Stellar
Anissina, during those days, did not have a workshop of her own. As a fledgling inventor whose accomplishments reached only the beginner stage, she had the privilege of using one of the old dungeons in the Blood Pledge Castle as her laboratories. It was fine back then, though. She was still studying all the complications of demon magic, and had only begun experimenting with machinery recently. The fact that the steel bars of the cells smelled of rust and molds, and that there were probably dead skeletons of long-dead prisoners down there, didn't bother her.
In fact, to her it made everything more… interesting.
During that day, she was working on a relatively simple mechanical device—Warm-Your-Soup-kun: warm your soup without the aid of a stove! Don't laugh, it seemed like a good idea at the time…
While she was working on a small steel cauldron (the 'blank canvas' of her project), there was a modest knock on the wooden door.
"Come in," she called out, her voice squished and muffled by the cauldron.
The light from the world outside the dungeon peeked from the crack in the door. It spoke. "Anya, that's you, right?"
"Yes, it's Lady Anissina. Come in already."
"Okay… you're not lying, aren't you? You're not just talking to me while a Kohi is sitting where your desk is, right? You know how skeletons freak me out…"
"Oh for heaven's sake, Konrad. I'm not that evil. Well at least to you, I'm not."
"…. Okay…"
The door awkwardly creaked open. A young boy stood there, with some amount of stress crinkling his young face. He had with him a small green book, a roll of parchment, and a quill. Upon seeing Anissina, his face calmed down, and then begged to ask a question. "Uh… Anya, what's that on your face?" he asked.
"They're goggles, Konrad. They make me see in the dark better. And I told you, it's Lady Anissina, not Anya," she replied with some authority in her voice.
"I'm sorry, An—I mean, Lady Anissina," he said bashfully.
She smiled back in satisfaction. She had nothing against Konrad, of course. It's just that he was obviously there for academic purposes. In these cases, she liked Konrad to act like her special student, regardless of their relatively small age difference. "So, what can I do for you, Konrad? Is that Gunter giving you a hard time with your studies again?"
He nodded and presented to her the book under his arm. "I don't know why he insists on teaching me about magic when I don't have a magic-wielding bone in my body…"
Anissina sighed and urged him to come closer. In that same awkward way, he closed the door behind him and stumbled a bit when he took a seat next to her.
This boy, Konrad, wasn't exactly the Konrart Weller that we know from the anime or the light novels—gallant, confident, handsome, and respected all-around for his accomplishments as an army general. No. This Konrad here wasn't anything like that (at least, not yet). Here, he was around eighty or so years old, and he had the appearance and development of an average 16-year-old human boy. Meaning, he's awkward, emotional, suddenly tall and thin like a five-year-old bamboo, and has occasional trouble with breaking voices, hormones, and pimples.
And, yes, like many 16-year-olds in our world, he's having trouble with homework for subjects that don't seem worth the trouble.
Anissina stared at his textbook, and then took a quick glimpse at his essay. She frowned. "Konrad, you have a good grasp of how Earth magic works, but it's obvious that you don't know how they work theoretically… did you even read the texts that Gunter assigned to you?"
He looked down on the floor in embarrassment. "Um… I didn't think I'd… need to… you know?"
"Gunter wouldn't like it if you based your assignment on what you learned from watching Gwendal performing earth arts in the yard." She flipped the pages of the textbook and pointed to a specific paragraph. "Here. Read this article, memorize it by heart. Everything you need is in this part of the book."
Konrad stared at the yellowing page under Anissina's nail and gave a low whine. "It's the wordiest part of the book! I don't think I can do it… the paper is due tomorrow morning!"
"It's your fault for not reading it in the first place. It's easier reading than you think, though. All you need is a quiet and productive place, like this dungeon, to study."
"But it's dark here… ow." A pair of goggles hit him on the face. "Well, okay, but I don't want to study in a dungeon all by myself, you know."
"You can study in the library, but Gunter'd be all over your back," replied Anissina curtly.
