Side Story 3
If they were soldiers of Astrie, that would at least be fortunate; if they were Davis’s army, it would truly be disastrous. She had heard plenty of rumors about the horrific suffering women caught up in battlefields endured. Moreover, Milena Girls’ School was filled entirely with women. If they had even a gun, they might somehow try to resist, but there was no way a school full of girls who only studied would have such a thing.
“I’m scared, unni. I’m scared……”
A child huddled in the closet whimpered. Once one child began to cry, another soon burst into tears from beneath the bed with a wail.
“There’s nothing to be scared of. It’s all right. Nothing will happen to us. So don’t cry. All right? You can’t cry now……”
They must not make any sound that could be heard outside.
Rijan tried hard to hide her own helpless feelings. To be honest, she was just as anxious, because she had no idea what she was supposed to do now.
She was soothing them with words, saying it would be all right, but she did not know.
Would it really be all right?
Could they come through this safely, without anything happening?
She had no confidence.
Young children could at least sob and cry that they were scared, but Rijan could not even do that. Children were often influenced by the attitude of their older sisters, who were only a few years ahead of them. Rijan herself was still a girl approaching the threshold of adulthood, but the little girls thought of Rijan, their eldest sister, as a grown-up.
I must not show weakness in front of the younger ones.
I have to be composed. I have to stay calm.
After repeating that to herself countless times and barely managing to calm the children, she was about to rise when sharp screams rang out all at once from here and there.
The army had finally reached the school.
Her heart grew frantic. Even if something were to happen to her, it must absolutely not happen here, in this room where the younger girls were hiding. The children she had gone to such lengths to conceal would be discovered too.
“Shh.”
After signaling to the children until the very last moment, Rijan opened the door.
But the chance to slip out of the room was already gone.
“There’s a woman here too?”
The muzzle of a long rifle jabbed into Rijan’s chest.
An enemy soldier.
Her breath caught in her throat. Rijan backed away as the muzzle pushed her.
The soldier grinned revoltingly.
“Pretty little thing, aren’t you? They say Astrie women are famous for being beautiful, and I guess that isn’t entirely wrong. Shall we see whether the rest of you is pretty too?”
The muzzle tapped at the buttons on the front of her clothes. Rijan instinctively clutched her collar shut. Even in the midst of it, judging that if she moved toward the closet or the bed the children would be put in danger too, Rijan turned her heels to the side.
As she kept backing away from the soldier’s rough hand, it was not long before the back of her head struck the window with a thud.
“Why’d you stop? Go on. Try running farther.”
The soldier giggled and mocked her.
There was nowhere left to retreat. A brutally spread hand came toward her, about to seize her.
In that instant, her vision went dark. Rijan squeezed her eyes shut and braced herself for the misfortune to come.
Bang!
Suddenly, a gunshot shook her ears. Immediately after, the window shattered. The shards crashing down and the roar of the blast made her ears ring so badly that Rijan thought she herself had been shot.
She falteringly touched her own body. Strangely, she felt no impact at all. Instead, the soldier who had been grabbing at Rijan’s collar and struggling with her opened his eyes wide, then slowly buckled at the knees and collapsed.
“Unni! Aah!”
“Aah! Mama, Mama!”
Startled by the clamorous gunshot, the children at last burst into tears.
Rijan, who had actually witnessed a person dying right before her eyes, could not even scream. While she was only staring blankly down at the fallen man, unable to come back to her senses, a fist bulging with veins smashed through the window and opened the latch.
“Monkam, Feder. We’re entering this way.”
A well-built man covered in black dust vaulted through the window with agile movements.
For a moment, she thought a massive beast had leapt in beside her. As the horrified Rijan staggered, the man quickly reached out and supported her. It seemed to have been an instinctive movement.
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
Instead of asking whether she was all right, the man asked first if she was injured. It was an extremely efficient question, one he could ask because he already knew what had been taking place in the room.
He was the person who had saved her by sniping the enemy soldier from outside the window.
Rijan realized it by instinct.
“Ah, yes. Thanks to you……”
She had been about to thank him for saving her life. As she unconsciously lifted her gaze, the man’s face entered her sight.
This time, she truly found herself speechless.
