MaruMA:Volume14:Short Story

Falling in Love

There’s only one guest tonight.

That is indeed what the lady owner of the inn said. That’s unsurprising, too, because although the location is by the roadside, no matter what it’s still isolated deep in the mountains, so there can’t be too many travelers passing by. The only people who would pass this area should probably be hunters, but the problem is hunting season is over too.

Add to that the fact that the weather has been rather bad since three days ago, and it keeps raining on and off too. I’m probably the only strange person who would come to this backwater place at such a gloomy time.

As for why I came to this sort of place, there’s no special reason.

My life is one of endless traveling. Although that sounds cool, what it really means is I wander around aimlessly.

I only walked all the way here back then because I thought I could cross this mountain, but instead the road stopped halfway. Still I’m in no hurry, and I don’t have any real destination, much less do I have any need to pull apart the branches and force my horse forward.

But it’s still quite the miracle to find an inn in this sort of place, I thought that in an isolated mountain area like this, there wouldn’t even be a hut for me to take shelter in. That’s why, even though this inn has worse facilities than a normal household, my feet sticking out of the simple bed, I still have no complaints.

Even if I’m delegated to the little room beside the kitchen, I’m fine with it.

According to what the middle-aged lady owner said, this is the only room that doesn’t have a leak, and the furniture in here are the only dry and clean ones. The words just now she added nonchalantly.

“There’s only one guest tonight.”

The lady owner takes me to a room that looks like the dining area, and after bringing out some food that makes me feel like suggesting, “Lend me your kitchen! Rather than eating something like this I’d rather cook for myself!”, she returns to her room on the second floor.

And then I hear the sound of a sturdy lock. Whatever, if she didn’t have that level of self-preservation, there’s no way she would be able to do business here, especially considering she’s just one woman.

I eat the tasteless, ration-like dinner, and drink the wine that’s pale in both color and flavor.

I have lived a long life as a soldier, so I’m long since used to food like this, but when I see the edible vegetables in the pantry with its doors open, I still feel a little empty inside.

Thinking, “Since you have these things, you could be able to make more decent food, right?”

But maybe it’s just I checked in at the wrong time. Because by now the sun has long since set, normal people would have retired to bed ages ago.

So I obediently return to my small room, drinking a bottle of wine I brought in on my own, planning to put myself to sleep earlier. I’m not in the mood to chat with what looks like a hard-headed human woman anyway.

But this wine is seriously hard to swallow, there’s no grape taste at all. Cursing how wine can be this tasteless, I lie on the bed listlessly, listening to the sound of the rain on the window. Just then, that guy arrives, knocking over pots and pans non-stop.

Listening to the loud sounds from across the thin walls, I even thought that the lady owner’s husband or lover is trying to sneak in. But next door is the kitchen, would her husband or lover need to enter through the kitchen?

So I think it must be a thief or a hungry animal. This deep in the mountains, it wouldn’t be surprising even if wild boars or bears found their way in. Or it could be a stupid lost thief, forced by hunger, throwing caution to the winds and running in here.

Anyway, if it dares to step into this room, be it a human or animal, I’m going to slash it with my sword. That tragic dinner and water-like wine tonight has already put my mood at rock bottom.

But this intruder sure is polite, even starting to pick up the overturned pots and pans, moving carefully to make sure the people in the house don’t notice, only making slight noises.

Hey hey hey, you already raised such a ruckus on the way in, there’s no reason to start cleaning up now, right?

The reason why the lady owner on the second floor didn’t come down, is probably not because she’s so dead asleep she can’t hear the noises, but for self-preservation. After all, showing her face carelessly could endanger her life. Perhaps she assumes the thief will leave after deducing there’s not much to take. For all I know she may have experienced such things many times before.

The intruder is completely unaware of all this, still trying to hide its tracks. What kind of idiot is this, and where from? Is it human? A monkey or ape that has been trained strictly, and has really good manners?

Grumpy over the tasteless wine, I grab my sword and walk out of the room. It’s not like I want to protect the lady owner, nor do I want to reduce the damage to the inn, I just want to see what that fella looks like.

I have to admit, honestly, I’m a little drunk.

