Guardians of the Prince

Lady Solamire very thoughtfully arranged it so that dinner was only those of us who had protected the prince.

I had been running around like a chicken with my head cut off the entire day, so I first availed myself of a hot bath and put my attire in order. And thank god I’d brought my important bags with me. It was just dinner with friends, but it was technically a meal in a castle, so I had to wear my lavender dress! Lemonina lent me some makeup.

Lady Solamire offered us clothing for the prince too, the first time he’d worn anything formal, and he really did look like a little prince. The white button down and black slacks with suspenders suited him perfectly. Well, I’m sure the prince would look good in bloomers and white tights, but maybe I’m biased.

The room the royal family used as a small dining room was the most simply decorated of all the ones I’d seen so far, but it was still plenty luxurious. A chandelier shone on tapestries with scenes from legends that hung from the walls, and tall chairs lined up around a table with a pure white tablecloth over it. Beautiful maids carried in trolleys with our meal on them, and we were told that if we needed anything we could ring the small bells, that their attention was entirely ours.

“Well…”

When the door closed, I looked around at everyone’s face and tried to break the ice.

“Really, thank you all for your help. Thanks to you all, it seems I’ll be able to stay with the prince from now on. I’ll never be able to thank you enough, but you’ve all been such a great help in protecting the prince. Honestly… Thank you.”

I bowed my head.

Mr Fatido got to his feet… followed swiftly by Lemonina, Mr Lahzt, and Mr Kahzam, who all raised their glasses. I rushed to grab mine too.

Mr Fatido beamed. “This is the result we’ve all been working towards. Thank you, Kohme, for all your hard work.”

Lemonina winked. “I’m glad to have met such an adorable young woman.”

“No apology would suffice, but I do want to thank you. Very much.” Mr Lahzt flashed a smile, looking a bit troubled.

Mr Kahzam just looked bashful. “It feels strange to think about the fact that Kohme wasn’t here until this happened… I can’t say it right, but…”

There was something welling up in my chest, and I smiled without saying a word. Everyone turned to me and held their glasses up in a toast to me. I followed suit.

The prince grinned. “Con-gats!”

It was the first time since I’d come here that I had fresh fish. A nourishing soup flooded through my entire exhausted body.

“Kohme. I’ll have to go back to work tomorrow, but if you have any trouble, contact me, I’ll come running, wherever you are,” Mr Fatido said. Oh yeah, the president of the company couldn’t just abandon it.

“You too, Lemonina, I’m sure you have actual work to get to?” I apologized hastily. “I’m sorry for all this.”

Lemonina let out a laugh. “It’s alright. I’ll just give my students some extra homework. And there’s a lot of it I can pass off to Lahzt.”

Mr Lahzt looked up in horror. And speaking of which, that thing at the Shiinium…

“We’ve got to get prepared for some field work. You and I will be leaving for the Shiinium tomorrow, together.”

“I– Ugh, yes ma’am.”

Heheh, his face was so stiff. Good luck, Mr Lahzt.

“And you’ll be going back to being Lady Solamire’s bodyguard, right, Mr Kahzam?” I asked, and Mr Kahzam smiled.

“Yes. I do sometimes leave the castle with Lady Solamire, and I’ll be busy for a little while, but usually I live in the guards’ barracks, so I’ll be close.”

Barracks, huh… So I can’t just casually drop by for a visit, can I.

After the meal was over and tea had been brewed with supplies from another trolley, I broached another subject.

“I have something I’d like to tell you as well.”

Everyone looked up.

“Actually, I’ve been informed that my younger sisters are safe… Well, I think. When I was given a name by Gaduos and lost consciousness…”

I told them about when I’d been shot back to Japan the instant I’d earned a name.

I’d floated beside Nanao in her room, as some kind of formless ghost, and my body had felt like it was being pulled toward Gaduelyon and I panicked.

How could I convey a message to Nanao?

At that moment, a white light swirled right next to me and formed a shape.

A figure like the shimmer of heat – Kahzapka.

He’d rubbed his head against my apron, and then shoved his beak into the pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. It was the paper with the transcription of the seal of Nanao’s name.

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Oh, I thought, and reached my hand out to touch the paper with my left hand. Suddenly the area around the ring on my left hand glowed, and in the area underneath where Nanao’s name had been written on the paper, other characters rose to the surface.

The Shin of my name!

