Guardians of the Prince

“Why don’t we go out in style occasionally?”

I had a little something in mind, so I sent Kohme a letter inviting her out. She replied in the affirmative, without a hint of suspicion.

I drove out to Shiz Cagna pick her up, and she met me with her usual smile. She was wearing a dress I’d never seen her in before. It was white, or maybe a very light blue, with one large navy blue flower embroidered around her waist just under her chest, and she had a certain captivating air about her.
I complimented her, enraptured.
“Lemonina went with me to choose something, and we found this,” she said, lightly pinching the skirt. “The flower’s very Chinese, it’s wonderful… Ah, that’s a culture from the country next to my homeland.”
She was staring hard at me.
“Incredibly beautiful. Please don’t leave my side, we don’t need other men setting their sights on you.”
I wrapped my arm lightly around her shoulders and prompted her into the car, and Kohme let out a single small sigh.

For an instant, I wondered if I’d missed something, but I was so busy thinking about taking her to where we were going, my concerns disappeared like a light dusting of snow.

◇ ◇ ◇

“Uh, here?”
We were in front of one of the high-class hotels battling for first place in the capital.
Kohme saw the information board standing at the entrance and came to a halt.
” ‘Class Reunion.’ Mr Fatido?”
“It’s a reunion for my college class. It’s alright to bring family, or lovers, it’s okay.”
“I– I’m good. I don’t really think I’d belong there.”
Kohme retreated.
“Actually, a lot of guys in my class have been asking if I haven’t calmed down a bit recently. Let me introduce you around. Show your face just for a minute, please?”
This was my scheme. I knew she was bad with public attention.

But when I gently took her hand, she pulled it back with surprising speed.
“No. A class reunion, absolutely not.”
“Ko– Kohme? You hate it that much?”
“I mean, it’s all people you’re close to, right Mr Fatido? If you ever made a promise with anyone, this is the sort of place something like that would be most likely to happen, wouldn’t it?
“A promise???”

Kohme backed up further, leaving me bewildered.
“You go ahead and join them, Mr Fatido. I’ll go have a cup of tea somewhere, so let’s meet back up afterwards,” she said, trying to change direction.
I hadn’t imagined she’d reject me so strongly, and totally panicked.
“No, I can’t leave you by yourself.”
I reached out.
“I’m fine!”
She dodged me.
Just at that moment, I heard a voice from behind me.
“Hey, Fatido! Long time no see!”
Kohme and I turned around at the same time.
There was a beautiful woman with platinum hair, wearing a sedate black dress. She was holding a little girl who was maybe a year or two old to her chest.
This was Ellya, a classmate of mine, and my lover back in my college days.

“Wow what a beautiful person,” Kohme muttered, looking down.
Oh– Oh. She didn’t want to come here because she hated the idea of being bewitched by the ghosts of my past. Did she think it likely she’d meet my ex-lovers?
So to put it bluntly, that was jealousy?
The instant the shoe dropped, I almost started to feel good, in a calculating, self-interested kind of way. She didn’t have to worry,
since I would be introducing Kohme to this woman and everyone else too. As my beloved.

But I had some unexpected cold water splashed in that direction.
Ellya waved the girl at me, grinning.
“Look, Lunya, this is your father!”

“Wha-!”
I was at a loss for words, and in my hand, Kohme’s hand went stiff.
She shook me off, and hit me with a single word, her voice strained with emotion and her expression like she was about to cry.
“Baka.”

Even Ellya seemed surprised by her leaving. “What? What’s that? ‘Baka?’ ”
She stared at me with a blank look. “That girl actually likes you?”

“What does that–”
“Listen– You have to go after her–”
“What the–”
Still confused, I chased after Kohme, but she’d run straight into the women’s restroom. Ellya followed her in, and then came right back out.
“She’s locked herself in a private stall. Uh, sorry. I thought for sure you were pressuring another girl into something, so I thought saying something like that would help her get out of it.”

All the tension leaked out of me.
Certainly I had tried to make Kohme stay when she’d been trying to get away, but… Maybe this was just the fruits of my own labor. Me getting knocked down by my own past.

Kohme had to have known right away that Ellya’s words were lies.
It had been several years since Kohme and I realized our feelings were mutual. In all the time, the bonds between us had never gotten so slack as to cause her suspicion that I might have had a child with another woman. Absolutely not. Surely not. Probably not.

