9 - Marquis Maron Episode 9
Episode 9
"It'll be three days tomorrow. I don't want to walk anymore."
"Are you tired?"
"No, bored."
"We're almost there."
"How do you know?"
"Maybe you should learn how to read a map."
Reikart held out the map and said that. The place he pointed to seemed to be the road we were currently on.
"I hate studying!"
I shouted confidently.
I didn't care if Reikart looked at me with disdain. Studying after coming all this way?
I'd been living like a caveman in Maron Keep, and now I was finally getting a taste of civilization, but it had to be studying!
You try studying all through elementary, middle, high school, college, and graduate school! See if you want to do it again!
"Who said anything about studying? You should at least know how to read a map. Look, we're about here, so if we go in this direction for one more day…"
"Ah, okay."
I nodded as Reikart explained. I couldn't read the map, but I could tell we'd walked quite a bit.
"This is our destination."
Reikart pointed to the squiggly letters. It read 'Production City Selbon.' It was the script mainly used by the three kingdoms.
Kasnatura, Nieve, and Holt used the same script, even though their languages were slightly different.
Even the languages were basically the same, with only slight differences in accent or pronunciation. Like the difference between American, British, and Australian English?
How fortunate that they were at least the same. If the three kingdoms used completely different languages and scripts, the female lead would have to know three languages to date the male leads.
Oh, or the male leads could learn the female lead's language. Anyway.
I looked at Reikart's face and then at the letters he was pointing at, and then asked shamelessly,
"What does this say?"
"Production City Selbon… Hayley?"
"Yeah?"
"What's this?"
He pointed at the letters again. I asked back with an even more shameless face how I would know.
"You don't know?"
"Can't you read?"
"Can't write either."
"Hayley…"
His voice, trailing off as he couldn't find the words, was filled with so many emotions. He was flustered, sympathetic, frustrated, and angry all at once.
So this is what it feels like to be illiterate.
I shook him up with the lie that I couldn't read, and then slyly turned my head, pretending not to know anything.
Reikart silently folded the map and walked ahead. I asked him innocently, talking to the back of his head,
"How much further?"
"I told you, we're almost there."
Our destination was the small town of Selbon, where Reikart had briefly stopped before coming to Maron Keep.
Seeing as the population was only a few hundred, it seemed more like a village than a city, but this wasn't the overcrowded 21st century, so I let it go.
"But does Selbon have a blacksmith? A general store? Do they even have a bakery or a clothing store?"
"I don't know about a clothing store, but they had everything else."
"I don't have any decent clothes to wear in the Keep."
What I was wearing now was a makeshift outfit made from a cloak I'd stolen from a Holy Order guard when I was dragged away in a cage.
The dress I'd been wearing at first had become unusable in less than a month. The clothes and fabrics in the Keep were a hundred years old and about to crumble, so I couldn't wear them, and after that, Doraji made me clothes out of tree fibers like a primitive tribal chief, and I lived in those.
Reikart looked down at me and asked,
"If that Dryad hadn't been there, you would have…"
"Don't say such horrible things. She's mine."
I wasn't planning on letting her go even if I became independent and left. That Doraji was mine. We would live happily ever after there, just the two of us.
"When we go to the city, don't say you're Hayley Maron. People will be shocked."
"You don't say you're Reikart Winter either."
One was an evil sorcerer, and the other was the heir to a destroyed family, so there would be people who recognized them just by their names.
Especially me.
"How much further do we have to go?"
We seemed to have been walking for quite a while, but it was still a dense forest. Reikart stared at me, then silently handed me the map and tapped Selbon twice with his finger.
Of all things, there was an inn.
What kind of city was this? It was a rural village. I'd expected at least a proper road, carriages bustling about, and a row of shops.
Selbon was a rural mountain village.
Fortunately, there was an inn. We, who had suffered for days crossing the Contaminated Zone, rushed to the inn first, got a room, and ordered food.
But as soon as the innkeeper saw me, her eyes widened and she covered her mouth with her hand.
Then she shouted,
"Are you starving?"
Her voice was full of sympathy, as if she were dealing with a starving child.
"I'm not starving…"
"She's been starving for a long time, so please prepare something easy to digest. I will pay generously."
Reikart answered for me. The innkeeper looked back and forth between us and nodded as if she understood.
"Did this older brother save you?"
"I'm older…"
"Oh my! I've been worried because there have been so many terrible things happening around here lately, but I didn't know there were kids starving like you. Just wait a moment. I'll make something for you right away!"
What was going on?
The innkeeper hurried into the kitchen. There was an old mirror in the Keep, so I knew I'd gotten skinny in the past year, but was it to the point where I evoked pity from strangers?
Reikart handed me the room key.
"Go upstairs and rest after you eat. I'll go get anything you need."
"Will you?"
"What else can I do? To haggle over the price of things, or to read the prices written on the tags…"
"Sorry for being illiterate."
"Study your letters when we get back."
I just laughed.
After we finished eating, Reikart left me at the inn, saying he would go get some things.
The food the innkeeper made was so delicious that I wanted to eat until my stomach burst, but I was already at my limit. I finished the last piece of meat, put down my fork, and got up from my seat.
"Aren't you going to eat more?"
"Later. Where are the blacksmith, the general store, and the clothing store? Tell me where the grocery store and the bakery are too."
"This village isn't that big, so all the stores are gathered in front of the plaza across the street. The blacksmith also runs the general store, and the bakery sells groceries. There's no place that sells clothes separately, so everyone makes their own."
"Then how do you get fabric?"
"A merchant comes from the big city every so often."
It seemed good in some ways, and not so good in others.
It was good that I could take care of everything nearby without going far, but it was bad that there probably weren't many things I could get?
I smiled brightly at the innkeeper and asked,
"Miss, would you sell me some of your leftover fabric?"
"We're an inn, so we have a lot of fabric… Doesn't your 'older brother' buy you clothes? He was wearing really nice clothes all by himself."
The innkeeper looked reproachfully at the seat where Reikart had been sitting.
It was an understandable misunderstanding. He was, after all, once the heir to a duke's family, so he was wearing clothes made of the finest fabric and sturdy leather protectors, while I was wearing nothing but tattered rags.
I decided to clear up the misunderstanding.
"He's not my older brother."
"He's not?"
"He's the one who saved me at the entrance to the forest. You could say he's my savior? I want to thank him before we part ways, but what's the best way to do that?"
"Oh, my dear."
The innkeeper laughed and made a circle with her finger.
"There's no better way to thank someone than with money."
"Ah."
She was a wise woman. I had a great realization and handed her a gold coin.
"Please sell me some of your leftover fabric. And a sewing kit too."
Shiny, shiny. It was a real gold coin. It was from the Maron Keep treasury, so it was a gold coin that was used 100 years ago, but who cares? Gold works everywhere.
Sure enough, the innkeeper awkwardly took the gold coin and bit it with her teeth. Then, looking at the clear tooth marks, she gasped sharply.
"My name is Fatima."
There was no need to tell me her name. She ran to her room and started rummaging through her closet.
She was looking for clothes that would fit me.
