Episode 15. He Was. (8)
My life. A life without you was strangely luminous. Unlike the hollow emptiness you left behind, the road ahead of me only seemed to shine brighter and brighter.
Born as the eldest son of the Marquis family, I lacked for nothing. The things I wanted were easy to obtain; with a single word, I could have what I had once desired so desperately in my previous life and never been able to grasp.
I was loved by many. I had parents, I had a nanny, and even without you, more and more people gradually began to fill the empty spaces around me.
Jackson, one of the family knights, would come over with a grin whenever I was swinging my sword. Mia, a young maid about my age, would hurry after me whenever I returned to the manor after training. Kyle, the butler, always smiled as if genuinely pleased to see me whenever we happened to pass each other, and the other servants were no different.
Under excellent instruction, I took up the sword from childhood. As though I had inherited my parents’ talent exactly as it was, I swung a blade while people kept calling me a genius.
Unlike my past life, in which I had possessed not even a single thing one could call talent, I had talent now. And in this life, I had also gained something I had never had before: a childhood friend who liked me.
Eshir. She was a very good person.
The girl, two years older than me at eleven, was someone I truly believed I might have married one day—if only I had not spent so long grieving for you, if only I had not carried the memories of my previous life.
Eshir always lingered by my side. Even with her high station as an imperial princess, she would step down one pace and stand beside me. She smiled at me, always took my hand and led me along, and welcomed me so warmly.
Though I could not return Eshir’s feelings, my life was still slowly continuing toward happiness. I spent a childhood so brilliant I could hardly believe it belonged to me—gently letting go of you bit by bit, filling the world around me with new people, and covering the hole that still remained empty no matter how much was poured into it.
And so I moved away from the past and grew, little by little, as a person.
********
From early morning, the knights were already bustling about.
“Young master, there’s no need to be nervous.”
Jackson, a knight passing by my side, said that with a smile.
“...I’m not nervous.”
“Come on, now. You’re lying. Your face is all stiff.”
“Have I ever had a day when my face wasn’t stiff?”
“Well, that’s true too. Anyway, nothing dangerous will happen.”
He dipped his head briefly and walked on.
Jackson and the other knights, as well as the family’s butler and maids, all passed me by with words of encouragement. I wasn’t sure I deserved quite that much support, honestly.
Still, if I were being honest, I was a little nervous.
Today was the hunting practice prepared for me and the other apprentice knights. A knight, even if still young, was not supposed to let fear creep into the blade.
To learn that, they said, it was best to start with wild beasts. Taking a life was not a good thing, but if one wanted to protect someone, one would inevitably have to take another life. So it was necessary to become used to it to some degree.
That had been my mother’s words, and my father had nodded in agreement. I wasn’t sure it was something you should say to a child who had only just turned nine, but as they said, this was not a world in which children could live ordinary lives.
If you were a noble child, you had to uphold the duties of nobility. As one who stood in a high place, you carried responsibility.
Seen narrowly, that meant the vassals and knights who supported the house, the maids and butlers I always met and greeted. Seen more broadly, it meant the citizens of Harden, and even the subjects of the empire beyond them.
Those were words that had never suited me at all, and yet I had been told since I was young that I had to strive for the subjects of the empire. For that reason, I went with the knights to the hunting grounds in the forest behind the manor, where wild beasts lived.
“Liam! Let me come too!”
Even though I had told her not to come because it might be dangerous, Eshir had chased after me anyway, saying not to worry about it.
The forest was not silent.
“Hmmm~ hmm~”
Eshir hummed softly, and the wind moved in answer through the trees.
Birdsong and the rustle of leaves. The cries of insects and the calls of a few wild beasts. All of it mingled together to make a harmony.
And Eshir, feeling all of it, marveled aloud. “Wow... This is totally different from that little hill we went to last time...”
“That was a walking path. This is a hunting ground.”
“I know, but... oh, hey, that’s the mushroom I saw at the market.”
“No, hey. Don’t just touch random things like that.”
I had to catch the hem of her sleeve before she could dart off somewhere unpredictably. She might have been two years older than me, but Eshir was still only eleven; that meant she was at the age when curiosity overflowed, no matter how kind or thoughtful she might be.
“If it’s dangerous, why don’t you just stay at the manor?”
“Me, dangerous? Hmm! Liam, do you even know who I am?”
“One of the empire’s few princesses who doesn’t act her age.”
“That’s... no! Hey, that’s not it!”
Should I say she was a girl who had learned only bad habits from her mother and was losing more and more of her dignity as a noble lady? I thought that and went on.
“Then who are you?”
“I’m Eshir von Bricht—the only child of Duke Havier von Bricht, a genius who inherited all his talent. The one who’ll become the greatest mage in the empire someday!”
