by CHIROLU
The swaying, flickering flames that lit up the town were the very symbol of their creed: While the guilty may be able to hide their deeds in the darkness, there is nowhere to hide in the presence of Ahmar. And so they lit up a great number of bonfires, transforming the normally silent night of the town into a sea of light.
“It’s amazing...”
Having secured a safe vantage point to watch from, the girls watched this special sight without needing to worry about being pushed or obstructed by the crowds.
Though there were a great number of people about, this was still essentially a religious ritual, so there weren’t many people truly cutting loose and causing an uproar. But it was still enough of a clamor that it would be hard to hear someone speaking without getting face to face with them.
The girls were enjoying this unusual atmosphere, with the commotion washing over the crowd like waves. It may have been thanks to it being such a special event that Chloe managed to bring up a topic she wouldn’t normally discuss with her friend.
“Hey, Latina.”
“What is it?”
“When are you going to confess your love?”
Latina’s voice choked up in response to Chloe’s words. It was hard to tell the reaction Latina was having by looking at her face, lit up by the red flames.
“That’s right. Why haven’t you done it yet? I haven’t heard anything about him having any special ladies in his life. So what are you holding back for?” Sylvia joined in, causing Latina to look down in embarrassment.
“I’ve already said it,” Latina asserted in a slightly childish tone. “I’m always saying it. I tell Dale that I love him... that I love him more than anyone else... that he’s special to me, more so than anybody else... But my feelings never get through to him...”
She’d held these feelings in her heart, never changing, for quite some time now, and she’d tried to express those feelings over and over.
Latina continued to tell her friends how she felt, her ears so red that it would’ve been blatantly apparent if they weren’t so near a bonfire.
“To Dale, I’m still just his ‘little Latina’... so he just doesn’t get it. No matter how much I say I love him or that he’s special to me... it doesn’t reach him.”
She didn’t know what to do when her words of love wouldn’t reach him. Just saying she loved him wasn’t enough. Even saying she loved him most of all, in a different way than she did others. Even with all those words added up, she still couldn’t reach him, so what could she do? And why weren’t those feelings reaching him?
She’d long since searched for the answer to that question, and she’d determined that she needed to be an adult. She thought that even if her words wouldn’t reach him when she was a child, if she grew bigger and became an adult, they would.
The gap between their ages was large, so she’d tried her hardest to act grown up, but she still hadn’t reached him.
Even so, she at least wanted to be seen as a proper woman so she could at least convey her feelings.
“Latina.”
Chloe, who was sitting by her side, squeezed Latina’s hand tight. Chloe held back her words, but their other friend spoke them without hesitation.
“Is that really all?”
“...Sylvia?”
“You understand why you haven’t been able to get through to him, right, Latina? But... you’re scared, aren’t you.”
“Huh...?”
“It’s because things won’t be able to stay the way they’ve been up until now.”
Latina looked shocked in response to Sylvia’s words; more so than just because her friend had hit the mark, it was because those words made her realize she’d been harboring such feelings in her heart.
“I...”
While Latina was shaken, she was able to regain her composure thanks to Chloe silently snuggling close to her. As her friend, Chloe knew full well that Latina feared losing the people close to her above all else.
“...Maybe that’s the case,” Latina concluded after a while.
“Yeah, probably,” Sylvia affirmed.
Chloe, meanwhile, just offered her silent support.
“What you need to convey your feelings isn’t to become an adult; you need the resolve to risk destroying your current relationship.”
“I see...”
Her time spent together with that beloved person, being treated as his “adorable little daughter,” helped hold her together up until now, and that time was incredibly precious and pleasant to her. But if she wished for a different relationship with him, she first needed to be willing to let that change.
“But, is it alright...? Is it really okay for me to tell Dale that I love him...?”
Sylvia almost called Latina out for those timid words, but held back when she saw the girl’s pained expression.
“...Latina?” Chloe said, looking concerned.
“I’m a devil, so... no matter how hard I try, I’ll never be a human... And so...”
“You’re still Latina, and being a devil is part of that,” Chloe said, unable to hold that back because she knew what Latina had done in the past.
“Right... but I’m still worried. The time I spend together with Dale is the same, but it flows differently for each of us. So even if I tell Dale and he accepts me in spite of that, I know that he’ll suffer, because he’s so kind.”
In her mind, she realized that fact. And yet, she’d continued to avert her gaze from it.
Eventually, her time together with the people precious to her would come to an end. Everyone would grow old and pass away, leaving her all alone. She couldn’t avoid or escape it, but because she was happy now, she didn’t want to think about that fact.
“And also... it’s not easy for devils to have children.” Latina looked like she was about to break out in tears as she voiced that fact. “Dale really has given me all sorts of things. And yet, even if Dale accepts my feelings... I won’t be able to give him a child.”
Latina knew that Dale loved kids. It wasn’t just that he’d taken her in when she was young and raised her. No matter what he may have said at the Ocelot, he certainly didn’t seem to mind watching Theo, and when he heard that his younger brother back home had a child, he broke out in a gentle smile.
