"According to His Majesty Souma, 'Aisha is a strong, noble, and beautiful warrior.
It would be fair to call her this kingdom's greatest warrior. It's reassuring to have
her at my side... or it should be, but I feel like I just can't leave her alone sometimes.
It's supposed to be her job to protect me, but I end up wanting to protect her... Well,
when there was that disaster in the God-Protected Forest, I did see how emotionally
fragile she could be, after all.' To my question of, 'Is there anything on your mind
about her?' he responded, 'That I hope we can sit at the same dinner table forever, I
guess.'"
"Uwahhh! I've failed as a bodyguard!" Aisha wailed. "But still, when he says, 'I
can't leave her alone,' and 'I want to protect her,' it made me feel a little happy,
stupid meeee!"
While Aisha laid her head down on the desk, stuck between feeling happy and
pathetic, Roroa patted her gently on the back. It looked like Aisha was in shock, but
as for me... I felt a little jealous of her, maybe? If she was like a pet, it meant he
cherished her just that much, and I wanted him to say he wanted to protect me, too.
Wait! Have I always been this prone to jealousy?
Hearing Souma praise his other fiancées, I caught myself feeling envious of them,
and it shocked me a bit. This was a feeling I couldn't let myself embrace, wasn't it? I
was the candidate to become Souma's first primary queen. More than anyone else
here, I had to respect the harmony between my fellow queens. I felt the hand I was
holding my collar with clench tighter.
At last, my turn came.
"Finally, Princess Liscia... For this one, I should start with his response to my
question, 'Don't you have anything on your mind when it comes to Princess Liscia?' I
suppose.'"
"Huh...?"
Why were we starting with the "Do you have anything on your mind?" question
for me? I wanted to find out what Souma thought of me, just like everyone else had.
While I was thinking that, Excel shook her head silently with a smile.
"There's no need for that. I think his appraisal of you is summed up quite
succinctly in his answer to this question. This is what His Majesty said: 'Nothing.'"
Nothing? He didn't have anything on his mind when it came to me? No fair... He'd
had something for everyone else, hadn't he? And yet... when it came to me, it was
"Nothing"...
Why...?
"Princess!" Excel barked.
I'd nearly gotten lost in my thoughts, but Excel's voice snapped me back to
attention.
"Oh! Sorry."
"Listen until I'm finished, please. His Majesty continued on to say this: 'I told her
the most important thing on that snowy day. I don't have anything more to say than
that.' Now, as for what he said on that snowy day... I refrained from asking him in
detail, but I think you must have some idea what he meant, right?"
It came back to me. Of all the days I had spent with Souma, there was one day in
which I vividly remembered that it was snowing. It had been the 31st day, 12th
month, and 1,546th year of the Continental Calendar. Last year's New Year's Eve.
"The truth is, this is something... I really ought to have told you before Aisha, before
Juna, and before Roroa..."
That night, on the terrace of the governmental affairs office, Souma had said it.
"Liscia... I love you. Please, marry me."
Souma had proposed to me in the snow that had just begun to fall. He had already
told me the most important thing, and there was nothing else left to think about.
That was what Souma said.
I see... I had already received them, hadn't I? The feelings that Souma held
dearest. The moment I thought that, there was a warmth in my chest. Then...
Slap, slap, slap, slap... Roroa, Aisha, and Juna all started slapping me on the back.
"Ow...! Hey, stop it! That hurts!" I shouted.
"""..."""
"I dunno," Roroa said. "It feels mighty unfair that only Big Sister Cia gets it."
"Ohh... Something special just for the two of you, I'm so jealoooouuuus," Aisha
moaned.
"Oh! Dear, how shameful of me..." Juna said.
When I looked at the jealous Roroa and Aisha, and Juna who was blushing in
embarrassment about what she had just done, I broke into a smile.
Yeah... That was right. Everyone could feel jealous, or that things weren't fair. The
fact that I was candidate to be the first primary queen had nothing to do with it. It
was a feeling I had just because of how much I cared for a person. That being the
case...
"...Hey, Roroa, I'm jealous of the rest of you, too, you know?" I said.
"Hm? Are ya?" she asked.
"Yeah. I wanted to be told, 'I like this about her,' or, 'I don't want to let anyone
else have her,' or, 'I want to protect her.'"
"Hmm. Well, maybe that's just how it goes."
