It wasn’t that I wanted to meet Seraphinlie, or that I had to comfort her.
To begin with, there was no help I could offer, and I likely wouldn’t be of any help at all.
Dharmont, which should not have fallen under normal circumstances.
For some reason, I felt as though this was my fault.
The shock of it made it impossible for me to leave right away.
&
For some reason, I felt guilty.
Dharmont, which should not have fallen under normal circumstances.
In my previous life, Dharmont had been shaken,
but it had not collapsed to this extent.
At least, that was how it had gone in the flow I knew.
But now, it was different.
It had not merely collapsed.
It was far too wretched.
This is driving me mad.
I couldn’t even apologize to Seraphinlie.
What was I supposed to say?
That it had turned out like this because of me?
Just then, as I looked down at the territory from the inn,
I saw people leaving.
At that moment, I saw a luxurious carriage begin to move.
For an instant, I wondered if it belonged to some noble staying here,
but then I realized it was the carriage of House Dharmont.
A carriage that, once upon a time, would have made people bow their heads simply by passing.
Its golden crest, its sleek body,
its well-tended horses.
The carriage that once could have influenced countless things just by moving
was now busy fleeing the territory in haste.
At night, no less,
as if running away.
On the side of the carriage, hastily loaded baggage rattled,
and there were hardly any attendants with them.
I could not know where they were going,
but those who had once been the masters of the Kerenia territory were leaving.
As I watched that sight,
something heavy tightened deep inside my chest again.
I’m sorry.
Watching the carriage grow distant, I offered a small apology to Seraphinlie, who would be riding inside.
“Phew.”
There was no longer any reason to remain here.
The only reason I had stayed at all was because I thought I might perhaps run into her.
Even if I couldn’t say anything upon meeting her,
it was the best thing I could do with this guilt.
Just as Aileen had hurried back,
I, too, had to hurry back and prepare.
So I went down from the inn and had the carriage readied.
The moment everything was prepared and I was about to climb into the carriage,
I saw someone with a robe pulled low over their head slowly approaching.
At first, I wondered what it was.
For some reason, their steps were powerless.
They seemed hesitant,
and though I found their unsteady gait strange, I tried to ignore it.
But soon, a low, cracked voice reached me.
“Rayon.”
It was a voice like something crawling along the ground.
But I recognized it at once.
“Seraphin... Lady Seraphinlie?”
When I called her that,
the shoulders beneath the robe flinched faintly.
“Are you all right?”
A brief silence passed.
From beneath the robe came a breath like a hollow laugh.
“You still... call me a lady.”
Her voice was trembling.
“I’m... from commoner stock, aren’t I?”
The secret she had wanted to hide even if it killed her.
Now everyone knew.
A commoner.
That single word had made Seraphinlie into this.
She tried to say it like a joke,
but she could neither laugh nor cry, and forced it out instead.
I looked at her for a moment.
When I said nothing, her body seemed to begin trembling faintly.
“That’s what made you even more amazing.”
The head beneath the robe lifted ever so slightly.
“You climbed all the way up from there to here.”
I was speaking sincerely.
“From a commoner background all the way to Dharmont. Is that something to be ashamed of? If anything, it’s absurdly impressive.”
Seraphinlie’s breath stopped.
“Some people start as nobles and still remain exactly where they are.”
Her robe stirred.
And little by little, her face became more visible.
The face faintly revealed by the lantern in front of the inn was gaunt.
There were dark shadows beneath her eyes,
and her face had grown noticeably thin in just a few days.
Her eyes, once sharp and composed, had crumbled badly.
“... Really?”
“Really.”
I said no more.
Too much comfort would only sound like a lie.
What she needed was not lengthy words,
but someone who would wait until she could accept it herself.
Perhaps that was why.
A very small smile brushed across her face.
But only for a moment.
“But why are you here?”
I changed the subject, just in case she sank too deeply again.
“I saw the carriage leave.”
Seraphinlie closed her lips,
and the fingers gripping the hem of her robe turned white.
“If I followed them... I felt like I would never be able to come back.”
“...”
“I know my family well.”
Her voice was full of unease.
“They went as if fleeing to the borderlands. Even so, they won’t starve to death. They have enough money to live without worry.”
