The Scent Was Never Perfume

"Please."

Chesian was a man who had fought his way through swarms of zombies with no magic to his name, trusting nothing but the antibodies in his blood. Even that valiant Chesian was a little afraid now.

"Can't you just wash like a normal person?"

He had brought the zombie to the lake, and she kept bobbing on the surface like a corpse.

Why is she doing that?

She had gone all the way out into the deep water, so why insist on floating around up top? He was only human; the behavior itself made no sense to him. But the part he truly could not understand was this.

"At least lift your head."

She had to. She absolutely had to plant her face in the water.

It might have been one thing if the two of them had the lakeshore to themselves. This, however, was a place where people came and went.

"Looks like someone's dumping a body."

"Shh, darling. Pretend you didn't see."

I can hear every word, you know.

Did that zombie have any idea how many passing carriages had stopped at the sight of her drifting on the lake like a drowning victim?

"Is that your lover? Do not despair! I shall save her!"

And every so often, someone appeared who was determined to rescue her.

"My lover just likes the water."

"But her head is nearly shoved under, is it not?"

"Must one really look out of the water in order to wash?"

"......?"

"I consider that a prejudice."

The man stared at Chesian as if he were looking at a lunatic. His eyes said that nowhere in all the world did anyone wash with their face jammed into the water like that.

For a good while Chesian fended people off with excuses that barely held together. Only when their interest had finally ebbed did he hurry over and haul in the zombie still bobbing on the surface.

Whereupon the zombie, who had kept her nose buried in the water all this time—

"Kyaa!"

—jerked her face up.

Drip. Drip. Her hair was soaked through, water falling from it in steady drops, and the droplets caught on her lashes glittered in the light. The clothes she wore clung to her body, wet enough to look almost sensual.

"Why are your cheeks puffed up like that?"

Chesian didn't register any of it. What snagged him was that the cheeks which had been hollow when she went in had come back round and swollen.

The zombie stole a glance at him, then carefully worked her jaw.

"Crunch. Nom, nom."

At that dreadful sound, Chesian's face went pale.

"Are you eating rocks?"

Today, too, he busily pried her mouth open and pulled the stones out. When little fish came popping from between them, he muttered, sick to death of the whole business.

"Is a fishbowl your dream?"

"This is the room."

Led by a maid through the Imperial Palace into the chamber where Princess Isabel had lived, Alpheus felt his expression turn strange.

"If there is something you are looking for......"

"I mean only to see whether anything here might serve as a clue to her disappearance. Nothing in particular."

He said it without so much as a change of face, and the maid nodded, unsuspecting.

"Then if any question arises while you look, you need only call for me."

"Very well. You may go."

The maid bowed respectfully and withdrew.

Click— tap, tap, tap......

The moment the door shut and her footsteps faded, Alpheus covered his face with his hands.

"I am not in my right mind."

His relations with the Emperor had never been good, and he disliked coming to the Imperial Palace even when duty required it.

"I must be mad, walking in here of my own accord."

That he had entered this palace of his own will was so hard to believe that a hollow laugh escaped him. The reason he had come was absurd.

Yesterday, after yet another search that had gone nowhere, he had forced his sleepless body to lie down—days without rest already behind him—when a thought struck.

How did Princess Isabel live in the Imperial Palace?

They had met every week for a long time, of course. But there had been almost no conversation between them, and so he knew nothing of how Isabel lived. The thought clung to him until the sun rose, and on impulse Alpheus had come to the palace.

"To think I even lied."

She had not vanished of her own will, and yet he had come here claiming he would look for evidence useful to the search. The sight of himself—having told a lie he could see straight through, just to step into Princess Isabel's room—was more than a little shocking.

What was I so curious about that I came all this way? Should I simply go back?

For a moment he stared at the closed door, wondering whether to leave, and set his hand upon it.

Isabel's scent.

As if bewitched by a familiar fragrance, he slowly turned back.

"It is as if someone has sprayed perfume."

Drawn along by that familiar scent, Alpheus—could this truly be the man who had been about to leave a moment ago?—began to examine the room with care.

Her chamber was splendid, even grand. One could tell without ever having watched how much labor the person who furnished it must have spent.

A place I had never once come.

The lavish room was thoroughly unfamiliar to him. Of course it was. He had never once set foot in Isabel's room. Between the betrothed it was common enough to invite one another into one's chambers for a secret tryst, but the two of them had never had reason for that.

