Guardians of the Prince

The following morning.

Mr Lahzt, the prince, and I went to the dining hall, made quick work of our breakfast of bread and ham, and then returned to our rooms.

Mr Kahzam had his meal, too, in the room, and then we all waited for Lemonina together. I got tea supplies together, and made some tea.

Suddenly, Mr Kahzam stood up, turning his shoulders a bit as he went to the center of the room, and faced the door.

“Stay back, Kohme, alright?”

What, what was going on? Mr Kahzam spread his feet about shoulder width apart… What the, is this what you call combat-ready?

There was a knock, rap rap.

“Come in.”

Mr Lahzt responded, and then got down into a corner of the room, carrying the prince in his arms.

The door popped open, and a small-framed person who carried themselves with plenty of grace flew into the room.

Who was… A woman!?

“Haa–!!”

She let out a spirited yell and thrust a short stick out at Mr Kahzam. It looked like she was about to stab him in the throat, and I reflexively let out a scream.

There was a metallic noise, and another stick appeared in Mr Kahzam’s right hand. He just barely avoided the woman’s attack with a slight movement, and then lowered his stance a bit.

His stick slid back upwards, and landed a hit on the inside of the woman’s right elbow. She’d poured all her strength into that arm, and it collapsed inward, and she almost lost her balance, like when you take somebody’s knees out from behind, but the elbow version. Mr Kahzam pressed his advantage, and pinned the woman to the floor without too much trouble.

“Ah, jeez, I yield, I can’t win!”

She jumped up, and sat cross-legged on the floor.

She had gold-colored hair, cut in a very short bob, lively linen-colored irises, and a gentle curve to her eyes. She was an attractive, middle-aged woman. Unusually for a woman around here, she wore boots under bell-bottom pants, and a jacket that looked a bit like riding wear.

“Dr Lemonina, sorry it’s been so long.”

Mr Kahzam offered his hand, to help pull her up.

The woman– Dr Lemonina, grinned and got to her feet.

“I’m no match for you after all, Sir Kahzam. I’ll have to have some more lessons.”

“I’d be happy to.”

Mr Lahzt put the prince down, and started to speak, kind of timidly. “Professor… I’m so sorry to call you out to a place like this–”

“You are about to entirely lose your license. You physically cannot just sit down and behave yourself, can you.”

Yikes. This– This was Lemonina!?

“Kahzam is my short staff instructor. I’m such a nerd for weapons. I wanna try everything.”

Lemonina – Doctor Lemonina Ruista – sat on the sofa with a tea cup and started chatting away like nothing had happened. She was apparently in the topmost of three official ranks at this Shin research institute. She even had a voice in politics. All in all, a pretty amazing person.

The officials were called Guiding Stars, and each rank was the First Star, the Second Star, and so on, and seemed to be roughly equivalent to University President, Professor, and Associate Professor in my world. Mr Lahzt apparently held a license as a Second Star.

Lemonina and Kahzam both seemed to have contracted their staves from earlier and clipped them to their belts. They were like a policeman’s billy club.

“Maybe you should learn a bit of self defense too? Women are bound to encounter a bit of trouble.”

“That certainly is true,” I answered without a shred of deceit, as I cut up the tart she’d brought.

And it wasn’t just last night either. Even in my original world, there were bits of trouble, molesters and the like. Nevermind that this was a totally other world where I barely knew left from right. Maybe I should learn a few things to protect myself.

Mr Kahzam had said he was a bodyguard, but he didn’t ever seem to have any guns or swords on him, so I’d been wondering how exactly he’d handle it when the time came. Turned out, he’d been hiding that short staff on him the whole time.

I was surprised, but he was kind of cool, wasn’t he?

When I glanced over at him, he was sitting so quietly, it was like all the action a minute ago had been a lie. Our eyes met and he smiled at me, and I got all discombobulated. I had a guy this strong protecting me, huh.

Lemonina dug into the tart with a grin, and jumped right in with the questions. “So, Lahzt, you brought the kid and the girl, what’s this important consultation all about? You’ve been in and out of the Garden of Stars without even a word to me, and sneaking around doing something, now you gonna tell me the kid is yours?”

I panicked, and started with a self-introduction. “Ah, pleased to meet you, my name is Hino Koume. Please call me Koume. We’ve come to consult with you, Professor Lemonina, about some problems I have.”

“I’ll tell it, Kohme.” Mr Lahzt stopped me. “Professor… She’s fallen into quite the complicated situation, and it’s my fault.”