She continued, pressing down on her trembling lips again.
“But they are people who have already possessed more than that.”
“...”
“When what they have decreases, they’ll tear into one another. To take more for themselves, to find out whether someone has hidden something, to shift blame onto each other over who brought things to this point. Until, in the end, they go bankrupt.”
Her shoulders trembled very faintly.
“I don’t want to see that ugliness.”
Seraphinlie shook her head very slowly.
“I’m afraid that if I go there, I’ll eventually become ugly like that too. I don’t want that.”
Her voice grew lower and lower.
“But... there’s no way.”
Her breath broke.
“No matter how much I think about it, there’s no way...”
It was then.
Plop.
A drop of water fell from the sky.
Water began to spread across the dry earth.
Plop. Plip-plop.
Soon, the raindrops multiplied.
Patter, patter.
Cold rain began to fall.
Rainwater fell onto her robe and seeped in.
A few strands of Seraphinlie’s exposed red hair clung to her cheek because of the water.
Rain made people look smaller.
Especially those who had nothing left.
Seraphinlie Dharmont, whom no one once dared approach so easily,
was now standing in the rain, clutching a soaked robe.
I looked at her without a word.
Guilt tightened around my chest again.
If not for me.
If I hadn’t acted,
perhaps this flow would not have changed to this extent.
Perhaps she would not be standing before me in this state.
Perhaps I would not have made someone so miserable.
I could not know for certain whether it was my fault.
But I still could not shake off the guilt.
I slowly opened my mouth.
“You’ll catch a cold.”
Seraphinlie lifted her head at my unexpected words.
“... Huh?”
“Get in the carriage.”
Her eyes wavered.
“Let’s go together.”
The sound of the rain grew a little heavier.
Seraphinlie stared blankly at me.
“Where...”
I answered briefly.
“Home.”
The moment those words fell,
her eyes shook greatly.
Perhaps because the robe, soaked with rain, had grown heavy,
the part covering her head slowly slipped backward.
Her red hair was revealed.
Hair drenched in a mess.
A pale face.
Trembling lips.
And water flowing from both eyes.
Whether they were tears,
or rainwater,
I could not tell.
***
On the way to the Brennan territory,
Seraphinlie said nothing.
I did not speak to her either.
Inside the carriage, only the sound of the wheels and the rain remained.
From time to time, droplets fell from her wet robe onto the floor.
Seraphinlie did not look out the window,
nor did she look toward me.
She simply sat still with both hands placed on her knees.
She looked like a statue that would shatter if touched even slightly.
So I did not touch her.
There were times when simply being by someone’s side was enough, more than any words of comfort.
Like now, for her.
When we arrived at the Brennan territory,
Seraphinlie briefly lifted her head.
Her eyes, looking out the window, widened ever so slightly.
The Brennan territory had changed remarkably from before.
Neatly maintained roads,
and the signs of the many shops lined up along them were as clean as new.
The people of the territory were busy, but like the people of Dharmont’s once-brilliant territory,
one could feel their pride.
Seraphinlie gazed at it for a moment,
then lowered her head again.
For her, the weight pressing downward was still too great
to lift her face and take it all in.
When we arrived at the mansion and stepped down from the carriage,
Father and Mother greeted us.
“You’ve worked hard.”
Father welcomed me with a smile.
“Nothing happened, did it?”
Mother also examined my face.
I smiled lightly, nodded, then immediately turned my gaze toward the carriage and said,
“Come down.”
A look of puzzlement crossed Father and Mother’s faces.
And a moment later.
Seraphinlie, wearing her robe, carefully stepped down from the carriage.
The instant they saw Seraphinlie, Father and Mother’s eyes widened sharply.
Since both of them knew the news well,
they could not help but be so surprised by Seraphinlie’s appearance that they were stunned for a moment.
Father’s gaze shifted endlessly between me, Seraphinlie, and Mother.
Mother was the same.
But that brief silence
pressed down on Seraphinlie.
Her foot, which had been about to step down from the carriage, stopped, flinched, and tried to retreat again.
Because she knew all too well what the next gaze directed at her once-brilliant self would be.
But at that moment,
it was Mother who broke the silence first.
