The Weight of Silence
“Come in……?”
Rofena, who had been approaching to greet me as I returned to the study, suddenly stopped upon seeing my face and asked with a worried expression.
“What’s wrong? Why do you look so sad?”
Her unexpected question made me tilt my head. Sad? Was the frustration I was feeling really coming across that way to her?
No, perhaps that was the more accurate description of my emotions. Yes. It might have been sadness. Whether it was sadness over Julian not telling me what was troubling him, or sadness over the fact that I wasn’t someone he could rely on, I couldn’t tell.
“Did something go wrong?”
“No. The task itself went well. It’s just……”
“Just?”
“……”
I was at a loss for how to explain it. The background between him and me was so complicated that even a brief recollection threatened to become long-winded, and I couldn’t easily decide how much to say—or how. Especially regarding the feelings he held toward me.
“……It seems Senior has some troubles, but he wouldn’t tell me about them.”
“And that makes you sad?”
“I don’t know. Whether it’s truly sadness, or just disappointment, or perhaps I’d unknowingly become arrogant somewhere along the way.”
“Arrogant?”
“The thought that he would do anything if I asked.”
Ever since I learned of his feelings, I might have been harboring that assumption deep down. When I asked him what was wrong last night, I hadn’t doubted for a second that he would answer me. Maybe what hurt was having that self-assured belief rejected. And perhaps that, too, was sadness.
“……?”
She simply tilted her head with a puzzled expression, as if she couldn’t easily understand my words, and studied my face.
“More importantly, were there any interesting books?”
I changed the subject to shift the atmosphere. Whatever the case, it was already over. Since he had spoken so definitively, I no longer had the right to press him further—especially considering what happened in Amusbian.
“Ah! I was just about to say……”
She led me toward the desk, where more than ten books were piled haphazardly.
“I thought this much would be fine for now.”
“For now?”
“Yeah. I figured this would be enough for us to read together without any trouble.”
“Together?”
Before I could ask what she meant, something flashed through my mind.
“……Don’t tell me you’re planning to read them starting now? And read them to me?”
I briefly hoped it wasn’t the case, but I already knew that hope was nothing more than wishful thinking.
“Yeah. That’s the plan?”
Right. I had thought as much.
Watching her smile innocently as she replied, I could only laugh. None of the books looked thin. On top of that, the night had already grown deep after my time with Julian, and bedtime had long since passed.
“Alright, let’s start with this one!”
The book she picked up was visibly thick, with small print. I didn’t know the exact format and rules of the demon language, but unless each sentence consisted of a single word, even if it was written twice as long and large as the common tongue of the surface world, it would be no different from an epic saga.
“[137 Days in the Demon King’s Castle]!”
But seeing her call out the title so cheerfully while looking at me, I realized there would be no sleep for me tonight.
* * *
“Anak! Are you still sleeping?”
Morning light filtered in, and I opened my eyes at the sound of knocking on the door. A bright, cheerful voice. The owner was Julian. Even half-asleep, I was relieved that there was no trace of last night in his tone. However, the drowsiness and fatigue kept pulling my eyelids shut.
“Anak?”
“Yes, Senior. Just a moment.”
I forced out a barely coherent reply, threw off the blanket, and sat up. My eyelids were so heavy that every blink brought another wave of sleep crashing over me.
“Still sleeping?”
I dampened a towel and roughly wiped my face. Even summoning a spirit to wash up felt too troublesome. Half-staggering, I made my way to the door and unlocked it.
“Come in, Senior.”
After briefly meeting his eyes as he stood outside, I turned and collapsed into the chair by the window. Julian looked at me with a smile that held both concern and amusement.
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen that face. Don’t tell me you stayed up all night doing assignments?”
I wanted to give a witty reply to his playful question, but my mind was blank. Pulling all-nighters after realizing forgotten assignments or cramming the night before exams had been common back at the academy, so this sight of me was probably quite familiar to him.
And in a way, his words weren’t entirely wrong. I never expected that, long after academy days, I’d be pulling an all-nighter just to read a book.
The book Rofena had picked up last night, 137 Days in the Demon King’s Castle, was a journal written by one of the human black mages who had worked at the Demon King’s castle, recording his daily life there. It was written with a surprisingly bright and cheerful sensibility—hard to believe it matched Denatel’s tastes. The handwriting and sentences were influenced by Rofena’s translation, and she didn’t seem to possess the qualities of a great translator, but the content itself was quite bright and entertaining.
No matter how I thought about it, it didn’t seem like something Denatel had particularly enjoyed reading. It was probably kept for its collection value or as historical material. When I asked her where she found it, she said it had been piled haphazardly with other disorganized books on a corner shelf.
“If you’re tired, want to sleep a bit more?”
