Guardians of the Prince

When I came back to myself, I realized all the men in the room were staring at me with concerned looks on their faces.

“Ah, sorry, what were we talking about?”

Reaching up to wipe my brow like I was trying to smooth out the wrinkles that had formed between my eyebrows, I deliberately changed my mood.

“Oh right, my background, wasn’t it? I mean we can’t really just come out and say I came from another world… can we?”

When Lady Solamire had entrusted me with the prince, the situation had changed. If it was known that I was from another world, that I lacked all the basic knowledge people of this world had, there was no way anyone would make me nurse to a child of the royal family, even an adopted one. Even if we tried to pass me off as merely a foreigner, that was still risky. We couldn’t change everything that was strange about me.

And besides… I thought, glancing at Mr Lahzt. Realizing I was looking at him, Mr Lahzt raised an eyebrow just a bit.

If it became public knowledge that Mr Lahzt had summoned someone from another world, there’d be all kinds of problems. And he was already under house arrest…

The prince had gotten thoroughly bored during our long discussion, and started to make his escape, a picture book that Mr Fatido had given him in his clutches. Wah, sorry!

He made quite the fuss, so we ended up putting off our conclusion once again. We hadn’t even moved an inch with the plan to have Lady Solamire adopt the prince. Seriously, I am so sorry!

Today, Mr Fatido ate his fill at dinner, chatted with me while he played with the prince, and then went home. No one in the building was inclined to say anything like, “It’s already pretty late, why don’t you just stay here tonight.”

It got to be the prince’s bed time, but when we started up the stairs together, Mr Lahzt called to me.

“After, would you come have a drink in the hearth room for a bit? There’s something I’d like to talk to you about. Kahzam’ll be there, too.”

“Ah… Okay.”

Being alone late at night with a man made me kind of nervous, but if Mr Kahzam was there too, it’d be fine. But what was it they wanted to talk about?

The prince was already sleepy, so he nodded off immediately, and I went back to the kitchen. If we were going to have a drink, I should make a snack. Wouldn’t want anyone to have to carry anyone else upstairs.

The national preference seemed to be for mountains of dairy products. First, a salad of vegetables and thinly shaved cheese. And then… I opened the fridge (There really was one here! Amazing!) to have a look, but all that was in there was pickled fish eggs? Like, cod roe? Maybe if I mixed it with some cream cheese and slapped it on a cracker, that could work. High in calories, but that was fine occasionally. Alright then.

I loaded my snacks onto a tray, and headed for the hearth room, where I found Mr Kahzam setting out glasses and a pitcher of fruit wine on the table. He looked over at me and smiled, and he must have been fresh out of the bath, because his hair was still a little wet. I could see his attractive collarbone through his lightweight V-neck knit shirt.

Oh lord, I almost forgot with everything that had happened, he’d seen me in my underclothes, and carried me like a princess just this afternoon.

I was well on my way to being flustered, when Mr Lahzt came in. He seemed to be just out of the bath too. Wow, it was my first time seeing him without the white robes. He was wearing the most ordinary button down shirt, but his hair wasn’t tied back, and it totally changed the feeling he gave off.

It’s because he’s just having a few drinks at home! It was a totally different dimension from having drinks out!!

It was a nice feeling, actually, like, ‘Now that the kids have gone to bed, it’s adult time,’ but I was suddenly all too aware of the ‘adult time’ part. I hadn’t been out of the bath very long myself, and I realized my hair was still wet too.

“We didn’t get to finish this afternoon, Kohme,” Mr Lahzt said, handing me a glass. Wait, what? What did we do?

“Our medical exam got interrupted.”

Oh, right, that. Our conversation with Mr Fatido had been so intense, I’d completely forgotten.

“The road to the Garden of Stars hadn’t completely disappeared. The Circle Art on your arm seems to have responded to it.”

“It was my fault too, for leaving the Shu-ii. And thank you, for realizing it so quickly and sending Mr Kahzam after me… Too much later, and they would have stumbled right over me.”

It had truly been a thoughtless move on my part.

“At any rate… So much happened today, you must be very tired,” Mr Kahzam said, quite formally, and the three of us raised our glasses and chinked them together. It was kind of cute somehow, and all three of us laughed a little.

“Kohme, please don’t worry about the whole proxy parent business from earlier,” Mr Kahzam said, immediately changing the subject. His tone was forceful, like he really meant something else. “No one’s going to ignore what you want and stand a fake husband up next to you like this is some sort of stage play.”

“Thank you, Mori– Mr Kahzam. If I don’t like something, I’ll say so, it’s okay.”

I smiled at him.

