Chapter 34: The Wakaba Flower

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This advantage had nothing to do with features, figure, or the like. After all, genetic technology could create all of those.

What he meant was a certain feeling—the feeling of beauty.

For nobles who had never lacked beautiful women, it was easy to distinguish a naturally beautiful woman from one whose appearance had been genetically enhanced. They could also sense the indescribable lack of beauty that clung to those altered by genetic modification.

“It has been so long since I’ve felt this way.”

A fierce impulse surged through him.

It was an impulse he had not experienced in a very long time.

It was called desire.

Wakaba withdrew her little head, suddenly feeling embarrassed. She had thought he was praising the flower in the pond when he said it was beautiful.

She had never imagined he was talking about her.

Although she knew she was very pretty, she was still delighted whenever someone complimented her appearance.

“Are you the instructor responsible for evaluating our internships?” Wakaba asked, her lips parting slightly as her childish voice rang out like silver bells.

“Internships… I suppose you could call them that,” the baron replied.

“Then what is your name, and what will we be evaluated on?” Wakaba asked with an innocent expression.

The gentler Wakaba looked, the softer the baron’s gaze became.

“My name…” The baron thought for a moment. “You may call me Koumyoji.”

“Lord Koumyoji!” Wakaba exclaimed. She bent her knees in a graceful curtsy, and her flawless little face instantly took on an adorably solemn expression, as if she were fully prepared to begin her internship.

Koumyoji could not help laughing. He reached over and rubbed her little head.

“There is no need to be nervous. The internship is very simple. All you have to do is keep me company while I take a stroll.”

“That’s all the internship is?”

“That’s all.”

Wakaba turned her little head, pondering how exactly one was supposed to keep another person company.

“Perhaps I’m supposed to dance for him.”

She secretly glanced at him with her bright, wide eyes, unsure whether he wanted to watch her dance.

Yet he showed no intention of saying anything, and she felt too awkward to bring it up herself. Thus, the two of them simply stood there in silence.

Koumyoji watched Wakaba without a word, warmth lingering at the corners of his eyes, as though he were admiring a flower.

“That flower is so beautiful. What kind is it?” Feeling somewhat self-conscious beneath his gaze, Wakaba pointed toward the strange blossom in the pond.

“It has no name,” Koumyoji said, shaking his head.

“How can it not have a name?” Wakaba asked in surprise, looking adorably ignorant.

Koumyoji slowly explained, “Two hundred years ago, humanity launched a colonization and terraforming initiative throughout the Kuiper Belt. They brought a collection of seeds in an attempt to transform the environments of Pluto, Eris, Ceres, Makemake, Haumea, and several other worlds. The project eventually failed for various reasons.

“All the seeds on the other worlds died. Only on Haumea, the least promising destination of them all, did a batch of evening mist flower seeds survive in that perpetually dark, frigid environment, saturated with all kinds of cosmic radiation. To adapt, they transformed into what you see now.

“So, in truth, this is a flower from another world—a completely new species.”

“Then it’s terribly pitiful,” Wakaba said. “The place where it grew was already miserable enough, and it doesn’t even have a name.”

Koumyoji neither agreed nor disagreed. He merely smiled faintly.

“Wakaba, you like this flower.”

“I do!” Wakaba nodded. Girls naturally had little resistance to beautiful flowers and plants, and this one was especially gorgeous.

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“Very well. From now on, it shall be called the Wakaba Flower,” Koumyoji declared.

Wakaba was speechless.

Was he merely trying to amuse a child?

Did something become whatever someone called it just because they said so?

This was not some childish game of make-believe.

At that moment, she had no idea how much power was contained in a single sentence from Koumyoji.

“But why does it glow even though it grows in a place with so little sunlight?” Wakaba suddenly asked.

“That is because the part you see glowing is only its stamen. This entire pond is made up of its petals.

“Its petals absorb all visible light—even gamma rays—which is why everything else appears pitch-black.”

“Ah!”

Wakaba’s little mouth fell half open in astonishment. She stared at the pond, which was nearly the size of two basketball courts.

The entire thing was the flower’s petals?

She looked again at the pure-white, translucent blossom in the center of the pond, immaculate and untouched by even a speck of dust. It was so dazzlingly beautiful, yet its petals were actually like a black hole, devouring the entire pond.

The pond was unnaturally still. There were no fish, nor even aquatic plants.

Without a doubt, what Koumyoji had left unsaid was that the flower had consumed every living thing in the pond.