Konrad bit his lower lip and put on the pair of goggles over his eyes. He then gingerly picked up the book and began reading the article Anissina recommended.
Anissina, with her hands back on the cauldron, turned to him and said, "You know, I'll be making a lot of noise here. I meant that you could use another one of the dungeons around here."
"Aah… it's okay, An—Lady Anissina. I don't want to sit in a dungeon all by myself… I can handle noise just fine, believe me. I won't bother you, I promise," he stammered.
She narrowed her eyes, shrugged, and went back work.
Konrad pondered upon the effectiveness of the goggles. He wasn't sure whether to think about the sudden redness and warmth on his cheeks. He just prayed that Anissina was too focused with her work notice.
Damned hormones.
A particular childhood memory of Konrad's that he wasn't too proud of happened like this:
Cecilie: Lady Anissina, my son has something to say to you!
Anissina: (turns around, change of facial expression) Oh, you're speaking of Konrad. Good evening!
Cecilie: Now, Konrad, don't hide behind me, just come out and say it… now, don't drop those flowers, be careful, they're you, you know.
Konrad: … g-g-good evening… (awkward bow)
Anissina: Yes?
Konrad: Um…(finds floor terribly interesting) you're real pretty… and…
Cecilie: Yes? Go on, now, don't be shy…
Konrad: Oh! Um… When I grow up, I'd like to marry you.
Anissina: (questionable facial expression) Oh? That's really sweet.
Cecilie: Isn't it? Isn't my son just the sweetest most adorable little thing in the whole entire kingdom? Now, Konrad, run along now and get your big brother, I'd like him to have a word with Lady Anissina here.
Konrad's idea and intentions were pure during those days, of course. All he told his mother back then was that Anissina was one of the prettiest girls in that party. Suddenly, she was pushing him to give her a bouquet of bright blue Konrad-stands-upon-the-earth blossoms, and to say that totally cheesy line that would scar him for the better part of his adolescent years (all four decades of them).
Right after he rewrote a good part of his essay in that dungeon, as he walked back to his bedroom, for some reason that memory replayed itself inside his head. He wasn't sure why, though. We can guess that it has something to do with the fact that he saw his older brother on the way back. It happened this way:
"Good evening, Gwendal," he said politely.
Gwendal nodded back to him curtly and said, "You've been studying."
"Yes, I have."
"Gunter tells me that you're not doing too well with magic studies."
"I know… I'm working hard now, though."
"As you should. I know that it's difficult for you, but you can't go out in the battlefield with just swordplay skills alone… you have to know about magic and how to defend yourself against it."
"I know, brother, I know."
Gwendal narrowed his eyes at him. "What are those round markings on your face…?"
"H… huh?" Before Konrad could react, Gwendal suddenly unsheathed his sword. He didn't get a chance to wonder why the older brother was carrying a sword with him at that particular time when he's not on duty. "B-brother, what's wrong?" Are you going to behead me or something?
As it turns out, Gwendal was just letting him use the blade of the sword as a mirror. He looked back into his own eyes and saw reddish markings around them.
"Oh… that," he said. He rubbed in eyes in embarrassment, in an effort to erase the marks. "I wore goggles for a couple of hours, when I was studying down in the dungeons…"
"The dungeons? Why would you be studying down in the dungeons?"
Konrad paused as he looked at the incredulous look on Gwendal's face. No reason for me to hesitate, right? So I'll be honest. "I asked Anya… I mean, Lady Anissina for help on my essay about earth magic," he said.
It was at that precise moment that Gwendal frowned that Konrad saw flashes of the childhood memory of his failed marriage proposal. "Those would explain the goggles," he muttered gruffly. "Earth magic, huh? You could have asked me about it if you needed help."
"You were working," Konrad reasoned.
"Hrm. So I was." Gwendal suddenly realized that he was still holding the sword up to his younger brother's face. He sheathed it nonchalantly. "Well, if you have any questions, you can come to my office. I can help."
