Side Story 8
“Are your lessons over?”
“They’re over. What did you do by yourself?”
“Waited for you.”
Rizan’s lessons, which had begun as a way to pass the time, continued today as unfailingly as ever. The neighbors, having learned who had purchased this mansion using Madam Serva as a front, were horrified and tried to keep their children in check. But the children, who adored the “beautiful and kind Teacher Rizan,” secretly came to see her despite their parents’ stern warnings. And Rizan was not the sort of person who could coldly turn them away. In the end, Ezekail resolved to yield her to the children for exactly two hours a day.
“Rizan.”
“What is it?”
“Don’t you think you should reward your husband for waiting so obediently?”
He tapped his cheek with a finger. Rizan brushed her lips against it in a quick peck, then pulled away at once. There was no way a touch like a passing breeze, lingering only for an instant, would satisfy him. Ezekail immediately cupped Rizan’s cheeks in both hands and pressed his lips deeply to hers. He stole her breath, swallowed it, and tangled his tongue with hers.
The one who drew away first was Rizan, whose breath ran short. After steadying her breathing with something like a sigh, she glanced around Ezekail, whose surroundings were unusually clean and tidy.
“Did you really just sit still and wait without doing anything?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I thought you’d have gone out to practice shooting or exercise. You can never stand it unless you’re always moving around busily.”
As expected, Rizan knew him far too well. If he had not been secretly writing a letter, then, just as she said, Ezekail would have gone out to train his body for those two hours.
Ezekail feigned ignorance with a perfectly calm face.
“We came here to rest, so I ought to do nothing and rest properly.”
“Liar. I heard you ran a lap around the neighborhood at dawn today while I was asleep. Anna says she’s startled every morning. She says you leave without her even knowing when. Anna’s room is the closest to the front door, but she’s never once heard the door open or close.”
“That’s just because it’s become a habit.”
The foundation of concealment was leaving no trace. When moving, one took care not to make a sound, and wherever one stayed, one cleaned up neatly so as not to leave a trail. Though it was no longer wartime, and Akenaus was dead, so there was no need to worry about an attack on his life, the habits of a soldier, learned by the body, did not disappear.
“……Well, even I can’t hear you at all, and I sleep right beside you. I’m not such a deep sleeper, but when you decide to slip away, I don’t hear a thing. To be honest, I didn’t even know you’d left. By the time I open my eyes, you’re back.”
Of course.
What time Rizan woke, what time she fell asleep, when she did what and whom she met—when it came to her schedule, Ezekail had long since received detailed reports and made sure he knew it all. He was confident that he knew every move she made, down to gestures even Rizan herself probably did not notice.
“I have to come back before you wake, no matter what. Because now, at last, the very first person you look for when you open your eyes is me.”
At the Derosa estate, where their hearts had reached each other, he had been blind and unable to see Rizan. And when he recovered his sight, he did not know Rizan was Rose and nearly made a horrific mistake. He had managed to rescue her by a hair’s breadth, but Rizan, whose heart had been left dry and brittle by the suffering she endured in the camp, would not let him come near her. Far from lying in the same bed as before, he would often steal glimpses of her face like a thief while she slept.
That woman had finally begun to look at him. Until they fell asleep, they would lie together in one bed and roll about, their eyes meeting; and even after parting reluctantly for a little while into dreams, when morning came and they woke, they sought each other first.
Ezekail, who kept a regular routine, always woke much earlier than Rizan. At the main house, he would spring out of bed as soon as he opened his eyes and begin his day, but at the western villa, it was different. In a manner unbefitting an officer, he lay in bed and dawdled, studying every corner of Rizan’s sleeping face.
In truth, merely looking at her made him lose all sense of time. He even felt like whining, something he had never done even as a child, that he wished he could simply remain buried in the same bed with Rizan like this.
However, Ezekail knew well the responsibility that came with his position. For the physical training that was a soldier’s duty, he forced his reluctant feet out to run a lap around the neighborhood, and by the time he returned, his wife, who had been sleeping softly, would show signs of stirring awake.
