The Knight Hates Love Triangles (4)
In more than fifty years of life, the duke—no, Blake—had never once heard anyone speak to him in crude, unguarded words.
Small wonder. Setting aside Pendragon's founding king, the Knight King, he was the legitimate son of the previous king, hailed as the greatest conquering monarch of the age, a wise king, the Martial God, and more besides. He had been born to talent as if beloved of a dragon, and not a single tutor had ever managed to teach him longer than a fortnight. Past that point his learning already outstripped the tutor's, as a matter of course.
Later, when the Magic Sword chose him and stripped away his right to the throne, it was said the Martial God showed despair for the first time in his life. That alone told the world what extraordinary stuff of a king had been in him.
And yet the man who never became king, who became instead the lord of Galahad, remained magnificent all the same. As if to demonstrate what flawlessness looked like, he grew House Galahad nearly thirtyfold. Politics, and he had politics. The sword, and he had the sword. Commerce, and he had commerce. There was nothing he let slip. By the present day Galahad and Blake were spoken of as one and the same, and he had become a power no one in the kingdom could ignore.
Even the king himself, most likely, could not address Duke Blake with careless familiarity. The presence and the ability of the man called Blake were that far out of the ordinary, and no one dared lift their head before him.
……Which was why.
"A royal can't have gone senile, so why in the world are you acting like this?"
"……."
Blake was startled. He had never expected such insolence from a knight he himself had invited, and the sheer novelty of the outburst kept even his anger from rising. He had only one curiosity.
"…Why are you angry with me?"
He simply wanted to hear why this knight had suddenly turned his temper on him.
The knight, for his part…
"I'm not angry. I'm telling you to get your head on straight. Quit the delusions."
It sounded, somehow, like a scolding.
"Don't take this as something I'm saying to 'Your Grace the Duke.' Think of it as advice, from a teacher who instructs the child of your house."
"…Advice. To me? You dare?"
"I dare. To a man who's a failure as a father."
"……."
"Ah—no. Let me correct that. As you are now, you're not even a sorry excuse for a man. You're disqualified as a parent. From where I stand, even if you'd had your wife and a child, you still wouldn't have made a decent father. You wouldn't have been able to believe in the kid."
"…You are crossing a line. Plainly."
From the moment his dead wife was named, he could not simply sit and listen. Anger surged, fury climbed, and he would have been well within his rights to cut the knight down on the spot—
"Then why didn't you investigate properly? Why are you suspecting not only that Judia, or whatever his name is, but Irene Windler as well?"
"……."
Blake's hand twitched. It was the first dismay he had shown, and the words stuck in his throat.
The knight went on.
"A moment ago, when you spoke of your adopted daughter, you called her 'Irene Windler.' Like a man who wants her to be a complete stranger. You're not only doubting the redhead. You're doubting your own adopted daughter, aren't you? Tell me I'm wrong."
"…And what, precisely, is wrong with that?"
He did not deny it. Just as the knight said, he doubted even Irene—the suspicion that a child who was the very image of the woman he had loved might, like Judia, be something the temple had manufactured. From that moment, even his adopted daughter had seemed suspect.
"It is a suspicion logic requires."
"People call that kind of thing dogshit logic."
"……."
Not an inch of retreat in the rebuttal.
"Because she isn't silver-haired? Or because she's a mage? They already said all of that is explained by fairy blood. And the way to confirm a bloodline? I hear that if you're royalty, there's a method for checking it, one way or another. So why won't you see it through to the end? Oh—could it be because Irene Windler might be a clone of your wife? Hmm. Sure, that could be. But here's the thing. I'm genuinely curious…"
"……."
This time he could not answer. He, who was wisdom itself, who had never once been at a loss in any moment of his life.
"You don't know why you keep her close? That's why I say you're disqualified as a parent. You already know the answer, and pretending you don't is a failing grade."
"…I know the answer?"
"Stop asking questions you already understand. You know, and you keep playing ignorant, and it's starting to piss me off."
