TPOK 05

Chapter 05

To be honest, I wasn’t particularly interested in sword fighting. But thinking about the future, there was no harm in learning it. No, at the very least, I would get my own sword.

That alone was quite reassuring.

“By the way… do adults just call all grown men ‘mister’? …You call the Jester King ‘mister,’ too, right?”

I clenched my fists, nervous about the new life that awaited me.

For now, the only person I could trust was myself.

There was also one thing about the giraffe story from earlier that bothered me…

“I mean, I’m younger than the Jester King… Hey, Ankhbayar, does he call you ‘mister’ too…?”

【2】

“Ah.”

“Again!”

The moment I barely managed to get myself up from the floor, my chest was pushed and I fell over again.

Hearing him shout again, I got back up, only to have my shoulder pushed this time and fall down once more.

“Again!”

Thankfully, thanks to the layers of soft carpets spread beneath my feet, my butt didn’t hurt no matter how many times I fell.

“Again!”

The moment I asked the Thunder King if he could teach me swordsmanship, he brought me straight to the courtyard of the Butt-Face Castle.

“Then let’s start right away!”

Before I even had time to process what was happening, I had already spent more than two hours practicing nothing but falling techniques.

“Again!”

It was such a boring and unimpressive lesson. The Jester King, who had followed along with me all excitedly, tried his best to throw in jokes and fool around beside us, but in the end, he couldn’t stand the boredom and returned to his room after only half an hour.

Traitor…

“Good. Break time! Don’t forget that feeling!”

Finally, the painfully repetitive training came to an end.

I never knew swordsmanship could be this boring.

Though I wasn’t even sure if this counted as swordsmanship.

It suddenly occurred to me that kings really had nothing to do.

“I don’t have much to do unless it’s raining. But when it rains, I become extremely busy.”

I almost jumped.

For a moment, I thought he had read my mind.

The Thunder King brought me a cup of water while I was lying face down on the floor, resting.

“Today is a special case. That’s why I’m taking care of you personally like this. During the rainy season, I won’t have time to pay attention to you.”

“What do you do when it rains?”

“I cut or slice lightning.”

What kind of work was that supposed to be?

Well, adults were strange like that. They spent most of their lives doing weird, meaningless things.

I wanted to ask exactly what he meant, but I already had too many other things to think about.

Like the giraffe and date palm story I heard in the Jester King’s room.

When the Thunder King answered the Jester King’s question about what would happen to the giraffe if the chosen child appeared and took all the dates, he had said:

“I’d push it down and kill it.”

Right.

That was what he said.

But something felt strange.

They were talking about a giraffe standing beneath a tree. So why did he suddenly use the phrase “push it down and kill it”?

Of course, it might mean nothing.

The adults here were all a little strange, so hearing them say strange things was actually natural.

Or maybe I was just becoming paranoid.

But I couldn’t help it.

The anxiety that had been slowly simmering since my first day suddenly boiled over, like steam bursting out from beneath a lid.

…Could there have been another child like me before?

That suspicion filled my nose like hot steam.

I looked at the Thunder King.

The man had his back turned to me and seemed to be practicing his impression of Pukpuki.

“Today was good…! Today, um… ho… Today was really, really good…!”

He spoke in a high-pitched falsetto while bouncing the sword in his hand around like it was a doll.

If he wanted to practice Pukpuki’s voice, shouldn’t he do it somewhere I wasn’t around?

Did he assume everyone else couldn’t hear just because he was hard of hearing?

No, more importantly, he shouldn’t be swinging a sword around like that.

It was dangerous.

―While I was staring blankly at the back of the Thunder King’s head with those thoughts, our eyes met before I realized it.

“All rested up― ahem. Are you rested? Then let’s do some finishing stretches and return.”

“Yes.”

He got confused.

The Thunder King had tried to speak in Pukpuki’s voice but quickly cleared his throat.

As expected, he didn’t seem like a bad adult.

But…

Was he only being kind because there was a possibility that I was his daughter?

Would he treat me the same way even after I was confirmed to be another king’s child?

Out of the four possible fathers, one was a murderer, and one was someone who failed to stop his own child from committing murder.

I don’t want either of them.

I wondered if the latter was at least better than the former.

Then again, maybe the latter was actually the worse option.

Two out of four being terrible choices was a horrible probability.

I sighed and stood up.

“Thank you for today.”

