Patrick rushes out of the fort alone and runs.
“Yumiela… please stay safe…”
After listening to Linus’s information about the sealing magical tool, the situation turned out to be more dangerous than he had imagined.
If the sealing magical tool, Remrest’s secret weapon, had the same effectiveness as the one against the Demon King…. Yumiela will be sealed away for hundreds of years. It may feel like a long sleep to herself, but the sleep is far too long.
Patrick won’t be able to see Yumiela until his lifespan is up, and when Yumiela wakes up, she will find a world in which no one she knows will ever exist.
Patrick is running as if he is leaving behind cruel predictions of the future.
He leans forward as if about to fall and moves, chipping the earth with each step.
After crossing a small hill, he could see Remrest’s military camp and the whole area.
He looked around and found her. Behind the army, in front of a large tent, Yumiela was about to be sealed when Patrick found her.
“Yumiela!”
Knowing he can’t reach her, he shouts out unconsciously.
Four pillars surround her and disappear into the light without resistance.
The light soon fades, the mysterious pillars disappear, and Yumiela disappears. Instead, a large white box appeared. The cube is large enough to hold a person and floats in the air, slowly rotating sideways.
“…I didn’t make it in time.”
Patrick lowers his head in shock and looks down at the ground.
It’s not that she is dead. Just like the Demon King, she will be back someday. It could be hundreds of years like the Demon King, or it could be years or days. External interference might even be able to break the seal.
Let’s wait until Yumiela comes out—until she comes out with her usual expressionless face, slightly smiling, and says, “I’m back; I couldn’t make it to the moon.”
With the thought of her face, which he missed even though he hadn’t seen her for a few days, Patrick looked up.
“…Eh?”
He lowered his gaze for a few seconds. Within that short time, a change had occurred.
The cube that was supposed to be pure white was now speckled with black. The black speckles expanded in range as if encroaching on the white areas.
A half-black and half-white stripe pattern was created in seconds, and within seconds, the box was almost entirely black.
Ultimately, the cube crumbled away when it became pitch black, the same hair colour as hers.
When the box disappeared without a trace of dust, Yumiela was standing there, looking as she had before being sealed.
“…Ah.”
Having worried about not being able to see her forever, Patrick’s shoulders slumped in disbelief.
“Please return my worries.”
After confirming that she was safe, this almost seemed like a natural ending. Yumiela has a long track record of making him worry in vain.
Still, it was true that she was sealed off, even if only temporarily.
“…I should say I’m glad she’s okay.”
Two emotions battle in Patrick’s mind: feeling glad that she is okay or feeling that he has wasted his time worrying about her for nothing.
Sighing out of habit, Patrick moved his feet towards her.
“Wait, don’t go.”
“…Aniue.”
Gilbert stopped Patrick with a call from behind. Compared to his good-natured younger brother, the older brother looked nervous and stared at the Remrest army with a grim expression.
The sealed magical tool that had been considered dangerous was gone. There was no point in rushing; Patrick followed his brother’s words and stopped in his tracks.
“I heard you went to Remrest. You were working with Yumiela.”
“Did you hear that from Linus?”
“He also told me about the sealing magical tool.”
“Oh, so it was a seal. That explains why the Remrest troops accelerated their march.”
“You sent Yumiela out there without knowing that?! Do you have no idea why they moved up their plan? In that case, Aniue should know something was up.”
“I knew something was happening, but come on. That thing wouldn’t do a dam thing to your fiancée.”
“…Well.”
Protesting his brother for sending his fiancée to a dangerous place, it is indeed hard to believe that Lemrest can prepare anything that can handle Yumiela. Two competing emotions in Patrick’s mind, one of them gaining the upper hand. It’s useless worrying about it.
Gilbert looks unhappy at his brother’s concern for Yumiela.
“The sealing works to that woman’s advantage. My task is too easy for her.”
“Task… acting like a loser?”
“That woman’s threat discourse is sweeping Remrest. I was convinced by the local atmosphere.”
“Aniue, calling Yumiela that woman is…”
“What’s wrong with that woman? Patrick, do you think she’s more important than me?”
Brother and lover are both important but not comparable. Even if Patrick said that, he knew from experience that his brother wouldn’t believe him.
