Co-written with miss mika namariya! We own nothing!
Kyoko had prepared a very long, impassioned speech to persuade their Majesties to let Prince Kuon go on his Fated Adventure to find his True Love. She was ready to tell them how ready she was to keep their son out of danger, how she would die to keep him safe, to outline in rather gruesome detail the lengths she would go to in order to protect the Prince on his Quest to find True Love. But strangely, it was not their Majesties who needed persuading. It was the Prince himself.
Rather than reassuring him, Kyoko's speech about how she would throw herself between the Prince and any possible dangers (a wild bear, a troop of bandits, etc.) had Kuon rather worried. The kingdom was perfectly safe, of course. It wasn't like they were going to be chased by assassins (as much as Kyoko seemed to think this a likely scenario). But still, Kuon hadn't liked the idea of the girl he loved being willing to throw herself into danger.
"Something might happen," Kuon argued to his parents one evening, in the privacy of the Royal Family's private chambers, away from his bodyguard's ears.
"Yes, exactly!" Kuu said, elbowing his son. "That's the whole point!"
"No, like, something actually might happen and then she'll get hurt!"
"And then you'll have to tend to her wounds and it will bring you closer together! Oh, Julie— remind me to tell the steward to only pack them one tent!" Kuu said excitedly.
"DAD."
"Mind you, if you come back unmarried and with grandchildren in tow, I'll be disappointed— especially if one of them isn't named after me." The King winked.
"Darling," Julie began, laying a hand on her husband's arm.
"Oh, right. Succession. Of course. No funny business, then," Kuu said seriously, wagging a finger at his son. Then he winked. "She's your guard so I'm sure she's very good about protection, you know, but it's your job, too—"
Kuon looked at his mother, his eyes begging her to intervene.
"It would be highly improper for you to come back married," Julie said in a reasonable tone, quieting her husband. She looked at her son sternly. "You have to get married here, so that she can wear my wedding dress."
"Excellent point, my love!" Kuu said, cupping Julie's cheek tenderly and gazing at her as though she was the wisest, most beautiful, most enchanting woman to ever have graced the face of the earth. And then, since Kuu was Kuu and incapable of looking at his wife for more than three seconds without launching into a speech about how wonderful she was, he began to do just that.
Seeing how his parents were distracted and not in any rush to return to the conversation, the Prince made a swift exit.
~((line break))~
With Kyoko's determination and their Majesties' blessing for their trip, preparations moved at a swift pace. Kyoko informed the Prince that she could finish preparations to go within the week. Kuon offered to help, but Kyoko firmly (but politely) refused to let the Prince help her since it was her job. Plus, although his bodyguard was too polite to say it outright, they both knew that Kyoko had much more experience when it came to adventuring than the Prince. And while Kuon resented the notion that he was some royal pretty boy who had been pampered his whole life and was useless when it came to things like woods-craft, it wasn't exactly untrue that he was lacking in practical experience. But Kuon was smart and capable, and besides, it was hardly going to help him woo Kyoko if she felt like she was babysitting him the whole time. But before the Prince could convince her to let him help, she had already called in his regular guards and disappeared off to make preparations.
Once Kuon had coordinated the handling of his ongoing administrative duties with Royal Secretary Yashiro, there was very little for the Prince to do. Without Kyoko around, Kuon was lonely. But if he tried speaking with his parents, all he got was unsolicited dating advice. The Prince avoided speaking for too long with Duke Takarada, as it inevitably led to Lory making fun of the Prince for Kyoko's continued obliviousness to his attempts. In a moment of true desperation, Kuon even thought about seeking out Sir Kijima for some company, but quickly thought better of it. Instead, Kuon went to the library.
"She's not here."
"Pardon?" Kuon said, managing not to stutter.
"She has other things to do besides come see me," the Archive remarked, without looking up from the book in front of her. "And other people to talk to."
"Ah— yes, of course," Kuon said, trying to fill the silence. Of course, it made sense. Kyoko, for all of her impressively deadly skills and violent reflexes, was remarkably friendly.
Kuon lingered awkwardly at the desk. The only noise was the soft sound of pages being turned by the Archive's careful hand.
"Do you have other friends at the palace?" Kuon asked, hoping to make some small talk and win over the human icicle that seemed to be Kyoko's favorite person. He wasn't sure it was going particularly well.
"I have acquaintances. Kyoko is the only person here I'd consider a friend." Kanae paused. "Don't tell her I told you that."
"Of course not."
~((line break))~
Kuon kept returning to the library. There was little else for him to do, until he and Kyoko set out on what the bodyguard insisted on referring to as 'Prince Kuon's Grand True Love Adventure'. Since Kyoko was still off, busy with preparations, Kuon decided if he couldn't have the pleasure of speaking to Kyoko, he could at least have the pleasure of speaking about her to her friend. And maybe, if Kanae was even a tenth as effusive about her friend as Kyoko was about her, Kuon might even learn something about his mysterious bodyguard.
