No, it wasn’t cold.
Like someone whose emotions had been completely switched off,
there was no light in his pupils.
&
And yet his movements were precise enough to send chills down one’s spine.
Pat!
Rayon threw himself forward, drawing one of the daggers at his waist and hurling it.
Clang!
The knight knocked it aside with his sword, as if sneering.
An attack that fell short of even being called a threat,
or so he thought.
The instant the dagger was deflected,
Rayon’s body had already slipped in beneath his chin.
The flashing tip of his sword rushed toward the knight’s throat.
Shwak!
This time, the trajectory was clearly threatening.
The knight hurriedly twisted his upper body and barely avoided being cut,
and at the same time, he intended to seize that opening in reverse and finish it with a single counterattack.
But Rayon did not withdraw his missed sword.
Instead of killing his momentum, he drove his body in even deeper.
Thud!
His shoulder slammed straight into the knight’s chest.
“Ghk!?”
The knight swallowed his breath at the unexpected impact,
but a knight was still a knight.
Before his balance could collapse completely, he immediately planted his feet again and tried to turn his sword.
Rayon was faster.
Taking one step back, he threw another dagger.
Clang!
This time too, the knight reflexively knocked it away, but he was delayed by another beat.
This time, Rayon planted his foot as if he were charging straight in again.
The knight raised his sword to match that pattern.
But the direction Rayon moved was not straight ahead.
Diagonal.
Very subtly, yet fatally, he shifted his trajectory and seeped in from the side.
Even as he closed the distance, his line moved outward, and the sword that came in from that position traced an angle entirely different from what was expected.
The knight hurriedly raised his sword to block.
Kiiing!
Sword scraped against sword, sparks flying with a harsh screech of friction.
To anyone else, it might have looked as if the attack had been blocked, but the knight knew.
A feint.
This was not the real attack.
But by the time he made that judgment, it was already too late,
and Rayon’s body was turning before his sword did.
Crack!
A spinning back kick drove squarely into the knight’s abdomen.
“Krgh!”
This time, the knight’s body was clearly pushed back.
A brief but definite blow.
Rayon did not stop.
He immediately reversed his grip on the blade, seizing the sword with his hand, and pulled the pommel up as if striking down from above.
A movement meant to break an armored opponent.
Whoong!
The knight flinched and hurriedly leaned his body back.
The end of the pommel grazed past right in front of his nose.
It was close enough that the air by the water seemed to split.
Only then was the knight forced to admit that he had been careless.
At first, it had been laughable.
He had thought there was no way the attacks of such a young brat could be a threat to him, a knight.
But that was not the case.
His speed was not overwhelmingly fast, nor was his strength absurdly great.
The problem lay somewhere else entirely.
He was unpredictable.
His next move could not be easily read.
He used a sword, mixed in daggers, threw those daggers, rammed with his body, deceived with the path of his blade, and finished with his feet.
His flow did not break.
There was no hesitation either.
Once pushed back, the next attack was already coming in.
Thwack!
“Kh! You crazy...!”
Rayon suddenly threw even his sword as he rushed in.
Throwing his sword?
It was a form of movement utterly impossible to predict.
Then he launched himself low and aimed for the legs,
and the knight understood that he meant to knock him down.
At that moment, a chill ran down the knight’s spine.
He was not wearing full plate.
It was plate mail with exposed sections.
The moment he fell to the ground at that timing,
there was no need to think about what would come next.
Flinch!
He barely shifted his balance and held out.
While he endured, Rayon picked up the sword he had thrown and moved again without giving him an opening.
But what truly bewildered him came next.
Shwak!
The knight immediately thrust into an opening.
It was clearly a moment when Rayon should have retreated or dodged.
But Rayon came forward instead.
Truly by a paper-thin margin.
The blade grazed past his cheek, and a thin spray of blood scattered.
Even so, his gaze did not waver.
If he were human, he should have flinched, even instinctively.
There was no fear.
No, it was stranger than that.
Whether he was trying to kill,
or trying to die,
even that was hard to tell.
No matter how bold one was,
no matter how skilled, it was not a movement one could make.
“You... you crazy bastard...!”
The knight felt fear without even realizing it.
That fear made his body stiffen ever so slightly.
Rayon did not miss that instant.
A dagger flew in,
a sword twisted through,
a fist shot out,
and he even threw his body in a way that looked almost unsightly, trying to break the knight’s balance.
All of it was outside the standard.
He absolutely must not fall.
He knew that instinctively.
So he gritted his teeth, kept his balance, and tried to attack from the narrow distance.
Kaang!
Their swords clashed head-on and tangled together.
Binding.
In that brief instant, Rayon slid his hand toward the blade as if he had been waiting.
Half-swording.
