Chapter 14
Chapter 14
Chapter 14: Blowing Wind (2)
The attention of the banquet hall was focused on the appearance of the Engineering Captain, the Lord's daughter who rarely went out except for work, and the person who received the Official Wintel Recommendation Letter, but soon, the air in the banquet hall softened much more.
On the table where the three sat around, empty glasses increased one by one, and the initial awkwardness was naturally dissolved.
Melissa was more talkative than usual, and Erwin was also enjoying wine without putting down her glass.
"So?"
Melissa asked with sparkling eyes.
"How was the real mercenary life?"
The conversation that started with Engineering Unit work naturally moved to Iden.
Iden didn't exaggerate.
Nor did he hide it.
Life in the Blue Wolf Corps, days risking life on a single contract, nights trying to sleep in a blizzard without even time to dry blood-stained boots.
He calmly unraveled stories that would be hard for listeners to understand.
Erwin, holding her glass, was deeply immersed in that story.
To her, the existence of a mercenary was always close to a 'concept in data'.
A group with high combat power but difficult to control, and dangerous to trust.
But Iden's story was breaking the fixed frame little by little.
The trust and faith he had shown until now were melting Erwin's heart.
The weight of a contract, the sensation of losing a comrade, even how cold-hearted he had to make himself to survive.
Erwin listened attentively without interrupting him even once.
"But fighting the Northern Barbarian Chief..."
Melissa, who was listening attentively, spoke as if swallowing her breath.
"That really, you could have died."
"Of course I was prepared to die. I was prepared to win even longer before that."
At that confident answer, Erwin's heated gaze moved to Iden.
She thought it was a cool remark, and a cool deed.
That he solidified the resolve for victory before death, that he could talk about belief in himself without a single inch of hesitation.
And that confidence didn't feel absurd, nor did it sound like bluff or bravado of someone who succeeded by luck.
Isn't the time spent with him proving it.
Although he was appointed as Senior Adjutant abruptly without receiving regular education, he now possesses top-level skills.
The trajectory he lived was being conveyed as the weight of words.
After stories were exchanged for a long time like that, Erwin suddenly put down her glass.
"...Senior Adjutant? Can I ask one thing."
Iden nodded politely.
"About your origin."
She caught her breath for a moment as if choosing words.
"No big meaning. Just, there was something that always bothered me."
Erwin spoke without avoiding his gaze.
"You have a strangely different feeling. Like a feeling detached from the process you lived... I don't think that's just because of tone or attitude."
Melissa nodded and chimed in.
"Right! I felt it too. Somehow, the Senior Adjutant doesn't seem like he's from mercenary background. So um... should I say he looks noble."
Iden looked down at his glass for a moment.
Rivan Count family.
That name floated in his head.
Cold hallways, hypocritical gazes, mansion filled with contempt and silence.
Even the steps he took with the ambition to win a new life abandoning everything on the day he left turning his back on that place.
Of course, those emotions and memories didn't stay long.
Now it's really someone else's story, just memory residue that can't even be categorized as outdated recollection.
Just if one thing remains at the end of thoughts, it would be about regret that he couldn't completely shed the shell of the youngest noble young master even with the rough wild life during that time.
Iden raised his head and spoke.
"My hometown is Rivan Count territory."
Erwin's eyes grew slightly big for a moment.
Iden stopped speaking for a moment, then continued calmly.
"My origin is a nameless roadside."
Melissa made a surprised expression, and Erwin didn't say anything.
A moment of silence.
However, there was neither suspicion nor interrogation in that silence.
Rather, Erwin's intoxicated gaze looking at him only contained the curiosity and interest of a young girl she thought she had erased now.
Erwin opened her mouth again.
"So, that's why you became that solid."
That remark was closer to understanding than a question.
Erwin lifted her wine glass and held it out to Iden.
Soon, a clear sound resonates as it clinks with the glass Iden held out.
Dark red wine holding the banquet hall's light swayed in the glass.
The night was deepening.
The lighting in the banquet hall lowered further, and the sound of people's footsteps disappeared long ago.
Melissa eventually left first leaving words that she was tired.
What remained were Erwin and Iden, and one half-empty bottle.
Erwin exhaled slowly holding the wine glass in her hand.
She was quite drunk.
Not to the extent her head became blurry, but the tension she usually held onto was noticeably loosened.
She didn't know herself, who was never disheveled, would loosen up to this extent.
If she had to find the reason, it was one.
Iden.
Trust in this man, results he created, attitude he showed, and judgment that never went wrong until now.
All of that was dulling Erwin's wariness little by little.
Was it because of that?
Erwin suddenly let out the thought she was holding.
No.
In fact, it was a thought she had been holding for a long time.
From the moment he declared he would breathe vitality into the Engineering Unit spending even his private funds.
"...As the Engineering Captain."
She continued looking down at the glass.
"I owe you too much."
Iden raised his head and looked at her.
"One can't live only owing debts."
Erwin continued as if bracing herself.
"I will repay the grace by all means. If there is something you want, say it."
She stopped speaking for a moment, then added.
