Revisiting the Past (1)
The Emperor’s secretary, Theodore Rees—the man who had once suggested introducing Ellie to a master craftsman in the Imperial Capital and even drawn up the paperwork—didn’t receive the bill from Master Craftsman Classman until far later than he had expected.
That’s surprising.
Seated at his unusually broad private desk, which was buried under papers and documents of every kind, Rees rubbed at his temple.
I thought that old man would finish within a week at the latest, and send the invoice the day after.
Among craftsmen, he was known for being almost painfully strict about time and payment deadlines. Besides, Rees had told him to put all other commissions aside and begin at once.
So… just how much is it going to be?
He hoped it wouldn’t be anything outrageous, but after suddenly putting such an urgent request before that craftsman, it would have to be a fairly significant sum…
“...Huh?”
The amount written on the invoice left Rees genuinely flustered.
It was a remarkable feat. To shake the Emperor’s secretary with a number.
“What is it?”
“N-no, nothing.”
Though he said that to his subordinate, Rees still brought the invoice closer to his face, as though he might have mistaken the units.
No, he hadn’t.
The amount due was precisely 1 syr.
One silver coin.
...What?
Something was wrong.
If this were meant as a protest—an outright refusal to take the commission—the man would have written 0 knuts and sent it back.
To charge one syr meant he had formally accepted the request, and once he had, that old man would never half-ass the job.
Why?
Had the girl paid it herself, perhaps? No, impossible. Her face had been refined, but she certainly didn’t look like someone who wore the clothes of a person with that kind of money.
Then, suddenly, the face of the girl who was supposed to receive the wand flashed through Rees’s mind.
The expression she had worn just before lowering her head that day, when she handed over the paper tied with golden thread.
That face, vanished in an instant like a mirage.
At the time, Rees had felt something stir in him, but it was such an absurd thought that he had quickly dismissed it from his mind.
And yet, confronted now with the even more absurd fact that Craftsman Classman had charged only one syr, the feeling he had discarded then rose again in his head.
She has the same eyes as Your Majesty.
“...”
Rees pressed hard at his temple.
He had a bad feeling that something extraordinary was happening. Perhaps something that would change this age—and this world—forever.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Melitt stepped into the headmaster’s office at the Academy and asked the girl who had apparently left the Emperor’s secretary so unsettled, “...Ellie? What exactly are you doing right now?”
She was so startled that her speech turned formal. In the deepest part of Melitt’s heart, Ellie was someone she should follow—her lord.
“Hm? Why?”
Ellie asked with complete calm and kept on combing Scathach’s hair with her hands.
“No, it’s just that the headmaster always wears it down, so I thought it might look pretty tied a little to the side.”
“...”
Whenever Ellie was nearby, silence seemed to grow more abundant. More precisely, there were many moments when she was so absurd that people simply didn’t know what to say.
Whose hair did she say she was tying up?
Honestly, it would have been less shocking if she’d said she was braiding the mane of a living lion.
The same was true of Ellie’s friends, and even Isabel—the one who understood the least of the four—had her mouth hanging open.
Melitt felt a strange sort of solidarity with them.
“There, all done. What do you think?”
“H-hmm...?”
The hairstyle Ellie had suggested was known as a two-side-up.
She had tied the hair up on both sides while leaving the back down, giving off a lively yet composed impression.
“Th-th, hm, well, uh... hmm...”
Scathach kept coughing lightly and glancing at the mirror, but Melitt saw it clearly: the corners of the headmaster’s mouth kept trying to curl upward into a grin.
She had dressed the lion’s mane, and now the lion seemed to like it.
And, in truth, it suited her. A two-side-up was a hairstyle that looked especially lovely on a pretty ten-year-old child.
Melitt felt a peculiar irritation. Not at Scathach, but at Ellie. Damn you, my lord—do you excel at even this?
“Yes, yes, it really is pretty. How about you wear it like this in front of other people sometime?”
“Y-you’ve gone mad!? Absolutely not!”
So a lion could be startled after all. She’d seen something rare today.
After that, Ellie stayed in the headmaster’s office as if it were her own and relaxed there with remarkable ease, and when dinner time arrived she took her friends and left together with them.
“We’ll come play again next time!”
“Thank you for the tea.”
“Excuse us.”
She sent off the children as they each made their polite farewells, and then Scathach turned to look at Melitt, who had been left behind alone.
“...Come to think of it, why are you here?”
“...Ellie called for me.”
“I see.”
After a moment of silence—
“D-don’t talk about this outside.”
“Don’t worry. Even if I did, no one would believe me.”
“Mm, mm. Quite right. Well, you’ve had your share of trouble too, so you may go now.”
