85.
“Baron.”
Before me, where I sat leaning against the cot, he came closer and sat as if kneeling. Then he pulled me into his arms.
Clang.
The sword he had set down rolled across the floor.
The physician who had been about to treat the bruises on my wrist blinked stupidly, ointment still in hand.
“Baron……”
He drew back slightly and looked up at me.
“Could you…… show it to me?”
His body was trembling faintly.
I asked calmly.
“Show you what?”
“That…… jewel. The purple raw stone that gives off a reddish light.”
“Ah, this?”
I gathered the fragments of the jewel I had completely forgotten about from my pocket and took them out.
“Huh?”
But the jewel, which had at least still maintained the shape of fragments, scattered over my palm like ash.
He silently looked down at the traces on my palm.
“What about it? Was it something important to the temple?”
“I heard the testimony…… They said you broke this. Is that true?”
His Adam’s apple moved violently up and down.
I had the feeling that the situation was taking a strange turn, but there was no other clever way around it.
I gave a slight nod.
“Yes. I broke it.”
Still, I lifted my left wrist and did not forget to add an explanation.
“When I grabbed that raw stone, light poured out from the bracelet, and heat burst from it as if it would burn me. From what I felt……”
Instinctively, I judged that I had to smash it, and so I acted.
“So……”
Prien cupped both my palms from below, as though supporting them.
I stopped speaking.
He bent his head over them.
The first thing to touch my fingertips was shadow.
For an instant, his movements seemed slow.
His large hands holding mine, and his long, slender fingers,
each and every one of his long lashes lowering calmly,
the strands of hair flowing down along the curve of his ear,
the thin shadow they cast upon his cheek,
and at last, the warmth silently spreading from his forehead as it settled against my fingertips.
It was more sacred and solemn than any sight I had ever seen.
I stared at him, at a loss for words.
My heart pounded.
My mind was a mess, and I could not continue my thoughts.
I murmured blankly.
“Why do you…… always cry in front of me?”
He was crying.
“I do not know.”
Like a spring welling up from dry earth.
He lifted his head slightly and looked up at me.
The tears streaming endlessly down his cheeks were flawlessly beautiful, and at the same time, they seemed sorrowful.
Perhaps nothing is as beautiful as something pitiful and sad.
At the very least, it must be what shakes a person’s soul the most.
He reached out. Then he wrapped his arms around my neck.
I was drawn deep into his embrace.
From his arms came the damp scent of tears, mingled with the smell of blood.
“Those people said……”
He whispered while leaning against me as though he had completely collapsed.
I had no choice but to embrace him in return to hold him up.
His body was hot.
“That it was an ecstatic cluster of light…… That for an instant, it was radiant. So much so that they could not look away.”
Was it?
I had been so out of it that I really……
Prien said nothing more.
I could not understand why.
For some reason, I thought of the old picture frame in his bleak, barren quarters, the only thing that had borne the touch of human hands.
And the innocent faces of the family within it.
But……
I reached out with my now-empty hand and gently drew his head toward me.
Then I slowly stroked it.
His faintly trembling shoulders were so broad that I could barely hold him.
But from where our bodies touched, I could feel our hearts beating together out of rhythm.
Where did all those people go?
Leaving this man here.
Where had they all gone?
* * *
“Keep him from regaining consciousness.”
He was a man with a high risk of taking his own life. If they gave him even a moment’s chance, there might be no turning back.
The aide, who was wrapping bandages around the duke’s body, lifted his head as if he could no longer hold back a word.
“He is already hovering at death’s door, so for now, let us focus on treatment.”
The duke, who had perhaps doused himself in the water of some nearby valley, dripping clear droplets mixed with blood from the ends of his hair, closed his mouth.
“Are you truly not going to inform the Baron of your injuries?”
“……”
The duke ignored him with practiced ease.
The aide, also with practiced ease, ignored being ignored and said,
“It is not really my place to say this, but.”
“Then don’t say it.”
“This is a chance to score points. Are you really going to throw it away like this?”
“……”
“Do you truly not have even the slightest desire? Are you really, truly going to be satisfied with merely being by her side? Will you be all right with that?”
When you like someone, you want to know them. The more you know, the closer you want to become. Once you become closer, you then want to touch them. And once you touch them, after that……
You come to want to become that one and only person, the sole existence allowed to reach them.
It was an emotion that naturally arose when one liked someone.
So why was the duke not budging at all?
“Well, if it goes well, this might not be so bad either……”
The aide trailed off.
