The Knight Holds an Interview (8)

Lee Han brought Levi home. He could have taken her somewhere else, but his own ground was the safest place he had.

And the greatest reason he had brought her was this.

"Have some black tea while you talk!"

"Th-thank you, miss."

"Don't mention it! Make yourself at home!!"

"...All right."

"Hehe."

Layla Winter — a maid who put the life back into anyone who looked at her. Lee Han had judged that her presence alone would be enough to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠let a little ease settle in Levi's heart.

Layla gave off that peculiar human-vitamin brightness of hers and backed away in a cheerful little scramble. Even as she retreated she mouthed You can do it, Sir Knight! and threw in a wink.

Pouring out positive energy like that was a talent even an Aura User could not have copied.

Sure enough—

"M-Miss Layla is amazing. Every time I see her she's so bright, and it's like she can read what people are feeling."

"You're rating her too high. My assessment is that the maid simply doesn't think, and stays sunny because of it."

"That's... th-that might be..."

Levi took in Layla's brightness the way a leaf takes in light, and the color came back into her. It was nothing if not a good sign.

Well.

"Aigoo!"

...There were sides of it she really ought not to absorb.

Still backing up, Layla finally went down with a yelp, and a crash followed as one of the tables Lee Han had lately been making for a hobby came apart. Anyone else might have worried for the girl before the furniture, but Lee Han was not particularly concerned.

"Wh-what do I do?! S-Sir Knight! It's broken, waah..."

"It's hardly a new occurrence. Please just leave it. You aren't hurt?"

"...?"

"...Built like that, she doesn't even notice she might have been hurt."

"Ehehe."

"...Just go on being healthy, the way you always are. These days, that alone is enough for me."

"Hehe, okaaay!"

Lee Han offered the familiar, deadpan concern, and the maid beamed like a golden retriever wagging its tail. The girl watching them let a laugh slip.

Pfft.

"......"

"I-I'm sorry! I didn't mean to laugh, it just—"

"No. It looks good on you. Laugh. If you don't laugh when you want to, you'll make yourself sick."

"Th-that's..."

"You done crying?"

"!!?"

"Haha. You're fun to tease."

"Y-you're too much..."

Levi's face went red, her voice shrinking almost to nothing, and Lee Han kept urging her to laugh. Freely, if she would.

There's some life in her now.

People really did need to cry their fill when things were hard. That was how you kept the sickness from settling in the chest.

Thank god.

Relief came with it. When he had first found her, the girl had worn a face on the verge of tears — no, a face on the verge of death. Watching her, the pity and the ache had been so sharp he could not have left her alone. He had been afraid she might make some choice she could not walk back from. Her condition today had been that serious.

I can't send her off like this.

In his previous life, among the worst memories of his years as an NCO, suicide attempts ranked near the top. Group bullying among the soldiers, or beatings. The depression that set in when someone could not adapt to the unit. The hollow of having two years of freedom taken away. Stress piled past the limit for all sorts of reasons, and plenty of them reached for the most extreme option.

For a time, Lee Han had been the one assigned to look after people like that. It had been another duty dumped on him without much fairness, but it was the first job the army forced on him that he took up with real heat. He had not wanted to watch people die in front of him. He had wanted them to hold on a little longer and make it back out into the world. Thanks to that, incidents of the kind had grown somewhat rarer in the unit under his charge.

...And now.

Mental care, after all this time.

There was a girl showing symptoms that were unusually severe. She was on a knife's edge — like a candle that might go out at any moment. And he did not want to watch a student he cherished give up on everything, powerless, and leave it at that.

"Levi."

"Yes? Ah — yes!"

"What are you so startled for?"

"I-it's just... it feels rare for you to call me by my name, Master..."

"Too awkward, is it? Then I'll call you Bear-Girl."

"Y-you can just call me Levi..."

"Yeah? Then I'll call you whatever comes easy."

"Yes..."

