Chapter 135: Betrothal

Arthur read over the description for Overcharged Psychic twice. Luckily, the achievement didn’t seem to come with any downsides, or to be the kind of thing he could actively control. The next weird system thing was a bit more complex, considering that it involved opening an entirely new window he was wholly sure he hadn’t seen before.

The window wasn’t related to his class at all, despite being related to his current status as a person. Labeled Mayoral Interface, it appeared to be a very basic sheet explaining the status of the town with basic metrics like population, distance from the next settlement, and even a basic great-good-threatened-dire scale of their food supply. Noticing that there were other pages, Arthur flipped to them, finding that most of them were blocked off due to his non-leader class or the newness of the town.

There was one exception to that, which was a recent happenings board. One person had recently recovered from an illness. There were two injured demons in the town, one of which must have been very moderate as it ticked over to “minor/healing” while he watched and then fell off the list entirely. The deaths column was thankfully empty.

All of that flew completely out of the window, however, when he saw a single number under the “recent betrothals” column.

“Lily, what’s a betrothal? In this world, I mean,” Arthur asked. “We had that word in my world, but it was pretty old, and I’m not sure I know the exact meaning.”

“Oh, it’s… like, a girl likes a guy, so she makes him ask her to get married. And then until they have an official marriage ceremony, they are betrothed.”

So like engagement, then.

“Why?” Mizu asked, smiling at him. “Does somebody have big plans after his near death experience?”

“Little bit different. I apparently can see mayor-information now, and it’s saying that someone was recently betrothed. And I can’t imagine who it is.” Arthur ran through the several couples he had seen get together in town, and couldn’t say he could think of any that seemed likely. “Probably not Spiky and Leena, right?”

“Probably not,” Mizu said. “Spiky would, Leena wouldn’t. At least not yet. Which is probably for the best.”

“Yeah, they’re pretty young.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Mizu said. “A bit sooner than average, but nothing crazy.”

“There are lots of seventeen-year-olds getting married?” Arthur asked. “That would be… almost default-mistake territory back on Earth. Like low percentage chances of success, maybe?”

“The way you describe Earth makes me think of a hard, dangerous place with evil lurking around every corner,” Mizu said. Arthur smiled at Mizu’s description of his old home, glad she lived in a place so good it made his old home seem like a war zone even though it was actually quite decent. “Here, if you love someone, and you treat them right, there’s not much to ruin things.”

Arthur chewed on that for a bit. She wasn’t wrong about Earth being a harsher, more stressful place. That would put a lot of strain on a marriage, which wouldn’t exist for most people in the Demon World. It wasn’t the only difference, either. People got started on a lot of things a lot later on Earth. People might start working as late as their early thirties. Everyone seemed to know who they were or who they wanted to be a lot sooner on the Demon World. It seemed weird to him, of course, but most things here did. His sample size was small, but he had yet to see divorce even mentioned here, except by Talca, who generally used it as part of his more esoteric insults.

“Well, then, here’s a game,” Arthur said. “We have the whole day, right?”

“Pretty much,” Mizu said.

“Lily, let’s make a bunch of tea. We’ll people watch. Let’s see if we can’t figure this thing out.”

Their vantage point in the plaza meant they could both see people who were coming in for lunch and snacks, in addition to all the passers-by milling through the town. Over a few hours, it would be a pretty good overview of everyone, with maybe a few homebody crafters excluded from the count.

“What do you think of them?” Arthur pointed at a badger-woman farmer who had recently taken up with a stamper Lily was fond of, someone she described as a “big funny ox demon” and, on multiple occassions, tried to ride on the shoulder of.

“Them? No. Not even close,” Lily said. “They like each other fine, but only fine, and it’s only been a few weeks.”

“She’s not wrong,” Mizu said. “I think they’re just trying things out with each other, trying to see if the relationship can go anywhere.”

“Ah. And them?” Arthur asked.

“Them? No, Arthur. They actually broke up.”

“Really? Why?”

“Their schedules end up conflicting and they didn’t want to figure out how to deal with that. People are pretty tired by the end of the day.” Lily giggled. “And not everyone has so much energy they will go try to help their girlfriends even when blood is leaking out their nose.”

“Har har. I thought it was just an allergy, for the record.” Arthur panned the crowd again, looking for redemption. “What about them? They’re clearly in love.”

“Not actually dating, Arthur.” Mizu held in a laugh. “Very good friends. Why are you so bad at this? You usually seem to know a lot about people.”

Arthur threw his weight back in his chair and took a drink of his tea. “Just a hopeless romantic, I guess. I think everyone is like us. You guys do some then. Let's see if you do any better.”