Lemonina listened to the tale of how I’d come here and cared for the prince, and then she turned a chilly eye on Mr Lahzt. “You abducted her, from another world? Not only that, you kept her in confinement, and forced her to care for a child? You… How far have you fallen?”

“I– Professor… I have absolutely no…”

“No… Uh… Ma’am…”

Sitting beside Mr Lahzt as he endured a storm of fervent scolding, I got flustered. Even the prince, who was clinging to my knee, jumped. Mr Kahzam, on the other hand, was perfectly calm. Perhaps he was used to this situation?

“Oh my, in front of the little one too, I’m sorry.”

Chatty once again, Lemonina turned to the prince and smiled. That smile had a strangely outsized impact.

“But even when he was my student, he was a habitual criminal, breaking rules and regulations since way back. It’s forbidden to use the Shin to teleport outside of public business, but he would just use it on whoever he wanted, and he would tell us, oh but my friend was going to be late for his Shiino technique exam. Or just break into the Garden of Stars whenever he felt like it, oh but I was conducting this really interesting experiment. He has always just done whatever he wanted. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to clean up his shit.”

Lemonina rattled off all his offenses, glanced at Mr Lahzt, who kept trying to interrupt – “Ah” and “Oh” – and then leaned over towards the prince.

“You’re so cute though, I always wanted a kid like you, you know. Listen, that stuff you’re eating looks real good, can I have one?”

The plate in front of the prince contained a sort of puffed egg snack that we’d made at Mr Lahzt’s villa and taken with us.

It turned out this world had starch made from potatoes too. In other words, it was just regular old potato starch, and it made me remember the way my mom had taught me to make these, so we gave it a try. They’d become the prince’s favorite.

“Kay…”

The prince timidly put one puff on Lemonina’s outstretched hand.

“Thank you. Oo, these are good! Kind of a gentle, nostalgic flavor, huh.”

And then she turned a gentle eye to me. “You, Kohme, wasn’t it? Why don’t you become my daughter?”

What?

“You don’t have any relatives here, right? So for now, you can become my adopted daughter, and make me some of these snacks every once in a while.”

Lemonina grinned, and Mr Lahzt sent her a sidelong glance. “And then the two of us can pick on Lahzt together.”

Even Mr Kahzam finally gave a short sigh. Mr Lahzt looked miserable.

“I– Professor, given the circumstances, please forgive me. Besides, she’s twenty five, that’s a bit old to be adopting someone.”

“Oh hush. Wait, what, twenty five!? I figured you must be around twenty. That’s even better, you become my daughter, and teach me the secret to staying so young!”

Looking any younger than people around here was just genetics, I didn’t think I could teach that.

“Well, setting that aside for now, I am truly sorry, Kohme. My idiot pupil has done something unthinkable to you. To be honest, it wouldn’t be out of line to throw him in jail this very instant. But circumstances being what they are, we can’t make any kind of public announcement, and without him around, prince will just be in even more trouble.”

Lemonina glared again at Mr Lahzt. His tall frame had become quite small, and I reflexively patted him on the back.

Seeing that, Lemonina smiled. “More than anything else, you’ve forgiven him, huh? I assume there aren’t any punishments you’d like us to mete out?”

“Correct.” I nodded firmly.

Mr Lahzt lifted his face and looked at me. His pretty, golden brown eyes were like amber.

I smiled into those eyes. Mr Lahzt was always conscious of his crimes against me, and I knew he was always careful of me. That was enough.

Besides, when I thought about the fact that Mr Lahzt might still be able to get me out of this situation, I started to feel extremely anxious. I wanted to be with him.

Lemonina patted my knee. “I understand. Alright then, that’s enough talking for now. It doesn’t mean I’m writing off what you did, though, you understand that Lahzt? Kohme might forgive you, but I haven’t. I’ll be xxx you right in the xxx and making you xxx later.”

“Yes ma’am…”

Mr Lahzt was sweating buckets.

I couldn’t really make out some of those words just now, why was that? If they weren’t included in the vocabulary I learned while I was asleep, they must be distinctly terrifying. Yeah, I wasn’t going to stick my nose into that.

But still, maybe it was exactly because of his previous misbehavior that Mr Lahzt was able to think up this plan to raise the prince in the Garden of Stars in order to protect him. And I didn’t know if there wasn’t some good in that.

Lemonina sat down next to me, took my ring off, and then took my hand in hers and stared hard at it.

“There really isn’t any seal, huh? People here get a seal on this finger, usually when they turn ten. In other words, the name they have from the time they’re born until they get their new one is a temporary name, their childhood name. When they get the seal, they think about their new name and pick a reading to go with the seal, and they register that with the government.”