After all, Mr Fatido was actually a nice person too. He was someone of power and status, and I was just some woman who wandered in from another world. He could have just forced me to go along with whatever he said. But instead he listened attentively to my opinion, whenever I was firm on it.

“I mean, generally speaking, it’s going to be people like Mr Fatido who would want to play husband to someone from another world like me anyway, you know.”

What about me did he find so attractive anyway? He was a bit odd… Just as I was thinking it, Mr Lahzt tilted his glass and said, almost to himself, “I think there are plenty of men who’d want to play your husband, Kohme.”

“Aw, thank you. I have nothing to give you in return for such flattery but snacks.”

I parried his lip service. But I confess, being praised like that did make the drinks go down quite nicely.

“I… talked to Lord Fatido, before,” Mr Lahzt said, broaching the subject once again. “Your situation is so chaotic, Kohme, are you sure you’d like to be the prince’s nurse, with everything else going on?”

What I’d decided was that I wanted to stay by the prince’s side.

His adorable face as he slept on the second floor floated through my mind. If I could watch over him as he grew even further…

But, it was just my personal wish, so there wasn’t anything to do about it. I shrugged lightly, and answered kind of evasively.

“I think Mr Fatido would certainly like it if I became the prince’s nurse. Didn’t he say he wanted to keep track of everyone who was in on the secret?”

Mr Lahzt smiled bitterly. “You’re sharp, as usual,” he said. “Of course there is that too, but I’ve no doubt his primary objective lies elsewhere. But that’s not what I asked. I’d like to hear your feelings, Kohme. What would you like to do from here on out?”

I took a drink of fruit wine and swallowed hard. Words flowed smoothly from my lips.

“If I can, I’d like to be his nurse. It seems like the prince is bound for a complicated upbringing, huh? So I’d like to be there for him, to keep that away from him, as much as I can. I think I’d like to protect him.”

When the prince learned the secret of his birth one day, he might be hurt, distressed. But if I could be there… Maybe I could at least listen to his story.

“There’s something I need to tell you, then.”

Mr Lahzt set his glass down, and looked me straight in the eye. “Once the prince’s adoption procedures are complete, he’s going to be raised in one of the more minor royal palaces outside the city. The way things are right now, Kohme, you won’t be able to set foot in that palace.”

I won’t be able to get in?

Confused, I asked, “I was the only one who could enter the Garden of Stars… But now I can’t enter the palace? Why not?”

“Lord Fatido got this idea of making you the nurse without knowing your name is Kohme… You remember I said we might not be able to write your name in Shin?”

Mr Lahzt extended his right ring finger and removed his wide ring. I could see two seals engraved like tattoos in small letters on his ring finger.

I got an image of a person who had a strong will to pursue knowledge. I immediately understood… This was Mr Lahzt’s name.

The ring was to prevent his name being thoughtlessly exposed.

“Your Shin name becomes a form of personal identification. Without one, you won’t be able to get into any public facilities, or into buildings connected to the royal family.”

I kept my mouth shut, and stared at one of the legs of the coffee table.

Nevermind nurse. I might not be able to live any kind of normal life in this world like this.

“So first, we absolutely have to figure out some way to get you a name seal,” Mr Lahzt continued talking, but to be perfectly honest, I was starting to wonder if there was even the slightest possibility of my becoming the prince’s nurse.

For one thing, wasn’t there already a nurse? And they were someone who had experience as the princess’s nurse. Even if they did manage to somehow squeeze me in, as foreign as I seemed, it would still be tricky, and we had plenty of problems before we even got to that point.

“I see… Well, we can put my problems second or third. Please, let’s consider the prince most important, okay.”

I chugged down the rest of my drink. I drank it all down, ignoring the burning sensation in my throat, and then when it was empty, I plastered a smile on my face. “After all, it’s just me, we can hide me away somewhere by myself! I’ll take in laundry or something. Oh maybe that won’t work? It would be amazing if I could live in that treehouse. That could be my reward for raising the prince, you could give me just that one thing, right? Just let me go shopping every once in a while for meals. I mean, I would have to hide when it was time to cut down those plants, but still.”

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I selfishly poured myself a refill. It tasted like wine, but more intense. Meh, whatever.

“I would get kinda lonely though, so you two should come visit me every once in a while. These days, Mr Fatido would even pay me a visit, I’ll bet.”

“Kohme.” Mr Kahzam started to say something, but I kept chattering like I hadn’t heard him.

“Oo, you can make everybody a ponga when we get together. That would be great. Like a harem!”

I started laughing, while I was still talking. I emptied this glass in one go.

