Coloring (14)
Coloring (14)
The chill morning air brushed against my cheek.
Beyond the high stained-glass ceiling, dawn was breaking faintly.
I looked to my side and saw Estelle asleep, curled up.
The makeshift bed — two long chairs pushed together — was too cramped for two adults.
Our bodies had no choice but to press close.
A few strands of her hair had spilled onto my shirt.
Soft, steady breathing reached my ears.
I traced her hair lightly with my fingertips, then slowly rose.
The wood creaked, but she didn't stir.
I walked toward the altar.
Kneeling, I mimed a prayer the way Estelle had done the night before.
I thought about what I might wish for — even wondered if asking to be sent back could possibly be sincere by now — and in the end, found no words.
Everything was hazy. The modest laptop, the large iced coffee, the version of me who had lived there.
Maybe staying with Estelle had grown as comfortable as existing in that place had once been.
"You're awake."
"Ah. Yeah."
"Spend one night in a church and suddenly faith starts sprouting up, does it?"
She was watching me, her hair a mess.
I couldn't tell when she'd gotten up, but she was already dressed neatly in her priestly robes.
The white fabric was stained by pale moonlight filtering through the stained glass.
She looked almost spectral.
"You'll be kicked out of that room soon enough anyway."
Her voice was quiet, but more than enough to break the silence inside the church.
"If that's how it is, let's just stay here. Together."
I didn't answer — just kept looking at her.
"Do you not want to?"
I shook my head. Then I held her gaze a moment longer.
Her crimson eyes caught the dawn light and glinted strangely.
"No. It's fine. Meals are included, right?"
"If there aren't enough, I'll steal from the cathedral. Don't worry."
I had nowhere else to go.
Levina had cast me out. The name Edelgard meant nothing anymore.
Things with Serepina had already been severed for a long time.
So what did it matter where I stayed?
And that was how our strange cohabitation began.
It was barely worth calling cohabitation.
Estelle's room was at the far end of the church's second floor. Spacious enough and clean, though it gave off an oddly hollow feeling.
There was a single abstract painting on the wall, the sort a child might scribble.
The bookshelf held more worldly novels and poetry collections than theological works.
Nothing about it felt right for a Saintess's room.
She fetched all my belongings from the room I'd been using.
If Levina had known, she'd likely have flown into a rage. But Estelle said nothing about it.
My space was the storage room beside hers.
Estelle must have cleaned it herself — the scent of old wood mingled with a faint perfume.
A decent bed, a table, and a chest of drawers arranged just well enough made it look faintly livable.
"Let's bring in a chair you can actually lie down in, too. Those long chairs are honestly terrible."
She surveyed the room as she spoke.
She wove herself into my daily life with a disarming naturalness — sometimes like family, sometimes like a lover.
Every morning began the same way.
The morning light slipped through the stained glass and fell onto my eyelids.
Estelle rose first, washed up, and then it was my turn.
She seemed to use something with an apple scent, because the washroom always smelled faintly of apples afterward.
I went downstairs every day to brew coffee.
I started to understand, just a little, why Serepina had kept showing up each morning to clean and pour my coffee for me.
A sense of obligation, I suppose. Something that simply needed to be done.
The old beans I had salvaged from the church storeroom gave off a reasonably pleasant aroma.
I poured coffee into two cups. One black, the other with a generous spoonful of sugar.
"Good morning."
Still half-asleep, Estelle shuffled down.
She sat across from me and accepted the sugared coffee.
"Thank you."
We drank in silence.
Through the window, students heading toward the Academy passed by.
Their energetic figures felt like scenery from an entirely different world.
"I've got classes."
Estelle drained her cup in one go and stood.
I finished mine and rose to follow her.
Outside the church door, the cold morning air sliced across our cheeks.
We walked side by side toward the Academy.
It was always like that. At some point, we had simply started moving together, unconcerned with how it looked to anyone else.
Inside the Academy, we were a conspicuously mismatched pair.
A Saintess who commanded universal reverence, and a fallen noble discarded by his own family.
The combination shouldn't have worked.
Students whispered every time they saw us. The weight of their stares felt like a physical heat.
I paid it no mind. Estelle seemed to do the same — or rather, to welcome it. Sometimes she deliberately walked closer to me or linked her arm through mine. Whenever she did, the murmuring swelled.
"What in the world is the Saintess doing with trash like that..."
"Shh. He'll hear you."
"They say the Edelgard family completely disowned him..."
"Exactly. So why is the Saintess..."
The words seeped into my ears as they passed. I let them wash over me. Estelle might have been indifferent; I certainly was. After getting that kind of treatment for years on end, you go numb to it eventually.
We met again at lunchtime, settling onto a quiet garden bench to get by with bread and fruit.
Once the meal was over, Estelle asked the same question she always did.
"Want a cigarette?"
She didn't bother consulting my preference. She simply produced the pack as though it were a foregone conclusion.
I nodded without a word.
She placed a cigarette between my lips and lit it for me.
I drew deep. Bitter smoke filled my lungs.
A certain type of familiarity had taken root between us. We knew what the other wanted without speaking. Comfortable — but also faintly unsettling.
