The 101st Me, to the 35th You — 5
...My mind was hazy.
I couldn't have said whether I was still gripping a sword, or whether I was still fighting at all.
Plip.
Only when the blood running from my forehead dripped down and touched my arm did I realize I was sitting slumped against a wall.
It was lucky that a few of them had fled mid-fight; if every last one had come at me, things would have gotten ugly.
I should have accounted for the fact that this body of mine wasn't fully finished yet.
But Mirajen had lived, so I lifted my eyes to the sky with a faint smile. There wasn't much of a sky to look at, really — nothing but a gray ceiling. Still, that was better than the floor, which was nothing but red, in every direction.
"Haah."
Even breathing took effort. I winced at the dull ache spreading through my chest, then forced out a breath and wiped my brow.
The problem was that I'd burned through my mana almost to the point of collapse. Capturing Temuchin, then cutting down the ones who swarmed in after him — more had rushed me than I'd expected, and I'd scraped the barrel dry dealing with them. I had only myself to blame.
I did need to get out of here eventually, but until Adele arrived, it seemed I wasn't going anywhere at all.
I looked at her sword. Not a single scratch on it. So it could hold up even to this kind of abuse. I supposed a famed blade really was a famed blade. I'd failed to keep my promise not to get hurt, but at least I could return her sword — and I'd actually managed to save Mirajen, too.
I'd kept sensing for movement the entire time I fought. If any outlander had gone anywhere near Mirajen, I would have caught it, but she seemed to have slipped out cleanly through another passage. The outlanders still outside had probably come in to hunt me, which meant that if I'd tried to leave, I'd have been caught.
By now she'd likely have linked up with Adele. My task from here was simple: conserve my strength, and hold out until Adele came.
Feeling the blood running down my shoulder, I tore my shirt and stanched it as best I could. Quite a few wounds remained; I'd need to avoid exerting myself for a while even after getting back. I probably looked worse than I was — in truth, I hadn't taken any serious injuries. If I had to put a name to it, exhaustion was the more accurate diagnosis.
After a few ragged breaths, I slowly closed my eyes. A cold wind brushed my cheek once, twice. Then, from somewhere far off, I felt something approaching.
"Robert, are you there?"
At the sound of Adele's voice, I smirked and rapped my head lightly against the wall.
Thud. Hearing the faint echo, she came hurrying toward me, footsteps quick with urgency. Adele appeared around the bend of the corridor, and the moment she spotted me, her brow knotted.
"...I distinctly remember telling you something."
"I never made an ironclad promise not to die, *cough*."
"Half a step from the grave, and still you have the nerve to run your mouth."
For all her tone, the hand brushing my cheek was gentle. Having wiped the blood from my face, Adele studied me for a long moment, her gaze moving over the wounds scattered across my body before she let out a soft sigh and spoke.
"Any sign of poison?"
"None. No one used it, and Temuchin is dead."
"I won't say you did well. All torn up like this, you're good for nothing for a while."
Still grumbling, Adele tore at the hem of my shirt — and then her brow creased, tighter this time. That part of me was the worst of it: cuts crisscrossing everywhere, gashes torn open to the bone. Her eyes lifted from the wounds to my face.
I'd expected fury. Instead, her eyes wavered — and the smirk that had been tugging at my mouth slowly died.
"...These aren't wounds a man can shrug off."
"I'm fine. I've been hurt plenty of times before."
"Well, I'm not."
Snk — pulling a bandage from inside her coat, Adele tore off a length and began winding it around my arm. It wasn't proper treatment, just a stopgap to slow the bleeding; she wound it in silence, then glanced up at me. Our eyes met again and again, and perhaps my composure grated on her, because her lips twitched.
"Tell me if it hurts. I've never done this for anyone before... so I might be clumsy at it."
"It doesn't hurt. Though wrapped that loose, I doubt it'll stop the bleeding at all."
"Is that so?"
