Third Arc: Twenty-Fourth Chapter

"I'm a background character, I'm..."

"Yo, Cosette. What are you doing? What've you got on your head?"

"Kwaaah! ...Oh, do pardon me!"

Had I ever been this irritated by Georg's inability to read the room? No, never. Georg's cluelessness, his artless nature, was supposed to be a soothing point about him. This was bad. I seemed to be quite badly rattled. Yes, so it couldn't be helped that I had let out an un-ladylike war cry. But I had surely covered it up, so there was no problem.

"This is called a hokkamuri. A time-honored ninja technique passed down from the Eastern lands. Well, never mind that, but I am not Cosette. I'm just a background character, so please leave me be."

Straightening my lace-handkerchief hokkamuri, I rattled it off, then backed away using the moonwalk I had secretly practiced in my youth. But Georg backed up with the same move without any trouble, calling out to me without the slightest reserve.

"What's a background character? Anyway, that guy turned out to be the king! Man, he looks hot, though."

"Yes, he does look hot. And your voice is too loud. ...More to the point, Georg! How can you do the moonwalk?! Do you have any idea how much I practiced...!"

And he was better at it than me. Had I ever been this irritated by Georg's inability to read the room... and so on.

"Now now, Cosette! Where are you off to?"

"Kwah..."

Just then, my arm, as I backed away with graceful footwork (or so it should have been), was seized in a firm grip. Dragged along by a black shadow that had crept up on me before I knew it, I was hauled right back into the middle of the ring of people.

"Is that an impression of a chicken? Ha ha! You really do always go off at some angle no one could predict!"

"Th-thank you very much."

Smiling brightly, Michael, despite his cheerful words, held my arm firmly from behind and stepped once more before Elliot and Lady Remie. What a thing. The eyes of everyone around were stabbing into me, a textbook background character. I'm about to have the life snuffed out of me by the beams from their stares.

"Who is that? So familiar with His Majesty the King..."

"Not a lady I recognize. But for His Majesty to bring her along to what you might call a semi-official occasion like this..."

"What is that slip of a girl. She isn't fit for the beautiful King Michael. The nerve."

The whispers I caught were terribly unfair. By any measure I looked like an alien being taken into custody, so why was I the one with the nerve? I wanted to shout that there was nothing improper between Michael and me, but not quite knowing where the border of the lèse-majesté sort of thing lay, I hesitated to open my mouth. As it was, by my own reckoning I stood right on the line of a lèse-majesté foul. I had no choice but to be careful.

And as I was turning over how I ought to behave, Michael dropped a bombshell that changed the mood of the whole place in an instant.

"Elliot, Lady Remie. And all of you! Allow me to introduce her properly. This is Lady Cosette. The one I love!"

"Fwoh?!"

"...Huh?" said Elliot and Remie as one.