He had long felt that his brother was an odd fellow, but he had never expected it to go this far. One more person who was asking the same kind of troublesome question popped into Patrick’s mind.
He knew that telling Gilbert that he was similar to Yumiela would cause even more trouble, so he didn’t say anything.
While the brothers were talking, things were changing. The two men in white were gone, and Yumiela was facing another man.
Pointing at them, Gilbert says.
“The First Prince of Remrest. He is someone who is easy to deceive. Plus that seal. Even Patrick’s fiancée could easily give him a reason to withdraw.”
“Are you not going to call her by her name? …Well, Yumiela could easily come up with a reason, as much as that the seal has consumed her magic power. As I have written to her many times in letters, her head does function.”
“I guess so. I was fooled for a while too. I heard that Count Dolknes is very good at playing nice.”
Gilbert narrowed his eyes as he looked down at the Remrest military camp.
When Yumiela and Gilbert were going to meet for the first time, Patrick was definitely planning to be present. There was no way that the two of them, both of whom were easily misinterpreted, could try to communicate with each other alone.
But they did meet in the distant capital of Remrest.
What kind of conversation did they have, as their first impression would have been the worst? Judging from the fact that Gilbert said he had been deceived, their attempts at communication must have failed.
Patrick opened his mouth with trepidation.
“What… did she do?”
“She hid her identity. Although I said I was fooled, it was a wise decision considering we were in a foreign land.”
“I see. But you figured it out right away, didn’t you?”
“I told you she was good at playing nice, didn’t I? I just found out. She was using the pseudonym Eleanora. …Now that I think about it, that’s the name of the Duke’s daughter.”
If we assume that Yumiela flew to the moon and crashed in a neighbouring land, they would have been in contact for more than a full day. After that much time, Yumiela’s true identity was just discovered.
Yumiela is capable of behaving. Then she can say or do something politely strange. Regardless of how much she disguises her name and hides her characteristics, a little conversation would have revealed her to be someone eccentric.
Patrick couldn’t admit that his brother, whom he respected for being smart, was as insensitive as Yumiela.
“Did you use pseudonyms with each other and assume that you were strangers?”
“No, I didn’t use a pseudonym. How many people hear the name Gilbert and think of the heir? Those people would have known my face anyway.”
“Are you saying that when Yumiela heard the name Gilbert, she didn’t recognize you as my brother?”
“She didn’t seem to recognize me, but do you think that she knew who I was and kept me in the dark—”
“No, I don’t think so. She can’t do that kind of tricks.”
Yumiela, being Yumiela, is too slow. Yumiela was slower than Gilbert, who didn’t know Gilbert was Gilbert even though she knew his name. My brother is not that stupid, Patrick tells himself.
Gilbert looks at Yumiela and the prince in the distance, unaware that his brother’s trust in him is about to collapse, and says.
“I had some conversations with her. I don’t think I could have had that level-headed conversation if I had known who she was. I tried to talk to her without assumptions and preconceptions… I mean, some things are weird… but ah, Yumiela was a good girl.”
“…Aniue!”
When Patrick realized that Gilbert had mentioned Yumiela’s name for the first time, he looked at his brother’s face. The face, which had always looked nervous, was twisted even more sullenly, but Patrick, who had followed his brother since he was a small child, could tell that it was his brother’s way of showing his embarrassment.
He wondered what would happen at one point, but it looked like he would approve of the marriage. Patrick patted his chest in relief.
“I won’t approve of your marriage! If that woman can’t accomplish her task, I will oppose her to the end, and I will not attend the wedding at any cost.”
“What if Yumiela is successfully defeated?”
“Then I’ll have no choice but to congratulate… well… Patrick and Yumiela on their marriage. …Patrick, why are you laughing?”
“No, it’s just like you, Aniue.”
“Right. I was thinking, since Aniue is too formal, you should be like the old days, Nii-sama—”
The conversation between the twisted older brother and the obedient younger brother was cut short there.
The first thing he felt was an enormous rush of magical power. It originated from the direction where Remrest’s army was.
The two of them looked ahead. Patrick immediately knew who it was, but it took Gilbert a while to figure it out. He mumbled to himself.
“…What the hell is that?”
Yumiela’s wrath xD