Bofuri (The Strongest Shield Of Tensura)-Chapter 118 - One Hundred And Eighteen

It didn’t take long for Towa to usher in Kaede to private chambers. Kirara followed as well.

Kaede dropped into the couch with the ease of someone who had been here before and knew it was safe to relax. Kirara settled beside her, close but not quite leaning.

Towa poured the tea herself, which she always did in this room, and took the chair across from them with composed grace.

"So," Kaede said. "How is it actually going."

Towa looked at her. "You could read the reports."

"I do read the reports. I’m asking how it’s actually going."

The corner of Towa’s mouth moved. She settled back in her chair, her hands wrapped around her cup. "Better than I expected," she said, and she said it simply. "The other states were cautious at first. Understandably. Being asked to answer to a queen they’d never heard of through circumstances most of them are still processing." A small pause. "But they’re practical people, mostly, and the math wasn’t difficult."

"And the people?"

"Receptive." Towa said it like she was still slightly surprised by it. "More than I expected. There was resistance at first in some quarters, the usual anxiety about outside authority, about what it means when your king answers to someone else. But it settled." She took a sip of her tea. "People care about whether their lives are improving. Most of the politics happens above their heads anyway."

Kaede nodded. "And the orcs?"

Towa’s expression warmed noticeably. "The orcs," she said, "have been extraordinary. They finished the river district reconstruction three weeks ahead of schedule. The foreman, Brug, has been approached by two of the other states already asking if his company has availability."

"Brug started a company?"

"He did." Towa set her cup down. "He called it Trample and Build." A pause. "I asked about the name. He said it felt right."

Kaede stared at her for a moment.

Then she started laughing. She pressed a hand over her mouth but it didn’t particularly help.

"Trample and Build," she repeated.

"Their logo," Towa continued, with the just as much composure as a sprite, "is a hoof print."

Kaede laughed harder.

Kirara looked between them. "I’m sorry, who are these orcs."

"Former enemy combatants," Kaede managed.

"Who now run the most reliable construction company in the eastern vassal states," Towa added.

Kirara sat with that for a moment. "Aren’t," she said, "all your vassal states already in the east?"

"Don’t remind me," Kaede said, still recovering.

Towa watched the exchange with the attentiveness she brought to most things.

The conversation drifted after that, easy and unhurried. Towa mentioned a visiting delegation from one of the border territories that had gone better than expected.

The tea went down slowly.

The sound of the falls came through the window.

At some point the light through the glass had shifted from afternoon into something softer and more golden, as it did in the hour before evening, and none of them had particularly noticed.

Towa set her cup down and looked at Kaede.

Not the way she looked at her in governance meetings, or in the harbor when she was composing herself for a formal welcome. Just looked at her, in the quiet way she had developed since the night on the balcony.

She leaned forward slightly and raised her hand, and placed it gently against Kaede’s cheek.

Kaede stilled. Not with discomfort. With something quieter than that.

"Can... Can I call you Maple?" Towa asked.

The question was soft and direct.

Kaede looked at her for a moment. The gold light was in Towa’s hair and her amethyst eyes were steady and the hand against her cheek was warm.

Slowly, almost without deciding to, she leaned into it.

"Yeah," she said quietly. "You can."

Towa smiled. Not the composed diplomatic smile, not the careful one she used in public. The small, private one that she kept for rooms like this.

A beat of silence passed, easy and full at once.

Then, from beside Kaede, Kirara’s voice arrived, thoughtful and unhurried.

"So," she said. "How long has that been going on."

Kaede straightened slightly. Towa withdrew her hand quickly.

"It hasn’t been going on," Kaede said.

"Mm." Kirara looked at Towa. Then at the space where Towa’s hand had just been. Then at Kaede.

"Whatever you’re thinking..."

"You never lean into anything," Kirara said pleasantly. "I’ve been trying to get you to lean for the last month."

Kaede’s mouth opened.

Towa lifted her teacup to her lips with quiet composure.

"That’s a completely different..." Kaede started.

"Is it?" Kirara said.

It was not really a question.

Kaede looked at Towa for support. Towa looked back at her with an expression that was trying very hard to be neutral and not entirely succeeding.

Kaede exhaled and looked at the ceiling.

"Why are feelings so complicated?"

