First Meeting (3)
The village square at noon.
By the time the sun perched atop my crown and began to slowly roast it, the village square would start to bustle with life.
As usual, I sat on a bench in the square with an old book borrowed from the village chief’s bookshelf—which also served as the village library—spread open on my lap.
It was the tail end of summer, when the cicadas screamed like boiling kettles.
Nice weather.
Ever since the wild boar incident, I had been deliberately adjusting my meals to maintain a suitably pale complexion and occasionally putting on a show of weak coughing in front of the villagers.
Thanks to that, my reputation in the village remained perfectly stable.
The frail Ian.
That label completely shielded me from bothersome labor or the village girls’ rough pranks.
But there was one person who kept sending particularly stinging glances at this flawless daily routine.
“Ian, look at me for a second.”
A low voice came from beyond the bookshelf.
When I looked up, Kara—the blacksmith’s daughter—stood there with a hammer as thick as a forearm slung over her shoulder, staring down at me.
A girl with soot-stained arms holding a massive hammer. Kara.
She was apparently the only person who had witnessed me subduing the wild boar in the forest on the day of the incident.
I wasn’t sure if it was true, but the girl who used to poke and tease me without hesitation had seemed strangely restless every time she looked at me since that day.
“What is it? I’m reading. Don’t disturb me.”
“Don’t lie. You’ve been stuck on the same page of that book for thirty minutes.”
Sharp. I casually turned the page as naturally as possible.
“The content was so profound I was savoring it.”
“Savoring? Like food? Anyway, that thing you used to catch the boar that day. What was it?”
Kara’s voice was low but resolute. I widened my eyes in an exaggerated display of innocence.
“What thing? I merely watched from the side while the young lady caught it.”
I deliberately answered in an even weaker voice. But the girl standing before me now had a face flushed with excitement.
“Cut the crap! I saw it clearly. She was frozen stiff, and you took down that huge beast with a single dagger!”
My pupils darted involuntarily. She really had seen everything—how I handled the boar in the forest that day.
“Hey… that day… it really was you, wasn’t it? I saw it. You took the boar down in an instant…”
“Kara.”
I lowered my voice and cut her off.
“You saw wrong. I was so scared I had my eyes closed the whole time. The boar must have simply run into a tree by luck.”
“Liar. The wound on its hind leg couldn’t have been made like that. You can’t fool my eyes. Our family runs a blacksmith shop—I can recognize wounds from iron slicing flesh and snapping bone like a ghost…”
Kara, who had been dragging out her words, suddenly reached for my wrist.
I instinctively stepped back, letting her hand miss. In that brief instant, conviction flooded her eyes.
“See! I tried to grab you, but you dodged without even looking!”
Ah, I should have just let her catch me.
I reflexively avoided it.
I hid my flustered expression and forced a smile as I stared at her.
“Your hand came so suddenly that I stepped back in surprise. Could you please stop interrogating me? I have nightmares every night because of it.”
Kara’s face flushed red then pale before she slammed her hammer into the ground with a loud thud.
“Hey, you… just what the hell are you? Why do you act like a pathetic weakling in the village? The chief, my mom—everyone’s losing their minds about how they need to protect you!”
At that moment, a girl came running toward us.
It was Mili, the president of the village’s infamous “Ian Fan Club” and the flower shop owner’s daughter.
“Ian! What are you doing here? Hey, Kara! Are you forcing our Ian into weird games again? What if his delicate body gets sick!”
Mili stepped in front of me and shot Kara a fierce glare. She was the passionate fangirl who brought nameless wildflowers and herbal teas for energy recovery to my door every single morning.
“Mili, get out of the way! Ian is actually…!”
“Actually what! Actually the frailest, most protective-instinct-inducing beautiful boy in the village! Ian, don’t worry. I’ll watch Kara every day so she can’t bully you.”
Mili grabbed my hand tightly, eyes sparkling.
Thank you, Mili. You’re actually being helpful.
“Ian just needs to keep smiling prettily and reading his books like this. Rough work is for stupid girls like Kara, okay?”
