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“He’s not here today,” the sage said with a smile--too wide of a smile, his entire body weight on his arm poised against the pillar by the garden.
Wolfram turned his head so fast he thought he could hear his neck crack. Fortunately, it was used to it. He turned to Murata with a hand on his hip, hypocritically enough thinking how presumptuous he looked with his leg posed jauntily like that. Before he spoke he remembered that he couldn’t say such things, however little he may like it. And so all he said was, “Your Holiness,” quite eloquently.
“Your Excellency,” Murata echoed, practically laughing.
Wolfram outright scowled, proper manners around living historical treasures be damned.
“I just thought I’d save you the trouble,” Murata continued as he dislodged himself from the pillar to approach the increasingly displeased former prince. He returned Wolfram’s disapproving glare with a long-suffering look.
“You know where Yuuri is, then?”
Murata dropped all pretenses and smiled. “Maybe.”
It took a few steps in the opposite direction before he added, “I have an idea--but the important part is, he isn’t in the castle this morning.”
Wolfram ceased his retreat, despite having an idea himself that he was only playing into the sage’s hand. “And why would that be?”
“Oh, you know how he gets,” Murata tossed out with a shrug.
Since his back was to him, Wolfram felt entitled to rolling his eyes at the flippancy he showed towards their king--regardless of the fact that he did, indeed, know how Yuuri “gets,” as the sage had put it. “I’ll have big brother send out Gurrier right away,” he snapped, resuming his march away from Murata.
He’d made it a good few more steps when a realization hit him. As if he somehow had given himself away, Murata chose exactly that moment to ponder aloud, “Isn’t Lord von Voltaire’s chamber in the other direction?”
“Right,” Wolfram grit out between clenched teeth. He didn’t waste any time spinning around and walking past Murata, tossing a, “Thank you, Your Holiness,” over his shoulder.
Just as he had been hoping to write off that portion of his so far very bad morning, Wolfram realized the footsteps clacking against the marble tiles of the inner castle in his wake were, indeed, Murata’s.
All decorum was forgotten as he was forced to spin around yet again, exclaiming, “Why are you following me?”
Murata didn’t flinch in the slightest. If anything, he looked even more pleased than before, given the smile spreading across his face. “I thought you might be lonely,” he answered, “what with the king gone and all.”
“I assure you your concern is unwarranted,” Wolfram mumbled, but his eyes betrayed him by hastily tracking down, away from Murata’s face and to his lower left. There was, alas, nothing there interesting enough to pretend to be fixated on.
“Of course,” Murata nodded without a moment’s pause. “This just happens once you’ve lived for a long time, you start over-thinking everything and go off creating your own concerns… You know, in Japan we say, don’t age if you don’t have to!”
Wolfram looked at the teenager who was supposedly the reincarnated soul of one of their most esteemed founders shaking his head slowly with a weak grin, and found his eyebrows rising incredulously before he could stop himself. Esteemed founder, right. This was his great, sagely advice. I’m only eighty-three, myself, thank you. “And?”
“Please humor me and allow me to accompany you,” Murata grinned.
Counting down from ten in his head, Wolfram made it to negative three before managing to grit out, “Fine.”
“Thank you, Your Excellency,” Murata said as he dipped into a little bow.
Wolfram turned face again and promptly resumed walking, if only so he didn’t have to look beyond the sage’s glasses frames to judge if there was sympathy or mirth there.
They’d made it a good halfway down the hallway before Murata broke the relative silence to say with such an affected casual manner that Wolfram could hear it in his voice, “By the way…” before trailing off.
“Yes?”
“I’m not certain Lord von Voltaire is in his chamber,” Murata promptly supplied. “I heard the guards mention an expedition…”
Wolfram groaned. “What’s next, Conrart is off an a rescue mission to save Gurrier?”
“Oh, you knew about Josak’s little problem?”
“You’re joking this time, right?”
Fortunately, Murata laughed. “Well, it’s true that Josak isn’t around right now.”
“And Conrart?”
“Well…”
Wolfram stared in disbelief as Murata rubbed his neck sheepishly, despite the slight grin on his face. “I have reason to believe he is not present this morning.”
In spite of any faculty of reason, Wolfram had to hold himself back from exclaiming: And who did Yuuri elope with this time? Naturally, the young king had yet to elope with anyone, nevermind the aforementioned absent parties--but there had been incidents. With all of them. Instead, he took a deep breath. “Does this have anything to do with where Yuuri is?”
Murata nodded, “If you ask the maids, it does.”
This time, Wolfram counted down from negative three to negative six before exclaiming, “And that means?”
“Nothing, really,” Murata answered, as calm as could be. “Except that there’s no need to be concerned over our sovereign’s personal safety.”
“Right,” Wolfram spoke through grit teeth. His jaw was going to start aching soon if this kept up.
“And,” Murata continued unprompted, “we basically have the castle to ourselves!”
Is that supposed to be a good thing? Wolfram eyed Murata skeptically. He looked just a tad too pleased with himself--or perhaps that was normal for him. “I see,” he ended up responding in a measured tone.
“Come on,” Murata chided. “It doesn’t have to be so bad. Why not take it as a day off?”
Wolfram scowled. A day off wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Not without Yuuri around.
“We could do something fun,” Murata practically sang.
Now this threw Wolfram for a loop. He crossed his arms, an eyebrow raised. “Do you have something in mind?”
Should Wolfram have been the suspicious type (when it came to anything other than Yuuri’s multitude of secret love affairs which he was obviously constantly having), he would have found something questionable about Murata’s smirk. As it was, it just seemed somewhat out of place. “Well…” he began, “not unless you’d be interested in some pieces down in the treasury… I can get us in there, you know.”
“Are you suggesting we steal from our own castle?”
“Heavens, no,” Murata said, despite looking as devious as ever. “Just to take a peek… You know, there are some great artifacts from my time down there.”
Wolfram’s raised eyebrow spoke well enough of his skepticism for him.
“Oh, you probably wouldn’t be interested,” Murata nodded with a thoughtful look. “But there’s a snowglo… ah, orb said to show you your destined partner… and a candle that only burns for one whose love is true…”
About a second and a half passed before Wolfram snapped, “Of course I’m not interested,” all at once, before continuing more slowly, “But I may as well accompany you as a guard.”
“Just what I’d been hoping for,” Murata grinned.
Needless to say, their sovereign was suitably distressed to return home from the first monthly Shin Makoku baseball game to find the maids chatting amiably about the Great Sage’s attempted elopement with Lord von Bielefeld, and equally amused to discover that it had ended with Wolfram knocking him over the head with an oversized snowglobe.