SALP Chapter 39

When Lanthe was young, snow meant one thing with certainty: she and Vigo would go outside to ride sleds. They'd ride down slopes on burlap sacks, or sometimes tie a wooden sled to a stolen reindeer and hold hands as they rode together.

But somehow, right now, she felt not even a single snowflake's worth of the sentiment she'd known back then.

The feeling was utterly different from those old memories.

Perhaps it was because Vigo's head, sitting beside her, had shifted to a position higher than hers, or because the shoulder pressed against hers had grown to an un-cute largeness.

It felt more awkward than even those past few nights when they'd lain together in his vast bed and fallen asleep.

"Ahem."

Back then, she'd held hands and embraced him without a second thought, singing songs together as they rode sleds.

"Cold?"

'Now I could never sing like that. Ugh.'

"No? I'm not cold."

"We're almost there."

As they moved away from the castle, only endless forest stretched on.

In the middle of a path where it was difficult even to tell if the scenery was changing, Vigo stopped the reindeer.

"Where is this?"

It was a forest dense with tall conifers. The green of the pointed needles was darker and deeper than the tree leaves of Eltzweig.

Silver and dark gray-brown tree trunks,

And snow that seemed to blanket the world white all the way to its end...

"Wow..."

At the edge of the desolate winter forest, a vast sea spread out.

The northern sea of Penmark.

The Mediterranean Sea.

"Eründel..."

Lake Eründel.

The lake where an angel slept.

'I know this place. I don't remember it, but I've been here before.'

An inexplicable longing swelled in Lanthe's chest.

The sea spreading out in achingly blue beauty was extraordinarily lovely. Even though this was the Mediterranean Sea nicknamed a "lake," it overwhelmed her with a vastness beyond anything she'd imagined.

The sight of endless waves undulating and crashing was more than enough to inspire both awe and terror toward nature simultaneously.

She gazed at the forest stretching across the distant horizon.

Northern Oden. That must be the land where Raphlang had stood until some 500 years ago.

"So it was here. Lake Eründel."

Lanthe murmured softly.

The place the angel had brought her.

The place where Vigo had rescued her as she drifted unconscious.

"How on earth did you save me in a place like this?"

A sea so wide and deep it couldn't compare even to the great river at Roas's edge. It seemed that if she so much as dipped a toe in, she'd be dragged into an unfathomably deep world and never escape.

"Good question."

Vigo smiled faintly, gazing somewhere out at the sea.

"I was lucky. You were floating around there."

He pointed matter-of-factly at a spot on the water not too far out.

"Isn't that deep?"

Though the sea was clear enough to see into, she'd learned that you couldn't gauge depth by sight alone when it came to water.

"Mm. You'd be better off not thinking about going in."

"I wasn't planning to bathe here anyway?"

She deliberately rolled her eyes primly.

What would she, who couldn't even swim, do in a sea that made her shiver just looking at it? The unknown water plants swaying below looked much smaller than those she'd seen on Newbella's dining table. Which meant that in reality, the plants were larger and the water deeper.

"Who lives over there?"

Lanthe pointed across the Mediterranean to the distant land beyond and asked.

"Baikans."

"Ah..."

"But the land where the Kingdom of Raphlang once stood apparently isn't fit for human habitation now. Judging by how the Baikans cross the Northern Sea in wretched condition, surviving through pillaging."

Vigo continued speaking while gazing across the sea with hostility in his eyes.

"The prevailing view is that it's become a land of death. They say other kingdoms exist in Northern Oden, but reaching such places would require a very long journey. There must be a reason why those people don't deliberately cross over here either."

"What about the Crohiya Clan?"

When Lanthe asked cautiously, he glanced at her.

"Where did you hear that name?"

"Father Conor said so when you were sick. That your wounds came from being attacked by the Crohiya Clan."

"Ah... that bastard Sean did say that."

'Now he's adding 'bastard' to it.'

Ignoring her glaring eyes, Vigo wrinkled his brow and spoke.

"The Crohiya Clan is a monster race that appears occasionally. Like fish leaping from the sea, they sometimes pop up and reveal themselves. It hasn't been established whether they originally live in the water or come down from Northern Oden lands. All we know is that they're a bizarre race that looks like a mixture of reptiles and humans."

"Such... monsters exist?"

Vigo nodded.

"To the world, they're known only as something like 'the Northern Sea monster legend.' Most people never have reason to witness them. But my knights have fought Baikans here for a long time and still conduct regular patrols, so they've encountered them occasionally. Watching them 'hunt' each other with the Baikans, it seems like they might be fighting over territory in Northern Oden or the Mediterranean..."

He paused as if lost in recollection, then continued.

"Anyway, until now there's been no record of the Crohiya Clan stepping onto Southern Oden's land or attacking people. Not until they attacked me."

