Below Crystal Palace (6)
“...Evan?”
At the voice in my ear, my dazed mind came back to me.
What had that smile I’d just seen been? I was so confused I couldn’t even tell whether it had been a dream soaked in moonlight or something she had truly given me.
“I’ll be counting on you from now on, Evan.”
I had been acknowledged as her bodyguard knight. From now on, unless she cast me away first, I would remain at her side.
And yet hearing her say it with her own mouth made it all feel strangely unreal, like some beautiful illusion that might vanish if I so much as pinched my cheek.
Frowning, I looked at Irene.
“So you mean... you want me to keep serving as your bodyguard knight?”
“Yes. You’ll continue being my bodyguard knight. We’ll have you formally knighted soon, too.”
At that, I pinched my thigh hard enough to make me grit my teeth against the sharp sting that followed.
This was real. Incredibly enough, it really was.
Had everything I’d been thinking all along just been a misunderstanding? And yet hadn’t she plainly said it? Only a few days ago, she had been thinking of casting me out.
No matter how hard I had tried, no matter how carefully I’d worked not to make her hate me, that decision should never have changed.
What on earth had made her change? I closed my eyes for a moment, then opened them again and forced out the question.
I wanted to ask what had changed her mind.
It was a little presumptuous for a bodyguard knight to ask, but Irene looked back at me and slowly parted her lips.
“Well.”
“...Yes?”
“I’m not really sure myself. Why did I change my mind? I’m certain I started out thinking I didn’t like you.”
When I first met Irene, she had been cold to the point of frostbite.
At the slightest mistake, she would give me a chill look, and if I ever stumbled over a title or form of address, she would click her tongue and brush past me without a second glance.
She hadn’t done that after apologizing at the tea party, but even then, the way she treated me hadn’t changed all that much.
It felt as if the mask over her face were slowly crumbling away.
The mask that had never shown even the smallest crack no matter how hard I tried was falling apart, and the emotions hidden beneath it were beginning to peek through.
Her blue eyes were no longer cold.
They were like still spring water now—less icy than simply cool and refreshing.
Those clear eyes held the night sky.
Like starlight flickering, eyes that had never seemed to hold any light before were now shining as they rested on me.
Even the shadow that used to sit over her expression seemed to have lifted, and whenever the corners of her mouth rose, I found myself looking away before I knew it.
She had never smiled before, so when she did now, it made her beauty stand out all the more.
Those lips a bright crimson wholly unsuited to the night curved again into a soft arc.
And every time they did, I swallowed reflexively and turned my head.
That smile lingered in front of my eyes, and somehow she seemed to shine even brighter than the pale moon itself.
If I were being honest, I wanted to keep asking her. Why had she changed her mind? I hadn’t even done anything remarkable.
Why had she accepted the very person she had once intended to throw out? But it was pointless.
She had made up her mind, and I was now her bodyguard knight.
Probably until the moment she met the tragic end that lay ahead of her.
At the thought, it felt as though a heavy stone had settled onto my chest, making my whole body feel strangely leaden.
The tragedy waiting for her felt impossibly far from the Irene who was smiling so lightly before me now.
How could a woman like her come to such an end?
My chest tightening for no reason at all, I tore my gaze away from Irene and closed my eyes again.
An awkward silence hung between us, broken only by the waltz drifting up from the ballroom below.
Piano and violin intertwined and cut straight through my ears, and beneath the music there was another voice.
“You look terrible. I’ve already told you everything I can.”
“...It’s not because of you, my lady. I’m just a little suffocated, that’s all.”
As I said it, I gave her a bitter smile.
I couldn’t very well tell Irene that she would one day meet such a miserable end.
It was a fact known only to me in this world.
Only me.
The loneliness in those words was far greater than I had expected.
Even with Irene beside me, it still felt as if I were standing alone on this balcony.
The dozens of empty carriages lined up below, abandoned by their owners; the red leaves occasionally drifting down on the wind; all of it seemed to make me feel more isolated.
Only me.
Murmuring the words to myself, I turned to look at Irene again.
Perhaps because I said nothing, she stood there blankly gazing into space, moonlight glittering on her face.
Her expression was still as impassive as ever, but unlike before, it now carried a hint of life, and she looked much better for it.
I wanted her to stay like this. From now on, too—always.
Resting my elbows on the balcony rail and propping my chin in my hand, I watched her stare into the distance.
What was her gaze following? In this night that was nothing but darkness, what was she seeing?
I had only been looking at her for a moment when the starlight in her eyes finally met mine and shimmered.
Our blank gazes collided somewhere in the dark, and after a while, I was the first to laugh.
I covered my mouth at the unaccountable laughter that burst out of me, and Irene looked at me before speaking.
“Are you feeling better now?”
“...Not sure.”
I shrugged. Honestly, the confusion in my head hadn’t changed at all.
But what was I supposed to do about it? There was nothing I could do right now.
“Still, I think it’s better than before.”
If I couldn’t deal with it now, then I could think about it later.
There was no need to keep frowning or biting my lip like this.
I still had five years left. Couldn’t I afford a little room to breathe?
For now, I should simply be grateful that my position as her bodyguard knight was no longer in danger.
Letting out a faint breath as my chest finally eased, I lifted my head toward the sky and closed my eyes.
The wind touching my cheek felt nothing but cool.
#
Unlike when I’d come to the balcony, I left it with Irene.
We walked down a corridor where not a single candle flickered, and then, all at once, she stopped. I stopped too.
“......”
In the middle of the corridor there was a wide-open window, and she stood still with her gaze fixed on it, as if watching the pale moonlight spilling faintly through the gap.
