The Weight of Expectations
Ariel, having calmed down a little thanks to her friend's request, sat perched on the edge of the bed with her head bowed deeply. The sight of her unable to lift her face, like a condemned sinner, stirred an inexplicable anger in Edgar, yet he found himself unable to speak. What sin could she possibly bear? It was the fault of a father who could offer no warm words to a child who had run endlessly beneath the crushing weight of duty, and of a powerless childhood friend who could find no way to comfort her.
Edgar brought her a glass of warm water and held it out. He had half-expected her to swat it away, but fortunately she had regained enough composure to avoid such a scene. Glug. Glug. Ariel carefully took the glass and took two small sips. Edgar silently pulled over the chair that had been sitting by the desk and sat down across from her.
“Feeling a little better now?”
“…Why aren’t you leaving? You said you would.”
Even to his question, Ariel gave no answer, only demanding in a sunken voice that he keep his earlier promise. Anyone else might have been flustered, but Edgar had expected exactly this reaction. He shrugged and offered a playful smile, as if to say, Did you really believe that?
“You don’t know me at all, do you? I lie like that all the time.”
“…Honestly. I don’t even have the strength to get angry anymore.”
When he so brazenly admitted to lying, Ariel let out a helpless laugh and held the empty glass out to him. She hadn’t believed him anyway. He was not the sort of person who would simply leave her in this state. Nor had she truly wished for him to vanish from her sight when she said those words. It had been closer to a childish tantrum—an act of petulance born from not wanting him to see her weak or unsightly. But now, thinking back, she wondered what meaning any of it held. They were friends precisely because they knew each other’s weaknesses as well as their strengths. She felt only shame for having lashed out at him out of her own embarrassment.
‘Spoiled little princess. That’s exactly what he always calls me.’
Repeating the words Edgar so often used, Ariel weakly lifted one corner of her mouth and nodded as if accepting it. It wasn’t as though she could hide it from him forever. Even if she had managed to delay his meeting with her father, the truth would have come out eventually, for one reason or another. It had simply arrived a little sooner than expected.
Ariel raised her head and met Edgar’s golden eyes, as though to say she was ready.
“……?”
Yet Edgar’s expression was oddly indifferent. Normally, when she looked at him like that, he would have reacted immediately—either by starting the conversation himself or by asking a brief question about what had just happened.
“…What?”
“What do you mean, what?”
When Ariel gave a short reply laced with meaning, Edgar merely scratched his ear with his little finger, looking perfectly calm. It was Ariel who grew frustrated instead.
“Why aren’t you asking? Don’t tell me you’re planning to just let this go if I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s exactly what I was planning.”
At his utterly nonchalant answer, Ariel felt all the strength drain from her body. At this point, she wondered if he was simply an idiot rather than a good person. Human curiosity was endless, and the clearer one’s deductions became, the stronger the desire to confirm the unknown story. She had thrown countless questions at Edgar until now. The chance to resolve them was right in front of him. Yet how could this man so easily turn away from the opportunity to hear the truth from the person involved?
As if to put an end to that question, Edgar’s tightly closed lips finally parted.
“If this had felt like a purely personal matter, I would have asked by now. But this is something tied to your family.”
Family affairs were never light enough for outsiders to comment on carelessly. Even if Edgar was still furious about what he had witnessed, rushing in without thought would be foolish. Moreover, from the fragments Ariel had shared, he wasn’t confident he could control himself. If she started crying again and conveying her sorrow, he feared what might happen inside his own head. In moments like this, keeping a cool head was essential. Mere pity would never be enough to truly understand and support her.
“Besides, I’ve been through something similar before, so I understand how you’re feeling right now.”
“You… when?”
“……”
The news that there had been discord in Edgar’s family was something Ariel was hearing for the first time. When her eyes widened and fixed on him, Edgar merely shrugged, raising both hands to his shoulders without offering further explanation. It was a story he couldn’t tell her. Even if he did, she wouldn’t believe it. It was nothing more than a hazy memory from a distant past, even in his own mind.
“Anyway, that aside, what matters most is your true feelings. Whether you actually want to talk about this, or if you’re just resigning yourself because it’s already been discovered.”
Ariel’s body flinched slightly at the sensation that struck a corner of her heart. He truly understood the deepest parts of her. Honestly, a large part of her had felt resigned because she’d been found out, and that had been the biggest reason she’d decided to confide in him. But not anymore. After regaining her composure and giving it more thought, she had made her decision. There were many reasons, but the greatest one was—
“Yeah, I want to tell you. Of course, part of it is because you found out… but more than that, I don’t want to have any secrets from you.”
“…Haha, that’s quite an honor.”
At her sincere answer—so honest it made the listener embarrassed—Edgar scratched his cheek with an awkward expression. Perhaps it was true that people revealed their true feelings most easily when they were hurt and vulnerable. Thinking back, whenever she had been this honest about her feelings, it had usually been when she was mentally cornered or struggling. As her friend, he wished she could be more honest even in normal times, but people didn’t change so easily. Now he was even finding amusement in discovering her own brand of honesty beneath her usual prickly, sharp-tongued demeanor, so it didn’t matter much.
“Where do you want to start?”
“If possible, everything you know.”
“It’s going to be a long story. Are you sure?”
“I’ve got plenty of time. Don’t worry—I’ll stay until dawn if I have to.”
Edgar gently wiped the remaining tear tracks from Ariel’s cheeks with his thumb, reassuring her. In normal times, she would have shyly swatted his hand away, asking what he was doing. But now Ariel only offered a small, ticklish protest—“Mmm…”—before accepting his touch like a cat and quietly beginning to speak.
