Aylin's Confession
"Pardon?"
Frey looked at Aylin with a face full of bewilderment. She thought that was fair enough, and pressed on.
"Do you remember back then?"
"Back then, my lady?"
"When I fell ill."
"Ah……"
Frey nodded. Of course he remembered.
That day had changed the course of his own life, after all.
"Mana Crystallization Disease. That was the name of what I had."
"It was absolute chaos. I was so young I didn't even properly know what your illness was called."
"Hehe. I was the same. All I could tell was that everyone in the manor had fallen into grief."
She was right. The moment her disease was diagnosed, Duke Katram collapsed, and the head butler of the time dropped to his knees and wept openly.
Mana Crystallization Disease. It was an illness in which the mana flowing through the body failed to run cleanly, tangling and clumping in place until it hardened into crystals.
Mana, by nature, wants to flow. Mana that cannot flow stagnates and rots.
A person afflicted with Mana Crystallization Disease became, in effect, someone with rotting refuse lodged throughout their body. No part of the body was safe. Mana courses through the entire system, so crystals formed indiscriminately — in the brain, the lungs, the heart. For commoners without access to treatment, it was a deadly disease that could kill within a week, or in severe cases, within a single day.
Fortunately, Aylin was the young lady of House Katram, one of the Empire's three great ducal houses and one that enjoyed the Emperor's particular trust. The finest physicians were summoned at once, and she was at least kept alive.
But Aylin and Frey, still so young, failed to grasp how grave the situation truly was. They were both ten years old then — three years after Frey and Iren had first met.
Aylin was immediately forbidden from leaving her room. The only people permitted contact with her were Frey, her personal butler of her own choosing, Duke Katram, her father, and the physicians.
"I was so terribly bored back then."
"You were. It was the first time I'd ever seen my always-composed lady throw a tantrum."
Confined to her bedchamber, Aylin was desperately bored. Ordinarily she had worked hard to project the dignity of a mistress before Frey, but a life in which she could not take a single step outside her room shattered her patience.
"Thanks to you, Frey, it wasn't entirely dull."
"I tried very hard. I wanted my lady to smile every day."
Frey could not simply stand by and watch the young lady he so admired fall apart. Young Frey taught Aylin all sorts of games.
"That was the first time I'd ever heard of jackstones."
"I was truly astonished. You were excellent at it even though it was your first time."
"Rock-paper-scissors was fun too, and — was it marbles? You were very good at that one, Frey."
"I'm still confident when it comes to hitting a target."
"Even as a child, you were so dependable. And the moment I truly found comfort…… came after that."
At the time, Aylin had believed her suffering would end at mere boredom. She was wrong. That was only a child's delusion.
The reason Mana Crystallization Disease was so infamous was that the pain during an attack defied imagination.
Aylin, mid-game of jackstones with Frey, suddenly looked down at her own hand.
"Huh?"
"What is it, my lady?"
"Frey, my hand feels strange."
"Your hand?"
Frey examined Aylin's hand, but found nothing unusual. Aylin, however, could feel it. The sensation in her hand, her arm — and some unnameable wrongness — climbed all the way to her heart.
The moment that wrongness settled fully into her heart, the pain arrived.
"Ngh—?!"
"My lady?"
"N-ngh, aaaahhh!"
Aylin collapsed and thrashed.
It hurts, it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts!!!! It hurts!!!!!
Once the pain surged up from the depths of her lungs and she went down, she could no longer even scream. Her hands, her arms, her heart, her head, her legs — pain struck every part of her body at once.
"My lady! My lady! I-is anyone out there?! My lady's condition—!"
Aylin's last conscious memory was of Frey's shouting. Then she blacked out.
She came to half a day later. The moment light entered her eyes, she resented the body that had woken up.
"Hic, hwaaah. Waaaaah!"
"Damn it — are the painkillers useless?"
"Any more and her life will be in danger!"
"Hell! Do something!"
It was better than when the attack first began, but the pain flooding into her small body was still more than a child could bear. The physicians threw everything they had at it, yet the agony would not easily recede.
Aylin's life was not in immediate danger, but the pain kept returning, and eventually even the doctors judged that further treatment was both meaningless and hazardous.