So it seemed that one Shin could be read many different ways. So then, you could just pick whatever name you liked?

Childhood names, new names you got when you were ten, it was a bit like Japanese people in olden times, changing their names when they reached maturity.

“A seal with a similar feeling to your childhood name mysteriously appears on your finger. The name a person’s been accustomed to does represent something about that person, after all. May I?”

Lemonina rolled up my left sleeve, and saw the faint green letters engraved around my arm.

She took my left hand, deploying her Circle Art, and when she touched the seals on her own arm with her right hand, my left ring finger heated up instantly.

But that was it. Nothing else happened.

Lemonina put my sleeve back and murmured to herself.

“Really did stay blank, huh. I thought maybe we could try putting some appropriate seal there, but no. The name Kohme definitely represents something about you, as you have been in your life so far. Any other name just won’t fit.”

Lemonina put her finger to her chin and lapsed into thought. “Yeah, it’s gotta be this, this ‘ume’ you called it? I wish I could see the actual fruit. If we were familiar with that fruit here in this world, I think a Shin for ‘ume’ might be born.”

“Born?”

“Yeah. So, sometimes a creature is birthed that never existed before, or one suddenly mutates or something. Or maybe someone thinks up a completely new idea that’s never been thought of before. When that happens, a new Shin is born. I’ve never been there to see it in person, but it does happen. A little while later, after a new seal is engraved on the walls of the Shiinium, someone sees it, and that’s how we know it was born,” Lemonina said.

So Shin continued to be born with modern advancements. That must have been what that light coming off like shooting stars from the miniature in the Shiinium was.

So that meant God still bestowed seals even now. The people of this world must feel a lot closer to their god than anyone in my world did.

Lemonina’s flaxen-colored eyes sparkled. “This is a rare opportunity. I want to see the moment a Shin for the fruit called a ‘plum’ is born. Let’s give it a shot, let’s order up a ‘plum’ from your world.”

Like ordering one of those high-grade dried plums off the internet?

Mr Lahzt gasped. “But Professor, last time I tried, there was an accident…”

“I’m not gonna step in it like you did,” Lemonina said sharply. Mr Lahzt coughed.

“Although… We could at least start the investigation with the image of a ‘plum’ that Kohme herself has, but there’s a pretty small chance that alone would do the trick properly. If only we had a clue, it wouldn’t have to be a big one…”

“What kind of clue would you need?” Mr Kahzam asked.

“Hm… Maybe a similar kind of fruit, something like that might work.”

Like when Mr Lahzt had pulled the bouquet of roses (with me attached) by using a flower from his world?

“Oh!” The instant I realized it, I let out a shout. “We have one, a fruit that’s a cousin to the plum! The bouquet I was holding!”

The plum was a member of the rose family.

Koaya’s bouquet was white roses. And I had brought that bouquet here, the dried flowers!

Preparations began immediately.

Mr Lahzt and I went to the Shiinium, and put to paper any seal that could be associated with a plum – the smell, the color, even the general feel.

And then, Lemonina engraved several seals, including the ones Mr Lahzt and I had found, on her left arm. This was to extract the image of a plum that was within me.

Lemonina’s Circle Arts erased one part of the Circle Arts that Mr Lahzt had originally put on my arm, and added in a different seal its place.

When the seals were set, it was quite hot, and a little painful, but nothing any more than I’d experienced before. A flu shot hurt more than that.

Mr Kahzam watched worriedly over the whole thing, but he seemed calm enough to spare me a smile.

And thus, we drew a spiral of tiny characters about five times around on my left arm.

Our plan to summon (?) a plum was put into action after the prince went to sleep.

“Uh… Right here?”

We were in the larger room that Mr Kahzam and Mr Lahzt were using. We’d shifted the table and sofa to give ourselves more room.

If we could summon a plum right here… Would we get a tree? A whole plum tree, teleported from my world? Extracted from the soil, bare roots and everything?

What season was it in Japan right now anyway? What if there were hairy caterpillars on the tree, would those be an invasive species here? I really didn’t have the slightest idea what to expect.

“But if we did it out in the open, who knows what’ll happen,” Lemonina said easily. “It’s fine here, we’ll just have to clean up afterwards.” What a broadminded person.

I stretched my left hand out in front of me holding the bouquet and stood up, and then Mr Lahzt and Lemonina stood up and went to either side of my hand.

When Lemonina moved her hands, the Circle Arts on all three of us expanded at the same time. Lemonina’s right hand plucked at the seals in the Circle Arts like she was playing a piano.