It’s just that I didn’t think that in this place when I haven’t even decided my destination, deep in the mountains where the rain won’t stop either, I would actually bump into a familiar face.

And we haven’t met just once or twice either, but so many times you could call it twisted fate.

There’s no way I would mistake Nigel Weiss Will-Never-Die Maxine. After all, this guy’s ‘undying legend’ started with me.

“Maxine, what the hell are you doing?”

His expression looks like his soul flew out of his mouth in an instant, finally dispersing my bad mood over the horrible weather these past few days and making me laugh.

Maxine, with that Shou Shimaron soldier’s special stupid hairdo and strange beard, is sprawled on the floor, picking up the pots and pans that have scattered everyone. This drenching wet hair is like a powerless squirrel’s tail, his untrimmed stubble like a farm in early spring.

Although he’s a thirty-year-old man dressed strangely, but the reason he barged in here is just like the brats running around on the streets. Still, all he can say is the truth.

“I’m hungry.”

Trespassing into an inn just because you’re hungry? Please, you’re not young anymore, and you’re the soldier of a large country, looting and plundering in a place outside of the battlefield, that’s just too much. If you want to eat then you have to pay for it, take your money to a restaurant, duh. Sacking a civilian residence, you think you’re a black bear that forgot to hibernate!?

But I’m not Maxine’s father, neither am I his superior officer, so I have no responsibility to train him into a good soldier. All I do is hold my stomach and laugh my head off, then throw a carrot from the pantry to him, telling him into eat. What surprises me is that the guy actually picks up and starts munching away, I’ve decided to call him Little Pony Boy from now on.

Just as Maxine is munching away at the carrot, the cheerful atmosphere quickly disappears.

This is not my first time seeing this sight, this is exceedingly normal on the battlefield. No, even the raw vegetables and not-yet-rotten rations are considered good. If it were the harsh frontlines, even the worms or roots in the ground would be dug up and eaten. I never heard what it’s like on the enemy side, but it shouldn’t be that different.

But this isn’t the battlefield neither is it a junkyard, instead it’s a rainy day in the quiet mountains, plus there’s food as well as pots here.

“Just how hungry are you?”

No matter close you are, you might not necessarily know someone else’s eating preferences. For all I know this guy really likes eating raw vegetables, or maybe he believes carrots are for eating raw.

But I still take back the red vegetable in Maxine’s heads, and find a kitchen knife from the kitchen cabinet.

I said it before, I’m a little drunk.

Everyone has some strange behavior after they get drunk.

Like cleaning up the storage room they rarely use, or writing a letter to someone they decided not to meet for the rest of their lives, these are things they would never do if they were sober. The scariest thing is that before they get sober, they will believe it’s an excellent thing to do.

I know one man who would start knitting things when drunk, and was accepted as a disciple by his childhood friend the next morning, so from then on he had no choice but to respectfully call her ‘Master’. The relationship between the two seemed to have been decided then.

Drunk on one bottle of pale wine, I unsurprisingly do something unimaginable.

I start cooking in the inn’s kitchen, and for Maxine no less. But also for myself, since all that laughing just made me hungrier.  

Being so hungry he wasn’t against breaking and entering into an inn, the way Maxine eats is quite terrifying, even the hungry children I tend to see during wartime are no match for him. He can’t even bother with the dining table, directly biting the biscuit in place of bread on the kitchen’s messy cooking counter, his hands holding the bowl of soup as he drinks, as though he doesn’t even have the time to grab a spoon.

I stir the pot of stewed vegetables, taken aback by his terrifying appetite.

What’s up with these Shou Shimaron soldiers? Don’t they have army rations?

Having finally filled his stomach, Maxine raises his head from the plate. Maybe he choked on the soup, because he coughs with tears in his eyes. It’s only when he eventually stops coughing that he murmurs,

“So delicious.”

“Well then, th…”

Whoa whoa, that was close, I almost thanked him.

“Especially this stewed rabbit.”

From tomorrow onwards let’s call him Little Pony Boy.

But at least he doesn’t only eat raw carrots.

Maxine harrumphs with his nose, confirming the smell of leftovers in the pot. Maybe it’s just me, but his limp squirrel tail seems to have recovered its spirits too.

“In our hometown village, there’s a woman who can cook really well. The way you stew carrots is exactly the same.”

