Phantom Pain
With my clothes in this state, there was no returning to the ball. And yet what would they say if I went home looking like this? Plenty of thoughts crossed my mind, but no matter how I weighed them, turning back was never an option I could take. If I walked into the venue with a slit throat still bleeding, the guests would recoil in horror.
When I peeled away the handkerchief Adele had given me, I found the bleeding had already stopped. The wound remained, though—and so did the blood soaked into my collar. In the end, there was nothing for it but to head home.
A chance to meet the Princess... today may have been a rare one, but it wasn't as though I would never find another way to see her. From memory alone I could count dozens of opportunities, and if circumstance ever wove a thread between us again, we would meet regardless. So I gathered up my lingering regret and set it down. If we were bound to meet someday, there was no sense in ruining my business clinging to some mere ball.
If Father demanded to know what had happened, I need only tell him I'd met Adele. The handkerchief clutched in my hand would serve as proof of that much. For a woman of her temperament, it was a surprisingly modest thing—plain white, bearing nothing but the Egret crest. I stared at it for a long moment, then started across the garden.
...Then again—did she really mean it when she told me to come visit?
"Come to the North sometime. We'll have a drink."
Knowing the woman, she would never have tossed out empty words. The invitation, the drink—she had probably meant every syllable of it. In that case, I could simply use this as my excuse for slipping away. Tell them I'd struck up a connection with the Grand Duke of the North, and even a man like Father would be left without a retort.
And yet—would it not be wiser to avoid growing close to Adele Egret? The thought surfaced, as ever, because of her future. In every future. In every possible circumstance. She, too, would be branded a traitor, just as I had been, and purged.
It wasn't a memory I cared to linger on. I gave a brief, bitter smile and shook my head. Stay too long around a woman like Adele, and far too much came flooding back—the regrets I had once carried, for instance. Or the sights I would never see again.
Thud—
"Oh, I'm sorry."
"My apologies. I was lost in thought for a moment..."
My thoughts severed the instant I collided with someone. I bowed my head, blaming myself for not watching where I was going—but the woman simply went on staring at empty air past my shoulder as she gave her reply. As though she had no idea where I was standing. Only then did it register that what my shoulder had struck was a person at all—a woman.
Gold thread traced across fabric of immaculate white. A garment of such unstained purity that only one person in this entire country was permitted to wear it. Saintess Adrian. The name surfaced, and a dry laugh slipped out of me of its own accord. So the Saintess had been here all along.
"I'm over here, Saintess."
"Ah, there you are. I can't sense anything unless I'm touching it. I'm sorry."
The Saintess, who had surrendered her eyesight as the price of her divine power, had long been something like the living symbol of this nation. She wielded authority surpassing even the Pope of the Tigris Church—the state religion of the Empire—and carried, beyond that, divine power immense enough to call back those standing at death's very door. It was true, too, that some sang her praises above the Emperor's.
At the sound of my voice, she dipped her head, a gentle smile on her lips. No attendants, then. Just as I was thinking how unusual it was for her to wander such a place alone, Adrian spoke first.
"You've gone quiet. Is it because I'm here in a place like this, all on my own?"
"...Yes. For the moment, at least."
"Mirazen is a friend of mine, you see. His Holiness the Pope tried to talk me out of coming, but I managed to bring attendants along anyway. They'll be here shortly—I asked something of them, so they've left me alone for a little while."
And then—she pressed a fingertip to her lips for a moment, turning her face slowly this way and that, before beaming at me once more.
"There are probably others who've followed me here in secret, too, so there's truly no need to worry."
"In that case, I'm relieved."
She meant the Paladins sworn to the Saintess's protection, no doubt. Why she was here at all, I understood well enough. What startled me, rather, was the realization that in all my lives, this was the first time I had ever met her.
Saintess Adrian—I had heard the name a hundred times over, yet chances to meet her face to face had been scarce. Truth be told, until quite recently I hadn't even thought to try. A stepping stone toward the Crown Prince, perhaps—but back when I broke into a cold sweat at the mere idea of letting anyone close, why would I have played the fool and padded my circle with more names?
