Episode 11: He (6)
I still didn’t really understand noble society.
Part of it was because my life in my previous world had been worse than ordinary, and part of it was because, up until now, I hadn’t met any other nobles at all.
Of course, the retainers were nobles too—viscounts and barons, the sort of thing—but because this was a knightly house, every one of them felt more like my mother and father than any aristocrat I could imagine.
In other words, I had never actually seen a noble who felt noble.
So I think I asked Mother directly.
“Mom, why don’t you ever mingle with the other nobles or anything?”
“Hmm? What would I even talk to those idiots about, besides their honeyed nonsense?”
I knew perfectly well my mother wasn’t a normal person, and yet I still asked.
I was a fool.
The city of Harden was the marquisate of Nirheim.
Within the city, there were no other nobles besides House Nirheim and its vassal families.
Because it was a territory managed by knights who had spent their lives on the battlefield, it was an oddly difficult place to even visit as a tourist.
The city itself was rugged. Its people, too, seemed to have grown into that same rough-hewn shape, and all of them were easygoing, plain-spoken sorts.
There were no arrogant merchants, no people mired in corruption.
At some point, finding that so strange, I asked Mother again.
Now that I thought about it, it had been a very stupid question.
“Son, in front of a sword, everything is equal. I’ve never once seen a person get run through in the gut and still insist they did nothing wrong.”
I should say this again: my mother had never been normal.
So I spent every day training like a frog in a well, and even when I turned seven, that was still all I did.
And so, on this day as well, I was swinging a sword and spending a sweat-soaked hour among the knights.
Even though spring was still cold, I didn’t care as I practiced among them, my sword cutting through the air.
Sion, who had taught me the basics, now came only two or three times a week once I’d learned them properly, then returned to her daily life as my wet nurse.
So now, when I slipped into an awkward stance while chaining together my sword forms, the other knights nearby would step in to correct me.
“Oh, come on, young master. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair, you can’t hold it like that. Swing it like this—then your waist won’t take the strain.”
“No, Jackson. I’m seven now, okay? Why is there not a single normal person in the Nirheim family?”
The problem was that not a single person in this house ever treated a child like a child.
Still, Sion at least had a habit of indulging me when I acted spoiled.
But if I said the same thing to the knights, their answer was always the same.
“Young master, the majority is always right. So if the majority is abnormal, then abnormal is right.”
“As if.”
They were knights under my mother, after all, so every one of them was rough around the edges.
And I thought that even when I was eight, nine, and ten—yes, all the way until I became an adult—that would be the only kind of time I’d ever have.
That was what I was thinking as I swung my sword, until I heard my mother’s voice.
“Son, do you have a moment?”
“Training isn’t over yet.”
“Oh? Then can I ask you here?”
“Yeah, it’s fine.”
I nodded at her and, turning my eyes back to the sword, kept training while waiting for her to speak.
Whenever Mother asked me something, it usually wasn’t anything important, at least from experience.
“Son, would you maybe like an engagement?”
“...?”
The sword that had been swinging straight and true skewed off course in response to her words.
Clang—
My hand went slack, and I dropped the sword.
I froze in place.
“Ah, um. I didn’t think you’d be this shocked. A marriage proposal letter came in from another house.”
“....”
“To my eyes, it seemed like a decent house, so I wanted to ask you about it…. Should I finish telling you later…?”
Apparently she hadn’t expected that reaction from me, because she awkwardly scratched the back of her head.
In the spring of my seven-year-old life, that was how a new wind of connection blew into my world.
Evening came.
I walked the same corridor as always, but my footsteps felt heavier than usual.
Mother had said she’d continue talking about the engagement over dinner after bringing it up during training, so that was where my thoughts kept circling.
“Young master.”
“....”
Sion followed quietly behind me and called out, but I stayed silent.
When training ended, I arrived at the dining room for supper with my parents.
I opened the door and stepped inside.
Father, already seated, blinked at me, while Mother smiled brightly when she saw me.
“Son, you must be hungry. Come on, sit down.”
“....”
I sat where Mother told me to, and before I even touched the food on my plate, I let out the words first.
There was only one thing I wanted to say.
“I don’t want to get engaged.”
“Eh? Huh? What did you say, son?”
Mother’s eyes widened into perfect circles as she asked me to repeat myself.
“I said I don’t want to do something like engagement.”