“Yes, and you’ve had a hard day too, Headmaster.”
At last, even the final visitor was gone, and Scathach stood alone before the mirror.
Her hair was still tied exactly as Ellie had left it.
She reached out as if to undo it, then hesitated.
Fidgeting. Wavering.
Finally, Scathach looked at herself in the mirror and formed a V with both hands, even trying out an awkward smile.
“...Ehehe?”
The face of the not-quite-girl turned bright red.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Rachel Vermi had died on Monday, and on Thursday of that week, class had been handled by Sir, who had originally been a teaching assistant.
He was praised for being excellent at teaching. Especially when compared to Rachel, he was nothing short of a professor for the ages.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
When the weekend came around again, I set out to revisit the orphanage where I’d grown up.
I’d originally planned to go alone, but Isabel insisted on coming with me.
“There probably won’t be anything fun there.”
“I don’t care. If I’m with Ellie, that’s what makes it fun.”
I felt like she’d grown a little.
But still—of all people, taking Isabel there was something I needed to think about.
It’s not that it won’t be fun. It’ll probably be hard.
Not physically hard.
Emotionally hard.
Of course, the orphanage now wouldn’t be the same as it had been when Doloria was the matron and Lord Repeat had the children growing raw materials for drugs.
Even so, that was only relative.
Even if they were living off the money left behind by the bastard’s flayed belly, the best they could manage in this age would still be meals a little worse than ordinary, and living conditions a little below standard.
And since that money was only dwindling further by the day, I had no idea who the new matron was, but I could already picture the headaches she was dealing with.
“Hmm...”
Was it really all right to bring this young lady from a wealthy household to a place like that? She was kind, but still had a lot of childish softness left in her.
No.
It would hurt her heart, yes.
But precisely because she was the daughter of a rich family, maybe showing her this side of the world would mean more.
“All right, let’s go together. If you cry because it’s too hard, I’ll stay by your side until you stop.”
“What are you talking about? Who do you take me for? I’m not going to cry just because I rode in a carriage for a little while.”
Isabel stuck out her tongue at me in a teasing little grin.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“Waaah, ahhh...! W-what is this...! Waaahhh...!! H-how could something like this...! Waaaahhhhh!!!”
In the end, it went exactly as I’d predicted.
“There, there.”
I took Isabel outside for a bit to soothe her, since she was crying as if the country had collapsed and the sky had fallen with it.
“Hic, sob, E-Ellie... sob, hrrrk...”
Once I comforted her, she seemed to calm down a little, but then she looked back and forth between me and the orphanage building.
“Waaahhhhhh!!”
“...There, there.”
I’d brought her here knowing this would happen, so I soothed her exactly as promised without a single complaint.
I sat her down in the grass and patted her back. Yes, yes, it was scary, wasn’t it? There, there, you were startled badly, weren’t you?
“...Hic, hic... Ellie...”
Once she’d calmed down a little more, I took out a handkerchief and held it to Isabel’s nose.
“Come on, blow.”
“Hrrrph.”
“The other side too.”
“Hrrrphh...”
“That’s it.”
I wiped around her eyes and nose as well, then was about to put the handkerchief away when I remembered something. I’d done this the first time I met her too.
But this time there was one thing that was different.
“W-wait a sec.”
Isabel grabbed my hand and recited a spell in the common magical language.
“L-lebua sro m'ua.”
Then the dirt on the handkerchief was washed clean away.
“I-I practiced... ever since that day.”
Embarrassed, Isabel turned her still-wet eyes away from me, but at the same time she also stole glances in my direction, clearly hoping for praise.
“Honestly.”
She was so cute and funny that I pulled her into a tight hug.
“You did well. Yeah.”
People grow.
Especially children who haven’t finished growing yet.
“...Ellie. You really did grow up here.”
Because her eyes were full of tears, Isabel’s voice was a little lower than usual when she asked.
“Yeah. And this is actually the better version.”
The orphanage’s situation was exactly as I’d imagined.
From the start, from the perspective of the new Lord Repeat—the eldest son of the man I’d killed—this orphanage was probably just a nuisance.
If he left it alone, it would only keep swallowing money, but he couldn’t just dispose of it recklessly either.
He was already having a hard time because of the notorious legacy his father left behind, and he couldn’t pile his own sins on top of that.
Still, I really do need to secure them a source of funding.
The chances of the orphanage children and my own path crossing again in the future were slim.
That didn’t mean I wanted to leave them to sink back into misery.
That was what you called a bond.
“...Isabel.”
Isabel sniffled again and said,
“You know, Ellie.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to take only half my allowance now, sob...”
The girl looked up at me with a determined expression.
“...”
That wasn’t exactly why I’d brought her here.