The Archive seemed to tolerate his presence, at least. Kuon didn't doubt that if she truly found him annoying, Kanae wouldn't hesitate to throw the prince out of his own palace's library. But that was her limit— the Archive wasn't much inclined to conversation with the Prince. Privately, Kuon felt there was very little difference than speaking with Sir Hoppington. Both mostly ignored him, only looking up to give the Prince a deadpan stare when he said something pathetic. The only difference was that instead of croaking, every so often Kanae went 'mmnnn', in a manner that did nothing to convince the Prince that she was actually listening. Oh, well. At least speaking with (or more precisely, at) the Archive made Kuon feel slightly less crazy.
"I'm going to tell her how I feel," Kuon confessed one day. He didn't know what prompted it. It wasn't as though the Archive was particularly touchy-feely. But he had to tell someone.
"Sure," Kanae said, not lifting her eyes from the page she was reading. "Go ahead."
"I wasn't asking for your permission," Kuon clarified. "But I did want to tell you, since you're her best friend."
Kanae's eyes stopped scanning. "Am I?"
"According to her, at least," Kuon said.
Kanae smiled. "Good luck."
~((line break))~
Unlike the King, Prince Kuon did not have any grand daydreams of triumphantly returning to the palace with Kyoko as his promised bride-to-be and a grandchild on the way. Not because Kuon didn't want such a thing to happen, he simply knew better than to get his hopes up. Admittedly, their relationship had gotten off to a strange start, what with Kyoko being his bodyguard but holding a knife to the Prince's throat and Kuon finding himself immediately smitten. At first, she had thought he was a royal pain in the ass. But their dynamic had changed. The Prince knew that the guard's strict adherence to hierarchy forbade the idea of a lowly commoner like herself claiming to be friends with royalty, but he was pretty sure she didn't hate him anymore. She voluntarily cooked his meals, kept him company, and did her best to cheer him up when she thought he was feeling down. She was even dead-set on finding the Prince's True Love for him. Surely she wasn't doing all of that work solely out of a (grossly misplaced) sense of professional duty, right?
Wrong. Or… maybe? Kuon had no idea. When she had first ignored his attempts at flirting, Kuon had thought she was oblivious. Then, after some less subtle attempts, Kuon thought Kyoko was only playing dumb to spare him the embarassment of rejection— perhaps her sense of professionalism kept her from seeing her charge as a romantic interest, or maybe the Prince just wasn't her type (Kuu would have declared this to be utter nonsense because according to the King, his son was everyone's type). But even Sir Kijima's obvious passes went over the guard's head. For all her excellent bodyguarding skills — her constant perimeter sweeps and hyper quick reflexes, the way she seemed to know everything going on in the palace and have eyes on the back of her head— Kyoko had a giant blindspot.
The bodyguard was smart, but her brain worked in odd ways. Everyone else in his life seemed to know about his crush, but the object of his affection just seemed to… not see it. It was like someone had cast a mysterious curse on Kyoko that filtered out romantic gestures in her brain and replaced them with seal noises or something equally nonsensical. It was enough to almost make Kuon wonder if Kyoko was under a curse, or if some part of Kyoko's strange LME bodyguard training had permanently damaged her brain in an incredibly specific way. The cause didn't matter. Kuon knew that it was too much to hope that leaving the palace would mean that suddenly he would be able to sweep Kyoko off her feet. No, Kuon's hopes were much more reasonable. If he could just use their adventure to become even a little bit closer, the Prince would consider it a roaring success.
~((line break))~
Between Kotonami's (dubious) blessing and his parents' unending unsolicited advice about how to set up a romantic campsite, the Prince found himself ready to be gone from the palace. Unfortunately, the preparations for their journey were taking a bit longer than anticipated. There had been a miscommunication with the leatherworker and so the custom gearpack that Kyoko had ordered was delayed. The bodyguard reported this information to the Prince one evening in his study, bowing deeply and apologizing for the delay. She promised that everything else for their journey was ready, and as soon as she had all of their equipment, they would set out searching for the Prince's True Love without delay. In the meantime, Kyoko added, she would use the extra unplanned day to keep working on the escape tunnels.
"Escape tunnels," Kuon repeated hollowly. "What escape tunnels?"
"Adding them has been a bit of a pain," Kyoko said honestly. "There were only two when I arrived, that's not nearly enough! I've managed to add three exits, but it's going pretty slowly and—"
"Hold on, wh—"
"The original is quite low. I wouldn't want you to be injured if we were forced to use them in an evacuation," Kyoko said, unfurling a blueprint onto the Prince's desk and gesturing, "but if I enlarge them enough for you, it would be easier for pursuers as well."
