That night, I got angry at my sister, asking why she hadn’t just told me in advance if she was dating, why she made me out to be a clueless intruder among her older siblings.
Primrose just smiled without a hint of apology.
“Did I really have to say it out loud?”
“What are you talking about? How was I supposed to know if you never said anything?”
“Couldn’t you see it?”
“See what?”
“That he likes me. That I like him. Hey, stuff like that is obvious even if you don’t say it. Why didn’t you know? You were always with us.”
I was so taken aback by her confident attitude that I was left speechless. Aunt, since when was love something visible? It was just a feeling of the heart, formless, an abstract emotion.
How was I supposed to know it? Honestly, there were times Primrose was so annoyingly arrogant that I wanted to smack her if she had been my younger sibling.
Now that I’ve told you all this, Aunt, you must have caught on by now?
Aunt Marilyn, the one who was actually supposed to write this letter was Primrose, not me. Since she was dating a thick-forearmed Reutlingen boy, there would have been plenty of fun things to tell, right? As for me, I grew even more bored because my sister was busy hanging out with Leon all the time.
Still, I didn’t resent Leon. He was a good guy. Perhaps he felt sorry for taking my sister away from me, so he started trying to find if there was any twelve-year-old boy nearby who could be my friend. But Primrose immediately put a stop to his well-meaning attempt.
“Leave it, Leon. Hyacinth’s just a kid, but she’s so picky with high standards.”
“What do you mean, what kind of taste? I’ll look for someone our little miss might like.”
“It won’t be easy. She’s really classy and weird. Since she was four, she’s been infatuated with the portrait of Reutlingen’s second prince, hoarding it like a treasure. These days, she seems to fancy that knight Arthur Millon or Gillon or something, who left to wait for the princess. She’s collecting every portrait of him that comes into the store.”
“Ah, so Hyacinth liked blondes?”
“I guess so. But not just any blond. She’s so finicky, she only goes crazy for that pale platinum color you rarely see in Winzerton. Don’t we lack any handsome boy around here with that color of blond hair?”
“Hmm, that color is rare in Reutlingen too. Hyacinth, do you really insist on only that hair color?”
Leon asked me with a surprisingly serious look on his face, so I nodded hesitantly. I wasn’t actually fixated on that color. Contrary to how my sister acted like she knew everything, I wasn’t some kid obsessed with light platinum blond. I simply liked looking at people who shone brightly.
But did I really need to explain all that to Leon? I wasn’t even interested in playing with boys in the first place. My sister Primrose and I were sisters, but we were truly different—she’d been dating local kids since she was five, while I never bothered.
She shook her head at me like she couldn’t understand.
“Anyway, that little thing sure has a strangely firm ideal type.”
I almost blurted out, “Look who’s talking, you only ever chase after big, burly guys with thick arms and chestnut hair,” but I held back. Leon might feel hurt if he heard that.
I didn’t want to interfere with their romance. It was worth celebrating that my sister finally found her perfect match.
It was also good for me that my sister had a boyfriend. I used to find it annoying whenever she wanted me to go out with her, but now I didn’t have to be dragged along to outside activities that didn’t suit me.
It also wasn’t like we lost our time spent telling silly jokes together. Leon stayed busy working as a smith’s assistant until dusk, so during lunchtime we still had our sisterly time alone.
That day was one of those days. It was the day something finally happened that I could write to you about, Aunt—a “fun” event.
We went to the edge of the western forest for lunch. As you know, my sister was eager to make me walk more. That day, she nagged that walking, though tiring, was good, so we strolled farther than usual.
It wasn’t so bad. Both of us sisters liked the bluebell hill at the western forest’s very edge. Uncle Shawn told us not to go there, since it lay beyond the barrier and was dangerous and deserted, but Primrose liked danger, and I loved how, due to that rumored danger, the place was empty and quiet.
We sat on a field dotted with wildflowers and opened the lunch bundle Uncle Shawn packed for us. I was holding a handful of tiny pine cones, about the size of sparrows, that I’d picked up on our walk, and I gave them to Primrose.
“I checked for bugs, so one for me, one for you. And give one to Leon later.”
