A Good Enough Excuse
Sunlight poured in, leaving behind a sharp golden trail. Sylvia stared at the drifting dust motes and tried not to notice Owen’s hand on her. But when he unexpectedly pulled out an ointment from somewhere against his chest and rubbed it along her chin, she couldn’t help herself; her mouth itched with the urge to say something sharp.
“You brought that in here?”
“Was gonna give it to you back then. Got nabbed before I could.”
“You were going to give it to me?”
Her eyes went wide. Owen didn’t repeat himself; he simply shut his mouth. His fingers moved slowly over her chin, so careful that it didn’t hurt at all.
For a moment, her heart gave a queasy lurch, as if she’d climbed onto a boat. The worst part was the fear that this feeling might reach him exactly as it was.
Only after he finished applying the ointment with painstaking care did Owen finally step back, after fastening on a fresh bandage for her as well.
Half of Sylvia wanted to run. The other half wanted to stay right there beside him and demand to know whether he’d really stripped those men down to their underwear because of her.
As if he could read her mind, Owen looked down at her quietly and said, out of nowhere, “You said you were disappointed.”
“I—when did I ever say that?”
Had her feelings really been getting through to him even then?
At her weak denial, Owen gave a short laugh.
“I’m not good at going against people’s expectations. Guess it’s because I grew up not being loved or whatever.”
“So you’re saying it’s your personality, not because of me?”
It annoyed her that he still insisted it had nothing to do with her. Owen gently rubbed the corners of her lifted eyes and asked, with infuriating ease, “Still, weren’t you relieved?”
She couldn’t exactly keep clinging to it and badgering him when he was looking at her like that. In the end, she let out a sigh and went along as he led her.
“Not really. It was a pretty ugly sight.”
“Didn’t know he’d be wearing underwear like that either.”
There was genuine helplessness in his tone, and Sylvia couldn’t hold back her laughter any longer.
Talking to him always left her feeling off-balance, but if she cleared her head and followed along, there was always some fitting sort of amusement waiting at the end of it.
Now that she thought about it, it had been the same even before they’d actually gotten involved, when they’d still kept that awkward, in-between relationship of friends-of-friends.
Hadn’t she learned exactly what kind of person he was the very first time they met, when he suddenly asked her to steal a bottle of liquor for him?
Owen took his hand off her and glanced at the clock. It seemed she ought to be going soon. But she didn’t want to leave after accomplishing nothing. She wanted to ask him how she could help.
“Owen.”
“Don’t worry.”
But before she could go on, Owen cut her off first, apparently guessing what she was about to say.
“I’m definitely not getting kicked out of the Knight Order. I told you, I’m not good at going against people’s expectations.”
At that, she couldn’t really keep insisting. Besides, Sylvia knew almost nothing about Owen. If he said he had his own way of handling it, all she could do was think, So that’s how it is.
“Then why the hell did you do something like that?” she muttered.
He only lifted one eyebrow and gave her no answer at all. It was obnoxious, the way he could pretend not to know a thing only when it suited him.
After that, Owen sent Sylvia away, saying it was time for patrol, and she had no choice but to leave the room without getting anywhere.
What kind of nerve did he have, anyway? He’d apparently gone utterly wild at the count’s estate, and yet he acted so damn calm.
Later, when she asked around separately, even the captain looked thoroughly stumped. Inside the Knight Order, they emphasized a horizontal structure, sure, but outside it, wasn’t what he’d done enough to get him punished under noble-insult laws?
Haa.
Once she heard he wasn’t eating, she started to worry every time mealtime rolled around. The way he’d lain limp in the sunlight, the way he’d held out a hand and asked her for a sandwich.
Was she supposed to go back again? He was a liar too, so the promise that he wouldn’t be kicked out of the Knight Order was surely just empty bravado—what exactly had she been trusting? Still, that meant he’d done it because he had no plan in the first place, and someone who actually had everything carefully arranged wouldn’t suddenly go around stripping other people’s pants, would they?
And so she spent day after day feeling like her head was going to burst.
But two days later, Sylvia finally saw for herself what Owen had been relying on.
Count Bronovich, the Emperor’s right hand, had personally come to the Knight Order.
“See? I told you there was a connection!”
One supporter who had once gone so far as to dig up Count Bronovich’s family tree while explaining the relationship between Count Bronovich and Summers practically bounced with delight, clapping at the proof that they’d been right all along.
Count Bronovich, his face full of shame, referred to Owen as his uncle.
