Guardians of the Prince

[First Day – Night]

Young Master was a colic demon. From just after the prince went to bed clear until midnight he would cry off and on for three solid hours. You bet I was wiped out!

“Haaah… Finally settled down, did you?”

I was wandering down the moonlit halls of Shiz Cagna at night.

In my arms, the young master was finally nodding off. But whenever I tried to put him to bed, or even sit down, he’d start crying again, hence.

“Are you alright?” Mr Lahzt asked, with the sense that he couldn’t think of anything else to say. He was walking beside me, just as quiet.

And when we turned around a little, Mr Endie was standing against a pillar at the other end of the hall.

Mr Idine and Mr Endie didn’t seem to be able to pull themselves away from Young Master, of course, and the two of them had taken to sticking by his side in turns like this.

They’d insisted that only me and these guys could handle it, and even Mr Lahzt and Mr Kahzam had stayed by my side in turns.

It probably was a help though. The Young Master seemed to get restless if it was too quiet, so being able to talk to someone quietly like this was perfect.

“If not for the circumstances, taking a midnight stroll with you like this would be quite the beautiful scene, huh.”

Mr Lahzt cracked a light joke.

I laughed a little and turned around, beginning the stroll down the hallway in the other direction again. Mr Endie followed us the whole time with his stare.

We walked all the way over to where Mr Endie was, and I asked, “Was the Young Master like this in the royal palace too?”

Mr Endie nodded. “Lord Waka’s nanny still has to do this same thing, even at night, so the security measures at the White Wing Palace were altered to accommodate it.”

Unlike when the child sleeps in their room all the time, the whole policy would have to be changed, I guess. That made sense.

“That nanny ended up one of the suspects herself, right…” I muttered.

If she wasn’t really the culprit, it would have been really sad. She’d been putting us lot of work caring for Young Master, and now he’d been dropped off with some people he’d never even seen before.

I hoped it’d be resolved quickly.

“What kind of person is she, Young Master’s nanny?” I asked.

“She’s of noble birth,” Mr Endie told me, “and she became nanny after giving birth to two of her own children. Those children are five and one, apparently, and they were all being raised together in the royal palace as foster brothers.”

Because her two children were still small, she’d probably still be lactating, right.

But that was nice, huh, foster siblings. I was a little jealous of them, growing up together…

As we were chatting, it turned a little past midnight, and the Young Master seemed to have finally settled down. When I put him down in the crib, he obediently stayed asleep.

Ow ow ow ow, my neck, and shoulders, and arms. If you’re not careful, you can get tendonitis like this.

Mr Lahzt sat me down on the couch without a word and then rolled up his sleeve and expanded his Circle Art. He was going to do a healing technique on me.

Mr Lahzt’s hands gently touched here and there on my body. Something warm flowed into me, and it felt really nice…

When I came to, it was already morning. I was asleep on the couch, my head on the chest of Mr Lahzt, who was laying under me.

Wait, chest! Waaah!

I jumped into a standing position, but Mr Lahzt stayed asleep. Good thing he didn’t wake up, I didn’t want him seeing my face this red!

I looked around in a panic, and spotted Mr Endie silently scowling at me.

Ah. Sorry, just making a fuss over here by myself…

[Second day – night]

My days and nights were perfectly reversed.

The Young Master was quite the formidable task. He went to sleep for me in the daytime just fine, so I took the opportunity to rest too, and then at night I was fully devoted to him.

He’d finally pass out around dawn, so we’d finally flop into bed together, and before I knew it, it was morning again.

The prince took notice, and would tell the maid Lauren and the others not to wake me up, and he was even leaving for school with his bodyguard now… Mm, sorry prince, I didn’t even get to say good morning.

When he got back from school, we’d chat over a snack together, but I think he was trying to restrain himself, and if he needed something, he’d go to Lauren instead of me.

When I said good night to the prince when it was time for bed, he replied with the saddest ‘Good night,’ it was just too much…

Looking at it from the prince’s perspective, it must have felt like the Young Master had taken me away from him.

◇ ◇ ◇

And again, night came.

This guest room was relatively close to the prince’s private chambers. It was temporarily the Young Master’s room.

“How’s the investigation proceeding?” I asked Mr Idine. I’d finished giving the Young Master his milk, and was patting him on the back as I leaned him against my shoulder and held his head steady.

With a full tummy, the Young Master obediently belched and seemed a little drowsy, but he wouldn’t be like this more than an hour.

“It’s a bit soon for results,” Mr Idine said, heartlessly. But he did reach out and take the baby instead.

Mr Kahzam watched the situation in silence.