And I was wondering what this guy wanted to say.

So I pull out a chair, take my plate and sit opposite the Shou Shimaron man. I’m not hungry anymore, the disgusting pale wine’s aftertaste lingering on the tip of my tongue.

“Don’t talk about such scary things with me, I’ve never been to your hometown.”

“And I never said your food tastes the same.”

“Nonsense. Goodness~~ I’m feeling a little chilly.”

“The meat is really delicious too. Only today… did I find out that your cooking is so good.”

“But I don’t know what meat that is, though.”

The truth is I do know. Although it was processed until the original look was completely lost so it could be preserved, it’s still pretty decent venison. There should be hunters in charge of hunting deer and rabbits nearby, those are all prey you don’t have to worry will fight back.

As I stab the meat in the plate, I glance at the pantry – looking for a bottle of wine.

Even if it’s pale and disgusting, it’s still wine. That’s how people drink too much, and then before they know it they’re drunk.

Maxine doesn’t care what I think at all, walking to the pot to refill his third bowl of soup. Thank goodness, now I don’t have to see the food scraps on his beard.

“Although the way you roast it is different, but the meat you use is the same as that woman.”

“Is that so?”

“She said it’s high quality beef.”

You’ve been conned.

“Her cooking is really the best, she can make the meat all soft and tasty and wonderful. That woman’s secret is using special spices, no one in the village can learn it from her.”

“I see.”

“Although she doesn’t look that good, but her culinary skills are really incomparable. She always says one day she will save up the money to start her own shop.”

“That happens a lot.”

Looking at the last bottle of wine, my attention can’t help but be drawn to it. Then Maxine suddenly springs a random line, “…At first I planned to marry her.”

“Oopph!”

This time I’m the one who chokes, as expected it sucks to have soup in your windpipe.

But that guy is already over thirty years old, and he’s an elite soldier who can lead a team, so it’s not too surprising if he had one or two fiancées… But can a man who breaks into an inn in his hunger really be called elite?

Maxine doesn’t mind me and my thoughts going all over the place, continuing his narration of his past. And those are all stories he would never speak of if he wasn’t drunk, I think he’s drunk on carrots.

“At first I planned to make a big splash on my first campaign, and then bring home medals and reward money. I promised to use that money for her shop. My family has been soldiers for generations, I thought it’d a great thing to have a wife with a special skill.”

“Your first campaign? When was that? How old were you then?”

If I remember correctly, the first time I saw him this guy was about fourteen or fifteen. Just as I mentioned, the one who started his ‘undying legend’ is me, and the place we fought wasn’t on Shou Shimaron land. That was a rash loss by a foolish commander leading a bunch of rookie soldiers.

“Fourteen.”

“As I thought.”

“She was four years older than me, she just turned eighteen.”

I keep getting the feeling that… as expected, you were conned.

He was talking about marriage at fourteen years old, how do humans mature so young? Fourteen-year-old mazokus are nothing more than kids, they can’t even be called manpower on the battlefield, neither could they be allowed to hold a sword. Forget the battlefield, they could only do basic training even at the soldier academy.

“Marriage, huh~~ But taking such a happy promise with you onto the battlefield, doesn’t sound very lucky. The more you boast about it to your comrades, the more likely something unfortunate might happen to you. Just like me, I got engaged before going onto the battlefield, and as a result I nearly lost my life, it’s true. In that case, why are you fine?”

He lowers his shoulders dejectedly, his hands holding the bowl and his head lowered. His hair that looked like a ponytail before, goes back to looking like a depressed squirrel.

“I never told anyone about it.”

“Hah? Then that was very modest of you, how unlike you.”

“It’s not that. Although her cooking skills were excellent… But not only wasn’t she pretty, her eyebrows are three times thicker than a man’s.”

“Three times…”

“And her voice is so deep it’s not at all like a woman’s, plus she’s one head taller than me.”

I feel as though he was conned really badly.

“S-so how did it end? I don’t know whether you got any reward money, but anyway you made it back alive, and happily married her, right?”

“By the time I got back to the village, she had long since been married.”

“What!?”

Nigel Weiss Maxine’s undying legend began then.

