As the Eyes Turn Red (6)
As I forced my swaying body upright, Irene looked at me with a face full of concern.
A laugh slipped out before I could stop it. Her eyes, lit by the moon, were bright red, and for a moment she looked as if she might burst into tears at any second, so I steadied myself on my sword and gave her a small smile.
“Were you crying?”
“...I wasn’t crying.”
And yet she was rubbing at her eyes. My vision was still blurred, too; if I stayed like this any longer, I’d pass out again. I blinked hard for a moment, then opened my eyes wide and let out a breath.
There wasn’t an ounce of strength left in my body. I’d probably pushed my mana to its limit. If I’d fought the troll any longer, I would have been the one to lose.
A metallic taste lingered in my mouth. I coughed up the blood surging in my throat, and Irene’s expression turned rigid.
“If you’ve suffered internal injuries, you need treatment right away—”
“I’m fine. I just overdid it a little and twisted my insides, that’s all.”
Honestly, I hadn’t expected myself to say something like that so casually. But that was really all it felt like.
Just twisted organs—nothing that wouldn’t heal in a few hours. I’d dodged every one of the troll’s attacks. I’d taken a grazing blow to the face and suffered some internal damage while deflecting its axe, but it was still far less serious than I’d expected.
I waved her off and told her I was fine, but Irene’s expression didn’t soften so easily.
The sight of that made me quietly smile, and I looked at her for a long moment. When we first met, I never would have imagined this—her pretending not to care while worrying about me like this. It was almost startling.
The mask was gone now; nowhere could I find that expression again. What flickered in her blue eyes was warm concern, and I shrugged lightly as if it meant nothing.
“...I really am fine.”
“I didn’t say I was worried.”
“I know. I just wanted to say it once.”
The moment I grinned at her, Irene suddenly frowned and shot me a glare.
She really should just admit it. Anyone could see she was worried about me.
Maybe it was simply embarrassing for her to confess it.
As I watched her in silence, she finally looked away and spoke again.
“I’m going to investigate Roman this time. Did you notice anything strange about Sir Adel? Of course...seeing him collapsed like that, I doubt he had much to do with it.”
At the mention of Adel’s name, I felt all my strength drain away again.
I hadn’t wanted to bring him along in the first place, and yet he’d insisted on coming to fight only to be knocked out from the start—he’d practically done nothing but give the troll a burst of confidence.
We’d won, thankfully, but without him it might have gone more smoothly.
What bothered me most, though, were his purple eyes.
The troll’s eyes had been purple too.
When I cut off its head later and saw its original color return, it seemed likely that black magic had tinted them violet while it was under its influence.
And since Adel’s eyes were purple as well, suspicion was unavoidable.
After hearing me out, Irene thought for a moment, then nodded.
“They were probably always purple. But...if Sir Adel fell first, then that troll was yours alone.”
“It turned out that way.”
I was staring blankly at the troll when a voice from behind made me flinch.
That exaggerated laughter had to belong to Sir Chris.
When I turned my head, sure enough, there he was. Sir Chris strode over and tapped my shoulder before grinning at Irene and me.
“You two are awfully close, aren’t you? Hugging like that and all—if someone saw you, they’d probably think you were lovers.”
“...You saw that?”
“Of course I did. Everyone else was busy dealing with Sir Adel. To be honest, I could tell from a distance that you’d just nodded off, but the young lady looked so serious I couldn’t bring myself to say anything.”
“Sir Chris.”
Irene shot him a cold look.
Her voice was so icy that Sir Chris gave an awkward laugh and scratched his head.
“Well...if you two get along, that’s a good thing in its own way, isn’t it? It’s the first time I’ve seen the young lady worry so much about anyone. There’s nothing wrong with a bodyguard knight being close to her.”
“Be quiet. It’s making my head ring.”
“...Understood.”
After letting out a small sigh, Irene frowned at me. She looked as though she had something to say, but perhaps she couldn’t with Sir Chris standing there.
Her ears seemed faintly red, too. Maybe she was still embarrassed that he’d caught us hugging.
When I met her gaze and smiled faintly, Irene replied in a frosty tone.
“What are you smiling at?”
“...No reason. I’m just a little drained.”
Irene shot me a look, then walked away, and I narrowed my eyes at Sir Chris.
“Why would you just blurt out that you saw it? She’s already shy enough.”
“What? I was only saying it was nice to see.”
“It wasn’t because it was nice to see. You just wanted to tease us, didn’t you?”
“Well, that’s half right.”
I was so dumbfounded all I could do was laugh.