I looked where she was looking, but all I could see was a handful of stars hanging shyly over the dark sky.
We had just been staring at the sky to our hearts’ content a moment ago, so what on earth had made her stop here like this?
“My lady?”
“...I suppose it does.”
What did? What was she talking about?
After glancing at the window, she looked back at me briefly and left me with nothing but those incomprehensible words before starting to walk again.
“Let’s go. It’s time to return to the duchy.”
Was it already that late?
I had thought we’d only been out on the balcony for a short while, but apparently it had lasted longer than I expected.
The sounds that should have been coming from the far end of the dark corridor no longer reached us.
The chatter of people, the murmur of voices, even the waltz had gone quiet long ago.
I had worried I might make a mistake by talking to someone at the ball, but in the end it all felt strangely anticlimactic.
Was this what she had been aiming for when she told me to come see it from the balcony?
By then, the noisy crowd had already disappeared without a trace, and when we stepped back into the ballroom, all that remained were empty glasses rolling across the floor and the maids gathering them up.
I just felt a little hollow.
I had come so tense, and I’d even practiced dancing while getting scolded by Lise.
And now that the ball was actually over, a sense of emptiness washed over me.
People could be bad at dancing, couldn’t they? Why had she gotten so angry about it?
Thinking of how all that effort had scattered like dust left me bitter, so I stared at the now-empty ballroom for a moment before looking away.
I wouldn’t be coming here again. It was time to shake off any foolish lingering attachment and leave cleanly.
Maybe I should be thankful no one was around.
If all those people had still been here when we returned, the way they would have looked at Irene and me coming back alone together was obvious without even seeing it.
Irene didn’t seem to care about the empty space around us and simply kept walking ahead with that usual unreadable expression of hers.
Well, she had said she was only here to show her face, so she probably hadn’t thought much about the ball itself.
As I followed after her, I saw that all the many carriages were gone now, leaving only one behind.
The Yuris shield with its thorns was painted on the carriage.
Then the horse that spotted us shook its white mane and snorted, and the carriage door flew open as the coachman stepped down.
“You’re here? Hurry and get in. If we leave now, we should arrive before sunrise.”
He looked exhausted, as though he’d worn himself out waiting for us, and as he pulled at the reins, he spoke with clear fatigue in his voice.
At the words before sunrise, a sigh escaped me on its own.
I’d have to endure that clattering ride again. When, exactly, was I ever going to get used to carriages?
Once I climbed inside, Irene, seated opposite me, stared at me intently.
As if she had something to say, her lips kept moving before she finally forced the words out.
“You worked hard.”
“Not at all.”
Was it really that difficult to say even that much? Still, I could understand why.
Even when she went somewhere and came back, Irene had hardly ever said this to me.
But saying I’d worked hard was a little contradictory. Had there really been anything hard about tonight at all?
So I smiled faintly, and Irene gazed at me for a moment before turning her head and falling silent.
Had she really thought that much about saying just one line?
Then I remembered that she was only fifteen, and a snort of laughter slipped out of me.
She was still at that age where one was supposed to be shy. However mature her behavior seemed, she was still just a child in the end.
When I turned my head, the Crystal Palace came into view, soaring high toward the moon.
Earlier, I had seen it and shrunk back in tension, but now I felt nothing at all.
It had simply become something from the past.
Maybe later, when I remembered this night, I’d think of it as the day Irene fully acknowledged me as her bodyguard knight.
A princess and her bodyguard knight. It was almost funny that such an obvious relationship had only truly been recognized after three months, and yet it made me oddly happy, too.
Was saying my chest felt full too exaggerated?
The fact that my effort hadn’t been wasted made my heart itch, and I brushed a hand over the corners of my mouth, which kept twitching upward.
At last, it felt like something was truly beginning.
Three months had passed since I met her, and I still remembered clearly how I hadn’t even been able to meet her eyes at first.
Hadn’t she herself called me her bodyguard knight and told me to count on her from now on?
When I looked away from the Crystal Palace and turned my head, I saw Irene leaning against the carriage with her eyes gently closed.
Her breathing was soft, and the expression on her face as she slept was nothing like the chill look she had worn when she got off the carriage earlier.
It was the same calm, gentle face she had shown me on the balcony.
Unlike the way she always kept her guard up in the duchy, it felt strangely wonderful to see her lower it in front of me like this.
“I’m not really sure why I’m like this either... but I just feel at ease when I’m with you.”
Did she know? That the single sentence she had spoken had created a ripple in me greater than any other words could have.
To the one person who alone knew of her death and grieved it, that one sentence felt more precious than anything else in the world.
Now I was her bodyguard knight, and she had acknowledged that relationship as well.
Whether I wanted it or not, I had ended up caught in her fate now.
The weight that thought brought with it was heavy indeed. As her bodyguard knight, could I really protect her?
When I looked out the window, dawn had begun to rise.
The brilliant sign that life was starting to beat again made my expression probably rather complicated.
But I shook my head and threw off the tangled thoughts as much as I could.
It was simple enough if I thought about it that way.
As long as the heroine and the crown prince had not yet begun to move in earnest, wasn’t it still possible to stop everything?
I had once only been able to pity her situation, but now I was her bodyguard knight.
If I meant to do it, I could make it happen.
The sky was stained black, with the moon and stars hanging within it.
And yet what drew my eye even more was the faint line of dawn at the far edge.
It was time for the darkness to end, and for bright light to color the world once more.
I only hoped Irene could become that way too.
Imagining myself stripping away every tragedy waiting in front of her, I could only smile faintly.