A Knight Fears People More Than Ghosts (1)
Layla Winter was a person like sunlight.
She was a little clumsy and made one mistake after another, yet she was so innocent, so warm, and so full of bright energy that those faults felt like nothing. In an older turn of phrase, it would hardly have been too much to call her a human vitamin, and even in the royal household where she worked, plenty of people were fond of her.
The royal household was a place where even the lowest servants lived for nothing but power struggles. Layla Winter alone did not so much as know the words. The maids themselves never guarded against her. It would not have been too much to call her a human capybara.
Perhaps that was why she was loved without any distinction between men and women, and why even the wariest people let the tension go out of them when they dealt with her.
As they were doing now.
"Layla! How long has it been!"
"Hehe, we saw each other not that long ago."
"That was already three months ago! Haa... the smell of sunlight, after so long..."
"Huh? Do I smell?"
"Yes. A smell that puts you wonderfully at ease."
"What kind of smell is that?"
She had been away from the royal household for a time under the name of a dispatch, and when she stopped by the Royal Castle after so long, her fellow maids welcomed her with open arms.
Was this what the warm scent of spring sunlight felt like? Or standing in a rose garden with a cool breeze moving through it? Simply being beside her softened the heart, as if one were standing in just such a place, and healed it without end.
"Layla, how long is this dispatch going to go on?"
"Nothing serious happened, did it?"
"Everything's all right?"
"Yes. Everything's all right."
"That's a relief."
"The royal household, honestly..."
There is an old saying that birds hear the words spoken by day, and mice the words spoken by night. In the royal household, it was common sense not to open one's mouth lightly.
To take what had happened there and chatter over every last detail was a blunder for which it would not have been strange to lose one's head on the spot.
Even so, the maids willingly opened their hearts to Layla.
They trusted that she would not go off somewhere and repeat their talk.
...Or perhaps they trusted her sloppy memory.
And in fact—
"Huh? When did the head maid retire? Wasn't it someone else?"
"...She didn't retire."
"That one is that one."
"Aha! So that's how it was!"
"You really haven't changed a bit..."
Her memory was still a mess. No—her head was. And the maids found their trust in her renewed.
Which was why—
"Oh, right. Listen. There's something I'm curious about."
"What?"
"What's Mordred?"
"...Layla, you are a citizen of Pendragon, aren't you?"
"??"
"How do you not know House Mordred?"
"Oh, Mordred is a house?"
"...I don't even have the words."
Should they have been shocked that she did not know Mordred, or shocked that she had not known Mordred was a house...?
Either way, the maids were past astonishment, and they showed off everything they knew to this colleague who lacked the most ordinary sense.
"When you say Mordred, you mean one of the kingdom's great noble houses."
"Its name stands high, and its history goes back a long way."
"And that isn't all. When you say Mordred..."
People have a peculiar urge to show off. It is said that great pleasure can be had not only from displaying fine jewels and fine bags, but from displaying knowledge as well.
As if to prove it, the maids poured their knowledge out without restraint and recited every part of Mordred's history, its present, and its people. They would never have done so in front of anyone else, but this was Layla, and they judged that it hardly mattered. From a certain moment on, truly secret things began leaping out of their mouths.
"My cousin is in House Mordred, and I heard the third child's kicked up another fuss this time."
"A senior I know is there, so I hear things now and then. From what I hear, the youngest daughter is bullied something awful..."
"Ah, I know that story too. A knight who was educated in our house told me something very much like it..."
Most of the royal maids were the children of nobles.
Noble society was narrow, and it was common to see straight through the private affairs of other houses—affairs no outsider could ever know.
Because of that, all sorts of information kept spilling out in detail even though Layla had not really asked, and through every bit of it she only smiled, bright as ever.
When about an hour had passed, the maids wound down the talk they had been pouring out and parted from Layla with regret, not without making sure to say that they would see her again.
"Take care!"
Layla stayed sunny with them to the very end and waved until the maids were gone.
"~♪"
Once no one else was in sight, she went at a quick little trot to the ash tree that had stood alone where the maids had been talking, and leaned against it.
Thump.
She sat down beneath the ash tree without a moment's hesitation.
Even if winter in the South was as mild as autumn, sitting so carelessly seemed unwise. And then, for her—
"Please don't sit like that, miss. The day's chilly."
A soft shift.
The ash tree spoke. No—the man who had blended into the ash tree took off his coat and held it out.
"I'm not cold, Sir Knight."
"I'm the one who minds. Use it as a cushion, at least."
"Don't do that. Let's go home. I like resting at home better!"
"...Yes. Let's go home."
With a soft thump, Lee Han turned his back as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and she climbed on without the slightest hesitation.
"Hold on tight."
"Okay!"
The moment he kicked lightly off the ground, he began to clear a wall thirty meters high in a single bound. More precisely, with a sharp tap of his foot against the air, he was walking on the sky.
