As the Eyes Turn Red (5)
The light shattered.
The sun hung high above us, and the light it cast struck the snow so fiercely that it broke into a spray of brilliance, turning the whole world to glittering shards.
Watching that red sunset tint the pure white snow with a faint blush, I turned toward the uproar that was rolling our way.
Knights were coming down the mountain, each carrying the banner of their house. Some held up the necks of the beasts they had slain, while others walked proudly with sacks bulging with carcasses, heading toward the families they served.
“Sir Evan should be back soon too. I wonder when he’ll come.”
“...He should be here any minute.”
So many people were pouring down from the mountain. How many beasts had died up there?
Whenever I thought about it, I found myself drifting into pointless sentiment, so I shook my head and forced those thoughts away.
The anxiety lingering in some corner of my chest would disappear soon enough. Evan would be in sight before long.
“I wonder how many he caught. Honestly, there isn’t anyone here as strong as Sir Evan.”
“Adel probably can’t compare to Evan either. To be honest, for all his age, Evan’s skill is already top-tier even among Expert-level knights.”
At Sir Chris’s words, Ropena’s eyes sparkled.
I wasn’t sure how much of that Ropena, who knew nothing about swords, understood, but I knew well enough that Evan’s level had long since gone beyond the ordinary.
That was exactly why I had told him not to feel pressured. No matter how hard the knights here strained, if Evan kept his focus, victory was well within reach.
“But isn’t it a little noisy back there? I can’t see many of the knights coming down either.”
“...Hm.”
Sir Chris narrowed his eyes. He looked out through the window, then frowned and muttered under his breath.
“Looks like something’s gone wrong. We should check.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“You can stay here. It’ll probably be nothing.”
“...I’ll go with you.”
When I spoke again, Sir Chris stared at me for a long moment before nodding.
I felt I had to see it for myself.
My heart was pounding so hard that, unless I confirmed it with my own eyes, it didn’t seem as though the unease would settle.
I was afraid. This was supposed to be a hunting festival with nothing dangerous about it, and yet some nameless dread had wrapped around me and seemed to be tightening its grip around my throat.
“Nothing’s going to happen.”
Ropena added that with concern, but my racing heart would not calm so easily.
I would probably only be able to shake this feeling once I saw it with my own eyes.
I didn’t know why I was so anxious, but I was certain that if I saw my bodyguard knight in person, this tightness in my chest would finally ease.
The moment we stepped outside, what I saw in the distance was a knight drenched head to toe in blood, arguing with another knight.
Blood. The sight of that red color made me frown. There was no knight here who would shed that much blood just from hunting beasts.
His armor had been torn apart, one side of it crushed inward as though by overwhelming force, and the knight was shaking with a broken sword in his hand.
What stood in his eyes was unmistakable fear. His mouth hung open in a daze as he stared blankly at the other knight who was shouting at him.
Sir Chris slowly stepped forward.
“What in the world are you talking about? Don’t spout nonsense! Roman himself inspected this mountain. There’s no way something like that could happen!”
“But I saw it myself. Trolls. They’re nothing like the trolls we know. I saw James get torn apart with my own eyes. A man gets ripped apart by hand. How are we supposed to fight that? If you’d seen it yourself, you wouldn’t be saying this to me. That purple color! You don’t understand. You don’t know what I saw. You don’t know!”
“You’re just weak. Even if a troll appeared, you should have drawn your sword and fought!”
“A troll? What are they talking about?”
Both men turned to look at me. One gaze was burning with anger, the other soaked in fear.
The knight who had been furious was breathing hard through his nose, but the moment he saw the insignia engraved on Sir Chris’s armor, he shut his mouth.
“It’s a troll. There’s a troll up there!”
The frightened knight pointed toward the summit.
For a moment I only stared at his trembling finger, and then Sir Chris followed the direction of that hand and looked back at me, his lips parting.
What flickered in those eyes was shock, and before I could even meet his gaze, he spoke at once.
“...It sounds true. The problem is that I can also feel traces of black magic. We need to summon the knight order. We should coordinate with Roman—”
“Sir Adel went to the summit. Another knight who was with him saw it too; I think it was Sir Evan. I saw the two of them heading up there together, so they must both be at the peak.”
Evan.
At that name, I flinched before I could stop myself.
He’d gone to the summit? But didn’t Sir Chris just say he felt black magic from the summit?
A troll, and black magic. I looked at the knight trembling in front of me.
Then what had happened to Evan? My eyes flashed.
The chill that had long since settled in the depths of my gaze pierced straight through the knight’s chest, and the man, catching my stare, jerked and looked at me.
“What happened to Evan? Don’t tell me you left him behind and came down alone.”
“...I-I had no choice. If I’d stayed, I might have died too—”
“So you ran.”
Was that what this unease in my chest had been warning me about?
Without meaning to, I clenched my teeth. A metallic taste spread across my mouth, and I exhaled sharply before looking to Sir Chris.
