Helios had a pointed gaze at the clothes that Sera held in her arms.
“His Highness Ferre sprayed water on me, and Her Highness Rosé subsequently gave me a flour bomb. When the two join forces, their synergy is really great. I expected a welcoming ceremony, but I didn’t know it’d be this fancy.”
“Oh… I apologize. I can’t believe they caused such an incident. I’ll scold them for sure.”
While remembering her disastrous appearance, Helios sincerely apologized.
He was worried that she would run away from Rosé and Ferre, so he was trying to gauge her expression closely. But it seemed like her smiling face was clear. Unlike the other tutors so far, she spoke cheerfully as though the ordeals she went through were nothing special, and she didn’t seem to be exhausted or on the verge of giving up.
“Rosé and Ferre didn’t cause any other troubles?”
This was the question Helios was the most curious about.
Sera mulled over telling him about Rosé hitting Ferre, but she decided not to since she wouldn’t want to break her promise with Rosé for a problem that was already solved.
“Since then, they participated in our class properly. We played fun games today and they learned the traditional dance of Adelio. We also practiced how to curtsy and bow gracefully.”
When he heard her say that his siblings participated properly, one of Helios’ eyebrows shot up. They were talking about Rosé and Ferre, right? The same twins who refused to study even when their parents were still alive?
“Truly?”
Then, Helios’ eyes narrowed sharply. He expressed his disbelief without much thought, but Sera accepted his suspicion in stride and nodded.
“They practiced the same dance more than 20 times and they sweated a lot. So if Your Majesty says that they didn’t work hard, Their Highnesses will be very disappointed. And I suppose they strained themselves a little bit because they’re already in bed.”
“Rosé and Ferre are already asleep?”
When Sera chuckled as though this was nothing, Helios looked at her for a moment, then burst into laughter.
“Something like a miracle happened. Thank you, Miss Sera.”
“It’s nothing. I’ll do better in the future.”
Sera clenched one hand confidently and expressed her determination. The clothes he ordered to be prepared for her were too big for her, so the loose clothes fluttered in the air.
Sera smiled awkwardly, perhaps because she only noticed it now.
“The clothes are a bit big.”
The sleeves were too long, and if she lifted her shoulder, the shirt would slip down, making her collarbone half visible.
He was thinking of adjusting her clothes, but he quickly averted his gaze. That would be crossing the line.
“It’s cold at night. Do you want something else to wear?”
After taking a bath, Sera trailed off for a moment as she tried to say that she wasn’t cold. While he thought that she seemed to be avoiding his gaze as well, at that moment, the shirt slipped off one side of her shoulder, making it fully exposed.
It really was cold at night, and he didn’t want to make her feel ashamed anymore.
“It’s really cold out.”
As Sera adjusted her clothes properly, she said this with an embarrassed voice. Only then did Helios look satisfactorily back at Sera.
“Here’s something you can wear.”
He rose from his seat, then handed over a coat that was hanging on his chair. It had much more insignias than Jean’s coat, and just one glance at it made Sera think that it was heavy with all those colorful embellishments. If she wore that, she was sure that her mind would also be twice as heavy.
“You don’t have to… I already have a coat that a knight lent me…”
Sera refused, saying that he didn’t have to.
When she showed Jean’s coat that was in her arms, he could no longer insist. In fact, Jean’s coat was also messed up with crayon stains and flour patches, so it harked back to her appearance before she took a bath.
“Tell me about the class.”
In any case, the factor that bothered him had disappeared. He changed the subject to something else.
“The dance I taught them was a penguin dance from the northern part of the empire.”
Sera smiled brightly as she said this.
Helios also knew what she was talking about as it was a well-known dance. The northern region of Adelio was full of snow and ice all throughout the year, but in rare cases, wildlife continued to thrive there. Penguins were one of them.
As the Adelio Empire boasted of a long history, children’s folktales and dances like the penguin dance had been handed down over a long period of time. Even so, Helios had only heard of it and seen it being performed. He had never danced it himself.
“Did my siblings like it?”
“Of course. The penguin dance is a dance where many people hold hands and spin around in a circle, and the movements are easy and simple, so children like it. Her Highness Rosé was having fun imitating the penguins that even when His Highness Ferre was struggling to keep up, she begged him to continue dancing with her.”
While Sera was imitating Rosé and Ferre herself, she was like an excited chick talking. Sera showed some of the simple movements.
She showed an attitude that was clearly different from any of the tutors he had come across so far. Unlike the tutors who were strict and hard to approach, Sera was clearly someone who children had no choice but to like. Helios tried to remember whether he had ever experienced a fun class when he was young.
‘Except for swordsmanship and spellcasting, I always just sat down and memorized everything.’
He had a pleasant time imagining how their class went, saying that Rosé and Ferre might become more amiable to her soon.
It was mainly Sera who spoke the whole time as he remained to be on the listener’s side. Just hearing about it all made him laugh out loud at times. She told him in detail every time she recounted what Rosé and Ferre did or said.
The reason why he was so focused on her stories without even minding the ticking clock was because the conversation was so pleasant.
Finally, as Sera finished talking, she rose from her seat. He stood up as well, looking down at Sera who was three hand spans shorter than him.
“See you next time, Your Majesty.”
Sera curtsied in goodbye. It was an elegant gesture that completely contrasted her previous fluttering, abashed appearance.