Could it be real?
Those words, and that look in her eyes.
Or,
was she trying to use my feelings to make me sacrifice myself in a dangerous situation?
&
We waited like that, simply letting time pass.
But even when night fell, no signal came.
“Still, it’s a relief.”
Eileen spoke in a small voice.
“We hardly know anything about preparing for situations like this. If Mr. Rayon hadn’t been here, forget food—we might have frozen to death from the cold.”
I dug into the ground, covered it with rocks, then lit a fire inside and made as much ash as I could.
The warmth heated the stones, and the stones made the surrounding area at least a little warmer.
Also, since there was a valley ahead, we caught fish and grilled them over low heat on the stones.
Because the heat was low, they weren’t properly cooked, but at least it was enough to get rid of parasites.
“Ugh... I can’t believe we have to eat this. I’ll just skip a meal.”
Elkant looked utterly disgusted.
Food that was practically raw was hard for inland nobles to eat.
“We don’t know when we’ll have to move again. So you need to eat.”
I spoke firmly.
“Depending on the situation, we may have to fight. As a knight trainee, Lord Elkant, you must be able to muster your strength.”
The look in Elkant’s eyes changed.
“Ah. So this is a moment when you can’t do without me?”
He clenched his fist.
“Just trust me. I’m one of the top ten in our academy!”
I let out a small laugh at his behavior, but at the same time, I felt sorry for him.
Because he still didn’t truly grasp the reality of this situation.
I understood.
Danger was something
you could never really feel until it was right at your throat.
Eileen, on the other hand, was different.
She was hiding it on the outside,
but in one corner of her eyes, anxiety remained clear.
If anything, she understood all too well just how dangerous this situation was.
That was why she was far more focused, and even now, I could see her mind racing.
At that moment, our eyes met.
Yet she was smiling, as if to reassure me instead.
I was just about to smile back, meaning that I really was all right.
Tap.
“Shh.”
At the sound that reached my ears, I immediately focused every nerve I had.
Elkant, who had been tearing into the fish, only widened his eyes,
and Eileen, though there was unease in her expression, looked at me with surprising calm.
Then I heard it again.
A very faint sound.
Footsteps. About three people.
Their gait was different from the Belmardian people’s.
They were dressed a little lighter than if they were wearing armor.
“They’re enemies.”
Eileen answered almost without hesitation.
“I think they saw our traces and followed us. Once they’re gone, we move immediately.”
“N-no, sister.”
Elkant whispered urgently.
“Wouldn’t moving in a situation like this be even more dangerous? Father will be mobilizing troops soon anyway, won’t he?”
“That’s exactly why it’s more dangerous.”
Eileen shook her head and continued.
“There’s a high chance they sent in more people to finish this before that happens. As long as traces remain, this place will be discovered eventually.”
She was right.
“Since they passed by once, they won’t come back right away.”
Eileen lowered her breathing as she spoke.
“When they come searching again later, they’ll definitely look more thoroughly. Moving now is the right choice.”
Then this time, she looked at me and said,
“We’ll move through the water.”
I could tell from her expression.
She had already calculated even this far ahead.
So we could move from here without leaving traces.
Taking advantage of the deepening darkness, we slipped outside.
I stepped into the water first, then held out my hand toward Eileen.
But.
Instead of taking my hand, Eileen naturally slipped into my arms.
“I’m not the kind of woman who just lets herself be held so easily.”
Eileen whispered very softly.
“Ahem, right now... we need to hurry.”
“O-of course.”
I-I was just going to hold her hand...
It was so natural that I ended up lifting her into my arms without even realizing it.
In any case, thanks to that, our speed definitely increased.
Elkant moved at the front,
and Eileen kept watch behind us from within my arms.
We moved for quite a long time like that.
“Aren’t you tired?”
“I’m fine.”
I shrugged as I spoke.
“You’re light as a feather.”
“Oh my.”
Eileen showed signs of laughing while holding her breath.
“If you keep doing that, I won’t be able to focus in this situation.”
“I’m telling you not to feel too sorry.”
I smiled faintly at her.
“...”
For some reason, Eileen’s body leaned a little more toward me.
Then she whispered very softly.
“At first, it was just interest.”
I heard it.
But I deliberately pretended I hadn’t.
...
Yes.
It had been the same for me.
At first, it was really just a small conversation.
After that, a light connection.
After that, a smile I wanted to see, even if it was fake.
And now, I wanted to see a real smile.
Perhaps.
Among the smiles I’d seen until now, hadn’t there been a real one?
No, wasn’t the one just now real too?
This time.
Wouldn’t it be different?
I knew very well that I was being foolish.
But that was fine.
Because I had always been a foolish human being.
The first time is hard, but the second time is easy.
Yes.
If we just survived this,
there would surely be a special story left between her and me, one different from before.
So this time, it really would be differ—
Thud.
Splash.
“Stop.”
We were caught.
And not just barely caught.
The man before us was a knight.
Though the force he exuded wasn’t sharp enough to be chilling, that fact merely meant
that our chances of breaking through him had risen from zero to one.
At that moment, Elkant, thinking that he had to stop him,
bit down hard on his lip and drew in a breath as if he would shout at any second.
But then,
Eileen, who had just gotten down from my arms, took one step forward.
“Do you understand what consequences this will bring?”
“Very well—”
The knight tried to answer, but Eileen cut him off.
“Our Belmardian family will stake everything to hunt down not only your family, but everyone connected to you, to the very end.”
Eileen’s voice had sunk coldly.
“The place you belong to must have promised to protect you. But even if the opponent is the royal family of Elstragard, we will find them.”
And she drove in her final words with clarity.
“And we will punish them. We, the Belmardians.”
At that moment, I felt the knight’s shoulders stiffen ever so slightly.