Rijan could not continue her sentence, nor could she finish it, and she looked over the man’s appearance again. Beneath his disheveled hair were irises the color of a midnight sea, the elegant contours of his face, and even the atmosphere about him, where the refinement he had inherited under the influence of his mother—renowned as the greatest beauty in Astrie—blended exquisitely with a soldier’s wildness.
In many ways, this unrivaled man was a face Rijan knew.
Ezekail Valdemaera. Her first love, left now as a distant memory.
His reputation as a soldier who had risen quickly through the ranks and become a major at an early age, and whose future was even more promising, was famous enough. But she had never dreamed she would run into him so suddenly here.
“What is it? Is something the matter?”
He seemed puzzled by Rijan’s inability to take her eyes off him.
“No.”
There was nothing the matter.
Instead, there was a memory.
“Major, we will enter now!”
“There are students left in the school, so move while taking care to secure their safety.”
“Yes, sir!”
Just then, the subordinates who had followed Ezekail through the window aimed their rifles and ran out into the dormitory corridor.
“I met you once, long ago, at the Valdemaera estate.”
Since she could not take up much of his time in this urgent situation, Rijan quickly explained in a single sentence. Then she pulled out the children she had hidden in the closet and beneath the bed, and as she turned around, she paused.
Ezekail, whom she had thought would have left long ago, was quietly gazing at her.
“Are you saying we’ve met before?”
“Ah, yes…… It isn’t anything remarkable. My parents have worked at the Valdemaera estate for a long time. When I was young, I visited with my parents and was misunderstood by Lord Akenaus…… When he was suspecting me and asking why I was loitering nearby, you appeared and saved me, Major.”
After explaining, she became bothered by the first thing she had added—that it was not a remarkable story—only because she had not wanted to delay Ezekail for long. Rijan quickly apologized.
“It may have been nothing to you, Major, but for me, it was a memory I was grateful for and could not forget for a long time. That day, and today as well, I have received such great help from you every time…… Someday, I would truly like to repay you, if only I have the chance.”
Knowing it was a past she alone had cherished, Rijan tried to end it there.
But this time, Ezekail continued the topic.
“Now that I hear it, I vaguely remember. Your name was…… Rijan, perhaps?”
“Yes, that’s right. How do you remember?”
Ezekail looked the woman over anew as she stared in wonder, her eyes round like a rabbit’s.
How did he remember?
Because the aftermath caused by that girl had turned into a storm for the Valdemaeras. After the girl, who had suffered a needless ordeal, returned home, Ezekail became suspicious about what secret Akenaus was hiding that made him torment an innocent child, and he instructed the head butler, who always resided at the estate, to keep a close watch on Akenaus. Before long, the head butler, having uncovered Akenaus’s clandestine relationship, hurriedly reported it to his father, the head of the Valdemaera family.
It would have been shocking enough even if they had simply fallen for each other by mutual consent, but the other party was, unbelievably, the nursemaid who had raised Akenaus. In noble families where parents did not raise children themselves, the nursemaid who fed them milk and took charge of their discipline was no different from a mother, save that they did not share blood.
No matter how notorious a man might be for his promiscuous womanizing, he did not lay hands on the nursemaid who had raised him. The shock was one thing, but with the family’s honor at stake, his father covered up the incident by secretly sending the nursemaid away. But Akenaus, thoroughly disgraced, gnashed his teeth and vowed revenge whenever he saw Ezekail.
Because the chain of results was so astonishing, and also because that incident had reversed the brothers’ positions, Ezekail would sometimes repeat the name of the girl who had been the beginning of the matter. That child’s name was Rijan, he would think. And so it became a name he could not forget even if he tried.
And that girl had appeared, after a few years, as a young lady.
Looking at her again now that she stood before him, it was actually understandable that he had failed to recognize her. Unlike Ezekail, who had been said to look like a young man since his mid-teens, she had truly changed a great deal. In place of the baby fat on her fair cheeks, a slender jawline had appeared, and her neck and limbs had grown long like a deer’s.
Moreover, her character had changed considerably too. Looking more delicate and frail than anyone, she had hidden her young juniors all around the room and tried to endure the danger alone for fear the children would be seen by the enemy.
It was no easy courage. The timid girl who had once hidden behind Ezekail’s back to avoid Akenaus had now grown into a firm, strong-willed adult who hid younger girls behind her own back.
“This will be truly hard to forget now.”
“……Pardon?”
At Ezekail’s mutter, Rijan looked even more bewildered.