When Luman moved by the light of his power, there was no need to think.
The light merely guided him to his destination, and all Luman had to do was follow it. Because of that, he never let himself worry or think at all. There was also a clear reason he liked money so much. Money was clean. It had value in and of itself, so it drove away useless thoughts. What thing could be more simple and honest than money? That was why Luman loved it. Money needed no sentiment, no emotion, nothing at all. There was only calculation in money. Arithmetic could be settled at once, without any of the other complicated thoughts. That was why Luman had loved money all this time.
So why did all these stray thoughts keep coming?
Ah. He couldn’t dismiss thoughts of Ren as mere stray thoughts.
Luman, thinking it over, could not find the right words for it.
Has something changed now, after all this time?
He had lived too many years as a Hero to accept something like change easily. Too much time had been soaked in the blood of the battlefield, and the death of the comrade who had become the very first Star had cut too deep. So how could he start talking about humanity now?
Then why did the face of that blond-haired boy keep rising before him?
Hadn’t he already settled his heart before leaving? Had he really still been lingering in regret all this time?
Before this power, there should be no emotion, no thought—only command.
Yet as he moved through the pale yellow-white light, carried along by its flow, Luman kept thinking of Ren, who resembled this light so much.
Luman arrived in the Loroe territory the following morning.
The time spent passing through the light felt both as brief as an instant and as long as eternity. Unable to judge how much time had passed, Luman asked a passerby, then felt relieved to hear he was not very late.
“I should’ve put a cloak on him.”
The words slipped out before he knew it, and Luman startled himself.
He ought to have been thinking up an apology or excuse for being late, and instead he was suddenly thinking about Ren. Luman let out a faint laugh, then shook his head as if to scatter the thought. His hair lifted in the wind.
“Something teal would’ve suited him. He would’ve looked like some rich young master. Or a noble.”
He really must regret it more than he thought. Even after trying to shake the thought off, his mouth kept saying what it wanted.
Winter would be over soon enough, but even so, he hoped Ren would stay warm.
Luman stared at the castle gate for a moment, then gathered himself and headed that way.
He had already left. It was time to think about reality now.
***
“Do you think the letter arrived safely?”
Coco, making preparations to go out, asked the question in a brusque tone. Her cheeks were red.
She had never imagined she would write one of those embarrassingly sentimental letters asking how someone was doing, and the fact that it had felt better than expected annoyed her. Since when had she become this emotional?
“Of course, my lady. It must have arrived a while ago.”
“Then that’s good.”
The maid answered firmly, telling her not to worry.
What kind of house was Duke Gannion’s? Didn’t they use the highest-grade Serten crystal orbs, the kind that could be used even in wartime? There was no need to even mention the express post. They had sent it by the fastest horse available, so by now it should have reached him.
“They didn’t forget to deliver it, did they?”
“Of course not.”
Coco wet her throat with tea.
“Nothing happened on the way, right?”
“My lady, are you that worried? Shall I go ask one of the knights for you?”
“Forget it! If something had happened, I would’ve heard about it, hmph.”
It seemed like Coco was finally going to drop the subject of the letter, but then she opened her mouth again.
“Then when will a reply come?”
“Well, I imagine it’ll take some time. We sent ours by the fastest horse, but there’s no way they can send something back as quickly as a duke’s house can.”
The maid said it with unmistakable pride.
Damn it. If she’d known she’d be waiting like this, she should’ve sent the letter sooner. It wasn’t as if writing it had been easy. She’d had no idea what to say. One thing led to another—cleaning up after everything that had happened, organizing the funeral procedures to be carried out in the capital, making a list of who had to be invited—and the days had slipped away from her.
In truth, she had also thrown herself into work to soothe the hollow loneliness Ren’s departure had left behind, but Coco had lost her father. He had not been an affectionate parent, but the solid wall that had protected her was gone, and now Coco had to stand properly on her own. In the middle of all that, there had been no time to write a letter. By the time she finally caught her breath and tried to untangle the words knotted inside her, too much time had already passed. And when she tried to put them into writing, it had taken forever. Whenever she wrote this or that, it all seemed too pointless, so she kept crossing things out and writing them again, asking Hugh, Seton, and her maid for advice over and over. In the end, after all the time she had spent agonizing, the letter itself had come out absurdly short, enough to make her wonder why she had worried so much in the first place. She should have just sent it sooner.