“I heard His Uncle made a mistake with the Marquess of Wilden’s child.”
People shook their heads at how bizarre it was for him to invoke “His Uncle” with the look of a father at his wit’s end over a son who’d clearly caused some scandal and couldn’t be dealt with.
“His Uncle is that young? His grandmother must have been something else.”
After tracing the family line, some came to the conclusion that the count’s grandmother must have given birth to Summers when she was nearing sixty.
Sylvia heard all this while she was in the bathroom checking the bandage Owen had put on her chin, and she nearly dropped it on the spot.
Count Bronovich’s connected to him?
Of course, since Cesirus Bronovich—the current count’s grandfather—had died early, the odds were high that Owen Summers had been born as a late-life indulgence of Countess Maishinka Bronovich, the count’s grandmother.
But even if there was something off about his bloodline, being tied to Bronovich was not something to dismiss lightly.
She’d heard that Count Bronovich handled nearly every political matter, from the trivial things like what went into the Emperor’s mouth and what he wore on his body, to the most serious affairs of state.
He hid that all this time? Owen really is something else.
He’d spent ages bullying her, justifying it by saying that, for an ordinary knight like him, this had been the only way to contact Sylvia. And now he was supposedly the uncle of the very Count Bronovich everyone was desperate to curry favor with.
Sylvia frowned, a faint sense of betrayal prickling under her skin.
If the count stepped in, getting Owen out of this would be easy as pie.
The Wilden family would tuck its tail and run at the mere mention of Bronovich’s name.
She didn’t want to hear any more about him, so Sylvia went off alone to the training hall.
He could’ve just told me then. Or if he was going to drag this out for days, maybe he should’ve come out sooner. Is starving himself some kind of hobby?
Thinking about Owen made her stomach noisy. Sylvia ducked her body to avoid a jutting tree root.
It was through that training session that she’d realized her reflexes were seriously lacking, so she’d decided to practice on her own.
When she stood behind Heston, she’d never once had to think about dodging obstacles herself. That was because Heston handled everything, making sure she wouldn’t get hurt.
On missions with Heston, Sylvia could simply stare at his back as he fought the monsters in silence and focus only on him. At the time, she hadn’t thought it was anything especially remarkable, but now she wondered if she’d just been a burden to Heston.
“There’ll be monster-adaptation training at headquarters soon, so please refrain from personal training and—”
Just then, someone apparently mistook her for a knight and called out that the knights were to gather at headquarters.
Sylvia stopped training for a moment and wiped the sweat from her face with a towel, lifting her head. Just as the man standing near the door where light leaked in began to look vaguely familiar, he called her name.
“Sylvia?”
“Heston?”
At her thin, breathless voice, all the lights snapped on at once. The surge of mana that came with the magic stones flaring to life hit her all at once, and the brightness was one thing, but the sudden nausea was another.
Why does my head hurt again? Did I get hit without noticing?
As she swayed on her feet, Heston had already come over and caught her.
“Why are you here?”
But unlike the steadiness of his hands, Heston looked around in disbelief, as if checking whether he was seeing things wrong. Still, no matter how hard you looked, this was clearly the training that only knights were supposed to receive.
Sylvia felt strangely embarrassed. She’d been sweating, so she probably smelled, too. It seemed better to keep some distance.
“I just thought my reflexes might be a little slow.”
She tried to mumble an excuse and back away, but Heston didn’t let her go so easily.
“Supporters train basic physical conditioning too. You shouldn’t need to go this far.”
“I was just bored because we haven’t had any missions lately.”
She took another step backward to put distance between them, but Heston noticed something and instead pulled her arm toward him. In an instant the space between them vanished, and her arm, left where it was, came to rest against his solid shoulder.
Sylvia tightened her grip on the towel around her neck and leaned her head back as far as she could. But Heston’s hand settled at her waist, and then he supported the back of her neck as if he were about to kiss her.
“H-Heston….”
She couldn’t even control how badly her voice shook. Up close, he smelled like a strange blend of cool sea air and lime.
As she lowered her head, his hair slipped down in a soft curtain. He narrowed his brows, stared at her chin, and said,
“What’s this?”
The low timbre of his voice made the middle of her back flinch the instant she heard it. Her chest trembled so hard she couldn’t get a hold of herself.
She flailed her arm, trying to put distance between them. But unlike usual, Heston held her tightly and didn’t let go.
“Tell me. Who did this to you?”