“Man at this rate, my poor lonely bones are gonna be buried in this world, huh. And here I always thought I was going to end up some cute, wrinkled little old lady, and finally get to be really popular with everybody. Steal every heart at the old folks home.”

Maybe even having plans for my old age was dumb.

“Oh, hey, I’ll let you in on one more secret, right now. Do you know why I told you my name was Mami? You want to know, don’t you?”

A little snigger slipped out of me. Mr Kahzam and Mr Lahzt exchanged a brief glance, and nodded hesitantly.

“In one of the other countries on my world, ‘Mommy’ means ‘mother.’ So my little sister started calling me Mommy-chan when I was taking care of her instead of our mom.”

Nanao had been hesitant to call me ‘sister’ when we were around her friends and their mothers. She’d learned about ‘Mommy’ from watching English language television programs, and so she’d started calling me Mommy-chan as a joke, and it had stuck. Well, that’s how it had started at least.

But it might have also been a way for Nanao to deal with some of her grief.

Yeah, so, in other words, there was something I was trying to say, wasn’t there? Oh yeah.

“Yeah, so in other words! Mr Kahzam, and Mr Lahzt, and Mr Fatido too, you’ve all been calling me ‘Mommy’ ‘Mommy’ this whole time! It was hilarious!”

I fell onto the sofa cushion and just laughed. I started crying… I mean, I was laughing so hard I was crying.

“Kohme.”

When I looked up at that gentle voice, Mr Kahzam was down on one knee beside the sofa. He was like a knight waiting upon a princess.

“So, the name Mami reminded you of your younger sister.”

“Yeah… Yeah, true. She used to call me that when she was little…”

My tears were spilling down my cheeks in rhythm with the nodding of my head.

“But all of a sudden… She stopped.”

“Oh?”

He wasn’t just trying to keep the conversation going, he wasn’t just trying to make me get to the point, Mr Kahzam was really listening to me. I was drunk and my head was spinning, and so I confided in him.

“There was this guy I was going out with. But… Some stuff happened, and eventually it turned out he was seeing some other girl… And I couldn’t tell her anything about it…”

Why was I telling him my secret though! I scolded myself, as Nanao’s crying face floated through my mind.

“I think she thought I couldn’t talk to her about it because she was just a kid. She started acting like she was a big adult after that… She even stopped calling me Mommy-chan.”

I couldn’t broach the subject without giving the whole game away, and so I just let it drop. She’d asked me once why I wasn’t angrier about it, but I couldn’t give her any reason. I didn’t want her to know how dull and unwanted I was.

How was I supposed to be worthy of being the prince’s nurse?

I was getting so sleepy. I couldn’t, if I fell asleep right now, I’d definitely end up dreaming about…

It was so cold that day it was hard to believe it was already April.

The elementary school was on spring break, so Nanao and I went out to see a movie together. We’d finished watching it and were leaving the movie theater, when Nanao spoke.

“Isn’t your boyfriend’s company near here, Mommy-chan? I wanna see what kind of place he works at.”

Come to think of it, I hadn’t even been all the way to his company before. “Sure,” I said, and we started walking.

He worked at a famous real estate company, so I knew which building it was on sight. We looked around the place, oo-ing and ah-ing over how big it was and how nice it was, like a couple of country bumpkins, and just as we were starting to head back and think about what we wanted for lunch, I spotted him walking back into work.

He was hand in hand with a woman in a business suit. They weren’t just holding hands either, their fingers were intertwined – like lovers. The two of them parted in front of the building and waved their goodbyes.

He disappeared into the building, and she walked towards Nanao and me. Her hair was in pretty curls, and her make up was very mature. She looked quite sharp in her pant suit.

As she passed us by, a pink key chain swayed from where it was attached to the strap of the bag on her shoulder.

“Baby on board” the letters said. It was a maternity key chain, the one the city governments give you when you register for their maternal health programs.

I must have sat there in shock for a while. When I realized it, Nanao was pulling me by the hand up the stairs of the train station.

Nanao… She was sobbing. She didn’t let go of me, even after we got home, and she was still crying, and so was I. Poor Koaya was so shocked when she got home.

I’m sorry, Nanao, I decided not to fall in love anymore, but you still ended up hurt alongside me, because of me.

As I apologized silently, the scenery gradually faded into a quiet mist. And then the world sunk into darkness.

What am I supposed to do?

If I don’t get back to Japan, I can’t be there for Nanao and Koaya.

But if I do go back, I’ll have to leave the prince behind.

Although, even if I do give it my all here, the prince doesn’t really need me.

I’ll only end up living in hiding somewhere, alone.

“Nanao…” I muttered, and felt someone’s gentle hands quietly tuck me into bed.