That was why I had to accept it, not deny it. Because I realized this feeling was
important.
With all of our appraisals over and done with, Excel clapped her hands together.
"Now, you all understand what Souma thinks of you. From here, I think we'll go
into some more practical knowledge of how to improve your marital relations."
"'Practical knowledge'?" I echoed without thinking, for which Excel gave me an
incredibly nice smile.
"Didn't I tell you at the very beginning? In this lecture, I teach you how you
should act as a wife, the way gentlemen think, and everything from how to support
your husband to how to perform your nightly duties in the bedroom in a way that
makes your marital relations go more smoothly. I'll be ever so very thorough
teaching you about that."
""""..."""" We all fell into dead silence.
Right. Now that she'd mentioned it, she had said that was what this course was
about.
"Um, Grandmother? Setting the other parts aside, well... D-do we absolutely have
to take your lectures on our nightly, um, 'd-duties'?" Juna asked.
"L-Like Juna said," Aisha added. "It's just too embarrassing..."
"I'm a little interested, y'know?" Roroa put in.
"R-Roroa!" I shouted.
"Huh? You ain't interested, Big Sister Cia?"
"That's... Maybe a little, but..."
While we were acting reluctant, Excel gave us a look that seemed to say, "I've
already planned around you feeling that way," and she patted the remaining black
bundle confidently.
"Oh my? You're sure you want to pass up this opportunity? If you take my
lectures to the end, you'll receive one of these in commemoration."
As she said that, Excel unwrapped the black bundle, and inside there were
notebooks just like before. However, these books were thin, and their covers were
black. Their covers carried the even more dangerous sounding, "Documents Contain
Top Secret Classified Information," and "Dispose of by Incineration After Reading."
They were being treated like forbidden books, but Excel opened one up and
began flipping through it as if to show it off to us.
"This black notebook contains the [censored] that His Majesty Souma wants you
to do for him, or that he wants to do for you, and the situations involved."
""""Huh...? Whaaaaaa?!""""
The look in everyone's eyes changed.
[Censored]? Wait, seriously?! I thought.
"I heard all of this after plying him with even more tequeur, so I'm sure of it,"
Excel said. "In short, these notebooks contain the naked truth about his desire for
the four of you that His Majesty Souma normally keeps under control and hidden
away."
So this was it!
Juna and I looked at each other once again. Little wonder he had suppressed the
memory. If he'd remembered blabbing about all of this embarrassing stuff, I was
sure he'd never be able to look any of us in the eye again.
Everyone looked intently at the black notebooks. Excel made a show of flipping
through one of them so that only she could see.
"My, how interesting. It seems he wants to do different things with each of you.
With Roroa... Hoho. With Aisha... I see, so that's how he likes it, huh. With Juna... Oh,
my, to be so young again. And with the princess... Hee hee."
Hee hee, what?! What exactly was written in there?!
Though Excel was beautiful as she gave us a sidelong glance with a seductive
smile, she also looked like a demon lord. I dunno... I had to feel sorry for Souma after
all this.
"Um... Duchess Walter? I think those notebooks are going a bit far..." I hesitated.
"Oh, you don't want them, then? In that case, they'll have to be burned like it says
on the cover..."
""""We want them!"""" the four of us shouted in unison.
Excel nodded with satisfaction.
...Sorry, Souma. But I'm sure this is for the good of the kingdom. While making
excuses to my absent husband-to-be, I gave in.
"Now, let's begin the lecture," Excel said with satisfaction.
This was how the first lecture of Excel's Bridal Training Course began.
The course content, naturally, made us feel embarrassed sometimes, but Souma's
fiancées took the lessons seriously. That included me, too.
Well, of course, I wanted that black notebook... I felt it was necessary for building
a stable household and a stable country.
So that we could all live happily ever after.
◇ ◇ ◇
Now, about these black notebooks: it is said that, in later days, the candidates to
become queens would ask Excel to produce them regularly. At first, they would
incinerate them when they finished reading them, but eventually they started to
store them somewhere safe, thinking they could be useful again in the future.
In later years, an historical scholar who discovered a box containing several of
these booklets attempted to announce their contents at an historical conference, but
he stopped just before the announcement claiming the discovered documents were
"forgeries." There were reports that a group of suspicious men had made contact
with him a few days prior, but the truth of those rumors remains in the darkness.