Episode 29
Sasha had known that man for less than a month. No, had it been exactly about a month?
Well. She didn’t know. In any case, the fact remained that it was far too short a time to hastily decide on something as grave as marriage.
When he had once coldly refused her, saying he disliked the idea, and now he was telling her, almost forcing her, to marry him.
Why? Because he had grown attached to her in that brief month?
Attached?
Sasha felt a strange churning in her stomach. It was truly an odd feeling.
It was different from nausea. She could not even begin to grasp what to call this emotion, or how to explain it.
And so she desperately tried to focus only on the urgent situation before her.
Isaac was right. She was in a hurry. She wanted to find a man who met the conditions as quickly as possible, marry him, fulfill the required period, receive the money, and then abandon everything and leave.
Her mind grew fiercely active. The churning and anxiety, whose reasons even she could not explain, were no match for the reason that was coldly examining the reality she faced.
The heat that had been making both her cheeks burn slowly began to subside. Sasha looked at him with a face calmer than before.
“Let me ask you one thing.”
She asked, and
“Anything.”
he answered, a little impatiently.
Isaac knew that, even in his own estimation, he must look rather strange right now.
But being treated as an oddity was something he was far too used to. He had lived his life being regarded by everyone as not merely eccentric, but unsettling. What did it matter now?
“Do you perhaps pity me?”
It was an unexpected question. Isaac, who had thought a more stinging question would come, raised his brows and looked at her.
“……No.”
“Ah, I see.”
When he answered somewhat awkwardly, she replied lightly, as though that was enough.
“Why did you think that?”
“Captain, you’re less desperate than I am. But you seemed to be trying to help me, even using blackmail as an excuse, so I asked just in case.”
Sasha explained with utter calm.
Isaac looked down at her with slightly dazed eyes, then asked.
“What if I had said I was pitying you?”
“I wouldn’t have been offended. Captain. Rather, if you were doing this for me out of pure pity, I intended to gladly express my gratitude to you and accept that sentiment.”
Isaac began to feel that this conversation was growing increasingly strange.
“……Then since I said it wasn’t pity, are you going to refuse?”
After clinging to him as though she were a person driven into a desperate corner, as though he were her only choice, now that woman was once again acting with that attitude, as if teasing him.
No, looking at it now, it seemed she was drawing a firm line.
“…….”
“…….”
He was the one who had kept telling her not to cross the line. He had thought so himself.
But now that they had come to this, it seemed that woman was the one saying, I absolutely won’t cross the line you drew, so don’t come inside mine.
Sasha looked up at him without answering.
Because of her agitation just moments ago, her face was still red. But her eyes were no longer distorted with confusion as they had been earlier.
“In that case, I still have no idea why you are going this far for me, Captain.”
She spoke with an incomparably proud attitude.
Even though she herself was cornered at the edge of a precipice, she treated him like a suspicious person repeatedly asking for permission, asking, Are you truly saving me with pure intentions?
She continued.
“At any rate, I can hardly refuse your sincerity, Captain.”
She held out her hand.
Isaac looked down, somewhat dazed, at the hand she had extended toward him.
So, was she asking for that greeting? Thinking so, he carefully raised his own hand, intending to press his lips to the back of hers, but she suddenly grasped his hand first.
Then she held it and shook it gently.
It was a simple handshake.
“……I don’t know whether you’re simply naive, or kind.”
Isaac blankly looked down at her small hand gently holding his large one, then bristled and replied.
“I’m neither.”
＊＊＊
The rain showed no sign of stopping. The rainfall grew heavier and heavier, and the road turned into a complete mess of muddy water. Lance Field, where the roads were not well maintained to begin with, was in especially serious condition.
The horses refused to run, and in the first place, they would not get far before the carriage wheels sank into the mud.
So Sasha had no choice but to stay one night in Lance Field.
Since she had, in the end, made a verbal engagement that was not quite an engagement with Isaac Pinscher, it was clear that she had no further business in Lance Field.
As for future matters, they could be exchanged by letter, and perhaps she would not even need to see his face again until the day of the wedding.
However, the next morning, Isaac came out to see Sasha off and asked her the moment he saw her.
“When will you come next?”
Sasha, who had not expected him to come see her off in the first place, was a little bewildered by the very fact of his farewell.
I’m not sure. There’s no need for me to come here anymore now, is there?
Sasha was about to say that, but closed her mouth for no reason. Then, after letting her gaze drop in a somewhat ambiguous manner, she answered, “I’m not sure. I don’t know.”
“Is that so?” Isaac replied blandly, as if it were unsatisfying, and held out his large hand to Sasha as she was about to climb into the carriage.
“I’ll send you a letter.”
Sasha said as she took his hand and climbed into the carriage.
For some reason, this conversation felt oddly ticklish.
Even though there was no longer any need for them to have obligatory meetings under the pretext of getting to know one another, it felt strangely ticklish.
“As soon as I return, I’ll draw up the contract first. I’ll send you the draft as soon as it’s finished, so would you review it and let me know if there’s anything you’d like to add?”
“A contract.”
“Yes.”
Isaac, who had been listening to Sasha with a strangely subtle expression, quickly let go of the hand he had been holding when Matilda approached to say goodbye to her.
He had been holding it all this time without realizing. When he realized it belatedly, his face flushed bright red.
Sasha greeted Matilda with an unruffled expression, then soon offered the two of them another formal farewell and waved.
The coachman closed the carriage door, and she adjusted her seat. Soon after, the carriage departed, rolling away over the muddy ground made sodden by the previous day’s rain.
“From the look of things, it seems the matter between you two was resolved well. I’m glad.”
Matilda said that to Isaac with a subtle smile, but instead of grumbling irritably as usual, Isaac simply stood still.
It had been nothing more than a businesslike conversation with not a shred of romance to it, all contracts and the like, yet somehow his heart was pounding so hard he could hardly bear it.
Isaac raised his palm and touched his cheek. Good heavens. It was hot.
“…Damn it.”
He was no child going through puberty at this late age, yet all sorts of emotions were surging through him.