Episode 4
“The higher-ups have finished discussing your case, Fincher.”
“Yes. I’ve just received the warning notice.”
“What did it say?”
“That, on the charge of damaging the dignity of an officer, my pay will be reduced for six months.”
Isaac spoke calmly. Major Wells stared at him as he said it with such an indifferent face, then let out a laugh of disbelief.
“You ought to be ashamed, Fincher. Under normal circumstances, this would have been sent straight to a court-martial. You wouldn’t have been able to avoid confinement, and perhaps even a dishonorable discharge.”
“…….”
“General Thurston has shown you special consideration and decided to settle this matter privately. Of course, there’s nothing to be done about the rumors that have already spread on that side…… but that is something you, as a nobleman, will have to bear.”
“I understand.”
The moment the name “Thurston” came up, Isaac clenched his teeth so hard his jaw stood out.
Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—Major Wells did not notice at all. Like everyone else, he knew nothing about what had happened between Isaac and the general.
“It’s fortunate the other party was also a soldier. I hear the two of you were acquainted. Bloom, was it?”
“……Yes.”
“Fincher, you shouldn’t hide things from me. What on earth did he say to make you do such a thing?”
Isaac remained silent for a moment, putting off his answer. With a vaguely detached expression, he looked at the major sitting across from him.
Major Wells was perhaps the only person in the 4th Infantry Regiment whom Isaac could consider trusting.
After a brief hesitation, Isaac opened his mouth obediently.
“……He insulted my comrades first.”
The major said nothing for a moment. Then he sighed, pressed hard between his brows, and simply stared at Isaac.
After that, without any scolding or encouragement, he gave an additional order for Isaac to keep quiet and lie low for the time being.
Isaac had intended to do so anyway. Now, he simply did not want to do anything at all.
A little while later, Isaac left the major’s office and walked down the corridor. Through the window, he saw two officers leisurely smoking in the open yard. They exhaled hazy cigarette smoke and stared blankly at Isaac.
Isaac faced forward again and kept walking.
“Of course, there’s nothing to be done about the rumors that have already spread on that side…….”
As Isaac continued walking, he chewed over what the major had said earlier.
“That side.”
He meant the social world Isaac had struggled so desperately to avoid being entangled with throughout his upbringing.
And now, bitterly enough, it meant that same social world where Isaac, having nowhere else to go, had been floundering to at least get a foot in the door.
“That is something you, as a nobleman, will have to bear.”
He had already heard that it had been printed in a weekly magazine read by the nobility and caused quite a commotion. It had been written at the beginning of the letter from his grandmother. A tremendous disgrace to the family, she had called it. His grandmother had rebuked him, stressing again and again, right up to the end of the letter, that he was to go and apologize at once.
Apologize. To whom?
Obviously. That woman.
That woman, who had been more innocent than anyone and suffered enormous harm.
The heroine of that day’s party.
“Captain Fincher.”
Someone called out to Isaac as he walked down the corridor with a fearsome expression. Isaac turned toward the familiar voice. His adjutant looked up at him, his face paler than usual.
“A visitation request has come in for you, Captain. I think you should check it immediately.”
＊＊＊
That woman had come.
“It’s good to see you again, Captain Fincher. I’m Sasha Grayson.”
She had truly come to see him.
As if she had already known that, far from apologizing, he would carelessly shove her out of his mind the moment she occurred to him, she had come to him herself.
Isaac stood stiffly, staring at her with a rigid face. His adjutant, who had been about to close the door and leave, raised his eyebrows and signaled to him with his eyes.
Only then did Isaac say, as if reluctantly, “Please sit.”
“I’m sorry for dropping by so suddenly. It’s been two weeks since we last met, hasn’t it?”
The woman sat down on the drawing-room sofa without hesitation as she spoke. Seeing Isaac awkwardly sit across from her, she even gave him a rather polite smile.
The face visible beneath her deep green chapeau was as white as flour, and the features set in that pale face were delicate and finely arranged. It was a neat appearance without a single sharp edge.
So that’s what she looked like. Muttering this rather rude impression inwardly, Isaac crossed his legs defensively without realizing it. Then both his hands came to rest on the armrests and, before he knew it, gripped them tightly.
The woman was smiling. Staring quietly at him with green eyes.
“I did send a letter in advance, but I hadn’t received a reply for several days.”
The woman explained why she had visited without warning. Fincher stared intently into her green eyes, then hurriedly tucked in his chin when their eyes met. For someone of his size, he looked terribly pathetic.
“I thought I might wait a little longer, but I have circumstances of my own as well, so I had no choice but to come in person. Did you, by any chance, receive my letter……?”
“…….”
“As I thought, you weren’t able to read it. You must have been too overwhelmed to think of it.”