“Actually, it’s not a particularly special story. It’s just something that happened because I couldn’t live up to my father’s expectations.”
“…I see.”
Before she could properly begin, Edgar’s expression grew complicated at her words. ‘Live up to expectations.’ That was probably the chain binding Ariel even now. But he would only know the details once he heard the story. So he remained silent, quietly waiting for her to continue.
“Father was always rather strict. And since he would sometimes be away on the battlefield for months at a time, we naturally grew distant at some point.”
Distance of the body led to distance of the heart. That was no different for family. If anything, it was worse because they were family. If they had been lovers, they might have tried harder to be good to each other to make up for the neglect. But within the boundary of family, people assumed the bond was unbreakable simply because they were family, and it was easy to grow complacent.
After Edgar nodded in understanding, Ariel continued.
“Whenever he returned to the main estate, Father would always say the same thing. That I was the only one who could carry on our family’s legacy, so I had to work even harder. He emphasized that from when I was very young.”
“Wasn’t that hard?”
“Of course it was. Mother told me not to take on too much burden, but… it wasn’t wrong, was it?”
Unless Ariel had siblings to share the burden, she was the only successor. Yulken had always used that fact to push his daughter. When she achieved one, he wanted two; when she achieved two, he wanted five. His educational methods were so strict—bordering on cold, as if she were a stranger—that Ariel could count on one hand the times she had received praise from him. Helene, who knew this better than anyone, did everything she could to support her daughter, but it wasn’t enough. A parent’s love was already split in half; no matter how much effort one side made, it could never fully compensate for the other.
“Actually, that’s why I decided to go to the battlefield in three years. I haven’t told Father yet, but… I thought that if I showed this kind of resolve, maybe he would praise me.”
“I see.”
Edgar finally understood the sense of déjà vu he had felt back then. At the time, Ariel’s expression when she declared her ambition had been less determined than resigned. It was something the Ariel Robeheim he had known until then would never have done. She had always been a bold and noble girl—one who walked her own path with purpose and conviction, without fear.
‘I thought it was just my imagination.’
Even Edgar didn’t know everything about her. That was why there were times when he missed her signals and let them pass. That day had been one of them.
“But after seeing him today, I realized something. Maybe Father just… hates me. Maybe he no longer expects anything from a daughter who can’t live up to his expectations.”
“……”
To say that the father who gave her life hated her—even within a family, speaking those words carried a pain that cut to the bone. Drip. Drip. Soon, fat tears welled in Ariel’s eyes and fell onto the back of her hand resting on her thigh. Edgar could only watch her, unable to offer a handkerchief or words of comfort. What meaning would any action have for her now? He clenched his fists tightly. It was the first time he had felt such powerlessness. For the first time, he understood how painful it was to know a friend’s sorrow yet be unable to resolve it or even offer comfort.
“Ariel, what do you want to do?”
“Hic… what?”
“Do you want to restore your relationship with Lord Yulken… with your father?”
What mattered most to him right now was Ariel’s true feelings. Did she truly want to continue living without understanding each other? Or, even if he was a father who had only ever left her with pain, did she still want to share the feelings they had never expressed? He knew it was cruel to place the decision on a girl trembling with such pain, but that was precisely why he had to ask. The choice at this crossroads could determine how Ariel would live the rest of her life. In anyone’s life, family was exactly that kind of thing.
“Yeah… I want to know. Whether I’m really a daughter he hates. And I want to tell him… that even so, I don’t hate him. I want to believe that a day will come when we understand each other.”
“…Right.”
Edgar stood up, finally wiping the tears streaming down Ariel’s cheeks, and gently stroked her hair.
“Ariel, do you remember what I said to you at the ball that night?”
“Yeah……?”
That night had been so heart-pounding that her memory was somewhat hazy. But even so, the one thing he had finally managed to say remained clearly etched in her mind. If she ever needed help, remember that there was a friend beside her who would gladly give his life. He had definitely said that. When her thoughts reached that point, the tears that had been falling one by one from Ariel’s eyes suddenly poured out like a waterfall. She knew it was something she shouldn’t say to him. She also knew that it was a path she had to carve out with her own courage. Yet because she still couldn’t take that one step forward, she reached out her hand and spoke the words she had never wanted to say.
“Hic, help me, Edgar……”
At his friend’s desperate request, Edgar silently stood, removed the coat he was wearing, and laid it over her lap. He worried that if the person by her side disappeared, she might tremble with loneliness. Now he had both the justification and the courage to act. With those words, he could draw his sword even if the emperor himself stood before him. After telling her to get some sleep, he left the room, and Shuri’s figure, waiting by the door, came into view.
“Shuri, I’m counting on you to look after Ariel.”
“Uh, where are you going?”
“To Lady Helene. Though ultimately……”
He would have to go to the person himself. Even if he couldn’t deliver the message today, tomorrow or the day after didn’t matter. What was important wasn’t speed, but assessing the situation before and after and tying up the loose ends properly. But first, he needed to meet Helene. There were circumstances Ariel might not even know about. The only person who would know them, aside from Yulken himself, was her. Without reaching that, no matter how boldly he stepped forward, he couldn’t truly say he had helped father and daughter understand each other.
Shuri bowed as deeply as she could toward Edgar’s retreating figure, seeing him off. She could only pray that everything would be resolved well. The only thing she could do was offer such a wish to someone whose identity she didn’t even know.