“Summon the knight order. Search Verdeng Mountain. Coordinate with Roman, and find the two knights before sunset.”
“As you command.”
Even as I watched Sir Chris move at once to call the knights, my heart only grew more restless, and my eyes narrowed.
Breathing suddenly felt difficult, so I forced out a ragged breath. He had to be safe. No, he had to be safe.
Why did the sunset pouring down the mountain look so much like blood?
To steady my shaking heart, I started walking, my gaze fixed on Verdeng Mountain and the summit where my bodyguard knight should have been waiting.
#
“Still haven’t found them?”
The brilliant sunlight had vanished, and the sky, once again dark, was thick with stars.
The light cast by the thin crescent moon was too weak to see much, even with magic illuminating the mountain, and the thick stand of trees made it hard to tell objects apart.
And yet the knights searching the mountain wore grim, resolved expressions, because the people they had to find were far too important.
The bodyguard knight of the Yuris younger house head, and Roman’s heir.
On top of that, the knight commanders who had sensed black magic were urgently sweeping the entire area.
From time to time a magic circle would flare and light the mountain, but nothing at all could be felt through the mana.
They had said there was a troll, so why wasn’t there even the slightest reaction?
It was almost as if that troll had died and vanished.
As time passed and still no trace could be found, the knights’ expressions grew darker.
They had to get to the summit. But if there really was a troll there, and if black magic was involved as the witness claimed, could they even handle it?
“...Maybe the troll has already been dealt with. I can’t feel any more black magic. If Sir Adel and Evan managed to kill it, there’s no need to waste any more time here.”
When I turned toward Sir Chris’s murmur, he met my eyes and gave a small nod.
Was it always this frustrating not to be able to properly sense mana?
Still, the disappearance of black magic was clearly good news, and the knights all at once began moving toward the summit.
Had they really cut down the troll? But if not, then...
The thought that it had simply vanished made my brow furrow.
The image of my bodyguard knight lying collapsed before me flickered in my mind, and I shut my eyes tightly, letting out a breath.
That couldn’t be. He had to be all right. Evan had already fought a black mage once, hadn’t he?
If there had been no chance of winning, he would have pulled back.
The road to the summit felt impossibly long.
With every step, my unease swelled, until my breath came shallow and my heart hammered against my ribs.
I clutched my chest as if to hold that wild beating in place. My clenched hand had gone pale, and my nails dug in until blood welled up.
Gasping through teeth that were locked tight, I lifted my head again.
A memory from childhood. I had thought I’d forgotten it, so why was it returning now?
— Irene.
That warm voice calling my name lingered by my ear.
I didn’t want to hear it. I covered my ears, but the voice kept coming, so I squeezed my eyes shut too.
Please. Wasn’t it a voice I no longer wanted to hear?
Whenever I heard it, the heart that had begun to thaw would let the cold in faster than ever before.
The winter’s bitter chill cut deeper and deeper. The pain of a heart freezing and cracking apart was more agonizing than anything else.
What I had seen before would not happen again.
Evan was strong. He would surely cut down even a troll, even if there really was a black mage.
So there should have been nothing to worry about.
“...We’ve arrived.”
When one of the knights said that, the stench that pierced the nose made everyone frown.
I had lived my entire life with a sword. I’d spilled more blood onto steel than was in my own veins, so I knew that smell well.
“The smell of blood...”
“Looks like there’s a corpse.”
When I realized what it was, my lips parted slightly at the sight before us.
Moonlight shone through the towering trees, illuminating only that one place with a pale brightness.
The massive body of a troll, its throat cut open, and the troll’s head lying fallen beneath it.
And beside it.
A single knight collapsed there.
“...Evan.”
I thought the forest washed in starlight looked almost gray.
Under that bright light, the knight lying there alone did not move at all.
I walked forward slowly, staring blankly at him with one hand lifted as I approached the fallen knight.
He was cold. His pale face was smeared with blood, and for a moment he looked like a beautifully crafted doll.
The unease scattered. No, something even greater than that surged up and flooded my chest.
A chill ran down my spine. What was I looking at? Could it be an illusion created by a black mage?
But even when I shut my eyes and opened them again, the scene before me did not change.
Evan was still lying there, and both hands had fallen limply to the ground after losing his sword.
“Evan Fried.”
I called his name again. But there was no answer.
My trembling voice touched the empty air and scattered with the cold winter wind.
“...I told you not to get hurt.”
The handkerchief I had tied around his wrist was nowhere to be seen.
His hands were covered in wounds, veins raised thick beneath the skin, and just the blood caked over them was enough to show how fierce the fight had been.
When my fingers reached his face, I felt the cold there and my mouth twisted.
“...Ha.”
If I had only been faster, could I have kept my bodyguard knight from ending up like this?
My chest felt tight. I wanted to pour something out right then and there, but I couldn’t even tell what this feeling was.