Maybe it was because he so rarely said her name straight, and was gentle about it besides. Levi's answer carried her fluster, and she flushed as if shy. It probably was not only the name. It was the first time anyone had called her by it from this close, and that itself embarrassed her.

A rare, genuinely pure child. In the plain sense of the word: an adult only by the count of her years, and still a girl, with innocence clinging to her.

...Put the other way, that was exactly why she was fragile. Not yet grown. Still in that unsteady state where the world ought to have been protecting her — a glass that might crack at any time. So Lee Han came closer carefully, and with a will that did not waver.

"From here on, if what I say is hard to answer, you can just say yes or no. A small nod is fine too. I'll read it well enough on my own."

"N-no, you don't have to—"

"Is leaving what you actually want? Or is someone trying to force you to withdraw?"

"!!!"

"See? Already too hard to answer."

"......"

"Fine. You don't even have to nod. Just listen."

Lee Han wet his throat with the black tea Layla had brought out, as if he meant to start talking in earnest.

"I can't claim to know everything about you. But I know this one thing. You're not the kind of kid who throws away her learning for no reason."

"......"

"I know there's a circumstance. I know that leaving the Academy is a conclusion you worried over alone until you were sick with it. But listen. Enduring a pain you can't endure, all by yourself, is nothing but torturing yourself. You need to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠understand that."

"...I, I..."

"I'll say it again. If speaking is too hard, you don't have to. I only want to know what you really feel, because it looks like you're suffering alone."

"......"

"Still, one piece of advice from someone who's lived a little further down the road: sometimes, just telling another person is enough to be a comfort."

"...Master, you—"

"Hm?"

"...You're strangely eloquent. It doesn't suit you."

"...Is that a compliment?"

"Yes."

Nothing could have been more so.

Even a few generations back, House Fault had been a family that produced many knights of high renown. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Regrettably, in the war with Britannia decades ago, the knights had died — among them the head from two generations prior — and most of the Fighting Art and the swordsmanship had been lost with them.

It was the flaw of a method that was never set down in records, but passed on only by word of mouth, in the old way. Because of it, the knightly line was as good as severed. And so House Fault fell into a state where even calling itself a house of knights was embarrassing.

A knight's house must prove itself by force and by honor. Having lost that force, how could it still claim the name? If not for the title of hero of the war, and even a small estate, House Fault would not have survived as a house at all.

With what honor and rank remained, the previous head of House Fault made his declaration.

"We will rise again! I will make it so!!"

He was said to have done everything he could to reclaim the honor of a great knightly house. ...Never realizing it was a truly futile effort, one that refused to look at reality.

Suppose, though, that House Fault had admitted the truth. Suppose it had admitted that, as a house of knights, it was finished. Another road might have opened. Civil office, or some other path — worse than their days as knights, perhaps, but they might have lived a stable life.

But.

"A Fighting Art is a secret art, refined across generations before it comes down, and swordsmanship is a treasure passed from the distant past, embodied in the swordsmen's bodies in the most ideal form. And he meant to restore a secret and a treasure like those? If Grandfather had been a genius like young master Roen, perhaps. But Grandfather's talent was ordinary. And with ordinary talent, you can never restore a Fighting Art or a sword art."

He had scraped together every coin the house had and every coin it did not, trying to restore the family's Fighting Art and its swordsmanship, and the work had been anything but easy. Even working ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠from what records remained, there was no one to consult. How could it have been easy?

In the end—

"—they went bankrupt."

Yes. House Fault went bankrupt. Once a viscount's house, it sold even its title, and remained a noble in honor alone, having barely kept its name upon the Noble Register. The fortune was gone. They clung to the mother's family and lived in a small house. It would have been fair to say that, as nobles, they were past any hope of rising again.

"Th-this can't be. This can't—!"

Unable to believe reality — no, able only to prove his own incompetence — the grandfather aged at a terrible speed and left the world.

