Winter (3)
As we walked along the path, I came upon a woman standing in a corner of the garden.
Her white hair, carrying the moonlight’s pallid sheen, flowed all the way to her waist as she gazed blankly at a barren tree.
The blue eyes that had glimmered alone in the darkness turned toward me at once.
“Evan.”
Her quiet voice rang out. For some reason, whenever that lingering, bell-clear voice reached me, my chest stirred.
Why was I reacting so sharply? I brushed the thought aside and spoke.
“Have you been waiting for me?”
I noticed the cloak she had draped around her. It was chilly out; would she be all right dressed like that?
As I frowned faintly at her clothes, Irene came toward me and said, “I just came out not long ago. You don’t need to look at me like that.”
What did my face even look like?
I touched my cheeks, and Irene soon looked away from me and started walking again.
Toward the bright lights glowing over the city streets in the distance. I followed after her.
#
Winter in this duchy, before the snow had even begun to fall, was bleak and cold beyond measure.
Street sweepers who could not bear to venture outside in the cold, and piles of trash strewn across roads heavy with gray and brick-red tones, stained the whole district in black.
Everyone wore thick clothes that hid the color from their faces, and unlike the seasons before, those colorless figures drifted through the streets like corpses.
The moment you opened your mouth, the cold stabbed straight into your lungs, and the instant you blinked, it felt as if your eyelids might freeze shut; I could hardly force myself to step outside.
If snow had already come, perhaps it would have been a little better. But on these streets, where those pure white petals had yet to fall, the only thing visible was dead leaves.
Cold.
That was what I kept thinking as I walked beside Irene.
In summer, and in autumn too, I had always looked elsewhere now and then just to take in the scenery. But the winter this world made was only cruelly, viciously cold.
The Empire’s winters were bitter, and the Yuris Duchy was no different.
Especially here, in the northern bulwark that guarded the Empire.
We had only just entered winter, and yet every now and then, when I saw the icicles hanging here and there, I would let out a hollow laugh.
Just how much colder was it going to get as time passed?
Rubbing my reddened nose, I turned my head toward Irene.
She seemed quite used to this cold, walking ahead in silence with her cloak clutched close. Her face remained as pale as ever, without even the slightest flush.
Perhaps it was because she had lived here all her life. “Still, what did you come out to buy?” I asked.
I was curious why she had come out at all. The weather was colder than usual today, so there was no real reason to leave the estate.
Maybe she had something urgent to get. When I asked that, Irene looked at me for a moment before slowly answering, “...Just something I needed. Is there anything you need to buy, Evan?”
“Well.”
Lately, I had honestly been living rather comfortably.
Compared to my old life, which was hard to even imagine, the position of Irene’s bodyguard knight was a remarkably appealing one.
Of course, the fact that I had grown this close to her probably made that possible.
Putting aside the lack of the internet and a smartphone, it was a life so lavish it couldn’t compare with anything from before, so I didn’t really want for much.
But if I had to name something.
“I do need a few swords.”
“Swords?”
Lately, with training growing more intense, my swords had been breaking often.
And the sword the duke had given me was, from the start, meant for ceremonial use, so it wasn’t something I could rely on all the time.
I had used several wooden practice swords in the ducal residence, but even so, not having a sword of my own was rather troublesome.
After hearing me out, Irene silently watched me for a moment before giving a small nod.
“...Swords, then. All right.”
Was she really going to buy me swords?
She had never bought me anything before, so I couldn’t tell whether she was serious.
Still, since we had come out together after so long, every step felt light.
The last time we had gone out, it had been summer, yet somehow the mood had still felt as desolate as winter.
Now that the air seemed softer than it had then, I found myself smiling before I knew it.
The scenery that had seemed so frigid a moment ago somehow looked almost warm now.
I wondered what this outing would bring.
Watching Irene draw a little farther away, I soon quickened my steps and followed her again.
#
“Who are you looking for so intently?”
“Ah, Chris!”
At Lopena’s voice calling him Chris, a laugh slipped out of him.
That boy always called him “Sir Knight” so properly, so why on earth did she get to use his name?
Well, if she did it because it made him feel a little closer, then he didn’t mind.
He had only just patted Lopena’s head when he remembered that she was clearly looking around for someone.
Who was she searching for? It probably wasn’t him.
When he tilted his head, Lopena seemed to catch on and started chattering away with her tiny mouth.
“I was looking for Sir Knight. I came looking because I had something I wanted to give him.”
“A birthday present, maybe?”
At that, Lopena’s eyes went round, and she quickly covered her mouth with both hands, making a soft gasp.
Honestly, was she really so easy to read?
Her expression, so unlike her mistress’s, looked almost painfully adorable, and when he chuckled, Lopena thumped her chest with her tiny fists and blurted out in a fluster, “H-how did you know? It was supposed to be a secret.”
“I just figured it out somehow. Do you really think I wouldn’t know my own disciple’s birthday?”
Though the birthday boy himself didn’t seem to think much of birthdays.
But even so, he wouldn’t refuse a gift from Lopena.
The boy looked as if he cared for Lopena in his own way, after all.
“He’s out with the young lady right now, so even if he comes back, it’ll be well past nightfall. You’d better go to sleep early.”
“Birthday presents are supposed to be given right when the bell rings at twelve. You’re the one who taught me that, Chris.”
“Did I teach you that too?”
