No Refunds on an Opened Body
In the rippling gray world of my ki sense, one figure alone stood dyed black. Red eyes shone by themselves in a space where no color should have been able to enter. This was not the ki sense at work.
What was I meant to call it... The soul. Yes. My soul was the one sensing that child. What on earth was this?
"Ow!"
"I told you to answer me!"
Well. Quite the highborn little noble, by the feel of it. We had never met, so there was no way I could have known their station, and yet they were lofty enough to kick a stranger in the shin without a second thought.
Surely not Elencia's child? About four feet three. A little short for the age, perhaps, but not impossible...
Or was I wrong? The clothes were worn thin, the hair a wild tangle. Nothing but some heedless page? Whoever they were—
"I don't know who you are, but you must not use violence on others so carelessly."
Before the question of who they were came the fact that they had struck someone. They might have been young. That only made it more serious.
"I'll do as I please."
A more impudent child than I had expected.
"So. Since when have you been watching?"
"From the beginning. I was up in the tree, and then somebody suddenly showed up, so I watched."
Mortifying.
"So what's a maid doing with a wooden sword first thing in the morning? Pretty entertaining, I'll give you that. Pfft..."
"...You shouldn't laugh at another person's effort so freely. And that is precisely what I wanted to ask. Who are you, climbing trees from the morning?"
"Me? Open your eyes and you'll know right away."
"Mm. You're a page, aren't you? Were you picking fruit?"
"I said open your eyes."
What was I supposed to do? Open them and pretend I could see?
Now that I thought of it, Elouis and I had already agreed that I would simply be blind.
"I'm blind, so opening my eyes doesn't really change anything."
"Blind? Don't lie!"
"Why would I lie about something like this?"
"That doesn't make any sense! If you can't see, how did you walk all the way here!?"
"That's... my ki—"
"Ki?"
"Presence. I meant presence. I can sense it quite well. Blind people are sharper about that sort of thing than ordinary people."
"Liar! You're just squinting, aren't you?"
"It's the truth. If something is close enough, I can feel it."
Who would lie about a thing like this?
The child, plainly unwilling to believe me, was twitching the muscles of their face.
"Then stay right there, just like that!"
They began to creep around behind me, soft as a cat.
"If what you said is true, you ought to be able to get this much right."
Spoken with a preening little air, and then the right arm went up.
"Which arm did I raise?"
Quite a charming quiz.
"The right."
"Wh—... Wrong! It was the left!"
"Please don't lie."
A child with a fierce will to win, it seemed. Even so, one ought not lie over something like this.
"N-no... c-cancel! You just guessed! You got lucky!"
The child let out a shameless laugh and hid the arm behind their back.
"Guess how many fingers I'm holding up, and I'll admit it!"
This had already stopped having much to do with testing whether I was blind. They simply wanted to win.
Mm. Better to answer correctly, or to miss? If I thought of it as playing along with a child, letting them win would have been the proper thing...
"Seven."
I decided to get it right. Losing on purpose merely because they were a child was not good manners. And that voice was strangely irritating. I did not want to let them win.
"One... two... three... Seven! H-how did you get that right!"
"You'll acknowledge it now, won't you? Then would you tell me? Who are you, and what are you doing here?"
"Nnngh...! I'll expose that trick someday! You just wait!!"
"Ah! If you've lost, you ought to tell me before you go!"
The unidentified child fled at once, out beyond the reach of my ki sense.
Judging by that lack of dignity, they really did seem to be nothing more than a page. That aside, I had no idea why that child alone registered so strangely. Nothing seemed particularly amiss, though, so there was no need to dwell on it.
I lifted the wooden sword again.
The intrusion had broken my rhythm, but the truth was simpler than that. This body was terribly weak. Weak enough that being laughed at felt inevitable... not that I was asking to be laughed at.
For the moment, I judged that tempering the flesh itself mattered more than learning the sword.
One hundred push-ups a day. One hundred sit-ups. One hundred squats. And last of all, a six-mile run.
...Impossible. I would have to build it up a little at a time.
"Hahh... hahh... huff..."
The first day of training, and a record without precedent was set. Four push-ups. Ten sit-ups. Eight squats. One minute of running.
To think that so little as that could exhaust me until my ki sense shut itself. A truly despairing milestone.
Could I get a refund on this body...?
In my days as the Hero I could have done that much from dawn until dark, and the contrast struck hard. Even so, I could not spend my hours only complaining. A body grows stronger the more it is used. An immutable truth, and one the captain of the Eagle Knight Order himself had acknowledged.
Besides, if I meant to kill Elencia, I could not simply stay where I had fallen. I clenched my teeth, set my weight against the wooden sword, and hauled myself upright.
This time, one hundred overhead swings.
I did not come close. At the tenth, the strength ran out of me, and I collapsed where I stood.
Damn this body. Damn this curse.
Emptied out as I was, I checked the time while I had the chance. Eleven and six, on the left. Half past eleven. What had I even done, for so much of the morning to be gone already?
It was a child's body. Push it any further and I might do real harm. On that judgment, I decided to eat.
Bread and an omelet alone were enough to set my mouth watering. What would the rest of the food be like?
Happy imaginings in tow, I dragged my spent body toward the dining hall.
Ahh~. Lunch had been sublime as well.
Cream pasta, with a fragrance all its own, and a harmony so perfect it was almost unfair. I had eaten in such a frenzy that I got it all around my mouth. I hadn't noticed while I was eating, but the person seated beside me had kept stealing glances.