“I only found out afterward, that even if she’s not pretty, has a deep voice and is very tall, she’s still as popular with the men as the other women. The moment they eat her food, anyone will become her slave, and will obsess over her… even if her eyebrows are three times thicker.”

“Okay…”

I don’t dare to suggest that maybe that person isn’t a woman, so I just put the wine bottle I took out against the lamp light.

So there is that sort of thing. No matter what kind of woman the other party is, there would be someone who falls irreversibly in love with her; even if a woman is so beautiful it’s like she’s not from this world, there are still times she can’t find love; even if it’s a woman whose looks have nothing to do with ‘beauty’, there will still be people who find her cute; even if it’s a perfect woman with no flaws, after being with her for some time they might discover that their personalities do not go along.

Before you fall in love, you won’t know why you love the other person. Even if you’re faced with a woman everyone praises, you might not necessarily be moved by the part of her everyone praises. Although in the end you will accept everything about her, and love her everything, that first wavering of the heart will be different for everybody.

It could be the eyes, it could be the voice, it could even be the lips, or that person’s graceful actions in that moment.

But for me, it’s none of that.

Putting down the transparent wine bottle, I pull out the crumbling, soft cork. There’s some sediment at the bottom of the bottle, I pray with all of my heart that the wine won’t be too tasteless this time.

“Cooking skills can indeed capture a person’s heart.”

“What, did you use your skills to make a woman head over heels in love with you too?”

Maybe he wants to use eating as a way to remove the sadness in his heart, because Maxine starts chomping down again. If someone were to walk in on this scene, seeing two old men eating opposite each other, they would definitely find it extremely disgusting.

After all it’s midnight , and on the kitchen counter too.

“Wrong, I was the one who fell in love with her.”

There are a million ways for a couple to meet, such as childhood friends, or an arrangement by their parents, but that’s not how I met her, because we didn’t know each other’s families. Until now, those guys still think we met on a tour of the capital or a ball.

That’s not the truth.

We weren’t wearing clothes beautiful enough to join the queen’s balls, neither were we at a place where blue-blooded aristocrats would meet.

I was wearing slightly a dirty uniform, she was wearing childish cotton pajamas, and she even tucked in her top like a child afraid of getting her stomach cold. I don’t know whether other women like to wear such unsexy pajamas, but she dressed like that even though she’s obviously an adult.

I was also just a young soldier, wearing my thin army uniform, without a single rank badge on my body. As a not-too-serious rookie I had slipped out from the nearly non-stop morning-to-night practical training.

Because I was hungry.

“Just like you right now, I snuck into the nearby castle. But I didn’t knock over any pots and pans.”

“Don’t you have food in the army?”

“You should know what military training is like, right? There’s no fear because there aren’t any enemies, so they use other methods to pressure the soldiers, otherwise there won’t be any meaning to the training. Things like the geography, the weather, hunger, anyway the army doesn’t care if it goes up to ten days, there won’t be any supplies given during the training period. Although it’s not to the point of eating poisonous mushrooms, snakes and frogs are expected sources of food. Still, if you pretend they’re chicken, they still taste pretty decent.”

But it’s not that easy for us to catch that many reptiles and amphibians either, so the young soldiers are always hungry, and can’t even fall asleep that easily when it’s time to call it a day. Therefore I left that group of starving young men with grumbling stomachs, and went into the forest at night searching for food. Technically this is a serious offense, and would warrant a heavy punishment, but even if my superior officer found out about it, he wouldn’t dare to make me accountable because I’m a noble.

Anyway I was being cheeky, and set my target on somewhere I can return to the troop back in time from. I found some light in a corner of a huge shadow, so I ducked past many guards and slipped in from the window, but I never expected that to be the kitchen of the Wincott castle.

The Wincott soldiers were always famous for their bravery and stubborn strength, even those without maryoku were excellent in their combat skills, especially when it comes to their fists and feet, no one else can hope to compare. That’s why the guards protecting the castle should all have been brave and powerful experts.

Thinking back now, the fact that I had managed to avoid surveillance and break into the kitchen back then, is probably nothing short of a miracle. Maybe God had a sudden interest that day, to allow me to meet her.

Suzanna Julia was in there—the kitchen of the Wincott castle.

