Alice was holding four pretty wild flowers in one hand. Pink delicate petals fluttered in the wind.
“Alice? What is the flower in your hand? It’s so pretty!”
At my exclamation, Alice smiled, her cheeks rosy.
“There are a lot of new blooms over there. I thought it would look good on Lady Emir… so I brought a few.”
“Huh? For me?”
Alice nodded her head. As she reached out her hand with the flower towards my hair, she asked, “Can I put it in your hair?”
“Of course, I’ll like it.” I replied without hesitation.
I couldn’t refuse Alice’s offer because she and the flowers were so pretty.
“Alice, put one in your hair too. Can I give Jake one too?”
“…Yes, My Lady, you may do as you please.”
I put a flower in Alice’s hair and a flower on Jake’s hem.
When I saw the three of us adorning the same flower, I covered my mouth with my hand and chuckled, “Wow! It feels like we are siblings. Ahaha.” To be honest, each of us have very different tastes to be siblings, but we seemed to have a somewhat similar disposition because we went to the same kindergarten. As I laughed, the tree of us sat on a rock next to each other and started writing poetry. Only the sound of a pen scribbling on a piece of paper could be heard in the pin drop silence.
Sometime later, I asked, ‘Umm, am I a little hungry?’ During lunch, I was lost in my thoughts. I was so excited about the outdoor class that I only nibbled a little at lunch, and now I’m hungry.
‘Oh, don’t show it. Everyone will think of me as a glutton who talks about eating again shortly after lunch. What an embarrassment…’
But, as we all know, when you’re hungry, your head doesn’t work properly. I closed my eyes slightly, leaving behind my growing appreciation of nature. But then.
Growl-
The rumbling sound of the stomach was quite loud for a barely eaten meal. The source of the sound was, of course, my stomach. I closed my eyes and stopped every action. How was I feeling now? Ugh, I wanted to cry…
“Uh, Mir, are you hungry?”
“Lady Emir! Are you hungry?”
Alice and Jake, who were sitting next to me got up, grabbed me and asked me instantaneously. They wholeheartedly help me everytime, but trying to help me when I don’t want them makes me a little embarrassed.
‘I didn’t want you to hear it, but what is this… haha.’
I slowly opened my eyes. The children became even fussier.
“Mir, your face looks haggard…”
“Oh no, I think she had fainted for a short while. What-what should we do?”
A misunderstanding! I finally had to shake my head and say I was okay.
“I am really fine. In fact, I ate only a little for lunch earlier. I guess that’s why.”
“Ah, that was it. Mir, I just heard that the teacher had prepared special snacks for the outdoor class. Let’s ask for it.”
“Yes, Lady Emir. Let’s go together now.”
Saying so, the two children put their arms around me, one on each side. I went to Mrs. Edmond, with Jake and Alice supporting me.
“Oh, you didn’t eat enough lunch. Then I should prepare a snack now.”
Msr. Edmond took a pack of snacks from the carriage and placed it on a table. After hearing the story from the Imperial Knights, the other children also gathered one by one.
“Mir, eat this too. It’s salad.”
“The sauce bowl is far away, so I’ll move it to Lady Emir.”
Jake and Alice were chattering along on my both sides. Somehow it seemed that both of them were more interested in feeding me than themselves.
“What? You mean that Lady Emir didn’t eat lunch earlier? Why were you starving?”
In the meantime, I don’t know who the princess heard it from, but it seemed like she heard a rumor.
‘Ah, I’m a little full now.’
And maybe the ten minutes of snack time has passed? Because there were so many varieties of food that people recommended to me to try, I quickly became full.
There was fresh fruit juice, strawberries topped with whipped cream, square sandwiches with mini forks…
“I’ll stop eating now!”
In the end, I couldn’t eat the last piece of pancake, so I gave up and put down the fork.
Brrr-
An unknown vibrating noise could be heard. And I felt the table shaking.
‘Huh? What is this? Why does the table seem to shake all of a sudden?’
Maybe this is a surprise event. An enchanted table that shakes the moment I put the fork down… But there is no way that is true! Who would do such a crazy event?
There were only dozens of possibilities that I could think of in my head in the short duration, but the vibrating noise was getting louder as if to prove that none of the possibilities were realistic.
“Wha-what is this?”
“The-the ground is shaking!”
The children were screaming with a bewildered expression. It was as if everyone other than me had already noticed that this was strange. Soon after, the food on the table could not withstand the vibration and fell to the floor one by one or were thrown into the air. A bowl of salad sauce spilled over the front hem of my gray dress, staining it deeply. But now this was something not even worth cleaning up or worrying about.