He leaned toward me, took out a handkerchief, dampened it, and gently wiped my eyes and cheeks. At that affectionate gesture, I stared blankly at his face. A different kind of beauty from Rofena, Lauti, or Aegina. Even if he were a woman, there would be no sense of incongruity or awkwardness.
“Here.”
He supported me and led me toward the bed. Normally, I would have snapped awake by now, but the gentle touch and the sincere concern in his expression kept me from reacting strongly.
He laid me down and pulled the blanket over me. Then he brought a chair and sat beside the bed. The sight stirred old memories, and a smile unconsciously formed on my lips.
“Why? What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. It just reminded me of the academy days. When I caught a cold, you insisted on nursing me and sat by my side all night.”
“Right. So are you going to insist on putting up a barrier like back then?”
Yes. That had definitely happened. Even in my slightly delirious state from the fever, I hadn’t forgotten to set up a barrier. Well, in the end, I couldn’t because of calculation errors.
“If you try that kind of prank on me now, even you’ll be in trouble, Senior.”
“I suppose so. Mr. Summoner of Deception.”
By this point, I thought I should be waking up properly. Though my mind had cleared somewhat, sleep still clung to my eyelids, and the bedding was far too comfortable. Of course, I wasn’t without anxiety about Julian, but the nightmares from the past had faded considerably under that gaze and expression.
“Get some more rest. We can go eat after you wake up.”
I could no longer resist my closing eyelids. Wrapped in the soft bedding, I shut my eyes and slowly drifted off.
I didn’t know how much time had passed, but when I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was him still sitting quietly in the chair, looking down at me.
“Did you sleep well?”
After a proper nap, my body felt much lighter. The fatigue was gone, and my mind was clearer. At the same time, my somewhat loosened rationality snapped back into focus.
“……How long did I sleep?”
“Not long. About two hours?”
Sleeping for two hours right in front of someone. It was something I would never normally do.
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen you sleeping. We used to sleep together all the time when we were kids.”
“I’ve asked you many times not to phrase it that way.”
“Oh my, but it’s not wrong, is it?”
I sat up in bed. I needed to go wash up first.
“What do you want to eat for breakfast?”
“It’s not breakfast anymore—it’s lunch.”
If two hours had passed since then, it was already too late to call it morning.
“We’ll eat lunch and dinner separately later too, right?”
“Yes. Yes. As you wish.”
When I came out after roughly washing up, Julian was waiting with a clean towel in hand.
“……You really don’t have to do this.”
It hadn’t been every day at the academy, but sometimes he would wait outside the washroom like this with a towel. And since it happened not only in the dorm room but occasionally even at the shared washroom, many students—regardless of gender—had given me quite sharp looks each time.
“I want to do it for you. Besides, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
“Well, I suppose that’s true.”
The moment I took the towel from him, the past and present overlapped before my eyes. More than ten years had passed, and even though that time had included a fierce war, it felt as if I had returned to those days.
“Come to think of it, do you remember the academy friendship sports day, Senior?”
“Hm? Ah, right. You made that brilliant pass back then, Anak.”
“Excuse me?”
I couldn’t understand what he meant. There had been ball games, and I had been forced to participate, but I had no memory of making any notable plays.
“Why? You threw the ball that Schupenik kicked to you.”
Schupenik? Right, I remembered the name. Because of his tall, slightly chubby build, he had guarded the goal……
“That was just passing the ball that had already gone in!”
I wondered what on earth he was talking about. Honestly, back then, Rowell and a few other tall guys had already widened the score gap so overwhelmingly that the rest of us “headcount fillers,” including me, hadn’t done much of anything. Yet he was calling it a brilliant pass, which only confused me further—it had been nothing more than anyone would do by tossing the ball back.
“Was it? I thought it looked pretty cool.”
“You shouldn’t say things like that, Senior. You were the real star that day. You single-handedly beat five defenders and scored, and in the spear and mounted archery events, you hit every target in ten seconds.”
His performance back then had been truly remarkable. Even Rowell had missed one target in archery, but Julian had hit every single one dead center. The supervising teacher’s lips had curved into an unshakable smile, and the cheers from the female students had reached the sky.
“Ah, right. That did happen.”
“……?”
Yet his reaction was a little strange. He wasn’t embarrassed or awkward. It was as if he were talking about someone else’s accomplishments, not his own. On top of that, he suddenly glanced toward the mirror in the room.
“You were really cool back then too, Senior. Especially that speech you gave in front of the team—Teacher Weimanpald even took shorthand notes, saying it should be recorded.”
“……”
I had brought up the memory as a conversation topic, but the more he listened, the more he simply smiled strangely without speaking. Was it my imagination, or did that smile seem somewhat bitter?
“More importantly, let’s go eat quickly. We ate simply yesterday, so I’ll treat you to something a bit more extravagant today.”