It even made her feel that putting on men’s clothes again did not mean as much as she had imagined.
She was a little short, and her shoulders were narrow.
Together with the wide trousers, she looked narrow above and broad below.
Sure enough, she really did look like a fat duck.
Comino said it in front of the women, and Nanfen was there.
After she heard it she gave him no pleasant face.
Yefei and Sheryl, watching from the side, were so cowed by this auntie’s air that they did not dare breathe loudly.
It was just then that they heard Eve laugh.
They had already noticed earlier that Eve was easily made to laugh by other people’s actions.
Sometimes you said a sentence or made a gesture, and as long as she found it interesting her face would light up.
Being able to make a girl as lovely as Eve laugh was truly a very satisfying thing.
Sheryl thought from this that the reason Eve was favored and admired by so many people was perhaps not only her looks.
“I won’t ride in the carriage. I’ll just walk around the city,” Eve sent Comino off, then said to Nanfen.
The Festival of Rising Light was Klijin’s most important holiday.
In these days, wandering merchants and acrobats gathered here one after another from far away and brought all sorts of curious things to sell.
Eve was especially interested in the foreign crafts the wandering peoples brought.
“Let Lug go with you,” Nanfen said.
“No need. Doesn’t he still have friends to see?” Eve said. “Let him do his real work.”
“There are many hands in the crowd tonight. There ought to be a man at your side. Or else…” As Nanfen spoke, her gaze swept over the younger generation behind her.
“It’s all right. Do I still need someone else’s protection?” Eve patted the sword slung slantwise at the small of her back, deliberately making it clink-clank.
“What kind of sword is that? Why is it so long?” Nanfen frowned. “Parading through the streets with a weapon—be careful the guards don’t take you away…”
“It’s only a training sword. No edge.” Eve drew the blade halfway from the sheath and showed her.
The sword was very long.
It was a hand-and-a-half sword Eve ordinarily found easy to use.
Apart from having neither edge nor point, its weight and size were standard.
Mogi had taken it from the storeroom when she tried on the clothes before the festival.
“Or don’t take it?” Nanfen started to speak and stopped.
She put out a hand, then drew it back. “A girl…”
“What’s the harm? It might even serve for defense.” Eve lifted her chin, smiled at Nanfen, and there was a little pleading in her voice. “I’m going, all right?”
In the end Nanfen still did not want to spoil her pleasure, so she smiled, gave her a few instructions, and let her go.
“Be careful. Stay in the busy, crowded places as much as you can. Don’t talk to outlanders. And…” Nanfen pointed at the great clock on a distant tower.
“Find us at the tailor’s shop before 9:00.”
The tailor’s shop meant a rented townhouse in the East District, one of the Dakren family’s properties.
On the third floor of the tailor’s shop there was a tea room open only to acquaintances, which could serve as a foothold when they came into the city.
While Yefei was still bargaining with her mother over tonight’s pocket money, Sheryl hurriedly pulled her out of the procession.
The two of them cut through the crowd and, in a rush, caught up with Eve, who had gone ahead.
Eve had just turned the street corner when she felt a light tap on her shoulder.
She looked back, saw the two of them panting, and felt a little surprised.
She asked them, “Why are you here? Not riding in the carriage?”
“We still think it’s more interesting following you. Take us along. Don’t just look after playing by yourself,” Sheryl said, half in jest.
“All right.” Eve agreed at once.
In fact she had wanted to invite the two of them just now, but she had also thought they might prefer the carriage.
If she issued the invitation herself, it would clearly put them in an awkward spot.
“Have you come here for the festival before?” Eve walked in front and looked back at the two behind her.
“I’ve come twice. I came when I was little, and once I came with Sheryl. Sheryl rarely comes to the capital. She doesn’t much like going out,” Yefei answered.
“Then that’s perfect. Tonight I’ll show you around,” Eve said with a smile.
“Let’s go look at the outer city’s ring road first and find something to eat. Tonight I’m treating…”
Sheryl clearly felt that Eve tonight was much livelier than she had been in the daytime.
The three of them walked from the broad main street toward the inner city.
Eve held a small wicker basket in her hands and went along the street, tasting the food all the way.
When she found something that suited her she bought extra and put it in the basket.
Yefei and Sheryl followed close behind.
