House Aepheros (4)
Pollux stared in bewilderment at the hand Karsein offered instead of a fist.
'An imperial... is holding his hand out to me?'
Impossible. No imperial in this world liked the Yarikh people.
But that hand wasn't a fist. It wasn't gripping anything, either—certainly not winding up to throw something. It was simply an open palm, rough with blisters and calluses.
'...The traces of someone who trained with a sword, then.'
It didn't match a Yarikh's, but the sheer volume of training behind those hands was nothing anyone could call lazy. And yet the question didn't go away.
"Why are you helping me? You know full well I'm a Yarikh."
"Honestly? I don't really know or care what a Yarikh is."
"...What did you say? You don't know I'm a Yarikh, with the tattoos plain as day on my skin?"
"Huh."
Doesn't know what a Yarikh is.
Pollux flinched for a moment.
"You asked why I was helping, right? Because the way I see it, it's just a crowd of people beating on someone who isn't fighting back at all. Things like that get on my nerves for no good reason."
"...You're a strange one."
"Think whatever you like. Anyway—"
-Thwip.
"Keep lying around here and I think the empty bottles are going to start flying."
As Karsein spoke those words, lightly plucking a bottle out of the air that had been sailing toward Pollux's head, the imperials in the tavern—their grievances stacked up long enough—finally shouted at him.
"You there! A knight, apparently—why in blazes are you helping a Yarikh?!"
"Any imperial should know! What kind of savages those things are!"
"They're the ones who summoned the demonic beasts upon the Pecellos Empire, yet they cling to the edges of our land like parasites—why are you defending them?"
So that's how far it goes.
Once the imperials had said that much, this man would surely withdraw his hand. Pollux turned away from the offered palm and spoke.
"If you heard all that, then be on your way, imperial. Helping me, a man everyone despises, will only get you burned."
That was how it always went. Whatever a Yarikh said, it never sat well with imperials. The proper course was simply to take their blows and be their venting post until the time came to move on.
At last, the man pulled his hand back.
Pollux had seen it coming to some degree, and tried to accept it. But Karsein didn't step back.
"I don't know what's behind all this, but being a punching bag isn't the whole of life, you know."
Not only did he seize Pollux's hand, he hauled himself up onto the footrest with his own body braced against it. Dumbfounded, Pollux found himself pulled to his feet by Karsein's grip and could only gape.
"What do you mean...?"
"I've been on the receiving end too, so I know how it feels. Keep that much in mind, and let's talk outside. Staying in here looks like nothing but a loss for you."
With that, Karsein strode toward the tavern entrance. Not a single one of the drunks dared to lunge at him again after watching him subdue them in one move. Even those who wanted to keep roughing up Pollux could only glower with sullen resentment.
When Pollux turned back to take stock of Karsein, who had quelled the brawl, a woman with violet hair came into view behind him.
Only then did Pollux piece the situation together.
'That woman is the one who's been helping us Yarikhs...'
Her name—Harnie Theresia, if he remembered right. Judging by how she was conversing with Karsein now, whatever help he'd given earlier didn't seem to be some calculated ploy to gain something.
Pollux, who had been watching Karsein, lingered a while longer in the tavern before finally pulling himself away.
I suppose I did stick my nose in, a little.
Harnie had only asked me to help that man—nothing more. It was me who told him that being a punching bag wasn't the whole of life. It was me who forced him up off the floor where he'd been sitting, resigned to absorbing the drunks' blows. Either way, both had been my own idea. Watching a group beating in progress had left a sour taste in my mouth, and I'd acted on it.
As we stepped out of the tavern, Harnie came toward us. She glanced back inside once, then looked straight at me and confirmed that things were finished.
"The inside of the tavern is... done, then."
"Yes."
Outside, it had gone quiet. The sound of bottles and cups flying, of chairs and tables shattering, had been ringing clearly even from out here—and now all of it had ceased. That would be Harnie's doing.
Which meant it was time for me to ask my question.
"So who exactly is that man, and why does he just sit there taking hits?"
He was strange in every possible way. His strength was plain to see, yet he simply let himself be beaten. When the other patrons hurled bottles and dishes and curses at him, he didn't so much as react. And he'd kept me at arm's length even as I tried to help him, as if he'd simply accepted all of it long ago. None of it added up.
But she would know. She was the one who'd asked me to save him, after all.
Harnie's lips wavered before she answered with a look of quiet pity.
"He's a man of House Aepheros. Someone doing the work the empire ought to honor most of all."
"House Aepheros...? Aren't those the people of the West?"
