“She’s my childhood friend.”
At my next words, the air seemed to stop.
Aileen’s and Serafinlie’s expressions hardened at the same time.
&
What in the world is going on right now?
“Father, hoho. That’s right. The tax settlement in the south will be a little noisy this time. Still, you don’t need to worry too much.”
Aileen had somehow attached herself naturally to my father’s side.
Her voice as she discussed politics was gentle,
and she was skilled at putting her listener at ease.
My father, too, was nodding with a very pleased look on his face.
“Mother, this is a new product that just came in. It was quite difficult to obtain.”
Serafinlie, on the other hand, was sitting in front of my mother, carefully opening a box.
Her manner of speaking was still stiff, and her expression was indifferent.
And yet her fingertips were strangely cautious.
“The fragrance isn’t too strong, so I think it will be all right. I thought this one would suit you better, Mother.”
It was painfully obvious that she was trying to be considerate in front of my mother.
And my mother, rather, found that sight adorable.
Aileen of Belmardian.
Serafinlie of Dharmont.
Even seeing them separately was unrealistic enough, so the fact that the two of them were sitting side by side in our drawing room was strange to begin with,
but watching them each curry favor with my parents like that was hard to believe even as I saw it.
“Oppa. What on earth is going on?”
Marsha, standing beside me, looked just as shocked as I was.
“I don’t know. More importantly, what are you doing here?”
“Oh, I... things got resolved well, so I came to say thank you.”
I immediately replied.
“You could’ve just sent a letter.”
Marsha’s eyes narrowed, and she puffed out her cheeks.
“Seriously, Oppa. Did you have to say it like that? The fact that I came in person means I’m that grateful.”
Thump.
Marsha hit me in the side with her fist.
“And, well... I also came because I wanted to see you.”
“...”
Marsha, who had lifted her head only to quickly lower it again when our eyes met, was very cute.
“If even you start doing that, this is really going to be hard for me.”
“Hmph. I guess, surrounded by two beauties like that, you can’t even see someone like me.”
“Well, since you’re short, I suppose I really can’t see you.”
At that moment, my side stung sharply.
“Argh.”
This time, she had pinched me.
“Oppa, were you always this annoying?”
“It means we’ve gotten that comfortable with each other.”
“If only you couldn’t talk, seriously.”
In the end, Marsha burst into laughter.
But it was right then.
From exactly two directions, gazes pierced toward us,
and Marsha, flinching, instinctively pressed even closer to my arm.
Then, whether on purpose or not, she looked up at me and smiled with an extremely happy face.
The chill in those gazes grew even stronger, and I couldn’t bring myself to turn my head.
***
Fortunately, the next day,
Marsha climbed into the carriage to return home.
It seemed she had originally intended to stay longer, but a letter had suddenly arrived telling her to come back.
“Ah, I really don’t want to go.”
Marsha looked back and forth between Aileen and Serafinlie with anxious eyes.
The two stood side by side, smiling and waving goodbye.
On the surface, they looked very close.
At that moment, Serafinlie whispered quietly to Aileen.
“Did you arrange this?”
Aileen shook her head slightly.
“No? I thought you did.”
Serafinlie gave a faint laugh.
“In any case, it’s a relief.”
The two continued whispering while smiling and waving at Marsha as she prepared to leave.
“The most troublesome rival is gone.”
“I was confident.”
At Aileen’s words, Serafinlie’s brow narrowed for an instant.
It was a provocation whose meaning was clear enough even without what followed.
And that provocation scraped right against Serafinlie’s nerves.
“Who was it that proposed an alliance first?”
The two were smiling,
but the air between them was frighteningly hot.
And that hot air warmed my back,
making cold sweat run down it.
Because their voices had been artfully pitched just high enough to reach my ears.
Scary.
All of a sudden, I wished Marsha hadn’t left.
“Come again next time.”
“Hmph. Don’t have too much fun without me. When I come next time, we’re going to play with just the two of us, so be ready!”
Then she came a little closer and whispered to me.
“And y-you have to go on a date with me, too.”
Marsha met my eyes several times and then looked away,
and I smiled faintly at the sight.
“Sure.”
As soon as the carriage departed,
Aileen and Serafinlie approached me from both sides before I knew it.
“Shall we go in?”
The moment I was about to answer, I flinched in surprise.
Uh, uh.
Aileen had naturally pulled my arm in and linked hers with it.
When I looked at her in shock,
Aileen smiled as if nothing was amiss.
In that brief moment, my heart dropped.
Because I had never seen her face from this close before.
And on top of that, our arms were linked.
That was when it happened.
Serafinlie, who had been standing on the opposite side, also clung to my arm as if hanging from it.
She had clearly done it herself,
but she was the one who looked more surprised.
“...”
She couldn’t even look properly in my direction.
“Don’t look.”
“...”
The tips of her ears were slightly red,
and even the faint trembling of her arm was transmitted straight to me.
And so I was dragged inside almost as if I were being hauled away.
Even when we ate,
even when we briefly walked through the garden, it was the three of us.
There was never a situation where I was alone with only one of them.
If my mother briefly called for someone,
Aileen would reflexively move first, but then make sure to take Serafinlie along with her.
It was the same even when they applied medicine to my wounds.
On the left was Aileen,
and on the right was Serafinlie.
“Ah, that stings.”
“Oh my, Serafinlie. You really are clumsy, aren’t you? If you apply it like that, it hurts him.”
“...”
Serafinlie was indeed clumsy,
but every time her skin touched my arm, she was the one who flinched harder.
“D-Did it hurt?”
“It’s all righ... t.”