"Thank you, brother," said Konrad. And then they separated ways.
In the safety of his room, he flashed back to that particular memory again. He struggled to remember why his mother asked him to get Gwendal, and what Gwendal said to him that night…
"Hmm…" A vague, overexposed snippet of a film surfaced from his memory and played in his mind:
Konrad: Big brother, Mother wants you to go over there.
Gwendal: (looks over shoulder. Sees Cecilie waving, with Anissina behind her) … Anya? Oh, no, that look on her face…
Konrad: What's the matter, Big Brother?
Gwendal: (sighs, rubs forehead with premature wrinkles) You know how Mother is when it comes to love and marriage…
Konrad: Uh…
Gwendal: (straightens jacket, frowns, and walks towards Cecilie)
When he thought a bit too much, Konrad had a tendency to squint. At that moment, he was squinting so hard that his vision blurred, and the light captured by his eyes scattered uselessly everywhere. "Eh… I wonder what he meant by that…"
Well, it doesn't matter what Gwendal meant by that. The important thing was that he was right about their mother: that evening, she had brought up the idea of arranging a marriage between Gwendal and Anissina.
Anissina had refused politely, but vehemently. Maybe it was just her and her revolutionary ideas, but she told the two of them: "If I wanted to marry anyone, I'd be the one to propose marriage, and not anybody else."
After that, Gwendal voiced out his refusal: "I'm too young to get married."
Konrad remembered feeling a strange mixture of emotions that evening: amazement at Anissina's headstrong response, Gwendal's non-valid excuse (no matter how he looked at it, Gwendal didn't look too young for anything), and a general relief that no marriage was announced that night.
"Kunz… Kunz… Kunz-Kunz! What are you doing?"
Konrad had with him an old guitar, a quill, and an old roll of parchment. He turned to the small, yellow-haired boy, rolling over to his side of the seat. Instantly, he felt embarrassed and turned away from him. "It's nothing, Wolf… hey, isn't Elizabeth visiting the castle today? Go play with her out in the yard or something."
Wolfram frowned at him, crossed his arms over his chest, and turned up his nose in a snooty way. "Ah, I don't like playing with her… she likes playing dress-up, and she makes me wear her dresses…"
"But you look good in a dress, Wolf."
"N-n-no I don't! Kunz, take that back!" He hit Konrad with a pillow on the head. Hard.
"Ow. Okay, okay, I didn't mean it," muttered the older brother. He sighed; he was never able to assert himself to anyone in his family, not even to his twenty so-and-so year old little brother. "Anyway, if you must know, Wolfram, I'm trying to write a song here, so I can't let you disturb me."
"Ooh, a song? Hey, I like songs! Mother says I have a good voice, you know. Let me help, let me help!"
"No! Hey, Wolfram, calm down…" Konrad pushed him back an arm's length away when Wolfram reached out for the guitar. "Look, you don't know how to play the guitar, and while you're good at singing, you're not so good at making up songs…"
"Am too good at making up songs," said Wolfram with a pout.
"Oh yeah? So what was the last song you made up? Let me hear it."
With a snooty look on his face, a young Wolfram started singing:
Lemon Lemon on the tree!
On the tree, on the tree!
Lemon Lemon on the tree!
Yellow like mellow yellow lingerie!
Case in point. The older brother tried his best not to look as if he heard a ridiculous joke, lest Wolfram cried and ran to Gunter and had Konrad beaten with a ruler, but it wasn't easy. "L… lingerie? Wh… where'd you learn that word…?" croaked out Konrad.
"Lady Anissina. She wrote me a book, you know. She read it to me and Gisela. She says that we ought to know those things if we want to grow up to be, um, respectable nobles with impeccable dress sense, whatever that means."
