Episode 16
Isaac Fincher was, in truth, the sort of man who trusted others so little that without suspicion, he might as well have been a corpse. He had not been born that way. As a child, he had been so absurdly naive that he believed everything he was told and was constantly taken advantage of.
His half-brother Edmund and his relatives, the fellow cadets and seniors who had envied him during his days at the military academy, and above all, General Thurston, who had pretended to trust him, kept him close, used him, and then discarded him. A series of experiences, piled up one after another, had made him what he was now.
General Thurston. Now that he had even been saddled with the mistakes committed by that fox-like old man and been transferred, as if to make a show of it, to the 4th Infantry Regiment, his hatred of humanity had reached its peak.
It was two in the afternoon. At around the same time as yesterday, Sasha Grayson, that woman, came to see him again without fail.
Isaac, seated in a room thick with the smell of oil and in the middle of dismantling a gun, abruptly lifted the curtain on the window. Instead, he saw the back of Lieutenant Felix’s head as Felix dealt with her in his place.
The sharp sunlight of two in the afternoon poured down over them. Lieutenant Felix informed Sasha Grayson on behalf of his superior that Isaac was in no state to receive visitors. Isaac had not given him any particular excuse, so Felix must have invented a reason on his own.
Today, the woman was wearing a mustard-colored dress. Beneath a yellow bonnet chosen to match, her face was faintly visible as she listened carefully to Felix’s words. As always, she wore a composed expression while paying close attention to what the other person was saying, and soon she smiled gently and nodded.
Isaac stared persistently from above at the smile that appeared on the woman’s flour-white face, then, at some point, felt inexplicably guilty and roughly dropped the curtain again.
Not long after, there came a knock, knock, and the door opened as Felix poked his head in.
Isaac was sitting at his desk as though he had been there all along. With hands blackened by oil, he was busy cleaning the gun he had taken apart.
“……I sent her away, as you instructed……”
“What did she say?”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“That woman’s reaction. Did she say she would come again tomorrow, or anything like that?”
Felix leaned against the doorframe and blinked slowly. Then he answered calmly.
“No. She said she hoped you would recover soon.”
“……Recover?”
“Yes. I told her you had eaten something bad last night and were suffering from stomach pains……”
The mechanical motion of cleaning the firearm came to a halt. Isaac glared at Felix, his face flushed red.
“No, please hear me out. You saw her perfectly fine yesterday, so it would be strange to say you suddenly caught a cold. But if I used being busy with work as an excuse, right now you’re suspended from duty and confined to quarters, Captain!”
“……You could have used that damned confinement as an excuse.”
“Ah, yes. I’ll do that next time. But yesterday, you met her despite being confined to quarters, didn’t you?”
In the end, he was saying that the ridiculous excuse he had cobbled together on the spot had been the best option.
When his superior glared at him with a flushed face as though he were itching to kill him, Felix belatedly scratched the back of his head with an awkward expression. He pulled aside the curtain over the window opposite Isaac’s desk again.
“Ah, someone is already talking to her. It’s Second Lieutenant Whitcomb.”
“……Whit…… what?”
Out of consideration for Isaac, who had only recently been transferred, Felix kindly explained.
“You know, that handsome fellow who likes gambling. The one whose older brother won the lottery.”
“…….”
“There are others besides Whitcomb too…… Ah, she’s following him.”
Isaac’s head turned of its own accord toward the window, through which sunlight was pouring in. As Felix had said, Sasha Grayson, that woman, could be seen walking after Second Lieutenant Whitcomb.
He saw her smiling at the second lieutenant just as she had smiled at Felix earlier.
Felix, who had been blankly looking down at them alongside Isaac, said,
“Captain. That Whitcomb fellow is quite desperate.”
“For what?”
“I told you, didn’t I? His older brother won the lottery. Apparently that brother is buying land here, a house there, and meanwhile he, the younger brother, is stuck out in this backwater, so he’s lost his mind over it. His family isn’t well-off either, so he has no inheritance coming his way.”
Isaac’s mouth hardened as he followed Felix’s gaze out the window. Strangely enough, it was a story that resembled his own a little.
Felix, who had been rambling on about Whitcomb without being asked, glanced at Isaac and said quietly,
“…And that Whitcomb fellow is even handsome……”
“So what. Why are you saying it twice? You marry him, then.”
