10. At Last, That Day
Episode 59
The man’s face was chillingly cold.
The headmistress of Milena Girls’ School looked at the man before her in bewilderment.
The uninvited guest who had barged into the school without any prior notice radiated a suffocating tension in every aspect of him—from his eyes to his face, his manner, and even his tone of voice. Ordinarily, girls’ schools strictly forbade men from entering unless there was a special reason, but the man’s extraordinary status and unusual air made it impossible to drive him away under the pretext of school rules. Instead, they had sent the headmistress running barefoot all the way to the front gate.
At first, the force with which the man had kicked through the school gate on horseback had been so alarming that she thought war had broken out again. She had been seized by fear, thinking he had come to tell them that Davith’s army had crossed the border and was advancing, and that civilians had to evacuate. Since the school was deep in the mountains and news always arrived late, and they had once been caught up in the front lines before, there was reason enough for her to have made such a mistake.
Yet once she calmed herself and looked him over again, strange details began to catch her eye one by one. First, the famous royal army was nowhere to be seen. Moreover, the man was not in a sharply pressed officer’s uniform, but was dressed simply in trousers and a shirt with only a coat thrown over them.
Then it likely was not war. But while the horse showed clear signs of exhaustion, as if it had been driven day and night without rest, the man’s eyes gleamed with an almost uncanny intensity. Only the way he was rumpled and disheveled from head to toe indirectly testified to the fatigue of his journey.
She could not even begin to guess the reason for his intrusion. And the man was none other than the famed Ezekail Valdemara. Flustered because no way of handling the situation immediately came to mind, she found herself meeting the man’s deep, dark-blue eyes.
A sudden chill ran down her spine, and the headmistress hunched her shoulders. It was because a rumor she had momentarily forgotten, overwhelmed by the man’s presence, abruptly came back to her.
Before she knew it, she had taken a step back.
Come to think of it, how had he found this place?
Major Ezekail Valdemara was surely… blind, was he not? And had he not become terribly vicious and violent because of it?
Cielsa, being rural, was always so slow to receive news that people there often failed to hear even things everyone else knew. As an exception, however, the ugly rumors about Ezekail Valdemara, though delayed, had spread for quite a long time—and even in more detail than in Cleris, where the main family had controlled the gossip.
The source of the rumors had been the doctors summoned to Derosa. Though the Valdemara mansion in Derosa had locked its gates against curiosity seekers, it could not seal the doctors’ eyes and mouths, and the doctors spread what they had personally seen of Ezekail’s current condition. They said it felt as though they had returned after sticking their heads into the maw of an enraged beast. That place, they said, was a beast’s mansion.
Yet the man who had supposedly shut himself away in the Derosa mansion and not shown his face for a long time was, no matter how she looked at him, far from blind. The man who had ridden his horse all the way to Milena Girls’ School on his own two feet even noticed the appearance of “that major from the 37th Regiment” and carefully counted and checked the faces of the female students dangling in clusters from the windows to look down outside.
As if he were searching for someone.
And desperately, anxiously so.
Confused as to whether she ought to protect the girls from Ezekail’s gaze or isolate Ezekail from the girls’ curiosity, the headmistress first led him to the headmistress’s office.
And only when they reached a quiet place to speak did the man bring up a matter that far exceeded her expectations.
“So… you have come to take a student with you? A girl named Rose, with red hair and green eyes….”
What on earth was all this supposed to mean?
It was utterly incomprehensible. He had barged in out of nowhere and demanded that a student be handed over, but as the headmistress had no idea when, how, or why a student of Milena Girls’ School had become entangled with Major Valdemara, she could only stand there dumbfounded.
“Where is Rose? I would like to take her with me immediately.”
More than anything, there was something else she could not understand.
The headmistress recalled, one by one, the faces of the students currently enrolled. Since it was a small school, it was not difficult to remember the students’ appearances and clothing.
What troubled her, however, was the man’s air. Even now, he seemed to be barely suppressing the urge to burst out of the headmistress’s office at once and search the classrooms and dormitories himself.
She had no idea how to make such a man understand the situation.
Watching his expression, the headmistress spoke with difficulty.
“Forgive me, but perhaps you have mistaken the school… We have no such student here.”
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“I’m afraid not. There are a few students named Rose or with similar nicknames, but none of them match the age or appearance you described at all.”