"Flowerpots?"

Just then, as he walked slowly through the great room, his eye caught a cluster of modest pots huddled together, small flowering plants growing in them. The moment he found the tiny writing on the pots, a small laugh broke from him.

"Sarah, Heinrich, Lesa...... Why give flowerpots names fit for people?"

The pots bore names a person might have carried. In truth, tending them was Isabel's hobby.

"So she had this whimsical side as well."

Alpheus, who had not known, was more than a little startled to learn today that she lavished such particular affection on them that she even gave them names. There had been almost no conversation between them, and what little they did exchange was worse than none.

The words he had spoken to Isabel on that last day came back to him, and Alpheus slowly raised a hand and clutched his head.

Like a man who moved for no purpose but to wound, he had driven her that relentlessly. In the end, when she could bear it no longer and called his name aloud, he had gone on sneering like someone who had lost all control.

That day—what expression was Isabel wearing?

Strangely, Alpheus could not call the day clearly to mind. Merely remembering the conversation made his fingertips tingle and his heart throb, as if he had committed a sin.

"Why am I like this?"

Even now his stomach churned and his head pounded, and Alpheus drew his brows together. Then another vase caught the edge of his gaze.

"Did she like flowers, too?"

Puzzled, he glanced about. He counted the vases in the room, then slowly closed his eyes and opened them again. There were not merely one or two.

"So it was not perfume."

Only then did he understand that she had not been wearing any special scent at all. She simply loved flowers and kept so many of them close that she carried a fragrance as if she had sprayed perfume.

But he had not known. He bit his lip, recalling Princess Isabel as she started to say something more and then closed her mouth.

In truth, looking back, Isabel's scent had not even been strong. Whenever that faint fragrance of flowers drifted over him, though, Alpheus was seized by a strange feeling and found it hard to keep his mind on his work. Because of that, he had made a habit of flinging harsh words at her, telling her to stop dousing herself in pungent perfume. Do not come near. It is revolting. Spraying perfume every time is nothing but extravagance.

"How strange."

After dwelling on the past for a long while, Alpheus laid a hand against his chest, his face grave.

His chest throbbed. Alpheus clutched it. The moment he recalled the words he had spoken, a heavy pain rose, as if something had caught at the pit of his stomach.

"Have I caught some illness?"

He muttered it, his expression grave. For a time he gripped the place over his heart in silence—and then a statue entered his line of sight.

"A statue?"

He walked slowly toward it, and his eyes gradually widened.

"A work by Master Lesao."

Astonishingly, it was a piece by Master Lesao, an artisan he favored. In truth, Alpheus had one hobby besides the sword: looking at sculptures. He disliked cumbersome displays, so he never bought them. He merely patronized talented artisans who happened to be poor.

"Not many people know this artisan's work."

Master Lesao's pieces were more distinctive than ornate, and not widely popular. Murmuring that it was a curious coincidence, Alpheus moved on to the next work, and his face grew steadily more astonished.

"Ene, Karhona, Giselle......"

Every last one was a statue by an artisan he himself had sponsored. Thinking it a little odd, he was about to approach the last of them—an empty display case standing with no statue in it at all—doubt written across his face.

Had someone not knocked.

Knock, knock, knock.

"Enter."

The maid hurried in, and Alpheus turned his back on the statues to fix his gaze on her.

"What is it?"

"His Majesty the Emperor bids you come at once. He says there is something he must tell you."

"His Majesty?"

At the sudden summons Alpheus frowned, then nodded. The maid turned, offering to guide him.

"This way, if you please."

He stopped short.

Alpheus, on the point of leaving Princess Isabel's bedchamber, halted where he stood.

"Before that, I have one question. Those statues......"

He turned halfway back and pointed to the sculptures decorating one side of the room. The maid answered at once, as if she knew the moment she saw them.

"Ah—Your Grace's gifts?"

"Gifts?"

"Yes. Gifts."

A question rose on Alpheus's face.

"What do you mean? You say those are gifts from me?"

"Pardon? What do you......"

But the maid, faced with his utterly baffled expression, tilted her head—and then went white as a sheet.

"Please pretend you did not hear that."

"What?"

She dropped abruptly to her knees and bowed her head low, and Alpheus's brow tightened. But the maid, as if she had spoken what must never be spoken, had gone deathly pale. Her head stayed bowed, and she was on the verge of tears.