Before I knew it, she had hidden her surprised expression and moved first, approaching Seraphinlie.
She asked nothing.
She simply approached and smiled gently.
“Welcome.”
At that moment, Seraphinlie flinched at the unexpected words.
Even at that reaction, Mother asked naturally,
“You must be hungry, aren’t you?”
That single sentence.
The emotions Seraphinlie had been holding back until the very end
collapsed far too easily.
Her lips trembled first,
then the corners of her eyes twisted,
and finally, tears spilled from them.
“Sniff...”
Even so, she tried to swallow them down, but she simply could not.
“Sniff, sniff...”
Seraphinlie cried with her head lowered.
Mother slowly embraced her.
Without minding the wet robe, she held her very tightly.
“There, there.”
Mother slowly stroked Seraphinlie’s back.
“It’s all right.”
In those arms, Seraphinlie finally cried aloud.
Everything she had endured to the bitter end
burst out not in the Dharmont mansion,
but in our home.
***
After washing, Seraphinlie sat at the dining table.
She was no longer in a wet robe,
but in warm clothes, her hair cleanly dried as well.
Even so, her face was still pale.
Her fingertips still could not even grasp the spoon.
Father and Mother still asked nothing.
Not about Dharmont,
nor about anything else.
They simply urged her to eat.
“The soup is warm, so have that first.”
“This is something Rayon liked when he was young. When he was little, he even threw tantrums and said he wouldn’t eat if he didn’t have this.”
“Oh, come on, how long ago was that...”
Mother and Father laughed.
At the table, there was no comfort forced into shape.
Only ordinary conversation.
I spoke very briefly about what had happened in the meantime.
I omitted the dangerous parts,
and said only what was necessary.
Father and Mother also naturally talked about matters in the territory.
A newly opened shop.
A waterway issue near the farmland.
A strange bread that had recently become popular among the people of the territory.
Trivial stories flowed on.
We deliberately ate slowly.
So that Seraphinlie could eat even a little more.
At first, she had seemed to struggle even with a few spoonfuls,
but at some point, she took another spoonful of soup.
Mother simply and quietly pushed a plate of side dishes a little closer to her.
Seraphinlie looked at it for a moment,
then lowered her head very slightly.
***
That night.
Seraphinlie was sitting on the bed in an unfamiliar room.
It was warm.
The blanket was soft,
and a faint fragrance lingered in the room.
It was not splendid, but it was clean
and cozy.
A room far too unfamiliar.
It could not compare to her own room in the Dharmont mansion.
Expensive fragrances.
Far better fabric.
Countless decorations.
But had she ever truly rested in that room?
Every day, she had to look over account books,
read the flow of affairs,
and calculate what lay inside people’s hearts.
Even before falling asleep, the money that would move tomorrow never left her mind.
That was why this warmth and coziness were so unfamiliar to Seraphinlie.
She slowly rose and went to the window.
The Brennan territory came into view at a glance.
Though it was night, the streets were not dark.
The lanterns lit the roads without excess,
and from far away, faint laughter could be heard from people returning late.
It was a small territory.
It was not as dazzling as Kerenia, yet strangely, it felt refined.
The width of the roads,
the spacing between the shops,
even the plaza visible from the mansion.
It was practical and restrained.
But she still could not admire it for long.
Because the extreme sharpness that had continued for days still remained, filling one corner of her chest.
She turned back and slowly walked to the bed, then sat down.
At that softness, a faint smile appeared on her face.
She slowly touched the blanket with her hand and hugged the pillow.
At that moment, what had happened today came to mind.
Family.
This was what a real family was.
Embracing one another without purpose.
Making room without calculation.
The kind gazes and voices that could never exist in Dharmont.
The touch of Mother’s hands as she embraced her was still vivid.
Seraphinlie hugged the pillow a little tighter.
Her body, which had been unable to sleep properly for days because of extreme stress,
was now finally in an environment where it could sleep, and drowsiness poured over her in an instant.
She slowly toppled onto her side.
Before even a few seconds had passed, soft breathing flowed out.
Through the gap where the window had not been closed properly, the night wind lightly stirred the curtains.
That night,
Seraphinlie fell into a deep sleep for the first time in a long while.