Saihi hadn’t found the opportunity to sneak back to the lake since the girl in red admitted that her name was Ai. It was all because Kenta found every opportunity to catch and pester Saihi in matters regarding the ball which was only a few days away.
Saihi desperately wished to escape to the woods where a mystery awaited him. He hungered for it like he hungered to hunt.
“Your highness, are you listening?” The royal interpreter, Sir Berthold William, who was now also acting as the prince’s temporary instructor, asked. He was short, but only because he was still a teenager. Bert, as Saihi decided to call the young man, is a noble from a foreign country, but Saihi couldn’t remember from where exactly since he wasn’t listening when Bert first introduced himself. Bert was definitely not from anywhere near Kuroba because he had an euro-centric facial structure and a head of yellow hair and eyes the color of wet moss.
“Your highness?” spoke the interpreter in his perfect Kurobanese accent. Then he switched to the common tongue of Gardeinia which Saihi hadn’t practiced nearly enough. “Today, we will memorize the names of the princesses and each of their nations. And we will pronounce them,” Bert looked at Saihi sternly. “... correctly.”
Saihi slumped in his chair. He hated the desk he had to sit on which had a small butt space and was so hard, Saihi was sure his behind was now its shape, flat as a board. The large chalkboard in front of him, which was quickly being filled by foreign names, wasn't helping lighten the prince’s mood. Saihi could feel his eyes burn as they threatened to blur.
A sharp pain ran across the back of his hand along with the sound of books hitting the floor. Saihi sat up straight as his reddening hand registered what had happened. Bert stood in front of Saihi’s desk with a ruler that was still vibrating from the impact.
“Nice of you to join us, your highness!” Bert chirped, smiling with fake delight which was unnerving coming from a man younger than he. “I’ve just talked through each of the names and nations for the princesses so now it's your turn!” Bert turned and walked back to the board.
Saihi gaped at him. This was just too much.
“Uh, umm…” he lifted a finger as if he might point to something. He put it down. He jabbed at a name again.
“Your highness, do you need a minute?” Bert was still smiling that odd smile that made Saihi’s skin crawl.
“No. No… It’s all good…” Saihi scratched the back of his head, misplacing strands of his black hair from his bun. He tried again, pointing to a name as he attempted to make a sound using the accents of the common language of Gardeinia. “A, A… Alice!” Saihi looked to Bert for approval and the prince nodded his head.
“Now finish the rest of the name,” Bert urged.
“Alice, Alice…” Saihi furrowed his brow. “Can I skip that one?”
“No.”
Saihi sighed as if he’d already given up. “Alice Fedorabu?” he tried.
“Fedorov,” Bert sighed. “That was the easiest one. Now go down the line.”
Saihi nodded his head, swallowing and moving his dry lips as his eyes ran across the board.
“Eeezer Kirali,” he said confidently.
“Eszter Kiraly,” Bert spoke slowly. “Es-ter, Kee-ah-lee.”
Saihi nodded his head, “Eszter Kiraly.” He said it perfectly, or so he thought since Bert didn’t correct it the second time. “Calumen Belasuco,” Saihi said, moving on to the next princess.
“Carmen Velasco” Bert tapped his foot. “Car, men, Velasco!”
Saihi bit his lip and repeated it.
“Seaweea Rutkosuki?”
“Sylwia Rutkowski. Sil-via, Rut-cow-skee.” Bert had his hands on his hips as he tapped his foot with each syllable.
“Sophia DeLosa!”
“Sophia DeRosa,” Bert threw up his arms. “By Hy’err your highness, it's as if you’ve never spoken the common tongue! What’s the matter?”
“Uh, actually-”
“I don’t care,” Bert interrupted. “I. Don’t. Care.” He grabbed a pointer stick and the boy slammed it onto the chalkboard with vicious intent. “DeRosa is pronounced Dee-roza,” said the boy with a clenched jaw.
The boy, probably still fourteen, strode towards the prince and leaned forwards so that Saihi could smell Bert’s previous meal of miso soup and fried tuna.
“Now,” Bert perfected his fake smile. Saihi wondered where such a young boy would have learned this strong personality. “Repeat from the beginning,” said he.
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When the prince finally escaped from Bert’s class, he was forced into the parlor to meet the tailor for a new kimono for the ball. Then after that, he had to sit in for a political lunch with a daughter of a council member.
Kenta had produced a scroll before Saihi, declaring, “Since you refuse to have an official butler follow you around, the empress has given me this list so that I, your bodyguard,” he looked up from the scroll to make a pointed look, “may direct you to having lunch with the eligible young daughters of our council members.”
Before the prince could protest, Kenta pushed open the doors to a terrace decorated like a fairy tale tea party and pushed the prince inside. The door slammed shut behind him. For half an hour, Saihi would have to be with whichever girl showed from that list.
Then if Saihi thought that he might be free in the evenings, his mother, the empress, summoned him to her wing of the palace for dinner. It wasn’t just the two of them like their occasional family dinners would be like, because the palace chef brought in samples of desserts and dishes for him to taste in preparation for the banquet during the ball.