Why is Anya teaching you and Gisela about lingerie? And what's more, you remembered all of that? Oh no. Konrad swallowed and looked away."Uh… Lady Anissina, huh. I did hear that she liked writing stories, among other things… anyway, that's not the point, Wolfram, the point is…"
"You're turning red, like a tomato!" said Wolfram, poking at Konrad's pink left cheek. "I wonder what older brother Kunz is thinking. Is he thinking of lingerie? You know, Lady Anissina says that adolescent men who blush when they think of lingerie are going through stages in their life which make them more susceptible to promiscuity and impure thoughts."
"I—No, that's not the point, Wolfram! The song you wrote is…" the older brother stammered, albeit a bit uselessly. Why do you remember these things, Wolfram? What will happen to you when you grow older?! Anya, please think about their psychological development before you tell children about these things!
Before Konrad could deny his inconvenient blushing fit, the younger brother said, "I can write a song about tomatoes too! Tomato tomato on the vine…"
Konrad could only bow down his head in shame and slight frustration. As Wolfram belted out his tomato song with his melodic, childish falsetto, the older boy glanced at his notes. There were verses and notes and attempts at deep poetry, but all of them were crossed out, scratched out, or doodled over with angry rabbits.
Looking at these, he thought, Maybe this was a bad idea from the start…
"… Red like blood-bread bred red… candy liiine! Hey, Kunz's song! I wanna see!"
Konrad opened his mouth in an attempt to protest, but the sheet wasn't on the desk anymore. He opened his mouth again, this time to tell Wolfram off, but the hyperactive twenty-year-old boy was already reading the characters he could recognize from the paper. In a singsong voice, he said,
"Meet me in ou-ter-space!
Me can sqend the nugt
Watch the earth go oof!
"Eeeh… it's a terrible song, Kunz! My lemon song is waaay better than your song," he said, sticking his tongue out. He looked at Konrad as if he ate a very sour lemon, and Konrad was to blame.
His face redder than ever (owing to more emotions than embarrassment this time), Konrad snatched the parchment from Wolfram's small hands and said, "You read and sang it all wrong. Of course it's going to sound terrible, Wolf!"
"I can read good, Kunz! But your song is bad because I don't know what you're talking about. What's outer space? And how can the earth go oof? I mean, soil doesn't go oof unless Gwendal says it goes oof. And why would you meet someone in outer space?"
Summoning some amount of patience, Konrad explained, "Outer space is where the stars are, Wolf. The earth doesn't go oof in outer space; I meant that the earth would go up when you look at it from above."
Wolfram tilted his head innocently and cutely to one side. Narrowing his enormous green eyes with some amount of suspicion, he asked, "But why would Kunz want go meet somebody in outer space?"
"Well…" He looked up the ceiling and imagined the vastness of outer space. Why did he write 'meet me in outer space' again? He felt a little fear about the answers that he came up with. "I guess it's because the place where the stars are placed should be a pretty good place to bring somebody… I mean… don't you think it would be nice to bring people that you like to a beautiful place?"
The blond boy's eyes shone. "Uh-huh! If I can go where the stars are, I'm gonna bring mommy and brother Gwendal and Kunz and Lady Anissina and Gisela and… un…. Not Gunter, because he makes me do things I don't like."
"… I see."
"I'll only bring people I like. I mean, really, really like, because I only want to make the people I really, really like to be happy."
"Ah, so you get my point. See, my song isn't as bad as you think, is it, Wolfram?" He had a slightly satisfied smile on his face. He didn't admit it, of course, but he liked how Wolfram explained the reasoning behind 'meet me in outer space'. It was a lot better than the mess of words that Konrad had in his mind, that's for sure.
To his surprise, Wolfram asked with a sly smile, "But why did you write that, Konrad? Does that mean that you have a person who you really, really, really, really, really, REALLY like?"
At the last 'really', the younger boy's face transformed into something unpleasantly impish. This kid likes pretending that he doesn't know much… I wonder what kinds of things he learns from hanging out with Elizabeth and Gisela, thought Konrad in annoyance and defeat. Trying his best to look snooty and uppity, he turned away and said, "What? I felt like writing a nice song. I wrote it for myself."
