The Anniversary (3)
Arthur remembered loss. The moment he lost his mother. The day of her funeral. Standing alone beside her grave in the rain. The countless sneers he endured at the palace afterward, left all alone in the world.
He had thought himself past it all, but turning over the wounds that still lingered, he swallowed down the heaviness in his chest and spoke.
"First, let's establish a premise: if we bumble our way into this, we'll only make things worse."
The grief of losing a parent is not something outsiders should clumsily meddle with. All the more so when, nearly a decade on, the emotional aftershocks remain this raw.
Because cheap sympathy only deepens the wound. Arthur swallowed the words—he knew because he had lived them—and tapped the table lightly as he went on.
"The one mercy is that there's someone in the manor who can share Lucy's sorrow with her."
"Margrave Benedict Aln."
"Exactly. In my judgment, the best remedy is for the Count of Aln to comfort Lucy himself."
"I did think so too, but..."
Joy let the sentence trail, recalling the expression she'd seen on Benedict's face yesterday, then continued.
"It seems the Margrave has been avoiding the young lady rather noticeably of late."
It had happened right when the party returned from the Archipelago. The moment Benedict heard that Lucy and the others were back, he had—as a matter of course—cast every duty aside and come out to greet her.
Up to that point, it was the standard behavior of the inveterate daughter-fool, same as any ordinary day. But the moment he actually came face to face with Lucy again, his demeanor turned strangely delicate.
The instant he saw her beaming and calling out "Papa!" at the top of her lungs, he froze solid—then abruptly remembered some urgent business and fled.
After that, Benedict kept avoiding Lucy to a degree that was impossible not to notice. It was so bizarre it was hard to believe this was the man who once bent every effort just to stay glued to his daughter's side.
"I'd wager it's because the young lady's expressions have gotten so much richer."
"That'd be it. The Iron-Blooded Count who used to adore her bratty little scowl half to death—there's no way he could withstand that girl's radiant smile."
The two of them, who knew all too well what an utter fool the kingdom's hero and a knight destined for the history books became before his daughter, let out a sigh in unison.
"Then our course is set. We inform the Count of Aln of Lucy Aln's state. That will move him."
"And since there's no telling how the Margrave might bolt the moment he sees the young lady looking sad, we'd best decide in advance exactly what advice to give him."
Joy and Arthur fell to discussing what precisely they would say when they met Benedict.
Seated at the far end of the table, Frey had been listening blankly to their back-and-forth when she quietly tilted her head.
Would the person who's always doting on Lucy really not know she's feeling down? He obviously knows. Isn't there some reason he just can't bring himself to go to her?
Naturally, Frey kept the question to herself.
She figured the two of them, far cleverer than she was, would sort it out just fine on their own.
Benedict did not like snowy winters.
The reason was simple. The woman he loved had died on a day like this one.
"Mira. Even after all this time since you left me, it seems the heavens still grieve your passing."
Unable to focus on a single task, Benedict had been staring blankly out the window when he sensed someone approaching outside and spoke first.
"Do come in. I was only resting anyway."
Through the door, which swung open with a leisurely creak, came the young lady of House Patran. Knowing she was a friend his daughter Lucy held especially dear, Benedict's face softened at the sight of Joy.
"What brings you here? As I understand it, it's nearly time for training."
"There is something I wished to ask you, Margrave."
"Ask me anything at all. You are my daughter's friend—I'll answer whatever you like."
"Are you aware that the young lady has been feeling down?"
At the question, which cut straight to the heart of the matter, Benedict stiffened for a moment. He agonized in silence, then nodded with a sigh.
"You knew, then?"
"Yes. I knew. Every last thing that happens in this manor reaches my ears—how could I not?"
Benedict had lived his life attending to everything that occurred within the manor's walls.
The habit was born of two fears: that one of the servants who resented Lucy might do something to her, and that Lucy herself might one day spiral completely out of control.
By now the habit had lost its purpose, yet Benedict still kept a watchful eye on everything that happened in the house.
And that was how he knew—that as the anniversary of Mira's death drew near, Lucy was grieving.
"...Then why have you been avoiding Lucy?"
"Because I have no right to comfort my daughter."
When he heard that Lucy was hurting, Benedict had been tormented by a pain like his heart being torn in two. And yet he could not bring himself to comfort her.
Convinced he had no right to do so, he had endured the agony from a distance.
Joy found his answer baffling, but his expression looked so pained that she couldn't easily bring herself to ask why—the hero who seemed as though nothing could ever topple him looked as if the slightest touch would bring him crashing down. She couldn't bring herself to press the question.
Perhaps he caught the worry in her eyes. Benedict forced the corners of his mouth upward.
"It is nothing so remarkable a tale. But I suppose it's something you, as my daughter's friend, ought to hear."
With that, he lifted his head and called out toward the two figures waiting beyond the door.
"You two may enter as well."
"...You knew about all this?"
"Excuse the intrusion."
As Arthur and Frey took positions on either side of Joy, Benedict summoned a servant from the hall, ordered tea and refreshments, and took a seat across from them.