“Who’s there?”

Maybe she had smelled some strange scent, Julia poked her body put from the kitchen counter to ask.

And she even turned her body towards me, her face turned in my direction too, I couldn’t tell at all that there was anything wrong with her vision. Especially since she wasn’t at all uneasy or surprise, asking me once more calmly,

“I don’t know, who are you?”

“Sorry, I’m not some suspicious character…”

I really was an idiot, one foot on the windowsill, and even meeting a young girl in the middle of the night, how could that not be suspicious. Suddenly remembering what I’m doing, I decided to give up on explaining, it’d only get worse. At times like this, it’s best to be honest.

Tell her I snuck in for food.

“The truth is, I’m hungry…”

“Me too!”

Julia suddenly said happily, walking around the kitchen counter over to me.

“But whenever I say I want to eat supper, the others will nag me, saying things like eating so late at night isn’t something girls should do. My little brother can eat anything any time, hmph. But my little brother is still young, so he falls immediately asleep once he’s finished eating.”

“Um…”

“So I can’t eat like my little brother, and adults can’t sleep immediately after eating. Besides I have to practice majutsu too, if I were to oversleep and miss my martial arts training that’d be bad. Because the martial arts teacher keeps trying everything to kick me out of classes… Oh dear, you’re…”

She talked up a river, and touched my clothes brazenly. As though to confirm something, her palm moves from my collar to my shoulder, and then towards my chest. I felt like she was a really brazen woman, but her aura made me unable to retort anything.

“Not from here.”

“I’m a soldier, I really am a Shin Makoku soldier.”

She murmured, “Good point, that’s right,” and removed her hand from my chest. After she helped me fix my collar that had been messed up by the tree branches, she reaches out her hand and puts it on my stomach,

“And you’re hungry, too.”

That was my first time looking at her face up close.

Suzanna Julia was a praise-worthy woman. Everyone praised the young lady of the von Wincott family, saying she was beautiful and kind.

Even though I didn’t know who she was, I still thought she was perfect, flawless. Her sky blue eyes were very beautiful, and her lips, smiling a little mischievously, were also very cute.

It’s just that for a woman her age, she lacked a little grace, you could even say she was slightly rough, but all that I only found out after I knew her for a long time.

But back then I hadn’t fallen in love.

We were just hungry young people, the same kind who would sneak into the kitchen for supper. So why not follow our wishes, and complete our objectives?

That night, we used all the ingredients in the kitchen, and then ate it all. The hungry soldier and the princess with the empty stomach sat opposite each other beside the not-too-pretty large kitchen counter, filling our stomachs before sunbreak and then went our separate ways.

No one noticed me and I successfully left the castle, returning to the army. It was only when we moved out during the daytime that I realized not only did I not shake her hand, I didn’t even ask for her name.

“And after that you never met that woman again?”

Maxine asks, soup dribbling down his beard, but this time he uses a spoon. Maybe it’s because he’s not that hungry anymore, so he’s finally in the mood to use cutlery.

“How can that be, she’s my fiancée after all.”

“What, how did she turn from a regular encounter to your fiancée?”

“Because she remembered my cooking.”

After that I snuck into the Wincott castle often, it was only on the second day I found out her name was Suzanna Julia. I also stated my identity to her, but even if she knew my identity, she only let me into the kitchen. I mean, only there did we have anything to do.

“Forget the bedroom, I never even went to the living room and the gardens. We only met in the kitchens deep in the night, chatting as we feasted.”

Upon hearing that I wasn’t invited to her bedroom, Maxine suddenly has an expression of triumph. I don’t care what you think, you carrot drunkard. You’re a human who matured early and was conned by a woman at fourteen years old, unlike us, content with what we had.

The rookie soldier training finally over, I visited every corner of the country as an officer in training, while at the same time learning how to cook in the barracks. My interest turned to recreating the food I was served at different places, and the local desserts.

“And thanks to that, our kitchen dates became even more fulfilling…”

“No matter how, no matter how I hear it, I still don’t think you’ll get into a boy-girl relationship with that woman!”

Holding the soup spoon in his right hand, Maxine yells out loudly. Even though you’re supposed to become calmer after filling your stomach, to think this guy throws tantrums even after eating, he’s so hard to please.

