* * *

The white-haired girl held a pair of chopsticks. After a little struggle, Ainsha picked up a savory-smelling pancake and transferred it to a rice bowl. Then she asked Limon, who sat across from her, in a flat voice.

"Lee, I would like to know if you have ever visited the Holy Alliance."

"Don't you know the sword marks I left in its great canyon and the ruins of the temple I destroyed are still there?"

"I do. They are famous. They are essential sightseeing stops."

"Then why ask?"

Perhaps he was remembering how, long ago, he had gone there to hunt down the White Dragon Clan, only to return after needlessly demolishing a religious order instead. Limon looked unimpressed. Ainsha answered his question with an expressionless face.

"Because I intend to take you to the Holy Alliance when I return home tomorrow and muddle my way into making our relationship a done deal."

"... Honesty is all well and good, but do you really think I'll go along if you lay out your whole scheme like that?"

"According to my foresight, no. But that is fine. The future can be changed."

"Changing the future and changing someone's mind are two entirely different things, you idiot princess..."

Pressing his temples at that confident answer, Limon turned his head. He spoke with his eyes to Li Qingyu, who was demurely placing an appetizing piece of meat in his rice bowl beside him.

'Princess, do something about her.'

'I'm sorry. That's beyond me.'

'If you can't stop her, what am I supposed to do?'

'Well... perhaps you'll simply have to get used to it, Sword Lord?'

Li Qingyu answered with a smile. Limon clicked his tongue at the palpable distress behind her smiling face. He knew why she had no choice but to smile even as she watched Ainsha's blatant courtship.

The problem was the offer to return the White Dragon Clan's seven-percent stake in Leviathan, part of the shares she had sold off to sustain the world-peace plan. Leviathan shares were no mere stocks. They were the Black Dragon Clan's lifeline, and the very authority to control the Seven Dragons Society.

And Ainsha was offering to return them merely in exchange for not interfering with her advances toward Limon. For the Black Dragon Clan, which held only 50.1 percent of the shares now, the offer was almost impossible to refuse—so outrageous it bordered on insanity. Even more outrageous, however, was the fact that Li Qingyu still hadn't accepted it.

Yet even that displeased Limon. He furrowed his brow and grumbled with his eyes.

'I told you to just turn her down.'

'If word of that gets out, our elders really will rebel.'

'I said I'd beat those bastards down for you, didn't I?'

'Even if the elders are dealt with, the clan's discontent will remain. More importantly, that controlling stake is an indispensable weapon for you to take control of the Seven Dragons Society.'

'We'll manage somehow.'

'We might, if Ainsha hadn't declared that she'd consider a refusal proof she'd been defrauded and go straight to war.'

'... So you're saying we're cornered?'

'It is difficult to find an answer, whether we look at the justification or the practical benefits.'

Limon sighed at the thought Li Qingyu conveyed as she set down some kimchi. Even if he ignored the practical benefits, he had no answer if Ainsha called them to account on principle. They were the ones who had tried to scam her with a date first, after all.

Of course, Ainsha had also tried to poison Limon out of the blue, so they could counter with that. The problem was that she had already promised to help capture the Liberation Brigade, partly as an apology. That left them unable to take her to task over anything now. Ultimately, Li Qingyu had no choice but to adopt the equivocal position of putting the matter on hold for the time being.

'Do you think she calculated all that before promising to cooperate?'

'It would be impressive if she had... but I doubt it. Perhaps she simply charged in with her eyes closed, and this is where she ended up?'

'Is it strange that that sounds even more impressive?'

'Sometimes an idiot is more frightening.'

All this was thanks to a certain someone who had evolved an idiot who acted solely on foresight into a super-idiot who acted in defiance of it. As Li Qingyu pointed that out with a beaming smile and Limon scratched his cheek, the piece of starch jelly Ainsha had struggled to lift with her chopsticks slipped onto the table for the third time. She muttered,

"Li Qingyu, holding secret conversations through telepathy is unfair. It is cheating."

"I haven't used telepathy, though?"

"We're just exchanging looks. Looks."

"I question that. Eyes are organs of sight. I do not understand how conversation is possible."

"When you're engaged, you can tell what the other person is thinking just by looking into their eyes."

"... Regardless, cheating is cheating."

Li Qingyu smiled, leisurely picked some fish off the bones, and placed it in the rice bowl. Ainsha watched her with a face that conveyed sulkiness despite its lack of expression, but finally succeeded in transferring the starch jelly on her fourth attempt. Limon frowned.

"You princesses over there, I can feed myself, so please just eat your own food. What is this, an offering table for an ancestral rite?"

Pancakes, meat, kimchi, starch jelly, fish, seasoned vegetables, and more. Limon spoke in disbelief as he stared at his rice bowl, where the assorted side dishes had piled into a mountain on the verge of a landslide. But Li Qingyu and Ainsha remained unperturbed.

"Well, I am your bride-to-be, Sword Lord. Isn't looking after her groom's meals a bride's privilege?"

"Understood. Then I will feed you myself. Say aaah. Open your mouth."

"Leaving aside the fact that brides have no such privilege, where did you learn that, Ainsha?"

