Chapter 116: Chapter 116: Festival

“Sorry to keep you waiting.” The familiar form appears before her out of the crowd.

“No problem.”

Brita shakes her head as she straightens her hat. He holds a small object out to her.

“What’s this?” she says, peering at it.

He is holding out a small, handcrafted ring.

It is silver—or it appears to be, anyway. She knows it has to be imitation silver. Something a roadside vendor has cooked up to part children from their pocket.change.

In other words, just a toy.

She finds herself smiling. Then laughing.

“Ha-ha-ha! …Do you think I am a little girl.”

“Was it?” he says in a small, clipped voice. And then, “I guess I was wrong.”

“Yeah.”

She nods. Nods, and put on the ring.

It may have been handcrafted, but it is cheaply made. It doesn’t even have a fake gem. Just a metal band.

But it catches the sunlight and glitters, bright enough to make her squint.

“…But,” she whispers, “I still like them.”

“…Do you?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you,” she manages to squeeze out, and then Brita slips the

ring into the pocket of her dress.

She keeps her left hand on it so that she wouldn’t lose it—her right hand, of course, is in his.

“Shall we?”

She smiles and starts off, hand in hand.

She couldn’t see his face from the side. But…

…He is smiling, too. She is pretty sure.

She trusts he is.

It is almost noon when a voice calls out to the two of them.

“Well, if it isn’t the guard girl!”

Brita cranes her neck to see who it is even as she fret about what to do with her ring.

She recognizes the relatively high-pitched voice, and Hiro knows it too.

They turn around to look squarely at Irijina, who is pointing at them.

Beside her are , Kurotsuchi, and Sylvia.

Brita realizes fellow housemates even spent their time off together.

“Whoa, Hiro, are you on a date with the guard girl?!” As usual, Irijina is animated. 

“Hey, you should be more polite to someone older!” 

Kurotsuchi sounds very interested indeed, but Sylvia tugs on Irijina's sleeve.

Guard girl? As expected of a barbaric woman to come up with a nickname like that. Brita laments in her heart.

She grins up at his face in a deliberately meaningful gesture.

“A date? I wonder. What do you think?”

“Hold on,” she says bluntly. “I’m only eighteen.”

Her smile widens. He hasn’t denied it.

“Whaaaa?!”

The girls give strange shrieks, and finally Brita couldn’t hold herself back any longer.

“You silly girl. How much am different from you.” Brita directs her anger towards Kurotsuchi who call her older. 

“…Before this, you always wore shabby clothing.” Kurotsuchi retorts.

"But nowadays, thanks to Hiro and Ivanna, I get to wear nice clothes!"

Brita's voice sounds a bit more brusque than usual.

Brita is pouting. Their day keeps getting better and better.

“Um, could you…give us some help?” Sylvia asks them hesitantly.

Hiro’s head turns toward her.

“Anyway, what’s on your minds?”

The girls nod, then glance back and point at the entrance to a tavern behind them.

A huge crowd has gathered there, and in the middle of the circle is a small table. On top of the table is a statue of an open-mouthed frog.

A drunk is standing at a white line drawn on the road, holding a jangling handful of silver balls.

“Hrah! Yaah! Haaah!”

He flung the balls one after another, but to no avail. Each one bounces off the table and onto the ground.

The shop owner standing next to the statue gathers up the balls with practiced ease and says in a loud voice:

“Step right up, ten balls for ten copper coins! Land one, get a mug of ale! Or lemonade for the boys and girls!”

“They won’t go in,” Kurotsuchi says with a huff.

“Yeah. I think those silver balls are rigged.”

“Now, now, girl. That’s not funny.”

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Kurotsuchi speaks half in jest as she hands over ten copper coins, and the owner responds with a smile and a tone that suggests he’d had this conversation before.

Then the two girls, Sylvia and Kurotsuchi tosses the balls one after another, but they comes nowhere near the target.

A great sigh…comes from the girls.

“…They get caught up in these things so easily.” Hiro sighs.

“Simpleton, huh?”

They aren’t much more mature, but they try to pretend they are.

Brita observes the incidence with an “Uh-huh, uh-huh.”

These girls. They’re trying to look cool…

“…and the girls want the prizes too,” she says, glancing at Hiro.

Hiro's expression is, as ever, impossible to see and yet easy to guess.

“What is it?”

“Give us a demonstration?”

“Hrm.”

Hiro sweeps his gaze over the girls.

Then, with a small nod, he pulls ten copper coins from his pouch and goes up to the tavern owner.

“Shopkeep.”

“Yessir!”

“One, please.”

What happens next is almost too quick for the eye to follow.

He rolls the balls around in his palm with a clink, then tosses them into the frog’s mouth.

There is nothing unusual about his technique.

He simply has his mark. But he is precise, and fast.

One goes in. Two. Three, four. Then five and six.

For several seconds, the balls rolling down into the frog statue creates a sound much like a rabbit.

“Wow!”

“Whoa…”

The amazement on the girl’s faces is plain to see.

And not just the girls.

The onlookers cheer appreciatively and begins to clap.

Heh! Kurotsuchi stuck out her cute chest almost as if she is the one who has put on this stunning display.

People thought Hiro is only good for commerce.

But that isn’t true. There is more to him than that.

“Geez, mister, ya couldn’t have held back? For my sake?”

“No.”

As he makes his nonchalant reply to the owner, the tall Irijina gives Hiro a congratulatory pat on his shoulder.

“You are very good at these games, we fall in love more with you.”

“Yes.”

“Wow, way to go, man!” a waiter says.

“Six lemonades? Coming right up!”

“Drink?”

“Sure, thanks.”

Brita takes the cold glass from Hiro's hand. It is well water with lemon and honey in it.

That refreshing chill, Brita thinks, has already changed her from deep inside.

“Oh, yeah,” she says, pretending something has just occurred to her as she watches the  her roommates determinedly toss the little balls out of the corner of her eye. “Since you got it for me, why don’t you put it on me? The ring.”

“Where?”

Hiro gazes intently at her fingers from her thumb to her pinky.

“I mean…my ring finger,” she says, starting to regret she had said anything.

“…How about it?”

“On which hand?”

“What do you mean, which? The—”

The left hand.

She shakes her head, somehow unable to get the words out.

“Ri—”

She takes a breath and searches in her pocket, pulling the ring out with her left hand.

“Right hand…please.”

“All right.”

And then he put the ring on her finger without a hint of ceremony.

She holds it up to the sun, and it gleams brightly.

"Well, I guess I’ll have to take it off when I work. But at least for the festival, I could leave it on." She mutters.

With the sweet-sour taste of the lemonade in her mouth, Brita resolves to have all the fun she could.

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