When I answered like that, the two of them began another round of tension, saying there was no way I would actually admit it hurt.
At times like this, both of them really did seem seventeen.
It was cute.
Difficult, though.
Fortunately, when night came,
I was able to return to my room relatively early under the excuse that I wasn’t feeling well.
However.
When the night had deepened, Aileen secretly came to find me.
“A brief conversation should be all right, shouldn’t it?”
“Ah, yes. Yes.”
In my confusion, I opened the door and tried to let her in.
But it was right then.
“What are you doing in front of someone else’s door in the middle of the night? And Reion needs to rest right now.”
At the cold voice cutting in, I turned my head,
and Serafinlie was standing at the end of the corridor.
Aileen narrowed her eyes.
“Get your facts straight, would you? You were the one who got here first. I saw everything, you know? You were hiding.”
Serafinlie’s expression froze for an instant.
“I-I was just passing by.”
The corners of Aileen’s lips rose leisurely.
“For five whole minutes?”
“That’s just how I am.”
“For someone who’s usually so well-spoken, why are you forcing it so much?”
“You simply didn’t know me that well.”
...
I want to go home.
Ah.
This is my home.
Fortunately, I carefully soothed the two of them and sent them back.
“Haa.”
As soon as the door closed, a sigh escaped me on its own.
Feeling suffocated, I opened the window,
and the cool night air brushed my face, the wind scattering my hair.
The moon was unusually bright tonight.
Aileen and Serafinlie.
Why, of all times, now,
had they come to my house and started acting like this?
No.
I knew.
What those actions meant,
I could at least figure that much out.
It wasn’t as if I was an idiot who couldn’t tell.
But knowing what it meant
and accepting it were two entirely different matters.
So why?
What on earth could they gain through me right now?
No, in the first place, I couldn’t understand the idea that they felt affection for someone like me.
If asked whether it made me feel good,
of course it did.
But the moment I asked myself whether I could believe it,
revulsion immediately surged up inside me.
I had hoped for decades, only to despair.
So how could I hope again?
I couldn’t.
How could I go through that again?
The days when I looked up with the thought that maybe, just maybe,
only to be disappointed in the end, had been every day.
That pain
never became familiar, no matter how many times it repeated.
If anything, it only grew clearer.
As I stared blankly at the moonlight,
I suddenly shook my head.
What am I doing, acting so pitiful?
With a sigh, I forced my emotions down.
Far too familiar,
and far too skillfully.
Was that why?
The wind seeping into the room felt colder than before.
Just as I reached out to close the window.
Piiing...
A very small, thin sound.
A sound another person might have simply let pass.
I knew at once what it meant.
A distress arrow.
And almost at the same time, the one who came to mind was Marsha.
“No way.”
My eyes widened.
Without hesitation, I burst out of the room and ran like mad toward the training ground.
A soldier who happened to be passing by turned to look at me in alarm.
“Now! Call Miles! Tell him to follow me!”
“Y-Yes?”
There was no time to hear his answer.
I ran straight into the armory and grabbed whatever weapons came to hand, along with several throwing daggers.
Then I mounted a horse without delay.
“Hyah!”
The horse kicked off the ground roughly and shot forward,
and at my urgent movements, the once-quiet mansion woke all at once.
It seemed Aileen and Serafinlie had also heard the commotion and looked out the window.
The two immediately ran outside and gave orders to their respective knights,
and the knights, too, began chasing after me without delay.
I cut across the village.
When I saw the gate in the wall being closed, I shouted until my throat felt like it would burst.
“Open the gate!”
The soldiers closing it startled and moved in a hurry.
Before the gate had fully closed,
that ambiguous gap was actually even more dangerous, but I did not slow down.
“Hyah!”
With my shout, the horse leapt high.
Taking advantage of the dangerously narrow opening, it crossed through the gate and escaped outside.
Not long after I got outside, three horses closed in beside me in an instant.
“Young master!”
“I heard the distress arrow signal! The direction is that way! I don’t know the exact location!”
As soon as Miles heard those words, he changed direction, and after hearing me, Aileen’s and Serafinlie’s knights each turned slightly in different directions and began spreading out widely.
Dadadak, dadadak!
Anxiety rose all the way to my throat.
There are no bandits around here.
So there was no reason for any battle to break out.
But since Marsha had left today, there was no one but Marsha who could have used that arrow.
Still, Marsha had knights with her.
Those knights weren’t extraordinarily skilled, but they were still knights.
If such knights had to use a distress arrow, then only one thing came to mind.
The ones who had attacked Aileen.
But right now, Aileen was at the mansion,
which only made me feel even more uneasy.
“Damn it!”
I pulled the reins even harder.
“Hyah!”
As the horse raised its speed once more,
the night air slapped against my face.
My heartbeat grew faster and faster.
While racing along the road that led to Marsha’s territory, I found marks stamped into the ground.
Hoofprints, and traces where something had scraped as it was forced to change direction.
I immediately turned the reins and entered the forest.
Before long,
a very faint sound reached my ears.
The sound of metal clashing.
Short, sharp, and continuing as if it might break off at any moment.
“Hyah!”
I spurred the horse on once again.
Clang!
This time, it was clearer.
Close.
The forest was already sinking into darkness,
and with night fallen and the trees densely packed, visibility was poor.
But it wasn’t completely pitch-black.
A handful of the last remaining sunset
was squeezing through the gaps between the trees.
And at the edge of where that light shone, I finally saw the scene.
Marsha, terrified.
And before her eyes, a masked man raising his sword.
“Stooop!!”
The scream, as if it would tear apart,
cut through the forest like the dagger I threw.