The Second Note (4)
—Clink!
Vivian set her fork down against the bowl with open irritation.
I watched her with a blank expression, though inwardly I thought, Well. It was bound to blow sooner or later.
"Why have you been trailing after me like this lately?"
She let out an annoyed sigh as she asked. Her sharp gaze drove straight into me.
"..."
I couldn't bring myself to answer right away.
If I mentioned the note, everything would get far too complicated. And I couldn't tell her that unknown enemies might still be after her life. That would only feed her anxiety.
So I answered with something else instead.
"Trailing after you? I haven't done anything of the sort."
Then I took a large bite of bread and shut my mouth with it.
When I played dumb so brazenly, Vivian looked properly provoked. She wiped her mouth with a napkin and pressed her case.
"You think I'm making a fuss over a day or two? You've been following me around for almost a month...! And today you just barged into my class without so much as asking!"
I shrugged and kept chewing the bread, pointing at my full mouth to signal I couldn't reply.
But she wasn't wrong.
It had been a month since I'd received the note. Which meant it had been nearly a month since I'd started following her.
Meals we already shared, so that was one thing. But I'd also gone into her classes just to watch, and whenever she went out for a walk I kept an eye on her from a distance. At night I loitered outside her door.
Sometimes I tried not to get too close. Sometimes I tried not to drift too far.
Vivian noticed my presence often enough, and every time she did she glared at me with pure irritation. Whenever that happened, I pretended not to notice and ignored her stare.
"So you're just going to keep denying it, is that it?"
She narrowed her eyes as she asked.
Judging that denial wouldn't hold much longer, I reached for a different excuse. I spoke without meeting her eyes all the way through.
"I'm bored. That's why. I just want to watch the spectacle of you."
"..."
"You've been learning some weird dance lately, too. You're genuinely terrible at it."
I forced a little laugh and tried to steer the subject away with a teasing tone.
Of course, watching Vivian learn to dance was funny. That clumsy beginner awkwardness of hers.
At my mockery, her face flushed red. She clenched her fists and gritted her teeth. The joke had clearly gotten under her skin.
...Maybe that was why she'd told me to stop following her in the first place.
"..."
Contrary to my expectation that she'd explode at me, Vivian's gaze wavered for a moment. She blinked and looked down at the floor, and I saw the rims of her eyes turning red.
"Huh?"
Realizing she was about to cry before the tears actually fell, I stood quickly and went to her.
"Hey, it was a joke. Don't cry over something like this."
"...I'm not crying."
—Smack!
Vivian slapped my arm away and answered stubbornly.
Of course she did. She always raised that vicious pride of hers against me.
Sniffling, she roughly wiped at the corners of her eyes and looked at me.
"Anyway, stop following me. Just looking at your face makes me so annoyed I could die."
"...What I do is my business."
"Sticking your face in my way for a day or two is one thing, but you're so damn bothersome I can't concentrate on anything! Why do I have to look ridiculous in front of you every single time I try to learn something!"
"..."
Breathing hard with anger, Vivian shot up from her seat. She strode out of the hall with hard, rapid steps. A few maids hurried after her.
I stared blankly in the direction she'd gone, then sat down in the seat she'd left empty.
"...Haa."
A sigh slipped out of me on its own.
I hadn't realized. Looking at it now, she simply hadn't wanted anyone to see her fumbling through something new. From her point of view, I'd been mocking her.
I'd been so focused on her safety that I'd missed that part entirely.
But how was I supposed to stop?
The note had advised me to stay glued to her side, and Vivian had been taking a lot of new lessons. She'd started dance classes, and etiquette of conversation as well. And among those new lessons were some I didn't even know the content of.
A few of them she refused to let me into no matter what.
My guess was that Lady Rinne had started teaching her something strange. And among these new instructors, someone might be trying to harm her.
Because of that uncertainty, I had no choice but to keep circling close to her.
But right now, everything was grinding against itself.
I'd thought that if something was going to happen, it would happen soon... and yet a full month had passed in silence. The longer time dragged on, the harder it became to force myself to her side.
Had the person who gave me the note been wrong this time?
Had the next plot against Vivian already fallen apart?
If nothing had happened after a whole month, wasn't it fair to call it over?
And I was wearing thin myself. It wasn't easy staying near someone who looked at me with that kind of hostility.
I clicked my tongue and thought to myself.
Fine. Then I won't either. Why should I protect someone who doesn't want it?
"..."
That was what I thought—but a lingering unease still sat in my chest.
Even so, I shook my head again.
A month had already gone by... I had to decide there was no problem. I couldn't keep up this kind of surveillance forever. Considering the state of our relationship, the fact that we'd managed to stick this close for a whole month was already a miracle.
I stood up from my seat. Only then did the maids still left in the hall begin clearing the table.
On any other day I would have gone after Vivian, but today, for once, I turned my steps toward the Disciplinary Unit.
The Disciplinary Unit had a new chain of command.
A few people had been appointed to serve as officers among the boy soldiers. Just as Burgor had requested of Vivian back then, the boy soldiers who had killed the hop goblins were given those officer roles.
As a result, under the name of "Kailo's Unit," I suddenly had fifty boy soldiers to manage.
Though "manage" was a generous word—everyone still lived exactly as they always had, so daily life barely changed. Maybe it would mean something the next time we marched out to battle.
In just a few more months, it would be a full year since I'd come here.
Whether because of that, or because I'd earned recognition on the last expedition, or simply because I'd become a mid-level officer, the boy soldiers no longer treated me with the same open hostility as before.
"Hey, Kailo! Come play some cards!"