“Uh… why not? It’s not such a bad thing for you. The girl in question was very pretty, and her family is high-ranking too.”
“....”
I answered only with silence.
If she asked me why I didn’t want to, there was only one reason.
Because I had thought of you.
If you want to marry a little later, then let’s get engaged first. Engagement is fine, right?
You had brought up engagement to me once, too.
Whenever the subject of marriage came up, I would try to dodge it somehow, and you had bitten your lip hard before asking me that.
Only, it had been after your mother had come to me the day before and begged me to break up with her daughter.
She told me not to block her daughter’s path.
That dating was one thing, but marriage was different.
Her face had carried an expression of utter disdain when she said it.
I understood what she and your father were thinking.
I understood the revulsion they felt when their precious daughter tried to marry an orphan whose origins were unknown.
I knew that the sight of me trying to marry you would look like nothing more than a parasite clinging to a wealthy household.
Even after growing into an adult, a child with no parents had to live with that label.
Those were feelings I knew all too well, as an orphan myself.
So I nodded.
I told your parents that I wouldn’t marry you, that when the time came I would let you go and walk my own road.
That was the answer I gave them.
To you, who had burst into tears and begged me to at least get engaged if I wouldn’t marry you.
To you, who had spoken right up to the very end, saying you still wanted to marry me.
And yet I still shook my head.
For me, it had been an unavoidable reality.
And after I rejected it that way, I kept chewing over it again and again only after death, regretting it all the while.
Maybe that was why.
Even now, living the life of a seven-year-old, I was still trapped in the past rather than the present.
Little by little—truly, little by little—I had been letting go of my feelings for you.
And yet you were still the meaning of my life.
So I didn’t think I would ever be able to love someone other than you.
After loving you that desperately, I didn’t want to betray you by handing my heart to someone else.
I looked at Mother with eyes like that.
Like a crybaby, tears slipped down my cheeks again.
If I had something to say, I should have said it properly, but I always ended up answering with tears instead.
It was unfair to Mother, and to Sion, and to everyone else.
“..., Fine. If my son doesn’t want it, then there’s no need to rush into an engagement.”
In the end, it would be like this.
Mother gave a bitter smile and nodded.
She said she’d refuse the engagement for now, then hugged me and told me not to cry.
“But, son. You are a noble of the Empire. You should know that you can’t keep turning your back on noble duty forever.”
“..., Yeah.”
At her words, I gave a small nod.
Just as she said, I thought maybe I had to forget you and adapt to this new life.
But would I—
Would I, who still kept taking one step in place after another like this, ever have a day when I could forget you and love someone else?
Would I someday become engaged to another person, and eventually marry them, and spend my days beside them?
I didn’t want that.
I didn’t want to forget you like that.
How many days had gone by, I wonder?
Mother came to find me while I was once again training as intently as before, and asked,
“Son…? Um. If you hate engagements, then what about a childhood friend?”
“What do you mean, suddenly, a childhood friend?”
Wasn’t it definitely Mother who’d said the other nobles were idiots who only knew how to spout honeyed nonsense? So why did she keep bringing me letters from other noble houses?
I looked at her with that thought in my eyes, and Mother laughed awkwardly before continuing.
“No… it’s just that I sent a refusal letter for the engagement, and they answered by saying we should start as friends first, so they sent their daughter over to our manor…?”
“....”
“I mean, Mom definitely said no, right? But that… friend of theirs was pretty fiery even back on the battlefield, so I guess she just shipped her daughter off to some foreign place without a second thought….”
Come to think of it, that did make sense.
I’d said nobles were all lunatics, so it had seemed strange that she was suddenly asking about some other noble family’s daughter.
So that was it. She’d met them on the battlefield?
“No, just send her back.”
“They said not to send her back….”
“Why would that matter?”
Even if they said not to send her back, you could just send her back anyway.
“That friend of theirs is a duke….”
“....”
So Mother had made friends with someone very high up indeed.
I think I lost the ability to speak after that thought.
“So, how about it? Just one childhood friend, son?”
That was what Mother said, and I had no choice but to nod.
“I’ll go after training.”
“Whew, good thinking, son. Then come to the manor once training is over. I’ll introduce you then.”
“Okay.”
And just like that, I ended up with an unexpected childhood friend.
It was a new connection, even if its direction was different from yours.
Again and again.
Again and again, your empty place kept getting filled in like this.
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