At his words, Lanthe swallowed.

"How... did you get attacked?"

"Who knows. Why did they do it?"

Vigo spoke with a light, joking expression, but deep in his violet eyes lurked a darkness dark-blue as night.

"Seeing how they attacked a fine lord like me, I suppose it confirms their true nature as evil monsters."

As if wanting to change the subject, he spun around with a crunch and turned his back on the Mediterranean. Then he walked toward the forest, treading on snow with crunch-crunch sounds.

"Let's make snow angels. No one will see us here."

"Okay."

She too turned her eyes from the Mediterranean and followed him.

"Vigo, you make one too. It'll be boring if only I make one."

"That's too much trouble."

"Make a friend for mine. Otherwise I won't show you my snow angel."

She commanded him to make a companion snow angel for the one she would create. Then she crouched down in a suitable spot and began gathering snow. Quite pleased with the order she'd given him—who had probably forgotten all about snow angels these past ten years—she smiled as she packed the snow.

Crunch, crunch, she packed the white, fluffy snow into a snowball about the size of Vigo's fist. She needed two snowballs of different sizes. Aside from having wings, snow angels had the same form as ordinary snowmen.

"Hmm."

A leisurely hum came from behind her.

"I don't think it looked like that back then."

She hadn't given him permission to sit comfortably on a stump and interfere.

"Is that right?"

Instead of answering, Lanthe stared intently at the lumpy, angular snowball.

Swoosh, she lifted it and hurled it at him.

"Whoa."

The snowball she'd thrown failed to reach him as he twisted his torso slightly to dodge, falling onto the snow with a poof sound.

"Who said you could just sit around? I told you to make a companion snow angel."

"...Thanks for not putting a rock in it."

He glanced at the broken snowball and said.

"That was just practice. I can't help it since it's been so long for me too."

She rallied herself and packed snow again.

This time it came together rounder and prettier than before. Pressing the core firmly and tightly to give it weight, she completed two spheres. Once she connected the smaller snowball on top of the larger one, the real work would begin.

The wings needed to be packed and shaped almost as hard as ice. Then, once they took proper form, she had to find a position on the upper body where the weight would balance well and attach them there.

This was the hardest part. Since the wings had to be made small and the connection points large and crude to keep them from falling off the body, the shape easily became awkward.

But she knew how to refine the wings attached to the body into a fairly delicate form.

This was what you called a special skill.

"Wow. Lanthe Entridhal's concentrating face looks really scary."

"......"

"Make your snow angel's face beautiful."

"......"

Though the teasing troublemaker made her insides boil, Lanthe kept her mouth firmly shut and concentrated.

And so, at last, the snow angel was completed.

"Oh..."

Not bad at all, right?

So then, let's see if Vigo Kiyer is working hard on his?

When she turned around, he—who had clearly been watching her—quickly turned his head and pretended to concentrate on his own snow angel.

He was making his from the snowball pieces Lanthe had thrown earlier. Judging by how the snow fragments that had been rolling around his feet had disappeared.

A smile escaped without her realizing it. As she secretly watched him, his face—serious and silently packing snow—looked exactly like it had when he was young.

He no longer had chubby cheeks, nor a small, cute body. His personality especially had twisted into an even worse mess.

Nevertheless, one thing was certain: the Vigo before her was the completed adult that Vigo Kiyer of Roas had grown into.

"I finished."

At Lanthe's words, he lifted his bowed head.

"Done already?"

"Yeah. How is it?"

She smiled, showing off the prettily made snow angel.

"Let me see."

She'd told him to look at the snow angel.

"Pretty."

Vigo assessed her with mock seriousness, looking at her.

"You're not even looking properly and just answering randomly."

Lanthe's face flushed for no reason as she scooped up snow from the ground with both hands and threw it at him. To prevent him from dodging nimbly like before, she kept scooping and pouring it over his head so the snow broke into powder and scattered.

While doing this childish thing, Lanthe's face only grew hotter, but Vigo laughed as if he'd caught something to tease her about.

"Sing, Lanthe."

The moment he said that.

Lanthe froze without realizing it.

'Sing for me, Princess of Raphlang.'

...No. It's different.

"What's wrong?"

Vigo tilted his head.

"Didn't you have to sing to make the snow angel dance?"

She quickly recovered her expression and shrugged her eyebrows.

"Right. So you stay there and cover your ears to watch. You don't need to hear the sound to see the snow angel dance, do you?"

At that, he snorted and plugged his ears.

"I'm not particularly curious about your singing either."

His appearance with both index fingers plugging his ear holes like stoppers looked ridiculous, so she laughed a little too.

Now then, what did I sing back then?

"Ahem."

Lanthe cleared her throat with a small cough.