A Lady's Heart Is Like a Reed (2)
He wasn't sure a comparison like that belonged in a medieval fantasy world, but the impression rose all on its own.
…Feels like a fox spirit's got me under a spell.
Tok. Crack. Every time bone sounded in the body that had been wearing Arno's shape, the height changed and the bones of the face rearranged themselves. A woman's frame took hold, and curves began to claim her from head to toe. It would hardly have been an exaggeration to call it a man turning into a woman in real time, and to watch it was an uncanny thing—the sort of sight that made one think that if a monster, a nine-tailed fox no less, truly existed, it would look just like this.
Her hair, too, had been white and cut short—
Fwoosh.
—or rather, it wasn't. It had spilled long enough to reach her waist.
"Haa."
A beautiful woman, young enough that one might have believed her in her twenties—no, even her teens—let out that breath, bound the heavy fall of white hair at her waist in a loose knot with a handkerchief, and let strangely bewitching red eyes gleam.
…Gulp.
A dry swallow, and no telling whose. No one could be blamed for it. Whoever they were, they could only have gone tense beneath the alien presence pouring off her.
Overwhelming everyone gathered there, she parted her lips.
"Elsa, pour me a cup of tea as well."
"……."
It was, somehow, a thoroughly deflating request.
At the Sword Duke's call, Elsa pressed her fingers hard into the furrow of her brow and sighed. Honestly…!
"I respect you more than I can say, but every time you carry on like this I feel my lifespan growing shorter, Your Grace. To play a prank of this sort…"
"Sorry, Elsa. Even so, my acting still holds up, doesn't it?"
"……."
"Don't be angry."
"…Haa!"
The woman who had demanded tea so brazenly wore a mischievous smile and dropped herself down with a thump, pointedly, right between Levi and Kunta, both of whom had frozen stiff as ice.
"Don't be so tense, dears. Do I look as if I'm about to do something wicked?"
"…Kunta wants to run away."
"I told you not to."
She patted him and stroked Kunta's head, and each time that huge body flinched like prey caught in a predator's grip.
At least—
"Th-then Lord Arno is…"
Levi alone kept a cool head and asked where the real Arno was. Perhaps that composure pleased her; the woman smiled brightly.
"Our grandson ought to be fast asleep in the underground training hall about now. He'll wake before long."
"……."
"Don't look at me like that. I only sparred with him, partly to see how much his skill had grown. When I said I'd be his opponent, our grandson came at me happily, so I used a little of my strength. …And then I knocked the boy out by accident. I wasn't sure what to do about it, so for a little while I simply 'disguised' myself as our grandson."
"And you expect me to believe that?"
"It's the truth, Iliad. If you need to confirm it, ask him when he wakes."
"……."
"…Still, I'll grant the prank went too far. So don't glare at me so. You'll hurt your mother's feelings."
"Haa!!"
For the first time, good-natured Iliad could not swallow his anger, and she seemed to accept her mistake with something like humility. She did not apologize, and she did not bow her head, but there was likely no one in the present kingdom who could demand an apology from theSword Duke. Even this much was achievement enough.
And so—
"…Sir Turtle, allow me to apologize in my mother's stead. To think she would do a thing like this."
"It doesn't bother me, so please don't trouble yourself."
More than anything—
…I already know perfectly well that Aura Users, as a breed, are eccentrics.
Lee Han swallowed the rest of that remark. Say a thing like that in front of the person in question, and there was no telling what kind of beating he'd catch. Honestly.
Sure enough.
"So, child. How in the world did you know I was in 'disguise'?"
"A transformation, you mean—not a disguise?"
"Iliad, save the scolding for later."
She kept to her own pace, as ever, and the man she had questioned scratched at his cheek.
And then—
"…Well, it wasn't anything special."
He decided to humor this willful Aura User for a moment.
"At first I thought it was the wolf pup. Arno. But once we'd traded a few words, something felt off."
"Where?"
"The muscle."
"…?"
"A friend or a lover may betray you, but muscle never betrays a person. By that measure, your muscle differed from Arno's in every respect. Well, of course it did. That's a body I broke in with the interval training I drilled into him myself, and the arms, the legs, the shoulders, the back—I practically made all of it. In other words, it's my work. If I couldn't tell a difference like that, I'd have to throw away the title of instructor."
"……."
"Of course, even after I knew, I meant to pretend I didn't. I couldn't see any bad intent, and there was no smell of blood, so I took it for a prank. …But from some point on, you started throwing the strangest pressure at me. It came crashing in from every side, and I couldn't even tell who was releasing it. The cold sweat was driving me mad."
Thump. Lee Han casually drew his shirt aside and showed them cloth soaked through. Cold sweat, from holding that pressure back.
"It was scary, you know?"
He wasn't joking. He had truly been afraid. It was nearly as sharp as the killing intent poured out by a spearman of the Heaven-Slaying Star—like being stung by wasps hundreds of times a second. Pressure enough to drop even mercenaries and knights who were called elite.