"Whoa...!"
She reacted like a child, eyes sparkling, as if nothing in the world could have excited her more.
The sunset seen from a knight's back was beautiful, and seeing it from the sky made it rarer still. Layla was happy without end, and this moment was happiness.
Then—
"...I'm sorry. For asking something strange of you."
"About what?"
At his sudden apology, Layla tilted her head.
And well she might.
"When did you ever ask me for something strange, Sir Knight?"
As far as she knew, the knight had never once made a strange request.
"All I did was talk with my friends and come back."
"......"
"Hehe. Sir Knight, you're strange."
"...Is that so."
Layla only buried her face against his back, a bright smile on her lips, and his back gave a small flinch.
She felt how carefully he treated her, how preciously, and little by little her eyes drifted shut. The cool wind and a back both warm and steady gave her ease all on their own.
"...Sleep well, miss."
She had wanted to answer yes. She was already asleep.
Wearing a smiling squint full of happiness.
Lee Han looked over his team and passed a judgment he was sure of.
"Thanks to the maid, it's certain."
Slap.
The moment he snatched up one of the papers laid out like so many choices, the others swallowed groans they could not help.
"Of all the names to draw, a great house like that..."
"Is it actually certain? Not just a hunch?"
Fierce reactions poured out at once.
Natural, if anything was. This was not some other house. It was the name of a great house whose reputation stood high even in Pendragon.
"No chance it's Conrad, or Beatrice?" Simon pressed. "The rumors around them are ugly enough, aren't they?"
"Those two are nothing but ordinary dumpster-fire houses."
The two houses Simon had named were not great houses, but they were distinguished families of a sort. Lately the lords' bastards had turned up in droves, and both houses were noisy in every direction—houses, in a word, wrecked by a husband's affairs.
But a bastard born of a noble's infidelity was no particular stain among nobles. If anything, nobles who thought one bastard or so was only to be expected were everywhere.
And so—
"What we need to watch isn't a house falling to pieces. It's a place where strange things happen."
In that sense.
Tap, tap.
"Mordred meets every one of those conditions."
"........."
"No picking the stone back up. You know that one, right?"
"...Haah. First I've heard of it, but somehow I think I understand."
Simon dragged a dry hand down his face, wondering how on earth it had come to this.
Why did I ever burn with such a pathetic sense of justice...?
He regretted it to the bone.
Four days earlier, Simon had understood with precision the twins' speech, which Lee Han had not been able to follow, and had interpreted it.
"So this is what the young master and the young lady are saying," he said. "A vampire, that legendary mystery-race, is still hiding inside the Royal Capital."
"You actually understood that?"
"Visit the orphanage the guild runs often enough to play, and you pick up a trick like this. More to the point, a vampire... To think a legend like that truly exists. Astonishing."
"I'm more astonished by you. So the Hao Sect Leader's seat wasn't something you won on a bet after all. You've actually got a gift."
"Not the Hao Sect Leader. The chairman."
There had been a great deal to hear: the heretics throwing the Royal Capital into an uproar, and a vampire of legend who seemed to belong to them.
But the most shocking thing of all was that the legendary vampire was hiding inside the Royal Capital.
...Unbelievable as it was.
But.
"I suppose I'll have to believe it."
Simon had to believe. Anyone else, and he might not have, but this was none other than Lee Han.
They had not met often enough to build any real trust, yet Simon was certain this man was not the sort to spit out a lie. He had walked the road that man had walked, if only through the written word.
...And also—
"If you want out even now, say so. The deeper we dig, the more dangerous it'll get."
"......"
"It isn't just you. Your whole Guild Association could be in danger. The bastard we're fighting is that dangerous."
"...And you tell me that, and I'm supposed to walk away?"
"Huh?"
The knight was sincerely worried for them, urging them to pull out, and those words gave Simon a certainty: that if he dropped out of this, he would never again be able to stand unashamed before that knight. That their tie would end here.
And that was—
Unacceptable...!
Simon made up his mind to the gamble of his life.
"Hell. Let's fight them once and see."
"Simon?!"
"Who says a guild has to be treated like the villain forever? Sometimes we've got to be treated like heroes, too! This is all image-making!"
"...What kind of nonsense is that?"
"This kind!"
It was a decision full of resolve, and the secretary decided to follow as well, willingly(?).
For the four days after that, the guild threw its whole strength into its intelligence, and by leaning on the twin brother and sister, narrowed the likely suspects down and down...!!
"...We're screwed."
"Oh, you see it now?"
Faced with the great house that had planted itself squarely in front of them, they ended up in tears.
Regret was always too late.
"Mister, why are that big brother and big sister like that?"
"Why are they like that?"
"...They're moved."
"Moved?"
"If they're moved, why are they crying?"
"...You'll get it when you're grown."
"?"
"...It's complicated."
"......"
Lee Han said nothing more, and stroked the two children's heads.