The days passed like that. Identical mornings, identical coffee, identical walks, identical cigarettes.
Then, one morning, Estelle was busier than usual — dressed in crisper vestments, her hair combed back neatly.
"Do you have to go somewhere?"
"Yeah. I'll be back late tomorrow evening, thanks to those damnable old men. Might not make it back at all. Don't cry from loneliness while I'm gone."
She said it lightly, then left the church alone.
I stayed behind and cleared away the coffee cup she'd left half-finished. The sugar had settled, making it sticky.
I spent that entire day by myself.
Alone at the Academy, alone in lessons, alone at lunch.
Everything felt wrong. The empty seat beside me felt gapingly obvious.
The students' whispering cut sharper than usual.
After classes, I didn't go straight back to the church.
I sat on the old bench near the Academy's rear gate and wedged a cigarette between my lips.
Without Estelle there, I had to light it myself. My hands felt clumsy.
The sun was setting.
The sky bled red, then dimmed slowly into a pale wash of color.
Then I heard it.
Someone called my name from behind.
"Ravin."
A familiar voice. Not one I particularly wanted to hear.
I turned around.
Three figures stood silhouetted against the dying sun, faces obscured in shadow — but not unrecognizable.
The man on the left, and the two beside him: Kyle, Serepina, and that female knight who had witnessed me kill Perion.
"Ah, Serepina. Been a while. I missed you."
I ground the unfinished cigarette out against the bench, more than half of it still left.
"Though I've got to wonder why you brought those two with you. What a goddamn pain in the ass."
Kyle's expression stiffened.
"Is that the only way you know how to speak?"
He stepped forward.
"Do you have any idea how worried Sera has been about you? We went to your room and found it completely stripped, so we tracked you down here—"
"Don't call her Sera. You're nothing but a verminous commoner."
A slip of the tongue. I'm not supposed to be the sort of small-minded man who gets angry over things like that. I'm just as lowly and worthless now. The bitter difference, of course, was that Kyle was the kind of man destined to rise, while I had nothing left but the fall.
He didn't get angry — he seemed to know it himself. Instead, he looked at me with a gaze that felt uncomfortably close to pity, the sort you'd give a crippled fool.
I had a revolver at my hip. Pulling it would be pointless.
"And honestly, you didn't come here out of concern."
She was staring at the ground.
Her long hair hung forward, masking her face. Her shoulders were trembling — so faintly it was almost imperceptible.
"Serepina."
At the sound of her name, her shoulders flinched, then went rigid.
Slowly, she lifted her head.
"You're the one who came looking for me. Do you have something to say?"
Our eyes met.
Hers were red-rimmed and bloodshot.
"...Ravin, I know. That's why I came."
"Know what?"
"The woman standing beside Kyle. You'll remember her face."
"Can't say I do. Think this is the first time we've met."
My voice came out flatly indifferent.
The nameless knight's face flushed crimson.
"Ravin Edelgard, you—!"
Kyle held her back. Then he looked at me.
"Ravin. After all this, you have to understand why we came."
His tone had dropped, calmer and quieter than before.
I thought it through. If the situation were genuinely catastrophic, Kyle wouldn't be here in person. Some high-and-mighty types would have shown up with armed soldiers. They clearly didn't know much. They didn't even know Estelle had been on the second floor. If they'd known, they would never have come looking for a fool who'd been thrown out of his own family and had his engagement broken — not first, and not on a day Estelle happened to be gone.
So a composed, rational discussion didn't seem like the best play.
"You three — and you especially, Serepina — you have no intention of believing anything I say, no matter what it is. We've been over this."
I circled back to the night I'd gone out with Estelle, deflected, and offered just enough emotional noise to bury the real subject and move past it.
"These days I spend every single night in the church, holding penitential prayer with the Saintess herself. Without missing a single day. Diligently. Faithfully."
I pulled another cigarette from my pocket and placed it between my lips.
"Or maybe you've come to point fingers at me for something I didn't do again. Yeah... that's always been you, hasn't it? The one person here who never changes. So you've already broken off the engagement. What more do you want this time, Serepina?"
I drew the smoke deep, then let it out slowly.
"In the middle of the night. Not long after you broke things off with your former fiancé. You show up walking arm-in-arm with some pathetic stranger like a whore. Do you have any idea how insulting that is?"
Her face went white.
Kyle and his nameless companion both flinched — the conversation had lurched somewhere unexpected, somewhere too sensitive to prod at casually.
"Now you've finally managed to discard a piece of vermin like me. Is this about parading it in front of my face? If you're going to spread your legs for someone, you could at least drag over some well-bred Lordling. Why a commoner again? Is his body that good, or is that genuinely your taste?"
Kyle's brow twitched. His fist clenched tight.
But Serepina, who was physically trembling beside him, caught his arm before he could move.
I let the original topic suffocate under a weight of ugly sentiment, turned my back, and returned to the church.
No one made a move to follow or stop me.
Up on the second floor, I lingered near the church window and watched the three of them turn to leave. Without meaning to, a laugh escaped me — a low, hollow cackle.
I really couldn't stand the sight of Serepina standing beside Kyle.