When I opened my mouth to protest, Sir Chris frowned and then broke into a shameless grin.
“Anyway, hurry up and go after her. You should head over and soothe the girl’s wounded pride.”
“...I guess I should.”
After saying that, I realized my face felt oddly hot.
I’d been acting as if nothing happened, but the truth was I was still pretty stunned by Irene’s hug.
Who wouldn’t be thrown off when someone suddenly wrapped their arms around them like that?
The strong scent of roses still lingered vividly in my nose, so much so that I might have believed this place was a garden overflowing with blooms rather than a forest.
The warmth of her body against mine, the way her eyes trembled as she looked at me, and the faint pulse of her heartbeat all made my chest feel strangely ticklish.
I took a deep breath and let it out again, but even that couldn’t calm my pounding heart, so I let out a bitter smile.
When someone made you this flustered, how on earth were you supposed to respond? I’d managed to get through it this time, but next time...
Next time, I doubted I’d be able to just brush it off so easily. I staggered forward again.
The steps I took toward Irene no longer felt as heavy as before, though maybe that was just my imagination.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“The forest is dangerous at night. If you go off alone like that, I can’t help but worry.”
“...Then you should’ve followed me faster.”
Her muttering, for some reason, looked incredibly cute, and I brushed a hand over the corner of my mouth before quietly turning my gaze away from her.
“Did you leave Lopena at the ducal estate? I haven’t seen her at all since earlier.”
“I stopped her from coming with us. If there was a troll, it would’ve been hard to protect Lopena.”
Lopena’s face seemed to drift into my mind.
She was a little dim for her age, so she might have cried when she saw me like this.
Irene hadn’t cried either, but she’d come close enough to doing so that it had left a strong impression on me.
Still, I really was surprised that she’d worried about me this much.
If anything felt a little unsettling, it was the way Irene seemed to overlap me with someone else whenever she looked at me.
Had she perhaps gone through something like this before?
But I couldn’t ask her directly, so I clicked my tongue, closed my mouth, and started walking again.
The climb up the mountain had been fairly bright just a little while ago, but now I could finally feel time passing as the world had turned dark.
If that was the case, maybe I should have tried to endure a little longer instead of collapsing on the ground.
The stars spread across the sky hadn’t changed at all, making it feel as if my battle with the troll had been nothing more than an illusion.
Janzir’s words came back to me—something about my bloodline and my mana. Was that, too, just another illusion?
On a hunch, I drew my mana upward, but the mana that was left to me, now little more than embers, only flickered in response and refused to manifest outside my body.
My body lurched, and I ended up sinking down to the ground.
I’d wasted strength for nothing, and when I suddenly collapsed, Irene, startled by the sound, looked at me and parted her lips.
“Evan?”
“I tripped on a rock. It’s nothing...urk.”
I’d been about to say it was nothing and stand up naturally, but something seemed wrong with my bones, because a sharp pain shot through my chest.
Had I been clipped by something while fighting the troll?
As I grimaced in pain, Irene hurried over and spoke at once.
“If you were hurt, you should’ve told the mages earlier and gotten treated. Why are you so stubborn...!”
“You said you weren’t worried, so why do you look like you’re about to cry?”
When I pouted and answered her like that, Irene’s expression stiffened.
Maybe I really did look sulky. But I couldn’t help thinking that if that was all it took, she should just be honest with me instead.
Or maybe I was simply being greedy. I smiled bitterly at that selfish wish to hear just one sentence—that she had been worried about me.
By the time the pain in my chest had faded, I looked at Irene and then slowly turned my eyes away.
The stars slipped across the heavens. When the drifting moonlight cut through the shadows between us, Irene’s lips moved.
“...I was worried.”
At those words, I turned my head, but Irene had already looked away and sealed her mouth shut.
Yet when she glanced back at me again and closed her eyes briefly, she spoke once more.
“I was very worried.”
“......”
“I even tied that handkerchief around you so you wouldn’t get hurt. How could I not worry?”
I wasn’t sure how to describe what I was feeling now.
The sound of my own heartbeat seemed to beat in my ears, and heat rose from my reddening face.
It was only a simple admission that she’d worried about me, and yet her voice brushed against my chest and reached something deep inside me.
I already knew she’d been lying when she said she wasn’t worried.
I already knew she was embarrassed and trying to act as if nothing had happened.
And yet—
Now that I’d heard it directly, my expression began to crumble.
Warm breath spilled between my slightly parted lips and scattered into the winter air, turning white before it vanished.
The shadows receded. As the light filtering through the trees illuminated Irene, her blue eyes seemed to shine even brighter in the darkness.
