Holiday.

At the aching sense that if he let her go like this she would vanish forever, Gus reached out instinctively before he could stop himself. Without meaning to, he caught hold of a slender wrist. It trembled faintly in his grip, and Aspara’s whole body gave a violent flinch.

“—, — —…!”

《Ah.》

It was a voice that had gone white as snow. Gus felt his heart drop with a thud.

《…I’m sorry.》

“——.”

《It’s just that I…》

What was I expecting?

It was only now that Gus realized he had been swept up in the mood of the holiday and the encouragement of the people around him. Because of his attendants who supported him so eagerly, he had forgotten his own position. Because of his attendants and dear friends who trusted him so completely.

But Aspara was not like them. She had no reason to love him.

Why did I — why did I imagine that my wife’s gift was something she had prepared gladly, out of regard for me?

No, to begin with — was it even a gift? No, but surely—

All at once, everything became uncertain. The space around him felt as though it were crumpling and folding in on itself, and he could no longer even remember what the message had been that he’d first heard from Ugli.

The ride of the past few days, crossing the distant snowfields, suddenly struck him as foolish.

The more the two of them looked at each other face to face, the deeper the emptiness in his wife’s expression grew.

《It’s just that I…》

Aspara’s eyes were dull, but very large.

《It’s just that I…》

Inside those great eyes, a beast was reflected.

The emotions and thoughts held within those eyes could not be read; only a grey beast was reflected there.

When her wrist was suddenly seized, Aspara gave a startled cry.

“Ah, that’s cold!”

Gus’s hand was genuinely cold. Her body gave a little shudder, the way it did when bare skin touched the icy rim of a washbasin in winter.

I heard circulation’s better when you’ve got plenty of muscle. Could that be a myth, then?

《——.》

The castle lord flustered himself alone and babbled something, then let go of her hand with a flutter.

Or maybe it’s because his arms and legs are so long.

Aspara looked up at her husband. He really was very long indeed. When a man was this stretched out lengthwise, no matter how robust his muscles, it would be quite a job to pump blood all the way to the tips of his fingers and the top of his head.

Blinking slowly like a cat, the small queen thought to herself.

《— …I’m sorry.》

Ah — a word she knew had come out. Probably meant to be an apology. As if there were anything to be sorry for in having poor circulation.

Aspara peered into the castle lord’s eyes. They were pale eyes. Eyes with a thin pigment, the kind one couldn’t see back in her homeland. People were fond of saying that emotions and personalities and the like were contained within a person’s eyes, but Aspara had never been able to agree.

When you popped an eyeball out of its socket, it was just a peeled grape.

Reading emotions out of something like that was meaningless. If there was any one body part that could tell you a person’s feelings and personality, it would not be the eyes — it would be the tongue. That was what Aspara thought.

“Come to think of it, I’ve never seen your tongue.”

《——…?》

“Hold on — is the pigment thin here, too…?”

Aspara took half a step closer and idly touched Gus’s lips.

《—, —… —— — —…!》

They were dry but soft lips.

Unlike the low-saturation skin of the exterior, the inside was the same pink as anyone else’s, regardless of outer skin color.

《— – —, —…!》

Aspara realized she had stepped slightly over a line, and carefully withdrew her hand. For a moment, she’d felt as though she were under some sort of spell.

The castle lord’s not-quite-living appearance and disposition were certainly elements that put distance between him and most people, but for Aspara, who found people uncomfortable, they carried a strangely calming sense of familiarity.

“Ah, that was a bit thoughtless of me…”

In that instant, Aspara felt the center of gravity of her body pitch violently to one side.

“Hiyaah—!!”

Gus had seized her by the waist and pulled her back. The moment she’d staggered and stumbled from her original spot, something came crashing down, stamped-in hard, onto the exact place the two of them had just been standing.

No — should she say someone? What on earth was that.

The figure was a young man holding a large cudgel. No, not a cudgel — a frozen hind leg. At any rate, a man with a massive hunk of stew meat in his hands had dropped in front of them.

《— —?》

“What is it.”

“Step aside, Princess! I have come!”

“What on earth.”

It seemed the man had swung the frozen-solid chunk of beef haunch at Gus’s back and missed.

“Princess, get behind me! Trust in me! I beg you!”

“I said — what on earth.”

She had no particular reason to trust, of all things, a stew-meat warrior who had just dropped out of the sky.

Ah — there was something fuzzy on the man’s wrist.

“Wait…! It’s dangerous right now — you mustn’t come out, Alexandrine!”