And that, for roughly—
"I held out about thirty minutes and figured I was done for. So I asked. Told you to cut it out."
Lee Han gave a light shrug. The tone looked easy, but his eyes were bleak.
In short—
"…Those eyes aren't the least bit kind."
"You've been entertaining a guest like this. I don't see why I ought to be in a good mood."
"……."
Which was to say that Lee Han was one step short of genuinely losing his temper.
"No, let me correct that. What was I expecting from an Aura User? Wanting decent treatment was the crime."
Clack.
"Hmm…."
Lee Han set the dagger he had received from Baltar on the table.
And with that—
"Let's go. The home visit's over."
"Master?"
"Want to stay and play a little longer?"
"…No. I'll go with you."
Like thread following a needle, Levi made ready to leave at Lee Han's side, as if she had no intention of remaining anywhere he did not want to be.
"Sir Turtle…."
"My lord, next time let's meet somewhere else."
"…Very well."
Iliad looked as if he understood none of what had passed, and for that reason Lee Han bore him no grudge. He rather liked the man, personally, so when he proposed they meet again, Iliad nodded as though he understood how Lee Han felt.
"……."
At some point the matter settled and the air went slack, and through it all she kept her silence, as if she were studying him. Only when Lee Han truly moved to leave—
"……I'm sorry."
"?"
"I know I played a mean prank. Even so, won't you give me a chance to apologize?"
"……."
"Of course I don't mean to apologize with words alone. Well…. Will you accept it?"
"…Hmm."
Lee Han looked at her—at Felicia—with curious eyes. He had never expected the day he would hear an apology out of an Aura User. It was a thing as unlikely as receiving, from someone in power, a sincere I'm sorry for acting like a political moron.
"…First, let's make sure the wolf pup is safe."
For the record, Lee Han was the sort of man who believed that anyone actually apologizing deserved a chance.
Click.
"If I may offer an excuse first, I wasn't exactly loosing pressure at you. Anyone else might have felt something a little strange, but they wouldn't have reacted as sharply as you did. Your senses are dozens of times keener than a passable knight's, so perhaps you felt my 'observation' as a threat."
"That was observation?"
"Baltar sent you, so I grew a little interested. I think I understand, more or less, why he sent you."
Felicia set down the dagger she had been turning over in her hands.
"Mm. There's no mistake. This is one of the daggers I scattered long ago. With it, you may ask one favor of me. Any favor at all."
"…A favor?"
"Long ago, in the days when I was weak, I received help from a great many people. And this dagger is one I gave out then. I gave one each to those whose lives I owed. There were about ten, and nine of them have already come back to me. Now the last has returned."
"……."
"D-don't glare at me like that. I apologized, didn't I…."
"I haven't said a word."
"You were looking at me as if to say, 'You threatened the person who brought you something that precious, and played a prank on him besides'…."
"And you knew that, and still…."
"…I said I was sorry."
Thoroughly deflated, Felicia fidgeted with her hands and apologized all over again.
"Give me a break…."
This was an Aura User?
…No—she's ninety at the very least. Why are her moods swinging like this?
As Lee Han understood it, Felicia was a knight older than Baltar. And yet, in speech and in action alike, her emotions swung like a teenager's. Was the youth only skin-deep?
"…Sir Turtle, allow me to apologize once more. She wasn't like this in the past. She had to go and change…."
"She changes?"
Apologizing again, Iliad turned a complicated look on Felicia. Less a son looking at his mother than a man looking at a thoughtless daughter. Lee Han wondered why he would look at her that way—and the next words left him no choice but to understand.
"…Nine years ago, my mother conducted a certain experiment."
"An experiment?"
"An experiment in spreading Aura—that is, her own life force—into every last cell. She kept it secret even from the family and performed it upon her own body, and in the course of that experiment, Mother… grew young."
"…?"
"Haa…."
When Lee Han's face said, for a moment, that he did not understand, Iliad pinched the bridge of his own nose. Even having explained it, he had no word fit to define this uncanny phenomenon. So, for Lee Han's sake, he had no choice but to describe at length what he himself had seen.
"…She grew young. Literally. Mother had always looked younger than her years, but the experiment turned her into a child of ten. And that was not all. As if to prove it was no mere imitation of youth, she has been aging, little by little, ever since. In other words, she was truly restored to youth."
"……."
"…It has been very hard. She is plainly past ninety, and yet her behavior and her mental age both seem to have gone back to her teens. Her moods swing wildly, her pranks are severe, and what a preposterous business it all is…."
"…Ah."
"Sir Turtle?"
"Ah, no. It's nothing…."
"??"
"……."
Lee Han was a little dumbfounded. And well he might be, for he knew exactly what that phenomenon was called. Said to have first appeared in the Biographies of the Immortals, a book of the Western or Eastern Jin, and to take its name from eight venerable lords who did not merely grow young but returned all the way to the form of children, the name of that phenomenon was—!
…Lee Han was beginning, quite seriously, to suspect that this world might be Investiture of the Gods or Journey to the West, merely wearing the mask of a romance fantasy.