“Are you sure it’s alright for me to join you?” Celestine asked apologetically as she accepted a hot towel from Shinobu.
“A private time for parent and child. In that case, I see no problem at all with you joining us, Celes,” the former emperor said with a smile.
Watching his grandfather, Conrad mulled over what to order today. They had just eaten kushikatsu the other day, and it might be a bit heavy for his grandfather.
He had heard from Celes that all the food here was delicious, but it was, after all, the cuisine of a foreign land. Even looking at the menu, he had no idea what kind of dishes they were.
He could just order at random, but if he happened to choose, for example, a soup and another soup, or a pork dish and another pork dish, it would be a rather embarrassing misstep. He never thought that dining with a woman would require this much consideration.
Usually, the woman herself or her attendants would handle such things, but among the three of them today, Conrad was the one who had to be considerate.
Who among the three hundred lords of the Empire could possibly imagine that the Emperor himself was struggling to place an order in an izakaya?
As he wracked his brain for a solution, a brilliant idea came to him.
“Excuse me, we’ll have the same thing as the table next to us.”
The dish that the family in the back was sharing seemed just right for the three of them. The idea of multiple people eating from a single pot felt terribly vulgar by the standards of the Imperial court, but this was not the Imperial Capital.
“Mizutaki, then. Right away.”
Translator’s note
Mizutaki is a type of Japanese hot pot (nabe) where ingredients are simmered in a simple, unflavored broth and served with a dipping sauce.
With a pleasant smile, Shinobu took their order and briskly began to make preparations. A portable stove was placed on the table, followed by a ceramic pot.
“But to think you two were in love with each other.”
“In love… or perhaps it was love at first sight,” Conrad stammered. Celestine shyly rested her head against his shoulder.
After the news of Princess Regent Celestine de Oiria’s removal from the royal registry was proclaimed throughout the lands by the Eastern Kingdom, Celes had gradually begun to act more like a young girl her age.
It was all so refreshing, and Conrad was spending his days in bliss.
“So, what do you intend to do about the Imperial Diet?”
“I have not been negligent on that point. I have already taken measures, Grandfather,” Conrad replied with a smile, watching the pot as it was being prepared.
When Conrad announced his engagement to Celestine to the lords, the reaction was even greater than he had anticipated.
An engagement to the Princess Regent of the Eastern Kingdom.
That alone was a matter of great importance, but now that same Princess Regent had lost her status and was to marry into the Empire as a commoner named Celestine. It was only natural that a storm of opposition would erupt.
Conrad was skillfully navigating that opposition.
Naturally, Celes was cooperating with him as well. At the center of the dissent were the great nobles, who hoped to place their own descendants in line to succeed the childless Conrad.
Deftly incorporating the opinions of the lower-ranking nobles, who believed that the continuation of the Imperial line would ensure lasting peace, Conrad and Celestine’s plans proceeded without pause.
They had lifted the long-standing Imperial ban on the market distribution of luxury goods, starting with vanilla. It was added that this was a special consideration made in honor of the marriage.
Not a few of the great nobles stood to profit from the lifting of the ban on prohibited goods. It was a strategy to chip away at their ranks and shatter the unity of the anti-marriage faction.
When it came to intrigue, Celes’s skills were in a class of their own. She revealed that she hadn’t been tricked by the forged documents at all, but had merely been letting her opponents think they were getting away with it.
The one who turned that situation to his advantage was the young King Hugues. He used it as evidence that Celes had been privatizing the Kitan Shūishi, making it grounds for her dismissal as Princess Regent.
As expected of the son of the “Hero King,” it was a rather cunning move.
It was a failure born from the fact that she never expected to be outmaneuvered by her own younger brother, but Celes didn’t seem too bothered by it.
Instead, she was now enjoying her maneuvers within the Empire. She was already deeply familiar with the Empire’s affairs. Using tactics that undermined the great nobles who were ostensibly cooperating, she broke them apart one by one, then lured them to her side with the promise of profit.