Hm. Swallowing a small grunt, Adele pulled the bandage tight — and a jolt of agony shot through me. It had been wound too loosely, so I'd asked for a little force, and the instant my face twisted, she panicked and snatched her hands away entirely. Her startlement almost made me laugh, but the pain this time was genuine; all I could do was grit my teeth.
"A-are you all right? You told me to press harder, so I pressed harder."
The problem was she'd cinched it so tight the raw edges of the wound had ground against each other. With torn flesh scraping torn flesh, of course it hurt. Still, I couldn't lay the blame at her feet. I forced out that I was fine, and Adele, who had been staring at me the whole while, began wrapping the bandage again — carefully, this time.
"That's enough. It only needs to stop the bleeding, doesn't it?"
"...I'm not usually this clumsy at things. It's just my first time, that's all."
"If you say so."
She glared at me for a moment, then let the glare soften and spoke slowly. She had rendezvoused with the Princess. On her way here, she had cut down every fleeing outlander in her path. And at last, she had come to me. Her expression had been darkening as she recounted it, but when our eyes met, it eased — if only a little.
"I'm glad you didn't die. And what you did was reckless — actually thinking of fighting the outlanders alone."
"It was a choice made to keep Her Highness alive. Isn't that why you came here?"
"...Even if it killed you, you'd have done it all the same?"
I watched her ask it in that low voice, and in the end I couldn't answer. Even knowing I would die, I would have come anyway. After all, the final day of my thirty-fifth life had always been one of the regrets I carried.
Whether she read my silence as a yes, I couldn't say — but the crease between her brows deepened as she examined my wounds. She would never understand, I thought. Why a man with no ties to the Princess, a man with no particular loyalty to the throne, would fret over Mirajen like this. To any observer, it would look more than a little strange. It was a truth only I, in this entire world, could understand.
As Adele's steady gaze wavered over me, I gave a small smile and spoke.
"Her Highness once did me a great kindness. She likely doesn't remember it, but for me, it was a debt I could never forget."
I didn't want to hide things from Adele. But my regression wasn't something I could simply come out and say, so I explained it differently. That Mirajen couldn't remember it, and that I couldn't forget it — neither of those was a lie.
"A kindness, hm? When did that happen?"
"That moment changed a great deal in me. So I repaid the debt this time. The chance simply presented itself."
"...I see."
"And if you were ever in danger, Grand Duke, I would go to you even alone. Would that displease you?"
"Don't spout nonsense."
When I answered with a joke, Adele scowled and shook her head firmly. Her stern face was funny enough that I smiled a little; watching me for a long moment, she slowly rose to her feet. By then, every wound had been wrapped in bandages. Some of my strength had returned, and as I moved to stand with her, Adele pushed me right back down.
"Stay seated. Everyone will probably be here soon."
"You should rest. It'll take them time to arrive anyway."
At that, Adele glanced at the spot beside me, then shook her head, a small refusal. The only blood-free ground anywhere was right next to me — sitting shoulder to shoulder like that was probably too much for her. When I conceded the point, she looked at me and went on.
"It's not that being near you is a burden. It's just... well, I need to keep watch on our surroundings. Besides, you're uncomfortable too, aren't you — sitting next to me?"
"...Why would I be? It's not as if we've crossed paths only once or twice."
So saying, I shifted over a little. To make room for her, I patted the empty spot with my hand — and Adele stared hard at it.
"I don't mind. Just sit."
It wasn't as though this were our first or second time together — what on earth was there to feel awkward about? If she didn't mind, then neither did I. In a previous life we'd even shared a bed while camping, after all; I was hardly in any state to be flustered by it now.
Adele hesitated — but after I patted the spot a few more times, she slowly drew near. She settled into place with a smooth slide, then flinched. Realizing her arm had touched mine, she quietly edged away, putting a sliver of distance between us. I chuckled at that, and she began to glare at me, brow furrowed.
It was an odd tableau, when you thought about it. Corpses strewn in every direction, a scene of carnage — and yet she was the one mortified by how they were sitting.
