Meeting With Her Highness Siesta (1)

It's been a week since I arrived in this world and I'd like to point out something.

Mostly.. the cultural aspect of things. I get how it's fantasy and many aspects are related to your typical fantasy novels, but one thing that you usually don't get to feel unless you were actually dropped into such a cliche situation is how life works differently here-- in an economic sense.

In the modern world, people study from childhood to-- go to college to-- get their diplomas or bachelor's degree to-- work a day job or something. If not then you choose the 'riskier' route of following your passion and become a freelance creative-- or become an entrepreneur and start a company-- or an investor in real estate, bonds, and stocks.

Basically speaking, if you're adverse to taking risks, it's possible to be a hikikomori in the modern world. Even if that means working a 9-5 job.. being conservative that is.

In the fantasy world however.. connections are indispensable, and juggling with risk is inevitable. You can't survive if you don't build connections, you can't survive if you don't act up. I get how making friends in the modern world is normal. But that is very different from making business partners, be it the adventurer industry, agricultural industry or some other industry.

You could even say not taking risk is way riskier than taking risk. I mean.. it applies to the modern world too if you really dig into the ponzi scheme of the economic system but that's besides the point.

The fantasy world isn't an industrialized world where you can just live working a decent 9 to 5 job. Adventuring earns you money at the risk of your life, working as a merchant earns you money at the risk of the business failing, farming earns you money at the risk of losing all your crops.

It actually is possible to earn a stable wage as a knight or hold some high noble position or become a maid-cum-retainer but that's the minority of the population. It's reversed in the modern world where people who earn a wage are the majority-- is the point I'm trying to get at here.

In the modern world.. starting a business or being able to sustain yourself freelance is unorthodox-- In the fantasy world, being able to work and sustain a stable wage is unorthodox. Pretty odd reciprocation huh?

Moreover, the legal working age is 12.

And Jennifer-chan here is going to graduate this year and she aspires to be an adventurer. She's your typical fantasy girl with silver-purple hair, emerald eyes and freckles on her face.

She's sitting over the counter counting coins while I sat on a stool a little further away as I arranged the flowers into a bouquet as instructed by Miss Margrett. I wasn't forced on this.. rather, I asked her to teach me the skill of flower arrangement. I'm glad she was kind enough to guide me.

Since I have an artist background, some concepts such as being clear about what the purpose of the banquet is before starting, colour theory, composition and shape theory applies here.

"Jennifer-chan," I called out. Currently, it's only me and Jennifer-chan in the store.

Liliath, Prune and Nine went out together with Margrett to get appropriate clothes for the 'occasion'.

"What is it? 68.. 69.." sounding a little far away, she replied.

"Nevermind, I'll ask you again once you finish counting the coins."

"72.. Un.. 73..74.."

I continued arranging the flowers into rolls-- not plastic, but yellow paper. One by one, I dug the stems of the flowers into the moist sponge at the apex of the inverted cone. The style or theme of banquets are usually tied closely together with the season, so the banquet I'm 'mass producing'-- or copying from the ones Miss Margrett has made is called 'Sky In Winter' where this small cerulean flower acts as a base with golden-yellow weed acting as accents. White lilies and indigo rose-like flowers are added at the sides to balance the overall feel. Also, I can't forget Eucalyptus leaves, it's a must have for the aroma-sake.

"Done! So what is it that you wanted to talk about?" Jennifer-chan said.

"Ah okay, I wanted to ask about safety. Does your mom leave you to attend the shop alone like this, ever?"

"Yes, I've had to sit here a few times, why?"

"I'm wondering what you would do in time if a thief or burglar comes robbing the place?"

I get how the scene of a man breaking into a florist-- much less a bank-- would cite the coming of the end of the world-- it could happen right? I'm just curious how this mother-daughter pair would deal with the situation.

"It won't happen, there are knights outside guarding the place."

"Okay.." I guess there's almost zero chance of such a thing happening I guess.

Snipping the stem of the indigo rose at slanted angle, I carefully skewered in between the two cerulean flowers. I spun the bouquet around to check the angle.

"But.. if it does happen.."

I raise my head to Jennifer's words.

She looked left and right in prudence. Seeing as nobody was present, she then added, "Don't tell mommy I showed you this alright?" And from below the counter she took out a weapon...

Kashik.

Pulling the pump to load magic into the mechanism-- what she showed me was a double barreled magic shotgun.

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Now then, today was a Saturday and Her Highness Siesta had just invited us for a sightseeing tour.. or something like that.

Remember how I talked about taking risks? Yeah, honestly speaking, I don't see any demerit to getting along with the princess of the empire. More so would be that getting on her bad side would make life even harder for us.

But the risk would be exposing ourselves.. actually, it might be a little too late.

Liliath has stayed in touch with Her Highness over the past few days and some incidents happen to shake her position and power within the political arena. She, who was known as the saint, for some reason lost the ability to use the Unique Skill [Oracle]. That meant stripping off her title and-- she's now back to just royalty.

Whatever it is, she now has free time to idle around with her freed-up schedule that she would have usually been spending doing 'saint' work. So instead of idling around.. she decided to 'build connections'. It's a plus for both parties so we decided to go.

We'd be found out as reincarnates but whatever. Makes no difference I think. It's not like the Regressor is being bothered all too much even though the royalty knew of his existence either.

"There's an unspoken rule that royalty should not meddle with irregulars too excessively. This applies a lot more to the kingdom that the summoned irregular originated from," was what Liliath said.

