LP 2.14 Mages of the Neutral Zone

The horse ran at a moderate pace. By Lucian’s standards, it was merely a breeze, but Kosha’s situation was a bit different.

The last time he had ridden a horse was when he was six. Thanks to strict training from a very young age, his posture was ingrained, but he was not accustomed to going at speed.

Fortunately, the well-trained white horse was extremely steady, and Lucian was someone who could hold on even without holding the reins on a horse running at full gallop. He skillfully guided the horse with one hand while holding onto Kosha with the other.

By the time they left the forested area at the edge of the village and began galloping across the wide Osterbelt plains, Kosha’s body had relaxed a bit. Lucian fully sensed this through the touch of the dry shoulder blade pressing a little deeper against his own chest.

That defenseless weight suddenly made him chuckle softly.

The vast, spread-out plains were tinged with golden and reddish hues, fitting for late autumn. Some were wheat, others corn or beans, and the rest were likely grapes, widely cultivated in Central Izelant.

There was no one following nearby, and the distant figures of people working the fields were sparsely visible, but they were merely part of the scenery. The air was now slightly chilly, and the wind wasn’t blowing much. Clouds hung in the deep blue sky like paintings.

He had chosen the day well. If it had poured rain, there would have been no point in coming out like this. Then again, he was generally the type to have good luck with such trivial matters.

Lucian pulled on the reins, slowing the galloping horse’s pace.

The Mage in his arms turned his head and looked at him with a puzzled expression. The curve of that cheek, the curves of the nose, lips, and chin, the curve of the eyelashes—things like that caught his eye excessively. They were a bit more intense than the curve drawn by the horizon of the famously beautiful Osterbelt plains.

So… he felt an inexplicable urge to poke fun.

“Why are you being so quiet?”

Kosha blinked, not understanding the intent of the question. He was originally quiet. He had been quiet and docile since he was a baby, so much so that his brothers often picked on him, or so his nanny had once told him.

“What made you trust me and get on the horse? How did you know where I was taking you?”

“…Aren’t we going home?”

It was less that Kosha had gotten on willingly and more that the other had practically forced him onto it. Moreover, if anyone should be worried about kidnapping, wouldn’t it be Lucian rather than Kosha? Because Kosha was a Mage. He could go anywhere he wanted.

Lucian asked again with a slanted smile.

“Home? Where’s home?”

“Um… the West Wing of Ostbrahe Castle’s inner fortress?”

An unusually proper answer came back from the Mage who often talked nonsense. The Mage seemed to have accepted his situation well, which made Lucian unusually satisfied.

Yes, now the Mage would be staying in his castle. Regardless of the detoxification. That made him feel a bit more at ease.

“Hmm, you know it well. That’s right. We have to go home.”

He adjusted the reins and continued.

“But since we’re already out…”

With two bodies being insufficient for the work, how easy could it be to clear an entire day?

“Since we’re out, I’ll show you something nice.”

The geese were, in fact, a kind of excuse. He hadn’t expected those geese to actually still be at that house at all.

Since they had left the castle, he planned to look around the neighborhood where the Mage had lived a bit, take advantage of the Mage’s sadness over losing the geese to completely dispose of that house, and then coax him by promising to buy new geese while taking him somewhere nice to get some fresh air. He needed to lift the Mage’s spirits.

Contrary to expectations, he was momentarily flustered because the geese were actually still there.

But that didn’t mean there was any reason to change the next plan.

Rather, it was better, wasn’t it? Lucian thought lightly. It was like taking a kind of hostage. With those geese he loved so dearly left behind, where would the Mage go alone?

“Something nice?”

Kosha asked suspiciously. Instead of explaining, Lucian just smiled.

Central Izelant, where the capital was located, was a vast plain area with occasional rolling hills. In such terrain, Ostbrahe, which began as a military fortress, was built against a hill. It was a typical form of an old fortress: a moat was dug around the main keep, the excavated earth was piled onto the hill at the rear, and an outer fortress was built on top for use as an outpost.

However, by the time the main keep had repeatedly expanded, its functions increased to the point where it was eventually designated as the capital of the new kingdom, the concept of a “rear hill” had become meaningless.

The hill overlooking the capital city was still a militarily important point. But if this place were to be used for military purposes, it would mean the nation’s fate had already run out, so its practical significance was minimal.

In conclusion, the place now remained merely as a restricted, royally owned recreational land.

It was quite wide, with well-maintained forests, and many deer and foxes lived there, so it was mainly used for royal hunting gatherings. Apart from the caretaker, no one else came and went. The old outer fortress remained mostly in form only, used as a temporary lodging for the hunting ground keeper.

Instead of heading towards the Ostbrahe castle gate, they turned to follow the castle walls. The Mage looked around like a child feeling uneasy in an unfamiliar place. He seemed like he might ask where they were going, but he was quiet.

Of course, Kosha was quiet from the extremely Mage-like thought that he could return home anytime he wished, but that silence made Lucian somewhat uncomfortable. It seemed like if someone gently coaxed him to go somewhere nice, he would just follow along vaguely.