Nobles were unlikely to enjoy the sight of someone eating without a shred of dignity. I would have to be more careful.
Any more training was out of the question, and my stomach was taut as a drum. A walk through the grounds would do, if only to help me digest.
I knew the paths, and still they were a trial. The estate was simply that vast, and because I could not take in the whole of it I had to walk as though I were walking a forest. Even those who know a forest path are said to lose their way in it. Even so, was I not the former Hero? Not even a forest that must be crossed by a single light in the dark had been able to stop me.
Just in case, a tip: remember the distinctive places, and remember them well. A tree or a rock within sensing distance will serve.
On the way into the servants' quarters, for instance, there stood a tree with a truly impressive knothole. And the places easier still to lose oneself—the garden above all—demanded caution even from an expert. An expert among experts, however, such as myself, had nothing to worry about.
Do you see the path here, the one that marks the border between the roses and the tulips? Go straight along to the left, then turn left once more at the next corner, and what do you find?
At the center of a broad circle drawn in flowers and grass stood the symbol of House Blake: a statue of a black cat. Cool-headedness and a cutting edge, or so they said.
All of it a lie. This was the symbol of a traitor.
The other cats could be whatever they liked. From this day on, the black cat would stand for betrayal. How well it suited!
I was heaping abuse on the statue when my legs, no doubt from the morning's training, began to tremble, and I sank onto the bench in front of it.
The sunlight lay full and warm. I could not see it, so I would have to settle for feeling it.
Drawing a wage while I sat here left me a little restless. Still, I had decided to live at least a little selfishly, and so I would enjoy the warmth.
This, too, was a sickness. As the Hero, one step more might have saved one life more, and so I had moved without rest. Now I was being paid to sit at my ease, and my heart would not be easy at all.
Ought I to train a little more after all?
Guilt welled up. I turned my back on the warm sun and the fragrant flowers and resolved to leave the garden.
Face the cat head-on and go straight. Right at the carnations. Straight on, and left at the sunflowers. Left again where the faintly glittering stone was set into the path, and?
Ta-da!!
The black cat statue.
Huh...?
Well. Even a wyvern falls out of the sky now and then. Expert or not, a person can get turned around. Let that be a warning to everyone. This time I would not play about. This time I would actually leave.
Left from here... right at the next block...
This time—!
The black cat statue.
In all my years, to lose my way in a garden inside a mansion...
This was plainly the will of God, telling me to rest a little longer. It had to be. I dropped onto the bench again and closed my ki sense.
Almost at once, as if to forbid the excuse, the sunlight broke off. A presence drew near, and with it a snip, snip, snip.
The world and the gods alike were terribly stingy.
I fixed the direction of the sound, opened my ki sense, and went closer. A man of ordinary build, though his forearms stood out, was holding an enormous pair of shears.
"Goodness, you startled me. Come up on a man without a whisper of warning and of course he jumps."
He had caught my footsteps. He flinched and turned. One of the gardeners, by the look of him. Middle-aged, if the voice was any guide.
"I'm sorry. I'm blind, so unless I come close I can't tell who is there."
"N-no, the apology is mine! Blind, you say... You're the new maid, then?"
"Yes. I've lost my way. Could you tell me how to get out?"
"The way out is straight along there..."
"Even if you say that way, the garden is so large, and so tangled..."
Had it been a reasonable size, I could simply have walked out. It was on the scale of a working field, and that made it a proper ordeal.
"Mm. I'm nearly finished. Could you wait a little? It will take some time, but I can't step away from this just now."
He wiped the sweat from himself with one arm and went on trimming.
Actually, this was better. Sitting still had been its own kind of hard, and now I could work, if only a little.
"Then is there anything I can help with?"
"Didn't you say you were blind? You needn't push yourself."
"I can feel the things that are close by."
"Mm... Well. They must have had their reasons for taking you on as a maid. In that case, would you sling the pail on your right across your back and clear away the cuttings? There are tongs inside. Use those."
"Yes!"
I shifted a little to the right and found the pail. I took out the tongs, settled the pail on my back, and returned to him.
"Don't overdo it, now."
With that he seemed to sink wholly into the shears, and said no more. I matched him, gathering the fallen blades of grass. This was work where ki sense outdid the eyes. I forgave not a single blade. Every one of them went into the pail.
As expected, I was still myself. Even a little labor set my mind more at ease—and this after I had resolved to live in comfort.
I sweated, and lost myself in the gathering, and the time slipped past before I knew it.
"Thank you for the help. Finished in no time, thanks to you. I was a little uneasy, you being blind, but you're far better than most of the attendants."
"You flatter me. And it was thanks to you that I was able to get out at all."
"Ha ha. We'll call it that, then. Might I know your name, miss?"
"Louis... Ruanes."
"Ruanes, is it. I am Hayden, head gardener of these grounds. Let us get along from here on."
I had taken him for an ordinary gardener, but the garden was so large that it seemed to be a department all its own.
"Yes. I'll be in your care."
I bowed my head and started off, and the head gardener waved after me.
The time was already four and three, on the right. A quarter past four in the afternoon. Early still, and yet I had done only a little training and a little work, and my body was flaunting its fatigue as though proud of the feat.
I ought to sleep early tonight...
Exhaustion had the young body half-nodding as I made my slow way back toward the quarters...