Yes I know, but it wasn’t like a guard could hold a baby. You wouldn’t be able to respond instantly if anything happened.

“Not really hot or even heavy, but just feels profound, huh.”

He was holding the baby in a perfunctory way, and muttering his impressions with a perfunctory feeling too. “What’s so good about a baby?”

“What? What’s so good–”

How the heck was I supposed to answer a question like that?

But, I got close to Mr Idine, and gently lifted the Young Master’s leg close to his chest. “Something like this maybe?”

I showed the tiny little soles of his feet to Mr Idine.

Or maybe it’s not the soles of their feet, but like, their tiny little nails too? Just looking at those teensy little parts of him was enough to make someone like me happy.

“I really don’t understand feelings like that. Even when people talk about the brilliance of life or such things, It just makes me bored. It’s probably best if I don’t have any children of my own,” is what Mr Idine said. #? i’m feeling this man pretty hard rn. ?#

So I said one more thing. “Ah, well, it can be fun to think about what happens after you die.”

“… You say some unexpected things, don’t you. I figured you’d be lecturing me on the splendors of being alive.”

Even if I did, you’d just be bored anyway. “Well, it’s all the same anyway, either one. I wouldn’t mind if life continued even after I died, I guess that’s the kind of feeling I get looking at babies.”

“Hmmm…”

Mr Idine let slip a thoughtful tone, and looked at me as I peered in on the young master. “Kohme, would you try bearing my child?”

“Whattt!?”

“No, I just thought it would be nice if you had my child, and then thought about death while looking at that child.”

“What the hell is that!? Sadism!? Masochism!?”

Young Master started wailing.

“Aah, he’s crying, and hey, Mr Kahzam, don’t you get your back up either!”

Mr Kahzam only glowered.

The baby cried louder.

Oh lord. So I’d be on the Round Trip Hallway Endurance Race again this evening then, huh. Well, at any rate, I still had no idea what would push Mr Idine’s buttons.

[Third day – night]

The hallway at night.

Tonight again I was wandering around with the young master in my arms, but I ground to a halt in surprise.

In the moonlight, accompanied by Mr Kahzam, who was supposed to have switched out with Mr Endie a little while ago, stood the prince in his nightclothes.

“Are you okay, Koume?” he asked, trudging up to me.

“I’m okay, what’s going on? Can’t sleep?”

“Yeah… I got worried about you. If you stay up all night, ghosts will come.”

I let slip a chuckle.

I did remember telling him that ghosts and monsters showed up in places where there were kids who weren’t sleeping through the night properly, and made the kids join the monsters’ group.

“I’m fine, ghosts don’t like the light. And also, Professor Lahzt or Mr Idine are always with me at night, so even if a ghost did show up, they’d blast ’em with their Shiino,” I said, and Mr Lahzt beside me nodded, and the prince finally relaxed.

But he said he wanted to stay with me for a bit, so we headed for the courtyard and sat next to each other on a bench. The Young Master… Well, he was a little fussy, but he didn’t cry, so that was good.

After a while, the prince leaned against me and started to nod off. Ah, I’m sleepy too… Every single day like this, of course I am…

“You can exterminate ghosts with light in your world, Kohme?”

Mr Kahzam was standing behind me, and leaned over a little to whisper in my ear. Something in his voice made me even more sleepy. I answered back in a sort of daze.

“It doesn’t do that here?”

“No, we have something far more eerie, I think. Controlling poison with poison, that kind of thing.”

“Hmmm…”

Poison again, huh.

“That’s right, at the villa, Mr Fatido…” I started to say, but then clamped my mouth shut.

It was a story from before the prince had been adopted by the king and his wife, and I almost carelessly blurted it out. Mr Idine and Mr Endie both were right here.

I had to be careful of what I couldn’t say. But, when the prince and I were living at Mr Lahzt’s villa, Mr Fatido had brought a picture book one day. How nostalgic.

Well, it definitely had been there in that picture book. A story about how to exterminate ghosts. That was the story with the line in it from just now, controlling poison with poison. It was a popular picture book in Vio Rizonna.

The ghosts in that story weren’t weak to light, but to a certain grass. In Japanese terms, it was sort of like holly at setsubun. The shape of the grass, the nice color, the pleasant smell, ghosts hated it all…

Like, a charm of leaves?

Day and night reversed….

Foster brothers.

My eyes flew open. My drowsiness flew away.

“Hey, the person who hid that poisonous plant, could it have been…”

◇ ◇ ◇

[Author’s Challenge for Readers]

All the clues you need have been revealed.

Try to guess who hid the poisonous plants and why.