And so she knew that she shouldn’t want to be the one to stand by his side when she couldn’t give him a child of his own.
Those thoughts had long since been eating away at Latina.
Just then, she felt a plonk on her head.
“Ow!”
She looked up in surprise, only to find her friend’s angry face looking back at her.
“Latina, you dummy!”
The girl once more landed a chop on Latina’s head. Latina looked dumbfounded by this attack, which made Chloe give an awkward smile entirely void of malice.
“You’re so smart, so why do your thoughts go in such bad directions?”
“Chloe...”
“It’s not like it’s rare for there to be married couples without children, even amongst two humans. And yet, they’re still able to live happy lives, right?”
“But...”
“A pathetic guy who’d judge a woman based on something stupid like that isn’t worthy of my best friend in the first place!”
Latina’s expression shifted from surprise to a different emotion. Realizing that, Sylvia hurriedly spoke up. “No! You can’t cry, Latina! You’ll ruin your makeup!”
“There’s someone you want to show that off to when you get back, right?”
“...Yeah.”
Latina pointed her face upwards so her hot tears wouldn’t flow, and she gripped the hands of her friends by her side tightly so that she wouldn’t forget her memories of this night or the warmth of this moment.
“...Dale isn’t a ‘pathetic guy.’”
“Right.”
“In that case... you should give it all you’ve got.”
After Latina made up her mind, the festival headed into its cl
imax. Flames made with magic danced about the center of town like a living being, scattering about sparks all the while. The excitement and clamor rose as everyone felt the hot air coming off the flames on their skin.
In the midst of all this, Sylvia wore a mischievous smile fitting of her personality, looking like she was plotting something.
“Hey, Latina. Races with long lifespans do have lower birth rates, but it’s not like you can’t have a child.”
“But...”
“In that case, shouldn’t you get into a relationship as soon as possible, to raise those odds even a little bit?”
“Huh?”
“That’s true. You should go for it tonight, Latina.”
“Wah?!” Thanks to her friends’ reckless suggestions, Latina forgot all about her tears and instead let out that panicked shriek.
The festival came to a close with fireworks made of large-scale fire magic. Fitting of a festival dedicated to Ahmar, they were all red, but it was still impossible to look at anything but the large flaming flowers in the sky.
Everyone in the massive crowd gazed straight up.
In the midst of all this, Latina suddenly felt like she heard someone call out to her and turned around. Seeing her do this, her friends tilted their heads.
“What is it, Latina?”
“Um... Just now, I thought...”
When Latina turned around, she saw the people from the lord’s manor who had given them their spot. She tilted her head a bit when she saw her childhood friend Anthony amongst them. Next to him were a number of men wearing guard uniforms. However, they looked much more fragile than the regulars who visited the Ocelot.
“Guards?”
“Gah!”
While Latina just looked innocently bewildered, Sylvia was clearly making a face.
Sylvia’s father was a vice-captain of Kreuz’s guardsmen. While they were commoners, Sylvia came from a family of high enough status that she’d had a rather strict and formal upbringing. Now that she had experienced the outside world by living in the temple of Akhdar, her life in that house felt suffocating. And to her, anyone serving as a guardsman was just a subordinate of her father, who was symbolic of her familial home.
One of the guardsmen talking to Anthony turned their way and then stopped cold. He seemed shocked to find the girls looking at him. The other guards by his side also looked surprised, but their reactions gave off a slightly different impression.
Thinking maybe there was something strange behind her, Latina turned around to check, but she only found the backs of the crowd looking up at the night sky rather than anything surprising, so she tilted her head again.
“Isn’t that Rudy?” Chloe asked.
“Huh?” Latina looked back at the guard. It was then that she finally realized that the guardsman talking to Anthony was her childhood friend.
“Ah.”
“It is! So he graduated from the reserve corps, then?” Sylvia whispered.
Before one could become an official guardsman in Kreuz, they needed to undergo training and education in the reserve corps. Once their abilities were recognized, they were allowed to wear a guard uniform and be placed on duty. There were ranks within the guardsmen, but as they were just an organization in a single town, it wasn’t as complicated as it was in a large army.
It felt like their still unreliable-looking childhood friend had been jammed into a uniform. His slender physique made it clear that he was still growing. Still, his body was well-proportioned, making it obvious that he’d been properly training himself. He’d been bigger than his friends when they were young, but as everyone matured, he ended up no longer standing out. In fact, in terms of height alone, Anthony now surpassed him.
Latina headed towards her childhood friend, whom she hadn’t seen in quite some time. She walked along with a pitter-patter, unchanged since when she was little. She was curious by nature, so when something caught her interest, she approached without hesitation.
“Long time no see, Rudy. You look well,” Latina said while approaching him, a smile with some youthfulness remaining in it on her face. Rudy wore an awkward expression in response.