...And at that point, calling it despair would not have been too much. The proper next step would have been to accept reality and return the noble rank.

But people are like that. They think they will be different. They think they are the clever ones. Most of them—

"Father failed, but I am different. I will raise this house, no matter what!"

—repeat the same mistake.

Levi's father. The current head of House Fault — a man for whom even the word head was an embarrassment — dreamed that dream. The dream of becoming a knight.

And so her father, Reynol Folt—

"It's business. Through business, first we make money!"

"Once we have money...!"

"This is it — look, Levi! They say it's a legendary knight's Fighting Art! I managed to get it for a great sum!"

...Reynol was a hopeless man. When he did business, he did not bring money home. He brought debt. He said he had secured investment, and came back stripped of his clothes. He said he had bought a Fighting Art, and it was a wretched thing, worse than third-rate...! A man to drive anyone mad. There was no other word for him.

A childish adult who did not know the world. That would be the precise sentence for judging Reynol Folt.

And once things reached that point, it was the established course, was it not?

"Pay the money, you bastard!"

"Hey, noble sir — you toying with us?"

"How long exactly are we supposed to wait?!"

When a maddening man makes a mistake, it is the family, in the end, that suffers for it. That rule held the same in any world.

"Mother collapsed a long time ago. My younger sister, at least, is fortunate enough to be in the Academy dormitory. Mother's family helped with that. But it isn't exactly a good situation."

"Why not just put yourselves entirely in their care?"

"We couldn't. Their means aren't comfortable either. And I couldn't let Father bring harm down on them."

"......"

"Haa. So—"

By this point, honestly, any normal person would have come to his senses. Didn't he have children to feed? He did not even think of earning money. If he would only have stayed still, that would have been enough.

"L-Levi, w-would you perhaps get married?"

He came asking about a match. And Levi saw it: the gold bracelet on his wrist, and the sword dressed in dazzling ornament.

"Ah."

She had been sold.

"—If I said I wasn't upset, it would be a lie. Even so, I decided to think of it positively. If gold has appeared, it means the rest of the family can live in a slightly better place now."

"......"

"And it is a good match. The marquis is rather old, yes, but this is Tristan. It isn't bad, surely. Noble young ladies are desperate to find a good match, while I..."

"......"

"I... mm. Why is it? Master, why won't the words it's all right come out of my mouth?"

He met Levi's quiet question with nothing but silence. The girl already knew the answer to it; he was sure of that, and so he deliberately gave none.

To tell her how much it hurts, having your wings broken and your ankles bound—

...would be too cruel.

"......"

Lee Han left Levi with Layla for a while and headed for the cliff in the back garden. It was a silent place, where people rarely came.

Had he come all the way out here because his chest was tight? No. Because anger was rising? That was not it either.

The reason he had come where there was no one nearby—

"Let me ask you something I've been wondering."

"—Yes."

A footfall.

—was to meet him.

The moment Lee Han cast the question into empty air, there was a rush of wind, and the gray-haired boy appeared. Lee Han had already known he was close, and Derek had already expected that if he waited here, the man would call him. He could roughly guess what the man wanted to know.

Sure enough, the question that came out was this.

"In the original, what happens to her?"

"......"

"Mm. You can pretend you don't know. I'm not pressing you for an answer. It just suddenly started to bother me."

"Haha..."

So he had given up even the will to hide it. Derek laughed under a mutter like that. But he had no complaint. He knew the things this man was curious about were thoroughly human things.

And so—

"Th-this is nothing more than me talking to myself. You have to understand that. I-I'm just muttering."

"...Right. We'll call it that."

"Ahem."

He decided to give the muttering. The spoiler.

"......"

"Sh-shall I go on?"

"Nnngh......!"

For the first time in a long while, Lee Han missed the food of his homeland. Maybe it was the burn of it hitting all at once — he wanted a bowl of dongchimi, that icy radish broth, colder and cleaner than any soda.