Third Arc: Third Chapter

The border town of Medius was bustling with people. Being right on the border, it was where nearly all the travelers and merchants coming from both Lumelica and Altria stopped along the way. The clothes of the people passing by had an international feel to them, and there was a faint sense of the many peoples who live in Lumelica. Well, this was my first time going to Lumelica, so I was only guessing.

Aiming at the tourists and merchants, stalls lined the main street even though there was no festival on, and they called out busily to the people going past. Apparently a festival is held in autumn, and next to the crowds then, an off-season day like today counts as quiet.

Everything we saw felt new and unusual, and having climbed down from the carriage, we walked along looking this way and that. The carriage had gone on ahead to the inn with Sissi aboard, so here there were only Lady Julia, Dora, and me, plus the guards following a little way behind.

"Sending the carriage on to the inn was a good idea, wasn't it! Look, those little trinkets that shop is selling. Aren't they darling!"

"Oh my! What a design, I've never seen the like! And this craftwork here is so interesting..."

Lumelica is a relay point for trade between many countries, so all sorts of things gather there. Of course there were plenty of trade goods from all across Altria too, and those were sold here in Medius as well.

There were seashells and coconut-shell crafts you would never see in the royal capital of Almenia, so far from the sea. I spotted a hair ornament, a beautifully colored spiral shell with small white shells scattered around it, and I gently picked it up.

"Oh, Lady Cosette. What a lovely hair ornament. The back of the shell shines in rainbow colors. It's so pretty."

"Rainbow colors..."

At Lady Julia's words I stared hard at the ornament again, and sure enough the back of the shell shone in rainbow colors, catching and throwing back the light. The shell was very pretty on its own. But if it shone in rainbow colors, that meant...

"Say, can't you get pearls from this kind of shell?"

"Pearls...? Mi... milady, what are... pearls?"

When I spoke to the shopgirl, her smiling face changed all at once, and she answered haltingly, looking puzzled. She had the dark wheat-colored skin that hinted at southern blood and sun-browned red-brown hair, and she lowered her brows and tilted her head.

Hmm. Maybe this shell isn't a pearl oyster. I had assumed shells meant pearls, but... In my past life I owned a pearl necklace and the like for weddings and funerals, but I had never seen an actual pearl oyster outside of television.

"You don't have any...? They're little white round beads. Oh, and there are black ones too."

As I told her this, thinking it over, she clapped her hands together.

"Ohh! Do you maybe mean paruru? The white round ones... I've got some around here somewhere, I think... huh?"

Saying it as if it had just come to her, she started rummaging around in her clothes, turning her pockets inside out. I watched her closely, but...

I mean, if these paruru are pearls... she keeps them loose in her pocket? That casually? Pearls fetch a pretty good price, you know. In my past life I remember buying one with the secret savings I had quietly squirreled away, and it near broke my heart to spend the money. Then I wrapped it in soft cloth so it wouldn't get scratched, put it in a case, and kept it ever so carefully.

And those pearls... in a pocket, you say!

After rustling around in her pockets for a while, the girl finally found what she was after in her back pocket. She set it on her small, slightly rough palm and showed it to me with a beaming smile.

"Found it! This is it, right?!"

On her palm was, without a doubt, a pearl. Not a perfect circle, though, but a slightly lopsided oval. It was a bracelet strung from these slightly lopsided pearls. Made to fit the girl's arm, it had small shells and bits of coral tied onto it too, and it was very cute.

"You, you sacrilegious little...!"

"Hawuh?! I-I'm sorry?!"

"...Huh?! Did something just take over my mind?! ...Sorry, it's nothing."

No, no. I couldn't hold back the cry of my soul. To a girl like this, of all people, what was I doing.

The girl had frozen stiff at my shout, so I hurriedly apologized and patted her head, and she soon got her smile back. I took the bracelet from her again and studied the pearls closely.

"So, these are called paruru. ...It's a very cute bracelet. Did you make it yourself?"

"Yeah! I made it! Paruru are all over the place back home, just lying around!"

It hit me like a bolt of lightning.

"What... was that!"

"Lady Cosette, your language."

"Hah! What was that, I say! ...No. I mean, what did you just say?!"

At Lady Julia's jab I hastily said it over, but my shock was surely only natural. Pearls lying around on the ground... what a thing. Should something as grand as a pearl be treated so shabbily? No, of course it shouldn't. Otherwise my secret savings would have died for nothing!

Once I had more or less recovered from the shock, I meant to ask the girl about it in detail, but the sun was already dipping low and the time to head for the inn was near. We promised to stop by her shop again the next day, and though it was hard to tear ourselves away, we left.