Episode 65
He had returned.
Only now did Akenaus guess why the door had been left open. The servants must have been so shocked to see Ezekiel come back in one piece that they had forgotten to lock up.
His heart plummeted.
He had expected they would meet someday, but he had never imagined Ezekiel would stride in through the door so boldly.
Sweat seeped into the hand gripping the rifle.
What should I do? Should I snipe him from here?
Can I hit him in one shot from this distance?
If he failed to strike true and incapacitate him at once, then his turn would certainly come next.
The moment Akenaus imagined Ezekiel raising his rifle and returning fire, a chill ran through him. He did not want to hesitate, yet he kept hesitating. He had no guarantee he would succeed in a single shot, but Ezekiel would. No matter where he aimed, it was clear that a single bullet would pierce through instantly.
He should not have come into the mansion alone. He should have brought the guards with him. If he had, they could have overpowered him by sheer numbers.
Father—could Father be at home?
Akenaus hurriedly looked around inside the mansion. No matter how deep his grudge against him ran, as long as Father was in the same house, Ezekiel would not have the courage to point a gun at his older brother.
No. First, leaving the mansion came first. Since he had returned in secret, the safest thing to do now was slip quietly out through the garden and plan his next move.
But by the time he thought of a way, it was already too late.
Ezekiel turned to look at him. His manner was utterly calm, as if he had known from the very beginning that Akenaus was hiding there.
It was a strange sixth sense. Even though they were far enough apart that his features were not properly visible, Akenaus instinctively knew that Ezekiel’s dark blue irises were looking straight at him.
His mind stopped right then and there.
His thoughts went pitch-black and still, yet his hands moved on their own.
Akenaus raised the rifle and pulled the trigger. He could not even remember whether he had aimed properly.
Bang!
A shot rang out, striking his eardrums.
Cracks spread all at once through the scenery of the world.
Then shards of glass that had lost their light and turned opaque collapsed together, blocking his view. The window, made as large as possible for admiring the garden, shattered and sent a powerful vibration through the house, causing the beautiful glass windows that were the pride of the Valdemaera mansion to break one after another and pour down in fragments.
For the first time, Akenaus learned that a roar beyond hearing resembled a deathly silence instead.
For a moment, time seemed to stop.
He stood there blankly for a while, unable to make sense of what his eyes had seen.
“I’m not even surprised anymore.”
Heavy footsteps suddenly sounded. At the voice, deep and weighty, Akenaus flinched and lifted his head.
“Every time I come home, the welcome is always like this.”
Ezekiel, who had approached before he knew it, was looking down at him with an expressionless face.
The gun Akenaus had fired had shattered the window, but it had not harmed anyone. It was an expected result, since he had pulled the trigger with the muzzle trembling aimlessly. A gun held with a clear intent to shoot never wavered. Judging by his aim alone, Akenaus would never have hit him.
“……How did you come here when I’m here!”
This feeble struggling was all he had.
“Why should I not be able to come just because you’re here?”
Ezekiel sneered.
“Am I a thief, that I should sneak into my own house when I return?”
It had not been difficult to hear news of Akenaus in Cleris, where he had set foot for the first time in a long while. He had supposedly hired guards, surrounded himself in layers of protection, and lived off his mistresses. It was so obvious who he had fled from that Ezekiel did not even laugh.
If that was the attitude of an older brother facing his younger brother, then as the younger brother, he ought not disappoint his expectations.
Ezekiel jerked his chin.
“You must have thought I’d hide behind others like you and use cowardly methods, but not a chance. I came here today intending to settle this once and for all. The 37th Regiment, the guards—there’s no need to drag other people in and make a family quarrel filthy. You and I will end this here and now with a duel.”
“……What?”
“If you’ve got a rifle in your hands, hold it properly.”
Ezekiel corrected the rifle that Akenaus was holding carelessly, setting it straight in his hands.
“You have bullets and powder, I assume. Load it.”
“Wh-what are you trying to do?”
“Are you asking because you don’t know? Shoot.”
The conclusion was clear.
“If you can shoot me dead, then do it.”
At Ezekiel’s indifferent tone, Akenaus glared at him with suspicion.
“You want me to shoot you?”
“Yes. Because I’m going to shoot you too.”
It happened in an instant. Ezekiel lowered the gun slung over his shoulder, finished loading it in the blink of an eye, and aimed at Akenaus.
“W-wait! My gun isn’t even loaded yet……”
“That’s why I’m waiting.”
Under Ezekiel’s cold gaze, which allowed no excuses at all, Akenaus measured out bullet and powder with trembling hands. Even so, his mouth did not stop moving for a second.
