Remembering That Day
Ilia Weiss was a loner.
The reasons, if one cared to list them, were perfectly clear.
First, she had never been the warm, approachable sort who reached out to others on her own. Second, her station as the Grand Ducal Lady of Nordwacht made people hesitant to approach her carelessly. Third, even those few who managed to draw near eventually fled, worn down by her blank expression and blunt speech.
Of course, there was Hilda Steiner, the maid who had stayed at her side since she was five—but Ilia never thought of her as a friend. Just a slightly comfortable older sister she had known since childhood?
In any case, for a girl who had cast her emotions aside along with her mother, making friends was an extraordinarily difficult thing.
Maybe I'll spend my whole life swinging a sword without a single friend.
That was what young Ilia had thought.
Then came the year she turned ten. Even when she heard that Roen, the young master of House Kraus—second to none in swordsmanship throughout the northern Empire—would be staying at the Grand Duke's Castle for a month, she felt no particular stir of interest.
A promising young knight her own age did pique her curiosity, of course. But that was all.
I just hope he sits quietly for a month without causing any trouble and then leaves. It's not like that young master is going to become my friend anyway.
Ilia had sneered to herself.
What she failed to anticipate was that Roen would approach her so freely. That he would be the first to take her hand—a hand no one else had ever thought to grasp.
In truth, the Roen of those days had been completely obsessed with getting close to Ilia. He treated the visit as a golden opportunity, and if he wanted free rein among the Grand Ducal family's sword techniques and library, befriending her was the first priority. It was a rather mercenary motive, but Ilia had no way of knowing that.
And even if she had glimpsed those sly intentions, would anything have changed? She was already being drawn to the boy who had been the first to plant a warmth called friendship in her heart. That unfamiliar fluttering in her chest simply would not go away.
"Hey, Roen."
"Hm? What is it, Ilia?"
"What… is love?"
"—Cough!"
It was the day before Roen was to leave the Grand Duke's Castle. Walking the nearby forest path with Ilia trailing after him, he had been hit with that question out of nowhere.
No doubt it had come from the chivalric romance she had been reading in the study earlier—a tender tale of a knight who, after a long adventure, finally returned home and reunited with his beloved.
But Ilia did not understand it. Living alongside Roen, she had thought she had recovered most of her feelings—yet love alone still eluded her. More precisely, the love between a man and a woman. She was also simply too young to learn it.
And Roen was no better off. Across both his previous life and this one, he had never once been in a relationship. It was a thoroughly awkward question. Ears flushing red, he glanced around desperately, hoping to divert her attention. What he found was a flower.
"Ah! Look, Ilia! A flower!"
"A flower? Really?"
Flowers were rare in the North. With snow falling nearly every day, how could they bloom well? Even if a bud managed to push through by some stroke of luck, simply not withering away was already a miracle.
But every so often, a flower defied reason—like the one flowering before them now. Its rarity, and those pure white petals rising so beautifully toward the sky, were more than enough to steal Ilia's gaze.
"It's a pretty flower."
"Yeah. Like you."
"Huh—me?"
Roen had a habit of tossing out shameless compliments like "pretty" and "beautiful" to the girl in front of him at every opportunity. He had uncritically believed some anonymous internet post from before his possession that claimed, Women always love it when you praise their looks.
It was the sort of line that could easily backfire—but his mother, his older sister, his younger sister, and even Hilda had all blushed and lit up every time he said it, so the wretched habit showed no sign of dying. And now he had done it to Ilia, too. He plucked the flower and held it out to her.
"Here. A gift."
"A gift…?"
"Yeah. I'm going home tomorrow. Look at this and think of me, at least."
Meeting her eyes, Roen smiled. In that instant, something sharp and bright lanced through Ilia's chest. And she thought: this moment matched the scene from that chivalric romance far too perfectly. The knight offering a flower, asking her to keep it until he returned if she truly loved him. The heroine, shyly smiling as she accepted it.
Had the girl in the novel felt the same way she did now? Had her heart also pounded as if it might burst? Then the feeling she was experiencing now was, without a doubt, love.
"Thank you, Roen."
