Chapter 58 – Pretend Lovers

Pel flipped his hood over his head, concealing almost of his entire face. All Levisia could see was his slightly pouted lips.

Even though Levisia had heard the truth, it wasn’t a big deal, but she did feel a bit embarrassed. She was vividly struggling amidst thoughts of his reasons for his incoherent words. But by Pel’s appearance, she didn’t find anything special about him. His being speechless like this left Levisia with a heavy heart, but she expected the switch.

Given that Levisia didn’t reply, Pel probably sensed that she couldn’t hear him. That was just fine for me. Because it wasn’t really something Levisia had hoped he would say.

As Pel stood there motionless, Levisia took the first step and said, “Well, let’s go.”

* * *

They looked around the street leading to the festival, glimpsing a few people beautifully dressed in fairy costumes. Some people who just passed Levisia even had sparkling yellow-green feathers attached to their backs.

Despite the night getting deeper with time, the atmosphere of the festival wasn’t cooling down. In one corner countless people had set up a stage to perform, and some even prepared a pretty good play.

“The play is still going on,” Levisia rooped while pointing towards west.

Pel looked at where she was pointing and replied in a lukewarm fashion, “It’s always the same repetitive play.”

That was all he said. It was almost an annual event to perform a play based on the story of the founding of the nation. Levisia had seen it every year at this festival. The first couple of times Levisia watched out of curiosity, but not so much now. Pel and Levisia brisked past that performance stage.

“Are you a little hungry?”

“Not really?”

“Hm…”

Most of the booths were selling street foods; some places specialized in selling baked cookies shaped like leaves of the fairy tree, as well as the sugar snacks that Levisia saw a child holding earlier.

“Tell me whenever you’re hungry since I said I would buy you something delicious to eat.”

“Don’t tell me you were being sincere?”

“Of course I was,” Levisia remarked.

Pel shook his head out of excitement. Meanwhile, Levisia scanned around and took the grinning Pel over to one of the street vendors.

“Just 20 silver coins. Flowers from the fairy tale of Mt. Polang. Wish you peace next year!”

As they approached, the voice of the vendor, which had been heard in confusion earlier, became much clearer. Her accent sounded like someone who wasn’t from the empire; rather, someone from a foreign country.

Pel, who was blindly following Levisia, now seemed to have guessed where she was heading.

“Are we…” he inquired.

“What?”

“You’re not going to buy that, are you?” Pel stressed.

“Sheila loves growing flowers,” Levisia remarked.

“I know that, but that isn’t a normal flower.”

“So what? It’ll still blossom,” she shrugged off.

It was an ancient custom of the empire to plant fairy flowers, which took a year to fully grow. And was said to bring good luck that year when the flowers bloomed. Aside from the old custom, however, fairy flowers have a notorious reputation in the empire. Because another name for them is ‘The flower that never grows.’ Planting a fairy flower and seeing it bloom regularly was extremely rare. Perhaps that’s why up until now Levisia has never met a single person who has grown one.

If Levisia had been someone who sold something like that in her previous life, she would have been accused of fraud. Sequentially, the buyers’ reviews would have been full of complaints that the flowers were bad and that they didn’t grow.

That’s why anyone would say that Pel’s reaction wasn’t uncommon. But isn’t this flower a kind of lottery or something? It’s good if it blooms, but if not, oh well.

“Come look around!” The vendor yelled as she looked at Pel and her; her eyes similar to a hyena who discovered its prey.

“They’re selling fake seeds. You’re going to buy this?” Pel didn’t even hesitate to shout such words in a loud voice in front of the vendor. Then, the florist, who was listening to them, responded immediately with, “Hey! Fake seeds? We only sell the best seeds from Mt. Polang.”

Polang was a famous district in the Kraiden Empire that specializes in fairy flowers. Of course, it didn’t matter if it was a specialty or not.

‘Well… a foreigner only dealing with Mt. Polang seeds is a bit…’

Oh, it wasn’t nice to think like that. Levisia sounded like someone who didn’t live in a global era. She put aside her prejudice and looked at the pots where all the plants were and picked the two pots in front of her. Sure enough, Pel, the housekeeper of their palace, saw it and started to nag.

“Why do you need two…?” Pel asked.

“One is for me.”

“But why―?

“Hey, hey! It’s attractive when a lover tends to flowers in a pot,” the vendor teased.

Levisia wasn’t the only one to question her use of the word ‘lovers’. It was also a natural step for Pel’s aim, who was nagging, for her to move to the street vendor.

“How can we be lovers? What are―”

Levisia cuts in just before Pel’s cold voice could get into the street vendor’s ear.

“Right, we are lovers.”