Nanao cracked her eyes open when Koaya called to her from outside the room. I hurriedly tucked the paper with my name on it into the bouquet of flowers, and tossed it towards Nanao.

The bouquet fell right beside her head.

I heard the door to her room open.

Nanao sat up in bed with a gasp, and Koaya froze the second she stepped foot in the room.

The instant their eyes met, the world went a brilliant white–

–And I was back on top of that sheer cliff.

By the time I finished speaking, Lemonina was crying. “I’m… I’m so glad, Kohme… That’s wonderful. I’m sure your sisters got the message… That you’re safe and happy.”

“Yes.” My face broke into a broad smile and I nodded.

I had fulfilled my promise to throw the bouquet to Nanao after all. Koaya must have noticed the ribbon around the bouquet, right, and my name?

“I’ve been wavering about a lot of things, but I think now I can truly devote myself to being a good nanny. I’m going to give it my all in this world!”

Everyone looked at me and nodded, smiling.

I didn’t meet the king’s first wife, who was staggeringly elegant, or the queen’s daughter and her husband the Crown Prince until later on, and only once.

We had a bit of a history between us, so I was quite nervous, but none of them had any interest in me or the prince, so the whole thing ended with hello.

The Crown Prince was twenty-nine. My first impression was that he felt more like a cold-hearted industrialist than a member of the royal family. I left it to the Princess to interact with that half of the castle, and just stood quietly to one side for the whole meeting. I happened to ask Tellner, and apparently he was the type who preferred to settle things through discussion rather than confrontation.

Maybe it was just my imagination, but perhaps the man himself hadn’t really wanted all this uproar over the position of Crown Prince. Sometimes it’s everyone around you that kicks up the fuss.

Even taking the prince back to the castle with him when we’d met at the Shiinium, if that really had been because he was worried about the prince… I hoped for the prince’s sake that he really was such a thoughtful person.

A few days later, the process of having the royal couple formally adopt the prince, who was privately considered a relative of Lemonina’s, was completed.

It seemed his name was to remain Prince. Calling the prince Prince felt a little strange somehow, but Lady Solamire said, “It’s the name you gave him, Kohme!” so I figured it’d be alright once I got used to it.

Mr Fatido and Lemonina returned to their work, promising to meet again, and Mr Lahzt headed out on his research trip. Even Mr Kahzam went back to work, and I didn’t see him.

I got to play with the prince sometimes in the garden, or have tea with King Ishdir and Lady Solamire, but almost all my time outside of that was spent studying. I was given lectures by members of the palace staff with basic information about the royal family and the building that served as their second palace. Even the way I spoke had to be corrected a little… Yikes.

Technically speaking, a wetnurse also acted as a tutor to the young prince in this world, but because I was supposed to be from further inland, where the literacy rate was lower, I wouldn’t have to play that role myself. But my work had been highly regarded when the prince went missing, and no one had objected to my staying with him as a wetnurse. Apparently they were putting in for someone else to be the tutor.

As the days passed in that manner, I realized I was unconsciously searching. For my companions.

I knew that no matter how much I looked there was no point. Mr Fatido and Mr Lahzt weren’t even here. And as for Mr Kahzam, he was supposed to be on castle grounds, but I never spotted him even once, and I started to get lonely.

And then eventually, it was formally decided that the prince and I would head for Shiz Cagna.

The night before we were supposed to start for the palace, after I put the prince to bed, I went next door to the living room, and turned on the table lamp. I opened a piece of stationary that had been left in the room for me, and picked up a pen. To one side was a Ren, a sort of dictionary of people’s Shin addresses I had borrowed from Lemonina. I’d decided to write a letter to Mr Kahzam.

He was close by within the royal palace, so I wanted to at least send him a note before we left. But during the daytime I was so busy with my wetnurse education that I never had the time, and now we were practically already gone and I still hadn’t sent him anything.

Fortunately, I remembered the seal for Mr Kahzam’s name, so if I wrote a letter, the posteys would be able to take it to him. When I thought of writing his Shin, it came to mind quite easily, and I’d practiced the names of people around me a lot, and had somehow managed to learn how to write them down. I always had been good at the really hard kanji.

The truth is, I want to meet up and chat. I want to see you…

I felt like my thoughts must be showing on my face, and I reflexively covered my face with both hands.

No one was around, but it was still weird!

I took a deep breath and got myself back together again, and then picked up the pen once more.