Yanes, who like me had been made a mid-level officer, called out when he saw me.
Yanes was an eighteen-year-old man, less than a year from adulthood. Naturally his body was more grown man's than boy's, and a rough brown beard was already coming in dark along his jaw.
I waved him off and walked past them, heading straight for my room.
Inside, sure enough, were Ballon, Willas, and Martin.
Two years older than me at seventeen, they already carried themselves like adults. I'd been growing lately too, but catching up to them still looked a long way off.
Ballon, who had lost so much weight recently that you could barely call him fat anymore, brightened at the sight of me.
"Kailo, what brings you back so early?"
"I just wanted to rest today."
After exchanging greetings, I went straight to my bunk and lay down. My head was a mess from the conversation with Vivian.
Ballon, Willas, and Martin went back to whatever they'd been talking about and snickered among themselves. Their conversation sounded light as air.
"I'm telling you it's real, though. Isn't it obvious?" Willas said with a dirty little smile.
"Nah, you just want it to be that. I think it's too vague to call a signal." Martin clicked his tongue.
"If you're a man and you get a signal like that, you go. Right away!" Ballon jabbed Willas in the back as he said it.
Listening in, I gathered they were arguing over whether a certain maid was actually seducing Willas or not. Apparently their eyes kept meeting from a distance, and when they passed close she smiled at him—and Willas insisted that was a kind of signal.
"Hey, Kailo. What do you think? Let's hear the noble young master's expert opinion." Willas, apparently tired of sparring with Martin, turned the question on me.
With Vivian as my only experience involving a girl, I didn't have much to offer. Thinking of her only tangled my head further, and I answered without thinking.
"...If she doesn't hate you, then there's a chance."
Martin muttered, "Well, that's true..." and nodded.
With Martin's momentum broken, Willas smiled like a man who'd won and said, "See? I told you I was right! This might actually work. Whoa... am I really gonna end up like Yanes?"
When Willas said "like Yanes" and pulled that uniquely disgusting face of his, I couldn't hold back the question.
"...What do you mean, end up like Yanes?"
Willas's expression snapped back to normal at once. Then he grinned.
"Ah, right—you've been out so much lately you wouldn't know. You haven't heard the Yanes story?"
"What story?"
"That bastard Yanes. He screwed a maid in the stables. Said she was some older sister six years older than him, or something."
"..."
I lost my words at that. I just lay on the bed and turned the fact over in my mind.
Looking at everyone else, they all seemed to be living just fine in their own ways. Somehow all of that still felt like a distant story to me. It wasn't that I had no interest at all... but it wasn't a conversation I particularly wanted right now either.
Leaving the excited Willas to it, Martin said with a snide edge, "...Well. Good luck."
Willas only got more fired up. "You jealous? What's with your voice?"
"Jealous, my ass. You're just saying such ridiculous things. Do you even know how to pick up a girl?"
"What do you mean, pick her up? She's already sending me all the signals. I just have to go pick them up."
"That's exactly why you'll never manage it. You think it's that easy? She'll send the signal and then play coy the whole way. If a man doesn't know how to approach, a woman will push him away first just to see."
Martin's words struck something inside me, and before I knew it I was asking,
"What if the other person doesn't want you near them? How do you approach then?"
"..."
"..."
Silence filled the room at the same time. Clearly none of them had expected me to ask a question.
Ballon was the one who broke the awkward air. The corner of his mouth twitched as he looked at me, and he asked in a teasing voice,
"...Well now. Looks like our young master Allen has someone he fancies?"
"It's not like that."
"Aiming's fine, but at least say something while you aim, yeah? I don't want to end up brothers-in-law through a—"
"—It's not like that."
When I denied it flat, Ballon snickered, and Willas and Martin burst out laughing with him. The room filled with laughter. I just tried to ignore their teasing.
But once the laughter died down, Ballon answered with a serious face.
"...If the other person doesn't want you near them, then you don't approach."
The sheer reasonableness of it felt strangely out of place.
Martin nodded as well. "That's just obvious."
"Unless you're planning to carry her off, give it up." Willas was the same.
"..."
For some reason their answers sat uncomfortably in my chest.
Without a word I turned over to face the wall and turned their words over inside myself. A strange feeling seeped through me. The simple wish to rest and the tangle of complicated thoughts only knotted tighter together.
I just closed my eyes.
And cut the thoughts off with them.
"EVERYONE UP!!!"
Deep in the night, a booming shout shook the Disciplinary Unit.
I jerked upright at the sound. In the faint moonlight I saw Ballon, Willas, and Martin sitting up just as fast as I had.
"Wh-what's going on?"
Ballon asked in confusion, still half out of his mind.
But we had no time to find an answer. All of us scrambled out of our bunks and into the corridor.
The Disciplinary Unit was pure chaos.
Boy soldiers were spilling out of the barracks in disorder, and the main gate leading outside already stood wide open. Soldiers and maids ran every which way through my field of vision.
My heart started hammering. Something serious had clearly happened. Anxiety pressed down hard on me.
Coleman, the Disciplinary Unit's adjutant, shouted at the boy soldiers pouring in without knowing why. His voice was tight with urgency.
"To the castle!! Move!! Grab water and run!!"
At that, the unit grew even more chaotic. Everyone scrambled to snatch up water buckets.
In that moment Yanes, startled but still sounding responsible, threw out a question.
"W-what's happened!!"
Coleman shouted back.
"The castle's on fire!"
"...Ah."
Only then did I understand.
The people after Vivian hadn't disappeared.
All this time, they simply hadn't been able to do anything—because I had been at her side.