It was a movement meant to grip the sword short in an instant, push in, and control the opponent’s blade.
That series of motions was far too natural and fast.
It was almost like the movements of a fairly experienced knight.
The knight hurriedly twisted his strength and broke the bind,
and at the same time, he thrust out his foot to kick Rayon away and create distance.
Thud!
But instead of retreating, Rayon stretched his hand out long.
That terrifying persistence made the knight even more sickened.
“You bastard!”
But the knight, too, was highly skilled in movements like these.
He no longer looked down on his opponent.
He was focused, and although the pattern was still beyond prediction,
he had begun to read him because he was now assuming the other was on the same level.
Now he did not bother blocking everything.
Attacks that did not need to be blocked, he let slide off his armor, and only knocked away the dangerous ones.
Then immediately counterattacked.
Slash!
The tip of his sword cut across Rayon’s chest as if grazing it.
Even in that situation,
Rayon predicted that his opponent would close the distance right away, threw his last remaining dagger, and retreated.
The knight drew in a short, rough breath.
He was certain he had cut him properly.
But Rayon did not fall.
Beneath the torn gap in his clothes,
there was indeed a wound, but it was hardly deep.
Armor.
It was none other than Serena’s armor, which he had worn under his clothes for the promotional show.
Though it had been torn, it had at least prevented that blow from becoming a disaster.
Even so, the knight thought this would make Rayon falter for a step.
Shallow or not, he had drawn blood.
But then.
Paat!
Rayon charged in without the slightest hesitation.
If anything, he had become rougher,
and now his style itself had changed completely.
He had realized that if sword met sword honestly, he would be at a disadvantage.
Strength,
physique,
speed—all of them favored the knight.
And so Rayon clung to him desperately.
He stuck close, again and again.
He ignored the path of the sword,
and dug in as though trampling even the concept of distance underfoot.
He even kicked stones from the ground,
and scooped up mud and dirt with his hands to throw them.
“You filthy—! Do you have no honor at all!”
That was when it happened.
Rayon’s lips moved very low.
“How dare you...”
Clearly, that was not an answer to what he had said.
Only now did the knight realize that his opponent’s focus had gone hazy.
And inside those eyes,
rage blazed like flame.
Hwaaak.
Flinch.
The knight felt his body stiffen once more.
Impossible.
For him, a knight,
to be cowed by the gaze of a brat like this.
It was unthinkable.
That bewilderment kept delaying his reactions by half a beat.
Cha-ching!
Kaang!
Chaeng!
Sparks burst one after another in the darkness.
They flashed and vanished,
then flashed again.
Rayon held out to an astonishing degree.
No, even saying he held out was not enough.
He kept biting and clinging, as if determined not to give the knight an opening.
But that too was nearing its end.
A knight was still a knight.
No matter how sharp and unpredictable Rayon’s movements were,
the completion of their bodies was different.
Stamina,
muscle strength,
balance.
In the end, the difference showed.
Clang!
This time, it was not simply blocked.
Knowing that Rayon’s strength was inferior to his own,
the knight knocked Rayon’s attack away with sheer force.
Rayon’s arm swung wide,
and his body staggered.
His limit.
Blood was already flowing from all over Rayon’s body.
His cheek, arm, side, the back of his hand.
Proper wounds and grazing cuts were mixed together.
“Haa, haa...”
His breathing had completely collapsed as well.
In truth, he had long since gone beyond his limit.
His fingertips trembled, and even the hand gripping his sword looked as if it might loosen at any moment.
The knight did not miss that,
and in an instant, he closed the distance as if erasing it.
In the blink of an eye, he was right in front of Rayon.
His sword flashed upward.
“Now die.”
However,
the knight could not move his sword in the end.
Because from far away,
a terrifying force was surging toward him.
It was Miles.
He was coming at a speed that did not even try to hide his killing intent.
Driving in low like a beast, he was bearing down on them with fearsome momentum.
“Tch!”
The knight made his decision immediately.
If he dragged this out any longer, he would die.
In the end, he abandoned the final blow, turned his body, and vanished into the darkness.
Rayon stared at his retreating back for a moment,
then dropped his sword as if his role had come to an end.
And then, just like that.
Splash.
He collapsed powerlessly onto the water’s edge.
***
She was crying.
She, who had seemed like she would have no emotions at all,
was crying in front of me now.
Why?
Why was she making that face as she looked at me?
Through my blurred vision, my gaze naturally drifted downward.
Only then did I see it.
Ah.
I’m dying.
Even so, it was strange.
The thought that came to me before death was,
Still, she’s making that expression for me.
“Why... why did you do that...”
Eileen’s voice trembled.
“After what I did, why on earth... why didn’t you just run away? Leave me behind, don’t think about someone like me... I... I tried so hard...”
What is she talking about?
