32.
After seeing Prien off at the entrance and turning back, I found Julie standing behind me.
“I didn’t even know we had a guest. What did he come for?”
“Nothing much.”
I shrugged.
“Last time, I was so worried about Lady Asha that I let him into your room, but… I don’t know what he was thinking, helping us like that. Even if he is a paladin, good deeds without a price aren’t exactly common, are they?”
“Well, that’s…”
I was about to answer lightly, then stopped.
I knew he had fallen victim to the potion, but Julie did not.
So it was only natural for her to be suspicious of Prien’s intentions when he looked after me so attentively and helped me.
But that was usually how people who had drunk the potion were.
They could never harm the person they had fallen in love with.
Far from causing harm, they became buried in blind protectiveness and sank deeper and deeper until they could no longer escape.
I thought back on Jaka’s behavior over the past few days, then silently lifted the corners of my lips.
“I guess he likes me.”
“What?”
Seeing Julie’s eyes grow as wide as they had long ago, when she heard that Rohwinas liked me and was following me around, I shrugged.
“Really? Did you hear it from him directly? Is he serious?”
Before I knew it, Julie had stepped right up to me, grabbed my arm, and was shaking it as she questioned me. I put off answering for a moment.
For an instant, I hesitated.
Would it be better to tell Julie everything, even now?
When I became Rohwinas’s lover, Julie had been the only person who worried about me, not him.
Even later, when I broke up with him and was abandoned by everyone, reduced to a wretched state.
Julie had been by my side.
In truth, there had been a time when I, too, could not bear people’s gazes and tried to run away blindly.
The one who held me back then had also been Julie.
‘Why should we run away? What did we do wrong that we have to run!’
‘…….’
‘If we run away like this, it’ll be as good as admitting that all of it is true. Tell me, Lady Asha. Is that really what you want?’
But as you know, it did not come to a good end.
Because proving my innocence blindly, with my strength alone, was never an easy thing.
Little by little, every effort came to nothing, and hopes went out one by one….
One day, when I returned exhausted and stood there, neither quite crying nor not crying, and said I wanted to give up.
Julie simply embraced me.
After that, Julie seemed to blame herself.
For those moments when she had told me not to run, to fight back, that if it was me, I could do it.
One night, I saw Julie secretly wiping away tears as she cleared away empty liquor bottles.
But I could not bring myself to let her know I had seen.
Because even I could do nothing about my own weakness.
I simply thought that for the rest of my life, this was how a person like me would live.
Neither especially happy nor especially sad, hiding forever within this dry, flavorless silence.
So no matter what I said to Julie, it would have been meaningless. Because all of it would have been a lie.
And yet….
How could I easily tell her now that someone who had drunk the potion had appeared again, that someone was targeting me?
That although I did not know for what reason that person was making me suffer like this,
I had no choice but to struggle and thrash with my whole body like a fish dragged ashore once more.
What kind of face would Julie stand before me with when she heard that?
Thinking of that, I could not bring myself to speak.
What if I failed this time too?
I did not want to believe it, but if, by some chance, things did turn out that way, would I truly be able to endure it?
I had already been driven to the edge of a dead-end cliff.
To the end of a line between life and death, where if I did not want to die, I had no choice but to strike back.
I did not want Julie standing there beside me as well.
Julie was the only person who had cared for me even without a potion.
I wanted Julie, at least, to live a peaceful life without great upheavals.
I wanted to take even a little of the worry she poured into me and let her use it for herself.
“Well, I’ve only met him a few times, so I don’t really know either.”
So I merely looked at Julie with a faint smile.
Julie chose her words with a careful expression, then asked,
“Then what about you, Lady Asha?”
“What about me?”
“Your feelings. You don’t dislike him?”
I did not dislike him.
I simply did not like him either.
I laughed it off playfully.
“Well, he certainly is an unbelievably handsome man.”
Julie stared intently at me with a doubtful face.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Lady Asha, are you perhaps hiding something from me?”
“Hm? Why would I hide anything from you, of all people?”
“If not, then it’s fine. It’s just, somehow… lately, life doesn’t feel like it used to.”
“Why? Weren’t you always hoping I’d mingle with people and live normally like everyone else?”
Julie lowered her eyes.
“I just wanted you to be all right, Lady Asha.”
“…….”
“As long as you’re all right, it doesn’t matter whether it’s normal or not.”
As if something had suddenly occurred to me, I asked,
“Then a glass of wine with dinner tonight?”
“…If you’re going to say nonsense that doesn’t even deserve a reply, then please just keep your mouth shut!”
Julie glared at me with an exasperated expression, stamped her foot, and slipped back inside the mansion.
I watched her go, then stepped about half a pace forward and turned my gaze behind the bushes.
Jaka was leaning against a tree trunk with his arms crossed.
“She’s gone?”
“Yeah. She’s gone.”