The prince first thought to just approve of every single dish that looked pleasant, but it was not so simple. The royal family must first taste it, and in order to do so, the royal food taster would have to eat or drink it first. Then after five minutes had passed and the physician had checked that there were no signs of poisoning, then was Saihi actually allowed to try the food. Saihi tried to speed things up by throwing in fancy language of entrusting tasks to the empress, or by approving all the dishes. But then the empress demanded where Saihi was hurrying off to, or to explain the reasonings for each dish that he had chosen. And if he did succeed, the empress would begin to argue over why they couldn’t have the dish he’d just taste-tested.
By nightfall, Saihi was too exhausted to get dressed and hike out into the woods. He’d fall into bed and immediately fall asleep. And this routine seemed like it might last for days.
“Can we pleeeeease switch places?” groaned Saihi one evening as he draped himself over the couch like a blanket way overused.
“If we did, you’d have to be the one in charge of the investigation searching for Odilia,” said Kenta. He sat across from Saihi on the couch and was sipping a nice, roasted aroma of what smelled like coffee.
“She’s still missing…?” Saihi rubbed his eyes. “At this point it's like she doesn’t want to be found. Just like Goldie here who keeps trying to fly away.”
The prince didn’t quite remember the girl who had been reported missing a week ago. Defensively, Saihi had been too busy with his own growing problems and numerous duties to pay close attention to the revolving world around him. However, he could see the distress written across his friend’s face at the mention of the missing girl. If Saihi remembered correctly, the missing Kurobanese girl was from the Hikizu village and was Kenta’s friend. In fact, Kenta had been the one to discover she was missing when he went out to meet her by first visiting the girl’s home where she lived with her father, and then to his other friend, Emiko’s house which was the only other plausible place that she could be.
“Odilia isn’t that type of girl,” Kenta argued.
“All women are that type,” laughed Saihi. “When push comes to shove they disappear until you’re forced to remember them. Then poof! They’ll be back to bat their eyelashes at you until you’ve melted into a puddle of goo and armor.”
“This is no joke, your highness,” Kenta glared.
“This is no joke, your highness!” Saihi whined. “Well what else am I to think? That the forest of By’lyl ate her on her way home?”
Kenta didn’t have a reply to that.
Saihi nodded at the black Steller’s sea eagle sitting next to him. The prince had decided on his own to name the bird Goldie, for its yellow, gold-like colored eyes. Goldie seemed to have developed an apathetic expression as it stared back at the prince.
“Perhaps it is time I release her back into the wild…” said Kenta.
“Why not keep her?” Saihi asked. “Honestly, isn’t an eagle like a hawk? She could be like your very own messenger bird!”
At this very statement, Goldie squawked an alarm and flapped its great wings.
“She doesn’t sound very happy about that,” Kenta chuckled.
“What? So you’re gonna release her?” Saihi questioned.
Kenta leaned back. “Can we change the subject?” Saihi didn’t get to answer before Kenta said, “When we told each other our childhood aspirations, I don’t think I ever told you why I wanted to be a pirate.”
“Okay…” Saihi shrugged. “So, why did you?”
“You go first.”
The prince crossed his arms and raised a brow, but spoke anyway. “Fine,” Saihi thought back to when he was a child and people told him he could be anything, even if he were a prince and his fate was quite obvious. “I wanted to be a pirate because I really wanted to wear an eye-patch. Stupid, right? Anyways, I was so obsessed with the idea back then that I’d play dangerous feats hoping for a bruised eye so that the physician would have to prescribe me one of some sort.”
“Ohhh…” Kenta leaned forwards. “But how did you hear about the eye patch in the first place?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Saihi shrugged. “That was waaaay too long ago, but I’m guessing some kind of pirate story.”
“Ah.”
“So, what’s yours?” Saihi demanded.
“Family,” said Kenta. “I always thought that a pirate’s crew was like an ideal family.” Kenta shrugged. “Anyways, what I’m getting at here is that in the past, we were sure of what we wanted. Now, what do you want?”
Saihi hugged himself. “Why are you asking me this?”
“Look at yourself,” Kenta said pointedly. “You hate this. Don’t you want to be emperor one day?”
“Of course!” Saihi threw back his head in exasperation. “But the key word is ‘one day’. I don’t want to marry and have kids and be the new ‘sun’ of the Kurobanese nation in less than a week!”
Kenta leaned back in his seat. “Okay, then what do you want?”
Saihi looked up at the ceiling. He looked back at his friend. “Can we change the subject?” he asked, though he was grinning.
“No.”
Saihi thought for a moment longer, and the only thing that appeared on his mind was Ai’s face glowing white against the moonlight, her dress a striking red.
“Can I go?” said Saihi, standing.
“What?”
The prince was already up and tightening the strap across his kimono. “I’m going out.” It was already decided.
“Okay,” said Kenta. For a prince’s bodyguard, he was being especially lenient.
The prince exchanged his slippers for sandals. “Thank you.” Saihi flew open the doors.
The prince looked back at Kenta, thinking his friend might regard this neutrally. Instead he sees an expression of bewilderment and senses the whooshing of air speeding past him and out the open door. Saihi spun his head to look in the direction of Kenta’s gaze. A dark blot that might have been an eagle soared into the woods.
Saihi looked back at the couch in the lounge where Kenta still stood. They both looked down at the gray couch where Goldie’s nest of beige colored blankets lay.
She was gone.