Episode 29. Liam Nirheim (2)
The day had been strangely warm, the sunlight almost unnaturally gentle. It was one of those late-summer days, three years after I had come to Vinkelite, when I was walking through the streets with all the polish scrubbed off a country noble and collided with a woman.
She wore an elegant dress and a wide-brimmed hat that hid half her face, but when I bent to pick up the handkerchief that had fallen at her feet, I saw it all at once: wind-tossed blond hair, slender fingers, a hibiscus held tight in those delicate hands, and eyes that looked frozen in place, carrying a sadness as deep as winter water. She was the sort of beautiful woman who made you feel as if you were staring at a memory.
Something about her reminded me of someone. Of tears that had long since blurred with time.
It had been the year I was seventeen, the day before I returned to Harden.
I was reading a letter.
One my mother had sent.
LIAM, my son.
It has already been three years since you left the manor.
Maybe that is why I sometimes find myself wondering how you can have the nerve to ignore your mother for three whole years and linger in the capital.
So I’ve decided I’m done waiting. Isn’t it usually the one who misses someone more who has to make the first move?
I can’t exactly do anything about my eldest son of the marquis house refusing to show his face, can I?
I’ll be coming to get you soon, so do make sure you’re living happily.
And if I do have to drag you home, you’ll pay the price for ignoring your mother’s “I miss you” for three years.
I’ll make you understand just how deep your mother’s love runs, my boy.
With all my love, your mother, Eleanor Nirheim.
I wasn’t sure whether it was a letter, a notice of arrest, or a threat, but I read the scrap of paper all the same. When I finished, I let out a sigh.
“Ah, Mother... seriously.”
“Why? What did Lady Eleanor say?”
“The same thing you learned from my mother.”
“Oh? She said she’s coming to drag you home?”
What kind of infamy had my mother cultivated for Eshir to understand that immediately? Well, yes. That was probably enough of an explanation.
“Yeah. I think I should head back soon.”
“Hm. Well, you really have been in the capital for a long time.”
With a look that was half relieved and half regretful, Eshir nodded. Three years was a long time. I wasn’t a child anymore, so it felt even longer. Eshir had become an adult at nineteen and was already working as a palace mage.
“So I’ll leave sometime this week.”
“Huh? That’s pretty sudden.”
“It would be stranger if I weren’t in a hurry after reading that part about ‘being prepared.’”
“Haha, fair enough. Lady Eleanor really does act fast, doesn’t she?”
I wasn’t sure I’d call that merely being “fast,” but anyway, that was how it was.
I said that and got to my feet.
“Where are you going?”
“Training.”
“...You really are relentless. You’re leaving soon, and you still don’t feel like resting?”
“If you have time to say that, you should be preparing to go to the palace for work.”
“Ugh... that’s even more relentless.”
At my words, Eshir shuddered in obvious disgust at the thought of going to work.
With the air of someone who had no choice at all, she dragged her feet out of the room. I took up the sword I had propped against the wall and headed for the training grounds as well.
It was early morning.
The week passed quickly. Eshir, unlike in the past, was busy working as a mage and had no time to spare, while I spent my days swinging my sword from dawn until dusk as always.
Even so, thinking about leaving made me feel strangely reluctant, and yet I kept living the same ordinary days.
The day before I left. Until the very last day in the capital, that was how it remained.
I woke earlier than usual and lay still, staring at the ceiling. There was a dazed, nameless feeling in my chest. Relief that I would truly be going home tomorrow. Regret, too, over leaving behind the capital where I had spent so much time.
Maybe that was why Eshir’s words came back to me: was I really going to train until the end and leave without doing anything else?
For some reason, that day in particular, I felt like skipping training and going outside first. I didn’t know why, but I had a feeling that if I didn’t, I would regret it later.
So I got out of bed and dressed by myself. Normally the maids would have helped me, so dressing alone after such a long time felt awkward.
After struggling into my clothes, I fastened my sword at my waist. When I stepped out into the hallway, I ran into Eshir, who had apparently just gotten up with a sigh of her own for work.
“Hm? Your clothes are a little different today. Don’t tell me you’re planning to train in that outfit?”
“No, I’m going out.”
“You? What got into you...?”
At my answer, Eshir screwed up her face as if she had seen something bizarre.
“...That’s a seriously insulting thing to say, and with a seriously insulting face.”
“Sorry, but when I think about the last ten years of your behavior, that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to say and a perfectly reasonable face to make.”
She wasn’t wrong. If I thought about it, I had always been in the training grounds unless someone had asked me to do something or ordered me to. So this was just an unusual change of heart.
