filled her chest was not simply joy. It was a flutter mingled with a trace of unnameable unease. But this was a familiar thing for Aspara, whose heart had always been wary of fortune and happiness.

“There must be one or two weavers in these parts. Go to the storehouse keepers and tell them to gather these up and store them separately from the dry stock.”

“Yessir.”

Jack paid his brief courtesy and made his way out of the room with a light step.

Of course, there was no way Jack could deliver such complicated instructions to the storehouse keepers on his own. He made a show of footsteps heading toward the storehouse, and then immediately set off in search of Ugli.

Now where would he be…

Since Ugli had taken on the middle-manager role and had his hands in this and that, the only way to find him was to wander around all over the place.

Fortunately, Jack was quite good at wandering around all over the place.

“There he is.”

Moreover, even with just a glance in passing, as long as Ugli crossed into his field of vision, Jack never missed him, the way one picks out one’s own name clear as a bell even amid distant conversations.

That day, however, this particular talent produced an unfortunate result. With Ugli alone centered in his sights, Jack was a beat late in noticing who Ugli was with.

“Ugl—”