Mr Kahzam always looked after the prince and I with such gentleness. He believed in the bond between the prince and I. He’d protected me wholly.

I wanted to let him know how reassuring he’d been to me.

I’d learned about the Ren seals in my wetnurse training, but it was incredibly hard to express the depth of my feelings right now. Well… the sounds and meanings were already in my head, so the only thing left really was to form the characters.

After agonizing over what to write, and then rewriting it god knows how many times, the only things I ended up actually putting down was “Thank you,” and Vio Rizonna’s most bog-standard collection of characters: “With all my heart.”

I opened the window and went out onto the terrace, where a small copse of trees that had been planted for privacy were loitering around. I went down into the garden and out between the trees, where a garden stretched out behind the royal castle. The flowers had closed their petals and were resting in the dark of the night, and a beautiful night sky adorned with stars kept watch over them.

I whistled as I’d been practicing, and a postey immediately descended from the starry sky. He perched on my left hand and I removed the lid of the letter tube attached to his leg, and put in my letter, rolled into a thin tube.

“To Mr Kahzam, please,” I asked the bird, still feeling a bit lonely, and released it into the sky.

I wondered what Mr Kahzam was doing just then. Maybe he was on the night watch. Maybe he was looking up at this starry sky from somewhere.

But just at that moment, the postey I’d sent off suddenly changed course and flew back down to the garden.

“What?”

What was going on? I wondered, and stepped towards him, but then came to a halt.

A figure was approaching from the other side. The postey was perched on the man’s shoulder.

The uniformed figure of Mr Kahzam floated into view, illuminated by the garden lights. He wasn’t carrying that long spear today, only a short pole of some kind, hanging from a holster at his hip.

“Mr Kahzam…”

“Kohme…”

My name spilled out of his mouth and echoed like some kind of premonition. Suddenly I could hear my heart pounding.

Mr Kahzam pulled my letter from the postey’s tube. It’s work now done, the postey let out a caw and took flight, disappearing into the night after tracing a satisfied circle around us.

“I’m, uh, leaving tomorrow, so I thought I’d drop you a note… Although since we’ve met now, the letter’s sort of pointless I guess.”

I started to reach out, but before I could, Mr Kahzam unfurled my letter and I reflexively looked to the ground. Those awkward characters, in front of his eyes? Ugh. My cheeks got hot.

I peeked up at him to see how he was taking it, and Mr Kahzam folded the letter with a little smile and put it in his breast pocket.

“I… I wanted to see you too. After work today, I thought it might be too late already, but I figured you must be staying around here somewhere, and… I was just wandering around, wondering if I should send a postey from here.”

“Oh?” I let slip a laugh. “Are you feeling a little lost too, Mr Kahzam?”

“I don’t usually come over here…” Mumbling Mr Kahzam was kind of cute.

Ah, I wonder if the prince is alright… I worried belatedly, and Mr Kahzam seemed to know. “Maybe we could talk a little, in the room next to the prince’s?” he said, gently pressing on my back.

“Security’s not going to wonder about you?” I said, noticing a silhouette with a long pole making their rounds in the garden, and Mr Kahzam showed another little smile.

“Security is all my coworkers, they know I’m here.”

We walked through the grove, and went back all the way to the garden just outside the room where the prince was sleeping, and sat down next to each other on the terrace.

The night air was clear and quiet. There wasn’t any distance between us at all, and I felt like everything I’d been thinking and everything I’d been feeling was being transmitted without any filter.

“Your work, must be busy, huh?”

“Yeah… Although I don’t know if you can really call it work. While I was away, my colleagues were giving it their all, so now I have to go around with them to make up for my part… Drinking, and drinking, and drinking.”

“Pfft-” I burst out, and quickly pressed my hand over my mouth. It was the first time I’d heard about Mr Kahzam’s private life, it was kind of refreshing.

Mr Kahzam smiled a bit too, before his expression changed. “In the next personnel shuffle, I was thinking about trying for service at Shiz Cagna. I don’t think it’s going to be any time soon, but… I’d like to protect you and Prince in the future too.”

I stared back into Mr Kahzam’s dark green eyes. “I’d be overjoyed if you could serve at Shiz Cagna, Mr Kahzam. But please don’t push yourself too much. I’m fine.”

I smiled, wanting to put him at ease, but Mr Kahzam’s eyebrows came together a bit.

