Chapter 41
The outside was a complete mess, so there probably wasn't much to see, but he should have ordered Lady Serva in advance to resume the garden landscaping.
What the eyes do not see and the feet do not touch, the mind cannot fathom. Ezekiel had come to find that a little regrettable.
"Just a moment. Then I'll get ready."
Rose's voice brightened slightly.
"I'll be right back. Please wait here."
He had expected them to go out holding hands, but Rose left him standing in the doorway and disappeared off somewhere.
It seemed she had left the front door slightly ajar in the meantime. The flow of air was quite different from the bedroom.
Chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp. Chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp.
The cries of crickets and scops owls, which had been sheltering from the intermittent spring rain, surrounded his ears. As the silence retreated, his sense of hearing awakened.
It was unfamiliar, yet welcome.
Ah, the world had originally been filled with such vivid clamor.
He had forgotten. He had been living that cut off from the outside.
Listening to the sounds of nature flowing like a melody, he raised his hand to cover his eyes.
And with one step, he strode boldly past the threshold.
After measuring his senses for a moment, he slowly removed the hand covering his eyes. Then he blinked. Just as Rose had said, the darkness was so deep that there was hardly any pain.
It was a night where neither moon nor stars had risen.
Though he had crossed only a single door, the scent of wet grass was thick. He took a deep breath of the damp wind. Unlike the turbid indoor air stagnating inside the mansion, it was refreshing and crisp. He couldn't tell how long it had been since he had taken the outside air like this.
When hiding in trenches and enduring the night with the morning dew, he had longed for the day he could lie beneath a roof again; yet now, lying beneath a roof every day, if only he could return to the past, he would gladly do so.
Even if that past was a battlefield.
Rose bustled back and forth somewhere, rustling about. Leaning loosely against the doorpost, he focused on her footsteps coming from behind. Thanks to her characteristically quiet steps, ever since the attendant had changed from Lady Serva to Rose, he had felt the surroundings were much quieter. She was a woman like a feather.
"Major."
Rose walked over with light steps and called to him.
He turned his head in the direction she was likely to be. Rose brushed his hand with fluttering fingers to let him know her position, then pressed something with a soft texture into his grip.
"What is this?"
It felt like something rolled up, so he unfurled it to find a cloth about a span in width. It had been cut into long strips and twisted like rope.
"I didn't know where the rope was, so I used a cord instead. I was going to make a walking path with this."
Rose explained, tying one end of the cord to an outer pillar of the mansion.
"Now, as we walk through the garden, I'll tie this cord here and there."
He immediately caught on to the method Rose had devised. If they tied the cord between the garden trees and ornaments like this, it would serve as a safe guide in place of stepping stones.
Rose continued.
"Then on lightless nights like tonight, or even moonlit nights, if you cover your eyes with a handkerchief, you will be able to take night walks whenever you wish."
Ezekiel tugged on the cord. The cord Rose had tied at his waist height quickly stretched taut, becoming a firm handhold.
"When did you even prepare something like this?"
"When I was working in the laundry, a lot of old, worn-out cloths came out that couldn't be used. Lady Serva told me to throw them away, but somehow it felt like a waste. I thought there would be a way to use them well, so I had been saving them."
When Rose mentioned the time she worked in the laundry, a specific day came to mind. Ezekiel recalled colliding with her in the hallway when she had her eyes covered with a handkerchief. He had sensed someone's presence but deliberately didn't avoid her, and Rose, unable to spot him because her vision was blocked, had gone tumbling with a loud impact that made the hallway thud.
What had he pressed her about then?
"That you imitate me without anyone telling you to—doesn't that mean you intend to mock me?"
"I was simply trying to learn of and guard against the inconveniences you don't tell me about beforehand...."
It seemed one of the inconveniences she had wanted to guard against was his garden walks. Judging by how she had cut and twisted cloths one by one to make a cord in place of rope.
"I thought you would feel suffocated if you only kept walking around inside the mansion. I wanted to make a walking path sooner, but I haven't had the chance until now."
You truly wanted to help me from the very beginning.
And yet I acted so wretchedly, so poorly toward you.
There must have been moments when she felt wronged and hurt, yet the tight-lipped Rose had never uttered a single word of resentment against him. Instead, she had apologized first, saying it was her fault, and withdrawn.
For some reason, his solar plexus ached. Ezekiel found Rose's hand and gripped it tightly.
"For me, walking like this while holding your hand is enough."
"Even so... there may be situations where I cannot go out walking with you, and also, if it's too dark, I can't see well either. Having a walking path is safer for me, too."
Rose gently took his hand and led him.
"I'll take the lead. Major, please follow from behind while holding the cord."
"No, give the cord to me."
"This is quite large and heavy."
Then all the more reason to give it to him—a frail woman with no strength shouldn't be holding such a large, heavy burden.
Ezekiel snatched away the bundle of cloth Rose held in her arms. Since it was a cord long enough to wrap around the entire large garden, its volume and weight were considerable. After lightly adjusting the load in one arm, he interlaced his free hand with Rose's fingers and walked in the direction she guided.
At first, there was nothing but pitch-black darkness. It felt similar to walking into empty air when he had first lost his sight. However, Ezekiel soon realized that was not all.
The senses of nature he had forgotten while staying in a house where not a breath of wind blew came alive. The wet dirt path was slippery, and the ground beneath his feet squelched. Roughly overgrown weeds brushed against his shins. Above his head, rainwater pooled in the trees dripped steadily down. Each one was an intense stimulus.
Because the sky was not clear, the energy of the night reached him all the more vividly. The chilly midnight temperature, the green scent of the garden, the sensation of raindrops falling across his face, the sound of clumped mud crunching under his shoe soles....
Everything stirred him with emotion.
Only, he wished it were moving for her as well, but the stiff, overgrown weeds and the tree branches brushing haphazardly against her forehead and the back of her head were unlikely to make a very beautiful sight. Indeed, Rose stopped intermittently to tidy her surroundings. He could tell from the sound of her snapping and clearing away branches that obstructed their path.
"At this point, it's not a garden but practically a jungle. It reminds me of my time serving as an officer."
Ezekiel summed it up in one sentence.
Though he had grown up in Cleris with its neatly kept gardens, as a soldier he was more accustomed to untamed environments like this. Beneath the trunks of imposing trees or within densely overgrown branches were excellent hiding places, perfect for concealing himself to snipe at the enemy.
Unexpectedly, however, Rose sympathized with his memory.
"It reminds me of when I attended school, too."
"Really?"
"My school was in the mountains. You wouldn't know how much I wandered through the mountain at night, which was no different from a jungle, in the pitch dark."
"Through the mountains, you?"
His tone suggested he could hardly believe it. Rose smiled faintly.
"Young children who enter school early often read adventure novels and then sneak out of the dormitory at midnight to go adventuring into the mountains. It's an age when they can't distinguish between books and reality. Also, the school is like a monastery, so there's not much fun for children at that age. Then older students like me would secretly search for them and bring them back in. Otherwise, we would all be scolded. That's why I find this scenery more familiar and welcome than a well-kept garden."
Ezekiel was glad to hear Rose's old story, which she rarely told. She was a woman who by nature didn't talk much about herself.
He tried to imagine the young Rose sitting quietly and studying with a prim, detached expression. Somehow, mature girls of that age all generally seemed to have that kind of look.
"I didn't know because I have no sisters, but girls play in such an adorable way."
Even in the darkness, he could clearly picture Rose holding a lantern and softly calling out names while searching for the younger children, afraid they might be caught by the teachers, alongside the little ones who had slipped out of the dormitory with sparkling eyes, clutching their novels.