Episode 85
Quite naturally, the world did not take on his shame and collapse just because he had shown someone a little of his backside.
As he had realized long ago, the world was not that accommodating. Like all the disgraceful things Isaac had endured before, this was a burden he alone had to bear.
The only consolation was that, this time, the embarrassment was not his alone.
Charles stepped in at precisely the right moment. Before Sasha, in her attempt to salvage the situation, could keep repeating with a perfectly composed face that it was “a backside everyone has,” he stopped her.
What a tremendous relief that was.
Only then did Sasha come to her senses. Without even looking in Isaac’s direction, she said there was something she had forgotten to bring and went back into the inn. Isaac, his whole body flushed red, stared blankly at her retreating back, then belatedly loaded her bag into the luggage compartment first.
Sasha returned about ten minutes later. Contrary to her claim that she had forgotten something, she was empty-handed. Isaac chose not to question it and helped her into the carriage.
At last, with the crack of the whip, the carriage set off. Inside, it was quiet. Sasha maintained the silence for a while before pointing at the window and saying, “The rain has stopped.”
“……It stopped quite some time ago.”
Isaac answered in a mutter, his face looking gloomier than usual. It was the same face as always. But now, there was an added impression of wounded injustice.
After that, Sasha threw out absurd topics a few more times, and Isaac gave hollow replies.
The carriage grew quiet again. The two sat facing each other, yet as if they had arranged it beforehand, each looked only out the window on the opposite side.
Isaac stared out the window with his thoughts tangled in every direction, only to recall what had just happened and flush in misery again and again. As if even meeting Sasha’s eyes was torment, he avoided her gaze, yet still stole glances at her as though gauging her reaction.
It had only been an instant, but Isaac remembered how pale her face had gone when they met in the bathroom. Then he recalled the sight of her back as she spat out an apology in a rush and hurried away.
Had she been disgusted?
Of course she had.
‘Damn it. Why do I only ever show that woman such humiliating sides of myself?’
Groaning with a pained expression, Isaac buried his face in his palms.
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The carriage traveled for another three or four hours, and at last arrived in a village larger than the one where they had stayed the previous night. Charles said he had things to buy here and there, including at the general store. He also intended to take the horses to the stables and have them checked over briefly.
Charles then suggested that if they were tired, they could remain in the carriage and wait for him, but if they were all right, perhaps they might step out for a bit of air. Before Isaac could answer, Sasha nodded and promptly got down from the carriage.
“Charles, you said you were going to the general store?”
“Yes. Would you like to come with me?”
“……Yes. I need to buy a comb. And gloves, too.”
Then Sasha looked at Isaac with her usual calm smile. Isaac pointed at the sign of a gun shop that happened to come into view and said,
“I have some business to take care of over there.”
And so the three of them scattered. Sasha entered the general store with Charles.
While Charles asked the shopkeeper to recommend treats that would be good for the horses, Sasha, looking somewhat dazed, fiddled with something in front of her—letter paper, or ribbons, or whatever it was. The comb she had come looking for was placed on the other side to begin with, but she did not even glance that way.
As Sasha toyed with some unidentified pink object that might have been a shoelace or a hair tie, she struggled to push away the image of his naked body that kept trying to occupy her mind. His large, firm, muscular body. The scars that had been scattered here and there across his back and arms. They kept taking over her thoughts.
All throughout the ride, Sasha had suffered from holding herself back from presumptuously asking Isaac about them.
In particular, she had wanted to ask about the history behind the large scar crossing his right shoulder, and even wanted to shamelessly compliment him, saying that far from being unsightly, it had actually been very impressive. Since it was the result of what he had accomplished until now, was it not a kind of medal?
She had nearly dared to say even that.
“My lady. Have you chosen everything?”
At Charles’s call, Sasha belatedly came back to herself. She handed Charles whatever she had been absentmindedly fiddling with. Charles raised his eyebrows for a moment in puzzlement at the thick skein of yarn that did not suit summer, but paid for it along with the rest without a word.
After somehow paying for any old thing, Sasha left the general store first and waited for Charles to come out. Then she gathered herself.
Don’t make a fuss. If you see that man again, please don’t be shaken, she repeated to herself.
