Side Story 3. Dedication

Right now, you are asleep beside me. I put a shade over the lamp to soften the light so I would not disturb your rest, and when I happened to look back at you, your face in deep sleep was so gentle and beautiful that I found myself gazing at you for a long while.

And then, all at once, I realized it. The peaceful everyday life with you that my past self had longed for so desperately exists right here, right now.

Once, it was a wish that felt impossibly distant, but it seems that if one hopes and hopes again, any wish will one day come true. No matter what words I borrow, they will never be enough to fully express how moved I am.

Rizan.

I have never written a love letter before. What I have always written are operation reports and orders, so I do not know how this letter will appear in the eyes of someone like you, who writes such affectionate and tender letters. I can only hope you will be generous enough to understand the parts where I fall short.

Even so, the reason I came to write such an awkward letter is that, during the time we spent far apart, I failed to send you news in writing

In the middle of writing the letter, Ezekail paused for a moment and looked down at the letters he had written with his own hand. Then he clenched and unclenched his hand a couple of times. Though it moved without trouble now, when he thought of how long it had taken him to be able to write such orderly letters, this moment suddenly felt like a dream.

When Ezekail, who had been carried to Cleris unconscious, opened his eyes, his entire right arm, from shoulder to fingertips, was bound in splints and bandages. The bullets and blades had deeply damaged his muscles, but worse than that, he had gripped his weapon and fought back so desperately that the bones throughout his right arm and fingers had been shattered. At the time, the crisis had been so urgent that he had not even realized his arm was in such a state. There had also been too many larger, more serious injuries for him to pay attention to every pain in his extremities.

When he tried writing with his relatively less injured left hand, the result was such atrocious handwriting that even the person who wrote it could not possibly recognize it. If he had someone else write on his behalf, it would be as good as letting Rizan know that he was in such a grave condition he could not write even a single letter with his own hand, so Ezekail gave up on replying.

It was a painful period. If there had been one sole comfort in that time, it was that his father, seeing the perseverance of the son who had thrown himself into rehabilitation with the single-minded determination to go bring Rizan back again, no longer voiced any objection to his marriage.

“If that child can kill you and keep you alive to this extent, then rather than lose my one remaining son, it would be better to bring her here. Do as you wish.”

Of course, whether then or now, it was merely a personal matter Rizan had no particular need to know.

Ezekail quickly rewrote the final words.

text-decoration-style: double;">could not did not, and so I wished, even now, to atone a little for my indifference.

Though I cannot say for certain how many days it will take me to finish this one letter.

Rizan.

“……Mm. Ezekail?”

Rizan, who had been tossing in her sleep, felt the empty space beside the bed and blinked her eyes open drowsily. Ezekail swiftly lay down beside her and blocked the things on the table from Rizan’s view.

Rizan blinked sleepily.

“You weren’t sleeping?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Why? Is this house uncomfortable? I knew it, the bed is too small……”

“No, I rather like that the bed is small.”

When Ezekail came down to the western mansion and opened the door to the bedroom Rizan used, the first piece of furniture he discovered was a small bed meant for one person. Unexpectedly, Rizan was using a single bed instead of the large marital bed Ezekail had had Mrs. Serva prepare. She said that when she lay alone in a spacious bed, she kept thinking of him, absent from the place beside her, and it made her lonely, so she had removed the large bed and brought in a small one that would not feel desolate even when she lay there by herself.

“What should we do? If I had known you would come here, I would have changed it to another bed long ago.”

Rizan, apologetic, suggested that they use separate bedrooms for the few days it would take to rearrange the furniture, but Ezekail did not so much as pretend to listen.

Even if he had to lay only a blanket on the floor and sleep there, he had absolutely no intention of using a different bedroom from Rizan, not even for a moment. And Rizan was not the kind of woman who would leave Ezekail to sleep carelessly on the floor.

The two fell asleep tangled together like one body on the narrow bed. For Ezekail to lie down in the tiny bed, there was the inconvenience of having to fold his large frame in on itself, but in just one day he realized the merits of a small bed. In order not to fall off the bed, he had no choice but to press himself to Rizan without the slightest gap between them. And so he firmly dissuaded Rizan from her decision to rearrange the furniture.

Ezekail ran a finger over Rizan’s slightly swollen lower lip, then kissed her softly.

“Because the time feels too precious to waste.”

“Ah……”

“The time when I’m not looking at you feels too precious.”

The time they had been forced to spend apart had been endlessly long. To make up for the years that had slipped away so wastefully, it would not be enough even if he looked at her and looked again.

“Still, sleep. It’s tiring. We can see each other tomorrow…… tomorrow, too.”

Rizan fumbled out a hand, trying to close his eyes for him. But instead of obediently closing his eyes, Ezekail laced his thick, long fingers through her slender ones.

“Tomorrow’s you will be seen by tomorrow’s me. Today’s you can only be seen by the me of right now.”

During the days when he had gone blind and his temperament had turned savage, Ezekail had felt an unfulfilled longing for “Rose,” who had filled his emptiness. As he touched her face while she slept in the same bed, he had imagined her features, again and again.

“I’m not going anywhere. And my sleeping face isn’t anything that special……”

“It is special.”

“……”

“You look peaceful. Rizan, you, asleep beside me, look so peaceful.”

Could this not be a miracle?

Ezekail turned it over in his mind again and again.

A miracle. This was a miracle.

There was no other expression that could possibly explain the overwhelming emotion swelling within him.

After he had barely rescued Rizan, who had nearly died hanging from the gallows, he had watched over countless nights of hers, but not once had Rizan slept peacefully. With a face that held no expectation whatsoever for tomorrow, she would force herself to sleep with the help of sleeping tea, then open her eyes blankly. It had been a dark time when neither her body nor her heart had been at ease.

Rizan had even asked him to let her leave. The days she spent bound forcibly at his side looked, even to him, truly agonizing and painful, and the parting in which he had no choice but to respect her dignity and ultimately send her back to the school remained vivid even now.

That very Rizan now fell asleep in his arms of her own accord. With her nose and cheek buried against his chest, breathing evenly and softly, a gentle smile resting on her lips.

“But you have to fall asleep too for us to meet even in our dreams.”

“You’ll meet me even in your dreams?”

“Of course.”

Rizan carefully stroked his eyelids closed. The touch that gently caressed him was ticklish.

It was a sensation he had missed so terribly. Like a docile lamb, Ezekail closed his eyes.

“Yes. I should see today’s you, see you in my dreams, and see tomorrow’s you as well.”

He drew Rizan tightly into his arms.

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