Jaka dusted off his palms and came over to me.
“I found it. Something suspicious.”
At last, the results had come from combing through the servants who had been present at the victory banquet.
* * *
Three days later.
Jaka and I were being carried somewhere in a swaying carriage.
Though I had slipped out secretly, by now Julie had probably noticed.
I glanced at the wound on my leg, hidden beneath the hem of my dress.
If the wound were to worsen during today’s outing….
As my shoulders trembled, I saw Jaka, seated across from me, quietly lift the window shutter and look outside.
Dusk had already begun to settle beyond the window.
“You’re sure it’s all right to go dressed like this?”
“Do you think those people wouldn’t notice if we deliberately dressed ourselves to the nines? It would only make us stand out more, so it’s better for us to go as we usually are.”
Jaka glanced at my face, then added in a low voice,
“Because it looks like we dressed shabbily on purpose to hide our status.”
I muttered awkwardly,
“That’s true. And honestly, I don’t have any money to dress up anyway.”
Jaka, who had been constantly fiddling with his swept-back hair as if it felt uncomfortable, let out a breathy laugh.
Then his face turned serious.
“Don’t go around saying that to people. It makes you look broke.”
“Sorry, but there’s nowhere for me to go around saying it. Besides, it doesn’t make me look broke. I really am broke.”
Jaka replied in an unmistakably teasing tone.
“Right, you didn’t have any friends, did you, Baron?”
“You say that like you do.”
“Then how do you think I found out this information?”
Jaka said, raising one eyebrow, and I gave him a crooked smile.
“By threatening someone?”
“……I see exactly what you think of me. But no, that’s not it.”
“Didn’t you say you couldn’t even talk to those people?”
Just then, the carriage seemed to turn a corner and lurched, naturally cutting off the conversation.
With his hair swept back to reveal his forehead, Jaka was dressed in a neat tailcoat, and it suited him so well it was as if he had been born wearing it.
For some reason, I had the feeling that even as Jaka grew older, that distinctive boyish charm of his would never disappear.
He looked prickly enough, yet he was the sort of fellow who could smile sweetly when he needed to.
Sensing my fixed stare, Jaka turned his gaze to me.
“What? Is this your first time seeing a handsome man?”
“What are you talking about? I’m pretty too, you know?”
“You haven’t even had a drink, so why are you spouting nonsense?”
“…….”
For a moment, I had nearly forgotten because I was unaccustomed to seeing him so well dressed, but knowing that his manner of speaking would remain the same forever somehow put me at ease.
As we gradually neared our destination, noise seeped in through the slightly open window.
Theaters, gambling dens, taverns, auction houses…….
Without a doubt, the carriage was cutting through the heart of the pleasure district.
Our destination was somewhere here as well.
The attendant Jaka had singled out had many suspicious points about him.
The attendant in question had been acting suspiciously for several days before the imperial banquet,
and there were eyewitness accounts that he had wandered around for quite some time holding the cocktail glass Jaka was presumed to have drunk from.
Even normally, there had been many occasions when his spending suddenly grew lavish despite the state of his purse,
and after the banquet, he repeatedly absented himself without permission before vanishing completely.
The last place that attendant had headed before disappearing was…….
The carriage stopped.
Just before I got out, Jaka picked up a hat and pressed it firmly down onto my head.
“Can’t forget this.”
“I was going to put it on after getting out.”
While I grumbled and adjusted the hat, Jaka got out of the carriage first.
He immediately reached his arms toward me, lifted me up, and carefully set me down on the ground.
After smoothing the rumpled hem of my dress and making sure to place the cane firmly in my hand, he said,
“Be careful of your wound.”
With that brief whisper, he stepped aside so I could see clearly.
In contrast to the sky, already dyed pitch-black with darkness, the street was beginning to glow little by little.
The street was crowded with people wandering about and carriages rushing every which way.
The smell of alcohol, strong spices, tobacco, and all manner of perfumes mingled together, while the stench of fish and sewers stabbed at my nose.
It was a smell befitting a flourishing street pressed up against the shadowed back alleys of the underworld.
Jaka led me to one side.
“This way.”
Our destination was a low, shabby-looking building with not a single signboard.
Beyond several thugs who seemed to be guarding the entrance, faint singing could be heard.
When I stopped a short distance away, leaning on my cane, Jaka offered me his arm.
“There’s something I haven’t properly told you yet, Baron.”
An unreadable light flickered in his eyes as he looked down at me, and the corner of his mouth lifted slightly.
“If they ask who I am, what will you answer?”
Feeling uneasy, I answered sourly.
“I should say you’re my attendant, shouldn’t I?”
“If you say that, they’ll never let us in. They might even suspect us instead, thinking it’s strange.”
“……Is that so?”
“Because no one comes to a place like this with an attendant.”
Jaka drew my hand over and hooked it through his arm, then whispered.
“They come with a lover.”