What was the big deal about seeing a man’s naked body? It would do her no good either, so please regain your composure, she muttered as if brainwashing herself.
“Did you wait long?”
With a jingle of the bell, Charles came out of the general store. At the same time, Sasha watched a group of young men pass in front of the shop, talking among themselves with their upper bodies cheerfully bare.
……Yes. What was the big deal about something like that?
Perhaps because midsummer was already just around the corner, the weather was moderately sweltering. Unlike Lance Field, this village had a mine nearby, and perhaps because of that, the people had a slightly rougher charm as well. Sasha followed Charles around the village, sightseeing here and there, trying in her own way to refresh her mood.
She looked at the sheep in the stable, carefully stroked the heads of the horses that had worked so hard for them until now, and then.
“It seems about time our stomachs started feeling empty. How about we all have lunch at that restaurant?”
When Sasha suggested it as though the thought had just occurred to her, Charles readily nodded. The two passed in front of a closed salon and headed toward the gun shop Isaac had entered. When Charles opened the door and went inside, Sasha stood quietly by the entrance and waited for Charles to bring Isaac out.
From the door that opened and closed for a moment came the all-too-familiar smell of gun oil. It was Isaac’s scent. The scent that always clung to his body whenever she met him.
“Are you here for work? A carpenter?”
Sasha’s gaze, which had been sweeping indifferently over her surroundings, soon stopped at a certain point. A large man, impossible not to recognize, was standing in the alley over there, surrounded by petite women who barely came up to his chest. It was Isaac.
“Are you always that quiet? I asked if you were just stopping by here for a bit.”
The woman leaned toward Isaac without the slightest hint of intimidation and showered him with questions. They were women even more fearless and bold than the maidens of Lance Field.
Isaac’s face could not be seen clearly. But Sasha could roughly guess that he was extremely uncomfortable. He disliked people, after all. And among them, he was especially uncomfortable with women.
Just as he had been with Sasha.
“Yes. I’m only stopping by. I don’t have time, so go.”
“Really? For someone who says that, you’ve been standing here for quite a while.”
“I’m waiting for my companions. Go.”
“Are you sure you’re not lying? Then we’ll wait with you.”
The women giggled and showed no sign of leaving. It was a familiar scene, one she had seen somewhere before. Yes. Back when the gathering was held in Lance Field, had that man not been surrounded by women in exactly that fashion?
Sasha looked at the scene with an expressionless face. Isaac was popular. It was only because he went out of his way to put up walls, but if one looked only at his appearance, he was quite handsome. More than anything, once one spoke with him, he seemed not merely normal, but even rather decent.
……Yes. Everyone thinks the same way, it seems.
“…….”
For some reason, displeasure surged up within her. A displeasure whose origin she could not understand.
As Sasha watched the scene with a sour expression, Isaac, who had been replying to the women irritably, abruptly turned his head and spotted her. And just as he was about to say, as if glad to see her, “Miss Grayson,” he faltered upon seeing the discomfort on Sasha’s face.
“……Isaac.”
Sasha looked at them with a somewhat chilly expression, then called him, as though obediently offering him help. Not Captain, but Isaac again. Deliberately speaking his name so that it would appear overtly intimate.
As if he had been waiting for it, Isaac came out from among the women and approached Sasha. With long strides, he came right up in front of her in an instant.
The women looked Sasha over for a moment at the appearance of someone who looked noble at a glance, as if sizing her up, then quickly lost interest and clustered together before heading off elsewhere.
“Why were you out here? You could have just waited inside.”
Still unable to shake off that inexplicable displeasure, Sasha spoke to him for no reason with a sharpened edge.
“I was just about to go looking for you first. Did you buy a comb?”
“……Yes.”
Sasha lied as smoothly as flowing water, deliberately avoiding his eyes.
“Actually, I didn’t buy a comb. I bought some strange yarn.”
Then, suddenly and capriciously changing course, she obediently confessed the truth to him.
Looking him straight in the eye.
“Yarn?”
“Yes.”
As Sasha looked at Isaac’s puzzled face, she realized in an instant exactly what that inexplicable displeasure was.
Jealousy.
……She dared to feel jealous.