Chapter 2: Daily Life – a.s.sam My name is a.s.sam. I am the Continent of Folio’s heir to the throne. The dominion of Folio consists of a deep forest on its right and a vast desert occupying its left. Between them was the wide plains where people plowed fields and raised livestock, they lived in good health.
After the civil war, although the region was finally able to settle down. I sighed at the news I was told.
“Again.”
It has been several years since I started to perform duties on behalf of the king. When I returned to my room this evening, I was notified about the queen’s pregnancy.
“Now which queen consort was it this time?”
“It is the twenty-sixth.”
My aide, Yarra, answered waiting off to the side. Light brown hair that flowed down his back, his body that was a solid two meters in height fit the battlefield better than the palace. Since long ago, Yarra has been my guard, attendant, and a friend.
“If I’m not mistaken, I feel as though I received news of the thirteenth princess’s pregnancy yesterday?”
“It appears that he has been going around attempting to conceive a child with one of them everyday.”
“If I didn’t know that there wasn’t a problem with food in our domain. I can’t say I’m shocked by my father.”
The king currently had thirty queen consorts. For a woman that was a queen, a residence with dozens of rooms, hundreds of livestock and fifty servants were given as a reward each time they gave birth to a “healthy child.”
Regardless of their status or qualities as a queen, if the consort was a pleasing woman, she would be held. s.e.xual acts could only be performed after marriage.
After a.s.sam’s mother, the first queen, pa.s.sed away from an illness, he started searching for queens, now it was out of control and turned into an extreme matter.
“By the way, what was Seventh princess’s child?”
“They were a pitiful ‘White Child of G.o.d’.”
“I see. Arrange for ’G.o.d’s Ascent’.”
“Yes.”
One day, it became difficult to give birth to “healthy children”.
Instead, they were born with pure white eyes, hair, and skin. The children born with those traits were only able to survive for one period and were referred to as the “White Children of G.o.d”, after their death, a “priest” would be called to perform a ceremony called “G.o.d’s Ascent” allowing them to be by G.o.d’s side.
The higher one’s status, the less likely for a “healthy child” to be born. Despite that there were many princess’s, in this whole continent the only princes were a.s.sam and his younger step-brother, Lark. Yarra withdrew and moved to the entrance where a slender woman appeared.
“Pardon my rudeness. It is Tugura.”
“Enter.”
Tugura is a beautiful woman with dark brown hair bundled into a single braid down her back, she had a beauty mark left of her mouth. As a personal attendant, her jobs were to take care administration and aid with everyday necessities. As usual, I was prompted towards the inner bath in order to rinse off my sweat, and had my hair and body washed. Soaking in the bathtub, I breathed out a deep sigh.
I thought idly about the dreams of a boy that I continued to see after I turned fourteen. The boy in my dreams was an awfully cute child about twelve years old and had black hair and eyes.
His slender body and clear dark eyes gave off the impression of an ephemeral youth. A small room with a white bed, walls, and ceiling, he read a book with writing I had never seen before, he held a long and narrow rod to walk in a garden. In the beginning, I thought they were only dreams.
But then, two leaves, three leaves, a branch, a tree, I would dream about the boy everyday, and realized that it wasn’t only a dream.
The boy was always watching pictures appear in a rectangular box, wore clothes that I’d never seen before, spoke a language that I’ve never heard before. Ah, this is a different world. I understood after a single tree.
By that time, I also understood that the boy was in a place for “pathology”. I wondered what was wrong with that slender and ephemeral boy. When the boy who was often left by himself gave a seemingly lonely smile, for some reason, my chest would ache in pain.