“Leon? Sure, I’ll give one to Leon.”
She clasped and unclasped the prickly scales of the pine cone for a while, not seeming bothered by the rough edges, gazing at it for a moment before smiling brightly.
“Hyacinth, did you know that? When the moisture dried up, these pointy scales all opened up. And they became thick like a ball.”
As Aunt knows, I love stories like that. But my sister was the kind of person who sneered at my habit of enjoying such little details, calling it sentimental.
Yet, that sister got excited over a single pine cone and laughed. As if it was so fascinating that a pine cone would grow bigger when its moisture evaporated, even though it was obvious and simple.
“So stubbornly keeping its mouth shut, then opening up all at once. Then you could see that light caramel-colored flesh inside the chocolate-brown scales. It showed everything that had been closed up and turned soft. That is….”
“That is?”
“That is just like me after meeting Leon.”
So in the end, it was a pink chat from a sister who had fallen in love. For me, who had never been in love, it was a soft conversation I could not understand.
No matter how much I liked trivial, tiny, and cute things, this was hard to accept. I’m sure Aunt understood that I did not want to see such a side of my real sister.
So just when I was about to ask what nonsense she was spewing, telling her to go off and talk to the pine cone alone, not to say weird stuff in front of me…
I heard a rustling sound from the other side of the forest, where dark-green spruce trees grew row upon row. That was the border of the village, the end of the barrier.
I did not think it might be a monster. I was expecting maybe a fawn to pop out. The sound was like that. A cautious yet clumsy hint of someone’s presence.
You know. The movements of such a delicate creature were entirely different from the noises of a large being like a monster. Even the sound itself felt friendly and affectionate.
Perhaps my sister had the same thought. Convinced it could not be a monster, we stood up carefully and peered over.
So, when a long shadow fell across the bluebell field, both my sister and I were startled. It was a person’s shadow. And a very, very big person. The silhouette was longer than a roe deer and bigger than a bison.
Immediately, the owner of that shadow appeared in our line of sight. That person was silver. He reflected the sunlight with his entire body, shining like a mirror. It was because he wore glossy silver armor.
Aunt knows, of course, that a person did not just sparkle that much by wearing something like iron. But that armor was nothing like the cheap, half-baked metal lumps mixed with bronze we saw in the capital’s streets, the haphazard chain mail under heavy armor that only covered half the body.
His closed helmet covered his entire face. Over the chain mail that trailed his long body was an expensive full plate armor that covered him from head to toe. On his shoulders, a delicately crafted myrtle pattern caught my eye. Some parts were even gilded.
It was beautiful.
Despite being fully armed, it did not feel scary. Though I had seen knights in armor before, I felt strangely as if I was looking at something unfamiliar.
Why did it feel so strange?
Because it was expensive armor?
No… there was something else.
I took a step forward to examine him more closely. At that moment, Primrose grabbed my shoulder.
“Ah, Sis. I just… that shining armor….”
“Hey, Hyacinth. You really…. I knew you liked pretty, shiny things, but this isn’t the time….”
“No, Sis. That’s not it. Look at the armor.”
I cut off Primrose’s words and pointed to the silver armor with my finger.
Aunt, you know as well. Armor always had flaws, no matter how expensive. Even if the knight was young and had no real battle experience, he would have at least tried some jousting. Rolling around like that, the armor would get scratches. Dents, dings, and marks here and there.
But the silver plate armor that person wore had none of those traces. Yet it was not brand new either, which was curious.
Scratches from brushing against branches while pushing through the forest, rust built up by enduring the wind and rain outside for so long—such things created a subtle blur on the shining silver armor.
Because of that, the armor, like a poor-quality mirror, only faintly reflected the mud, insects, and fallen leaves on the ground, while reflecting the glittering sunlight in the sky vividly. Hence it seemed magical in its beauty.
The strange part was that nowhere on that armor, layered with the passage of time, was there any sign of combat, as opposed to everyday life. Primrose was no fool, so as soon as she turned her head to follow my finger and saw the armor, she realized the source of that odd feeling.
“He might not be… a knight?”
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