Wolfram frowned and fell silent. He glared at Konrad.
At this glare, the older boy was taken aback. What… is he thinking now…?
Without warning, Wolfram screamed and said, "Kunz is thinking impure thoughts! I'm going to tell Gwendal!"
Before Konrad could scream back, "Ah! What the… where did that come from? And why Gwendal?!" his younger brother was already running out of the room.
Meet me in outer space.
I will hold you close…
If you're afraid of heights.
Konrad sighed. His fingers were sore from playing guitar—or rather, attempting to play the guitar, and then failing miserably. Because he's not as skilled or practiced like Gwendal, his fingertips felt soft and raw, and his left index finger seemed to have permanent blood-red stripes on its underside.
All I wanted was to make something nice for her hundred twenty first birthday… maybe I should just give her something predictable like tea bags from Caloria… she likes tea, doesn't she?
"What's the matter with you? You look so lonely that I want to push you off the balcony to end your misery."
Konrad looked up and saw that Gwendal was watching him for… how long? He already had his arms crossed, and the weary look on his face suggested that he'd been watching his emoting moment for a while now.
"Ah… it's nothing, Gwen… I can't play the notes right, that's all," stammered Konrad.
Gwendal walked over to the railing, where Konrad was seated with his feet dangling over the other side. "Let me see that," he muttered.
Konrad handed him the guitar. With part amazement and jealousy, he watched as his older brother tuned the guitar, and then effortlessly plucked a very melodic, calming piece. It was probably something he didn't even have to think about, he mused.
As he listened, Gwendal suddenly told him, "It takes years of practice, you know. If you know which songs to play, you'll be good in a couple of years."
"Really?"
Gwendal nodded. Again, without putting much thought into it, he bent the strings while sliding two fingers up and down the fret board. It was a sound that Konrad's never heard before, but it was musical… in a far-out way.
"Start singing."
"S… singing?"
"Yeah. That outer space song."
"… ah." Konrad closed his eyes in concentration. From Gwendal's sound, he tried to pick up a fragment of his original melody, and then he started singing,
Meet me in outer space.
We can spend the night and watch the earth come up.
I've grown tired of that place… won't you go with me?
We can start again.
Gwendal stopped. Ignoring the awestruck look on Konrad's face (perhaps, from realizing that he sang the song in front of him), he asked, "You wrote that by yourself?"
"Yes," he replied awkwardly.
"… I see."
"I don't know what Wolfram told you, but I wrote that out of a whim, not an impure mind. Whatever he meant by that."
"Hm."
"I mean… writing songs. It's my hobby. I don't need to write songs for anybody else, you know. Just me… because I felt like it."
The slight chill of the night air slid on his skin. Somehow it made him more aware of that blasted awkward lilt in his voice.
Strangely, Gwendal sighed. The frown lines on his face relaxed for a few seconds, at least, as he said, "It's your song, Kunz. It's actually not bad. Unexpectedly straightforward, but not bad." And as simply as he entered, he left Konrad alone in the balcony, tossing the guitar nonchalantly to him along the way. He stared at his older brother's tall, blocky shadow as he left.
He looked down on the floor, where his own shadow flowed vaguely over the floor. This one was long and terribly skinny. There were odd circles and lines on the top of its head—probably caused by his unkempt hair. When he put his hand over it, the shadow raised an arm as thick as a broom handle, and an incompatible hand the size of an oversized gauntlet.
'Nothing alike.' Not one bit.
A few evenings later, it was already the celebration for Anissina von Kharbelnikoff's one hundred and twenty-first birthday.
Two questions nagged Konrad's troubled adolescent mind that evening—first, how? And second, why, again? The nags were so bad that he was reminded of Gunter tutoring him on bad days, when the older man had to oversee the playtime of Wolfram, Elizabeth, and his own Gisela. "Oooh, Konrad, you'd better come up with an answer soon, or I shall have to make you squat while holding two buckets of water with extra rocks in them!"