"That's right. Pollux is a Westerner."
"But the people in the tavern seemed to call him—that man, this Pollux—a Yarikh."
"That's..."
"Because imperials still see us as the Yarikh tribe, and not as fellow citizens of the empire."
Pollux, who had just emerged from the tavern, answered in Harnie's stead while she hesitated.
"They don't accept you as fellow imperials?"
"Exactly what I said. The Yarikh tribe is treated as savages. Even though the imperial title of Marquis Aepheros was granted to me, they still refuse to acknowledge us as their own."
-Drip, drop.
Bloodstained shards fell to the ground—fragments of the bottles that had been embedded in Pollux's skin mere moments before.
"I wondered why you knocked out the imperials and offered your hand to a Yarikh like me... when the truth is you really don't know anything. Isn't that right, Head of the Flessia Merchant Guild?"
"How many times have I told you not to call me that?"
"..."
Pollux gave a dry chuckle and asked me, "Boy. What's your name?"
"Karsein. Karsein Bagrand."
"Hoh. You don't mean... of the Bagrand Ducal House?"
"The very same."
"Haha! Remarkable. The heir of House Bagrand—the head of the nobility itself—helped me. What on earth possessed the Head of the Flessia Merchant Guild to bring a man like this along?"
"Oh, for heaven's sake..."
Still laughing aloud, Pollux held out his hand to me once more.
"Chieftain of the Yarikh tribe, Pollux Tutulum. And... strange as it sounds to say, I'm also Marquis Aepheros himself."
At those words, my eyes sharpened.
'This man... was the Marquis of Aepheros?'
In the game, his appearance had never been properly introduced. When dealing with him, he'd dressed in noble's attire just like any other aristocrat, so I'd had no information to go on—name included.
'The episodes required me to face him at least once, but to meet him like this, this early...'
A jolt of tension ran through me. A man of such colossal build. A man whose body spoke of countless battles survived. This character—whom the story demanded I confront at least once, in a somewhat violent fashion—was standing right in front of me.
"You've got good eyes, boy. But if we keep standing like this, my hand's going to feel the shame of it."
I understood instinctively. This was his way of saying he wanted a proper introduction. Right—I hadn't met this man today to push an episode forward.
"Karsein Bagrand. Adopted son of the Bagrand Ducal House."
"Adopted son?"
"I mentioned it briefly in the tavern, didn't I? That I've been on the receiving end before."
Since he'd laid all his cards on the table, I laid out all of mine as well. Pollux clasped my hand and let out another dry laugh.
"So that's what it was. You've had your share of being resented, too, haven't you?"
"Something like that. Meeting Lady Harnie came out of those same circumstances, come to think of it."
They say everyone's circumstances differ, but even I couldn't keep my brow from knotting this time. To be denied recognition as a noble despite being one was one thing—but to be denied even standing as a fellow citizen of the empire?
And he was being ostracized on top of that. The patrons here hadn't hesitated to act savagely toward him just because he'd ordered a drink at their tavern.
Yet Pollux accepted it all as if it were simply the natural order of things. That was what I couldn't stand.
"Karsein Bagrand. Right. I'll remember it. But there's something I'd like to ask—will you answer me?"
"What is it?"
"...Karsein. You said you were the adopted son of Bagrand, didn't you?"
"That's right."
It wasn't as though I'd entered that house by choice. But it was still true.
"Then were you a man of the Wederos Kingdom?"
"...What?"
"If you weren't of the Wederos Kingdom, you couldn't possibly be wearing that ring. Yet you wear it just fine—with no side effects whatsoever."
I'd heard something like this before. From an old man in Rusmayer, if I remembered right.
'The problem is, I can't give him a definitive answer either.'
Even before I'd entered this game world, I'd tried countless times to dig up information on him, but Karsein's origins had proven impossible to uncover. Nothing came of it—not a single clue—and even raking through the Memorials revealed nothing about where he'd come from. The best I could establish was that he'd once lived in the slums.
There was nothing for it. When cornered like this, improvising an answer was the best play.
But before I could open my mouth—
Harnie answered the question first.
"I can see what you're thinking, Pollux, but I believe you're barking up the wrong tree."
"Why? Surely you know the legend of the Wederos Kingdom as well as anyone, Harnie."
"I do. Which is exactly why the answer is no—that ring is almost certainly a fake."
"A fake?"
As Pollux tilted his head in confusion, Harnie let out a soft sigh.
"This is nothing more than a prize ring my fiancé won at the Snowflower Festival. There's no way it could be genuine."
