Chapter 2 - Prince Thumb's First Love

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Chapter 2

 

 

Mylphe abandoned his berry-picking and hurried straight home, where he immediately did as he had been instructed.

 

He filled a terracotta pot with soil, then emptied the contents of the leather pouch onto it.

 

Inside was a seed no larger than a bean. When he touched it, it felt faintly warm.

 

From then on, he was to water it until the flower grew, keeping the pot on the living-room windowsill where it would receive plenty of sunlight during the day.

 

Apparently, once the flower bloomed, Mylphe would be able to meet the man who had once been human and was now a flower fairy.

 

He had also been told that the man who had slept for a hundred years was, like Mylphe, a man who could love only someone of his own sex.

 

While waiting for the seed to sprout, he was supposed to take this potion...

 

With twilight approaching, Mylphe opened the second pouch the sorceress had given him.

 

This one was not made of leather, but from a fish's swim bladder.

 

Inside was a powder resembling gold dust, so fine that it looked as though it might scatter into the air at the slightest carelessness.

 

Its glitter was much like that of gold dust, but its airy, weightless texture was closer to scales or pollen.

 

To make certain he swallowed every last bit, Mylphe poured honey into the pouch.

 

The sorceress had specifically instructed him to do so.

 

He added about three spoonfuls of thick, viscous honey and kneaded the pouch from the outside.

 

Once the honey and golden powder had been thoroughly mixed together, he steeled himself and swallowed the entire contents in one go.

 

The sweet honey trickled slowly over his tongue and down his throat, and no matter how carefully he tasted it, it was simply honey. Perhaps the golden powder had no flavor, or perhaps the honey was simply too strong. Either way, he felt nothing unusual from having swallowed something so strange.

 

After gulping it all down, he peered at the pot on the windowsill. There was nothing there but the seed resting atop the soil.

 

Puzzled, Mylphe tilted his head and took a sip of wine.

 

As he drank, letting it wash away the excessive sweetness coating his mouth, he happened to glance outside the window.

 

He thought he caught a glimpse of something shining as it passed through the nearby birch grove.

 

Nervously, he opened the window, and something resembling a butterfly glided right past him.

 

It had several translucent wings and disappeared beyond the birch grove.

 

Thinking he might have imagined it, Mylphe looked again—and saw something resembling a grasshopper near the base of one of the trees.

 

He narrowed his eyes and stared, but it was translucent, its outline impossible to make out clearly.

 

Yet there was no mistaking it: something was there.

 

It floated and hopped about, light as a drifting mote.

 

Wanting to see the creatures up close, Mylphe rushed out of the living room.

 

He stepped into the hallway, passed the door leading to his workshop, and headed for the front entrance.

 

Since customers occasionally came by, he opened the door carefully. Yet the familiar scene outside suddenly looked completely different.

 

Beyond the flat stones paving the front porch, there were creatures perched upon the gate and the shop sign.

 

The moment one noticed Mylphe looking at it, it darted away as though fleeing from him.

 

They looked like insects, but they were not insects—small creatures, faintly translucent, almost as though they were made of light.

 

In the birch grove before him, countless living beings danced through the air, more than he could possibly count.

 

Some appeared whitish, while others were green like leaves. Still others shimmered in every color of the rainbow.

 

Could these be fairies? If so, were they fairies of the birch trees, or perhaps fairies of the flowers and grasses carpeting the ground...? He wanted to ask the sorceress right away, but she supposedly lived in Loughray Gorge, near the border, and reaching her would take more than half a day.

 

I should have asked her more questions.

 

Excited, Mylphe blinked again and again, then closed his eyes for a while before opening them once more.

 

Perhaps it was all in his imagination, he thought as he looked again—but now he could see even more fairies.

 

It was neither his imagination nor a dream.

 

Most likely, they had always been here. This had always been his everyday world.

 

He simply had not been able to see them. They had always been close by.

 

All that had changed was Mylphe himself, after drinking the golden powder the witch had given him.

 

"Amazing... Ah, amazing. It's like a dream."

 

Mylphe looked up at the sun sinking toward the western sky, shielding his eyes when its brilliance dazzled him, before turning back to the birch grove.

 

It was such a strange, unbelievable sight that he found himself checking again and again, as though he could scarcely trust his own eyes.

 

When he stepped off the porch and passed through the gate, the pond in the forest gleamed like a mirror.

 

Mylphe slowly made his way toward the pond, which looked so different from the day before.

 

He had no idea which creature was the fairy of what, but fairies of every color had gathered around the pond. Some were almost indistinguishable from human beings.

 

And yet they had multiple wings, and varied greatly in size.

 

Some were no bigger than his thumb, while others were as large as wine bottles.

