by CHIROLU
“This was just thrown together with some temporary sewing. Well, don’t you want to see the little lady wearing a proper one?” Sylvester mercilessly called out to Dale from behind, like a devil trying to smooth talk him with a wicked grin. “You wanna see it, right? We’ll set things up proper so the completed item will really match your tastes, y’know?”
He hinted that everything wasn’t fully settled just yet.
“Come on, take a good look,” Sylvester said, grabbing the now red-eared Dale by his shoulder.
“Wait...! No, you see, right now, I just can’t...!” Dale muttered, but he lacked the power to resist and was thus turned to face a worried looking Latina.
His breath reflexively caught in his throat.
Latina was wearing a pure white dress.
Dale of course knew what that lily-white outfit was, as such things were becoming a trend amongst nobles as of late.
It had a completely different sort of impact than the traditional bridal attire from Tislow Dale had been looking forward to seeing Latina wear.
The glimmering dress sparkled gently in the light alongside her platinum hair. As one might expect from a preliminary design, the dress was currently a simple affair with hardly any ornamentation to speak of.
But seeing Latina’s whole body wrapped in light like that, she was so beautiful that she could even be called divine.
The sight of her had long since been burned into Dale’s brain, but she was giving off a completely different impression now. After all, above all else, she was currently dressed as a bride.
His head was practically overflowing with potential comments, but he just wasn’t mentally prepared, so Dale didn’t speak a word.
Normally he would let loose an onslaught of the word “cute” in response to Latina’s pure white attire, but he was just plain overwhelmed at the moment.
This was precisely what Sylvester’s Fairy Princess’s Bodyguards had hoped to accomplish.
That group was well aware of the fact that when it came to persuading Dale, the sight of Latina in that wedding dress was worth far more than a thousand words. After nearly ten years of watching him excessively dote on the girl, that was more than just a mere assumption.
There were numerous other ways they could’ve gone about things, but by making a big dumb mess like this, it turned the affair into one large festival of sorts. And that served as a sort of preliminary entertainment for the wedding itself.
Ever since returning from her birth country, Latina occasionally seemed to brood over something. And since Latina had suddenly disappeared, even though she had returned, Dale was terribly afraid that she would be stolen away from him again.
It wasn’t as if the reasoning behind those concerns was hard to understand. However, the bunch really wanted them to be able to forget about their worries, at least for the sake of taking center stage in their own wedding.
Old timers were meddlesome by nature like that.
And of course, there were plenty who had the couple’s flirting drilled into their heads and who decided to use the opportunity to vent some of their frustrations on Dale.
Even if the dress was just made with some temporary sewing, it still needed time to prepare. Plus, they needed to get Latina changed into it before Dale arrived.
And so, the Fairy Princess Protection Committee’s victory condition was to buy time for those two goals to be met.
The fact that Dale now looked like he was feeling more embarrassed than he had ever been in his whole life and was left at a loss as to what to do showed that the old timers must have really hit the mark.
†
When Dale returned to the Dancing Ocelot alongside Latina after that big dumb mess came to a close, he found a letter from Granny Wen in Tislow waiting for him. The timing of its arrival gave him a seriously bad feeling.
Dale cut through the letter’s seal with a frown on his face, gave the contents a cursory glance, and then furrowed his brows even further.
What was written there was the fixed date for the ceremony, as well as instructions to prepare.
“That damn hag...!” Dale angrily let slip, causing Latina to take a step back in surprise.
There was no helping Dale wanting to curse. After all, it was written clearly there that they were to hold the reception in Kreuz, then journey to Tislow for the ceremony.
His grandmother had dodged the question when he was in Tislow a few days prior, but it seemed she really had been working together with Latina’s “bodyguards.” And apparently she had already accepted their demands and even worked them into her plans, on top of that.
Normally, one would hold the reception after the wedding ceremony. Granny Wen’s instructions surprisingly went against that, though. The reception would allow them to celebrate in Kreuz, and then they would send forth the bride as per Tislow tradition. After that they would hold a Tislow-style ceremony at Dale’s family home, where they would be unveiled to the clan. Those instructions incorporated the demands of the Bodyguards, but it could also be seen as a show of consideration and gratitude towards the people who’d cared for Latina since she was a child.
And for the reception in Kreuz, there was no need for her to follow Tislow tradition in terms of what she wore. Granny Wendelgard made sure to specifically make note of that in her letter.
But with that said, no matter how much Dale may curse and complain, he had already given his consent, so he had to play along with bringing their plans to life.
Thus, it was officially decided with Dale’s approval that Latina would be unveiled in a pure white wedding dress, just like the Platinum Fairy Princess Protection Committee had wanted.
“Now all those documents I gathered up will finally be put to use, right?”
“Y-yeah...”
Dale had been dragged along by Latina to the workshop that also served as Chloe’s family home, only for the girl to greet them with an incredibly bright and sunny smile on her face.
