A Week in Tokyo

Chapter One: Bus Stop

Chapter One: Bus Stop

Van stood at a brightly colored shack with his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his light brown pants. The sign overhead was spelled in Mystic Moon letters that he could not decipher. He was trying to remember how he had managed to get himself into this mess in the first place.

Allen stood next to him with a frown on his face, arms crossed over the blue straps of his knight attire. He didn't seem the least bit amused to be there either. Dryden and Gaddes were there standing on opposite sides of the two spitting and cursing. Van let out a heavy breath and stared at the empty road in front of him. Where were they anyway?

Van thought about the events that lead to the lot of them waiting next to what appeared to be a Mystic Moon trade road with a hint of disgust reflected in his eyes.

A week before, the four men had planned a hunting trip. Allen figured it was a good way to get Van's mind off of his royal council. The council began pressuring him to find a wife after the first year Van and Hitomi had been separated and things fell into a kind of turmoil after that. Every day after the first year apart from Hitomi, one of his annoying council members would come up and ask him if he had found a bride.

Van had made it very clear that he did not intend to marry any of the women that they showed to him but his words didn't seem to register. Every first week out of the new month Van was forced to go have dinner at some duchess's house or go horseback riding with a princess from some obscure country he had never heard of. It was enough to drive any man insane.

After five years of putting up with this Van was starting to crack. He would purposely 'forget' to go on dates, which caused strained relationships with the other kingdoms that his council members had to apologize for later. This made the head council member, Vladimir Kent, do something unthinkable.

Vlad proclaimed that Van would have to get married by the end of the year or the leadership would be passed to another family line which supposedly lived in a neighboring village. The family that lived within the borders of this village apparently had ties with Van's great-grandfather. Many of the council members had sensed deceit from the moment those words left Vlad's lips and predicted the worse for Van if he did not choose a bride within the allotted time frame.

Allen happened to be traveling to Fanelia on royal business with Gaddes and Dryden when he caught wind of the news. He figured that the best way to get Van's mind off of things was to invite him on a hunting trip with his friends. This is where the trouble began.

Vlad was already furious that Van was not taking initiative to set up a royal lineage and when he heard Allen make the suggestion of going on a hunting trip it seemed to tug at his last nerve of patience. "That's out of the question." He had hissed at the council meeting. Merle had had enough of Vlad smooth talking the council and proclaimed a 'Saet Vait' which had the effect of removing a shady council member from the palace on grounds of treason. Van admittedly could have kissed Merle for that political move.

Van could do nothing as the king, but as the royal advisor, Merle had the power to fire the head councilman with the majority vote from the rest of the council members. Most of the council anonymously agreed to get rid of the old nag on the grounds that he only had his own interests at heart.

Vlad and five other council members left that day, mainly because they supported the old wicked man, and also in part because he had shady dealings with them outside of council affairs. Six new members were added to the council and the action of Van finding a bride within a year was dropped, much to his relief.

Van and Allen decided to go on their hunting trip shortly after as a celebration of their victory. Merle was given extra privileges to go into the palace kitchen for snacks, which in her mind made her political move the best thing she had ever done in her short career. While Van, Allen, Gaddes, and Dryden were away, Vlad had been cooking up a scheme to get back at Van and the other members of the council.