Col wondered what was on her mind when the silver wolf girl turned to Hyland.
“Hey, do you have any clothes?”
“Clothes?”
“Yeah. See, Brother wants to be a priest or whatever so he only has clothes that make him feel like one.”
Hyland was about to burst into laughter, but she managed to hold back.
He glared at Myuri, who had bad-mouthed him like a little kid running around with a stick pretending to be a soldier, but she just calmly smiled back at him.
“You are right. I doubt anything good would come from walking around looking like a priest,” Hyland said and stood from her chair. “I’ll put something together, so just wait there.”
“But, Heir Hyland—”
“Make it good!”
It was Myuri who Hyland looked to in response.
“I’m on it!”
The two were weirdly on the same page, and Col could do nothing but sigh.
The clothes that Hyland prepared for them suited them in a way.
“That looks really good on you, Brother.”
Myuri sounded like she was teasing, but her eyes glittered, so perhaps he really did look okay. He had mixed feelings—happy, and also like he had done something wrong, but he obediently accepted it for the time being.
“The red on the vest isn’t too bright but not too pale; it’s arranged really nicely. And this cape with the gold edging is such a dark brown, it’s almost black, but it looks good. And what’s this fur? It’s not rabbit, is it?”
“It’s the fur of a sea creature. It’s thin and repels water but is surprisingly warm. You don’t often find fur of this texture on land animals.”
“Yeah. It’s really smooth…It’s so weird how slimy it is, like someone put oil all over it! The embroidery on the sash is so nice, too. The pants come with a wrap, like the hunters in the snowy mountains have. The shoes even go up to his knees.”
“These shoes are a holdover from when people who engaged in war dressed like this. Aren’t they dashing?”
“Yeah. But it doesn’t look like he’s showing off his physical prowess; it makes him look intellectual, and I like that.”
“Wow, I’m glad you noticed. I suppose that’s because plenty of nobles come to visit Nyohhira. You have a good eye.”
After Col had put on his outfit, Myuri and Hyland engrossed themselves with talk of clothes at his expense.
“This hat is amazing!”
“Isn’t it?! This hat indicates a very high level of education and has an air of authority to it.”
It was a fur hat made of the same fur as the cape; it was flat, roundish, and without a brim. It was a masterpiece, whose brass decorations and gold hemming gave it elegance.
“I’ve never seen it in Nyohhira before, but I guess there are people who wear this stuff to work.”
“Yes. Nyohhira is neutral to many countries, after all, so I suppose you can’t hold any over-the-top ceremonies. I imagine you don’t often get to see many guards of honor.”
Col was essentially wearing the type of clothes a royal attendant would wear for a ceremony.
Myuri, on the other hand, had an eye-catching white cloak resting on her shoulders, held shut by a rough belt made of black leather. All the clasps were gold, so despite how simple the outfit was, she could easily be mistaken for someone of high standing.
Together, they looked like a noble daughter of a good family who had come from some faraway territory with her retainer.
“It’s almost vexing how good it looks on you,” Hyland said, and Myuri giggled.
“Don’t worry—you look important, too.”
“Myuri!”
Col cautioned her despite himself, but Hyland seemed to be enjoying herself.
“Ha-ha-ha! Either way, there are plenty of nobles and rich people pretending to be nobles here in the city, so you won’t stand out too much.”
“I’m sorry we’re using such nice clothes of yours…”
He felt apologetic for the trouble, and Hyland shrugged slightly.
“Why, I’d honestly be willing to offer you more. But you don’t accept any compensation I offer.”
She sounded slightly aggressive when she said that, likely because she truly felt that way. Royals had to provide rewards suitable for the jobs their attendants had accomplished. And so she had mentioned giving them a reward for all the work they had done so far.
He did not ask what that might entail specifically, but Hyland was a noble, and a royal noble at that, so he surmised that it was an unimaginable amount of money, so he firmly turned it down.
“Well, do enjoy yourself,” Hyland said, and Col respectfully bowed his head.
When he turned to face Myuri, he fully expected her to be buoyant with the thought of walking around the city and eating mutton, but her expression was hardened and her eyes downcast.
He felt irritated, wondering if she still did not like it when he bowed to Hyland, but she instead kept her head down and only lifted her gaze, giving Hyland wide puppydog eyes as she asked, “Aren’t you coming with us?”
She called Hyland “Blondie” and assumed a rude attitude toward her at every turn. There were even times she bore her fangs at her, so while Col’s reaction was a given, Hyland was the most surprised of either of them.
Myuri did not seem to like the idea that her big brother was serving Hyland, a woman, but they shared an interest in clothes, and her closed heart seemed to finally open up.
For a brief moment, Hyland looked as if she was going to cry. Col had heard once that nobility could be quite lonely.
But at the same time, she was one who had spent a long time hiding how she truly felt.
She immediately smiled and spoke.
“I’m very happy to hear that, but if I came along with you to eat, you would stand out. And when people start realizing that he’s the Twilight Cardinal, that would only bring in unwanted scrutiny. You two should enjoy your time together on your own.”