From beneath the man’s sleeve, something bulged and rippled from his wrist all the way up to his shoulder, and then, out of his collar, a tuft of fur popped up with its head held high.

“Oh my, is that…”

It was a small, fat hamster.

“Gangster…?”

“Alexandrine!”

《Peep-peep!》

The three figures each exclaimed at the sight of the small rat.

He called it peep-peep…

So they call it peep-peep, then…

A brief silence settled over the chaos. Then Aspara cleared her throat and gently broke it.

“I don’t know who you might be, but that’s quite a flamboyant greeting.”

“I…!”

The man who had come bursting in snapped himself upright and went on.

“I am a loyal citizen of the central kingdom, the eldest son of Baron Arvelland, the heir of House Cupedalio — Volmo Hipoto Monstro Bui Cupedalio. I have come to escape this barbarian’s wicked clutches and to rescue you, Princess.”

“You’ve come as a hostage, have you?” [TL: The Korean “볼모” means “hostage,” but the man insists it is his name, which begins with V.]

“No, I am Volmo — no, my name is — no, well, Volmo, starting with the letter V.”

Aspara examined the state of the V-for-Volmo figure before her.

He was a son who resembled his father very little. Or so she had thought. But on closer inspection, the likeness of that man did seep through, here and there.

The baron had eyeballs with an unusually high proportion of whites to them, and the hostage was no different. Only, unlike the baron’s, the son’s three-whites gaze had a cringing quality to it — shaped like that of a domestic animal broken in by a harsh master.

The only feature that felt truly like his father’s was perhaps the curly hair; and yet, on closer examination, that too did not seem to be its natural form. The curls were coming undone in a slightly sloppy way, the grain of root and tip out of alignment.

In any case, what that man’s child was doing here was beyond her.

“There seems to be some misunderstanding. This one is to be my husband.”

“I know. I have heard the rumors well enough of the barbarians’ abduction-style marriages.”

“It is my own will.”

Volmo did not answer back, but he was still holding the frozen meat up high, his tense eyeballs rolling from side to side.

“You speak like that because your spirit is broken. Once you return to your homeland, you’ll wonder how you ever lived out here.”

“That does seem likely.”

Aspara blinked sleepily, like a drowsing ox.

“But what does that have to do with anything.”

“It — it has a great deal to do with everything!”

A man of truly theatrical bearing, in posture and in manner of speech, Aspara thought.

Aiming his shabby blunt weapon at the castle lord, he stretched his other hand out toward Aspara.

“I’ll guard the rear — let us flee together!”

Without that ribbon, it might even have been a rather gallant scene.

Ah yes. The ribbon.

The pink polka-dotted ribbon tied at his neck.

As he stretched his arm out long, the pink ribbon prettily fastened at his throat dangled along with it.

The kind of ribbon some tasteless person would tie on the end of a wrapped gift-box.

The more she looked at the man’s state, the more interesting he became, and the thought of returning to her room didn’t even cross her mind.

《— ——, —.》

Gus, who had been listening quietly, smoothly raised one hand to block the space in front of Aspara. A gesture telling her to step back.

As she took two steps back, Aspara noticed that something black and pointed was held in Gus’s hand.

A dagger…

No. She realized a moment later that Gus’s large hand had briefly fooled her.

It was less a dagger than something closer to a short sword — a proper, serious weapon.

Where did that come from.

At some point his chest had become unfastened — so apparently he habitually carried a sword tucked inside his clothes.

As soon as the blade appeared in his hand, Volmo bit down on his lower lip and lunged at the castle lord.

“Princess, get out of the way!”

“Never mind. If I’m hit, I die, is all.”

Gus lightly parried the ridiculous blunt weapon carrying the full weight of a grown man’s body.

The frozen-solid slab of animal flesh was certainly hard, but each time it came crashing down it let out a wet slap-slap sort of sound — and the whole sight of it was bizarre.

What an outlandish spectacle.

Against a backdrop of slapping meat and a fluttering ribbon, Aspara admired the scene with detachment.

If the sound had been metallic, at least someone would have come running.

And yet Aspara did not raise her voice to call for help, nor run off anywhere to escape.

She simply stood by and watched.

“Kh-aagh…!”

Watching Volmo barely holding his own, Aspara was, in her own way, impressed.

Jack, too, behaved fearlessly in front of Gus, but that was because the boy’s fearlessness was preceded by a brainlessness of its own.

The man before her, by contrast, was clearly frightened.

His way of using his body was passable enough, but how many real fights he had actually been in, one had to wonder — for the grip tightening past all necessity was trembling visibly.