Irene Windler Is the Neighbor Next Door (3)
"Stay for dinner before you go, Cadet Irene."
"Pardon?"
"It's late. I'd feel bad packing you off like this. And you did bring me something."
"I-I only prepared it because I wanted to..."
"People have feelings. Sending you home like this won't do. Miss Maid."
"Yes, sir!"
"Warm some beef stew and bread, if you would."
"Leave it to me!"
"...Don't put your back into it. Please. Slowly."
"...?"
"I-I'll help."
Irene was quick to read a room. She went straight to Layla, ready to help with the preparations, and Lee Han let a flicker of satisfaction cross his face as he started taking down the two hand axes hung on the wall.
"I'll split a little wood while that heats. Cadet Irene, look after the maid."
"Y-yes!"
Somehow the whole evening was being hustled along before anyone had quite agreed to it. Irene had been cornered into dinner she hadn't meant to accept, and yet, privately, she was glad she wouldn't be eating alone. A ghost chattered inside her without pause, but a ghost had no warmth.
Is he a considerate man?
She watched his back as he went out the door, and hope stirred in her—that he might, contrary to the look of him, be a careful man, the sort who looked after others.
Her hopes and the man himself were two different things.
The hinge creaked.
"......"
There was no warmth on the face that stepped through the door. Only a bleak, barren cold.
Around the quiet cabin the scene was so still it might have been a fairy tale told from one mouth to another. Inside that peace Lee Han felt the wrongness without mercy, and he walked forward with a hand axe settling into each fist.
"Come out."
Nothing answered.
"For the record, I only warn a man twice."
His eyes rolled, whites showing, and his presence drew tight.
A breath of air. Then they showed themselves: a suspicious company in black, more than thirty by the look of them. Lee Han's face did not ease in the slightest.
"Calm yourself. We did not come to threaten you."
The one whose presence stood furthest above the rest offered the excuse. Lee Han was not interested.
"Ha. You didn't come to threaten anyone, and you're pouring out killing intent like that?"
"......"
"Anyone with eyes can see you're a dangerous lot."
An excuse had to sound like something before a man believed it. Ask to be trusted while you reek of blood, and who in the world would trust you?
Even so.
"That goes for you as well."
"What?"
"If we are speaking of danger, you are no small matter yourself, commoner. With the likes of you beside the young lady, how are we meant to be calm?"
"...Ha. Look at this bastard."
The thief crying thief. The fellow had the gall to stand there as if he were in the right, and Lee Han's head went cold the other way. His heart, meanwhile, beat hard.
Thump.
"This won't do. I might let the others pass. You, I'm hitting."
"Nonsense."
Lee Han flung the axes to the ground and closed on the black-clad man he liked least. The man came to meet him.
"Let's try not to kill each other."
Whether the offer suited him, he passed the sword he had brought to another of his company and stepped in as he was.
The next instant a dull blow landed, and then a crash. Without another word, the two men started punching each other.
A fistfight, sprung out of nowhere, had begun.
Lee Han's fists were strong. His body was strong. A troll factor alone made his strength a thing apart from ordinary men, and he had hammered that already monstrous body without rest until flesh and bone, by themselves, could pound a knight flat. The vice-captain of House Follet's knight order, beaten down by him the day before, was proof enough. Once a matter went to fists, there were precious few who could beat Lee Han. Bare hands were not how you were meant to fight him at all.
And yet the blows kept landing—heavy, heavier, a boom, a shock that drove into the earth. It was a fight. It was more than a fight.
Something cracked.
"...I'll grant you're sharp."
"Thought I only knew how to run my mouth?"
"Likely not."
Another impact, and Lee Han was giving ground. He had never lost a fight of bodies. In this moment, he was losing it. The black-clad man's fists were quick and finished, the hands of someone who had properly learned to fight. Most of that breed called knights poured everything into weapons, so the skill was strange—but neither of them had any attention to spare for that.
They wouldn't have. Their only interest was forcing the other to yield.
Fist met fist. For an instant there was the sound of bone breaking, but it was not their bone. It was the stones under their feet. Lee Han snapped out jabs like a boxer, one after another, and the sound of them was nothing ordinary: six trajectories in a single flurry, and a graze alone would split skin. The man in black slipped and struck every one of them aside, then drove into his guard and kicked the calf. The power might have been wanting. The edge was not. It bit for bone.
