Just Because You Asked
A dull gaze turned toward Zama. The boy stood with his hands clasped behind his back in a mature pose. He had shed much of his boyish air and could now imitate the bearing of a grown man, yet his still-unripe face was dotted with clusters of acne.
“Zama.”
When their eyes met, Nyx crooked a finger. Zama’s eyes widened like a dog hearing its master call its name, and he obediently brought his face closer.
Nyx gave a small snort of laughter and touched the boy’s cheek. He picked out the largest, reddest pimple and poked it playfully.
“My disgusting skin isn’t going to settle down over time like one of these cute little bumps. It’s not a problem on that level.”
Like seawater that never lessened no matter how much you scooped, like vines that never ended no matter how deep you dug.
“My body is broken from the inside out. It feels as if something cursed is lodged deep in here.”
By now Nyx no longer felt wronged or sorrowful about his illness. He slowly swept a hand down from his solar plexus, speaking in a tone of resignation.
“I’ve said it many times before, so I’m not expecting anything from you. Do whatever you want. But don’t bother me out of some pointless sense of duty.”
As Nyx set his helmet aside, he also set aside his stubbornness. Just as Tichite had said, he was the patient and she was nothing more than the physician.
It would be ridiculous for him to be the only one conscious of her gender when the woman herself felt nothing of the sort. Even if Tichite remained unaware, that was how it was.
“It means you don’t have to force yourself to examine me if you don’t want to. I’d rather you didn’t.”
Nyx hated the way people looked at his body and grimaced. Whether they found it repulsive or feared catching his disease, facing expressions like that never left him feeling good.
Having said everything he meant to say, Nyx slid his arm back into his sleeve. He had shown enough.
Tichite, deprived of the arm she was supposed to observe, rose from her seat and returned to her original position. As she did, she mulled it over.
The words I don’t need you.
This was certainly not the first time she had heard something like it.
The two previous rejections she had taken with a crooked smile, assuming the man simply didn’t trust her, that he looked down on her as nothing more than a Tilamin woman unworthy of treating him.
But now she saw that what Nyx despised was not Tichite’s skill, but his own body.
The man seemed to harbor far stronger negative feelings toward his own flesh than she had realized. He appeared to view it as rotten meat that one had to endure touching despite the revulsion.
He believes there is no hope for himself.
It was a pity. When the patient himself abandoned hope of recovery, even things that might have gone well would fail.
She could also understand the heart of someone who had endured a long illness. He must hate being dragged around and bothered for treatments that would probably prove useless anyway.
But she could not forget that there was another person besides Nyx Farrow who gave her orders.
Your younger brother thinks differently. Whose words am I supposed to follow?
Perhaps because Desidero had been the first to approach her with the intention of employing her. The person she was meant to serve was Nyx Farrow, yet she could not ignore the presence of Desidero lurking behind him.
One side said the illness must be cured at all costs, while the other said there was no need. She had no idea which rhythm she was supposed to follow.
In the end she voiced her troubled feelings.
“The Knight Commander spent an enormous sum to rescue me, a sum I could never repay even if I spent my whole life trying. So I naturally intended to fulfill my duty, but now you tell me there is no need, and I am confused.”
Tichite was the sort of person who followed rules and routine. She preferred her role and assigned tasks to be clearly defined.
Even when she had decided to leave Saltcoast, she had been afraid. She had not possessed the courage to stand alone in an unknown wasteland. So when the chance came to follow the Iron Horse Knights, she had been grateful that a place in society had been given to her. If she simply did as she was told, at least food, clothing, and shelter would be taken care of.
Yet this was such an unstable employment.
Perhaps he intended to sell her off to someone else?
What do you truly want from me? Why did you help me in the first place?
The master’s ambiguous attitude made the servant uneasy.
That was why Tichite ended up pouring out a question so blunt it bordered on rudeness.
“I’m saying this now, but to be honest I still don’t understand. I don’t know what you saw in me that made you pay such a huge amount of money.”
At the time it had happened, she had been too desperate to escape the brothel keeper’s grasp to dare voice her doubts.
“Didn’t you bring me here because you thought I would be useful? If you were going to act like this, why did you save me back then?”
Depending on how one heard it, the question sounded extremely arrogant and impertinent. Even so, Tichite could not help but ask.
“You could have simply pretended not to see.”
At those words Nyx answered with genuine bewilderment.
“You asked me to help you.”
It had been her own request, no one else’s.
He looked dumbfounded, as if to say he had simply helped because she asked—what was the problem?
“…Just because of that?”
“Just because of that?”
Nyx frowned, still apparently failing to grasp the intent behind the question.
“Was that a situation where one could say ‘just’?”
Desidero had asked something similar. Considering the boy’s dislike of unnecessary expenditure, his dissatisfaction was understandable.
But this woman was the very person who had received that help.
“Some leech-like bastard wasn’t thinking about earning money through honest work. He was planning to take an innocent girl and sell her off for his own gain.”
Why had he saved her? In all his life, this was the first time he had ever been subjected to such an absurd interrogation.
“Did you think I could just stand by and watch that? That I should have looked away and pretended not to see?”
Nyx glanced at Milvian and Zama, asking as though seeking their agreement.
“No, Knight Commander. You did what was right. I consider it admirable.”
When Milvian answered in a rigid, wooden posture, Zama noisily chimed in as well.
“I think so too!”
Nyx shrugged his shoulders pointedly and turned back to Tichite. The woman had looked as though she would not yield an inch, yet at this her rebellious spirit seemed to deflate. She lowered her head with a timid expression.
Twisting her fingers, she confessed in a gloomy voice.
“But I’m not a maiden.”
“…What?”
“And I’m not particularly innocent either…”
“Ah, no.”
The moment the word “maiden” left the woman’s mouth, Nyx’s face turned bright red.
“That’s not what I meant at all…”
Why had the topic suddenly veered in that direction? He could not understand it, but in any case it was not a subject others should hear.
Flustered and stammering, he kicked Zama’s knee.
“Hey, hey. Get out.”
“Huh? Just me?”
“Both of you, scram.”
He did not want to reveal personal matters in front of the others. He quickly chased the two young men out and slammed the door shut, issuing a harsh order not to enter until called.
“Don’t misunderstand. I didn’t say that with any particular intention…”
Only then did Nyx calm down a little. He hid his embarrassment and tried to resume the conversation.
But in truth Tichite had not been thinking along those lines at all. A different thought had seized her mind.
“So the Knight Commander was simply being kind.”
She murmured as if to herself. Her voice was so small that Nyx had to stop speaking and lean in to listen.
Hm? What did she say? If his eyebrows had been visible, they would have drawn together in exactly that questioning shape.
Tichite, however, could not even lift her eyes. She kept her gaze fixed on the floor. Her face and voice were as melancholy as a criminal’s. The murmuring words trembled like a flickering candle flame, faint and fragile.
“I have never received kindness without reason, so by my common sense I simply could not understand the Knight Commander. What you might be thinking, why you treat me so well…”
Nyx fully agreed with the sentiment that he could not tell what she was thinking.
“But if what you said is true, I don’t know how I can ever repay this favor.”
His statement that he had simply helped because the situation allowed it struck Tichite more deeply than he knew.
Because there had never been a man in her life who offered help so naturally, who extended goodwill without expecting anything in return, a man she could rely on for his sense of justice.
Tichite’s eyes stung.
“Thank you once again, from the bottom of my heart.”
Her voice, soaked with emotion, wavered like molten wax. In the end a few teardrops fell onto the floor with soft plops.