Taking the flower with trembling hands, Ilia was certain. The boy who had plucked this precious flower and pressed it into her palm must love her too. A child's characteristic leap of logic had struck again.
"I'll keep it safe forever."
With that vow, Ilia smiled at him for the first time—bright and open.
"Uh, yeah…!"
Faced with that warm, sunlit smile he had never seen before, Roen's heart dropped clean through his chest, and he answered without thinking. It was the day Roen lost a friend, and Ilia found love.
Ilia did not try to stop Roen from leaving. She believed, with absolute certainty, that he would soon return to her side. Instead, she acquired a hobby: once a day, in the study, she would look at the flower set in its glass bottle and write three words in a book—I like you.
Looking at the flower brought back Roen's smiling face. Writing those words revived the feelings of that day. She would wait. Until Roen came back. And when they met again, she would return the flower to him and confess. That she liked him. That she had waited a long time. Just like the final scene of a chivalric romance. Young Ilia carved that resolve into the pages of her book.
And then, without any consideration for her at all, nine long years slipped past.
From that day on, Roen never so much as showed his face. The flower, no longer in a glass bottle but carefully pressed between the pages of the book, had already faded to sepia, and the book itself had almost no blank space left. Page after page filled densely with those three words: I like you. Every letter was neat and precise.
Having written today's entry, Ilia closed the book. Then she looked out at the blizzard beyond the window and thought.
When will Roen come back?
At least before the Debutante Ball would be nice.
I want Roen to be the first one to see me in my dress.
She was starting to miss him. The last grain of sand in the hourglass of her heart was about to fall.
So that night, Ilia stormed unannounced into the office and confronted her father, Grand Duke Friedrich. Bring Roen Kraus before her eyes at once. She was not like the heroines in novels who could only sit by the window and wait for their knights.
Those girls had been commoners, with no choice but to wait, but she was the Grand Ducal Lady. In rank, she stood far above a mere count's heir. If the knight would not come, she would drag him here by force. Having become a Northerner to her very bones in the years without him, Ilia meant it with complete sincerity.
But Grand Duke Friedrich refused his daughter's demand outright. Forcing the boy here without proper grounds could explode into a political problem.
After several days and nights of thought, the card Ilia produced was this: appointing Roen as her bodyguard knight. Wouldn't a legitimate contract between the two houses be enough? After all, the decision rested not with Roen but with his father, Count Walter.
Even if she earned the resentment of a Roen dragged here against his will, Ilia did not care. She would simply overcome that with love, too. And if she spent the rest of her life taking responsibility for his, what of it? Imagining Roen as a proud member of the Grand Ducal house, Ilia smiled to herself.
Ilia carefully drew the flower from between the pages and looked up at me, using it to half-cover her mouth.
"By the way. You still remember this flower."
"Of course I do."
How could I forget that brilliant smile? That was the first time I learned Ilia was someone who could smile so purely.
"Then do you remember what you said when you gave it to me?"
"Hmm… something like, look at this and think of me… was it?"
"I knew it. You remember that too."
Honestly, I didn't remember exactly what nonsense I had spouted back then. I just guessed at the kind of thing I would have said—and luckily, it seemed I had gotten it right.
"I'm glad you remembered. I almost would have been disappointed."
"Ah… right."
A disappointed Ilia? I couldn't really picture it. Still, imagining her pouting with her cheeks puffed out, I had to admit it might be pretty cute.
"Hey, Roen."
"Yeah? What is it?"
"……"
The moment our eyes met, Ilia swallowed whatever she had been about to say and glanced away. What was with her all of a sudden?
"You called me and then went quiet. Is it hard to say?"
"…No. Let's just go back to our rooms and rest."
"Ha. Fine, alright."
I was pretty sure that wasn't what she had meant to say. But if she didn't want to talk, there was no point in pushing. If it was truly important, she would bring it up again later. I stood and held out my hand to her.
"What?"
Ilia stared down at my open palm.
"Can't you tell? It's an escort. I used to do this for you all the time when we were kids."
"…Right."
Only then did she set the flower down on the desk. Our hands met, soft and easy. The mouth that had been hidden behind the petals curved into the faintest arc of a smile.