It was unbelievable. Rose had clearly stated where she came from and what school she belonged to. She had even confessed to memories that no one could have known unless they had witnessed the melee themselves, saying that he had once saved the students trapped and surrounded at the school.
But when he had come to find the missing Rose, what he heard from the headmistress was utterly absurd.
Rose was not at this school.
Even under Ezekail’s chilling gaze, the headmistress stubbornly held to her claim.
Then who, exactly, was the woman with whom he had spent four seasons? Had she become some bodiless ghost? Her low and tranquil voice, her soft and faint scent, the touch that tickled his heart, and above all, the warmth of Rose that had been his greatest comfort were still so vivid.
“If you mean students who left the school last winter… Ah, yes. At the time, there was an accident where the chimney collapsed, so we couldn’t house the students in the dormitory. Most of the students had fallen ill, so we decided to suspend school operations for a while until the chimney was repaired and sent the children home.”
He asked her to bring every similar student, even if their appearance was only vaguely alike, even if their age differed by a year or two, even if Rose was not their real name, but to the very end, the headmistress denied Rose to Ezekail’s face.
“If there were any student who came to mind even if the conditions were slightly different, I would have known the moment I heard your description. As the headmistress, how could I not know my own students? But the ‘Rose’ Major Valdemara is looking for truly is not here.”
The repeated insistence that she was “not here” was enough to drive him mad.
This answer had not been within Ezekail’s expectations. If she had merely said that Rose had left the school, he would have pried into every detail—where her home was, when she had left—and traced her whereabouts. If only he knew the direction in which she was, he would gladly endure riding for several days without rest or sleep.
But they said Rose had never enrolled in this school at all. The headmistress waved both hands emphatically, saying there was no way she could fail to know a student with red hair and green eyes, one who had been given the name Rose because she was likened to a rose.
“As you can see, this is not a large school. The number of new students we receive each year can be counted on one hand. Even at most, it never exceeds ten. Naturally, I know all the students who live here. If she had such striking looks, I would have understood immediately. According to what you have told me, only that girl’s name is somewhat common; all her other traits are so distinct that she would have stood out. I am sorry, but the person you are searching for is not one of our students. There is no such student among those who have graduated, either.”
When the very person who had founded the school insisted so firmly that it was not so, he, who was no more than an outsider, had no grounds to argue further.
He had not been in a position to come fully prepared in the first place. As soon as he confirmed through Madam Serva that Rose had disappeared, Ezekail brushed aside the two doctors’ recommendations that he should rest for the time being and recklessly rushed out of the mansion. His destination was Milena Girls’ School.
Because Milena Girls’ School was the one place where Rose, who had spoken almost nothing of herself, had at least looked back on memories of her childhood.
So he even revealed the childhood stories he had heard from Rose, but the headmistress shook her head.
“At school, the students cause all manner of astonishing accidents every day. To be honest, something like that can hardly even be counted as an accident. At most, it remains only in the person’s own memory; everyone else soon forgets it. Even now, we have one or two children every week who secretly burn pots.”
In other words, students who were quiet and composed like Rose were convenient from the perspective of an adult who had to supervise conduct, because they required little attention. But compared to students who caused incidents big enough to throw the school into an uproar, they were not, in truth, the sort who left a strong impression. Since there was no student whose appearance matched and even her personality was not particularly distinctive, Ezekail ultimately gained nothing.
His steps as he left the school were unbearably heavy, as though he had sunk into a swamp.
Ezekail looked back at Milena Girls’ School one last time. While being led to the headmistress’s office, while sitting in the headmistress’s office, and then at intervals as he left the school, he had tried to observe as carefully as possible every student of Milena Girls’ School who entered his sight. Yet there had not been a single student with Rose’s appearance.
If she had been nearby, there was no way he would have failed to recognize her at a glance, no matter how far away she was.
Because the senses engraved into his memory would have sent him a signal.
Because even if he heard only her voice, even if he heard only her footsteps, his instincts would sense her presence.
“…Rose.”
Overnight, Rose had erased every trace of herself like smoke. As though he and all the employees of the mansion had seen an illusion at the same time, she had vanished without leaving behind even a single clearly stamped footprint.
When he first realized she was absent, he thought it was absurd. He denied reality.
Was there not no reason?
No reason Rose had to leave his side.