PDCOO Chapter 9

Back in her room, Anna had a peculiar dream.

She was standing in the middle of a field where a gale was blowing, dressed in a gown. The sort of pretty gown that princesses wore in storybooks.

Before Princess Anna stood a black bear, walking upright.

The bear was wearing a crown. Anna, working from what was available, made sense of the situation and asked:

'You're under a curse, aren't you? Shall I kiss you?'

The sort of thing that would earn her a slap on the back from Karlah.

To that bold, entirely unlike-Anna offer, the bear shook its head.

And bared its sharp teeth to ask:

'Is it a human prince transformed into a bear, or a bear given a prince's position?'

'I beg your pardon?'

'If the first, you need only break the curse. But I may be the second.'

The bear showed its canines.

A gesture that suggested she understood very well what might happen if she kissed it.

But Anna took a step forward.

She was certain, somehow, that this bear meant no harm.

The bear stepped back and cried out:

'I could tear you to pieces and swallow you whole!'

The bear's breath smelled of wild raspberries.

Anna walked faster.

The bear stumbled backward until the wall of gale-force wind stopped it. In the face of her approach, it said something—

But the sound of the wind swallowed the words.

Crunch, crunch. The rough scraping of sand.

The smell of raspberries grew closer, and closer……

"Have you lost your mind."

Her mother's voice arrived without warning, and Anna's eyes flew open. A raspberry, held by Karlah, was popped into her open mouth.

"Sour!"

"What sort of deranged dream puts that expression on your face? Lips stuck out like that?"

"I, I wasn't dreaming anything!"

Anna's face went red.

It was the embarrassment of a twenty-two-year-old having a dream better suited to a child—but Karlah seemed to misread that entirely. She grabbed Anna's ear and pulled.

"I need to marry you off before you start having thoughts like this. What will anyone want with you when you're this lazy! Do you know that that big bear has been up since before dawn sweeping the courtyard?"

The regular scrape, scrape sound had been Bertram cleaning, apparently.

Anna steered the conversation sideways toward that.

"Mama, you were just carrying on like you'd throw him out, and now you're impressed? You'll be hiring him next."

"If you hadn't been sick on his coat, I'd have thrown him out right away."

"……I was very dizzy."

"While we're talking—have you heard anything more? What kind of person he is?"

"He said he was at the front until the end. Doesn't seem like a deserter."

"Anyone can say that."

Anna made a face.

"If you don't believe him, why ask?"

"What? Anna, have you taken his side already?"

"It's just strange to treat someone like a criminal without any basis."

"You have to prepare for the worst! Even if he is nobility. ……Did he show you any jewels or anything? Trying to impress you?"

The image of the blue jewel in his chest surfaced—but Anna shook her head.

He hadn't shown her anything slyly.

Anna had looked for herself.

But Karlah, having satisfied herself that the man's clothing was quality goods, was not about to relent.

"Tomorrow I'm going to tell him 'you've worked hard, the debt's paid, off you go.' So today, work him until his arms fall off—but don't be alone with him. Understood? You can be won over in an instant. Eyes open!"

"Mama, you're being strange. You never said anything when I brought in other people before. Why are you so prickly about this one?"

Karlah had the expression of someone who had just walked into a door.

"……Am I?"

"Yes. Relax, there's nothing to worry about. The whole village is watching."

"That's true, I suppose."

Karlah trailed off. But why wouldn't the thought leave her alone—the persistent sense that this time is different.

At that moment Bertram looked in from the restaurant and said to the two of them:

"Karlah. You have a guest."

"It's not opening time yet."

"Not a paying guest."

The guests that had been hidden behind Bertram stepped out looking annoyed at the description.

Dieter and the village chief.

The village chief gestured to Karlah and headed to the restaurant side, and Dieter, left behind, started toward Anna—

And stopped.

"Anna……. Ah, you just woke up. Sorry, I'll come back in a bit."

"Why?"

"……You have to be ready to receive a guest, don't you?"

"It's just you. Why bother."

Anna scratched the back of her head vigorously. Where her fingers passed, her hair curved upward in small arches.

She didn't bother fixing it, just chewed on the raspberry Karlah had left behind and asked:

"What are you doing here so early?"

"I was worried. Did he do anything strange?"

"Hm? Bertram is always strange."

Dieter's brow furrowed.

"Well. Your face right now is also strange."

"Anna, please!"

"No really, why is everyone doing this. Me bringing someone home and putting them to work isn't exactly new. Mama's one thing, but why are you acting like this?"

