Divorce (9)
“…And so, the funerals for all the soldiers who fell in battle have been completed.”
Commander Hayden regarded Second Lieutenant Platon, who stood delivering his report, with a long, silent stare.
Most men would have tensed under a commander’s wordless scrutiny. Platon merely met his gaze with clear, bright eyes that seemed to ask whether there was anything further to discuss.
I can see why Haydam wants him as adjutant.
The commander had tossed the entire funeral duty for the fallen of the recent campaign onto Platon the moment the boy was commissioned, half as a test. Platon had finished it without a single ripple of complaint or error. No doubt he had watched his father Anton handle military affairs for years and was more familiar with the army’s workings than anyone his age had a right to be.
He is capable, no question… but still.
Capability aside, the simple fact that he was Anton’s son continued to sit uncomfortably with the commander. No matter how oddly screwed-together the boy might be, when the critical moment came he would choose his father. And Haydam could not possibly have asked for him as adjutant without knowing that.
What was Haydam thinking, making Platon his adjutant and even dragging the already-retired Anton into the Max affair?
That Anton had willingly played along with Haydam’s little performance had been surprising, yet the commander had simply assumed Haydam—being a regressor—knew some weakness of Anton’s that even Anton himself was unaware of. That much had not seemed strange.
Then lightning had struck Yosef.
After that, the conviction that Haydam possessed something beyond mere regression began to take root with alarming force. The cat that had suddenly started trailing after Haydam, and the young girl who had arrived from another zone, could not be ignored either.
The girl did not seem ordinary… yet she is still different from Haydam.
The girl from the Love Area gave the impression of someone who was not quite human. Haydam, on the other hand, felt so far outside the bounds of humanity that the commander sometimes found it hard to believe the boy was his own son.
And that near-inhuman son of his had lately thrown himself with single-minded zeal into divorcing Daphne from him.
He is my son, yet I cannot begin to guess what he is thinking.
The way he had handled the Max business alone proved he was a long way from anything resembling justice. There was no chance Haydam would try to force a divorce between Daphne and himself for no better reason than “she looks pitiful.”
While the commander’s thoughts wandered, he noticed Platon still standing patiently in front of him and asked,
“Did you also help spread the rumor that I am going to divorce?”
Bones or Lucas would have flustered and scrambled for denials. Platon’s answer was clean.
“Yes.”
“…”
The commander narrowed his remaining eye and regarded Platon a moment longer before continuing.
“Then do you also believe I ought to divorce?”
“No, sir.”
“You don’t?”
The unexpected reply prompted another question.
“Then why are you helping the effort to make me divorce?”
“Because Lord Haydam desires it.”
“Would you kill even your own father if Haydam asked it of you?”
“…”
It was a question that should have provoked at least a flicker of anger, yet Platon answered without the slightest disturbance.
“If Lord Haydam wished to kill my father, he would not need to borrow my hands.”
“As a soldier that answer is a complete failure. You know that, I assume?”
“I am sorry, sir.”
“As an adjutant, though… I am less certain.”
A spark of interest stirred. The commander asked one more question.
“Come to think of it, you were close to Daphne as well, were you not? I recall the two of you were like siblings.”
“Yes, sir. Though I have not seen her for some time, she has always been like an older sister to me.”
“In your eyes, would your sister and Meursault suit each other?”
That question finally gave Platon pause. After a brief hesitation he asked carefully,
“Why do you ask me that, sir?”
“You already know. After Haydam divorces me from Daphne, into whose hands he intends to place her.”
“Ah…”
Platon’s face lit with sudden understanding.
“So Your Excellency did not know.”
“…Know what?”
“It is nothing. I do not believe it is my place to interfere.”
Commander Hayden’s brow furrowed slightly.
“…Meursault.”
“I am Platon, sir.”
“Where has Meursault gone?”
Only then did a sense of wrongness settle over the commander. He began looking for Meursault in earnest.
“Why are you the one delivering this report? It should have been Meursault’s duty.”
“I was told it would be fine if I reported in person.”
“Who told you that?”
“Director Meursault…”
“Meursault?”
The commander’s expression was turning dangerous when a soldier burst into the office. It was a face the commander knew—one of the guards assigned to Daphne’s residence.
The moment he saw that face, the commander knew with absolute certainty that the absent Meursault had done something.
Sure enough, the soldier approached with an expression that said he had no idea how to phrase what he was about to report.
“Y-Your Excellency… Director Meursault…”
“Director Meursault?”
“He is… with Lady Daphne…”
Hayden’s brow immediately tightened.
“I distinctly ordered that Daphne was refusing all visitors. Did he go to her anyway?”
“I-It isn’t that he simply went…”
At the words “it isn’t that he simply went,” one of the commander’s eyebrows climbed high. The soldier hurried to add,
“He is proposing to her right now.”
“…What?”
“He is proposing in front of Lady Daphne’s residence as we speak. I saw it with my own eyes—he is down on one knee inside a heart made of candles.”
For a moment the commander was so stunned he forgot to close his mouth.
“I… shall take my leave.”