This was the method Eileen used when pressuring people.
Not a simple direct threat, but a way of making the other person imagine the worst possible outcome on their own.
With her sharp gaze, her presence, and the atmosphere that seemed to press down on people added to it,
most could not withstand that pressure.
Eileen pushed one step further.
“If you turn a blind eye and withdraw now, we will also treat this as something that never happened.”
Her voice did not waver in the slightest.
“I swear it in the name of Eileen of Belmardian.”
It failed.
Astonishingly, I realized that immediately.
The atmosphere and overwhelming pressure Eileen was radiating right now were certainly remarkable.
So much so that it was hard to believe she was only seventeen.
Yes.
Only seventeen.
She was still a little lacking when facing a knight.
“Impressive.”
The knight laughed lowly.
“To already possess such presence at your age.”
Shrrk.
His sword was drawn.
In his eyes, revealed beneath the moonlight, resolve was thicker than fear.
“However, you do not know much about knights.”
He raised his sword.
“A knight does not retreat in the face of threats like that.”
The instant he finished speaking, the knight shot forward at terrifying speed.
Kaaang!
Elkant gritted his teeth and blocked the blade.
“D-damn it!”
Elkant shouted as he barely held on.
“Sister! Run! I’ll buy time somehow!”
Then he screamed at me.
“Brother! Please protect my sister!”
Even at the sight of Elkant,
Eileen snatched my hand without hesitation.
“Let’s go!”
But I could not turn away.
Elkant could never hold out alone.
“You mustn’t hesitate!”
Eileen shouted urgently.
“No.”
I gritted my teeth and spoke.
“Elkant can’t stop him alone. It would be better if I joined him too, so we can buy even a little more time.”
“What are you talking about!”
Eileen’s eyes shook violently.
“You’ll definitely die! Absolutely not!”
She gripped my hand even tighter.
“I really hate men with empty vanity! So please! Don’t do this!”
“You know it too.”
I looked straight at her.
“That this is the only way to raise your chances of survival, even a little.”
She bit her lip and put even more strength into her hand.
“No. Not now!”
Her voice broke.
“It’s not cool at all! Even if you do that... even if you do that, I...”
Ah.
That face.
The face I had seen in my dream right before I died.
So that was what it looked like.
No, that was the face I had wanted it to be.
“Sorry.”
That was why I could be even more certain.
“After all, keeping you alive is more important to me.”
In the end, I pulled her hand away and turned without hesitation.
I drew my sword and ran toward Elkant, who was on the verge of collapsing.
In just a few seconds, Elkant had been driven by despair to the brink of death.
Probably.
At this rate, I would die.
A knight, not a mere soldier.
There was no way the current me could face that head-on.
I really was foolish.
I had finally gotten another chance,
yet in the end, the result was flowing the same way again.
This time too, I could not shake off this ill-fated bond,
and in the end, I would die.
An ill-fated bond.
Yes.
This was what an ill-fated bond must be.
Something you couldn’t escape from,
something whose ending you couldn’t change after all.
Still.
Wasn’t it a little different from back then?
Back then, even my death had been meaningless,
but now, at least, it had meaning.
At the very least, she had shown me, in reality, the face I had longed for in my dream.
That was the moment.
‘Does it really have meaning?’
For an instant, someone seemed to whisper from within me.
Eileen might be laughing inside right now.
Perhaps,
hadn’t she anticipated even a situation like this?
Yes.
The reason she searched for a man who could die for her.
In my previous life too, in the end, I died for her.
So she had drawn in someone like me,
to use me someday in a moment like this.
As those thoughts overlapped,
the urge to look back surged up within me.
If it were her.
If it were truly her.
She might have turned around without a moment’s hesitation.
Because she would never miss a chance to survive.
Don’t look back.
Don’t check.
Because if I did, it would be too miserable.
That was the moment.
That brief distrust shattered my concentration.
Swish!
A dagger narrowly grazed past the side of my eye.
And almost at the same time.
“Ah!”
Eileen’s scream burst out.
At that instant, I whipped my head around.
The knight had thrown the dagger at her leg
to keep Eileen from escaping.
But the first thing that entered my eyes
was not her condition.
It was the fact that she was still standing there.
The person who should have fled
had, in the end, stopped there while looking at me.
At that moment.
An emotion difficult to describe surged in all at once.
As if a dam had collapsed,
countless memories poured down in a single instant.
The gaze right before death.
The times I had believed to be an ill-fated bond.
The smile I had thought to be calculated.
The expectation I had nevertheless never been able to let go of.
The countless memories and emotions tangled within them swept over me all at once.
And even in the midst of that vortex,
I could see it with terrible clarity.
The place where the dagger had grazed past.
The torn hem of her dress.
The red blood spreading out along that gap.
***
Elkant was fighting with everything he had right now.
“U-uaaah!”
Death.
There was no way Elkant, facing it before his very eyes, could have a proper mind left.
He had never been a match to begin with.
He was merely swinging his sword by instinct,
barely managing to block,
and struggling desperately to hold on even one more time.
But the end came quickly.
Kang!
His grip could not endure, and his sword was knocked away.
Splash.
Elkant collapsed as if he had been slammed into the water’s edge,
and the knight did not hesitate.
As if there were no reason to hesitate in finishing off a fallen enemy, he raised his sword high.
“N-no.”
The very moment a trembling sound leaked from Elkant’s throat.
Kang!
Sparks flew before his eyes.
Someone had intervened in an instant and blocked that strike.
At first, he thought it was his own escort knight.
But soon, he saw.
Familiar clothes.
“B-brother?”
It was Rayon.
But something was strange.
The eyes that flashed into view for an instant were far too cold.
No, they were not cold.
As if he were someone whose emotions had completely gone out,
there was no light to be seen in his pupils.