Mm, sorry Mr Lahzt, but now that I see this… She’s on a whole other level.

The light of the search threads floated up like blood vessels onto the backs of our hands, and just as I wondered if they were going to leap up into the air again and make those little waves in front of me, they disentangled themselves and whooshed into a wide formation.

“Alright, concentrate… Bring to mind an image of the plum that you know.”

Nervous, I put one hand to my chest, and tried to remember.

The plum tree in the garden at mom and dad’s house. The flowers blooming even in the middle of winter.

My mom and grandma talking about the origin of my name.

Memories of making plum syrup with my grandma, putting it in rock candy and drizzling it on plums.

Getting assigned homework in elementary school to investigate our names, and going to the library to research it.

The plum tree that grew along the road I always took to school, and the crowd of White Eye birds cawing there.

Showing Nanao the plum blossoms at a plum-blossom viewing when she was in kindergarten, and her awkwardly praising my name.

Lemonina’s right hand moved, and I felt something tangle around the tip of a thread I couldn’t see. At the same time, I had the sensation of my strength being sucked out through my left arm. I started to feel like I didn’t quite know where my body was…

I regathered my courage. The power that flowed from Lemonina and Mr Lahzt’s Circle Arts passed through me into the searching threads. As I became aware of that flow, I could sense the tips of the threads, and where they were going. It felt like I was swimming upstream.

There was some resistance, just like when you’re reeling in a fish. This continued for a while, and just when my strength was about to give out, whatever it was that had been tangled in the thread was tugged gently through.

On reflex, I put my right hand out in front of me.

Plop.

A single yellow fruit dropped into my palm. It was soft, and smelled sweet.

“Oh… A plum…”

At the same time, the bouquet of dried flowers that I’d been holding in my left hand suddenly changed.

Before I could stop it, the bouquet crumbled into tiny pieces and melted into the air, leaving only the lace ribbon that had been wrapped around it in my hand.

When the Circle Arts returned to their original places, the light dimmed, and the room regained its original form.

We all took a huge breath at the same time, and plopped down on the sofa.

“I was hoping we could get an entire tree,” Lemonina said, wiping the sweat off her brow. “But I guess that’s not possible. It’s not so simple as just yanking it across the border between worlds, huh.”

“Kohme.”

I was still staring at the ribbon, a bit shocked, and Mr Kahzam must have been worried about me, because he called to me, and came over from the corner of the room where he’d been to get down on one knee beside the sofa. “Are you alright? That bouquet was important…”

I smiled and nodded. “Looks like it carried out its final purpose, huh?”

Mr Lahzt saw what I had in my hand, and started talking to Lemonina.

“So this is a plum fruit, then… There’s no sense of a Shin, is there.”

“True… Well, probably stands to reason that Gaduos wouldn’t bestow a seal for the fruit of a flower that grows from a seed that’s never been cultivated on this planet.”

“All we can do is try. Kohme, we should extract a seed from that fruit and plant it.”

Hearing that, I gave a little sigh and muttered to myself. “Peach and chestnuts three years, persimmons eight, yuzu a stupid ten, plums a sour thirteen.”

“What?”

“It’s a saying in my world.” I flashed a bitter smile. “It means that things never go smoothly. It’ll be a long time until the tree bears any plums.”

It really wasn’t going to work after all… I was disappointed.

By the time it bore fruit, I’d be forty. Even if a new seal was born and we could make a name for me, by the time it happened, the prince would be plenty old enough not to need a nurse anymore.

Just then, Mr Lahzt spoke. “Kohme. We can plant it there.”

“What? Oh!” I gasped. “The Garden of Stars! It’ll grow super quick if we plant it there!”

When I instinctively turned to Mr Kahzam, he was smiling too, and nodded at me. “We should take it easy today, we’ll go tomorrow.”

“Hold up, you lot.” Lemonina crossed her arms. “Could you not discuss that stuff right in front of me?”

Ah. Right. Teleportation for personal reasons was against the law.

I started to get flustered, but Lemonina flashed a grin like she was plotting something.

“On the other hand, if I tag along, I’ll definitely get to see the birth of a seal. I’ll come tomorrow too.”

“Pro– Professor!?”

“Thank you so much!”

Mr Lahzt’s eyes were wide as eggs, and I joyfully expressed my appreciation. If we were found out, Lemonina might end up having to take responsibility for the whole thing. She really was a generous person after all.

I pressed the plum and the ribbon that had been left behind in my hand gently to my chest.

The bouquet Koaya and Nanao had given to me had been a help to me even as dried flowers. Thank you.

I slipped the ribbon carefully into my dress pocket.