“Latina was saying she didn’t want to go forward with her wedding outfit just based on her own tastes...” Chloe said with a giggle, causing Dale to look a bit embarrassed.
“It’s just, considering your plans for after the reception, I wasn’t so sure about the sort of binding corsets nobles use, or anything with overly long sleeves, so I recommend basically sticking to these sorts of contours...”
As Chloe explained, she lined up design sheets for dresses with the relevant contours to them. Dale didn’t care much about his own outfit and said he would let others just handle it, so now that it came time to look over women’s clothing, he looked just about ready to turn tail and run.
“This design is cute... What do you think, Dale?”
“I think you can get a pretty mature feel to it depending on the type of lace you use. For example, if you use some from the same workshop as this...”
“But I’m only going to wear it the one time, so spending so much would be a little...”
“Don’t worry so much about that.”
At least on that point, Dale and Chloe were in complete agreement.
“If we’re going to have it custom-made regardless, I don’t think there’s any need to compromise on it,” Dale replied, which caused Chloe to break out in an even brighter smile than Latina. Having gotten the verbal go-ahead from her sponsor, she went ahead and started piling up more materials.
“This lace is imported, but it’s incredibly fine and I think it would really stand out. Also, it’s like this in the design sheet, but how about decorating it with something like this... Ah, this’ll work as an example, so what do you think?”
The questions just kept on coming.
Bowled over by Chloe’s swelling momentum, Dale honestly couldn’t recall just what exactly he’d agreed to. Despite being the groom, he would end up having to wait till the day of for the dress’s proper unveiling. And Chloe just waved farewell with a smile, telling him to look forward to it.
The main reason behind that choice was
because Dale was getting more deplorable and making more of a pain of himself as the wedding approached, and that only seemed like it was going to get worse. Everyone around him was already well aware of that fact, too.
From the next day onward, both Chloe and Latina started working at a quick yet careful pace to complete the wedding dress.
In the half-month since the plan kicked off, the floor of the workspace had grown so coated in various materials that there was no longer even room to walk.
In the middle of all that sat a pure white silk gauze intended for a veil. Normally such a thing could only be made in the temple of Quirmizi, as that light, delicate, gentle fabric was more than simply a tailoring material. No, it was also a sort of amulet, imbued with a blessing.
“Even high ranking nobles can’t prepare such wonderful silk for their wedding veils!” Chloe excitedly exclaimed while clutching the material to her chest, her thoughts racing as to what veil design would go best with the dress.
“Really?”
“Dale can handle the final blessing ritual, right?”
“Yeah, probably.”
“Craftsmen only rarely ever have a chance to make it in the first place, after all. I really am lucky to have a chance to make a headdress out of it.”
Latina tilted her head, but she didn’t seem to have any question as to the source of that material that could “only be prepared at the temple.” Chloe, meanwhile, just gave a strained smile.
It really wasn’t the sort of material you could get ahold of in half a month. And the number of people who could help get ahold of something like that, which wasn’t normally distributed, was quite limited.
“You sure are cared for.”
“Hmm?”
Chloe glanced over at Latina tilting her head, then set about tidying up the material in a way that wouldn’t leave any creases. Then, she used a marking pin to affix some lace to the glamorous silk dress that would be wrapped around her best friend’s torso.
Latina didn’t just discuss her wedding dress with Chloe. No, she got involved with the needlework, too. And as a result of her devoting so much time to the work, she ended up neglecting Dale. He didn’t act all gloomy over it this time around, though.
Dale was considered a priest of Quirmizi, the god who presided over marriage. As such, wedding ceremonies fell within his field. Normally he didn’t look priestly in the least, but he was actually a serious person at heart, so Dale was busy diligently preparing.
After all, it was his beloved Latina’s wedding ceremony. Or to be more accurate, the wedding of the dear girl he doted endlessly upon. Ever since she was a child, he’d struggled with feelings about the thought of her one day being happily married.
Currently, he held both the feelings of a groom set to marry his beloved bride, as well as a father seeing the daughter he raised about to get married. That made him twice as much of a pain.
It was decided that the reception would be held in the Dancing Ocelot. That decision seemed only obvious not just to Dale and Latina, but also to everyone around them.
As a result, Dale inspected the inside of the shop day after day while thinking thoroughly on the arrangements for the event.
“If we moved this... could we set up an altar here? Kenneth, is it alright if I move the stuff around here?”
“As long as you put everything back where it was once you’re done, I don’t care.”
“And then...”
“Ah, right, we’re planning to leave one of the customer rooms open. Rita said we’d need it so that Latina could change and stuff.”
“Right... It would be pretty difficult to come down the stairs from our room in a dress, huh...?”
“I went ahead and calculated the amount of food and booze you’ll need, but if you have any requests for particular dishes or brands, go ahead and let me know.”
Planning things out with Kenneth like this brought Dale joy now, too.
“No matter how I figure it, there are just going to be too many guests to fit them all in the shop... We’re going to need to prepare for quite a lot of people.”