“…But you wore a villager disguise in Atiph.”
“That’s because I was in a foreign country. But here, I have no shortage of acquaintances. And the Golden Fern is a very popular place where a lot of those people get together.”
Hans would not allow her to disguise herself as a handmaiden. When Myuri made a disappointed face, Hyland knelt down before her and took her hand.
“It hurts me, too. You know, it is usually incredibly rude of me to turn down an invitation to a meal from such an esteemed lady.”
For a moment, Col thought Hyland was a man.
That sort of act suited her much too well.
“…If you act so princely like that, Brother might get the wrong idea and get jealous.”
“We can’t have that.”
The two were a perfect pair.
They both giggled, and Col could do nothing but look away with a wry expression.
“Please enjoy my country.”
“Yeah. Okay, let’s go, Brother.”
“U-uh—”
Myuri pulled him by the hand. Hyland mimed pushing him away, as though telling him to take the lead with her.
He felt strange, usually being the one minding others, and the moment they left the room, Myuri waved to Hyland, and Hyland gleefully waved back.
There was nothing greater than a friendship that transcended social standings.
“Now then, Brother,” Myuri said as they exited the manor. “I trust you’ll be keeping this cute little princess nice and safe?”
Minus the audacity to so blatantly flatter herself, she surely was as adorable as a young noble lady.
“Of course, of course,” he replied and grasped her hand again, and together they strolled down the flagstone street.
The moment they left the district of rows of elegant manors, the atmosphere around them immediately became noisy.
Back at Hyland’s manor, Col wondered slightly if they would stand out in a bad way wearing these clothes, but they did not at all. Ra
ther, there were so many people and the place was so lively that no one had time to think about others.
And the little princess was overwhelmed by the city as a whole.
“Brother, what is up with this city…? No matter where we go, it just keeps on going…”
It sounded like she was telling him a riddle, but he understood what she wanted to say. The structure of a city this big would be completely different from a normal town.
Cities as big as Rausbourne did not have artisan districts or trade districts, as one often saw, but instead had countless smaller towns within it. These towns were often divided by parish, with churches and chapels serving as the nucleus and gathering places only for those who lived within those districts, as well as all the necessary shops such as bakers, butchers, taverns, and workshops for artisans who were specifically for that neighborhood. The parish on the other side of the street would be made up in the same way; there was no need for people of one parish to go out of their way to another.
The main avenues connected these countless parishes together, and that created another unique world of its own.
For example, rows of outdoor stalls and artisans set up shop specifically for visitors coming from out of town; no locals did their shopping there. The residents did not stop to watch the performers put on a show on the street corners, either because they were too busy with normal life or had seen it all already. But then, the local children ran by in droves, and the roaming chickens and pigs skulked around, waiting for a chance to get some of the waste that escaped from the stalls. And then, in the midst of all the congestion, a rich carriage drawn by four horses tried to push its way through as though it owned the place and got into a yelling match over who gives way to whom with laborers pulling carts filled to the brim with salted fish. A closer look showed a group of stray dogs that gathered near the back of the cart in order to have a lick at the salt that had spilled out.
It was chaos.
Col was worried that Myuri, who had been so enraptured by the sights of the city that she forgot to breathe, might get lost in the throng of people, so he pulled on the girl’s hand and they took shelter on the side of the road.
And there just happened to be a small chapel.
“Hey, Brother? Is this a church?”
Myuri’s hair and clothes were mussed and her cheeks were flushed, either because she was excited by the city or because she had been jostled around by the crowd, and she spoke like she had just woken up from a dream.
She did not move to fix her loosened robe, so Col dropped to his knees to readjust her leather belt, but she still stared intently at the run-down chapel.
“Yes, it must be the chapel for this district. Oh, stop, can you face forward, please?”
Not only would she not stay still, her waist was so thin, there was no place for the stiff leather belt to rest on. There was a stray sleeping at the front of the chapel; when she realized it was a dog, she started growling deep in her throat.
It was a big dog with long ears, but it seemed it could only shrink back when glared at by a wolf, looking up at her with servile puppy dog eyes and a pitiful, high-pitched whine.
“Stop that. It’s just a poor dog.”
He struggled to finally close the leather belt, and after he stood up, he jabbed her in the head.
“Ow! Hey, why’d you hit me?”
Myuri also looked up to Col with wide puppy dog eyes, but she did not look to him in obedience but in protest.
“Because you are acting like you’re going to bite anyone and everyone,” he said with a sigh and adjusted her hood. “Calm down a little bit. You finally have an outfit you look cute in, and you’re putting it to waste.”
“What?”
Myuri straightened herself in surprise and immediately beamed with joy. Had her tail been out, it would have been wagging so vigorously, it would have surprised the stray dog even more.
“Really? Wait, are you being serious, Brother? I look cute? Say it again!”
“I will once you stop acting so mischievous and tomboyish.”
“Awww, I haven’t pulled any mischief and I’m not a tomboy…”
He wondered for a moment who she thought she was, but Myuri made a sound of realization and looked back at the long-eared dog. The dog she bullied immediately sat up and adjusted its posture, its front paws together, like a retainer being glared at by a king.
