29.
“Jaka?”
Jaka grasped the hand I had left outside the blanket.
His hand, clasped around mine, was trembling faintly.
A little startled, I studied Jaka’s face, which I could only make out here and there in the darkness.
“What’s wrong?”
“……Nothing.”
“You were frightened because of me, weren’t you?”
“It’s not like that.”
His voice was cautious and restrained, without a trace of his usual prickliness.
With trembling hands, he adjusted his grip on mine.
Now that I noticed, cold sweat was seeping from his palm as well.
Hadn’t I been simply fast asleep, not unconscious?
……Had the fever been that serious?
I lightly shook the hand he was holding.
Reluctantly, he raised his head and met my eyes.
“I’m hungry.”
“……Then I’ll bring you something, so eat and take your medicine.”
“Before that, I want to sit up. Will you help me?”
When I spoke and reached out one arm, Jaka lowered his head and propped my arm over his shoulder.
At the same time, Jaka’s arm slid in beneath my waist.
The hand wrapped around my waist carefully raised me and supported me.
I braced myself on his shoulder and leaned my weight onto him.
“……Ngh.”
When the movement pressed against my injury for an instant and made me flinch, Jaka hurriedly bent his upper body and moved in close.
It was too awkward to be an embrace, and far too close to be simple support.
Jaka’s rigid expression was right before my nose. His complexion looked tired, and his hair was slightly disheveled.
Amid the sound of the blanket rustling, I could faintly hear his focused breathing.
Pillows were stacked one after another behind my back, and soon I was able to sit leaning against them at an angle.
After carefully checking the position of my injured arm and leg, Jaka pulled up the blanket that had slipped down and covered me with it again.
Finally, just as the hand lingering at my waist hesitated and tried to withdraw.
I moved the hand I had draped over his shoulder and gently slid it toward the nape of his neck.
Jaka sucked in a breath and froze in place.
I pulled him by the back of his neck.
It was by no means a strong force, but he was helplessly, obediently drawn toward me.
Jaka, who had remained still until then without understanding my intention, seemed to suddenly realize it and climbed onto the bed.
Before I could even register the shadow that abruptly fell over me, he pulled me into his arms.
In an instant, his hand ran up my back, seized the back of my head, and pressed me firmly into his embrace.
At the same time, he drove his upper body forward as if he meant to burrow into me. I barely managed to pull my head free and rest my chin on his shoulder.
Considering how fiercely he held me, to the point that I could not move an inch, he was not that heavy.
Even in the midst of it, he was being careful not to put his weight on me.
With one arm hanging around his neck, I let Jaka bury his face in my shoulder and gasp for breath.
His soft lips seemed to brush my skin, then pressed there firmly, almost crushing against it.
Every time he exhaled, the stray hairs near my ear trembled.
It had been so long that the feeling of someone else’s heartbeat against my chest felt unfamiliar.
I had not meant to go this far, so instinctively I wanted to pull away, but
I simply stayed quietly in his arms and patted his back.
His body trembled for a long while more before gradually settling down.
“……I was scared.”
I was about to open my mouth, then closed it again. He was speaking once more.
“Even if I don’t want to believe it, damn it, now I have something I’m afraid of too.”
“…….”
“Then you can’t do this. To me…… you shouldn’t do this to me.”
Listening to that choked voice, it suddenly occurred to me that I did not know whether he had family, how many there were if he did, or even where his hometown was. I knew nothing at all.
I had no memory of even hearing any news he had let slip in passing.
Had he truly had nothing precious to him all this time?
So when losing something overnight seemed, for the first time, as though it might become reality.
Had the sudden fear that came upon him made him bewildered and powerless?
Just as I had been once.
Thinking that, I could not push him away.
* * *
Over the next few days, my body improved considerably.
As long as I was careful not to let the fever rise again, there was no particular problem.
The inconvenience caused by the wound on my leg was naturally something I had to endure.
However, after hearing that it would take quite some time for my injuries to heal completely, my bedroom was just beginning to feel stifling.
“I told you, you should just eat here.”
As I staggered to my feet, Julie supported me and muttered worriedly.
Surely it wasn’t my imagination that Julie, who was nursing me at my side, looked worse than me, the injured one?
My conscience pricked at me, but even so, I could not back down on this.
Lying in the bedroom all day made me so restless that I could not stand it any longer.
Did Julie think I was a newborn baby?
“The physician said it was most important for me to keep my mind at ease, but I can’t possibly feel at ease in this room.”
“I’m only saying this in case your wounds get worse……”
At my complaint, Julie could not scold me as she usually did and merely trailed off.
