The fire in the fireplace flickered.
Seated in the chair placed nearby was a golden-haired boy. The chair, built with a grown man in mind, was too big for the boy, and when he rested his cheek on the right armrest, a considerable gap opened up on the left.
Perched on the left armrest was the household's fairy housekeeper. Swinging her legs, she watched the boy quietly turn the pages of his book. Even as she harboured an inferiority complex over his handsomeness, she didn't do anything that might disturb his reading.
The fairy, having acknowledged the boy as her "owner," was relaxing without a care in the world. Lately, she'd been spending more and more of her time by his side.
When the fairy started to doze off, the boy noticed and prompted her with "You might as well go back to the cage." To the fairy, Eleanor, who stubbornly insisted "I still want to stay here," his smile took on a tinge of exasperation.
Watching the boy, Eleanor let out an easygoing, hehehe.
"Children really do grow, don't they. It's been, what, two years since I got here?"
"Out of nowhere, again."
"Humans really do grow at a pace that... hm?"
Eleanor seemed to have noticed something.
With no regard whatever for Louis's inward prayer of please don't let it be another troublesome thing, Eleanor cut straight to the chase.
"Birthdays... come to think of it, we haven't done anything birthday-ish, have we?"
"Birthdays? They don't celebrate them here."
"Huh?"
"Even if you 'huh' at me..."
"But your birthday is today, isn't it?"
"Now that you mention it, yes. I'd forgotten."
"Huh?"
"Huh?"
The two wore matching what is this person saying expressions.
Eleanor, who had started getting used to being looked at that way by a ten-year-old, seemed to reach some realisation with an "... ah, come to think of it, in the game there wasn't an event for that either." She nodded to herself.
Within this game, birthdays and such are treated as any ordinary weekday. There is an obligation to keep a record of the date and time a child was born, but whether to share that information or not, or even to let it be forgotten completely, was left up to each household.
The Stillus household was apparently the type to "forget about it altogether". Or perhaps this was the result of two children living on their own. Eleanor wasn't sure, but for now at least, she understood that this world didn't celebrate birthdays. Or rather, she remembered. Fans had certainly complained "How can a game that's also a dating sim have no birthday event?!"
"Hmmm..."
Eleanor didn't know how many fans harboured hope for a birthday event, but the birthday event didn't matter to Eleanor. After an exchange of "You're not going to eat cake or anything?" and "Cake... ah, that brings back memories. I used to get it a lot in my past life. Birthdays were that kind of thing, weren't they," Eleanor suddenly understood.
--- Well, if it's a custom that doesn't exist in this world, then so be it.
It wasn't quite a "when in Rome, do as the Romans do" kind of thing, but a celebration wasn't going to be missed. So, there was no need to bring it up either.
In this world, everyone becomes one year older on the first of April.
On that day, meals are made a little more lavish than usual, but the celebration was more about expressing joy at the arrival of spring rather than marking another year to adulthood.
Eleanor suddenly wondered: just how many festivals and events were there in this world?
The typical Japanese notion of "birthdays = presents and cake" didn't apply here. There had to be events and celebrations that didn't exist in Japan too.
Things that came up tied to game events or the storyline; she knew about the existence of things like the Carnival, but there might be others. Apparently, the developers had considered a lot of worldbuilding lore but had never implemented them. It wouldn't be strange if there were events Eleanor didn't know about.
If the people living in the town weren't NPCs, then events, religious or secular, were bound to exist.
When she asked Louis about it directly, he said "Events, you say," thought for a moment, and answered honestly.
"For example... there was yesterday."
"Yesterday?"
"Valeitland Day. The day on which a man gives snow to the woman he's set his heart on." [1]
Va-leit-land Day?
Eleanor pictured the letters in her head, felt a strange roughness to them, and knitted her brow. A word that felt both familiar and unfamiliar; an odd kind of dissonance.
And what did "giving snow" even mean? Apparently Eleanor's question was written on her face, because Louis closed his book.
"You pack snow into a shape, embed a single flower inside it, and give it to the woman. When the snow melts or breaks, your feelings are conveyed through the language of flowers. I heard it originated when a certain water mage sealed a certain spring flower inside ice and dedicated it to his deceased lover. Apparently it still sits in a cave to the north, even a hundred years later."
"Sounds more of a hassle than chocolate."
"Right? The first condition is that it has to snow. Since it depends on the weather, it's not as though an opportunity comes around every single year. People with their eye on someone look forward to the day, apparently."
Trust a dating-sim RPG. What an exasperating bit of setting.
"The game didn't have an event like that, though."
"Oh?"
"I heard of a similar event in the first-print bonus drama CD, but the hero/heroine was the one who did it... and they gave out candy."
"Wouldn't that be Whaidal Day? And candy, you say. That'd be a consolation prize, or maybe they were giving it out of obligation. If they wanted their feelings accepted, they should have prepared a flower." [2]
Wha-idal Day.
By this point Eleanor had lost all desire to correct him, and gave a half-hearted "Hmm" in response.
For reference, the content of the drama CD was: the heroine's response to having received "friend-snow" from the hero during an event referred to as Valeitland Day.
Due to the nature of the game, it's impossible for the protagonists to meet each other and have a heartwarming conversation, but that CD made it possible. Fans who shipped the minor pairing of male protagonist × female protagonist wept with joy.
The event, only briefly mentioned in the CD, had neither its official date nor name revealed. Yet who would have guessed it overlapped so thoroughly with "White Day."
After that, apparently, in any year where snow fell at just the right time, the boy decided to give snow to the fairy.
First an azalea, then a penstemon, a hydrangea, a crocus, a clover; each year, a different flower frozen inside the snow. The snow sculptures themselves grew more elaborate with each passing year, from a simple snow rabbit to a loaf-sitting cat to something resembling the Virgin Mary he'd seen in his past life, becoming extraordinarily sophisticated pieces.
They were palm-sized works of art, fated to melt away in no time.
And in the year the boy turned eighteen, it snowed too. The snow the boy handed to Eleanor, smile and all, was shaped into a small fairy of incredibly delicate workmanship.
Seeing it, Eleanor's eyes lit up innocently, and she thanked him while asking, "How did you even make this?" The flower set inside the body of the snow fairy was a crimson-purple epimedium.
The meanings of the flowers he got her in order:
First love → I am captivated by you → You are beautiful, but cold → Do not betray me → Be mine → I will capture you.