“A soldier challenging a civilian to a duel—do you think this is fair?”
“If there’s another weapon you want, I’ll accommodate you.”
That made even less sense. Akenaus clenched his teeth and protested.
“Do you think Father will forgive you if you shoot me dead?”
“That’s none of my concern.”
Ezekiel replied without intonation.
“This time, too, Father won’t have a choice.”
Just as he, blinded, had once been abandoned, this time as well Valdemaera would not be able to choose a child who had been crippled or killed.
“I’m not a soldier who’s handled rifles like you.”
“You talk too mu—”
Bang!
A gunshot burst out, cutting off Ezekiel’s words. Akenaus, who had been whining to buy time, abruptly pulled the trigger.
It was a strike he had put his heart into, but Ezekiel, who had never once taken his eyes off the movement of the muzzle, kicked Akenaus’s wrist the instant he saw the finger on the trigger begin to move.
“Agh!”
As he lost his grip on the rifle, the bullet flew off in a completely wrong direction.
It was his first and last chance. Now that he had even lost his weapon, counterattacking was impossible.
It was a duel that could never have existed in the first place.
If this were something that could be settled by fighting fair and square with their bodies, he would never have threatened that woman into handing over poison.
Akenaus hurriedly looked for an escape route. But there was no guarantee he could avoid Ezekiel’s shot and flee safely.
He had no confidence that he could win in a contest of strength, no confidence that he could seize the weapon, and no confidence that he could escape unharmed. Father, the only person with the authority to stop the duel, happened to be absent, and the servants were so cowed by Ezekiel’s momentum that they could not even approach.
Akenaus slowly raised both hands.
“If you’re demanding surrender…… I lost. I admit it. So……”
It was an apology not worth hearing. Letting Akenaus’s apology go in one ear and out the other, Ezekiel opened his mouth.
“The doctor who healed my eyes told me. If that poison had gone into my mouth instead of my eyes, I would have died.”
“Ezekiel, I was wrong, so……”
“I thought about it over and over. What I would do when I caught you and that woman.”
“Spare my life, at least……”
“You ought to experience what kind of time I lived through before coming back. Don’t you think?”
Ezekiel raised the rifle and, with a click, took aim. At the movement of his hands as he aimed precisely at his face, Akenaus screamed.
“Either way, you came back perfectly fine now, didn’t you!”
“I’m perfectly fine…… Ah, does it look that way on the outside?”
He had come back perfectly fine, so that was enough.
Had it been a period of time that could be spoken of so easily?
Without even knowing why, he had lost his sight. He had writhed in pain as though his head would split apart at the slightest glimpse of light, until his subordinates rescued him and carried him away. Unable to accept reality, he had relied on opium hallucinations, and only with Rose’s blood and sweat had he barely escaped his addiction.
And after enduring treatment and surgeries with no promised end, a full year had passed before he finally returned home.
It had taken an entire year.
The only good thing in that process had been meeting Rose and the memories of the four seasons he had spent with her.
And yet even that Rose was no longer by his side. He did not even know where to begin looking for her.
“There’s exactly one thing I’m grateful to you for. Because I was blinded and driven all the way to the north, I met her.”
No sooner had he finished speaking than a flash burst from the muzzle.
“Aagh!”
For an instant, Akenaus could not understand what had happened to him. His face, his head, burned hot. It felt as if he had been set on fire, or struck by lightning. His right eye, in particular, hurt terribly. It felt as if a giant had struck him with a fist swung with all his might.
“Ah, ah, ah, ah…… Aaaagh!”
Unable to grasp the situation, Akenaus groaned and groped at his face with his palm. It was strange. Half of his face was hot and slick.
He slowly pulled his hand away. His heart began to beat more and more ominously. And the moment he saw the red stream of blood soaking his palm, he screamed. Only then did he sense that the breadth of his vision had subtly narrowed.
“My eye…… My eye, you madman, my eye!”
“One year blind.”
“What?”
“Whether you run off to some foreign land as I did, or depend on all those mistresses of yours, endure it for exactly one year. After that, I’ll end it for you.”
Taking a life in one breath was too easy and simple. Once a moment of pain passed, eternal rest would come.
Ezekiel did not want that. There was a kind of regret one only understood after experiencing it firsthand. He intended to make him live through countless repeated despairs, to learn how far a person could fall, and how they came to see the very bottom of themselves.
Click. The muzzle turned toward his left eye again.
Akenaus hurriedly shouted.
“Can you really say you aren’t cowardly? You were holed up in Derosa too, colluding with Father!”