“We’re planning on closing down for the day of the reception, but we’ll have to announce that somehow...”
Since the Dancing Ocelot acted as a terminal for the temple of Akhdar, that meant it served as an important public facility for distributing information. And so, it couldn’t exactly take closing down for the day lightly.
“I get that it’s necessary, but still...” Dale said, a troubled look on his face.
“I’ll have to let all of this place’s customers know the date and time of the reception at the same time...”
It was easy enough to picture the place being swarmed with folks wanting to catch even a glance of Latina dressed as a bride. It really was questionable how exactly holding the reception “in” the Ocelot would turn out.
“How about if we prepare the backyard and send folks around there, too?”
“We could use my magic, and have Vint help out, too... His wind magic should help with cutting the grass and stuff. And we should work Theo hard, too.”
“I can’t forgive him for getting Emma mixed up in everything, either, so work him to the bone.”
Thanks to that discussion between Dale and Kenneth, the sum of Theo’s punishment was finally decided. He may have managed to pull one over on the world’s most dangerous hero, but the price he paid for it was great. If he at least hadn’t used his little sister in his plan, his father probably wouldn’t have been so hard on him, but it was too late for that now.
Dale’s earth magic was a huge help in leveling out the ground, naturally, but he left the rest of the weeding and cleanup to Theo.
Vint, meanwhile, soon grew sick of the job. Or to be more accurate, he just started playing around and digging holes, so he had to be kicked out. And then, Theo had to fill in the holes, half in tears.
Normally Latina would stand up for him, but she had been going over to Chloe’s house to help sew day after day. The circumstances really were stacked against young Theo.
At the same time, a truly strange sight was unfolding inside the Ocelot.
“Polish it all thoroughly. After all, your strength is all you’re good for,” Dale said with a grin as the old timers who made up the regulars were down on their hands and knees, running rags across the floor. And they were putting so much strength into it that it looked like the friction was going to wear right through their rags.
It was a strange enough sight that anyone happening to visit the shop would just stand there and stare in bewilderment.
“Work to make up for the trouble we made, huh?”
“Don’t forget the stairs, either. Afterwards you’ll wax and then polish again, but first you better make sure you get all the dirt up,” Kenneth added relentlessly, as Dale’s statement could be taken as meaning the old timers were being let off lightly for the whole mess they had caused.
Preparing the inside of the shop where the ceremony would be held was also a job undertaken for the sake of their beloved Latina. In that way, it could be seen as a point of compromise that benefited both Dale, who had gotten wrapped up in that big dumb mess, as well as the old timers who had caused the whole thing in the first place.
But when it came to cleaning, Kenneth was incredibly strict. He apparently saw it as a good opportunity to thoroughly polish up the shop, and so he mercilessly instructed his elders to keep on cleaning.
As a result of all that, by the time the day of the wedding arrived, every last bit of the Ocelot was positively sparkling. And in turn, the regulars’ cleaning skills had also undergone a meteoric rise in that short period of time.
4: Sequel: The Platinum Maiden Becomes a Bride
At last, the day had arrived.
It was like they had picked out the weather themselves, as the clear sky above the Dancing Ocelot was a beautiful shade of blue.
One of the customer rooms had been set aside to be used as a waiting room for the bride, and a lar
ge mirror was set up there for her. Atop the thin carpets that Rita had laid out, Chloe was helping Latina slip her arms through the sleeves of her wedding dress.
Normally such preparations would be handled by female relatives, but Latina was a bit limited in that regard. And so, Rita and Chloe were lending her a hand instead.
Rather than feeling ecstatic at the sensation of the high class silk atop her skin, Latina seemed more overcome with emotion, as her grey eyes were already tearing up.
“That was quick.”
“Yeah, it sure was.”
The shock of not only Chloe but also Rita quipping at her with awkward smiles on their faces caused her tears to withdraw a bit.
The pure white shoes matching her dress were also brand new, of course. The delicate flower decoration sewed into the shoes was also lily white, and so Latina was childishly thrusting her foot out from under her dress to see, then happily smiling away.
“Alright, now sit.”
“Right.”
Latina went ahead and sat down in the chair that was pointed out to her. Rita then grabbed hold of a wooden comb and started carefully combing Latina’s platinum hair. Once she had finished taking thorough care of it, she smoothly slid the tips of her fingers through it.
“You really do have pretty hair,” Rita sighed in admiration, then coated her palms with Latina’s favored pomade. She took care of Latina’s hair so up close and personal that her body heat was transferring over to it. Then she separated the hair into several tufts and did it up in a complex shape.
“It feels like so long since you last did up my hair, Rita.”
“That’s for sure.”
When Latina was young, Rita had done up her hair each and every day.
As they reminisced over times long past, the pair’s faces met in the mirror and they smiled at one another.
Meanwhile, Chloe finished up the final preparations on the dress, checking over the laced up back, and then called out in a satisfied voice, “Alright, it’s perfect! I’d expect nothing less from myself!”