Still, to the two of us, this was familiar. At least in the time we'd spent together in the North, Adele and I had always been side by side in places like this.
Adele settled in, and a long silence followed. The bleeding had stopped, and the dizziness with it. With my head clear again, there wasn't much left to hear — only the sound of melted snow beading and dripping to the ground, and the faint rise and fall of each other's breathing.
Then, when I turned my head, I found Adele looking at me. Even with our eyes meeting, she didn't look away. If anything, she bored into my eyes, searching for something. The same blue as mine — but hers were far clearer. Unlike mine, which could hold no feeling anymore, that cold light of hers was strangely refreshing. The northern wind always made me think of Adele. Cold, and yet, in a way, freer than anything else alive.
It was a little while longer before she spoke.
"...When I look at you, strange thoughts come over me."
"What kind of thoughts?"
"Even sitting right here beside you, it feels like you could die at any moment. So I can't take my eyes off you."
Was she complaining, then? I wondered if it was a joke and was forcing out an awkward laugh when her hand brushed my forehead. In those blue eyes, I caught the faint glimmer of wetness. Like a gentle current rolling in, her softly wavering gaze washed over my face.
"Even when my hand touches you, you feel like an illusion. Whenever you aren't speaking, I can't shake the feeling that I'm reaching for a mirage — that you might not really be there."
Once more, I felt her hand glide down my cheek. Wasn't it absurd? That the hand of the woman they called the Grand Duke of the North could be this warm.
Adele stared quietly at the blood smeared on her own fingers, her lips parting. As if about to say something, she hesitated a long moment before speaking again.
"...I saw the scars on your body. Not today — the last time."
"Ah. You mean... that."
She meant when we'd crossed paths after I'd washed. I'd wondered, having been caught before I could dress — so she had seen all of it. The scars on my body were not ordinary ones. Some from what Yuria had inflicted; others from the punishments my father had dealt out. To me they were simply part of me, nothing worth a second thought — but to Adele, the difference must have been stark. Unlike today's blade wounds, those scars had been carved by hands that deliberately hunted the tender places.
Adele's expression darkened. As if she had pieced together roughly where such marks came from, she let out a small sigh and continued.
"Those scars weren't earned for any ordinary reason. Were they."
"...No."
"I have no intention of asking how they came to be. I'm meant to hold to neutrality in all things — but if I learned the truth, I fear I'd come to see House Taylor as an enemy."
Adele smiled at that, and it was a bitter thing. In noble houses, such stories were not rare. Perhaps none so severe as mine, but now and then you'd hear of families so obsessed with their name that they would bring harm to their own kin. She had probably known from the moment she saw them — that House Taylor was nowhere near so refined as the rumors claimed.
Adele stopped looking at me. Staring into empty air, she murmured, quiet as a breath:
"I suppose that's why you unsettle me every time I see you. Why I keep feeling you might simply vanish."
"Why on earth would I vanish? I'm not fog."
I laughed as I said it — and Adele just stared at me, her face gone cold. She was so utterly serious that I couldn't find another word. I had the sense that if I let the joke run any further, she'd lose her temper on the spot. And just as that strange feeling began to wash over me, Adele whispered:
"...Don't get hurt anymore. Not where I can see it. Not while I'm here. I don't want to watch you be hurt again."
Her eyes were full of sorrow — an expression that, in every memory I possessed, the woman called Adele Egret had never once worn. Eyes that looked ready to break into tears at any moment. She held my gaze a long while with those eyes, and then murmured, barely audible — in a voice so small that only I could hear it:
"Hardly the words of someone who hurt you once herself."
Confusion flickered across her face, and slowly she withdrew her hand. She chewed her lip until it went white, then let out a quiet sigh.
"I don't... I don't even know why I'm like this. Truly, I don't."
Eyes closed, head resting against the wall, Adele said nothing more.
Not until Bunta arrived with the other soldiers. Not until Mirajen and I met again.
For a long, long while.