The woman smiled as if she understood everything. She smiled faintly at Isaac, who ought to have apologized first but instead behaved defensively, as if what was bound to come had finally arrived.
Isaac recalled how, when he had lost his reason and caused that incident, that woman had thrown water on him. He remembered how her face, which had been smiling the whole time, had twisted as she shouted at him to stop, as if she could hardly believe what she was seeing.
“…….”
“……About that day.”
As the woman merely looked at him with a smile, Isaac opened his mouth as if he had no choice.
“Do you remember what happened that day? You were drunk. Both of you.”
The woman cut him off.
Isaac sighed and rolled his eyes.
“I remember everything.”
“…….”
“The ones fighting were that bast—that man and me, but when I came to my senses…….”
At the time, Isaac had blatantly ignored the woman trying to stop the fight and had been wholly absorbed in punishing Robert.
Even after the woman drenched him with water, Isaac hit Robert a couple more times and shoved Robert hard by the shoulder when he tried to lunge at him.
Then the table supporting the cake collapsed, and Robert, covered in white buttercream cake, charged at him again.
At that moment, there was the dull sound of fists hitting flesh. It was neither him nor Bloom.
When he turned his head, he saw two men who had been watching the fight suddenly trading blows with each other.
Looking more closely, it was not only them. Behind them, a woman was yelling at a man young enough to be her son that she couldn’t see and that he should move.
Nearby, some man was scraping up the buttercream cake that had fallen to the floor into a bowl. Then, with an indescribably refined expression, he licked the cake straight out of the dish.
That was the state of things when Isaac came to his senses.
In other words, it was chaos in the most literal sense.
“Everyone was excited in all sorts of ways. Isn’t that what parties are like? Everyone was already in high spirits, there was alcohol involved, and on top of that, they were given a spectacle…….”
As the calm voice drifted in from across from him, Isaac quickly shoved the memory of that day out of his mind and said,
“I have no excuse.”
“…….”
“I’m sorry about what happened that day. Miss……”
Isaac apologized as if he had been waiting for the chance.
“Grayson.”
“Miss Grayson.”
The woman was still wearing a smile that seemed painted on. Isaac became even more uncomfortable with her.
“How much do you know about me, Captain?”
“I know your name, at least.”
“You couldn’t even remember my family name just now.”
“Sarah Grayson.”
“It’s Sasha Grayson. We even exchanged greetings earlier, but you truly know nothing about me, and not only that, you have no interest either.”
The woman delivered the piercing remark with a smiling face.
Isaac, well, could not have defended himself even with ten mouths.
“That’s true. I don’t know much about you, Miss Grayson. I was forced to attend that party because of my grandmother, and…… what I knew about you was only what my cousin told me that day.”
“What did your cousin say about me?”
It felt like an interrogation.
Without realizing it, Isaac shifted his large frame, letting his displeasure show.
“That you inherited a considerable fortune from the late former duchess.”
“…….”
“And that, because you spent all that time nursing the old lady, you never properly made friends. So that day was your first……”
Even as he felt uncomfortable, he said everything that came to mind. He knew perfectly well that he had even said things that need not have been said, without any filter.
He had always ruined relationships this way.
“Yes. That’s right. It was the day I was being introduced to people for the first time.”
Fortunately, the woman cut him off at the appropriate point.
“……It was a very important day for me.”
Then she murmured this.
She was no longer smiling.
“Well, in any case, not only was the party ruined, but it even ended up in a weekly magazine. Thanks to that, everyone pities me, and at the same time, I’ve become a laughingstock.”
“I’m sorry.”
No sooner had she finished speaking than Isaac apologized again.
‘Apologize.’
The voice from the letter of Isaac’s grandmother, First Lady Caroline, echoed in Isaac’s head.
Apologize.
“Captain.”
Just as Isaac was about to apologize again, as if getting it over with, she cut him off.
“That’s enough.”
“…….”
“……I don’t need an apology for myself.”
The woman, Sasha Grayson, said with a smile.
“I appreciate your willingness to apologize, but I didn’t come here to receive an apology from you, Captain.”
At last, that woman brought up her real point.
“How shall I compensate you?”
Isaac asked, as if he had been waiting.
At his attitude, as though he had been waiting only for those words, the woman stared at him expressionlessly.
She asked quietly,
“To what extent are you able to compensate me?”
“Within what is possible. ……No, if it is beyond that, I will take the time and repay it gradually.”
After hearing Isaac’s words, the woman put that painted-on smile back onto her composed-looking face.
“What I want isn’t anything material, Captain.”
Then the woman said this.
“Can you apologize? To the gentleman you fought with, Captain.”
Isaac stared at her with a face as expressionless as hers had been moments earlier.
Unconcerned, she asked again.
“No, can you apologize to the gentleman whom you unilaterally beat?”