45.
The first year I entered high society was the year I met more new people than any other in my life.
Rohwinas was one of them.
Perhaps I was the first person ever to come to a party and make such a dent in the banquet food, because I was suffering under subtle ridicule when some handsome man I’d never seen before stood beside me and ate with me.
I hadn’t known. That even with food piled up like mountains, everyone only looked at it as though admiring a painting and barely put any of it in their mouths.
And that to those people, I must have looked like some uneducated bumpkin.
In any case, Rohwinas later said that, to be honest, that day was also the first time he had seen someone fill their stomach at a party.
Of course, if he hadn’t drunk the love potion, the fastidious Count Kanesion, who placed such importance on appearances, would never have committed the eccentric act of standing there and eating with me.
At least to me back then, it was certainly something to be grateful for.
So when Rohwinas abruptly asked if, since I was grateful, he could visit my estate for a meal later, I couldn’t refuse.
Well, what happened after that was a story everyone knew.
I was bewildered by the endless courtship, and by the time I came to my senses, I was already dating Rohwinas.
After spending a long time digging through the items from back then and the well-worn records, I acknowledged it cleanly.
“There’s nothing here.”
“……”
“All right, then. Next.”
The following year, Rohwinas stormed out of the ducal house and lived here with me.
Because of that, quite a lot of Rohwinas’s belongings that he had failed to take with him remained in the storage room.
“Why haven’t you thrown this away all this time?”
After keeping his mouth shut for quite a while, Jaka finally asked.
As I opened a box, coughing at the cloud of dust that billowed out, I still answered him earnestly.
“Back then, I asked Julie to clear it all away, but later I completely forgot that it had been put here.”
“……”
“Huh? I thought I’d lost this, but it got swept in here with everything else.”
I discovered a fountain pen covered in a pale layer of dust among the odds and ends and picked it up.
“I should take this and use it.”
“Just buy a new one.”
“Why? It’s perfectly fine.”
Jaka snatched the fountain pen from me, fiddled with it this way and that, then shoved it into his pocket.
“It’s broken.”
“How can you tell just by looking at it like that?”
“Is that what’s important right now? Weren’t we looking for clues?”
I shot Jaka a glare, then focused once again on rummaging through the junk.
“Oh? Look at this. It’s the indoor clothes I wore when I was little. Cute, right?”
“Things like that should be thrown away.”
“My father bought it for me.”
“……”
“And he passed away not long after, probably?”
“……”
“You want to take back what you said, don’t you? Should I give you a chance?”
“…Looking at it again, it’s so refined and elegant that I think it’s worth keeping.”
Because Jaka truly corrected himself so meekly, I burst out laughing.
Jaka’s eyes turned sharp, but the tips of his ears were red, so it had no effect at all.
“…But if it was when you were young, when did he pass away?”
“When I was five? To be honest, I don’t remember very well. Even his voice. I definitely must have heard it.”
“What about your mother?”
“I was only told she passed away not long after I was born. They said she gave birth to me even though her health was very poor.”
“……”
“She’s someone I’m grateful and thankful to. I feel sorry, too, and though I don’t even know her face, somehow… I feel like I miss her.”
I answered absently, then turned to look at Jaka.
Jaka wore an expression as though he were deep in thought.
In his hand, he was holding an old waist belt, something I was seeing for the first time.
The waist belt, made of black matte fabric, seemed to have been made as a belt for hanging a sword.
“What’s that?”
“…Ah, it was here.”
“That side is just things my father used long ago, so we probably don’t need to look through it.”
Jaka put the waist belt back, then started rummaging through another box.
“Why, do you want it?”
“What would I do with that?”
Seeing the way he frowned, it seemed he really wasn’t coveting it or anything.
“Then you don’t even know her face?”
“Huh?”
“Your mother.”
“No. When I was little, I was sick, so I didn’t really have the leisure to think about things like that. I do have a necklace that was one of her keepsakes, but aside from that, there’s absolutely nothing to remember her by.”
“……”
“Somehow, there isn’t even a single portrait in the estate.”
“You don’t know what family she was from, either? Then you could ask that side for one.”
“One day, Father suddenly brought her home and said she was the person he was going to marry, so everyone just accepted it.”
Jaka, who had been quiet the whole time, seemed dumbfounded at this part and narrowed his eyes slightly.
“I suppose the baron’s easygoing nature really is hereditary in this family?”
“There’s no one left at the estate who remembers what happened back then… Ah, but there are a few things left in writing.”
I dragged the box where Jaka had found the waist belt over to my feet and rummaged through it.
Then I pulled out an old envelope and held it out toward Jaka.
“They say she had the same golden eyes as me.”
Watching Jaka unfold the letter he had taken from the envelope, I brushed my fingers near my eyes.