Except that the wounds from her past hadn’t healed enough that she could shake off stories like the one before as joke. She was trying to avoid any event that would end up touching that wound, and here was I…

“Ellya. Kohme is a woman. I can’t tell you any details, but she’s been hurt terribly by circumstances a lot like this before, so it was truly… awkward.”
“You’re lying, are you serious?”
Ellya’s expression stiffened, as she saw me bite my lip. She stared at me like she was putting me under observation. I stared back, and her expression turned earnest.
“Sorry, it isn’t a lie is it,” she muttered. “There’s a totally different air about you… You really are honestly thinking about her, aren’t you?”

And then she said, “The dress she’s wearing, did you choose that?”
“No… She did.”
Why were we talking about the dress at this stage?
I was suspicious, and Ellya burst out laughing, readjusting her grip on her sleeping child.
“Huh, she really is thinking about you too, huh. That flower is the color of your eyes, you know.”

“Oh– Woah.”
My hand flew to my mouth without my thinking.
It was true, the flower embroidered on Kohme’s dress was the same rich blue color as my eyes.
That must have been what Kohme had wanted me to notice when I picked her up! Me, of all people!

I tried to fly into that private space where the woman I loved was, not caring what anyone else may think, but Ellya desperately held me back.
“Wait! There are other customers in there, you can’t go in there! I’ll go. I’ll tell her the truth properly.”

And so I waited anxiously, listening to fragments of their voices coming from inside the bathroom. Ellya seemed to be telling Kohme everything.
But eventually I couldn’t wait anymore, and I shouted into them, still standing outside. “Kohme! I’m in love with you! Come out, please!”
I was shouting as loud as I could, and so she quickly emerged, along with Ellya. Her face was bright red, so much so that the red around her eyes from where she’d been crying was hardly noticeable.
I hugged her as tight as I could so she couldn’t run away again, not caring who saw us.

“Haven’t changed on that point though,” Ellya muttered, suppressing a grin, and then left, taking her daughter with her, leaving only Kohme and I, alone and embracing each other in front of the bathroom. Other customers went out of their way to avoid us.

“Kohme.”
“I’m sorry… It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you, I just…”
Kohme leaned her head on my chest, and I rushed to interrupt her.
“Don’t apologize. I understand. It’s my own immorality that invited such a situation. You can call me baka all you want.”

Kohme twirled the string of her bag around her fingers for a long while, but eventually lifted her head and smiled.
“Somehow, I just ended up feeling so down about everything. And as usual, you’ve blown all that away, Mr Fatido, and I’m happy again.”
Hearing that, I scooped her up into my arms. I whispered to her as she got flustered.

“Leave it to me.”

We went straight to the front desk of our hotel without any further ado, and as I took the room key from the man at reception, her eyes went wide as saucers. “Just like this!? You are baka after all, Mr Fatido!” she shouted, hitting me with her fists repeatedly.
But after we got into the room, that baka soon took on a sweeter tone.

◇ ◇ ◇

“You went through all the trouble of choosing those clothes with me in mind, and I just took them right off you again,” I whispered, wrapping my arms around her soft body, and then she lifted her head from my chest and giggled.
“Did Miss Ellya tell you?”
“Embarrassingly enough. I’m so sorry, I didn’t even notice,” I reluctantly admitted.

“She’s a very nice person. She frantically explained to me that the thing about the child was a lie.”
“She’s got a husband she’s madly in love with. He’s in the real estate business or something.”
“Yeah. And she asked me if there was anything else I wanted to know and she’d tell me, so I had her tell me your Shin name.”
“Geh–”
I didn’t know what to say, and got to see Kohme giggle again.

What an adult she was. She had the inherent generosity to laugh and accept everything, even my past.
“I didn’t end up hating anyone, I’m glad,” she muttered, afraid of just the feeling of hating someone. That fear was the ripple of her past spreading into the present.

“Not hating anyone is fine, but if you started liking someone, that just wouldn’t do.”
I deliberately scowled.
She was too good, even the Crown Prince’s twins said she was a nice person, and they usually ignored everyone.
Kohme laughed. “Speaking of which, it’s the first time I’ve seen you not at your best, I believe. I even got away from you.”
“Please forget about that. Please,” I said in a rush, and Kohme let out a laugh and sat up.
“Come on, it’s about time I got back to Shiz Cagna.”

Admiring her figure in that dress once more, I wondered what would have happened if I let her go home to everyone at Shiz Cagna, not to mention back home to Ouji, with that tear-stained face, and I shivered at the thought.

[Ripples from the Past – End]