Since the four of us needed better clothes for the sake of courtesy-- we've been wearing mismatched ones for the past few days and didn't know any better about the proper fashion sense of this world-- we prepared new clothes. It's not just for this one occasion, it's clothes for future use too. I was left out since someone needed to take care of the florist.

The decision on who to house-sit was made at Liliath's words, "I memorized Noel's body size so trust me on this alright?"

That's.. a little unsettling but alright?

They bought back a few sets. Some for formal wear, some for adventuring. We changed into suitable clothes.

Now then, time to meet up with Her Highness at the church.

Yes, the church, or would it be better to call it a monastery? There were many large white buildings enclosed in walls which had crosses screaming all across the design. Of the numerous buildings, the largest one of which was probably the main cathedral.

If I were to describe the place in one word, it would be: busy.

There were merchants selling stuff along the outer parameter of the monastery, people walking in and out of the main gate. Among those there were people in wheelchairs, some entering with crutches-- children that have come of age to receive the god's blessing or something, emergency cases where people were pulling in a group of bloody adventurers and ectertra.

"Liliath, what is the function of the church here? It's a lot more sophisticated than I thought?" I asked.

"To put it in terms of your world, it would be equivalent to a church, hospital, orphanage, temple and community centre," Liliath replied. Her gorgeous velvet hair complemented the beautiful black medieval dress she wore today. It was weirdly simple, made of silk with thin criss-crossing laces going over her stomach area. The sleeves were loose and reached all the way to her wrist, the emblem attached to her chest area helped add a pint of complexity.

She's beautiful.

Gulp.

"It's really busy, and big too," Nine commented. Nine, male form, had black hair and was wearing a white shirt with a diamond punctured into the crow-neck area and brown loose pants with the azure sword hanging at his waist. It's like those easy clothes worn by retired heroes if you get what I mean.

Prune's wolf-like ears perked up, observing the different food ingredients being sold here. She wore a simple blue dress. Unlike Liliath's, her's is more princess-like and has a tight lace around her waist. The dress created quite a bit of exposure so she had a capelet draped around her shoulder. I guess she picked the colour because it matched with her silver hair well.

I know that it's a very odd line-up considering how the current temperature here is 3 degrees celsius but get this: most people use magic to deal with the cold. They create this magic barrier around them to prevent heat loss. Damn convenient.

Having Liliath register this magic into the magiccasting widget, the spell data was shared among us and now we can use the magic even if we didn't know how to properly 'use' magic yet. It's cheating.. at the same time, it's the best we've got.

Amidst the bustling crowd, we entered through the gate. There were church knights wearing imposing armor and holding gallant swords but they didn't stop us or anything like that.

Stretched out before us was a path with grandiose quartz statues of 12 gods and goddesses arranged on both sides-- aren't there supposed to be 13 gods and goddesses? To the left side of the monastery quarters was the main cathedral, to the right were office-like buildings and the orphanage. The building at the front was most probably the hospital site. Winter coloured trees interspersed at intervals with other decorative elements like fountains and stairs when walking the main path to cope with the elevation of terrain.

So you get this dissonance of ancient meets modern fantasy. Yes, the architecture in Imagi is weird AF.

"From the map Her Highness should be somewhere at the orphanage," Nine said, looking towards one of the larger buildings that had at least 3 floors.

"I've notified Her Highness regarding our arrival, she told us to wait at the entrance," Liliath said.

I noticed how people prayed to the statues of the gods and goddesses. It was quite surreal seeing tears stream down some of their faces. If I were to rate the most popular to the least, the God of Disease, Asclepius would come in first while the God of Fate, Moirae would come in last..

"Huh, did something happen?" Of all the statues here, only God of Fate's statue had no one praying to it. Moreover, there was a black flower lying sideways at the base of the statue.

"We met her last time, right?" Nine said dubiously, but taking care to speak in a voice soft enough not to be heard by the others.

"It doesn't look like her at all," Prune said, scanning the statue from head to toe.

"Yeah.."

To be honest, the real Moirae doesn't suit this exaggerated ethereal statue pose. Her hair should be curly, not straight, and her eyes aren't supposed to be droopy. Worst of all, she's not a lolli. This statue has it all wrong. I wonder where they got her image from before creating the statue?

Snapping a picture to save it for when we meet again, we proceed to the orphanage building. Siesta's marker was moving out from the building at the further end towards the one in the front, close to us.

This building looks like a school to be honest. You have to go through the front entrance intermission room before entering the auditorium where the paths to the various facilities separate. Since we were told to wait here, we didn't need to get ourselves lost or anything of the sorts.

And then her figure appeared amidst the crowd. The people greeted Her Highness quite amiably in fact. She's well known.

"Good afternoon Your Highness, It's a pleasure to meet you again."

"""Good afternoon Your Highness."""

Nine, Prune and I just followed some template shit with Liliath doing the talking. It's awkward, can't help it. Only Liliath knows the way to speak to royalty properly.

"Pleasure to see you all once again. Thank you for coming.." Her Highness Siesta replied. Her smile was twitching.

Her hair was platinum blonde, emerald eyes that refracted a little blue-- she wasn't wearing a dress but casual clothes with pants.

Behind her was a maid with amber coloured hair and irises.

Surrounding the two like flowers in need of protection were a troop of royal knights.

The air fell heavy all of a sudden.