Chapter 110: The Festival Starts
LEO
The exhibition was a huge success. The Second Lady seemed to really like our artworks—all of them!
It felt especially good because only a few weeks ago, I wasn’t even part of the art club. Now there was a picture I drew hanging in an exhibition, and someone from the Royal Family had actually stood in front of it and talked to me about it. I wished Mom and Dad could have seen that. I wondered what they would have said.
Mario looked a little tense as he was accompanying the lady, but maybe that was expected considering how important—or high-ranking, whatever you call it—she was. I’d be nervous walking around with the Dean, let alone royalty.
Once the lady had left the exhibition hall, I wanted to talk to Mathias, but he seemed busy, as he immediately left the room as well, looking unusually tense. Maybe even he was a little nervous about the whole thing, I thought.
"Well done, guys," said Blanche after only the four of us were left in the exhibition hall.
"Thanks to you, Blanche," Liesel said, hugging her.
Blanche immediately tried to squirm her way out of Liesel’s embrace, but was stopped by Fabian putting his long, lanky arms around the two girls to hug them together too. Seeing that it was turning into a group hug, I couldn’t let myself be left out. So I went over and hugged everyone too.
"You guys are making me want to puke," Blanche said, but she didn’t sound too unhappy.
"You can puke after we let you go," Fabian said.
"I’m going to puke on you."
"That’s fine. Liesel is between us."
"Hey!" Liesel protested.
I laughed and squeezed everyone a little tighter.
After spending some time like that, we finally let go of each other and Blanche told me and Fabian,
"We can take turns staying at the exhibition. Why don’t you guys go and look around the festival first?"
I felt a bit sorry that we couldn’t all go around together, but that didn’t stop me from feeling excited at the chance to experience my first Autumn Festival at the Academy.
"Thanks, Blanche!" I said.
"I think I will go get some food first. No pork pie this time, but I’m sure the cooking club must have come up with something nice. They’ve always been great in the past years," Fabian said.
"I want to get some snacks too!" I told Fabian.
"Sure, let’s go to a food stall together," he said with a smile, putting his arm around my shoulder.
So we left the exhibition hall and headed outside to the big field just outside the Academy’s main building, where a bunch of stalls had been set up by various clubs.
The place looked completely different from the usual Academy grounds. Colorful banners hung everywhere, tables and tents covered the grass, and students were shouting over one another to attract visitors to their stalls. There was music coming from somewhere too, although with all the talking and laughing around us, I couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from.
Now this was a festival.
"Do you think they have the festival skewers?" I asked Fabian.
"Yeah, they must do. But probably without pork," he said, somewhat disappointed but still happy about how our exhibition went. Then he continued, "I wonder what’s up with the Second Consort and pork."
This was a chance for me to show off my knowledge of the Southern Avelainians.
"I’m pretty sure the Second Lady comes from Southern Avelaine. They don’t eat pork there," I said proudly.
"Huh? How do you know? And why is that?" Fabian asked.
"It’s because a king of that region from a long, long time ago was rescued by a pig after losing a battle."
"What the heck? What kind of a story is that?"
"Apparently, the king had lost all his soldiers in a fierce battle. He managed to save his life by running away and hid himself in an abandoned farm. The enemies came looking for him, but a pig—who had been abandoned together with the farm when the farmer left and had been living alone—hid him in his pigsty. When the bad guys searched the farm and arrived at the pigsty, the pig lay down on top of the hiding king, so the enemies didn’t find the king."
"I don’t believe that at all, but it’s a nice story," Fabian laughed and said.
"Heh, believe it or not, that’s the reason why Southern Avelainians don’t eat pigs. It’s strictly forbidden! So although they have a lot of dried-meat kinds of food, they never use pork for them."
"You know a lot about these things, don’t you?"
"Just something I heard when they came to visit our town together with the Yeps."
"Yeps?"
"Ah, I think people in the capital call them Yapians," I said.
"The savages?"
"That’s not true. They are quite nice people, actually. I have never met a single ’Yapian’ who was mean."
Fabian then stopped walking, looked at me for a second, and said,
"The Second Consort is right. You have a good heart, Leo."
"But not a good brain! I was dropped on my head as a baby!"
Then we both laughed and headed toward the food stall prepared by the cooking club.
"Oh, you are here early—hi, Leo!" Thomas spotted me the moment I arrived. He seemed himself again, the good old Thomas I knew and liked.
"Hi, Thomas! How are things going?"
"We’ve already sold a lot," Thomas said with a satisfied smile on his face.
"So what’s good?" Fabian asked Thomas.
"Well, no pork pies and no festival skewers—because we thought it’d be criminal to make them without pork, because, you know... the whole thing about a festival skewer is having ALL kinds of meat together—but we have some grilled beef patties in buns."
"Oh, let me try that," I said and asked, "How much?"
"I shouldn’t do this, but what the heck, I’ll give you one for free," Thomas said, looking around to make sure no one was watching us and winking.
"That’s very nice of you, but we should really buy them," Fabian said.
"It’s alright. Consider it goodwill for a friend, and well, Leo’s friend automatically gets into my good book, so I’ll let you have one for free too," Thomas said to Fabian. Although they had never met before, Thomas was being very kind to him as well.
"I’ll take you up on your offer, then—just to prove that I’m Leo’s ’friend’ as well, haha," Fabian said.
Thomas then gave each of us a nice, big, fat beef patty in a bun, and I yelped as soon as I took my first bite,
"Juicy!"
"Yup, it’s good, isn’t it?" Thomas asked.
"Super good!"
After that, I frantically devoured the whole thing, and Fabian seemed to be enjoying his too.
"What next?" Fabian asked once we were done at the food stall.
"I think Dimitri is going to have a kick-ball match soon. I must go cheer for him!" I said.
"Aye, your friend would be happy if you came, but—" Fabian said, "do you mind if I go somewhere else? I want to go check out some things at the handcrafting club."
"I guess it’s fine. I’ll see you back at the exhibition hall later, then."
Fabian and I then split up, and I headed to the big kick-ball field where the teams were warming up.
"Dimitri!" I shouted out to him as I spotted him doing keepy-ups with a ball.
"Oi, Leo!" Dimitri waved his hand while still bouncing the ball up and down on his head.
"Who are you playing?" I asked.
"We have a match against the Capital Guards Cadets later," Dimitri said.
"Capital Guards?"
"You’ve never heard of them?"
"No."
"Oh boy. This is like the biggest sporting rivalry in the capital."
"Really?"
"Yeah, there are two annual matches between the Royal Knights Academy and the Capital Guards Cadets. A lot of people come to the festival just to watch the match," Dimitri explained.
"Oh wow, that’s exciting."
"Yup!"
"I’ll stay and cheer for you, then, Dimitri!"
"Haha, I’ll do my best, but there’s still some time left. You can come back after you check out other things at the festival. There’s plenty to see and enjoy here," Dimitri said with a chuckle.
"Heh, thanks. I’ll definitely come back."
With that, I waved goodbye to Dimitri and decided to walk around the field with no particular aim. Everything about the festival was exciting. Our exhibition went well, the food from Thomas’s cooking club was amazing, Dimitri’s kick-ball match was starting soon, and later in the day, there was a performance by the choir where Janice apparently got a solo part, as well as a play by Isabelle and Beatrice’s drama club—some of the props and backdrops were made by me together with Liesel and Fabian!
I also hoped that maybe I could catch up with Mario and we could look around too.
Today was going to be a good day.
I was sure of it.