"Whew. I can't train any more."
Marilou set down the wooden sword in her hand and flopped outward with a dead-fish look on her face. She had just used Moon Step several times over.
Her movements were growing more practiced, and along the way she had also discovered that the odds of the little wooden sword shattering were random.
Sometimes it broke with barely any mana poured in, letting her cast freely in multiples, and sometimes no amount of Moon Step would do it.
While she was dozing, a familiar figure came slowly toward the training ground, and a light breeze carried over waves of a delicate scent.
Viya cleared her throat. She knew Marilou hadn't been slacking, so she simply beckoned and said:
"Worn out, are you? Today's training is over."
At the words "training is over," all the weariness suddenly left Marilou's tired body, and her eyes came alight again.
For one simple reason: being allowed to rest was a good thing.
"Then I'll be going. Take care, Your Holiness."
Marilou got up and collected her weapon, along with the bag she'd left at the entrance.
"Wait..."
Viya called after Marilou as she was about to leave.
"Is something the matter?"
Marilou craned her head and studied a Viya who was behaving out of character today, warily.
"Stay and have dinner."
Through Viya's mind went what Marilou had said under the tree earlier. She needed an opportunity to work out what, exactly, Marilou's feelings for her were founded on.
Whatever it was that made the girl think well of her.
"Eh? Is it something serious?"
Marilou was rather overwhelmed. Viya very rarely kept her for a meal. Had the sun come up in the west today?
"The family banquet is almost here. You and I have been husband and wife of a sort for a few years now, and if we don't practice in advance, we'll only be laughed at when we get there."
"Oh. I see."
Hearing that, Marilou was quickly reassured. Viya held herself to a strict standard, so this was hardly odd of her.
The two of them went together to Sea Lake Manor, and the servant on cleaning duty was startled to see the young mistress come in.
"Good day, young mistress. Oh, is Madam here today as well?"
The servants recognized the Marilou trailing behind her and were rather astonished. Ordinarily the mistress came to eat alone.
It was the first time Madam had ever come.
In the servants' eyes, Marilou was Viya's lawful wife, and in front of outsiders they sometimes called her Madam.
Marilou had found it very uncomfortable at first, but under long, patient wearing-down she had come to accept her reduction to somebody's wife.
Viya raised a hand. "The usual dishes. And make an extra strawberry cake for her."
Marilou was a little surprised. Viya had actually remembered that she liked cream cake.
"Yes, young mistress."
A servant drew out two chairs, and Marilou sat down half stiffly. She wasn't used to formal occasions like this.
Everything around Viya was too formal, and it felt like standing at the edge of a freshly mopped floor with nowhere to put your feet.
There was no helping it. As Marilou saw it, Viya was simply too dazzling.
Imagine it. You're a stray child who has crawled and scrapped about in the mud, and you're suddenly led in to meet a magnificently dressed young noblewoman.
The greatest hardship she has suffered in her life is possibly a box of imported dark chocolate, and then someone points at you and says:
From now on the two of you are married.
What would you think?
Marilou had felt a certain inferiority back then. Even having lived two lives, she had never seen anyone this rich.
One of their rooms was the size of somebody else's entire home.
Marilou picked at her fingers. She thought it was better to earn as much money as she had before and not get too entangled with the young mistress.
It was a contract marriage anyway. Before long she'd leave, and the young mistress would forget this passing stranger, which was perhaps the most dignified way for people of different classes to part.
Each of them had paid with the cheapest thing they had.
One was called youth. The other was called money.
"Mistress, Madam, the dishes are all served."
The servant set the roast meat and dessert on the table, brought out several fruit platters and placed them along the edge, then withdrew with a smile.
"Eat. I don't imagine you like praying anyway."
Viya still shut her eyes and made her vow, urging Marilou to take up her knife and fork.
Marilou wasn't in a hurry today either. She made a show of clasping her hands along with her, though as she had never learned the words of the vow, she simply recited some gibberish incantation of her own invention.
Only when Viya had finished did she follow her in picking up her fork.
"You're exceptionally well behaved today. Is something on your mind?"
Viya had noticed something was off about Marilou. Ordinarily, by now, she'd have been talking back.
"I'm tired. It's nothing."
Marilou speared a piece of meat with her knife and fork and bit into it. It tasted good.
"Then eat."
Viya said nothing more, and the two of them began eating in silence. As the meal was drawing to a close, Viya set down her knife and fork.
"You've had enough, haven't you? Turn your head this way."
Marilou paused, thinking she hadn't had enough at all.
"What for?"
Viya smiled faintly. "You've forgotten the actual business. When we go to the banquet, are we each going to eat separately? Come on. Open your mouth."
Viya picked up a slice of cake and scooped a spoonful of cream with her fork.
"This?"
For a moment Marilou was overwhelmed. Viya really was too strange today; this was in no way something Viya would do.
"Married couples feed each other. Is there a problem?"
Marilou hesitated, looking at the spoon right in front of her, and thinking she probably couldn't refuse anyway, she simply opened her mouth and closed it around the spoon, studying Viya out of the corner of her eye. The woman was exceptionally gentle today, without the faintest air of rank about her.
This... was this really still the same young mistress?
For an instant, Marilou suddenly felt that Viya wasn't as tyrannical or as short-tempered as she'd imagined.
"Is it good?"
"It's good."
"Then you feed me too."
A trace of red curved at the corner of Viya's mouth, her red lips parting slightly to show the tip of her tongue.
Marilou was startled.
"My lady, isn't it a bad idea for me to touch you?"
"These are special circumstances, so it's fine. Whatever else is true, during the contract term you are my lawful wife, and nobody is going to look down on you."
So it was acting after all.
Marilou wasn't disappointed, and didn't think there was anything improper about the young mistress doing it. The woman was paying, after all.
So Marilou picked up the spoon from Viya's plate without any fuss.
"Use your own."
The smile stayed at the corner of Viya's mouth.
Marilou said, somewhat uncomfortably, "Mine's dirty."
"It doesn't matter. It's only once. Hurry up."
Viya pressed her, and Marilou's hand released the spoon she was holding, picked up her own, scooped up a spoonful of cake center scraped through with cream, and delivered it unsteadily into Viya's mouth.
She very nearly jabbed it up her nose.
Unlike Marilou, Viya first caught the spoon between her teeth. Marilou tried to draw it back and found the resistance considerable.
Viya's tongue licked at the spoon, and a vibration came through the tip of it. The fine hairs stood up all over Marilou, and her body went slightly numb.
"Marilou, what are you so nervous about?"
Viya released the spoon and looked at a Marilou shaking like a sieve, asking it back with a smile at the corner of her mouth.
"My lady, why did you bite my spoon? Wasn't it good?"
"It was good. It's only that somebody looks a little uncomfortable."
"I don't..."
"Really?"
Viya pressed Marilou's temple, and then her expression changed in an instant. She pointed at her own arm. "Look at that. Your hand shook so badly you got jam on my arm. Marilou, as my wife, you ought to know what to do about that, don't you?"
TL Notes:
TL Note: Sea Lake Manor — the estate's name in the original is also the standard Chinese name for Mar-a-Lago, and back in chapter 4 Marilou compared Viya's residence to the White House; the estate names are a running joke about American presidential property.