"……I truly do not know. What is it you claim I fail to see?"
In that moment Blake felt, for the first time in his life, like a fool. He was that bewildered, and every time the knight spoke his chest lurched, as if he were about to grasp the single most essential thing he had been missing all this while. Blake pressed him for it, as if to say: give me the answer, now.
To that urgent question—
"-------."
The answer that came back was exceedingly simple, and yet in that simplicity Blake felt a splitting pain at the back of his skull, as if he were being made to look back on the foolish days he had denied—no, the days he had known, and pretended not to.
"Your Grace. You know it too. Sometimes people live not by their heads, but by the pull and the impulse of instinct. So I'll ask. What does your instinct—no, what does your heart—think of that child?"
"……."
"If you still don't know after I've spelled it out like this, I think I'm going to be disappointed in you. Disappointed that the man who made me taste defeat was this pathetic."
"…Heh."
In that moment, Blake thought he understood. Why the knight had been angry, and why he had spoken with such reckless boldness. Of course.
…I was lying even to myself.
The knight had found him pathetic: a man who did nothing but lie. Blake had not been able to be honest even with himself. He had only doubted without end, and denied even the pull inside his own heart, because he had decided that his feelings were nothing more than an illusion born of longing.
"Shall I say one thing more? If you had truly suspected that child, you wouldn't have drugged her to sleep. You would have spoken to her outright. And the reason you used the drug will be simple."
"……."
"'I don't want to be hated.' That feeling is why you put her to sleep. If she had heard your suspicion, she would have been hurt."
"……."
"Of course, even I can't be sure whether you're that child's real father or not. But I know this one thing. Every father in the world instinctively hates being hated by his own child. And the mere fact that you don't want her to hate you means you already hold that child dear."
"…I—"
"If you don't want to lose something precious and regret it too late, then don't do this. …Though people always do manage to regret it only after it's gone."
"……You might have done better to leave off that last part."
Somehow Blake felt as if this knight were older than he was. The advice, and also…
The way the strength goes out of him at the end. He's just like my late brother.
If a brother far his senior, already dead, came to mind in the face of a mere knight, then that meant…
Is the man simply that strange?
……Well. He'd gone and done it.
That was the first thing Lee Han felt, and right on its heels came the price of the mess he had made.
A prickling rush—
A wave of killing intent poured toward him.
A faint-hearted man wouldn't last a second in this.
It was a fierce pressure laced with murderous will from the ducal retainers, and if the duke gave the order they looked ready to kill him on the spot. A dangerous situation, and for Lee Han it was proof that he had walked into the danger himself.
Even so.
And yet my chest feels clear.
He had no regrets. Not because he was confident he could run even if every last one of them came down on him. Simply…
If I don't say it now, I'll only make myself sick.
If he didn't give that man a piece of his mind, the anger wasn't going to settle. So he had decided not to rest his mouth. Regret could wait until later. It wouldn't be too late then.
It was absurd. Was the man too clever for his own good? Or was it that no one had ever told him?
Why doesn't he know something this obvious?
In truth there was one more thing he hadn't said. Or rather, anyone with a sharp eye, or a sense that could read something like energy, would have known it at a glance…
They're cast from the same mold.
The day before he had spoken through an artifact and hadn't seen it clearly, but now he could. The energy the man called Blake gave off. The wavelength. The sum of the Color that made the man up.
A color like that was probably unique to each person, and the reason was simple.
Because that color was different for every single one of them.
Knights and mages especially—those whose vitality ran strong—felt all the more vivid, and Lee Han could tell that Duke Blake's vivid color and the little mage chick's color were alike. A color that might as well have proved a match in blood, and it told him plainly that the two were father and daughter.
And yet that man had the gall to deny it and fall flat on his face about it. Honestly, writing the redhead off didn't matter much to him, but the way the man spoke and acted was as choking as being force-fed dozens of dry sweet potatoes, the sort of frustration that sits in the chest and burns.
