Even a Madman Can’t Be Cured
“So he’s finally woken up.”
At the uneasy sensation creeping up from below, Sylvia swallowed a sigh and clenched her fist. It was unpleasant, yes, but thanks to the medicine she’d taken, it was still bearable. Pills that dulled her senses a little. Pills that loosened tension and regulated her heartbeat. Three kinds in all, dutifully swallowed every morning, noon, and night.
She couldn’t have been more grateful that the knights who dealt directly with monsters had easy access to medication. There were side effects—she felt a little more subdued than usual, and her digestion had grown sluggish—but that was far preferable to being helplessly exposed to Owen’s every stimulation while trying to eat.
Not that Owen had failed to keep his promise. It had only been a misunderstanding on the first day.
Even on that first day, when she’d taken medicine to keep her from any “emotional disturbance” and still woken with that peculiar feeling the moment morning came, she’d been so close to wanting to throttle him. But Owen had only shrugged, perfectly unruffled, and said morning erections were beyond his control too.
It’s not like I didn’t do my part by leaving it alone and calming it down properly.
There wasn’t a trace of shame on that smooth face of his. Every morning, whenever he got hard, she was apparently supposed to be notified of it, and he didn’t even look embarrassed about that.
If she had a body that grew aroused every morning and he were the one forced to know each time, she would have blushed so fiercely she’d have burned herself down to white ash.
For some reason, that made her feel wronged.
Why is he always so damned composed?
It was the first time she’d ever felt the urge to rattle Owen, to force that eternally calm expression of his into something flustered entirely by her own hand. Of course, the urge was only an urge, and there was nothing she could do about it.
“He’s late getting up for someone on leave.”
Grumbling under her breath, Sylvia pulled back the little curtain hanging inside the carriage door. Bright midday sunlight flashed across the distant rooftops of the Imperial Palace.
Owen had taken a short leave two days ago and vanished. His origins were murky, but unlike most knights of uncertain birth, he never seemed desperate. He made a point of using every scrap of leave he was allowed, and even after receiving an imperial medal, he showed no hunger at all for achievement.
Once, Janet, a female knight who was Sylvia’s friend, had said of him, “I think he came here to kill himself. Don’t you? I’ve never seen him cling to anything.”
Because Owen was friends with Heston, people who liked Owen often came to Sylvia. Janet had been one of them, though she was a little different from the people who’d simply been dazzled by Owen’s bright blond hair, handsome face, unexpected kindness, and smile that made one’s chest flutter.
She was someone enchanted by the emptiness at the core of Owen’s soul.
Her assessment hadn’t been wrong. The people who entered the dangerous First Knight Order to fight monsters were either possessed by moral convictions no one else could touch, eager to rise quickly and claim accomplishments before moving on to something else, or miserable souls sent there by their families to die with whatever honor remained to their name.
Owen maintained smooth social relationships, and he was rarely injured on duty, but he still gave off that same kind of feeling.
Since he almost never spoke of his family with his own mouth, rumors about Owen had spread in abundance.
“His surname is Summers, right? That isn’t connected to that person, is it? Count Bronovitch?”
People had gone so far as to point out that the maiden name of the Count of Bronovitch’s grandmother—his being the Emperor’s right hand—was Summers, and whispered that Owen might have some connection to that line.
“That’s ridiculous. He’s definitely some kind of drug addict. Taking days off for no reason all the time? He’s probably just at home sunk in narcotics.”
Others slandered him just as easily.
Sylvia thought none of it mattered, and yet whenever Owen was away, she kept finding herself thinking of him.
It must all be because of this ridiculous mana sharing.
Owen’s mana, which had flowed into her that day, must have been stirring about in her head.
After getting out of the carriage and straightening her uniform, she headed toward the knight compound, only to hear a commotion from the training grounds. Wondering if Owen had arrived, she stretched her neck to look—and saw two knights sparring.
The moment she recognized one of them, Sylvia stopped in her tracks. Just looking made her chest tighten as though her heart had been bound in a fist.
Black hair, slick with sweat, hung over his forehead, and beneath it, his deep blue eyes flashed sharply. Heston, dressed in a light leather vest, was thrusting and battering his opponent with a long wooden sword. His smooth, extended arms never wavered, and the distance between him and his opponent was closed with ease, then opened again in an instant.
