The Thing Called Jealousy
“What? What is it?”
Her mind went blank for a heartbeat, and she had no idea what he was even talking about. Heston stared at her chin with stubborn intensity and said, “The bruise. Who did this to you?”
“Wh-who if someone did?”
“Just tell me quickly.”
“What, are you going to go beat them up for me like some kids do?”
Even though Owen’s salve had done its work and the bruise had faded quite a bit, Heston had noticed it at a glance.
Sylvia tried to make light of it and looked away. Her face must have been giving away just how awkward she felt, but unlike usual, Heston kept holding on and wouldn’t let her go.
“I just fell.”
The excuse didn’t work at all. Heston lowered his brows and said calmly, “If I ask anyone else, I’ll find out anyway. So just tell me.”
“F-Fine. I’ll tell you properly, so let go of me.”
In the end, Sylvia surrendered because she couldn’t bear standing there with her chin trapped in his hand any longer. Heston looked at her as if he disliked the situation, then finally let go.
She rummaged through the past in a daze, wondering how on earth she was supposed to explain it. Saying she’d been knocked over by Willden and the other knights like a child was easy enough compared with what had to come after.
Owen stripped their pants off in front of everyone to get revenge for me.
How was she supposed to say that? Heston would definitely ask how the two of them had become so close.
Since when did you and Owen get that close?
Just imagining Heston asking in that flat, expressionless voice made her heart race and her head spin.
Even though Sylvia owed him no duty to preserve her innocent devotion to Heston, and even if she really did tell him she’d slept with Owen, Heston would only be briefly startled and wouldn’t object to it in the slightest, she still hated the thought of Heston finding out more than she hated death itself.
Sylvia agonized over it for a long time. Heston watched the unstable tension in her hand, how it kept clenching and loosening, and the way she bit down hard on her lip.
“Do you hate it that much when I get involved?”
His voice was composed, but edged with a slight wound. The silence shattered, and Sylvia realized only then that she had been quiet for far too long.
“It’s not that…….”
But she had no words to replace it with. Heston’s gaze dropped again to her bitten lip, and his expression grew colder.
“Because I’m engaged, and because we’re supposed to keep our distance, I’m not even allowed to ask how you got hurt?”
Is that what you want? he seemed to ask. Sylvia was a little surprised to realize he was still bothered by what had happened back then, after their engagement, when she had snapped at him about putting distance between them.
She, the one who had actually insisted they keep their distance, had been so consumed by everything that followed that she had forgotten all about it.
Was that why I haven’t been seeing Heston lately? Sylvia thought.
It had been strange that he’d been taking on one assignment after another. No matter how much the captain tried to drag Heston into important meetings and make him play a crucial role, he had always refused until now.
But lately there had been constant rumors that he’d been accompanying the captain repeatedly, that he was being groomed for the deputy captain’s post, or that he was angling for a position worthy of the imperial princess’s consort.
Sylvia thought such behavior didn’t suit Heston at all, but ever since he’d become engaged to Princess Catherine, she couldn’t be certain of anything that was truly him anymore, so she had simply believed what other people said.
But now, looking at Heston standing there with a faint pallor and no attempt to hide his hurt feelings, she couldn’t help thinking that maybe she really had been the one in the wrong.
“I’m sorry. What I said then…….”
She tried to apologize out of habit, only to falter.
After all, she had realized that this was not something she could simply decide to cancel on her own.
“……The injury really isn’t anything. I got it while helping with training. They said the Supporter went on leave and asked me to lend a hand.”
“You got hurt during training? How?”
He seemed unable to imagine any situation in which that could happen. Sylvia averted her eyes and mumbled, “It just happened somehow.”
“Who did it?”
But even if she tried to deflect, it had no effect. If it was training without a movement drill schedule, then at most they’d be dealing with dummies in the practice room. If a Supporter had been injured in that situation, it could only mean a dummy had gotten behind the line and attacked.
In other words, whoever it had been, the knight in question could only be concluded to have done absolutely nothing to do their job.
“It probably wasn’t on purpose…… and I don’t really want to make a thing of it.”
“Not on purpose? In that narrow space, there’s no way they wouldn’t have seen the dummy go behind the line. And even if it did, if they’d stopped training quickly enough, the dummy wouldn’t have attacked. That wasn’t on purpose?”
“I can handle it myself.”
“You just said you didn’t want to make a thing of it. That means you haven’t been handling it yourself up until now.”
There wasn’t a single flaw in his logic. Sylvia’s head started to hurt, and she raised a hand to rub at her temple. Heston, with the unyielding face of a knight you couldn’t make bleed if you stabbed him, waited for her to continue.