“...You should just go to work.”
“Wow, your personality is really something.”
And so, as usual, Eshir and I traded barbs before going our separate ways.
I passed her by and stepped out of the manor. Because it was summer, the sky was bright even early in the morning. A slightly stale, lukewarm breeze drifted over me, and I followed wherever my feet wanted to go.
I wandered into alleys I normally wouldn’t have entered and browsed the tiny shops there. Small ornaments caught my eye, and I nodded at rows of miscellaneous goods. The merchants, noticing my clothes and bearing, immediately realized I was a noble and bent themselves nearly in half.
It felt awkward, so I would end up buying some useless trinket just to smooth things over before moving on.
That was how I spent my time. Walking from place to place as if I had to take in every corner of the city. I looked at everything I could see as I moved.
Before I knew it, morning had become noon, and noon was racing toward afternoon. The sun had grown far hotter than it had been in the morning, and I was heading into the shade to avoid it when—
Thud.
I collided with someone.
“Ah...”
I heard a slender voice.
A white handkerchief had fallen to the ground. A little above it, I saw a pale foot in a sandal, and without thinking, my gaze kept rising.
When I saw the elegant dress, I caught my breath. It was my fault, so I spoke quietly.
“Ah, I’m terribly sorry. I was walking while distracted.”
“...”
As I said that, I picked up the fallen handkerchief.
And when I handed it back, I saw her clearly.
She was a woman with half her face hidden beneath a wide-brimmed hat.
Wind-tossed blond hair, slender fingers. A hibiscus held firmly in those delicate hands. A frozen expression, and eyes that carried a sorrow every bit as deep. A beautiful woman looking at me without the slightest expression.
I met her gaze.
She made me think of something. She reminded me of someone’s tears, now faded and blurred with time.
Then she took the handkerchief I offered and bowed her head.
“...Thank you.”
Her voice was delicate and elegant, beautiful in the same way as the face hidden beneath the hat.
“...”
“Excuse me.”
Maybe that was why. Or maybe it was something else. Perhaps it was the sad look in her eyes, or the way she kept clutching that hibiscus, that made me pay attention.
So I did something strange.
I reached out and caught her arm just as she tried to leave with those brief words.
“Lady, if you’re wandering around alone, would you care to walk with me?”
I said it on impulse. She was a complete stranger, and yet I had the strange certainty that I had to stop her.
“...That won’t be necessary.”
She refused with a cool, indifferent face, as though she had no interest in me at all.
“I insist, because I’m the one who was rude. Please allow me to make it up to you at a café.”
“...”
In the end, I was shamelessly pursuing a woman whose name I didn’t even know.
After I kept asking again and again, she finally gave a small, helpless nod.
We arrived at a café, ordered coffee and dessert, and then I bowed my head first and gave my name.
“I’m Liam Nirheim.”
“...Aria Hopenberg.”
“Ah.”
Aria Hopenberg.
I knew that name. She was the adopted daughter and heir brought in by Countess Obriel Hopenberg. She wasn’t the youngest person ever to pass the Imperial Mage Division’s exam, but rumors said she was still a talent the court mages had been keeping an eye on. It had been a fairly common topic in high society for a while.
And the woman sitting in front of me was the very person at the center of those rumors. Of course, it would have been rude to gush about it to her face, so I simply smiled.
“So you’re Lady Hopenberg. This is my first time meeting you, so I didn’t recognize you.”
“...Yes.”
But she only gave me a short answer, as if it were a topic that held no interest for her.
“First, let me apologize again. I wasn’t looking where I was going and made a mistake earlier.”
“...It’s fine.”
Even when I tried to bring up other topics, her reactions were the same. No matter what I said to try to start a conversation...
“Yes.”
“It’s fine.”
She cut everything down to those two answers and nothing more.
And so time passed without meaning. Eventually, she stood and said she had to go. Outside, the evening sun was already painting the city in sunset colors.
“I should take my leave now.”
“Yes, Lady. It was a pleasant time.”
“...Yes. Then.”
She bowed stiffly, then turned away from me. I looked at the flower still in her hand and spoke before I could stop myself. I felt as though I had to say it.
“Do you like hibiscus?”
Since the moment we met, she had never once let go of that red flower clutched tightly in her hand.
“...Yes. Very much.”
For the first time since I had met her, her lips curved into the faintest smile.
Just as you once had, she smiled while looking at that red hibiscus.
And so I spent my last day in Vinkelite before returning to Harden after three years.
It was the summer I was seventeen.