“You won’t… forget me, in all that time? I’m sure you’ll end up thinking about Nanao, but…”

“That’s… true, I suppose… I’m sure Nanao will be on my mind forever,” I answered, and the very next instant Mr Kahzam pulled us close.

Suddenly, strong arms drew my waist near, and Mr Kahzam was hugging me.

My chest was throbbing so hard it was about to explode, and I was sure Mr Kahzam could feel it.

Probably he was just comforting me, since I was thinking about my sisters, but… I was overjoyed. Maybe it was okay to let him spoil me a bit…?

When I gently tried to put my arm around Mr Kahzam’s back, he spoke in a hushed voice. “Please forget about him already, this Nanao person.”

“What?” I looked up at him, startled, but Mr Kahzam had his arm around me so tight I couldn’t move.

Why would he say something like that?

Mr Kahzam put even more power into his arms, and lowered his head, pressing his cheek against mine.

“I’m sorry… I know you said you’ve already broken up, and I know you’re in this world now Kohme, but I think you still have feelings for that guy… I feel like if I don’t do this, you’ll end up going somewhere far away. The truth is, I don’t want to let you go to Shiz Cagna.”

What now?

“Wait, wait a minute, Mr Kahzam!”

I tapped Mr Kahzam on the back and succeeded in getting him to loosen his arms. I looked up into Mr Kahzam’s face and said, “Nanao is my youngest sister’s name though?”

“What!?”

Silence.

It was the first time I’d seen Mr Kahzam dumbfounded.

“I– That’s– I guess now that I think about it, I’ve been talking about ‘My little sisters this’ and ‘My little sisters that’ but I guess I never did actually mention their names. But how did you get the idea that Nanao was a man?”

It felt like we were talking entirely past each other.

Mr Kahzam’s eyes wandered a bit. “Uh, um… When we first brought you to the Garden of Stars, you, um. You were kind of delirious, and you mumbled the name…”

So sometime between when I first came to this world, and the first time I woke up. Okay, so?

“And then later, at Lahzt’s villa, when you told me about the name Morio, you said the o part was something people put at the end of mens’ names, so I thought, you must have been calling out the name of the person you love…”

“Ah.”

I finally got it.

If he were a Japanese person, he would have been able to tell it was a woman’s name from the nana part, even if it did have an o at the end of it, but that was something only a Japanese person would know! So he was under the mistaken impression that I was still thinking of the lover I’d broken it off with, that was why he’d asked in the RV about who’d given me the bouquet.

I started to say something, but held my tongue, and my eyes met Mr Kahzam’s as he made a gesture like he was wiping sweat from his brow.

“I’m very sorry…?”

“My apologies…”

We apologized to each other, and then we both felt weird and started giggling.

The laughter subsided, and silence fell for another little while.

Mr Kahzam’s brusque hands moved suddenly, touched my cheek, and then combed through my hair. His fingers traced down the nape of my neck, and I unconsciously drew closer, sighing.

His voice was heated. “In that case, I don’t have to worry about it any more.”

I looked up, surprised, and Mr Kahzam’s dark green eyes were right next to me.

I gave a small nod, and hung my head again without a word.

Yeah, don’t worry about it any more. And now… And now?

The hand that had been creeping into my hair got a little stronger. His face got closer, like he was peering in at me.

Our lips touched, just barely.

Just once, and we separated.

I was pulled in by that gaze that was asking for something more, and looked up, just a little.

Mr Kahzam smiled, overjoyed, and then pulled me to that broad chest and hugged me tight, like I was precious to him.

Our lips pressed close once more…

“Moy-oh?”

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Gah!

I popped my body away from Mr Kahzam’s and turned around to find the prince standing in the terrace doorway rubbing his eyes.

“Oh, little prince, you woke up, huh?”

Wow, my face was hot! My voice even cracked somewhere around ‘you’. Mr Kahzam was red around the eyes too, and he covered his mouth with one hand like he didn’t want anybody to see.

“Mm…”

The prince came over to me, and forced his way onto my lap. And then he grabbed onto my clothes and fell right back asleep, muttering to himself.

Mr Kahzam and I looked at each other and reflexively burst into laughter again.

And so, the following day, the prince and I set off for the palace at Shiz Cagna, accompanied by Princess Haluria…

I became nanny to His Highness and Lady Solamire’s adopted son Prince – later formally given the name, Ojes Ildes Rizonna. 1

Footnotes

Prince’s first name is pronounced similarly to the Japanese word for Prince, oh-gee.