"Didn’t you used to have a girlfriend?" Kirara’s voice was entirely even as she asked.

Kaede shifted slightly where she sat. "Well, yeah. But Sally and I have known each other since we were kids. When it finally happened between us it didn’t feel like as much of a shift as you’d expect. Like something that had already been true for a long time just got a name." She paused, searching for the right way to put it. "This is different."

"That much," Kirara said, with a small solemn smile, "is definitely true."

She looked at the ceiling for a moment, the smile staying where it was, taking on a quality that was partly amused and partly something else entirely.

"We’re in a fantasy world," she said. "You’re somehow the empress of a nation of mythical creatures. I survived a three year coma." A brief pause. "Became a Kamen Rider."

A soft beep sounded from somewhere near Kirara’s collarbone.

"Spirit Rider," she corrected, without missing a beat. "I know, Eve."

Kaede was smiling from where she lay, the kind of smile that arrived without being summoned. Across from them Towa sat quietly with her tea, following the shape of the conversation without all of its context.

"Nothing about any of this is normal," Kirara continued. Her voice had shifted, losing the lightness by degrees, settling into something quieter and more considered. "I would never have expected to end up here. In any sense of the word." She looked at Kaede. "I would never have thought I’d be into girls either. And then I met you."

Kaede looked away. The familiar warmth climbed her face and she made no particular effort to stop it, only to not be seen doing it.

"I didn’t really do anything," she said.

Kirara let out a soft laugh.

"Are you serious?" She shook her head. "I was a trainwreck before you. Going through the motions. Telling myself that if I just didn’t look too closely at things, didn’t examine them, they’d sort themselves out eventually." Her voice was steady but there was something underneath it that had been waiting for the right room to say itself in. "I was really good at believing what I needed to believe to keep going."

She looked at Kaede properly.

"You saved my life," she said.

The room was quiet except for the sound of the falls coming through the window, steady and unhurried.

Kaede opened her mouth, then closed it. Whatever she’d been about to say seemed to leave her, and she looked away.

Towa watched her for a moment before speaking.

"When you came to this kingdom," she said quietly, "I might as well have already been dead. I knew it. The council knew it. Everyone who looked at me knew it." A small, hollow laugh. "It was just a matter of time."

She set her cup down.

"I remember thinking that if I could just... do one good thing before the end. Something that mattered. Something real." Her eyes drifted to the window, to the sound of the falls beyond it. "I wasn’t hoping for any of this. I didn’t think I was allowed to."

She looked back at Kaede.

"You brought joy back into Raja. You walked in and just..." She shook her head slightly, like she still hadn’t fully made peace with it. "You gave me my life back. And then you gave me a reason to actually use it." Her hand came to rest against her chest. "I don’t care that you’re a woman. I’ve fallen in love with you. I know I said I’d step aside, and I meant it. I still mean it." A beat. "But just having you here..."

She didn’t finish.

Kirara reached over and placed a hand on her shoulder, gentle and unhurried.

"None of this is normal," Kirara said. "So I don’t see why we have to handle it like it is." She glanced at Kaede like someone who had been thinking about this for longer than tonight. "I’m not going to pretend I can keep you to myself. Not you. Not with everything you are."

Kaede looked between the two of them.

"Like, a harem," she said. It didn’t quite come out as a question.

Kirara shrugged, easy and unbothered. "Well if the alternative is watching you endlessly prance around the issue, then yeah." A pause. "A harem."

Kaede was quiet for long enough that the falls outside filled the silence completely.

Then she said, "Sally would laugh at me."

It came out softer than she intended. She wasn’t smiling when she said it, but she wasn’t not smiling either. Something in between that didn’t have a clean name.

"She’d laugh," Kaede continued, "and then she’d say something like, ’of course you did, Kaede, you’ve always collected people,’ and then she’d steal whatever I was eating and act like she hadn’t said anything meaningful." A pause. "That was how she worked. She’d say the truest thing and immediately make it easy to ignore."

She was looking at the ceiling again.

"I miss her," she said simply. "I miss her every day. And I don’t know how to explain that missing her and..." she gestured vaguely at the room, at Kirara, at Towa, at all of it, "...this, can exist at the same time. It feels like they should cancel each other out. They don’t."

Kirara didn’t say anything.