I can’t hear her well.
No, I could vaguely hear her, but I could not understand.
My mind grew hazier and hazier,
and before I could grasp the meaning of those words, my consciousness sank downward.
***
When I opened my eyes again, I saw a ceiling.
Where is...
The moment I tried to raise my body, dizzying pain surged through my entire body.
Hup.
A scream rose to the edge of my throat before I barely stopped it.
What the hell.
What’s wrong with my body?
When I lowered my head, my entire body was wrapped tightly in bandages.
I could not make any sense of this situation.
A little while later,
the door opened and a doctor came in.
“Have you regained consciousness?”
“Ugh... what happened? No, before that, is Lady Eileen safe?”
“First, Lady Eileen will explain the details to you herself. One moment.”
After checking the condition of my wounds, the doctor spoke calmly.
“Fortunately, though there are many wounds, they are not at a level I would call fatal. If you apply medicine consistently and rest well, you should recover quickly.”
He continued as he straightened the end of a bandage.
“However, since there are so many external injuries, you must be especially careful. If the wounds fester or become infected, we may have to cut away the flesh.”
“... Understood.”
As soon as the doctor left, urgent footsteps sounded in the hallway.
Bang.
“Rayon!”
“How did this...”
“Are you all right? I really, I was so worried...”
...
It was the same.
As in the dream just now.
At the final moment of my previous life,
those eyes were too much like the ones I had seen right before I died.
Eileen, biting her lip hard, grasped both of my hands without hesitation.
From the strength transmitted through her grip and the faint trembling,
I could feel her emotions exactly as they were.
It was a strange feeling.
I could not explain it precisely,
but the warm heat I felt from her hands was so pleasant.
“I’m glad.”
At my words, Eileen, who had been lowering her head, slowly lifted her face.
“Glad? You’re glad? You’re... like this. And that’s the first thing you say when you see me?”
“Well...”
I smiled with difficulty.
“Either way, you and I are both alive.”
“Haa... honestly.”
Eileen let out a breath that might have been a sigh or a laugh.
“But my memory’s a bit hazy... what happened? Did help arrive? Why is my body...?”
After that, I heard an explanation of the situation from Eileen.
“I see.”
To be honest, even after hearing it all, it still did not feel real.
That was when it happened.
The door burst open, and this time Elkant came rushing in.
“Brother!”
Before, even when he called me Brother, his eyes had held quite a bit of disdain.
But now, his gaze was completely different.
“Are you alright? Do you know how much I worried!”
Elkant soon launched into a passionate speech, calling me the savior of his life.
“Seriously, wow, do you know how cool you were? The moment Sister started bleeding, the atmosphere suddenly changed completely, and you said just one thing, didn't you?”
Elkant lowered his voice and mimicked it.
“How dare you... Kya~ you really killed him.”
“It’s a bit embarrassing.”
“What’s there to be embarrassed about!”
Elkant jumped up.
“It was really cool, I’m telling you. Right, Sister?”
Eileen turned her gaze away without a word.
“Look at this. Sister’s blushing again.”
Elkant grinned and blurted out.
“Anyway, Brother is clearly my lifesaver. Brother—no, Brother-in-law!”
“B-Brother-in-law?”
“Haha! Then it’s Brother-in-law, of course! Right, Sister?”
Smack!
“Ack!”
“Stop talking nonsense and get out. He needs to rest.”
As Elkant turned to leave with a sulky look, I looked at Eileen as well.
“I’m sorry... Could I be alone for a moment?”
Eileen blinked, looking slightly flustered.
“Ah... Of course.”
She gave a small smile and immediately rose from her seat.
“You must be disoriented since you just woke up. I’m sorry. Please rest well. If you need anything, call for me right away.”
Only after the door closed did the room become quiet,
and I blankly stared at the ceiling.
It was rather fascinating.
I hadn’t originally been someone who lost his composure to that extent.
In my previous life, I had protected her at the cost of my own life.
But when another such crisis came,
I suppose I couldn’t endure the anger and stress.
My mental world was still...
I guess I really am her husband.
Pathetic.
My head throbbed.
“...”
More than that, something was bothering me.
This incident was something that hadn’t happened in my previous life.
Then why had it suddenly occurred?
The answer came to mind quickly, as always.
Because I had stopped Balterk's poisoning.
Of course, my relationship with her had been different from the start as well.
But I naturally felt that the more direct cause than that was precisely that.
The event that was supposed to happen had gone awry,
and as a result, a different danger had befallen Eileen.
Whether that was right or not, at least one thing was clear.
This incident was a result brought about by my choice.
An ill fate.
I had thought it only applied to me.
But it wasn’t.
Me too.
I was someone who brought misfortune to her as well.
We, after all.
Meeting.
It was wrong.