Even half-drowsing, she groped for his empty place with her hand. Then Ezekail would quickly change into indoor clothes and, as if by chance, lie down beside his wife. Around then, Rizan would come to her senses and open her bleary eyes.
Blink, blink. As he watched her gaze gradually come into focus, it would end in her looking fully into his eyes. His heart felt ticklish and soft. Such a peaceful, trouble-free morning.
Beautiful.
It was beautiful.
It was a feeling he could experience for the rest of his life and never grow tired of. It had always been that way when it came to Rizan. Whether she did something or did nothing, she was a woman who made his heart overflow simply by existing here, safe and sound.
“But isn’t it boring, looking only at me all day long?”
To the extent that Rizan quietly revealed such concern, Ezekail spent the entire day following only his wife’s daily life, apart from maintaining his body while she slept. When she had just woken up, he brought a simple breakfast to the bed, and when she read, he lent her his shoulder. If she looked out at the garden and said the saplings needed trimming, he cut the branches himself, and he also helped Rizan grade the children’s spelling and arithmetic problems.
Quite literally, his wife occupied an overwhelming share of Ezekail’s day.
“Rizan, you are the most interesting thing in the world to me.”
“Goodness. If anyone heard that those words came out of the mouth of the ‘Ezekail Valdemaera,’ no one would believe it.”
Rizan walked over with a smile and sat on the bed. When Ezekail noticed that his wife was about to absentmindedly take the pillow hiding the letter and use it as a cushion, he naturally wrapped an arm around her shoulders and laid her down on the bed.
“Wait…… The sun hasn’t even set yet.”
Of course, mixed in with his intention to hide the letter from his wife’s sight was a considerable amount of selfish desire.
“That’s what makes it even better.”
They had always joined their bodies in the dark. Without knowing what expression Rizan wore, he had only licked, sucked, felt, and caressed every part of her, imagining it all.
The miracle of a scene that had always existed only in the realm of imagination unfolding before his eyes was pleasurable no matter how many times he saw it. He had believed he had done his best to feel out and read Rizan’s expressions and reactions, but now he knew. The Rizan he had thought he had “grasped fairly well” was nothing more than the tip of the iceberg.
“I want to see you in more detail.”
Even the brush of her gaze set his heart on fire.
Skillfully covering his wife’s body with his own, Ezekail brought his lips to her forehead. From her forehead, following the elegant slope downward, there were Rizan’s lips. He kissed her deeply while his hands tugged and loosened the front of his wife’s clothes.
“Dinner will be ready soon…….”
“I know. That’s why just a little, only a very little.”
“……As if it will be only a little.”
Though she knew, his wife yielded to him. Ezekail buried his lips against the gentle rise of her breast.
Rizan’s breathing began to quicken little by little. The light glimpsed between her lashes shone with heat, and a flush rose in both her cheeks. Even as he pressed his mouth again and again to her soft skin and sought his way into the narrow space between her legs, he constantly captured her face with his eyes. He did not want to miss for even a moment these varied expressions that only he could see. No matter how great a painter might be, there was no one in the world who could render so beautiful a lover’s face on canvas.
As the wet, clinging sounds grew thicker, Rizan pressed her lips firmly with the back of her hand.
“Why are you covering your mouth?”
At the vanished moan, Ezekail narrowed his brow.
“The sound…… What if it goes outside…….”
Her voice broke here and there because of her panting breaths.
“You know how quick-witted our servants are. If you and I aren’t in sight, they won’t even come near the bedroom.”
In particular, Anna, who had witnessed their days at the Derosa estate, was the quickest to catch on. If she did not see her two masters nearby, Anna would delay dinner on her own.
“Even so, it would be, haah, embarrassing to face them…….”
“They’ll all understand. We’re newlyweds. It would be stranger for us to leave the bedroom.”
They had not yet held a wedding. That was something they planned to prepare leisurely after spending enough of a vacation together at the western estate and returning to the Valdemaera main house.
Taking their time, much later.
Around the time the citizens of Cleris had forgotten Rizan’s face.
In private, with only the two of them.