“Of course we would.”

“How did it happen? When!?”

Even if he asks that, since I’m not Julia, I can’t understand how her feelings changed. But I remember my own feelings clearly, as though I had recorded a journal solemnly every day, the impressions burned deep into my mind.

How the rookie officer von Grantz Adalbert fell in love with Suzanna Julia.

“The reason I fell in love with her…”

 

Since Julia couldn’t see, she used all her body’s senses to eat. She would bring the bowl in front of her to savor the aroma, use her cheeks and forehead to feel the rising steam, use her hands to touch the soup and determine the texture of the food, and then she would use the silver spoon to lightly tap it apart, Her movements were very light, but completely unhesitant.

That day I used a method I just learned to make my first dish, the ingredients being large, hard shellfish and white fish meat. The Wincott area was really far from the seaside, so they wouldn’t eat anything without cooking it properly first.

“It smells so good! Goodness~~ I feel it’s such a waste that you became a soldier.”

As usual, Julia used her entire body to taste the food. When her white finger touched the steaming hot bowl, that instant when the brown soup dirties her—maybe she couldn’t resist the fragrant food, or maybe it was an accidental action.

That was the moment I fell in love with Suzanna Julia.

“She actually ate it with her hands, even pinching the food with her fingers, like a child with bad manners. But when she was drinking the soup, she immediately realized that her actions were unbefitting a lady. At first I thought she would be embarrassed, but instead she held her stomach and laughed. As she was laughing she worried that the fish would go cold, so she still pinched it with her fingers for her second bite. And to match her, I picked up the piping hot shellfish with my hands too. Once I leave this castle, I live a rough military campaign life, so it wasn’t strange at all for me to eat with my hands. But Julia was different, although she was manlier than I imagined, and strong with her fists and legs, she was still the precious princess of the Wincott family, so she can’t do something as rude as eating with her hands in front of her father.”

Suzanna Julia cleaned off everything on the plate, and then laughed heartily as she said,

“How annoying, Adalbert. I only get like this when I’m eating with you, y’know!”

“It’s better that way. If you were to act like this in front of your father, he might choke on a prawn.”

“That’s right. Speaking of my father, he’s already arranged my marriage for me.”

I asked, “You’re already at a marriageable age, huh?”

Because I was only an officer, still wet behind the ears, and Julia was younger than me, to me engagements and marriages were all very far away. But some aristocrats treat marriage as a method to strengthen relationships, those marriages have nothing to do with age.

But she seems to be against that method too, shaking her head with her mouth shut,

“No, I’m not at that age yet. My majutsu and martial arts aren’t mature enough yet, even if I enlist I wouldn’t be an independent soldier. So I told Father, I think marriage and love are still too early for me as I am now. Even if I will reach that stage eventually, I have long since had a partner in my heart.”

Just a while before that, in that moment just a few breaths earlier, I had fallen in love with Suzanna Julia, so I felt a little dejected as I asked instinctively,

“Who is it?”

“Who’s there--!”

A bucket and cursing fly at me at the same time.

The inn’s lady owner is standing at the door furiously, her right hand fiercely brandishing a machete.

She thought that it had gotten quiet downstairs, so she came down to see the situation, only to smell cooking from the kitchen, as well as sounds of conversation. Just as she thought it shouldn’t be robbers, her fury finally explodes—

“Hi~~ Lady owner, sorry to frighten you. This guy here is my comrade…”

“Get the hell out of here--!”

Hey, hold on a sec! You want to chase us out into the rain in the middle of the night!?

Nigel and I don’t have the time to protest before we’re chased out the back door, my sword and little luggage thrown out behind us. I haven’t sobered yet, so I don’t have the strength to debate with a human gone berserk, all I can do is just sit in the mud with a silly smile.

From the moment I saw this guy, the laughter I’ve been accumulating for so long starts acting up again. That’s a laughter you only hear from ten-year-old children, geez.

Weathering the rain, Maxine bends down and asks, looking at my face,

“How did that woman reply?”

“I forgot what she said. Anyway that was a long time ago.”

The truth is I haven’t forgotten, I think I’ll never forget until the moment I die. Looking surprised, she had said--

 

“You, of course.”

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