Chapter : 211

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Ken stared at Ira's sand fortress. His mouth hung open. Then he looked at his own creation, which was essentially a pile of wet sand with delusions of grandeur. Then he looked back at Ira's fortress. Then he started laughing. Not a polite chuckle or a quiet snicker. A full, loud, uncontrolled laugh that echoed across the park and made several of the children turn their heads. He laughed so hard that he fell backward into the sand, clutching his stomach, tears streaming from the corners of his eyes.

"Ira!" Ken gasped between laughs. "You... you actually... you built a sand fortress! With math! In a sandbox! This is the greatest thing I have ever seen in my entire life!"

Ira looked at her creation. Then she looked at Ken, who was rolling around in the sand laughing like a maniac. Then she looked at Risa, who was also laughing, though more gently, covering her mouth with her hands the way she always did when something was really funny. Ira's face remained blank. Her expression did not change. But if someone had looked very, very closely, they might have noticed that the corners of her mouth were tilted upward by the tiniest, most microscopic fraction of a degree. It was the Ira equivalent of a beaming smile.

"The fortress is structurally optimal," Ira stated flatly, standing up and brushing the sand off her uniform with quick, efficient movements. "It will survive for approximately fifty-three minutes, which is eleven minutes longer than the statistical average. This satisfies the challenge."

Ken sat up, still grinning, sand stuck to his hair and his clothes and probably places he would discover later. He looked at Risa, who was smiling her beautiful, innocent smile. He looked at Ira, who was standing next to her geometrically perfect sand fortress like a proud, emotionless architect. He looked at the sky, which was blue and warm and endless. And for just a moment, in a small park in the middle of a busy city, with sand in his hair and a giggling girl beside him, Ken Eliot thought that maybe, just maybe, the world was not so bad after all.

"Alright," Ken said, standing up and brushing himself off with the same lack of urgency he applied to everything. "We should probably head back before Iris sends out a search party. Risa, grab your teddy bear. Ira, grab your fortress. Actually, wait, you cannot carry a sand fortress. Just take a mental picture. You probably already have one stored in your robot brain, right?"

"I have catalogued the fortress in my memory with ninety-nine point seven percent accuracy," Ira confirmed.

"Good enough," Ken said. He picked up the shopping bags, which were still mostly empty except for a bag of apples that Risa had picked up at the market and a small jar of honey that Ken had bought because the label had a picture of a potato on it and he thought it was funny. He held out his free hand to Risa, and she took it without hesitation, her small fingers wrapping around his.

The three of them walked back through the streets of the capital toward the estate. Risa skipped alongside Ken, chattering happily about the market and the food and the sandbox and Ira's amazing fortress. Ken listened, nodding along, making occasional comments that made her laugh. Ira walked in perfect formation on Risa's other side, her eyes scanning the streets, her posture immaculate, protecting the small girl from any threat that might dare to disturb her happiness.

When they arrived back at the mansion, Risa ran inside and immediately found Princess Iris. "Princess! Princess! I went outside! And I ate a honey stick! And Ken made funny faces! And Ira built a castle in the sand! It was the best day ever!" She was bouncing on her feet, her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling with joy.

Iris looked up from her documents and smiled. It was a real, warm smile, the kind that reached her tired eyes and made them soft. She glanced past Risa to the doorway, where Ken was standing with sand still in his hair and shopping bags hanging from his arms. He gave her a lazy thumbs-up.

Iris nodded. "Thank you, Ken," she said quietly.

Ken shrugged. "She did all the hard work," he said. "I just sat in the dirt."

He shuffled off toward the living room, already dreaming of the couch. Behind him, Risa was still telling Iris about every single detail of the outing, from the spicy dragon stick to the terrible jokes to the magnificent sand fortress. And somewhere in the middle of her happy, breathless story, she paused, looked back toward the doorway where Ken had disappeared, and whispered so softly that only Iris could hear.

"He is the nicest person in the whole world, Princess. Even if he is very silly."

Iris looked at the doorway. She thought about the messy, lazy, ridiculous young man who had somehow become the heart of their team. And she smiled again, because Risa was right, and because sometimes the bravest thing a person could do was simply sit in the dirt and make someone smile.

---

The Inner City of the Belmontia Empire was where the truly important people lived. The streets were wide and clean, paved with white stone that gleamed in the sunlight. The buildings were tall and elegant, made of marble and gold and enchanted glass that sparkled like diamonds. There were no crowded market stalls here, no shouting vendors, no messy commoners tripping over their own shoelaces. Everything was orderly. Everything was pristine. Everything was exactly as it should be, which was to say, everything was expensive.

At the very heart of the Inner City, in the wealthiest sector where even other nobles needed permission to enter, there stood a tower of pure white marble. It was not the tallest building in the capital, nor the most decorated. It did not need to be. The tower spoke through its simplicity, through the impossible perfection of its clean lines and flawless surfaces. It was a statement of power that needed no embellishment, the architectural equivalent of a raised eyebrow that said, "I am better than you, and we both know it."

This was the private residence and office of the 2nd Princess, Hera Belmontia. And at this particular moment, Hera was not relaxing. She was not sipping expensive tea or attending a high-society gala or doing any of the things that her schedule normally demanded. She was sitting behind her massive golden desk in her pristine white-marble office, and she was watching a holographic broadcast of the 13th Unit's Tower Defense match against Prince Hades for the fourteenth time.

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