"What on earth do you mean, you have no right?"
"I mean exactly what I said, Your Highness. What right does a father have to comfort his daughter's sorrow—a father who wasn't there for her at the moment of her greatest pain?"
Ask Benedict when he would return to, given the chance to turn back time, and he would answer without a heartbeat's hesitation.
To the moment when Lucy suffered most.
Not to his hot-blooded youth. Not to the days when he was celebrated as a hero. Not even to the happiest days of his life, when he met his wife. He would return to that single moment when he failed to stand beside the daughter who needed him most, and be her pillar.
"When I lost my wife, I was so consumed by the pain of that loss that I had no attention left for anything else in the world."
He would wake in the morning and the person who should have been there simply was not. No warmth beside him. No sound of laughter. No soft voice. Everything was hollow and empty.
Mealtimes were the same. Gone was the person who would lay out each dish and explain what she'd prepared, eyes shining with expectation, who would beam ear to ear whenever he said it was delicious.
At work. Walking the halls of the manor. Strolling the grounds outside. Riding off on a journey by carriage. The person who had always been there. The person who seemed like she would stay forever. She was simply gone.
The loss of the woman who had filled every corner of his life came down on Benedict as the greatest agony of his existence.
That was why he had turned away from Lucy. Because whenever he looked at his daughter, his wife's face rose before his eyes. Because the tears kept coming. Because some part of him wanted to follow his wife beyond the veil. He simply could not bear to keep his daughter at his side.
"Only after a very long time did I realize what a fool I had been—but by then it was too late. Lucy had long since closed her heart. And of course she had. This worthless excuse of a father abandoned her first. How could she possibly open her heart to me?"
Benedict understood his own sin. That was why he had lived his whole life with the heart of a condemned man.
He believed that all he could do was love his daughter and pray that one day she might forgive him, and so that was how he acted.
"People are truly cunning creatures, you know. Even the guilt I swore I would never allow myself to forget gradually dulled with time."
When the child who had been trapped on the day her mother died—cursing the world through her tears—overcame her grief alone and began, once more, to put one foot in front of the other,
the foolish Benedict felt a pure, uncomplicated joy at the change in her.
He imagined days of happiness alongside his daughter, his sins forgotten.
He longed to return to the happy scene of years past.
Shamelessly. Without a shred of remorse.
"But the very moment that dreamed-of scene came true, every sin I had committed came rushing back to me, along with every memory of the past."
The Lucy who returned from the Archipelago could now wear a bright, genuine smile—the kind she wore in the far-off days when her mother was still alive—instead of that strained, practiced one. She had become able to be honest with her own feelings.
And seeing it, Benedict felt a guilt far heavier than any joy.
Because within that scene from the past, he remembered a sin that could never be washed away.
Because he realized that somewhere along the way, he had begun adding excuses to the crime of abandoning his own child.
"That is why I have kept away from Lucy until now. Because when I look at the Lucy of today, I fear I will find myself truly, genuinely happy."
I am a man who has no right to happiness. A man who deserves to carry his sin for the rest of his days and suffer for it.
Just as Benedict had all but forgotten how to smile, a knock sounded at the door.
The butler entered, set out the tea service, and withdrew again, and Benedict went on, gazing at his own haggard face reflected in the surface of his teacup.
"I have no right to comfort Lucy. Nor any right to be forgiven by her."
And so, he concluded, he must not be the one to soothe Lucy's grief. At his words, Arthur and Joy found themselves utterly at a loss. Every argument they had prepared in advance was powerless before the weight of Benedict's guilt.
"Which is why I ask you all—"
"Lucy's dad."
But one person was different. Frey, who had never once cared for anyone's opinion of her, met Arthur's and Joy's frantic glances head-on and kept speaking, plain and unbothered.
"Shouldn't that be Lucy's call to make, not Lucy's dad's?"
"...I beg your pardon?"
"A bad person doesn't get to decide their own punishment, does she? If that were possible, I'd never have gotten chewed out by Lucy or by His Highness here."
"Hey! Frey!"
Ignoring Arthur's outburst entirely, Frey chewed over her words—and then abruptly shot to her feet.
"No good. I'm way too dumb to say this stuff nicely."
"What in the world has gotten into you all of a sudden—"
And without so much as asking leave, she bolted out of the room.
While the other three stood frozen in shock at her sudden escapade, Frey kicked up an almighty commotion somewhere in the manor and returned, at last setting a single crystal orb down before Benedict.
"Lady Kent. What is this?"
"A communication orb."
"Whom might it be connected to?"
"The most grown-up person I know."
With those words, Frey channeled mana into the crystal. A blue glow rippled across its surface a few times, steadied—and then the figure of a person rose above the orb.
- Young Lady? What on earth—oh my. Margrave Aln!
"Saintess?"
- Yes, it's Phoebe. It's been some time since we last met.
It was the image of the Saintess, who by now would be buried in a relentless schedule at the Church's Holy Land.