Kuon stared at the map in front of him. He swallowed. "I thought you said you only made three exits?"
"Yes, Your Highness."
Kuon pointed to several spots on the map. "And all of these are…"
"Dead ends! To confuse pursuers."
Sir Hoppington let out a loud croak from his tank and Kyoko went to fetch the frog, bringing him to the prince's desk so that the knight could observe the plans.
"Sir Hoppington has been advising me on the placement. See, I'm moving one towards the lake, as per your suggestion," Kyoko said, addressing the frog and pointing to a corner of the paper. The frog puffed up proudly.
Obviously, Kuon had to see the tunnels. There was no way he was going to learn about the existence of secret escape tunnels in the palace and not see them for himself. Kyoko acquiesced, leading him through the halls to a seemingly innocuous stretch of wall that swung inwards into the dark. The guard turned around and extended her hand to the Prince.
He looked at it blankly.
"Don't get separated," the guard said seriously, taking the Prince's hand in her own and causing his brain to short-circuit. "There are a lot of dead ends. It would be bad if you got lost," she added, gently tugging Kuon forward into the passageway before leaning around the Prince to shut the door behind them. They were in near-perfect darkness. The only illumination was a faint greenish glow coming from some of the rocks. On closer inspection, it looked to Kuon like the bioluminescent moss that also decorated Sir Hoppington's tank. It was barely enough to see by. Kuon's eyes could make out the glint of Kyoko's copper hair, but the bodyguard's dark robes faded into the shadows, leaving the outline of her form blurry and vague. But Kyoko walked through the dark easily, just as quick and sure-footed as she was in the above-ground halls of the palace or outside in a sunny garden. Kuon quickly lost sense of where they were going. Not that he was paying too much attention. His brain was too fuzzy over holding Kyoko's hand to pay attention to the tunnels, or even Kyoko, who was saying something about gradation and the bedrock under the palace. The Prince wondered if he could get away with weaving their fingers together. She wouldn't mind, right? She probably wouldn't even notice. He could always claim it was a more secure way to hold hands.
"Duck," Kyoko warned.
"Goose," Kuon replied automatically. He was too preoccupied with his internal hand-holding debate to process what the bodyguard meant in time and abruptly smacked his head.
Kyoko lunged, but she was a split second too late. She whirled around, finding herself awkwardly off-balance. The Prince was still tightly gripping her hand, even as he stumbled backwards blindly. His steps were too big in the small, dark space, and the bodyguard saw that he was about to hit the wall behind them and smack the back of his royal head, too. So she did the only thing she could. She yanked Kuon forward with all her body weight. She had expected the Prince to drop her hand so that she could brace and catch them, but he refused to let go, stubbornly clinging to her hand like a starfish to a rock. Kyoko had not expected that, but she managed, her free hand going to cradle the Prince's head as she fell back and hit the dirt floor of the tunnel with her charge safely on top of her.
"Are you okay?" Kyoko asked, worriedly. She felt the back of his head gently, checking for blood or any forming lumps and breathing a sigh of relief when she felt nothing.
Kuon's brain stopped working entirely when he felt Kyoko's fingers brush through his hair. He was vaguely aware that he should probably move, since he landed solidly on top of his bodyguard and had probably knocked the wind out of her. He tried to formulate a sentence but nothing was coming out and he ended up making a rather undignified strangled sound.
"Oh no!" Kyoko sounded aghast. "Do you have a concussion?!" She pulled back, sitting both of them up and putting her hands on Kuon's cheeks, trying to check his pupils and focus. But even with Kyoko's preternatural night vision, in the darkness of the tunnel her observation skills were pointless. It just seemed to make the Prince sputter more when she leaned forward.
Kuon was not concussed, of course. Kyoko had successfully protected his head (and most of the rest of him) by sacrificing herself and using her body as a landing cushion. Minus some minor scrapes, the Prince was totally fine. He was simply rendered inarticulate by how close she had been: the way her arms had wrapped protectively around him, the press of his leg against hers. The fabric of her uniform was surprisingly thin, enough that he had felt the heat of her skin. And now they were sitting up in the darkness, her face barely inches from his own as she tried to examine him. Kuon couldn't see her, but every fiber of his being was vibrating with tension from knowing that she was near. A sweet, alluring scent wafted from her hair and it took every ounce of self control in Kuon's power not to pull her into his arms and confess his feelings right then and there, in the darkness on the tunnel floor.