This country's one and only Saintess was a woman even the Emperor met but rarely. What hope was there for a family's laughingstock? Her snow-white blonde hair seemed to stream with light. They said the color had changed the very instant she received her divine power. A mysterious woman, in every sense of the word.
"By the way... are you hurt somewhere? I can smell blood, quite close by."
"I was injured a little. It's a small wound—you needn't concern yourself."
Sniff, sniff—her nose worked busily as she turned her face toward me, worry creasing her features. The scent, perhaps, rising from the wound on my neck. I hesitated a moment, then admitted it, and Adrian started faintly, her face angling toward the injury. Her eyes were closed; I couldn't have said where her gaze pointed. But she was, unmistakably, looking at the wound.
It was a strange sensation—to be pierced through by eyes that could see nothing at all, and know they were reading me to the bone. It occurred to me that denying it at this point was pointless.
"Your neck... is that where you were hurt?"
"A light cut. Various things happened, that's all."
Various things, I said—but she would know perfectly well that getting one's throat lightly slit is hardly an everyday occurrence. Yet Adrian asked nothing further. She only stepped closer and gently cradled the wound carved into my neck.
In that instant, a warmth seeped into my flesh. Golden radiance welled up and lit the garden around us, and when Adrian drew her hand away, she spoke in a voice gone calm.
"...It was shallow, so it should be fully healed now. But the reason you were hurt—is that, too, a personal matter?"
She seemed determined, after all, to know why I'd been injured. I couldn't imagine why a stranger's wound should occupy her so—but I supposed this was simply what she was. It must be why they called her Saintess: a woman who read other people's hurts and held them, who pitied them and ached alongside them.
I answered with a dry little laugh.
"Yes. A personal matter."
"I thought as much..."
Whether she had anticipated the deflection or not, Adrian's face turned toward me again, easing into a calmer expression. The distance had crept too close for comfort, and I made to step back—but her small hand had closed around my wrist and would not let go.
"Saintess?"
"Then may I ask just one favor of you?"
"A favor? Well... you did treat my wound. I can hardly refuse you now."
"I'd like to hear your name. You know who I am, but I don't know you."
The sudden request left me blinking for a beat before my wits caught up. Of course—a blind woman would have no way of knowing my face. We had never met, so she wouldn't know my voice either. I weighed it briefly, then slowly parted my lips.
"I am Robert Taylor of the Ducal House of Taylor, Saintess Adrian."
"Is that so? A lovely name."
With a soft laugh, she drew back a step, bowed her head, and traced the sign of the cross through the empty air. Like a prayer offered on someone's behalf, Adrian drew the cross, then spoke again.
"If we should meet again... I hope you won't be hurt then."
The warmth of her smile was carried off and scattered by the summer breeze. But that softness lingered still, and unlike when I'd met Adele, a gentle air seemed to wrap around everything between us.
We stood gazing at one another for a spell, until the sound of someone running reached us from far off.
"Ah—I should be going now. I'll head on ahead."
"I see. Go on ahead, then."
Adrian said her attendants seemed to have arrived, and set off once more. Unable to see a single step ahead of her, yet walking without one misstep, she dwindled into the distance. I watched her back in silence.
The Saintess I had never once met in a hundred lives. The Saintess who vanished every time I reached for her, as though destiny itself refused the encounter. What meaning, then, was there in meeting her in this life?
I ran a hand along my neck. Smooth skin—without so much as a scar left to show for any of it.
"Young Master. You've come back alone?"
"I have. It's not as though I'd have had anything to do there anyway."
Renald studied me with an expression he'd been wearing rather often these days. I couldn't imagine what surprised him so. Even attending the party, I would have been nothing more than an extra in the background. The 'partner' business had been a pretext and nothing more—the one who had to outshine everyone in House Taylor was Yuria.
She would probably chide me out of sheer indignation that I'd skipped it, but surely nothing would be botched for my absence. I'd missed a few balls before, and nothing had come of it. It would probably be fine.