As he’d said earlier, if she asked other people, she’d find out the whole story anyway. She knew he was waiting patiently because he wanted to hear it from her own mouth.
In the end, Sylvia gave up with a sigh and yielded to Heston.
“Buckley, Jafiel, and Willden did it.”
“The three of them?”
“Yeah. There was a score bet going on between Michelle and them in the training room that day.”
Heston’s face briefly pinched, as if something had just occurred to him.
“Is this the thing involving Owen?”
Her heart dropped with a thud. She had never imagined he would connect that with this. No, she had hoped he wouldn’t. She was afraid he would figure out everything on the spot and start pressuring her about it.
At the very thought of Why on earth Owen? her heart began to hammer as if it might burst. But contrary to her worry, Heston actually let his shoulders drop as though things had worked out.
“So Owen’s been looking after you all this time. I guess he’s been running around outside lately, so he must’ve been taking care of you for me.”
He looked as though he’d been relieved of a burden. Sylvia went a little stupid with the casualness of his words. There was even a faint trace of gratitude toward Owen in his expression.
She had to fight hard not to want to clutch her head, and instead said as evenly as she could, “There’s knight training at the main building. Don’t you need to go?”
“Ah.”
For Heston to forget training of all things. How shocked everyone would be if they knew. As she was thinking this, Heston suddenly picked up the towel she’d dropped earlier in her fluster.
Since it must have been damp with sweat, Sylvia darted forward to snatch it away. But apparently interpreting that differently, Heston tightened his grip and wouldn’t let it go.
“Training again? You don’t have to do this sort of thing. I’m not going to put you in danger.”
“No, it’s not because of that…….”
His voice held a touch of hurt, as though he didn’t trust her. Sylvia’s face heated as she explained, “It’s not that I doubt your skill. It’s just that I feel like I’ve leaned on you too much up until now. It occurred to me that maybe you’ve been overdoing it to protect me.”
“Did I look like I was overdoing it?”
He frowned, looking affronted. Sylvia quickly shook her head.
“No. But if I learn how to handle this kind of thing, maybe you won’t get hurt as much either.”
“Sylvia.”
He said her name quietly. Whenever he called her like that, she had no choice but to give in.
When she lifted her head, she met his eyes, calm as the sea.
“Even if one of my arms gets torn off, I still won’t let you come to harm.”
The quiet words made her face flush. He would never know how dangerous it was to her heart when he said things like that without thinking.
“You keep doing this, and…….”
Something rose abruptly inside her. Every time he was like this, she felt it become harder to give him up, and she wanted to confess that. But Heston, as if he couldn’t begin to guess at her feelings, placed a hand on her head instead.
“It’s better to think of it as not letting even one of them get behind me in the first place. I don’t want to fight monsters while pretending you might be able to dodge them somehow.”
“So you’re the one who doesn’t trust me? I’m not that hopeless. I dodged perfectly well just now.”
She mumbled irritably, trying to hide the feelings roiling inside her, and gently pushed away the hand resting on her head.
“This isn’t about trust or mistrust. It’s about not needing to worry about it. I trust your Supporter skills completely, don’t I?”
“That’s because I’m good at it.”
“Exactly. You’re the best at it. So let’s go. I have training to get to.”
He said it as though she couldn’t reach the training grounds unless she got out of there first.
Sylvia sighed and nodded.
“Then give me that.”
“Ah, yeah.”
When she reached for the towel, he handed it over as if he had forgotten all about it. Sylvia flexed her fingers for no reason, soothing the odd ticklish feeling in her chest.
Heston extinguished the lights for her, tidied the room in her place, and closed the training room door. As Sylvia followed after him, still thinking over something, she blurted out, “By the way, did you know? That Summers is connected to Count Bronovich.”
Only belatedly did she think Heston might have known already. The two of them were best friends, after all. But Heston only shook his head.
“No. This is the first I’ve heard of it too. Owen doesn’t really talk about himself to begin with.”
“Even so, haven’t you ever asked him? You’re friends.”
“Well. If it were necessary, he would’ve said something, and if he had, I’d have listened.”
He spoke so casually about his own indifference.
If it were necessary, he would’ve said something.
Heston seemed not to realize there were things one might need to say but still couldn’t bring oneself to. Then again, maybe he didn’t have any need for that.
As she stared at his solid back, Heston turned around as if to ask why she wasn’t coming. Sylvia pasted a carefree smile on her face and hurried to catch up beside him.