Towa didn’t either.

The right thing, it turned out, was to let her finish.

"I’m not good at this," Kaede said. "In the game I was always the one charging in headfirst without reading the room. Sally was the one who thought about things. Chrome was the one who said them out loud." She exhaled. "I just... got used to being the blunt brick we all just threw at the toughest problems."

"That’s not entirely inaccurate," Kirara said.

Kaede gave her a look.

"I mean that affectionately."

"I got into a fight with Millim."

"I heard you fight Millim over Syrup," Kirara said. "Which is somehow both the most and least surprising thing I’ve learned about you."

The corner of Kaede’s mouth moved despite itself.

Towa had been watching this quietly, her cup held in both hands, the tea long since gone cold. She looked like someone cataloguing something she wanted to keep.

Kaede looked at her for a moment. "Can we... Come back to this later?" She finally asked.

"Kaede." Kirara’s voice was patient. "If we keep skirting around this..."

"I know, I know, it’s just..." Kaede stopped. Started again. "A harem sounds like something that happens to a different kind of person."

"We can take it slow," Towa said. "It doesn’t have to be de..."

"I’m going to proclaim myself a Demon Lord."

Silence.

Not the comfortable kind that had filled the room earlier. The kind that had edges.

Kirara looked at her. Something moved through her expression that she didn’t quite manage to put away in time. "Kaede."

It was just her name. It didn’t need to be anything else.

Kaede didn’t look at her directly.

Towa reached for her cup. Set it back down without drinking. When she spoke her voice was composed, but it was the kind of composed that had been assembled quickly.

"We’ll come back to it," she said. "Later."

A breath.

"I assume you want Raja to carry the announcement."

Kaede finally looked at her. The guilt was right there on her face, which was somehow worse than if she’d tried to hide it. "...Yeah."

Towa held her gaze for a moment. Then nodded once, small and final, and reached for her cup again.

Towa exhaled slowly. "The human nations that were on the fence about Maple Tree will stop being on the fence."

"Really?" Kirara asked finally seeming to get her emotions in check.

"Against me, yeah" Kaede confirmed. "Right now there’s ambiguity. I’m a human leading a monster nation, which is strange enough that most people don’t quite know what category to put me in. The moment I take a Demon Lord title that ambiguity disappears. That’s something they have a framework for. Something they know how to be afraid of."

"Fear isn’t always the same as compliance," Towa said.

"No. Sometimes it’s just fear." Kaede’s jaw tightened slightly. "There are nations that would have eventually come around. Given enough time, enough trade, enough proof that Maple Tree wasn’t a threat. That window closes."

"How many nations are we talking about."

"Enough that it’s not nothing."

"Although." Kaede leaned back. "The nations that were never going to come around stop being emboldened by the idea that I might be manageable. Clayman can’t maneuver around me without acknowledging me." She paused. "And Rimuru gets a wall he doesn’t have to build himself."

Kirara’s eyes narrowed slightly. "Meaning."

"Meaning if Maple Tree is a Demon Lord nation, anything that comes for Tempest has to calculate whether coming for Tempest means coming for us as well." Kaede’s voice was matter of fact. "He won’t take the title. He’s said so and he means it. But he benefits from proximity to someone who has."

"Like his neighbor with a very large fence," Kirara said.

"There’s also Walpurgis to consider." Kaede added, her voice quieter. "Only a few days now."

Kirara was quiet for a moment. "The demon lord’s banquet." It wasn’t quite a question. "That doesn’t fill me with relief."

"Most of them are fine. I mean it, I’ve met four of them and they’re..." Kaede searched for the word. "Cool, mostly. A little impulsive. But the others." She exhaled through her nose. "Clayman especially."

"That bad?" Kirara asked.

"Hopefully I’m overestimating it." Kaede said, and then her attention shifted. Her eyes moved to the window.

Kirara turned a half-second after her.

She didn’t get to finish the thought. The window exploded inward.

Neither of them had moved. Kirara’s hand had gone to her side on instinct, and Kaede remained exactly where she was on the couch, watching the smoke. Behind them, Towa had already raised a barrier, reddish, faintly luminous, a rose sigil burning at its center.

A voice came from the smoke. Female. Certain of itself.

"I’ve finally found you." A beat. "Caos."