“Could you stop calling me ‘Rudy’ already?” her childhood friend responded without even greeting her, his voice even lower than she remembered. Latina tilted her head.
“But Rudy, you’re Rudy. Right?”
“At my age, a childish nickname like that is a bit...”
“Rudolph?”
Latina said his full name a little awkwardly, not being used to saying it, and for some reason, he froze up again, despite being the one who had told her to use it.
“Hmm... that feels strange, somehow.” Latina crinkled her brow a bit as she muttered that, but then her expression returned to normal. “Can’t I just call you Rudy?”
“...Do what you want.” Unable to look Latina in the face when she was so close, Rudolph averted his gaze. His other old friends, meanwhile, wore lukewarm expressions.
“It looks like his body’s the only thing that grew up. Guess there’s no helping that, though, since it is Rudy we’re talking about.”
“It looks like even reserve corps training can’t fix a good-for-nothing like him. Seems there’s just no helping Rudy.”
“Chloe, Sylvia, it’s not fair to put too many expectations on him. He is Rudolph, after all.”
“Right, that’d be awful!”
“That’s true!”
“Hey! I can hear you! Wait, are you even trying to hide it?!”
He didn’t break out in tears, but even so, it was hard to see much growth in Rudolph as he retorted with that.
It was Anthony who had approached the guards. This was because he knew that on the off chance some hoodlums were to assault the “Platinum Fairy Princess” or some lecher were to catcall her, it’d become a serious incident. Most likely, the perpetrator would never make it out of town alive.
Anthony knew the “guardians” around her well, so he was aware that ordinary folks tended to mistakenly think of all adventurers as inherently terrifying. But when it came to a particular doting idiot, such judgments weren’t necessarily off the mark.
Things were more dangerous for Latina than she herself realized. She may have been a magic user, giving her some definite firepower, but if she lost her voice from fear or shock, she wouldn’t be able to properly cast it. Then she’d just have her slender, frail body to fight back with. And yet, these girls intended to wander around all on their own at night, when the town was full of even more outsiders than usual.
Anthony figured he needed to make a move, to protect the peace and tranquility of the town. And so, he’d gone to where the guardsmen were stationed in order to discuss the matter with them. They ended up exceeding even Anthony’s expectations by offering up a number of fresh graduates from the reserve corps. This was a result of an alignment between the captain, who was worried about the safety of the Fairy Princess, and the vice-captain, who was concerned about his daughter, who seemed to not want to come back home as of late. It was a pure abuse of authority, but there was nobody who could point that out right now.
Rudolph ended up in the dispatched group, thanks to the intentions of his superiors. There wasn’t anybody in the guards’ upper brass who didn’t know who he had feelings for. And as a result, he’d gotten plenty of attention since he entered the reserve corps four years ago.
Perhaps thanks to the influence of her guardian and her mentor, the regulars’ beloved Fairy Princess tended to be closer to the adventurers. To the guardsmen regulars, this had been terribly disappointing; but then a childhood friend of the Fairy Princess joined their ranks. If she fell for the boy, then she’d make frequent visits to the guard station, and greet them all with an adorable smile, and maybe even occasionally bring lunch and say, “Please have some, everyone.” And so those men moved on the desire for such days to come. That was why Rudolph’s superiors worked him so hard, realizing full well that he was at a disadvantage. After all, if he
couldn’t at least avoid being immediately wiped out by her guardian, he’d never get anywhere.
From the point of view of those watching over her, it was annoying, but, well, it was better to back someone they could beat into shape. At any rate, this made a living hell for the boy himself, but he himself had chosen to walk this path of thorns to begin with.
“So you’re a proper guard now, right, Rudy? When did that happen?”
“It only just happened. They were short-handed for the night festival, so they rounded up us newcomers.”
“Are the people behind you new, too? I haven’t seen them at the shop.”
“...The guardsmen who are regulars in the shop are pretty much all in high positions.”
“Hmm... Nice to meet you. I’m Latina, from the Ocelot in the southern district. I’ve been friends with Rudy since we were kids.”
Latina pointed a smile at the other young men, ignoring Rudolph’s attempt to avoid saying the name of the Ocelot. There was a bit of a gap in their ages, but these young men who had been promoted to official guards were still clearly taken aback by Latina’s appearance.
To be honest, Rudolph was shocked himself. He was aware that the girl he’d had feelings for since they were young was cute, but in the time that they hadn’t seen one another, she’d grown more and more beautiful in his memories.
His reserve corps training had been harsh, causing him to always keep his mind on what lay ahead. He got the feeling that he was getting worked harder than his fellow trainees, but he couldn’t quite call it unreasonable hazing, so it was hard to bring the matter up.
Despite all that, Latina had grown even more beautiful than he’d imagined. Even his colleagues were at a loss for words upon seeing her. In the predominantly male guardsmen, they’d often discuss how the waitress at some bar was a looker, or how they’d seen a real sexy woman at such-and-such a place. But Latina was on a whole other level.