Catching sight of my bloodstained shirt, Renald looked to have a great deal he wanted to say. But there was no wound on me, and I had returned from the ball alone... Well. I trusted he would piece the rest together sensibly on his own.
By tomorrow at the latest, everyone in this mansion would know I'd met Adele. Vast as the estate was, rumor traveled faster than anything under its roof. Even so, this once, I had no intention of keeping it quiet. I was curious what Yuria would say when the rumors—doubtless swollen by then—sent her storming to find me. Curious, too, what foolish expression she'd wear upon learning I had met Adele.
It promised to be rather comical. Here was a woman utterly convinced I would never once act in House Taylor's interest.
"I'll be resting in my room today. Don't come looking for me unless it's urgent. If the Young Matriarch asks for me... just say I'm asleep. I've no particular desire to see her anyway."
"...Understood, Young Master."
Yuria's temper would doubtless land on Renald's shoulders in my stead. That, at least, was none of my concern. Today I would rest properly and set my thoughts in order; come tomorrow, I could begin to move.
Click—
The door swung shut, and stillness rose to greet me. In that hush, where no sound reached me at all and only the clock's second hand clamored on, I shuffled across the room and sank heavily into a chair.
Perhaps because of everything the day had put me through, exhaustion crashed over me in a single wave, and my eyelids grew heavy. Just a brief rest, I thought—and the moment my eyes drifted shut—
"Robert... what I'm most curious about is when you'll finally take your own life."
Yuria's voice began pouring into my ears. I knew it was an auditory hallucination—a voice stored away in some corner of my memory. Yuria was at the ball right now; there was no way I could be hearing her. But no matter how firmly I reminded myself of that, the memory wrenched my throat shut and stole my breath.
With a wet, scraping sound, something began carving into my arm. Nails crushed and ripped free; of my pulped fingers, several were already gone. A memory, perhaps, of when I was tortured. The one who administered it had been a truly cruel sort—he knew exactly how to make a body hurt, and he almost never granted the mercy of unconsciousness.
Yuria's hand seized my head where I lay sprawled across the floor. With that brutal grip she hauled my face up and hurled her cruelty at me, one line after another.
"You should never have been born. If I had strangled you the moment your mother bore you, nothing would have gone wrong."
Not a grievance—words closer to naked abuse. And those words had cut deeper than being carved open chest-first. Because back then, I was a man who admired the woman named Yuria.
Was I truly never meant to be born? There had been a time I lived shackled to that very question. My arms and legs were gone from sight. Nothing of me remained but a torso, breath still clinging to it, while cold earth poured down over my face.
Even wailing, hardly a tooth left in my head, I could not stop the shovel from heaving more soil onto my body. My sight was blotted out—dark and freezing—and with a body that no longer moved, I thrashed all the same. Ah. Right. No legs.
But for all that struggling, one of my countless lives simply ended there. In a silence where nothing could be heard, it concluded in a death attended by nothing but quiet. The last thing I remember is those frozen blue eyes, watching on the day the earth swallowed me whole.
"...Yuria."
Only when I caught myself speaking the name aloud did I finally come back to my senses. A cold draft brushed over my skin. The fog in my head gave way to a damp, clinging sensation, and my eyes cracked open to slits. When they did, my body was drenched through with cold sweat.
A good deal of time seemed to have passed. I looked around the silent room and understood that what had just seized me had been a dream. It was my own fault for feeling relieved at a single night without it. I had grown careless, telling myself I wouldn't see it anymore. As if this nightmare could ever end.
This past, which hounded me like a brand and would cling to me until the very moment I died—when would I ever be free of it? Wiping my damp brow, I let out a quiet breath. My body was unharmed. Which meant this pain had to be the agony of something that did not exist—a phantom pain. Nothing more than an ache conjured by my own broken mind.
Yuria had killed me more times than anyone across my countless lives. And yet how could I possibly think of that as nothing?
Perhaps... I had been lying. Lying when I said no feeling remained in me at all. Lying when I said that even if a past existed, it was only the past—that forgetting it would be enough.
I glared into the empty air, where there was nothing to see. The darkness gave no answer. It only kept its silence, as if to tell me to go and find the answer myself.