“It’s not a common color in the empire.”
So it was all right.
Because I already had something to remember her by.
* * *
In the middle of the night.
Jaka was standing, leaning beside the half-open window.
Then something flew onto the windowsill where only moonlight had been seeping in.
A black bird.
It was a bird easily larger than the forearm of a grown man.
Jaka did not stir, his body hidden within the thickly hanging shadows.
Eyes like glass beads shining in the moonlight swept back and forth through the room.
The bird, trained to an eerie degree, gave off a sense of wrongness.
And then.
Tap.
After a sound so faint it could only be heard by straining one’s ears.
Flutter—only a very small note remained where the bird had left.
Only then did Jaka walk out of the darkness and stand by the window.
With one hand, he unfolded the note and checked the words written there with his eyes.
The encrypted sentence was substituted and read with familiar ease.
In the darkness, Jaka’s lips moved soundlessly.
D o n o t f o r g e t y o u r p u r p o s e k i l l t h a t w o m a n
“……”
Beneath the faint moonlight, Jaka’s eyes shone with an especially chilling light.
* * *
“Don’t you think there have been a lot of birds around our estate lately?”
At the question I tossed out in the middle of breakfast, Julie replied apathetically.
“Is that really something the person who spread liquor bottles all over the roof should be saying?”
“Oh, come on, Jaka cleared all of that away last time… Right?”
I nudged Jaka with my elbow.
Unlike usual, Jaka’s reply came a beat late.
“Ah, yes, I did.”
“And I might be late today. Don’t wait for me, and go to bed first, all right?”
Julie asked worriedly.
“Is the duke tormenting you?”
“As if that man would ever do that.”
I laughed briefly.
“It’s that aide who’s the problem.”
“Is it serious?”
“No? For all the obnoxious things he says, he can’t actually do anything.”
“You mean the brown-haired man?”
Jaka cut in.
“You know him? Have you seen him before?”
“Wasn’t he the person riding in the rear carriage when we came back after the hunting festival?”
Honestly, I don’t remember.
Now that I thought about it, it would have been natural for him to be there too.
“Should I come with you?”
“I feel like that would only make things more troublesome, so I’ll just accept the thought.”
After finishing my meal, I stood up and gave Jaka one more warning.
“Don’t cause any trouble while I’m gone. Wait quietly.”
“What exactly do you think I am, ever since last time?”
I deliberately mussed up Jaka’s hair, then tilted my head.
“My ally?”
“……”
“You said so yourself last time, remember? No take-backs.”
With Julie seeing me off, I set out for the official residence where the duke’s office was located.
For some reason, the coachman was dressed to the nines and sitting on the driver’s seat with a fired-up look on his face.
“Baron! Do your best!”
Was this because it was my first day at work, in his own way?
Feeling awkward at the unexpectedly excessive treatment, I climbed into the carriage, but
once the carriage set off, as I watched the scenery slip past outside the window, I gradually began to feel a little excited.
But naturally, there was no paradise waiting where I arrived.
Only an aide like a jackal, constantly watching for a chance to harass me, was waiting for me.
Even so, I’d come prepared not to go home today if that was what it took.
I braced my stomach, steeled myself, and said,
“All right, do whatever you want. I’m ready!”
The aide snorted at me and brought a whistle to his mouth.
Pweeeet!
“Run.”
“Pardon?”
“You will run from now on.”
And so, I had to run without stopping all the way to the training grounds behind the official residence.
What followed after that was, as expected, basic physical training.
“Don’t you think twenty laps is honestly a bit much?”
“If you wish to run more, I won’t stop you.”
“……Ten laps.”
“Thirty laps.”
“Fifteen laps.”
I read a faint madness in the aide’s unyielding face.
“Forty……”
“Now that I think about it, twenty laps seems just right and quite nice.”
Without waiting for the aide’s reply, I began running across the training grounds.
The training grounds were filthy huge.
The sun was gradually climbing to its zenith, my body was already drenched in sweat, and my throat had been burning for a while now to the point of misery.
Wasn’t he working someone who’d only recently recovered a little too hard?
The aide stood in the shade, arms crossed, glaring at me.
Or was it just the heat making him look that way……?
As I somehow managed to fill all twenty laps in the end, the aide’s expression changed from moment to moment.
Somehow, he seemed flustered, or displeased, or if not that……
At least one thing was certain: he had started looking at me as if I were some strange person.
‘Ah, finally.’
The aide tossed a towel and a water bottle to me as I collapsed onto the ground, utterly exhausted, then moved on to the next destination without another word.
I didn’t even have the energy to curse, so I quietly followed after him.
‘So he wore me out first to take away the strength to resist…… What a meticulous bastard.’