In the end, only Aylin and Frey were left alone in the room once more.
The only thing that had changed was that endless pain now kept her company.
"Nngh, nnngh."
"My lady……"
Aylin could not sleep. She only moaned through the pain. Frey wanted to cry. Why did such a kind, wonderful young lady have to suffer like this?
I wish it were me who was sick instead.
But he could not cry. The one who was supposed to cry was the girl in pain — not the boy watching her.
There was nothing Frey could do. All he could manage was this:
"My lady. My lady. My lady."
He took the hand of Aylin, who was in too much agony even to hear the voices around her, and prayed desperately that she would get better.
One day passed that way. Then two…… then ten.
"Hah, hah."
"My lady. You have to eat."
"Don't…… want to……"
Aylin tried to refuse the spoon Frey held out. Even the act of swallowing something down her throat was agony.
But Frey stubbornly brought the spoon to her lips. At last, Aylin opened her mouth.
"It's gruel, so it should be all right."
"Ngh, kkh. I-it's not all right at all."
Even as she furrowed her brow in pain, Aylin accepted every spoonful of gruel he gave her. Once he had gotten her to finish the meal, Frey sat beside her and opened a book. Though she had not asked, he spoke.
"I'm going to become a great mage. And I'm going to cure your illness."
The book Frey had opened was a magic textbook — an ordinary volume covering only the theoretical side of magic, not a grimoire.
"I've always been working hard, but I'll work even harder than before. So that you won't hurt. So that you can keep going."
Aylin let out a hollow laugh. The words were kind. But this was not a disease that a little butler she had picked up off the street could cure through effort alone.
Mana Crystallization Disease was an incurable illness even in the magic empire of Valencia. The only path to freedom from it was to drink an Elixir reserved exclusively for the imperial family. And Aylin was not of royal blood, so that was impossible.
Even so, she was grateful for the heart behind it. Because Frey —
"I will. I swear I will. I'll make it happen."
— poured every hour that was not spent attending her into the study of magic.
Meals? Replaced with drinking gruel. Sleep? Replaced with a spell that cleared the mind. Fatigue? Dissolved simply by imagining a future in which his lady smiled.
Frey truly began to spend every moment of his life for Aylin's sake.
Watching him push himself so hard, Aylin asked,
"Frey, why do you try so hard for me?"
"That's……"
Frey, who had been reading a grimoire, flushed red. In that moment, Aylin understood.
This child likes me. Not mere admiration — he truly likes me.
He had only turned red, but clever Aylin saw straight through to everything he felt. Frey immediately scrambled to explain — that she was the benefactor of both himself and his mother, that she was someone he deeply respected, and so on and so forth.
Watching Frey flail about trying to hide his heart, Aylin —
"Pfft!"
— laughed softly. Frey's eyes went round as saucers.
"My lady! You just laughed!"
"Hehe. Yes. I laughed."
"Hooray! My lady laughed! Hooray!"
Frey hopped up and down in pure, unfiltered joy. Watching him, Aylin felt a single shard of the pain inside her transform into a flutter of something else.
Yes. Love had not been sprouting in only one person's chest.
"That's when you started working so hard, and became the remarkable mage you are now."
"It was all for you, my lady."
"I know. And I know your feelings, too."
"……"
"I'm sorry for pretending not to notice all this time. But I had my reasons as well. So, Frey — what I said earlier."
Aylin looked him straight in the eyes.
"I meant it. I like you, Frey. Will you go out with me?"
The moment the words left her mouth, Aylin laughed inwardly.
Well, Iren von Valencia? Do you still think Frey won't accept this confession? Both of us are sincere, you know!
Then Iren's answer came.
It's done.
Done?
Aylin did not understand. What was done? Only after hearing Iren's words did she finally look properly at Frey's face.
The face she had expected was one blooming with soft color, thick with the joy of a love returned.
But the Frey before her now —
"……"
— was looking at Aylin with sad eyes. Why? Wait. Frey. That isn't — wait—
Aylin felt a chill at the words he was about to speak. She tried to stop them. But a gesture cannot hold back the wind.
"I'm sorry, my lady. I'll pretend I didn't hear that."
"……What?"
Frey had rejected her confession.