"Tata taught me. How to become a beloved bride. A complete strategy guide."

Li Qingyu was utterly shameless, and Ainsha kept spouting foolishness without a trace of expression. After briefly agonizing over the two women, neither of whom showed the slightest inclination to back down, Limon finally spoke plainly.

"Ainsha. As you know, I'm already engaged to Li Qingyu here, so I can't marry you."

"That is fine. The Sword Lord is marrying Li Qingyu. I need only marry Lee."

"... Even if I bend over backward and accept your absurd claim that Lee and I are different people, I still have no desire to marry you."

"If you have no desire, I need only make it come."

"I'd rather you didn't talk about my feelings like some new product that'll eventually come into stock."

"Love always comes suddenly. It did for me. It will for you too, Lee. So let us make an effort."

"..."

Was it that he couldn't get through to her, or that she had no intention of listening? Even in his centuries of life, he had never experienced anything like this lovestruck idiot with broken brakes pitching her courtship straight down the middle. Left momentarily speechless, Limon asked in sheer disbelief,

"Look, I get how passionate you are, but what are you going to do if people find out you married a married man?"

"If they find out, they find out."

"Doesn't it occur to you that that might be a problem?"

"It is fine. The clan will understand even if I become your second wife. If they cannot, I will beat them until they do."

"What the... ?"

Limon stared incredulously at Ainsha as she clenched a fist and answered confidently, then suddenly fell silent. An important fact had just struck him anew.

'Come to think of it, she's from the Holy Alliance, isn't she?'

The Holy Alliance. A religious melting pot of countless interwoven temples and religious orders centered on Jerusalem, the world's last holy land. Here, in a state that united religious and political authority—a form of government that had otherwise died out after the Silver Age—even citizens of the same nation were subject to different laws depending on their faith and religious order.

Marriage was a prime example. Polygyny, polyandry, group marriage, shared marriage, cousin marriage, same-sex marriage, levirate marriage, marriage by abduction, and so on. In the Holy Alliance, any form of marriage was permitted depending on the religion. All that mattered was whether the marriage could receive a god's blessing.

Even the Amazons' marriage custom of abducting a husband and killing him after bearing his child was recognized. As a result, quarrels erupted practically every day, not only among believers but even among priests and gods.

And the one who had stepped in every time was the priestess. In other words, this expressionless girl was the very person who had witnessed and mediated all those bizarre marriage customs. Naturally, pointing out polygyny or husband-sharing to her would only earn a response of, "Is there a problem?"

'... I don't know anymore either.'

Limon gave up thinking about it. If he kept ignoring her, she would continue making advances on her own until her passion cooled. It was a decision befitting an old man thoroughly worn down by the world, who knew there was no such thing as eternal love.

That was why he abruptly asked her a question.

"Anyway, Ainsha. That thing we discussed before—could you do it now?"

"Of course. Any time is fine."

"Really? Then I'll ask you in a little while."

"You need only trust me with it."

It was an utterly transparent change of subject. Yet whether she failed to notice or noticed and ignored it, Ainsha made her confident assurance with an expressionless face and placed another chopstickful of seasoned vegetables in Limon's rice bowl. As the mountain of side dishes finally collapsed, Limon could only agonize once more over whether his decision to leave this idiot alone had really been right.

* * *

A little while later, after their eventful meal had ended and the table had been cleared, Limon set the box he had brought on it. The moment he opened it, Ainsha let out a brief exclamation, her face still expressionless.

"... It truly is extraordinary."

"You can tell?"

"Of course. I am the Holy Alliance's priestess. Seeing magical artifacts is an everyday occurrence."

Even a dog that spent three years at a school would learn to recite poetry. All the more so for Ainsha, who had spent her whole life visiting temples; there was no way she would fail to recognize a magical aura. Especially when the magical artifact in question radiated as tremendous a presence as the Violin of Deepest Black.

"But magical artifacts of this caliber are rare even in the Holy Alliance. It surpasses most divine relics."

"I did think it was pretty impressive... but you'd compare it to a divine relic?"

"Of course. Possessing even one magical artifact of this caliber changes a religious order's standing."

"Well, that much I know very well."

Limon nodded. Even after the Silver Age ended, magical artifacts made by priests and witches had been prized highly. They held the power to distort the order of the world in all manner of ways: speaking with someone far away, creating water in a desert, or preserving one's youth for years.

Among them, each divine-relic-class magical artifact had been regarded as virtually a strategic weapon. Though the flood of items from dungeons had driven down the value of magical artifacts, their power had not disappeared.

"But I do not understand why it is cursed."

"There's a rather complicated story behind that..."

... Of course, no matter how impressive a magical artifact was, a cursed item was still a cursed item, now as in the past. But Limon did not go out of his way to explain the history of the Violin of Deepest Black in detail. He merely asked with a serious face,

"More importantly, what do you think? Can you use your precognition to uncover what this violin really is, or read where the other Seven Arcs are?"

"I will take a look first."

Ainsha took out a set of prayer beads that warded off curses and wrapped them around herself several times, then reached out as she drew up her psionics. The moment she grasped the violin, a white radiance rose in her eyes.