 

They seemed to be chatting among themselves, but the moment they noticed Mylphe, they scattered in every direction like startled spiders. Then, just as suddenly, some came fluttering toward him of their own accord, circling above his head with soft, giggling laughter.

 

"H-hello."

 

Having clearly heard the fairies' laughter, Mylphe greeted them nervously.

 

He waited for a reply, but the fairies merely startled and fled.

 

He could tell that they were laughing, but he could not understand their words. Perhaps they could not understand his language either.

 

Bewildered by the way his familiar world had suddenly burst into radiance, Mylphe steadied his breathing.

 

Realizing just how excited he had become, he decided to return home for the time being.

 

With the birch grove behind him, its translucent fairies flitting about like gnats, he passed through the gate.

 

After giving the furniture shop's sign a brief glance, he crossed the porch and proceeded down the empty hallway. There were no fairies inside the house, and the door leading to the workshop looked just as it always had.

 

Still curious, he gently opened it—and found pale brown and green fairies inside the workshop. Since it was a furniture maker's workshop, countless boards of walnut and horse chestnut were stacked throughout the room. Perched atop them were fairies resembling tiny human figures, chattering amongst themselves.

 

"Fairies of the trees...?"

 

The moment he spoke, the fairies flinched and fled.

 

Apparently, they could pass straight through walls, for they ignored the windows entirely and slipped out one after another.

 

As Mylphe stared at the workshop, empty in the blink of an eye, an inexplicable sadness settled over him.

 

It was no different from how the workshop had been that very morning, yet it brought back memories of the day his parents and his brother and sister-in-law had died.

 

The workshop, where someone had been working almost every day of the year, no longer possessed the vitality it once had.

 

There had been many times when all five of them, Mylphe included, had crowded into this very space.

 

Back then, the crisp sounds of planes shaving wood and sandpaper rasping against its surface had filled the room.

 

Mylphe's father and older brother made furniture, while his mother and sister-in-law crafted smaller items such as cutlery, and from a young age, Mylphe had helped both sides.

 

'Mylphe, I'm done here, so go help your mother.'

 

'Mylphe's so nimble-fingered. You're such a help.'

 

His father and mother had doted on Mylphe, their child born to them in their later years.

 

His brother and sister-in-law had treated him like their own child as well, so when he looked back, his memories were filled with nothing but happy days.

 

Of course, there had been imperfect days too—disagreements over work, arguments, and times when he had been scolded for some small prank. But even those moments had eventually turned into laughter, becoming precious memories unique to a family that trusted and loved one another.

 

The five of them had lived happily together. Customers came almost every day to order furniture and buy their smaller wares.

 

The workshop and the dining table had always been full of life, overflowing with smiles.

 

That was what had been normal to Mylphe.

 

Everyone's gone now.

 

Mylphe gazed absently from one end of the workshop to the other, where the fairies had disappeared.

 

He had been twelve when, on the way home from delivering a large piece of furniture, his family of four had been caught in a rockslide and lost their lives.

 

For the seven years since then, Mylphe had lived alone in a house far too large for one person, running the shop without relying on anyone.

 

Even as a child, he had been blessed with good customers and good work, and he had managed to live steadily enough all these years. But he had always wanted to spend more time with someone. He had wanted someone to talk to.

 

Even when he thought, Today I'll make some small talk... it never went well, and their conversations always stopped at the bare minimum.

 

All the things he wanted to say had piled up inside him, and lately, he had found himself talking to himself more and more.

 

I thought I was alone, but I wasn't.

 

Thinking the wood fairies might return, Mylphe waited for a while.

 

He imagined that, even though they could not understand one another, a walnut tree spirit might be telling another wood spirit something like, 'I want to become a beautiful chair...'

 

But no matter how long he waited, the workshop remained empty. Still, perhaps after a night's sleep, they would come back.

 

From tomorrow onward, he decided, even if he could see the fairies, he would pretend he couldn't. They did not seem like beings he could talk to, and it would be lonely if he frightened them all away until none remained.

 

But what about the flower seed? Could it be different?

 

A male fairy who might become his lover...

 

Back in the living room, Mylphe approached the window where he had placed the terracotta pot.

 

He had only just watered it, so there was nothing else to do, but he leaned over and peered inside. Then, strangely enough, he found that it had already sprouted.

 

A tiny yellow-green shoot had sprung up, standing there adorably straight.

 

"W-wow... amazing. It really was a seed."

 

Mylphe smiled at the little thing, which seemed far more fittingly called a magical seed than an ordinary flower seed.

 

He had no idea how many days it would take for the flower to bloom, but he decided to wait eagerly and enjoy watching it grow.

 

 

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