Even Platon, who normally paid no attention to the atmosphere around him, seemed to grasp by pure instinct that this was the moment to disappear. He slipped out of the office before the commander could recover his wits.
When Hayden finally regained his senses a long while later, the first words out of his mouth were:
“Haydam… that brat has done it again.”
“That lunatic!!”
Daphne’s butler spat the curse while staring out the window at Meursault. Rain had begun to fall a short while earlier, thoroughly soaking both Meursault and the heart of candles he had arranged. The sight was pitiful in the extreme, yet Meursault himself had not moved a muscle from his one-kneed pose.
“Does that man care nothing for Lady Daphne’s honor?! It is raining and still he will not leave at a reasonable hour…!”
The butler muttered that an early rain in spring was an ill omen no matter how one looked at it. Daphne, who could not even bring herself to look out the window, sat at the tea table with a troubled face and sighed. I sat opposite her, calmly sipping black tea.
Apparently finding my composure unbearable, the butler stopped cursing at the window and clung to me instead.
“Lord Haydam! This is no time to sit there leisurely drinking tea! Please take that man away at once…!”
I set my cup gently back on the saucer.
“Very well.”
“Lord Haydam!”
His face brightened at my apparent agreement, only to darken again at the words that followed.
“If Lady Daphne wishes it.”
“Wh-what?”
“Lady Daphne, what would you like me to do? Shall I send Meursault away?”
“…”
Daphne bit her lip and glared at me with pure resentment.
“Haydam… why are you doing this to me?”
“I am simply fulfilling a promise. You wanted a divorce from my father, did you not?”
At my matter-of-fact reply the butler exploded.
“What kind of slander is that?! Divorce?! Lady Daphne would never have wanted such a thing!”
The butler was furious, yet Daphne spoke as if his words had not even reached her ears.
“The order… is wrong.”
“L-Lady Daphne?”
Saying the order was wrong amounted to an admission that she had, in fact, wanted the divorce as Haydam claimed. The butler stared at her in considerable shock. When Shin Eun-jo and I had visited earlier she had been quick to play dumb, but the sudden appearance of Meursault’s proposal seemed to have shattered her composure completely.
“I have not yet divorced Hayden. And yet he proposes out of nowhere like this…!”
As though she had forgotten she was still supposed to be playing the part of the proper lady, Daphne pressed a hand to her forehead and cried out passionately.
“If something happens to Meursault…! If Hayden decides to punish him, then what…?!”
Instead of ordering Meursault driven off, she was defending him. The butler’s mouth fell open in horror, but I felt only relief. Had Daphne, even at this moment, thought first of her own safety, I would have simply taken Meursault and left.
“L-Lady Daphne, what in the world are you saying…!”
“Butler.”
I addressed him with what I considered a measure of consideration.
“If you do not feel equal to handling what is about to take place here, you may leave. I give you my word that no harm will come to you.”
“I… that is…”
The butler looked between Daphne and me, torn, then withdrew with an expression of deep apology he could not quite hide.
Daphne gave a short, hollow laugh and fixed me with eyes full of accusation.
“So you did not come here to help me after all.”
“Oh?”
“You came for revenge. From the very beginning.”
I could not help a quiet snort of laughter.
“Why would I seek revenge against you, Lady Daphne?”
“Because of what I did to Luna Moon… No—if this is not revenge, then what is it?! You forced Anton, who had even prepared a portrait for you, into retirement on the spot, and you pinned an outrageous false charge on Max…!”
Common sense said that a ten-year-old—no, he was eleven now?—could not possibly have masterminded Anton’s retirement or Max’s framing. Surviving more than a decade in this apocalyptic world as an otome-game transmigrator apparently required more than pure luck.
Still, assuming I had done all of it purely to take revenge on her felt like a mild case of main-character syndrome. Then again, as the player of the original otome game she had been the center of this world, so perhaps it was only natural.
While I entertained those idle thoughts, Daphne’s voice, which had risen for a moment, dropped again; she was clearly worried it might carry through the window.
“You are the one who made Meursault propose to me while I am still married, are you not? Or will you claim that Meursault is out there in this rain proposing of his own free will? The Meursault I know would never do such a thing. He is not a man who does anything so reckless…!”
I waited until she had finished, then opened my mouth.
“First of all… yes, I am the one who advised Meursault to propose.”
“Haydam!”
“I told him it was necessary to secure your divorce, and he agreed without hesitation.”
Daphne was breathing hard, unable to hide her anger.
“Did it really have to go this far? Standing that knife of a man in the middle of a tacky heart of candles?”
“Sorry, but the candle heart is Meursault’s own taste.”
“…”
I had been just as startled when I arrived and saw it myself. If roses had been common in this era, that man might well have prepared a million of them.
“There was an easier way, you know. A peaceful solution that would not have caused any of this commotion.”
Daphne’s brows drew together in incomprehension.
“Then why on earth create this scene…!”
“Because it pissed me off.”
“Wh-what?”
I propped my chin on my hand and gave her a bright little smile.
“You and Meursault both. Sitting around waiting for someone else to divorce you—that was what pissed me off.”