To think this was the stratagem of a mere nineteen-year-old girl, Conrad could only marvel. She would be a terrifying enemy, but as an ally, there was none more reassuring.
“It’s ready,” Shinobu’s voice called out.
Looking at the pot, Conrad saw steam rising appetizingly. Ever since coming to the Ancient Capital, he’d had many opportunities to eat warm food.
Perhaps one of the reasons he kept finding excuses to delay his return to the Imperial Capital was his reluctance to go back to the cold meals of his old life.
It was a given that as emperor, he had to be wary of poison, but he was surprised by how much more vitality he felt after eating something warm.
He decided that upon his return to the Imperial Capital, he would order the Head Chef to reform the system so that warm meals could be served. He could endure it for himself, but he felt terribly sorry for forcing Celes to eat the same cold meals he had.
“Well then, shall we eat?”
With those words, the former emperor skillfully brandished his chopsticks. Neither Celes nor Conrad could use them. Feeling a little chagrined, Conrad stole a glance at his grandfather’s profile, only to see him flash a smug, triumphant grin.
He must have been practicing in secret, just to show off. He scooped some broth from the pot into a bowl of ponzu and tried to hand it to Celes, but his movements were clumsy.
“Lord Conrad, please allow me.”
The ladle passed into Celes’s hands, and her technique was masterful.
“That’s quite impressive. As expected of the Princess Regent.”
“Please don’t tease me, Grandfather.”
At some point, Celes had also started calling the former emperor “Grandfather.”
The quarrel between the former emperor and the current emperor, which had begun with the recent matchmaking fiasco, was coming to an end, and now they were even closer than before. And Celes had joined them in the middle of it all.
As the opposing nobles would say, they had been royalty from enemy nations. Just a few days ago, this would have been unthinkable. Every envoy for improved relations that Conrad had sent to the Eastern Kingdom had been summarily ignored.
That said, the situation seemed to be such that an immediate outbreak of war could be avoided. The young King Hugues had quickly seized control of the government, but even he could not prevent all chaos.
With Celestine, who had single-handedly managed the affairs of state as Princess Regent, now gone, he was struggling to fill the void. In such a state, he would be unable to start a conflict with the Empire.
Judging from the reports of the spies dispatched to the Eastern Kingdom, Conrad even suspected that the boy might just be lonely now that his sister had been taken from him.
Following the others’ example, Conrad tried using the chopsticks and brought a piece of cabbage from the mizutaki to his mouth. Indeed, this was delicious. It had a different flavor from a simple boiled soup.
Cabbage was one of the main crops grown in the Empire, but he was learning there were many ways to eat it.
They chatted amiably as they picked at the food from the pot. Even that simple act was somehow enjoyable. The chicken was now cooked as well.
The former emperor was already wetting his throat with a Toriaezu Nama, using the chicken served to him by Celes, the newly appointed Bugyō, as a side dish.
Seeing him break into a smile at the smoothness of the lager, it was amusing how he looked less like the former emperor who once shouldered the fate of the Empire, and more like an old man of his age.
While ordering a couple of suitable side dishes for his grandfather, Conrad also ate the mizutaki. It was delicious. He had never considered sharing a meal from the same pot with others before, but he wondered if this deliciousness was something born from eating together with someone.
Celes was here, and his grandfather was here. How blessed he was at this moment. His grandfather seemed to have found a chicken meatball at the bottom of the pot and popped it into his mouth with a look of delight. For Conrad, this was the first time he had ever seen this side of his stern grandfather.
“…I wonder if I can grow old like that.”
The words slipped out unintentionally. Celes looked surprised for a moment, but her expression quickly softened into a smile.
“We can. If we’re together.”
Conrad’s face grew hot. Was it from the steam, or something else? The peaceful chatter from the next table was also pleasant to his ears. Is this what they call happiness? As he pondered this, Conrad raised his hand to order a Toriaezu Nama for himself.