Thankfully, they were both spared the awkwardness that would have ensued from such a revelation. Kyoko made the executive decision that tunnel exploration was over. She led the way back slowly, pointing out the tiniest dip in the ceiling or uneven patch on the floor, worried that the Prince was going to go sprawling again. Kuon let himself be led, docile as a baby lamb. Kyoko only relaxed once they were back in the Prince's chambers and a thorough examination concluded that Kuon was, in fact, fine. Still, she made the Prince promise to go to bed early and get plenty of rest, before disappearing through a window and swinging up onto the roof for the first round of her nightly patrol.
~((line break))~
At last, they were ready to set out. Kyoko had carefully arranged the final pebbles and bits of moss in Sir Hoppington's travel pack. Kuon was not surprised that the frog was coming with them, but he was impressed by the accommodations that Kyoko had arranged for the knight. It turned out that the final piece of 'equipment' that Kyoko had been waiting for was a reinforced bag with two shoulder straps, made of sturdy leather and sealed to keep in moisture, with a large glass pane so that Sir Hoppington would have an excellent view of all their travels from his mobile tank. Sir Hoppington had given a croak of approval, and with their frog in tow, they were ready.
A small group assembled at one of the side gates to see them off. It was just before dawn, and the small courtyard was quiet. Duke Takarada had wanted a parade, or at least a troupe of minstrels, but his farewell ideas had been firmly rejected by Kyoko. She was a very capable bodyguard, but there was no reason to make her job harder by announcing to the entire kingdom that the Crown Prince was leaving the safety of the palace with only one companion.
Kyoko knelt before the Queen and the Duke, promising to keep the Prince safe. The bodyguard had drawn her sword and offered to swear it by blood. Julienna looked slightly horrified but managed to keep her voice calm as she informed Kyoko that such an action would not be necessary, while glaring daggers at Duke Takarada. Lory returned the look with an emphatic gesture that managed to convey 'It wasn't me. I swear— she's just like that.' Which honestly, given what Juli had to come to learn about the sweet but strange girl that her son was in love with, checked out.
Kyoko had missed the entire exchange. Instead she stood gracefully and slid the sword back into the scabbard that hung from her hip. The first beams of sunrise had now risen, touching the light pink stone that was set in the hilt of Kyoko's sword and making it glow softly. In addition to her sword, Kyoko was also wearing the gorgeous throwing knives that the Prince had entrusted to her for safekeeping (until his True Love could claim them), plus a dozen other sharp, deadly things she had added to her arsenal for the trip. Kuon had insisted that there would be no need for such things, but better to be over-prepared than under, Kyoko had countered.
Likewise, the King also thought it was better to be over-prepared and was busy shoving packets of rose petals and scented candles into Kyoko's carefully packed travel bags. He'd had to remove one of the bedrolls in order to make room for the scented oil and champagne, but Kuu thought it was a worthwhile trade-off. It wasn't like they were going to need two sets of bedding, anyways, Kuu thought. At least, not if things went the way Kuu hoped they would. He quickly refastened the pack and stepped away as Kyoko and Kuon approached. The King pulled Kuon into an embrace, loudly pretending to weep at the idea of being parted from his beloved son. Kuon only escaped the crushing hug when his father began dramatically wiping his tears.
"Well," the King said a little too loudly, trying to conceal the wobble in his voice (apparently not all of the tears had been faked). "Time to head out, right? Daylight's wasting!"
Kyoko couldn't agree more. Her minions swirled around her, ready to be off. They all moved towards the gate. Before they left, Kyoko turned and offered their Majesties one last bow. "I swear, I will not return until I find the Prince's True Love."
"I'm looking forward to it," Kuu called after them, winking rather conspicuously at Kuon. The King lifted one arm in salute, the other he wrapped around his wife. Lory made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snort, for which Julie promptly kicked the Duke in the ankle.
"Have fun, darlings!" Juli called, waving enthusiastically.
"Good luck!" The Duke added, in a tone that said 'you're going to need it'. When the Prince and Kyoko were far enough down the road, Lory pulled out a sheet of paper with several names, dates, and amounts neatly recorded.
"That's not what I think it is."
"Indeed," Lory said blithely. "Place your bets now."
Kuu leapt for the paper. A bit of debate ensued as Julienna (wisely) tried to dissuade her husband from betting half the kingdom on Kuon and Kyoko returning engaged within the fortnight. The monarchs squabbled for a minute before deciding to place separate bets. People from all over the palace had written down their guesses. The King's bet was the shortest by far. The Archive's was the longest as Kanae had only written two words: probably never. With a hum of satisfaction, Lory folded up the paper carefully and stuck it inside the pocket of his jacket. Since arriving at court, the Duke had been carefully observing the prince and his guard. It was impossible to predict the future, of course. But Lory Takarada had a feeling that something important would happen on this adventure — and his hunches were rarely wrong.