He decided against bringing the guitar. After hearing Gwendal's far-out bending technique, he knew that anything else that Konrad can do would sound terrible and second-best. He would have to rely on his voice to do the magic.
(That is… if he decided to go and do the magic. He tried not to remember that due to the principles of heredity and genetics and so on and so forth, he wasn't capable of doing any sort of magic, so he may not be using the appropriate term.)
(In any case, he had in his arms a parcel the size of an ordinary shoebox in our world. This would be his back-up plan if he fails.)
The royal family rode a carriage to the Kharbelnikoffs' castle—the demon queen Cecilie sat next to Wolfram, while across her were her two older sons. Through all the awkward shakes and bounces, Konrad noticed the strange glint and smile in their mother's eyes.
Apparently, Wolfram took notice of this too. "Mama is thinking of impure thoughts," he said, pointing at her face.
Cecilie laughed and ruffled his hair with her daintily manicured hands. "Oh, Wolfie, there is nothing impure about my thoughts! All the dreams I have for my sons are pure and innocent, like a newborn lamb… and of course, you," she said, pinching his cheeks.
"Un… then I guess Mama is not thinking of impure thoughts."
Believe me, if they're anything like you, they have to be impure, thought Konrad.
"Anyway, what's Mama thinking about?"
"Mm. It's nothing, really. I'm proud of Lady Anissina; she's turned out to be a rather impressive young noblewoman. I'm very glad that I got to see her grow up along side you three."
She looked up to Gwendal, who was frowning while he had his eyes closed (as usual), and a rather wide-eyed and questionable-looking Konrad. She smiled at them.
"You two should relax."
"I'm relaxed."
"I'm relaxed."
"They're lying. They're a-scared 'cause…"
Wolfram closed his mouth when he saw a venomous glint from one of Gwendal's suddenly open eyes.
Sure, Anissina was the celebrant of the party, but for some reason, she wasn't at the centre of the ball, like Konrad had imagined her to be. She wasn't speaking to any of the other nobles—Gunter and Cecilie were doing a rather good job of that. And she wasn't at the buffet table, getting plates and plates of stir-fried noodles. Her older brother Densham was doing it for her.
"That is a good question, Konrad Weller. I do not know where she went." Judging by the look on this guy's face, he wasn't enjoying the fact that he carried seven bowls of noodles in his hands and on his head for somebody who wasn't there anymore.
"I see. Thank you, Lord von Kharbelnikoff. Do you want me to help you with that? Or at least, call a servant who would do that for you…?"
"You would be fine. Here." In the blink of an eye, Den von Kharbelnikoff stacked the bowls of noodles on Konrad's hands, and placed the final bowl on his head. Konrad didn't have time to react, much less move. "The long table at the front is our table. Be careful, you do not want to spill those noodles on anybody wearing a gown or a dress shirt." And he easily disappeared into a nearby crowd of giggling noblewomen with wineglasses in their hands.
… that guy… But Konrad worried about Anissina's noodles, and he figured out that even complaining inwardly might lead to disastrous consequences. Summoning all of his abilities for balance, he weaved through the well-dressed members of the aristocracy, and reached the table that Den mentioned. It wasn't easy, given that he also had that parcel under his arm, but thanks to his physical training and lean frame, he was able to do it.
Ah, now everybody would think that the Demon Queen's half-breed son is aspiring to become a manservant. That can't be good.
As he placed the bowls of noodles on the space near the centerpiece (he assumed that this was where the celebrant would sit), he glanced at one of the balcony entrances nearest to him. Sure enough, he saw it: the ends of a very long, bright-red ball gown, and of a long, bright-red ponytail.
Wide-eyed, swallowing a lump in his throat as he went, Konrad held the parcel firmly in his hands and silently walked. There was a strip of moonlight on the floor just in front of the entrance, and he decided to find her first before his shadow touched it.