Our gazes met, and I swallowed hard, staring into those blue eyes that felt as though they could pierce my chest and lay every hidden thought bare.
“...Young lady.”
I’d wanted to say something. My mouth had been itching to blurt out anything at all.
But what came out was only that meaningless murmur. I could feel my eyes trembling.
The emotion wrapping around my body was unmistakable embarrassment, and all I could do was blink at her.
But Irene got up without saying another word.
As if she had said everything she needed to, she turned away without hesitation and quietly looked up at the sky.
I simply stood up and moved to her side.
I didn’t think there was any need to say anything.
I just stood beside her as she stood there silently, stared blankly into space for a while, and then took the handkerchief from my breast pocket.
The handkerchief’s color had not changed at all. My face and body were covered in blood, enough for it to have already dried hard, but the handkerchief remained as pure white as when I first received it, and a small laugh escaped me.
I’d failed to keep my promise not to get hurt, but at least I’d kept this one.
“I’ll return it to you.”
At that, Irene stared blankly at me, her eyes fixed on the handkerchief in my raised hand.
When she looked at me as though asking why I was handing it back now, I slowly opened my mouth.
“You told me not to dirty it, didn’t you? I kept it in my chest pocket while I fought.”
“...And all that while, you were worried about something like that?”
“You said it yourself, didn’t you? Isn’t it something you always carry around?”
“I have plenty of handkerchiefs. It’s not as important as all that—”
“It was precious to me.”
As I said that, I gave her a faint smile.
I simply held her gaze in silence, telling her with my eyes that every word was sincere.
It was precious to me. That was the first time anyone had given me something like that while worrying about me.
It was the first time anyone had worried about me.
Natural talent was not always a blessing.
Being able to read a score and understand every note precisely, or to look at a page of music and hear a new sound in my ears, was not always a good thing.
They were memories from a life that wasn’t Evan Fried’s. Being born with talent was one thing that Evan and I had in common.
But the difference was that, for me, that talent had become a noose around my throat and eventually dragged me down.
I had talent. Because I always showed people something exceptional, no one ever worried about me.
When I made a mistake, all that returned to me were cold stares, and those who had once applauded me began pointing fingers.
Why did they think I’d never make a mistake? Why did they think I’d never fall apart?
I was not a machine. Things always went wrong in places no one expected.
I was only human—how could I possibly do everything perfectly without a single mistake?
Now I held a sword instead of a piano, and though that talent was overflowing, I could still die at any moment.
No matter how much of a Master I might become, an arrow through the heart would kill me all the same. So how could I always win against every enemy I faced?
What I always carried in my chest was anxiety.
If I ever made a mistake and collapsed, if I failed to stop the tragedy awaiting Irene—
The reason I came out at dawn to swing my sword wasn’t diligence. It was simply that I couldn’t sleep.
I trembled. And when the hand gripping my sword shook violently, I clenched my teeth and swung harder.
Did she know what her concern meant to me?
Maybe there was nothing in the world that could replace it.
I was almost tempted to give up on ever returning to my original world, just for a single sentence like that.
To me, that one sentence was worth more than anything else.
Because the boy who had once worked so hard just to hear, “Don’t get hurt,” and “I was worried,” was still here.
So I looked at Irene and smiled again. Her eyes wavered as she met mine.
Perhaps startled, she opened them a little wider as they turned toward me.
“...You don’t have to give it back.”
Her answer was so unexpected that I stared at her in confusion.
What did she mean, I didn’t have to give it back? After saying that, Irene started walking forward.
As I stood there and watched her, a moment later she turned back and spoke softly.
“Keep it. It’s fine if it gets dirty, so just carry it with you, like always.”
“But—”
“...I’ll think of it as something that says you’re always worrying about me. Don’t do anything reckless like that alone again, not next time. Don’t make people panic.”
“......”
“Come back a little more normally...with a smile.”
Her eyes, soaked in darkness, trembled.
Even after she turned away again and hid the slight shake of her mouth, I was still chasing that blue light I had seen before my eyes.
And then silence fell.
The rhythm that only a quiet forest could possess wrapped around us, and the forest dyed in white starlight and black shadow looked almost like a piano.
The chirring of crickets, the occasional murmur of flowing water—within that pale noise, even Irene’s breathing blended with the wind and flowed on as a single rhythm.
And so I laughed.
The music I had hated so much, the melody nature made here and now, sounded more beautiful than any other sound in the world.
“I’ll be sure to do that.”
Normally.
I smiled like that.
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