Interlude
Interlude
"That's good. Isn't it, Sis?"
The two people before her seemed like good people.
Claire found that truly remarkable. Though she was still only a few years old, her mind worked well enough to pick up on others' emotions.
From her earliest memory, she had wandered the backstreets. Her oldest image of herself was being held by alley thugs, clutching a dented tin can and begging along the main street.
The thugs constantly frightened her by saying she'd be in for terrible things if the police caught her, so whenever she spotted a policeman in the distance while begging, she'd slip into an alley to hide.
Claire was still young and didn't have a quota, but children even slightly older did. If they failed to meet the thugs' age-based quota, they were beaten until their faces swelled. And those swollen faces usually helped quite a bit with begging.
But the reason little children weren't assigned quotas wasn't because the thugs possessed a shred of compassion. It was simply obvious that they couldn't meet the quota even if one were set.
If the thugs had any compassion at all, they wouldn't have sold Claire to an orphanage for money.
The old woman who visited the thugs regularly took one look at Claire, immediately handed money over to the thugs, and bought her. Young as she was, Claire could still easily figure out that she'd been sold. She'd seen money and goods change hands plenty of times.
Of course, the orphans under the thugs never received more than moldy bread no matter how much money they brought in.
"You're going to sell for a high price."
Claire remembered the old woman's face as she smiled while taking her to the orphanage. Well, it wasn't such an old memory that she'd have forgotten it, anyway.
Life at the orphanage was still better than living under the thugs.
The porridge had the texture of paper dissolved in water, but at least she could fill her hungry stomach at a set time every day. As long as she listened to the old woman, she wasn't beaten. And above all, even if she was hit, it was rare to be struck hard enough for anything to tear or leave a scar.
Furthermore, at the orphanage, Claire met a "good person" for the first time.
Sylvia.
The person with the surname Black seemed to be the oldest among the children. Though she didn't look much older than Claire. No, at a glance, they almost looked the same age.
But since the old woman said so, Claire decided to believe it. Sylvia didn't exactly show a displeased expression when called "big sister," after all.
She did look somewhat taken aback, but that was all.
When Sylvia was first called the leader of the group, Claire thought she'd hit the other children like the others did. The "action leaders" the thugs appointed always behaved that way. You had to listen to them well to avoid being beaten.
But... Sylvia was different somehow.
"Hungry? Here. Have some more."
The portions were served on time but were too small to satisfy even one person alone. After finishing her own share, Sylvia would give a little of hers to the children who just sat there staring blankly into their bowls.
She never hit anyone or shouted.
She didn't get angry when children laughed, and if they fussed, she did her best to soothe them with kind words.
Having never met such a person in her life, Claire found Sylvia's existence genuinely fascinating. In fact, in some ways Sylvia felt more like an adult than the old woman who might well have lived longer than all the orphanage children's ages put together.
And it seemed the other children felt the same way.
The children followed Sylvia.
Sylvia was usually quiet, but when the children fussed, she'd tell them old stories, clumsy as she was. Most of the stories overlapped in content, with only the characters' names, endings, and settings changing, but the children, starved for entertainment, wanted to hear them anyway.
Strictly speaking, the time Sylvia spent as the children's leader wasn't very long. It was only about a month from when Claire arrived at the orphanage until it burned down.
Yet to Claire, that one month was the happiest and most comfortable period she'd ever experienced in her life.
After the orphanage burned, the old woman died, and the children escaped together.
Sylvia led the children toward the city center.
And the process was truly... a string of impossible miracles.
Without once catching the eye of the police officers stationed along every main street, without once being accosted by the back-alley thugs, Sylvia advanced unhindered into the heart of the city.
And somehow, knowing just where to go, she'd brought them here.
"The children's condition is quite poor."
A man with a splendidly styled beard rolled up the sleeve of a child before him and spoke.
"They look as though they haven't eaten anything for days."
The noblewoman standing beside him said.
Occasionally, passersby on the street had dropped coins into Claire's can with sympathetic glances. But she'd never seen anyone step forward so proactively, check their condition, and speak with such a worried voice.
"Where did you all come from? Are there more children like you?"
"I don't know."
When the child whose arm the man held said that with a frightened look, the man nodded and let go.
"Is there someone who brought you here?"
"Ah, that's—"
Big Sis Sylvia.
The person who had brought every child, including Claire, here was Big Sis Sylvia.
"That's good. Isn't it, Sis?"
The two people seemed like good people.
Sylvia had probably known that and led the children here because of it. To find a place to lean on.
Claire didn't know how she could have known... but that fact wasn't important.
Because from this moment on, they could probably live far more safely than they ever had at the orphanage.
"... Sis?"
But the gentle voice she always heard when she spoke to her was nowhere to be found.
She turned around.
Sylvia had definitely been standing at the very back of the group—
There was no one behind Claire.
"Huh?"
She spun around frantically.
People walked along the main street. Carriages passed on the road, and countless people came and went through the shops.
But Sylvia was nowhere to be seen.
"Sis!"
Claire shouted, but there was still no answer.
"What's the matter?"
The noblewoman, who had approached without her noticing, spoke to her.
"Was there someone else?"
"Sis, she's gone!"
At Claire's words, the woman's face immediately grew serious.
"You mean there was originally one more person?"
"Yes, she was at the very back...."
The woman turned her gaze at once to meet her husband's eyes.
"Don't you worry."
The woman bent her knees to meet Claire's eye level and spoke.
"We'll look for her. We'll certainly find her."
"Really?"
Normally, Claire wouldn't have asked back like that. Nearly every adult she'd ever met hated being questioned back fiercely.
Claire was that anxious.
Afraid that, just as Sylvia had appeared so suddenly, she might suddenly leave her side.
"Yes. We'll find her for certain."
But the woman didn't scold Claire, nor did she curse at her for being a nuisance. She didn't even strike her.
She just gently stroked Claire's head with her hand.
Claire nodded.
Things went well after that, too.
It didn't take long for her to learn that the couple were Baron Grace and Baroness Grace.
Within the barony stood a newly built orphanage, and the baron and baroness gladly took in the band of orphans who had made their way to the edge of their territory.
And it didn't end there. As time passed, the number of orphans steadily grew.
The orphans all wore clean clothes, ate proper meals in a clean environment, and grew up healthily.
Their education was thorough, too. Though the orphans all hailed from the backstreets, some of them grew bright enough to enter the Imperial Rondarium Academy, and their swordsmanship could grow to match it.
One of them could even become so close to the Grace family's eldest son that they were practically like siblings.
That was Claire.
Adopted into House Grace at the age of ten and becoming Claire Grace, she surpassed the swordsmanship of the Grace family's eldest son, who was merely a jack of all trades. At fifteen, the age when all nobles began higher education, she was able to enter the Imperial Academy, where only the finest from the imperial capital gathered, as the second-highest-ranked student.
But all that time.
Claire looked among the newly arrived orphans again and again, but she never found Sylvia.