I gave a bitter smile and nodded. I appreciated the thought, but it was a little overwhelming.
Kara clutched her head in disbelief and shouted.
“No! This guy’s actually strong! He just… the boar’s neck…!”
“Sigh, Kara, you hammer too much and it’s made you stupid. Is a wild boar some neighborhood puppy? For Ian to catch one.”
Thanks to Mili’s ironclad defense, the crisis seemed to pass, but Kara’s tenacity refused to die there.
“Are you all idiots? I saw it clearly with my own eyes! Ian is a monster!”
Kara cried out in frustration, but all that answered her was an empty echo.
Monster might be a little hurtful.
The women passing by giggled. “A wild boar with one hand? Kara must have gone mad from liking Ian too much.” “They say when a crush gets too severe, the delusions get worse too.”
Unable to endure any longer, Mili whacked Kara’s back with her flower bouquet to drive the point home.
“How dare you call our delicate Ian a monster? Kara, has the forge fire cooked your brain?! Starting today, you’re banned from coming within two meters of Ian!”
The onlookers watching from afar nodded in agreement with Mili’s words.
Kara kept shouting, “Lady Yuki is hiding something too! Recruiting party members to investigate what those two do in the forest every night!” but
all she received were dismissive replies like “You’re just crazy for boar meat. Go to sleep.”
Leaving Kara’s resentful gaze behind, I headed toward the bookstore. But her persistent shouts hammered into the back of my head.
“I won’t give up, Ian! I’ll uncover your true identity someday!”
Don’t deliver lines like some hero, Kara. It makes you look weak.
That night, Yuki was already waiting in the forest clearing.
“You’re late, Ian.”
Yuki answered indifferently while swinging her sword. Yet the tip of her blade sliced the air with a far sharper sound than usual.
“You looked like you were having fun with the village girls earlier today.”
“Fun? I was merely tired.”
“You’re my master. So why are you out there surrounded by women with that vacant expression? It’s disgusting to watch.”
Yuki stopped swinging her sword and stepped right up to my face.
“Especially that blacksmith’s daughter. She tried to grab your wrist. Isn’t it improper for a commoner to touch your body so carelessly?”
Her eyes held a strange displeasure instead of the usual arrogance.
“Are you jealous?”
“...Do you want to die? Don’t misunderstand. I simply don’t like my master being tainted by lowly women.”
Yuki’s face flushed beet-red in an instant. Flustered, she sheathed her sword and turned away.
“More importantly, Kara has started suspecting me. She might follow me into the forest soon.”
“Don’t worry. If that blacksmith’s girl comes, I’ll handle her myself.”
“Handle her? That word sounds rather brutal. You’re not planning to kill her, are you? I couldn’t allow that.”
“As if I would! I’d just pressure her with my family’s power, or…”
Yuki approached me after putting away her sword. Her silver hair gleamed coldly beneath the moonlight.
“I could hire her as my exclusive blacksmith and bind her to me. The best way to keep a secret is to make the person my possession.”
Yuki’s suggestion sounded quite reasonable.
Despite her young age, as expected of a noble lady, she instinctively understood how to wield power to obtain what she desired.
“You’re the same, Ian.”
She poked my chest with a slender finger.
“It doesn’t matter if the villagers see you as a pitiful boy or if that Mili girl follows you around. But at night, you’re mine. My master from whom I receive teachings, the one I must overcome.”
Yuki’s finger was persistent and burning hot, as if trying to brand my heart.
“Remember. The only one who knows your true worth is me… So don’t think about anything else. You’re the only one I’ve acknowledged.”
As I felt her hair brush against my shoulder, I thought:
The prejudice-filled Mili and the truth-seeking Kara are both tiring, but the most exhausting one is definitely this silver-haired lady who wants to swallow me whole along with my skills.
When did we get this close?
“Understood, so please step back a little. The smell of sweat on your clothes is about to paralyze my nose.”
“...Do you really want to die?!”
Still, her personality isn’t quite as foul as I expected.