He scratched his chin and frowned as if he knew nothing at all, and Lopena suddenly flared up.
Seriously, who did she take after to be so bad-tempered?
“Ahhh—!”
“I do remember. Of course I remember. I told you that on your birthday, didn’t I?”
“...At least remember things a little faster.”
“Heh. Well, that happens.”
“Oh, but I’m not sure whether the gift I prepared will actually suit him. I did get ready for it in my own way, but he never really tells me what he likes.”
That was true enough. Evan was not the sort to speak freely about himself.
Looking at Lopena, who had settled beside him before he realized it, Chris’s eyes narrowed slowly as his thoughts turned to Evan.
Evan Fried—the boy who had suddenly come to the ducal residence with a strange request that he be raised as a knight, supposedly gifted beyond belief in swordsmanship.
He had not come with anyone from the Fried Count family.
He had only brought a sword and a single letter, and when Chris first saw that child, he had no idea how shocked he had been.
What filled those vacant green eyes was nothing but emptiness, and the boy who hardly smiled possessed a talent that could astonish the whole world.
One year.
That was how long it had taken Evan to awaken to mana, something most people struggled to grasp even once in a lifetime.
It had taken Chris himself five years, and he had even been considered a prodigy.
But when he saw that boy suddenly pouring out white mana all over his body, he could only stare in stunned disbelief.
And then another three years—the time it took the boy, after taking up the sword, to become fully versed in every form of swordsmanship.
At fifteen, the boy who had come alone to the ducal residence reached the Expert realm.
Even the crown prince, hailed as a genius of a thousand years, had only reached Expert at seventeen.
And even he, despite having held a sword since he was very young, had needed that long.
So what in the world was one supposed to call someone who reached Expert in merely seven years?
What worried him most, however, was that the boy never once changed expression.
How long had it been since he had seen him smile?
Probably since childhood—since not once had he laughed or cried in front of him.
Sometimes he even wondered if the boy wasn’t a person at all, but some kind of doll made elsewhere.
He had always worn that gloomy expression while swinging his sword, and whenever a shadow fell across that pallid face, Chris used to worry he might die right then and there.
Now, though, the fact that those expressions had vanished completely was almost strange enough to be amusing.
Perhaps the boy had changed on the day he became the young lady’s bodyguard knight.
He still remembered clearly how he had barked at the boy, who had been sitting there in a daze when he first opened the door.
On the day he became a bodyguard knight, it had been oddly fascinating how the boy’s usual reserve had given way to a different kind of speech altogether.
Now, rather than finding it odd, that bright side of him was what felt familiar.
He was glad both the young lady and Evan had changed for the better, but could that change really continue?
Would there come a day when all this was nothing but a dream and they returned to their old, bleak selves?
Whenever such thoughts came to him, he would think he needed to live a little longer.
It would be his role to support those two from beside them.
As his thoughts scattered and he lifted his head, he saw Lopena beside him, grinning as she hugged the box in her arms.
She was fifteen too—about the same age as the young lady and Evan. So why was this girl still so childish?
“So, what did you prepare?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“You little brat.”
Would the boy really be happy to get a gift? He had seemed so bitter even at a simple word of congratulations.
Chris wondered if it had always been like that, but until last year someone else had been in charge of the boy, not him, so he had no way of knowing.
What on earth had happened on his birthday to leave him with such a dark expression?
But there was nothing he could learn right away, so he only smiled as he watched Lopena clutch the box tightly to her chest.
“Should I prepare something too?”
“No, and you knew that already, didn’t you?”
“...Well, that happens.”
As he said that, he looked toward the window. The moon shone as pale and bright as ever, illuminating the world around it.
Below even the darkness lying beneath it were probably the young lady and Evan.
Would the young lady be able to choose a proper gift?
He was glad she wanted to take care of her bodyguard knight and was rooting for her, but given her personality, wasn’t the chance of failure rather high?
He didn’t know how Evan had managed to sweet-talk the young lady into this, but now even the knighting ceremony had been moved up, so he hoped they might grow a little closer this time.
“...Hm?”
Then, all at once, he thought the darkness outside the window looked unusually troubling.
It was certainly no different from any other night; the stars and moon were exactly as they had always been.
So why did looking at that darkness make his chest tighten? He was sure he had felt this before.
That darkness, as though one were crawling into a swamp, seemed to drag breath from the lungs and even make the world before one’s eyes drown in blackness.
The instant he recognized the word that flashed through his mind, the hand gripping the sofa began to tremble.
The emotion rising in him at that moment was both shock and rage.
How on earth had those bastards come back to Yuris?
From his wide-open mouth, a roar burst forth like a beast’s howl.
“Summon the knight order—!”
The sensation he had not felt in thirty years ran tight through his whole body.
Lopena looked at him in confusion after his sudden shout, but that was not important now.
“Chris? What on earth are you—”
“...A black mage has appeared.”
At the word black mage, the color drained from Lopena’s face.
And no wonder—who would treat the phrase as a joke? What it meant was this.
Those who had unleashed the great war thirty years ago, spread plague, revived the dead, and shattered the golden age of the Empire had appeared on this land once more.
The darkness outside was not the same as it had been just moments ago. It was now so dense that even moonlight seemed dim by comparison.
And the face of the man beneath it—thinking of the two people who were surely the most important within this ducal residence—would have been more grim than ever before.
More than ever before.
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