The other man turned red and purple with humiliation as blow after blow landed before he could even get his sword up.
“If you do that, Felco will bite your wrist off in three minutes.”
After giving that brisk instruction, Heston kicked his opponent’s shin and pivoted, slamming into his side hard enough to make an awful sound. It took only a moment for a groan to escape the man’s lips and for him to collapse. Heston glanced at the opponent sprawled face-first in the sand, then lifted his head again and addressed the line of knights standing in front of him.
“Next, please.”
He gave the sword in his hand a lazy twirl, and it was clear his condition was at its peak today.
Those who noticed exchanged wary looks, each one already looking tired.
“How many is that now?”
“Last time he stopped at twenty, at least.”
“Crazy bastard. Something bad happen?”
Sylvia heard the murmuring. It was well known that Heston sparred with people at the commander’s request. Since he was being considered for the deputy commander’s position and all that, the others didn’t take offense at his instruction.
But today, his teaching seemed particularly brutal.
“Probably because of his fiancée.”
One of the knights watching with her spoke up then, and Sylvia felt her fist clench tighter for no reason as she turned her gaze elsewhere.
“As soon as they got engaged, Her Highness went straight back to the palace. He was so worked up he proposed after three months, thinking he’d finally got her, only for her to slip right back out of his hands—of course he’d be dying inside. In my opinion, the two of them probably haven’t even held hands, let alone kissed. Would that ice-cold princess really allow it so easily?”
“You’re low-class trash, you know that? That’s all you can think about?”
“No, but… wait. What’s that?”
As if they’d noticed something, the knights’ attention, which had been fixed on Heston, suddenly shifted somewhere else.
“Huh? Yeah, what is that?”
“On the back of his neck… wait a minute.”
Wondering if he might have been injured, Sylvia looked closely at the place they were pointing out. Beneath the harsh midday sun, Heston stood waiting for his next opponent with disconcerting patience.
Though the weather must have been sweltering, he showed no sign of discomfort—didn’t brush his hair back, didn’t furrow his brow, didn’t let his stance slip. Then, when the next challenger finally stepped forward under everyone’s pressure, he merely bowed politely in brief greeting.
“Ah…”
Only then did Sylvia realize what the others had been talking about. On the back of Heston’s neck was a red scratch, as though someone had raked their nails across his skin. It looked like someone had grabbed the nape of his neck and left a mark behind.
It was a wound too clean to have come from sparring, leaving behind only the nail marks and no bruise at all. It looked like…
“A woman left that.”
As though he had read her thoughts, the man who’d noticed the mark said it aloud.
“What do you mean, they haven’t even held hands. Seems like they’re doing a lot more than that.”
They looked at one another and began to snicker. They clearly had plenty more to say, but since the topic involved Heston and the princess, they seemed to be choosing their words carefully on purpose. Sylvia quickly turned away and started toward another path. She didn’t want to attach meaning to any of this and start indulging in wild fantasies.
And yet she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
If she’d seen such a thing back when she was completely inexperienced, she likely wouldn’t have paid it much mind. But now Sylvia understood what could happen between a man and a woman, understood the sort of things that could leave a mark like that.
The princess gripping the reddened back of Heston’s neck with slender fingers. The two of them utterly focused on each other, swept away by pleasure that sent them all the way to their fingertips, too consumed to care where they were clutching or whether their nails were digging into skin.
Yes. You’re right. He has Her Highness.
Then her heart burned with a pain so sharp it was like being cut open from within. It hurt so badly she had to stop walking and draw in a rough breath, as though a knife had really been driven into her chest.
“I don’t even want to imagine it. I don’t.”
But against her will, Sylvia’s head was soon stuffed full of Heston and Princess Catherine, tangled together in a thick, sticky blur.
If only she hadn’t known.
About the affairs between men and women who shared a bed, about how far they could strip one another bare and come to know every last thing. If only she hadn’t known that much, she never would have imagined this either.
Sylvia pressed a hand to her burning forehead. Her emotions surged and rolled, and she felt cheap for imagining something like this about Heston. Worse, if she thought about it honestly, the fantasy she’d just formed had layered Heston and Catherine’s image over what she and Owen had done.
She felt miserable, small, and so thoroughly fallen that it made her dizzy. In order to escape even that feeling, she fled the area in a panic.
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