For a moment, Wakaba found the flower rather frightening.

“I, Wakaba, am a gentle and kind girl. I’m definitely not the sort of evil flower that deserves a name like that…”

While she was lost in thought, Koumyoji added, “Furthermore, to successfully transplant this flower and the other extraterrestrial plants, the entire tract of land on which this estate stands was brought back from Haumea as well.”

His tone was utterly calm, as though he were mentioning something completely ordinary.

Wakaba, however, was so shocked that she could not speak.

All right. She no longer knew what to say.

No wonder entering this place required them to swallow some kind of capsule, and no wonder they had been told that the air here differed from the air outside…

“Is this what the world of the obscenely wealthy is like?”

Wakaba did not understand it, but she was profoundly shaken.

Afterward, she followed Koumyoji around the rear garden. For the most part, he introduced her to one strange plant after another.

Most of them had no names either.

And wherever they went, the rain stopped.

By early evening, Koumyoji was ready to have dinner.

She followed him into the magnificent mansion, looking utterly bewildered, like a country girl stepping into a grand palace.

She could recognize the various works of art because she had studied them at the academy.

Yet that only made her even more astonished.

This was beyond being priceless. This was wealth without a shred of humanity.

As for vulgar things like jewels and gold, there was so much of them that they could only be laid across the floor and trampled underfoot as though they were tiles.

A mansion of this size naturally had no shortage of maids.

Two hundred maids, all fifteen or sixteen years old, each one as lovely as a flower, stood in matching black-and-white uniforms. They formed two long lines and welcomed Koumyoji home.

Though these maids were beautiful, they were merely on the level of students from the ordinary class at Miyagi Hundred Flowers Academy. In terms of bearing, they were far inferior to the elegant refinement instilled in ordinary-class students through years of strict education and training.

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Dinner was served in a lavish room resembling a palace.

Koumyoji sat at one end of a long table laden with more than a hundred delicacies.

Whenever he wanted something, a maid would pick it up and place it directly into his mouth.

Wakaba’s mouth watered at the sight of the feast, yet Koumyoji seemed listless. He took only a single bite of each dish.

His attention was instead focused on the dance being performed before him.

The dancers were the senior students who had arrived with Wakaba. They had changed into splendid, flowing gowns.

The upper portions of the dresses featured openwork designs that clung tightly to the girls’ fair, delicate skin, outlining their supple, serpentine waists. Below, gauzy skirts swayed lightly with every movement, creating a scene of breathtaking beauty.

Wakaba did not dance. She stood beside Koumyoji, pouring his wine.

After dinner, Koumyoji went to his study to attend to some matters.

Wakaba and the other girls went to the kitchen to eat.

The kitchen of a wealthy man’s household was as spacious as a hotel.

Once they had eaten and drunk their fill, night arrived, and the girls were assigned to sleep in a large room.

The bathroom alone was large enough to accommodate all seventeen of them.

However, several senior students who were only slightly less beautiful than Wakaba were summoned away.

The night passed quickly.

Those girls did not return until the following morning.

Wakaba immediately noticed that something about them had changed. A faint trace of allure lingered between their brows.

She was no longer the genuinely foolish girl she had once been, so she naturally understood what they had experienced. Judging from their expressions, however, they seemed quite happy about it.

She reached out and touched the spray hidden inside her undergarments.

“So this is what Sister Keiko meant by trouble. I wonder whether the thing she gave me will actually work…”

Fortunately, she had not yet reached the point where she needed to use it.

Koumyoji took her around the rear garden again that day. He tried wrapping an arm around her slender waist, and once he had experienced the wonderful, boneless softness of her body, he no longer had the heart to let her go.

“Is this part of the internship too?” Wakaba asked innocently.

“Of course.” A gentle curve formed at the corner of Koumyoji’s lips.

And so the third day arrived. Apart from sleeping, Wakaba spent nearly all her time with Koumyoji. They either held hands or he kept an arm around her waist, and nothing else happened.

Wakaba felt relieved. She decided that he was a good person after all, since he had not forced her into anything.

The instant she stepped out of the estate, everything seemed like a world away.

The same square metal box remained parked by the rear entrance—the aircraft that had brought them there.

The estate’s steward escorted them outside the rear gate and then returned. The girls climbed into the metal aircraft.

With a familiar sensation of weightlessness, Wakaba knew that the aircraft had begun to move.

At last, their three-day internship had come to an end.

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