"Or, if it's not something I can do right now... set a deadline. I will definitely grant it by then."
Short breath, yet breath harboring conviction.
"Because I will give you everything I can give staking the name of Vermir."
Erwin spoke like that putting her sincerity.
That much, what Iden did for the Engineering Unit was great, and it was a great grace the current her couldn't repay.
It was sincerity conveyed borrowing intoxication, and a burden of the heart she was unpacking only now.
But when Iden had no answer, Erwin, feeling some unknown impatience, added words again.
"Really. Although what I have right now is only this one body and title, if there is something you want, I will repay by all means. So you can speak comfortably."
Erwin, finishing her words, put strength into her slightly relaxed two eyes.
Since it was sincerity brought out with difficulty borrowing alcohol, she hoped it would be conveyed fully.
"......."
Uh....
However, only after speaking, Erwin felt something was strange.
...Everything I have?
......One body?
She realized belatedly that something was wrong among the words she poured out under the single-mindedness to convey sincerity.
It was because of intoxication.
Words lost discretion, boundaries of thought blurred, and range of imagination widened unnecessarily.
The words she just said rewound slowly in her head.
'If there is something you want, say it.'
'Everything I can give.'
'What I have is only one body.'
Erwin's gaze crashed rapidly to the floor.
Her heart started beating fast without reason.
Thoughts started bouncing in a direction she didn't intend at all in her head, and the words she poured out lengthily started compressing in a strange direction.
'Want.'
'Everything.'
'Body.'
—!!!
...Perhaps.
Perhaps if he misunderstands the choice of those words?
Erwin tried to deny that thought herself.
It doesn't make sense.
She didn't speak with such meaning at all, and she knew better than anyone that Iden wasn't a person to misunderstand in such a direction.
He is a cool-headed and goal-oriented man, not swayed by emotions, and doing his best only in what he is entrusted.
She believed if it were him, he would accept her sincerity without distortion.
But, nevertheless, the thought once gone awry didn't stop.
It inflated arbitrarily, and mixed arbitrarily.
Then suddenly, the sound someone used to say like a joke in childhood 'of all things' came to mind now.
She couldn't understand why that saying came to mind now.
To Erwin, who never even thought properly about relationships between men and women let alone dating experience, and to Erwin who was intoxicated, that sentence was just too excessive.
As the boundary between imagination and reality blurred in her head, heat started rising to her face.
It felt like a wild horse that finished preheating was running wild in the wilderness ignoring the one holding it.
Like mocking or teasing.
...No.
It's overinterpretation.
Even while stopping herself like that, her heart didn't listen.
It was then.
Iden, who was sitting quietly, suddenly moved his seat.
It was right next to her.
Her seizing heart crashes to a place she doesn't know where in an instant.
It seemed like the wild horse running wild in the wilderness was smiling gloomily revealing healthy teeth.
"Then,"
Iden, who approached, spoke quietly.
Anxiety grew bigger as much as that lowered voice.
"I have something urgent to tell you."
Instantly, Erwin's whole body stiffened.
Urgent?
Now?
At this moment?
Her head, already jumbled, becomes messy like a haystack stirred up by a crazy wild horse.
Thinking was impossible.
No, an accident was happening.
Furthermore, Iden was closer than thought.
Distance where shoulders almost touched.
Bodies stuck naturally, and although her head knew it wasn't intentional, the intoxicated body reacted hypersensitively.
Strong force entered the hand holding the wine glass.
The creaking sound of the glass surface seemed to sound loud only to herself.
Then, Iden lowered his head.
Erwin's breath stopped at the breathing sound hitting her side line without notice.
Close as if whispering, Iden approached.
Erwin closed her eyes tightly reflexively.
The heart she thought had crashed and stopped beat crazily again.
Hands trembled.
In the hand holding the wine glass, extreme strength entered.
—Don't tell me.
If it's a story to convey this secretly, it must be only that.
If not, it would be a story he could tell from the opposite seat.
Why is he trying to whisper.
Don't tell me!
Did he really misunderstand as 'that'?
Erwin, who was shrinking her whole body with instinctive defense mechanism, bit her lip.
As the dignified Engineering Captain, I will overcome what is heard.
Since I swore to dedicate this one body solely to protect the city's safety, I will fulfill that vow by all means.
Erwin, ruminating on the vow of past days, prepared fully for what would be heard soon.
Of course.
Although what was heard was something else that deviated from all imagination and delusion, expectation and prediction.
"There is a high possibility that the Northern Alliance Tribes will advance to Hamelon sooner or later."
—Huh?
Clang.
The wine glass she was holding strongly broke just like that.
Red liquid scattered on the table, and Erwin's breath burst out a beat late.
And right after that, Erwin...
Only then began to realize how she had run wild alone in absurd imagination.
"...."
Erwin looked at Iden, who gave strength to his glabella, with a dumbfounded expression.
Regrettably.
The words that she would repay help even borrowing the name of Vermir.
The words that she would repay by all means even if it takes time.
Although Iden was intending to use that to plan the situation after air raid defense.
"......."
It was a night where ambition and misunderstanding bloomed.