"That's, well……."

Because the world had settled and it seemed like there'd be no one else for Anna to take in, so he'd been gearing up to propose—and then out of nowhere a bear of a man had dropped from the sky. And she'd given him onion porridge at midnight and been alone with him under the night sky. Naturally he was uneasy. He was catastrophically uneasy.

That long sentence ran through Dieter's head.

Not one part of it was sayable.

Dieter did at least understand that telling a woman you weren't courting yet 'don't be around other men because I like you' was the kind of thing decent people didn't say.

"This is, this is my instinct as a man. That one's suspicious."

"Oh my, what an airtight case!"

"I'm being serious!"

"So am I! An instinct from two meetings is quite a lot to ask me to trust. Just say you don't like his face and be done with it. Then I'll tell Bertram that Dieter's scared of him and ask if he'd mind keeping his distance."

Dieter's face went scarlet.

He was opening and closing his mouth, trying to produce a rebuttal, when Anna ignored him entirely and headed to the well to wash her face.

Telling herself not to look made her look. Anna glanced around for Bertram and found him shortly—beside Karlah and the village chief.

The village chief said his last words to Karlah.

"Right, then—feed him lunch and send him over. Understood?"

"Yes, understood. And please don't work him too hard. Especially—don't let him anywhere near Dean."

"Understood. Good gracious, there's Anna. Still as small as ever."

"And you're still upside-down and backwards in everything you do, Chief!"

This directed at a man whose head was entirely bald while his beard reached his sternum in dense, undisciplined waves. Karlah sprinted over to swat Anna on the back, and the village chief chuckled, shook Bertram's hand once, and stepped out of the restaurant.

"Mama, what did the chief want?"

"There was a wolf that came down into the village last night. The chief's gathering the young men to go investigate—and he wants to borrow Bertram."

"Bertram isn't a tool."

"He said he'd do it himself. Didn't you?"

Bertram nodded.

"Yes. It's no trouble."

"See? He's more reliable than my own daughter."

At exactly that, Dieter—who had been lingering to hear all of this—bolted out of the restaurant.

Target: the village chief. His shout faded into the distance.

"Chief! Please let me join the wolf patrol!"

Whether the village chief would include Dieter was not a matter of interest to any of the three present, and so none of them listened for the answer.

Anna rolled up her sleeves with energy.

"Right! We'll have to pack you a proper lunch, then. Is there anything you want? Or anything you need for the patrol?"

"Nothing comes to mind, but……"

Bertram turned to face her. His body blocked her view of everything else; it was as though there were only the two of them. Anna swallowed.

"What I would like to know is what happened last night."

Entirely grave, in a voice to match, Bertram produced from his pocket——

The floral-patterned apron.

The very one Anna had tucked around his feet in the night.

Anna burst out laughing.

"Ahahaha! It's nothing dramatic. I came to check you were sleeping and your feet were sticking out of the blanket, so I covered them. That's all."

"Is it acceptable to use an apron to cover feet?"

"Aren't you worried about strange things! It's an apron I wasn't using anymore, it's perfectly fine."

She'd been braced for something difficult, and the tension dissolved all at once. Anna took the apron back and chattered on brightly.

"Use it however you like today. And I don't know if I should say this, but—you looked rather cute with it on."

"……What?"

Cute.

A word he had never once, in all his years of self-awareness, had applied to him.

Anna had already turned and gone back into the restaurant—

But that word, light as a flower petal, drifted down and raised a small ripple in Bertram's chest.

Before Bertram was conscripted for patrol, Anna had laid out a mountain of food for lunch.

"Eat before you go. I have to deliver meals to the workers at the communal farm, so I'll be— Bertram? Are you all right? Can you see my hand?"

Anna waved her hand in front of Bertram's face as he sat at the table. He was nodding along fine enough, but something was off. Like a clockwork toy with a bent spring.

Had Karlah not shouted when she did, Anna would have gone for the doctor.

"The workers are going to starve! Are you going to the farm or not?"

"All right, all right! If Bertram says there isn't enough food, can you make sure he has more?"

"...As if he'd run short."

With enough food laid out to feed an ox, Anna picked up her lunch basket and ran out.

The moment the restaurant fell quiet, Karlah looked at Bertram, steadily making his way through the provisions.

'Why is Anna suddenly so worried about him? Is something wrong? ...Surely she hasn't gone and fallen for him, has she.'