Oh.
Balconies –are- for love scenes, aren't they?
It turns out, she wasn't alone. Gwendal was with her. He was an arm's length away from her, his back was straight, and he seemed to be telling her something in a low voice. There was a strange, suppressed look on his face (what, is Gwendal… embarrassed, or something?) while Anissina…
She had one hand on her hip, a sly smile on her face, and her blue eyes (ethereal under the moonlight) looked directly into Gwendal's black ones.
Konrad decided against moving. In fact, he was quite glad that his shadow didn't do anything to disturb this scene. He wasn't sure of what to think when a cold hand found its way over his mouth, though…
"!!"
The small, giggly voice of his mother reached his ear: "Kunz, let's dance, all right?"
Konrad turned around, and still with his wide eyes, he nodded and silently accompanied her to the dance floor.
His head spun with so many ideas that spinning his mother wasn't much of a challenge anymore.
After that, Cecilie asked him to wait outside with Wolfram and Gisela. Apparently, some of the nobles were more than a little tipsy, thanks to Den's party-hosting skills. She decided to 'spare the children' from such sights, and so out in the garden they were.
They were seated side-by-side on the edge of a white fountain, where a naked baby angel forever spilt water from a ceramic jug. On one side of Konrad was Wolfram, who was linking small, white flowers together to make a necklace, while a rather restless Gisela sat on his other side.
She clung to Konrad's arm and said, "Wolf says Lord Weller wrote a song. Can I hear it?"
"Aw, Gisela, don't call him Lord Weller. Besides, he can't sing good…"
Gisela put on a snooty face and said, "Well, Wolf can't sing good either. It's just Queen Celi who thinks that Wolf can sing good." Ignoring Wolfram's whines, she looked up at Konrad, tried her best to make her eyes shine, and said, "I won't say anything bad if you sing bad."
Konrad smiled at her and shrugged. "You promise not to laugh either?"
She nodded. "Promise!"
The parcel was still on his lap. He looked up at the balcony, where Anissina and Gwendal used to be, and thought, Well, this way, my song wouldn't go to waste. "Here goes."
How do you do it? Make me feel like I do?
How do you do it? It's better than I ever knew.
How do you do it? Make me feel like I do?
How do you do it? Make me feel like I do.
After singing, he heard clapping. He turned to Gisela. She was smiling up at him, but her hands were definitely still clinging to his arm. And Wolfram was complaining something about how repetitive the song was, so…
"That was great, Konrad! But why are you guys out here?"
The sight of her, along with his older brother and a strange, white-haired girl, almost made Konrad choke.
"Lady Anissina!" exclaimed Wolfram and Gisela at the same time. "Mama says that we have to stay outside so that our innocent children's eyes would be shielded from the possible horrors of drunken nobility!" explained Wolfram.
"Ah, my stupid older brother… Queen Celi is right about that," she said.
Konrad stared at Gwendal, who seemed to stiffen upon seeing his younger brothers on that specific occasion. He then remembered the scene from before. And without thinking further, he jumped to his feet and walked towards Anissina, parcel in hand. "This is for you. Happy 121st birthday, Lady Annissina."
"Thank you, Konrad." Without even waiting for a chance to sit down, she tore the wrapper and stared at her present. "Oh. Tea bags."
"Yeah," he said, trying hard to suppress his blush. "I mean… I know you like tea, and that you need it to keep you awake when you're working in the dungeon. I hope I picked the right kind of tea, though."
She smiled at him. "Thank you, Konrad. That's very sweet of you to remember me and my inventions when you bought my present."
Konrad tried to look as casual as possible, but apparently it wasn't casual enough…
Gwendal cleared his throat. "Anya, you're forgetting something…"
She narrowed her eyes slightly and said sharply, "I was getting to that, Gwen." She turned to Konrad and the children, who were looking up curiously at the white-haired girl, who seemed to be smiling calmly back at them. "Anyway, everyone, meet Lady Susanna Julia von Wincott. Lady Julia, I would like you to meet Lord Konrart Weller and Lord Wolfram von Bielefeld, who are the sons of Queen Cecilie, and also the younger brothers of Gwendal; also, meet Lady Gisela von Kleist, the daughter of Lord Gunter."