“My lady, it’s done.”
The maid, who had fastened a brooch set with emeralds to the chest of her black dress, stepped back.
“You look truly beautiful.”
“Yes. Well.”
Coco looked at herself in the mirror and gave a nod.
A black dress.
It had not even been a month since the duke’s death. For three months, she intended to wear nothing but black, as duty demanded. Once she put on the black netted hat as well, she was more or less ready.
Knock knock.
Right then, a knock sounded at the door.
“Come in.”
“My lady.”
It was Seton and Hugh.
“Hugh is coming too?”
“Yes.”
“I told you to rest. With that leg?”
Coco frowned. Her tone was cold as ever, but Hugh knew it came from deep concern, so he only smiled faintly.
“We’ll need to train up more knights. There’s no one fit to serve properly as your personal guard, my lady, so we’ve ended up bringing along an injured man instead. My apologies, my lady.”
“...You don’t need to apologize.”
Coco rose from her seat. With a prim expression, she walked past them and out of the room. Seton and Hugh followed behind her.
“Oh. The letter, ahem... do you think it arrived safely?”
She asked as casually as she could, pretending it meant nothing. The maid stifled a laugh.
The procession accompanying Lady Coco to the capital for Duke Gannion’s funeral stretched out long from the castle gate onward. In the fierce wind, the red banners bearing the ducal crest snapped boldly in the air.
***
The small village in the mountains always wore a peaceful face.
Ordinary days passed in quiet succession. Perhaps it felt especially quiet because someone who had once made a place for himself in this little village had now left it behind. Normally, around lunchtime, the village would always grow noisy with the sounds of fighting.
But now the village was quiet.
Few children were born there anymore, and the boys had all grown into young men before anyone knew it, so naturally the sounds of running and play had begun to disappear.
“Hmm.”
The old apothecary, returning after buying herbs from a peddler, stopped where he was.
The snow that had fallen the previous night glittered in the sunlight. Looking at it made him think of one particular child.
“I wonder if he’s taking his medicine properly.”
The person in those dark blue eyes was Ren—the bright blond-haired boy with skin white as snow and clear green eyes.
The child he had cared for since he was little had already grown into a boy and left the village.
At the time, he had simply thought it was a good thing as he waved him off. But looking back on it now, he felt worried.
He had packed him plenty of medicine, and he had done everything he could. There had been no way to heal that child’s body any further than that. The ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ only thing he could do was give him medicine to ease the pain as much as possible.
“What a strange body he has. Truly strange.”
For more than ten years, the old apothecary had studied and observed Ren’s body, yet he had never found any treatment worth naming. All he had managed to do was develop tea that could suppress the pain as much as possible and give his body some strength. Beyond that, there was nothing he had been able to do to help.
Even after leafing through the books he had collected over a very long lifetime, he had never found another human who complained of an illness like Ren’s.
“Hm. How dull.”
The old apothecary paused with his cane braced against the ground and looked up at the sky.
Seeing the clouded sky, as though snow might fall again, made him think of Ren as a child.
There had been a time he saw the boy coming slowly down the snowy path, crying silently. That boy had grown up and learned how to yell and fight well enough, but when he was little, Ren had been nothing but gentle.
Thinking of him, the old apothecary walked slowly back into his house.
As he laid out the things he had bought from the peddler, his hands came to a stop.
Every item he had purchased out of habit had something to do with Ren.
Medicinal ingredients needed for the mixtures he prepared for Ren, herbs for making strong painkillers, a small ring and necklace set with emeralds that reminded him of Ren, and sweets he did not even eat himself.
“Habit is a frightening thing.”
His dark blue eyes sank.
Abandoning the task of putting the items away, the old apothecary suddenly opened the window and whistled.
A black bird flew in like an arrow and landed on the sill. In an instant, the old apothecary wrote a letter, tied it to the bird’s leg, and sent it off. The black bird vanished from sight as quickly as it had appeared. Watching the black speck disappear, the old apothecary rose to his feet.
His face looked old, but his eyes alone were bright and sharp.