Now and then you met a man like that. Some put weight into a blow. Some put a sword into it. His whole body was no razor, and still, the more you allowed the hits, the redder your hide became. Lee Han's own blows were no kinder. If the other man's strike carried a blade, his was a hammer.
The impact boomed through the yard.
"...Very well. I acknowledge it, commoner. I cannot speak for the rest, but your fists are sharp enough."
Lee Han's blow took him in the gut, and fresh blood ran from the corner of the black-clad man's mouth. It was a hit that should have churned his insides to ruin. Collapsing on the spot would not have been strange. Strangely, he was fine. Lee Han's brow twitched.
"Not feeling like falling down just yet?"
"Your mouth is still at work."
No long speech was required. The blows came again, and each time both of them threw defense aside and simply took the other's fist and foot head-on, or smashed it away. A contest of pride. He could not have said when it had curdled into that, but the fight had become nothing but attack: you hit, and you are hit, and you drive in more than you took. Two men who would not fall behind anyone alive when it came to striking, and every time a blow raked the yard the air tore and something broke. Trees were punched through. Rock crumbled like tofu. Whatever lay scattered around them split in half.
"......"
"......"
It had to hurt. Neither of them screamed. They hit, and they hit again, and somewhere in the middle more than striking began to mix into it.
A rush of air, and then catch-style wrestling—joint locks and chokes wound together, the sort of wrestling people called gentlemanly, all dignity and manners. What the man in black unfolded was not gentlemanly in the least. It threatened like a snake taking a body in its coils.
This bastard was a grappler?
The completeness of it chilled him to the marrow. Lee Han admitted it. The man had spent a lifetime on a training that did not fall short of his own body, or else he had been born with mad talent and a mad frame. Set aside an outlier like Baltar, and he was stronger than anyone Lee Han had met.
And that was the problem.
...Shit. Why is this fun?
He was getting excited because the situation, purely and simply, was enjoyable. He was not the sort of deviant who rejoiced at meeting a strong man. Even so, the enjoyment loosened his reins.
What kind of man is that?
Someone is fighting Sir Lark head-on...?
...Unbelievable.
The other black-clad men, watching the duel, let out soundless cries of shock. Who was Sir Lark? A monster who had stood out in the training halls from childhood, whose skill had at last been recognized even by the Duke of Galahad as absurd. For that he had been granted the name given only to the greatest knight of House Galahad: Lark. Lake. And that Lark was being pushed by a knight whose name no one knew.
They were fighting well. Why call it being pushed? Because Sir Lark had begun to use his technique. Grappling. It was the method he brought out when his stamina started to fail in a bout with the knight-order captain, or with the liege they revered, the Duke of Galahad. So the men in black decided it was over. They knew how complete those techniques were, and how vicious.
And yet.
"...That madman?"
They were shocked again. The blows that had matched Lark were one thing. This was another.
Bone ground on bone.
"He got up from that? ...On strength alone?"
With the hold already on him, the knight called Lee Han rose. Arm and shoulder could have broken together. His neck was being choked. He endured it and stood, and the sound of breaking came out of his arm and shoulder as he did.
"...A madman."
"It'll mend once some time passes."
"Shall I test that?"
"Go ahead."
The grinding grew worse. Lee Han only clamped down harder, wedging the man's body into the hold so he could not slip free. Not at all.
"Don't let go. I'll finish you like this."
"Try."
Neither Lee Han nor Lark had the smallest intention of losing. Their momentum climbed. Yield the flesh; take the bone. Even with his throat closed and his shoulder coming apart, Lee Han set himself to smash the man down, and Lark poured his strength the other way, trying to break that shoulder outright—then faltered, thrown, when it refused to break any further.
The pride of two men bent on a killing conclusion was one breath from its end.
"......"
"......"
A third party who could not be refused ordered them to set their pride down.
"...If this bastard lets go first, then whatever."
"If the commoner admits defeat, I will desist."
"......"
"......"
A crack. A heavy thud.
"...You're not letting go?"
"Look who's talking."
In the end they did not listen, and blood was drawn again. Even then, whatever that damned pride of theirs was, the two men would not end it. The one watching them sighed.
Unlike the man written down in the papers Lee Han had read, this one looked sane—a normal man, the madness somewhat gone from him. The master of Galahad in this age. Blake Vivian de Galahad let the sigh fall deep. Two young men who would not be stopped. Looking at them, his head seemed to ache.