"...Is that so? Well, fair enough. Such a thing wouldn't be floating around in merchants' hands at a festival."
"And not only that—it seems to react to my fiancé, but if it were real, it should have reacted to me as well. And my ring?"
"Doesn't react at all. An empty cart rattles loudest, as they say."
"Exactly."
The seriousness drained from Pollux's eyes, replaced by something close to boredom—as if it all amounted to nothing more than a child's game.
"Tch. Legends will be legends, I suppose. I got my hopes up for nothing."
"Ahaha..."
"Hey. Am I the only one being kept out of this conversation?"
Something about being stuck on the listening end left nothing but question marks stacking up over my head, so I asked outright.
"I mean, common sense says both sides have to share something before anyone can judge whether it's real or not, doesn't it? That's how it works, right?"
So Pollux opened his mouth—
"Hmm. It seems I've committed a grave discourtesy. Here I was, meddling in the private time of a passionate young couple."
"Yes—yes? What are you talking about all of a sudden...?"
"Seeing you wear the same expression, Harnie, I'd say you two are a perfect match... And I thought there was something familiar about the air between you, too. To think I intruded on young lovers in the full bloom of their courtship. I was hopelessly oblivious. My apologies."
"P-Pollux!"
He'd gone and said the very thing Harnie hated most.
...If I didn't want to hear it, I suppose I'd just have to pretend I hadn't.
After parting ways with Pollux, Harnie was on her way back to the horses she'd left standing with Karsein.
But for some reason, that one remark kept circling in her head, and she couldn't bring herself to say so much as a word to him.
"Hmm. It seems I've committed a grave discourtesy. Here I was, meddling in the private time of a passionate young couple."
She'd met Pollux before in her capacity as Head of the Flessia Merchant Guild, but the subject of their contract-born engagement had never come up. And so an enormous misunderstanding had bloomed.
"Personally, I think you two suit each other wonderfully. A fine match between a fine man and a fine woman. Hahaha!"
After hearing him thrust out his thumb and cheer them on like that, there was simply no dissolving the awkwardness.
"Harnie."
"Ye-yes?!"
"You do have to get on the horse, you know."
"Ah..."
Her embarrassment had run so deep that she hadn't even registered their arrival.
"I'm sorry. I was lost in thought..."
Taking Karsein's hand, she climbed up toward the saddle. Riding would settle this fluttering feeling a little, she told herself.
And then—
Karsein climbed up onto the horse with her.
"Wh-what are you doing? Why are you...?"
"Surely riding together was the plan?"
"What?! No, I was going to—!"
She'd meant to say she'd intended to ride separately. But Karsein's airtight logic came right on its heels.
"The horse rental costs more as it is. Besides, how would you ride in that dress?"
"...Ah."
Of course she'd had to be wearing a dress. It was one a marquis's daughter might send over to fetch a new fiancé—a gown hardly suited for sitting a saddle and gripping the reins herself.
"I know it's uncomfortable. But I'll need you to bear with it—there's no way to rent another horse at this hour."
She understood the reasoning perfectly well. But her heart was pounding far too hard. That was the problem.
She willed it to calm down, yet the frantic rhythm refused to stop.
"I believe I've given you plenty of time. All your nerves settled now?"
"Yes?! Ye-yes!"
"Then please, lean in toward me just a little."
There was nothing to be done. Her heart raced because Karsein felt so awkward to her now, and yet for the moment she had no choice but to settle into his arms.
-Hihiing!
Her heart thundered like a runaway horse. Harnie found herself fanning her face again and again, trying to cool the heat blooming across her cheeks.
'Of all times... of ALL times... why did he have to say it right there?!'
"He's a fine man, isn't he? Hold on to him tight."
Pollux's parting words were partly to blame too. Why did he have to go spouting remarks that stoked misunderstandings like that?!
She stole a glance.
How was Karsein taking it?
But his expression was set in stone. This hardly seemed like a situation where the awkwardness could be broken at all.
And so Harnie, leaning against Karsein's chest, was forced to keep her gaze turned firmly away.
This was all Pollux's fault.
She prayed only that this hammering heart of hers would stop—just a little sooner.
───────
I'm sorry I couldn't put together an April Fools' chapter for you all. To be blunt about it, I guess I'm just not a fun person. I wanted to play a little prank with the cover art like other authors do, but...
It's not funny, and it just looks pathetically cheap... I walked it through for about five minutes, decided it really wasn't working, and switched back to the original cover. Sorry for missing April Fools'.