In less than half an hour they were both seven- or eight-tenths full, yet Eve still showed no sign of stopping.
She kept turning among the food stalls and tasting.
This the two cousins found a little hard to accept—clearly she was eating more than the two of them put together…
Eve was just then bargaining with a Bilin dwarf merchant who sold small trinkets, speaking some foreign tongue the two of them could not quite understand.
Yefei and Sheryl stood not far behind her.
“I remember last year, the moment my mother got back from Auntie Nanfen’s, she went on about how excellent her two daughters were, and she made a special point of Eve. She said Eve knows how to handle things, and that even if she married a Consul’s son later no one would find it strange.” Yefei pursed her mouth.
“But looking at her now, she doesn’t need to find a Consul’s son at all. She’d make a fine Consul herself.”
In most cases, Consul was Klijin’s name for the nation’s highest leader, appointed by the elders of the Logos Institute.
“Then you’d better get on good terms with her now,” Sheryl teased.
“You seem to like her quite a bit. I’ve never seen you this eager toward anyone. Come to think of it, I feel as if my legs are growing on you. Every time, before I’ve even figured out what’s going on, I’ve already been dragged off.”
“Chances vanish in a blink,” Sheryl blinked.
“So what is it, really? Why are you this interested in her?” Seeing her dodge the point, Yefei could not help pressing.
“Put it this way. If someone told you that the person across the way was the famous composer Gerelin, wouldn’t you go straight up and greet her?” Sheryl asked her.
“Of course I would,” Yefei answered at once.
“So Eve is my Gerelin.”
After saying that, Sheryl colored a little.
“There’s nothing to hide about it. Sometimes I feel I could never become someone like that, but I still look toward it.”
At that answer Yefei was so shocked for a moment that she could not speak.
It was just then that Eve came back, holding a glittering, gold-yellow flower in her hands.
The flower’s petals were open.
The bright yellow, notched, willow-leaf petals were covered on the outside with a layer of deep-yellow transparent shell like amber.
It was very beautiful.
Yefei could never refuse something so delicate, but just as she was about to look it over and praise it, she heard Eve say, “Come taste.”
“Taste what? This is… food?” As Yefei said this, her brows almost twisted together.
“That’s right. The flower of the white-spider dandelion, poured over with brown-sugar syrup boiled with Tianshui. Pretty, isn’t it?” Eve broke a petal from the base of the flower.
It gave a crisp snap, and then that petal, like a golden feather, was held out in front of Yefei.
Yefei took the petal and bit into it.
The yellow petal was thick and juicy.
By itself it had little taste, but paired with the thin, crisp sugar coat on the outside it became as clean and sweet as fruit, and the mouthfeel was crisp and soft like candied strawberry.
The white-spider dandelion was a plant unique to this world.
Its plants were huge.
In appearance they were no different from ordinary dandelions, but their scale was greater by who knew how many times.
The cultivated variety grown for edible crowns could have a flower head more than ten inches across.
The flower stem of the white-spider dandelion was hollow as well.
When cut, a milky sap overflowed that could be used as medicine.
The seeds of the cultivated variety had already lost the power of flight and could not even drop off on their own, but the wild variety still kept the dandelion’s character.
Its huge white seed-puffs could drift on the wind into the high air and even cross the sea, take root, and spread on the New Continent.
The seeds of the white-spider dandelion were very light.
They looked like big-bellied spiders with legs flung wide, and that was the origin of the name.
The first time Eve saw one in the wild, she recognized it as a dandelion.
She thought it wonderfully strange, picked one, and blew the seeds apart as one does with an ordinary dandelion.
The result was that the seeds had not flown far before they flew back and all stuck to her hair and clothes.
Eve mistook them for live spiders and was badly frightened.
She even abandoned Minxi, who had been playing with her, and bolted from the wilds back home.
The final result of the affair was that she was laughed at for a whole year by the three Dakrens.
But one could not blame Eve for being timid, because she had truly run into similar things.
For example, she had gone to pick fruit and picked instead an egg-sized parasitic egg sac, and had nearly bitten into it.
When Mogi cut open that red egg sac, identical to a piece of fruit, in front of her, and she saw the dense black larvae, Eve threw up on the spot.
She had not been especially afraid of crawling things at first, but after being tricked a few times she had grown jumpy.