My breath shook in small, ragged bursts. I clutched my chest.
Even though the hem of my dress was wrinkled and crushed in my hand, I kept gripping it tighter.
I had told him to come back safely. And in the end, this had happened again.
Human hearts were terribly fickle; only when something precious is lost do we understand, at last, just how precious it was.
Cold seemed to seep through my empty chest. When had it started? When had my bodyguard knight become someone I treasured this much?
There was no taking it back now. Just as when my mother died, all I could do was regret it again.
Regret, and then regret once more. Blue eyes, stained with remorse, trembled in the dark. The stars no longer shone.
The moon, hidden by clouds, no longer lit the world around me.
All I could see in the dark was red. Red, and soil packed beneath the snow in my grasp.
My fingers had dug in hard enough to wound me, and my hand stung, but I felt that if I didn’t do even this, something inside me would snap.
I shut my eyes. Was it because I had been staring at blood? In the darkness, it seemed as though green was rippling through the black.
It must have been only an afterimage left by all that red. I drew in a thin breath.
And when I opened my eyes again, what I saw was still black. Red.
And green.
“My lady...?”
For a moment, it felt as if my breath had caught in my throat.
I had thought I would never hear that voice again. But at the sound of it, right there by my ear, the colors around me scattered.
Evan, who had been lying there like a corpse, rose to his feet. Then he looked at me.
Even in this darkness, that green stood out so clearly that I could only stare at him, lips parting, dumbfounded.
How in the world...?
“I must have dozed off for a bit, but it looks like... quite a bit of time passed.”
“...Evan?”
“You don’t look well. Did something happen? I took care of the troll. Ah, Sir Roman is over there—”
I didn’t know why.
My body moved before my thoughts did, and before I knew it, I was hugging Evan.
But I couldn’t let go. Unlike before, his body was warm, and I could feel the steady beat of his heart against my own.
He made me feel so safe that I couldn’t let go.
“Stay still.”
Whenever the breath of my bodyguard knight brushed against me, I felt an absurd little itch in my chest.
He was warm. His body had been battered by winter wind, and it should have been freezing, yet his breath was the exact opposite, so warm that I found myself relieved before I even realized it.
If I let go of him, would he vanish as though he had never been there? If this scene I was seeing was an illusion...
“...I’m not going anywhere.”
When I lifted my head at the voice near my ear, Evan gave a faint smile and spoke again.
“Did I make you worry?”
“...I didn’t worry.”
At that, Evan narrowed his eyes. I had worried, of course, but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
Was there any need to admit that I’d worried? As I stared at him, his narrowed eyes curved softly. It was the same face that always looked at me that way.
Whenever I saw that smile, when the darkness lifted and the cold lodged deep in my heart began to melt,
why did heat always rise to my cheeks? I touched my face without thinking, and then Evan slowly opened his mouth.
“I guess I didn’t earn your trust. Didn’t I tell you? I’m my lady’s bodyguard knight.”
“......”
“No matter what happens, I’ll stay by your side. So don’t make that face. Honestly, I think you looked much better when you smiled like you did before.”
How could I smile?
The mere thought that someone beside me had vanished made my chest feel hollow, and remembering that moment made me frown.
Hadn’t that moment been just now? And yet, all at once, it felt astonishingly distant, and I let out a small laugh.
It was strange. He was only one person.
He was nothing more than a knight, no different from anyone else, and yet he affected me this much.
We stayed like that for a long time, until his voice reached me again and I slowly lifted my head.
“But... could you maybe let go of me now?”
“Ah...”
At that, I pulled back, and only then did Evan let out a breath and run a hand over his face.
Was it my imagination, or did his face look faintly red? Only then did I realize that the world around us had grown bright again.
It wasn’t dark anymore. The stars were shining just as they had at the start, and the crescent moon was casting its pale light over the forest.
Red eyes.
But they no longer looked ominous.
The unease that had been circling in my chest was gone too, leaving behind nothing but the simple thought that they were red.
When I looked at that red light, the afterimage left on my eyes was green. The world turned green.
And when I turned my gaze, what I saw was green eyes watching me, and before I knew it, my lips curved softly.
What exactly did I think of that man?
But nothing came to mind at once, so I let out a quiet sigh and slowly stood.
One day I would know. But not now.
The moment I became aware of these feelings, I was afraid I would never be able to look at him the same way again.
Closing my eyes, I spoke slowly.
“...Gather Sir Adel. We’re returning to the duke’s estate.”
Now that I had found my bodyguard knight, it was time to bring this matter to an end.
Roman, black magic, and the troll. The fact that these three were tangled together made it clear this was no ordinary incident.
So I would have to investigate. The Roman ducal house that had hosted this hunting festival.
After a brief glance at Adel Roman, who lay there covered in blood, I turned my eyes away and stared into the distance.
Unlike when I looked at Evan, a cold chill now lingered in my gaze.
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