Is this the curse of a romance fantasy?
They looked exactly alike no matter how you looked, and the man who was the father couldn't recognize his own daughter. A cliché so common it barely deserved the name. And what was even more stifling—
"I see. I already hold that child dear. And still I was doubting her. Whether she is my daughter by blood was never what mattered. What mattered was that I hold her dear, and I failed to know even that most basic thing…"
"……."
He was going to lose his mind.
He's drawn to her by instinct—hell, it's dripping honey—and he still won't admit she's his daughter?
No wonder people said the middle and late stretches of a romance fantasy played out like a gutter drama. It looked ready to come undone, and it absolutely would not.
…Fine. I've done everything I can.
He decided not to meddle any further. He had already gone past overstepping his place and spat out insults that might well cost him his head. Open his mouth again, and this time that man really might cut it off.
"Then I'll be running along."
"…You say every rude thing you have to say, and then you leave?"
"People only understand you if you say it hard, and say it like an ass."
"Haha! I hate to admit it, but I must. The back of my head is still ringing."
"……I'm not apologizing."
"Ahaha!"
The duke laughed, pleasant as anything, and under the retainers' gazes—grown even more murderous by contrast—Lee Han looked back at them without flinching.
"You mad? Because I insulted your lord?"
"Then don't tell me I came to the wrong door. You ought to be blaming yourselves."
For a moment their eyes asked what this shameless bastard thought he was saying. Well, he was doing the classic trick of the man who farts and then throws a fit, so he understood their position. But Lee Han meant it. He genuinely thought the fault was theirs as well.
Because—
"A loyal vassal, they say, is the one who doesn't spare advice or bitter words even at the cost of his life, when his lord means to walk a wrong path. And you didn't stop your lord from running wild. You ought to be ashamed that words like these came out of the mouth of a man who has nothing to do with any of you. You pathetic lot."
"What good is it that there are hundreds of you, if you've got eyes and ears and still can't tell what's right?"
That was worse than not having them at all. The last fact Lee Han drove home.
"……."
The duke watched the knight's back as it receded. Already it was drawing endlessly away, growing small, and yet somehow it looked like an enormous back, steady beyond measure. A great mountain, unmoved even from far off.
"He's grown. And not by a small measure…"
Grown. Not merely grown stronger. Everything that made him up had grown. He had staked his life—no, he had thrown his pride and his convictions against the world with everything he had, and grown strong, and that was why the change was so startling. And the knight who had grown as a man had grown bold enough to scold him, unlike the day before, when they had faced each other.
It was, without question, a humiliating situation.
"…Strangely, I cannot bring myself to dislike him."
Even after hearing such blunt abuse, the duke was left not with displeasure but with amusement. It had been the same the first time they met. A hero who hid his own merit. That had drawn his favor; he had thought the man a rather fine knight, and now—
"……I begin to understand Lord Jenimia's feelings."
Keep close the one who does not spare bitter words, and beware the one who pours out flattery. Was that not the old counsel? He could well understand why the Marquis of Tristan had wanted this man at his side.
Even looking only at the retainers, still sunk in silence and turning over their own conduct, the knight had certainly been a great shock, and had shown them what rightness was.
The way of a knight who walked the true path.
Not merely strong. He knows how to examine his own convictions, and he has an eye for those around him. A rare man.
In an age when knights idled through politics and lusted after abstinence, did a knight like that still remain? He wanted him. As a lord, there was no one so trustworthy, and so interesting.
And then, unbidden—
"Hmm. ……Shall I take in one more son?"
Wouldn't it be amusing to keep him around?
The duke thought it might not be bad to have an adopted son as well. Words that would have made Irene Windler jump out of her skin, had she heard them…….
After Tristan, a love call from Galahad. In a certain sense, it seemed very much like a love triangle of high nobles gathered around a single knight.
"…What is this? Why do I suddenly feel so filthy?"
If the man himself ever learned of it, the tale would be past chilling, and straight into horror.