LIGHT NOVEL
LIGHT NOVEL
— Tisli’s perspective —
A marathon of meetings finally behind me, I was walking the corridor back to my office. The clock had just passed three in the afternoon.
Normally Rahful attends me, but today an errand had taken her outside the castle, so for once I was alone.
This floor, moreover, is reserved for the royal family; wide as the corridor is, not another soul walked it. Even the cleaning maids had finished their work in the morning, it seemed.
(Phew… I’m rather tired. I never did have lunch—perhaps a short rest.)
So I decided to take a breather on the terrace of the aerial garden. It hardly seemed worth summoning a maid, so I prepared tea and fruit myself and carried them out.
The terrace, as it turned out, had a prior guest.
(…A cat?)
Mildly surprised, I regarded the cat sprawled on the lawn. It seemed not to have noticed me—it was sunbathing, luxuriously.
(Wherever did it get in from…?)
The royal castle has aerial gardens on several floors. The topmost one is still under repair—I’m the one who broke it—but greenery is planted on terraces at key points throughout.
And this particular garden is on the sixth floor. That a cat had climbed to such a height surprised me. The castle does rise like a mountain, its outer walls studded with protrusions, so the climb may not be impossible… but can it get back down?
Unbothered by my concern, the cat gave a long stretch and rose. Then it looked at me. Perhaps the smell of the tea had caught its attention.
I expected it to bolt. Instead it studied me… then padded over, utterly soundless. No fear of people—someone’s pet, perhaps?
The cat arrived at my feet and looked up at me.
“…You. Could it be you’re hungry?”
“Meow.”
The cat answered with an indescribable little air. I pinched off a piece of fruit, crouched, and offered it at the cat’s mouth—no interest.
Not hungry, then, apparently.
“Am I in your way, perhaps?”
Cats are famously territorial; possibly this garden was already claimed ground, and I the trespasser—but no, that didn’t seem to be it either.
“Meow.”
Because the cat rubbed its cheek against my hand.
“Could it be… you want affection?”
“Meow?”
If only I could understand feline speech—but super-genius beauty though I am, even I cannot build a spell that translates a cat’s meowing.
In which case one must think as the cat thinks—and to understand another’s heart, the essential thing is to become the other party.
Accordingly, I attempted, tentatively, an imitation of a meow.
“M-meow…”
At my timid effort, the cat tilted its little head, adorably.
“Meow?”
“Meow, meow…”
“Meow.”
H-hm… this is… profoundly embarrassing, isn’t it…
In fact, I’ve just remembered—Alde has seen my cat impression before… seen it, or rather, I did it right in front of him…
That time was mortifying in the extreme…!
Though Alde had seemed flustered himself, so the whole thing blew over right away—my one salvation.
W-well, no matter… At present there is no Alde here, nor a single maid.
No one is watching; there is nothing whatsoever to be embarrassed about.
So, to understand this cat’s feelings, I continued in its own tongue.
“Meooow, meooow.”
And the cat answered—timed as if in reply to my own call.
“Meow.”
And so, before I knew it, I was getting into it.
“Meooow, meoooooow.”
“Meow.”
“Mew-mew-mew, mew-mew-mew?”
“Meow?”
“Mrow-mrow-mrow-meow? Meooow, meooow, meooow?”
“Meow-meow.”
“Meooow-mrow, meooow-mrow?”
“Meow-meow♪”
Somehow it felt as though we were communicating, and my spirits lifted. And so—
“Mrow-mrow-meow♪ Mrow-mrow-meow♪ Mrow-mrow-mrow-meow♪♪”
—I was trilling cat-speech practically in song, romping with the cat, when—
“…?!”
A human presence, behind me?!
I whirled around!
“A-A-Alde?!”
And there—
—in the terrace doorway stood Alde, his usual idiot look turned a notch more vacant still!
“Y-y-you?! What are you doing here?!”
I shot to my feet and backed up several steps—
—and Alde said, looking awkward about it,
“Uh, well… I kind of got lost inside the castle, see.”
“This is the royal family’s private floor! How does one wander onto it?!”
“Is it? Now that you mention it, there was a gatekeeper at the entrance to the floor—he waved me straight through, no questions asked, you know.”
Th-th-that’s right, he would have…!
I’m the one who arranged for Alde to move through the entire castle unrestricted!
“B-be that as it may! What business do you have spying on people?!”
“No… spying was never the intent…”
And then Alde’s gaze drifted downward.
At the end of his gaze, the cat was still there—and, not the least bit bothered by my shouting, it let out a big yawn.
Alde watched the cat a moment, then said,
“Eh, no harm done.”
“There is every harm!”
“This time you actually sounded like a cat, you know.”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?!”
And so…
For the second time…
I had made a spectacle of myself before Alde…
I am never doing a cat impression again—never!
(And that’s that.)
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