‘There’s no way the Baron won’t notice. His Grace is not the sort of person who can deceive others to the end, either. If she asks, his answer will be…… Or not? That woman can be truly dense at times. But when it comes to smells, she’s like a ghost.’
Just before tying the knot, the aide pulled the bandage taut.
Blood was already seeping through the bandage from the wound that had reopened.
The aide hid the satisfied look in his eyes and took his hands off the knot.
* * *
The duke suddenly stopped the steps he had, without realizing it, been hurrying.
Inside the tent, someone who had not been there just a moment ago had arrived.
He caught a glimpse of two people embracing.
‘Do you truly not have even the slightest desire? Are you really, truly going to be satisfied with merely being by her side? Will you be all right with that?’
The duke did not look away.
He saw the hesitation fade from Asha’s fingertips.
Asha slowly stroked that man’s hair as if consoling him.
The duke stood there in silence for a long while longer.
Asha never once turned to look his way.
* * *
When the emergency treatment was finished, and even the preparations to return were complete.
Someone suddenly approached from behind and whispered.
“This way.”
Clutching my ear, I turned around with a frown, and it was that same holy knight.
That bastard who kept leading me to strange places.
‘Did he think I’d follow?’
After walking a few steps alone, he looked back this way, then hurried his pace and came back toward me.
“Did you not hear me tell you to come this way?”
“No, I heard you, but why should I follow you?”
“I have something to say about Sir Ijanar.”
“I’m not particularly interested in anything you have to say. All you ever do is spout things that ruin my sleep….”
“Spout? Did you just say I spout…!”
The paladin flared up, then swallowed his anger and spoke quickly in a low voice.
“Then I’ll say it here, so listen carefully.”
“Did you not hear what I just said? I’m not going to follow you, and I don’t want to listen….”
“The crystal stone you destroyed may have been Sir Ijanar’s sister.”
……Excuse me?
What did he just say?
The paladin saw my expression and put on a triumphant look.
“Do you understand now? What exactly you did?”
“No…… why would that be…… Prien’s…… younger sister…….”
“When a soul is refined through a ritual like this one, or by offering up a sacrifice, what is created at an extremely rare probability is precisely a crystal stone.”
“…….”
“In a manner of speaking, it could be called the heart of a soul. Sir Ijanar has been searching for crystal stones all this time. In case his younger sister might be inside one.”
“…….”
I pressed a hand to my forehead.
No, then, I…….
With my own hands……?
“Sir Ijanar…… didn’t say…… much to me about it?”
“That’s because Sir Ijanar…… you….”
The paladin cleared his throat.
“You know, don’t you? How could he possibly have brought himself to say it?”
“…….”
But if that was the reason.
Prien only fell in love with me because he drank the potion, didn’t he?
Then what about after he takes the antidote?
A chill ran down my spine.
I did it to save people, though, didn’t I? Wouldn’t that count as extenuating circumstances? It had better.
‘If Sir Ijanar had been here, he certainly would have made the same judgment we did.’
When I thought of what he was originally like.
Maybe I couldn’t be so sure…….
Completely at a loss, I looked up at the paladin.
“Did I just make a total……. mistake? Is that it?”
The paladin puffed out his chest as if I had finally begun to understand.
“And I know the only way to make up for it.”
“Tell me.”
“Sir Ijanar’s birthday is in three days.”
“And?”
“You celebrate his birthday.”
“……That’s it?”
“It seems you don’t understand yet, but Sir Ijanar does not celebrate his birthday.”
“…….”
“He also hates it when others celebrate it for him. Once, in the past, he even drew his sword over it.”
And he was telling me to do that?
‘I really would have been better off not listening.’
Again!
Only things that would keep me up at night!
I ended up hearing a whole pile of them!
I clenched my fists tightly.
Somehow, the more I saw of this guy, the more hateful he became.
“How is that a way to make up for it? That’s a way to fan his anger and bring disaster down on myself!”
“Shh! Lower your voice. And……. since ‘that day,’ Sir Ijanar has probably never celebrated his birthday even once.”
‘That day’—even without any explanation, I felt as though I knew what he meant.
‘I really don’t want to ask. I don’t want to know.’
“…….”
“Doesn’t your heart just ache? Doesn’t it hurt as if it’s being torn apart?”
“Enough nonsense. Please return to your post.”
Clicking my tongue, I turned away from the paladin.
‘……Still, it does bother me a little.’
I had never even guessed that the crystal stone I shattered was created that way.
The light and vibration that had throbbed in my hand the moment I clenched it tight still came vividly to mind.
Though it felt unsettling.
All of a sudden, I recalled the wave of light that had swept up over me at the instant it broke.
‘It didn’t feel bad.’