“Ilenia told us about this, didn’t she?”
He thought she might be quibbling or trying to trick him again, but he was surprised to hear a name he was not expecting.
“Miss Ilenia?”
“Yeah. She said that you don’t usually see a lot because they’d stand out in a small village, but bigger towns have a lot of roaming animals and that we should befriend them if we can.”
Myuri waved her hand as she spoke. The long-eared dog then stood up, came over to her, and she patted it on the head.
“She said when she’s doing trade alone in town, people end up going after her. Thieves have tried to break into her room at inns lots of times, but the chickens and pigs alerted her and helped her out and stuff.”
Now that he thought about it, Col remembered Ilenia even had stacks of inventory outside the room at the inn where she was staying.
Considering how every company hired bodyguards for that, it seemed careless, but she did have countermeasures in a way that only a nonhuman could.
“She said it’s better to have friends and that we should use our strengths when we can. That’s what she told me.”
The long-eared dog completely accepted Myuri as its master, its tail wagging as she patted its head, and it even hopped up onto its hind legs after being given some sort of command. The reason Col stood there, speechless, was not because he was impressed by how easily she handled the dog.
It was because he was intensely shaken that someone besides himself had given her such important advice.
Ever since they’d left on their journey, Myuri had demonstrated that she was not a girl who needed protecting, as she had saved Col countless times. Yet, she clung to him, calling out to him like always, and for this reason he believed that everything she was would always fit inside his arms.
In short, he should have known everything about her, and he should have been the one to show her the way.
Or perhaps that was possessiveness.
“Well, Mother can easily chat with the bears in the woods and they tell her where all the beehives are, but I can’t do that, so this is also practice for me…Wait, Brother? A-are you okay?”
Myuri looked back at him, her expression dubious.
He wanted to say, It is nothing, but they were right in front of a house of God. He could not lie here.
“Yes…I was just thinking about how you’ve met such a good friend.”
Instead of lying, he hid all his feelings behind his words.
He should have been happy that Myuri would meet many people and grow and mature.
He would set aside the pain and sadness of letting go of a little sister he so doted on for when he reunited with Lawrence.
“Um, okay? I guess we’re friends. I wanted to talk more with her, though,” Myuri said as she regretfully tilted her head, and behind her, other strays besides the long-eared one gathered, sitting with their front paws neatly together like her henchmen.
When he saw that, he remembered when she was the leader of all the scoundrel children in Nyohhira, and a small smile appeared on his face.
“We’ll go to see her next time we have the chance.”
“Okay!”
And then he found himself relieved at how she happily clung to his arm as she always did. Yet, as they continued on their journey, she would learn plenty of things he could never know from plenty of people he could never even imagine. And whenever that happened, Myuri as she was now would slowly become a memory.
While he knew that was natural, he still wanted to hold on to this moment now as he cradled her. But then, it felt as th
ough the patient dogs were giving him an odd look.
He thought they were looking at him as though to say, What is a fool like you doing to our master? But perhaps he was imagining it.
He looked at the chapel—to escape from the dogs’ gazes—and said to Myuri, “That aside, would you mind if we stopped in here briefly?”
Now that they had come all this way to a faraway city, he wanted to see what the local chapels were like.
“Huh? I don’t mind…Can we just go in? It doesn’t seem like there’s anyone around.”
Myuri could apparently tell what sort of position the chapel was in from her experiences traveling so far.
“The strays have likely taken their place here because people must feed them when they come and go. And it’s not like the doors have been nailed shut like they were in Desarev.”
Myuri peeked through the gap between the rather warped wooden doors, then looked back at Col.
“I guess we have to go in, if you want to so badly. But just for a sec, okay?”
It was always Myuri who wanted to take detours, so now that their positions were flipped, she seemed rather happy.
Col placed his hand on Myuri’s head with a compliant, wry smile, and she shrugged as though it tickled her.
While the dogs’ gazes still bothered him, he pretended not to notice in the end and opened the door, entering the chapel.
It was a small chapel, and the pews inside had enough room to seat about twenty. Since the only ones gathering here were likely those who lived in the parish, it was more than suitable.
The platform, which was more like the kind that an outdoor vendor would use to put clearance items up for sale in the market and less like an altar, and the long, backless pews made for a comfortable atmosphere. The high ceiling reached to about the third floor of a regular building, which gave the space an open, welcoming feeling when coupled with the many high windows for letting in light.
Of course, it wasn’t perfect—Col immediately found scars from the conflict between the Kingdom and Church. There was a mark on the wall from where the emblem of the Church once hung and had now been taken away. Much like Desarev, it was likely it had been a long time since a priest was last here.
However, the floors had been neatly swept, and the pews were nicely polished. He could visibly see the faith of those who gathered here, and as he gazed happily at it, he approached the platform, and his eyes widened at what sat there.
Wolf & Parchment: New Theory Spice & Wolf, Vol. 4 Page 7