"Lord Weller, Lord von Bielefeld, Lady von Kleist, I am honoured to meet all of you," she said, with a voice so soft that it seemed to float towards them like a perfect white feather on a day without wind.
Wolfram and Gisela both bowed and said, "Nice to meet you, Lady Julia!" Konrad seemed a bit lost, and tried to bow along with them.
Gwendal grunted at this, while Anissina shook her head with a 'tsk, tsk' kind of expression on her face. Julia giggled.
"Well, I suppose I'll have to go inside and make an appearance again. Gwendal, come with me, won't you? And Konrad, I wonder if I can leave Lady Julia with you, for a little while?" she said.
"It's not a problem, Any—I mean, Lady Anissina."
She grinned at him and without warning, tiptoed and kissed him on the cheek. Before he could comprehend what happened, she, along with a grumbling Gwendal whom she dragged by the arm, disappeared. He wasn't sure, but Konrad could have sworn that she… winked at him?
After that, the silence of the night: crickets, a slight breeze, and the flowing of the fountain. Out of the blue, Gisela punched Wolfram's arm, and they ran off chasing each other in the garden. Eventually, their screams, complaints, and laughter effortlessly faded into this same silence.
"Lady Anissina is an amazing woman," said Julia.
"… yeah." He stared at the spot where she disappeared.
Julia turned to him. "You know, the three of us heard you singing to Lady Gisela back there."
"I… I guessed as much," he replied bashfully.
"I was sure that Lady Anissina enjoyed the song. You wrote it for her, didn't you?"
He froze at first, and then rapidly turned to Julia, who was staring up at him with her glassy eyes. He wasn't sure anymore of what colour his face was at that time. He tried not to stammer as he said, "W… whatever gave you that idea, Lady Julia?"
She smiled serenely at him. "I'm a good guesser. Don't worry about it," was all she said.
Heck, everything about her was so serene that even his nervous gaze softened.
They sat down on the fountain again. From the balcony hanging over their heads, they heard the excited voice of the Demon Queen. It was hard to determine what she was saying, but afterwards, there was music, accompanied by wild applause and the hoots of several drunken noblemen. Konrad guessed that they were dancing.
The image of Anissina spinning around and around in her red dress was mesmerizing. The circles must be caused by Gwendal's hands, right? Their shadows must be a crazy sight.
In any case, Konrad knew that tomorrow was another day. He didn't know how different it would be from other days, when he went down to the dungeon to ask for her help with his studies, or on those afternoons where he caught glimpses of her drinking tea with Gunter. He didn't know how different, true, but he felt neither dread nor excitement when he imagined it and her and his older brother Gwendal. There was just an odd curiosity.
He looked at the strange girl beside him. She was staring up at the sky. It was hard to tell whether she saw anything; her eyes were so blank that the moon shone a perfect, undisturbed image on her irises.
He took her lead and stared at the stars. With that spinning image in his mind, a phrase repeated itself in his mind, accompanied by the music inside the mansion:
You are stellar.
- end -
Notes: I struggled with the ending. This is a really long story, exactly 11 pages, single spaced. Gah. Well, I hoped it wasn't too boring. I know that Konrad should have been called 'Konrart,' and that he shouldn't have met Julia yet, and that their speech is a bit too modern for their time period, but I used creative license liberally, haha.
Edit -- from Dmitri, I changed the name to 'Denshado'. I am forever unsure of spellings, hence the haphazard nickname of Den. XD I do like that nickname, it's practically Winry's dog. (FMA. See-what-I'm-saying?)
By the way, the song is 'Stellar' by Incubus--ah, a wonderful, wonderful song, indeed. Thank you very much for reading.