They did. Mizu heard a lot down in her wells, and Lily talked to virtually everyone in the town at least once over the course of a week. They knew more than Arthur did, and were able to put together a bunch of high-probability guesses based on actual accumulated data that Arthur just didn’t have. He made a lot of conversation, but his role in the town meant the talks were more about work than leisure, at least outside of his little friend group.

The hours plied on as they relaxed. They had plenty of access to food, and despite Arthur’s huge lunch, he found himself hungry again as the day went on. Both Mizu and Lily encouraged him to eat as much as he could, claiming that Itela had more or less ordered them to make sure that happened anyway. It was exactly what he needed. Mizu was out of trouble, the town was doing fine, and he had absolutely nothing to do except waste time in the least productive way possible.

“Well, you look better. Good job, girls. Was it hard to keep him in one place?” Itela tracked them down, and immediately got a tea and a seat in return. “He’s the energetic kind of patient. That’s always hard.”

“He’s been cooperative,” Lily said, puffing up slightly in pride. “I didn’t even have to threaten him. My mere presence was enough.”

“He’s been eating all the food, just as you asked,” Mizu said. “That didn’t take any convincing at all.”

“Well, no, that wouldn’t.” Itela put her feet up on a nearby fireplace. “It sounds like both Eito and Ella will be in to town in the next few days, by the way. They got worried as soon as they heard you were in trouble.”

Arthur felt a little warm inside at hearing that. “Nice of them. How did they hear?”

“Karbo. He’s been going back and forth. I make him land outside of town. You can thank me for that later when you realize how many roads I saved. Anyway, it’s going to be a nice little vacation for all of us.”

“Oh, that’s good!” Arthur had missed Ella the most out of anybody, but it would be good to see Eito too. And Eito and Karbo as a unit was almost an entire other person to miss in some ways. “I hope the town is up to your standards.”

“Arthur, when I got here, you had an entire set of spare houses for me to choose from. All of that inside your walled town with its own sustainable food supply. The first night I was here, I ate cook-prepared food on nice plates while listening to a band sing a song called Why is Arthur Always In Trouble. You’re way ahead of the game,” Itela exclaimed.

“That song can’t be real,” Arthur said. “The turn-around time is too fast.”

“It’s not a song, either. It’s a poem,” Mizu said it before she realized she was outing herself as the author. “And it was easy to write when your boyfriend is always in some kind of trouble, Arthur. This is a safe world! You aren’t supposed to be in danger every couple of months. You really aren’t.”

“That’s fair, I guess. And maybe people will forget about the song once enough time passes,” Arthur said.

“Not a chance.” Itela laughed. “There’s a whole section about trouble always hitting you because you’re too hard to miss. I’ve heard the stampers singing it while they work. But you all looked like you were having fun when I showed up. Am I interrupting that?”

“No. Stay.” Lily pointed out into the town. “Arthur says his mayor-powers that he just got say someone got betrothed. And we’ve been trying to figure out who it is.”

“Any luck so far?”

“No.” Lily pointed to the few couples that were still visible and told Itela why it probably wasn’t them, as well as shedding light on several couples who weren’t in sight anymore and why they probably weren’t hurtling headfirst into nuptial bliss. “And we’ve been trying all afternoon.”

“Hmm.” Itela looked out into the town for the first time, scanning everyone she could see with eyes that had suddenly become razor-sharp with perception. “Have you considered you might have a blind spot? Someone who makes perfect sense for this question, but who you won’t consider?”

“We thought about that, but Spiky and Leena are far too new for that. Especially Leena,” Arthur said. “I just can’t see it being them.”

“Oooh, that’s a really big blind spot. Worse than I thought.” Itela looked at Arthur in a peculiarly intense way before panning her eyes back out to the village. “Are you sure you haven’t perhaps missed someone else?”

Arthur began to protest, then thought better of it as he followed Itela’s line-of-sight to a couple they really hadn’t considered before, a pairing that was laughing on a bench as they compared notes about their work.

“No,” Arthur said. “No way. Not a chance.”

“Not a chance at all? Really? Because they’ve been together a while. And as far as I’ve seen, they get along just fine,” Itela said.

She wasn’t wrong, besides the part where it was unthinkably sudden and maybe the biggest change that Arthur could imagine crashing into his life at that moment. All illusions he had of finally getting an entirely normal day dissolved away as he took a harder look at the couple, trying to find ways to disprove what was becoming more obviously true by the second.

The last bit of Arthur’s inability to swallow the truth fell off when Milo flicked Rhodia’s head, she flicked him back, and they devolved into a full minute of finger-based forehead warfare before looking at each other affectionately for several seconds. It was true. He hadn’t confirmed it, but he knew it as true as anything could be.

Milo was getting married.