The paths up the hill were all guarded by the King’s soldiers at every pass, but Lucian had already thoroughly traversed this area dozens of times during hunting gatherings. Lucian, who had increased his speed a bit along a sparsely populated streamside, suddenly pulled on the reins and spurred the horse.

The well-trained white horse leaped over a not-short distance. A thick arm wrapped around and pressed Kosha’s startled shoulder. He whispered as if to soothe.

“This side is relatively lax.”

It would be a bit awkward if we got caught. He added. Kosha didn’t know what was supposed to be what, but he just calmed his startled heart and agreed with his opinion.

The white horse carrying the two climbed the uphill slope not along a path. Trees and bushes were dense, making it impossible to gauge the time or location.

Then, in an instant.

Pushing through one bush, the forest suddenly ended and the surroundings brightened. While Kosha squinted his eyes a little, Lucian first leaped nimbly off the horse. Then he lightly lifted the bewildered Kosha down.

“Come here.”

He gestured. It seemed they had reached the summit, as an old outer fortress stood firmly to one side.

The place Lucian led Kosha to was where the hill was so steep it was almost a cliff. One misstep and it seemed his bones wouldn’t be recoverable.

And… everything was visible at a glance.

The very tip of the west wing of Ostbrahe Royal Castle, the inner fortress walls surrounding it and the outer fortress walls beyond, and the endlessly spreading plains, and the horizon. The horizon that seemed infinite. The sun that had by now descended a bit closer to it. It was so dazzling that Kosha had to turn his head away. But it was useless.

On the side he turned to, there was him. The man who was always as radiant as the sun to Kosha.

“The weather is good, so you can see it well.”

Lucian laughed and stretched out his hand.

“All the way over there is Osterbelt. That side over there… that’s about the edge of the Mardote Mountains. Beyond that is Callot.”

His hair fluttered a little in the wind. Kosha could only follow that explanation with his gaze.

The wind blew, and his breath opened up. Everything came into view at once like a very small model… and so all the things he had experienced in his not-very-long life felt very distant and trivial.

“Ah, careful. Don’t lean too far forward.”

Lucian held onto Kosha. He seemed to have leaned forward a bit without realizing it, but it wasn’t that dangerous. Even with plenty of flat ground remaining, he looked at the man’s hand holding him and then his face in turn.

His expression, his eyes. The immeasurable things contained within them.

Suddenly, his heart pounded. But he wasn’t anxious. Rather… it seemed he felt good. This was unfamiliar to Kosha. But he wasn’t afraid.

“The view is nice, right? I like this place.”

Lucian said softly.

“The air is good too… the castle is so stuffy after all.”

Kosha’s lips moved. For a moment, he felt as if he knew all the secrets and truths of the world, but none of them could be expressed in human words.

So instead, Kosha raised his hand. His pale fingertips swayed in the empty air, and the faint wind grew slightly stronger. As if the wind had will and form, it gently wrapped around Kosha’s hand and passed by.

Nature was always friendly to Mages. Kosha could finally feel everything completely. Everything within sight, the flow of all water, the names of the earth. The direction of the wind and the time contained in the stones. The whispers of the growing trees and… the sound of the heartbeat of the person standing before him.

“Your Highness.”

Overwhelmed by all of it, Kosha opened his mouth as if pushed. With trembling legs, Kosha politely bent his knee.

“Th-thank you, Your Highness. Thank you for bringing the geese. For me, no, for myself…”

Where on earth should he start? What should he say first? He was talking about the geese, but how could he make him understand that he wasn’t just talking about the geese?

“Thank you for the clothes. For giving me books, for bringing me to a place like this…”

How could he make him understand that he didn’t mean to talk about all these material things?

Lucian looked at Kosha, momentarily bewildered, then merely frowned lightly and smiled.

“You have a lot to be thankful for. Is it because you lived in such a neighborhood for too long?”

To call it ‘such a neighborhood,’ Kosha actually didn’t have any major complaints about that village, but he seemed to find that village very unsatisfactory.

“It was a village not really suitable for someone like you to live alone. If you had stayed there a little longer, you would have been completely devoured, bones and all, by the whole village. And the security was too poor. Is it normal for just anyone to come and go into houses like that?”

He didn’t really know what kind of person ‘someone like you’ was either.

“Calling people gooseherds so carelessly… it’s absurd.”

Kosha hesitated. He was clumsy at such things and didn’t know how to express himself. But it seemed any way would be fine. He seemed like he would understand.

“Your Highness.”

So Kosha just blurted it out.

“I lived as a gooseherd in Osterwick from the age of fourteen. It’s a commoners’ village. There, um, they usually call each other that. Gooseherd, blacksmith, carpenter, plasterer… In such a small village, there’s only one of each, so that’s how it is. I heard that in very old times, they sometimes didn’t even give names.”

Lucian silently listened to the words spilled out as they came. That gave Kosha courage.