I tugged at the hem of Julie’s clothes as if pleading.
“Staying only in the bedroom is suffocating.”
“When I begged you to go out a little, you stayed glued to the house, and now that you’re actually ill……”
Julie let out a sigh, then spotted Jaka just as he was entering the room and, as if this were perfect timing, handed me off to him. Thanks to that, before I could react, Jaka had scooped me up in his arms.
“Huh? Whaaat?”
My hand, which had been reaching toward the crutch standing by the bedside, sliced uselessly through empty air.
I grumbled in dissatisfaction.
“Am I an object? Something you can just pick up and move around however you like?”
“Didn’t you hear them say that if you put weight on the wound, it could get worse?”
Jaka replied indifferently, then turned his head and muttered without lowering his voice in the slightest.
“Then who told you to come back hurt?”
“But, you know, tsk, wasn’t that a little too casual just now?”
“…….”
“‘Who told you to come back hurt?’ That’s talking down to me.”
“What is? I don’t know what you mean.”
At Jaka’s shameless reply, my dumbfounded gaze turned on its own.
Julie! Look at this!
But Julie ignored me without so much as twitching an eyebrow, then said in a calm voice,
“Take good care of Lady Asha. I’m counting on you. Got it?”
“I’ll make sure she absolutely can’t wander around as she pleases, so don’t worry.”
It was by no means a gentle tone, but considering the way the two of them usually got along, it was definitely a friendly atmosphere.
I suddenly felt a sense of crisis.
“I’m only saying I’ll walk a little on my own two feet. Have neither of you thought that you’re being overprotective?”
“…….”
“…….”
“Are you two teaming up and ignoring me…… Is that what this is?”
My mouth fell open.
“This is unfair! This is overprotection!”
Julie’s eyes narrowed primly as she looked at me.
As if I had done something outrageous!
Then, as Jaka and I left the room, she said loudly enough for us to hear.
“Absolutely. Make sure you don’t put her down.”
At the same time that the corner of Jaka’s mouth rose loosely, his eyes gleamed coldly.
As though he had gladly accepted Julie’s request……
I cried out desperately toward the other side of the door closing right before my eyes.
“Julie! How could you do this? What about our nearly twenty years of friendship? Ju-Julie!”
The door shut.
“……Are you really not going to put me down?”
I immediately changed tactics and began working on Zaka.
Surely he wasn’t planning to carry me around like this all day.
At the sense of impending crisis, my tone grew solemn on its own.
“I said I’ll keep it a secret from Julie. Read the room and sneak down with my crutches. Please?”
“You’re going to the dining room, aren’t you?”
But there was no chance.
“…….”
Being carried limply in Zaka’s arms, I swung my legs in displeasure.
“Since when did you listen to Julie so well?”
But Zaka, one eyebrow furrowed, gripped my skirt tightly so I couldn’t move my legs, and even that became impossible.
It wasn’t as if I couldn’t walk at all. If I was careful, I’d be fine.
……Of all things, I had to injure my leg.
“Are you really not going to put me down? Even if I ask you?”
Perhaps Zaka noticed that my voice had sunk considerably, because I felt him hesitate.
But he still merely shrugged and replied like this.
“It can’t be helped. A servant can’t neglect the duty of attending to his master, can he?”
“…….”
I pressed my lips shut.
I asked him so! kindly! and so earnestly! How could he ignore me like this?
“……Do you really like me?”
Let’s see if he could stay unconcerned when the subject we had deliberately avoided putting into words suddenly came up.
In truth, now that things had come to this, we couldn’t keep burying what both he and I knew forever.
It wasn’t as if pretending not to see it would make it go away.
The more we said it, even if it didn’t become any lighter, we could at least pretend it had.
“You say you like me, so how can you do this? You ungrateful thing.”
I picked a fight by tugging on Zaka’s ear right in front of me. Though he frowned, he didn’t particularly look offended.
Rather, he gave a short snort and even asked back.
“Who says? That I like you, Baroness.”
There was even a crooked playfulness about his lips.
“Wow, so that’s how you’re going to play it? Then I guess the person who hugged me and cried when I woke up must’ve been someone else?”
“Is that really something for the person who hugged me first to say?”
“When did I ever!”
I was just going to pat him a little and leave it at that!
“And I didn’t cry. Perhaps you’re confusing me with someone else?”
Zaka even began mocking me.
I mean, did I cheat on my lover with someone else or what?
I’m an innocent single woman!
If anything, the person I’d had the most intimate contact with was him!