“If it doesn’t rain tomorrow, come again. I still don’t know for sure, but… you don’t seem completely without talent. …Pukpuki seems to think so too.”

The Thunder King grabbed the base of his sword and shook it like a puppet while speaking in an incredibly metallic falsetto.

“You did sooo well!”

“Ah, yes. Thank you for today.”

I nodded and returned to my room.

When would he stop doing that…?

It had already been about five days since I came to the castle.

Nothing particularly happened.

The weather remained clear, the food was slightly bland, the Jester King occasionally came to visit me, and sometimes I visited him instead.

Along with falling techniques, I had started learning how to run…

There had also been a slight update to the paper where I had written down the names of the three kings.

It was nothing more than a note where I arbitrarily evaluated them under the title “Father Notebook.”

Since I had only seen the Thunder King and Jester King, it wasn’t very useful.

[Jester King. A liar. Sparkly. Pretty and wears too much makeup.]

[Thunder King. Someone I don’t really understand. Hard of hearing.]

[Big King. A gigantic mister. Scary.]

[Never seen.]

Writing things down on paper really did calm my mind.

It gave me the illusion that I had some control over my situation.

“Ughhh, there’s really nothing to do…”

There truly wasn’t much to do in the castle.

Aside from my lessons with the Thunder King, I occasionally read books or rode a pony.

Whenever people were needed, workers appeared from somewhere, but most of the enormous building was completely empty.

“Is this what castles are usually like?”

I had never lived in a castle before, so I had no way of knowing.

When I visited the Jester King’s palace, where he looked like he had just as little to do as me, I ended up muttering that question.

“I thought there were supposed to be four of you.”

The Jester King, the Thunder King, the giant king, and one more.

I hadn’t seen the Big King again after the first day, and the remaining one hadn’t shown even the tip of his nose.

“The Rock King doesn’t usually come outside. I haven’t seen his face in a while either. As for the Big King… well, he also stays in his room a lot, but it’s not usually this bad. He’s just busy these days.”

That was what the Jester King told me after hearing me complain.

Incidentally, his room had already turned into a pigsty.

It wasn’t because there was actual garbage or bugs crawling around.

Rather, his room was filled with all kinds of random objects piled on shelves, beneath chairs, on desks, under desks, inside trash cans, on top of trash cans, underneath trash cans, between trash cans—

Ironically, there were a lot of trash cans in his room—

and everywhere else, until the floor and furniture were no longer visible.

When I asked how a room could become like this in only three days, he answered:

“This is actually pretty clean right now. I did a huge cleaning because I wanted to invite you over. It took me six days just to get it to this state.”

“Is he very busy?”

“Out of the four of us, he’s definitely the busiest. Especially these days. He’s been searching through records thoroughly.”

“Records?”

“Yeah, remember that ridiculously tall tower you saw last time? It’s a huge library. Almost everything that happens here is recorded there.”

When he said here, the Jester King waved his arm widely.

I couldn’t tell whether he meant this castle, this country, or something else.

Judging by how broadly he gestured, it almost felt like he meant this entire world.

“There are personal records too… so he’s probably looking for clues about who your father is.”

“There are records that can tell something like that?”

“Of course. He’s checking who, nine months before you were born, did—”

The Jester King hesitated.

That was extremely rare for someone as smooth-talking as him.

“Who… planted a pomegranate tree.”

“A pomegranate tree?”

“Yeah. When two people who love each other hold hands and plant a pomegranate tree, a child grows on the tree nine months later.”

A pomegranate tree.

It seemed to be this region’s version of the cabbage patch or stork story.

I made a naïve little sound of amazement while secretly laughing at him.

What a ridiculous thing to say.

But he thought I was ten years old, so I suppose he couldn’t help it.

The thing was, I was already twelve years old.

I knew perfectly well where babies came from.

So he’s checking who kissed my mother nine months ago.

When a man and a woman kissed, a baby came out of the woman’s belly button nine months later.

Even I knew that much.

Besides, if planting a tree together created a child, there was no way I would have grown up somewhere outside this country.

It was far too clumsy of a lie to fool me.

However, there was one flaw.

The person who kissed my mother ten years ago probably isn’t my father.

Because of my mother’s pathological lack of interest in other people and my own bout with measles, everyone thought I was ten years old.

So the records they were searching through were probably from ten years ago.

But my actual age was twelve.

Searching through records from ten years ago would be completely pointless.