“…I was eighteen then, and I gave flowers to Your Highness.”

“……”

“At that time, Your Highness asked me my name. No one had asked in those four years.”

It made him confess his heart.

“For the first time in four years, I pronounced my name. Or maybe it had been longer than that. Then Your Highness repeated it back to me. For over four years, no one had called me by it.”

So at that moment, he could be not a gooseherd, not a young master, not anything else, but just Kosha.

It was a sensation he had long forgotten. Or perhaps a sensation he was feeling for the first time in his life. Kosha had always been called more by ‘titles’ than by his name, ever since he was born.

“So I…”

Kosha hesitated.

“It was like that from the first time I saw you. From when you picked up the apple for me… No one, no one had ever done that for me. No one had ever picked up anything for me. It was okay. I thought I could pick things up myself and lived like that, it didn’t matter at all. But Your Highness picked it up for me.”

Kosha rambled. Lucian probably didn’t even remember what picking up an apple meant, or if such an event had even occurred. Kosha didn’t even expect him to remember.

That wasn’t important. It didn’t matter if he didn’t understand.

Just that one moment he smiled, that one moment he spoke. All of it piled up, until now.

So saying he liked him, just with such words, couldn’t express it.

The Mage’s gaze wandered through the empty air. Kosha didn’t know much about trees, but nature was always friendly to Mages.

His dry fingertips gently touched the gnarled tree trunk. The flow of the tree, its growth, all of it began to move according to the Mage’s will.

Fresh green leaves began to sprout on the late autumn branches, incongruously. Everything happened in an instant. As if time had been fast-forwarded, as if only where that tree was, winter had passed and spring was approaching. Buds formed, and then plump white flowers bloomed.

In late autumn, a magnolia was in full bloom.

Because the Mage wanted to give flowers to the person he liked.

A branch leaned towards Kosha, and Kosha carefully plucked a single magnolia flower from its tip. The freshly bloomed flower was white and fresh without a single blemish. As if it would melt endlessly sweetly if put in the mouth and chewed.

But when he held it out to Lucian, his expression was a bit strange. It seemed like a frown, or surprise, or somehow even anger.

Kosha, who had urged the tree to bloom flowers hoping he would be pleased, belatedly became cautious. Was the flower not good? Maybe he disliked flowers.

Just as Kosha moved his lips to try to make an excuse, Lucian reached out his hand.

He thought he would take the flower, but that hand instead grabbed not the flower but Kosha’s wrist. In an instant, their bodies were pressed together.

And their lips too.

The startled hand lost strength, and the flower cluster slipped down. The snow-white flower cluster got caught between their bodies, then thud, tock, slowly rolled and fell. Rolling on the dirt ground, it was crushed between shoe and shoe.

The overly flawless, pure white petals were easily wounded. Kosha stared blankly at it for a moment, then closed his eyes. Lucian kissed him greedily like a person possessed, and Kosha could only open his mouth and receive him.

There was no room left to care about the crushed flower. But even if there had been room, it probably wouldn’t have mattered. Kosha still had enough flowers to fill a whole tree more…

And if that wasn’t enough, he could just make it bloom once more.

Interference through magic comes at a cost. The tree that bloomed early for the Mage would not bloom next spring. But Kosha… somehow, it seemed okay. If he could give him flowers. Something like that.

At least at this moment.

“You…”

The pressed lips barely parted. But not completely. Each time they spoke, their lips brushed and breaths mingled. Each time the mixed saliva moistened their lips, Lucian gave up trying to continue speaking and instead bit, sucked, and licked it. Several times, continuously, repeatedly.

“I…”

Lucian, who had barely managed to grab the Mage’s shoulders, barely managed to pull him away from his own body. No, it would be more accurate to say he pulled himself away from the Mage. As strength entered the hand gripping the thin shoulders, a sharp pain made the Mage, whose eyes had been dazedly closed, open them.

His eyelashes fluttered, and the gem-like pupils within were revealed.

The scent of magnolia flowers vibrated in the chilly, dry air of late autumn. Mixed with the sweet scent emanating from the Mage’s body, it turned his head into a quagmire. Lucian didn’t even realize the Mage had held out a flower. Just… the late afternoon’s golden glowing sunlight, the hair that received it and shone reddish, and the eyes that looked solely at him.

Eyes filled with clear affection.

Looking at a person with such eyes, how on earth…

Suddenly, he felt inexplicably anxious. He remembered how the Mage kept calling himself a gooseherd. He now finally gauged the origin of that habit, which had until now merely been an act that grated on his nerves.

And he himself as well. Under the pretense of being friendly, he had asked for his name, but had never once properly called him by it.

Just Mage, you, that one, you.

“I, that is.”

He wanted to explain, but it didn’t go as he wished. If he said it as it was, it felt like something would become irreversible, but there was also no way to refuse.

“…Kosha.”

It was a voice as faint and whisper-like as a breeze, but because they were so close, Kosha could hear it without missing a single breath.