Eshir put a hand on her hip and said that with great satisfaction.
“...”
She wasn’t wrong. She was a genius at magic. Just as if she had inherited the Bricht ducal house’s talent for magic unchanged, she handled those dazzling lumps of light with complete ease.
She did look adorable, all puffed up with pride as though the whole world belonged to her. But I spent a fair while wondering whether I should indulge her or simply ignore her and keep swinging my sword.
Of course, as always, I ended up playing along with her boasting.
“Ah, I see. I was so rude as to fail to recognize the noble Eshir.”
“Yeah, don’t think it’s funny just because I’m the one who comes looking for you every day.”
“Though I did forget it was time for you to take your medicine. Come now, let’s go get your medicine.”
“Medicine? What medicine?”
“What do you mean, what medicine? You still have today’s dose of your insanity medicine left. Miss a few days and the sickness comes back again, doesn’t it?”
Only then, perhaps realizing what I meant, did Eshir’s face flush red.
“Hey! Do you want to die?!”
“No, I’d rather not die. But we’re training right now, so please be quiet, Eshir von Bricht, future greatest mage in the empire.”
As much as I wanted to keep teasing her, it was about time to focus, so I said that to her.
“Ah, sorry. I’ll be quiet.”
Sensing the tension settling over the place, Eshir apologized and quietly continued walking.
Step, step.
Only the sound of grass brushing against us spread through the forest.
Then came the wet, heavy sound of a strike, followed by a beast’s cry.
The vivid sensation of a sword piercing thick hide sent gooseflesh over my entire body. Through the torn skin where the blade had sunk in, red blood spilled out, and the life in the beast’s eyes slowly faded.
“...”
I couldn’t bear to look straight at it and shut my eyes. My hand around the sword kept trembling, and memories kept leaking through.
I staggered backward.
“Young master, you mustn’t retreat.”
“Ah...”
I heard the knight’s voice, but I couldn’t really hear it. That sword thrust through a belly, that body writhing in pain before finally losing all life—it reminded me of the day I died.
It was truly painful and terrifying. The feeling of slowly coming to understand what death was, the sensation of blood draining from your body as your strength faded bit by bit—it was all so vivid. And then, at last, the pain would vanish little by little, and you would close your eyes and grow peaceful.
—Ah!! Snap ou—.
It was so painfully frightening that I couldn’t even answer the desperate voice in my head. That was why. I was still afraid of blood.
Even if it wasn’t me, even the sight of someone else—or of some small beast like this—dying made my skin crawl. I didn’t want to see it.
I hated those blood droplets growing sticky as they spread. The pool of my blood that had soaked your hands would have felt just as sticky, too. You, who had had to see that scene with your bare eyes, with nothing like fur to hide it the way a beast had.
Had I given you trauma because of me? Were you suffering because of my death? Only those thoughts kept coming to me. It had only been the death of a beast, but the sight of life’s little flame going out made me remember so much.
“Young master, it’s all right. Nothing is wrong.”
“That’s right. Like the knight said, there’s no problem at all, Liam.”
“...”
I couldn’t answer the knight or Eshir. I didn’t even know when Eshir had come over, but I was not all right. There were too many problems.
I hadn’t realized it properly because there had been no reason to think about it, but trauma born from death was much more stubborn than I had expected.
My hand kept shaking.
“Calm down, and take a deep breath...”
“It’s okay, Liam. I’m right here beside you.”
Little by little—really, only little by little—I tried to steady my breathing and calm myself. I meant to do that.
To open my eyes.
To turn my head toward the direction of Eshir’s voice.
It would have worked, too, if not for the wild dog charging straight toward us.
It wasn’t very large, of course. Even if it bit, it would only hurt for a moment, and then I could get it treated. But the sight of that wild dog rushing toward Eshir overlapped with another scene in my mind—the assassin who had tried to stab you.
—Ah, —ah!! Don’t close your eyes—!
It felt as though I could hear your voice, and my hand began to shake. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.
Don’t kill me. Don’t kill you.
My head filled with nothing but those thoughts, and I immediately raised my sword.
Like just before death, I shoved you away. Like just before death, the assassin’s shape rushed toward me.
I lifted the sword on a slant and brought it down diagonally. If I was going to protect you, then I had to kill that assassin.
And from the strike I brought down with that thought in mind, a grey light rippled.
Swish—
With that cold, slicing sound, blood splashed across my face.
The smell of blood spread, and only then did the hallucinations vanish. The vision that had seemed to remain in the middle of the city returned, before long, to the blue forest once more.
“Y-young master...! Aura, you used Aura just now?! That’s impossible...!”
I heard someone’s voice, but I couldn’t answer. My body slowly tilted, and my eyes closed.
I had protected you.
Truly, thank goodness.
This time, too, I had been able to protect you.
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