“No. I’m worried, that’s all. Miss Grayson is devoted to you right now, Captain, but what if that Whitcomb wins her over……?”
That was what I was thinking. Felix could not bring himself to say the rest and swallowed the words back down.
“That woman is devoted to me?”
After his face had gone cold and stiff for a moment, Isaac soon let out a hollow laugh and asked Felix in return.
Felix nodded as though he were the one who found this absurd.
“She comes to see you every day, Captain. Every time she comes, she somehow finds out what you like and brings it with her. ……Ah, you finished the apple pie she brought yesterday.”
When Felix glanced at the empty plate on the desk, Isaac irritably pushed it away with one arm.
“Just because she comes to see me every time doesn’t necessarily mean it’s ardent courtship, Thompson.”
“……Uh…… Then does it mean something else? What does she come to see you and talk about every time, then, Captain?”
At the question Felix tossed out as if he had been waiting for the chance, Isaac closed his mouth.
A proposal for a short-term marriage.
Isaac could not bring himself to answer honestly. Even if he said honestly that the woman came every day and pestered him to marry her, how would that be any different from the ardent courtship Felix was talking about?
He could not explain the subtle nuance and the true substance behind it, but because he did not explain, it looked no different from courtship, just as Felix said. Isaac groaned and rubbed the back of his neck.
“……I know that type well.”
Isaac spat the words out and added,
“That woman is a swindler.”
Felix, who had been watching Whitcomb and Sasha Grayson converse in a friendly atmosphere, turned his head as though dumbfounded. Regardless, Isaac, who had reached his own conclusion, focused again on what he had been doing.
“……Captain. That woman is the heiress of a ducal family.”
“Have you never been scammed by a rich person, Felix Thompson?”
“No. Well……. I mean, for a scam to work, there has to be something worth taking, doesn’t there? What I’m saying is……”
You have nothing.
Isaac Fincher, who had once belonged to a special operations unit and commanded numerous operations, and who had become the youngest captain through a special promotion, was, as Felix had pointed out, merely in a humble position now.
Silence fell, and Felix belatedly looked away from his superior’s fierce gaze. Then, as though hastily trying to smooth things over, he said,
“I just…… purely thought she had fallen for you, Captain……”
“That’s the real bullshit.”
“Are you admitting that what you said yourself was bullshit? No, what I mean is. You’re a much better person than you think, Captain. I heard you beat people senseless if you didn’t like them, but instead, from the very beginning, you were shy around me……. Well, setting your personality aside, you are far better-looking than that Whitcomb……”
Felix, who had built up an arbitrary affection for his superior in that short time, scratched the back of his neck and spoke.
“You just become a little less interesting once you open your mouth. When you first came here, the girls around this area heard the rumors about you and started whispering among themselves, you know.”
Isaac, however, was not really listening to Felix. His gaze was following only Sasha Grayson and Second Lieutenant Whitcomb, who was smiling at her with a gentlemanly expression, beneath the window.
Fallen for him? It was so absurd that it was difficult to listen to. She had no interest in Isaac. Even when she had first come to him without warning, she had acted strangely, and in the end, had she not confessed it with her own mouth? The matter of mediating the fight had been nothing more than an excuse from the start; she had simply meant to come for a short period of recuperation.
Then she had come back and, this time, told him to marry her.
“…….”
If she truly was a swindler, as Isaac had hastily concluded, then it was a truly nonsensical buildup. Unless this was her first time committing fraud, how could she skip ahead to such an absurd development?
A one-year contract marriage. He chewed over her words as she had abruptly presented that dry relationship meant only for mutual convenience and coexistence, emphasizing that it had to be him.
As Felix had pointed out, Isaac was in a humble position. His rank had long since become nothing more than a faded medal, and the only thing he could barely put forward was the title of count that would come on the premise of marriage.
It made even less sense. As far as he knew, there were plenty of men with conditions like that.
“Ah, they’re coming out again.”
Sasha Grayson and Second Lieutenant Whitcomb, who had entered the building housing the major’s office together, could be seen coming back out side by side. Second Lieutenant Whitcomb escorted her with somewhat exaggerated gestures and said something to her again.
Whitcomb, whose only asset was his handsome face, suddenly raised his hand. He took a handkerchief from his breast and carefully moved it toward her cheek.
Isaac sprang to his feet.
“Where are you going, sir?”
“Stay here a moment.”
“Tell her the medicine worked and you got better.”
“Shut up.”