A Shadow Cast in Paradise - Chapter 38

Riana hesitated before him for a moment.

Then, as if urging her, a large hand gestured once in the air.

Riana cautiously took his hand, watching his reaction.

His firm hand supported her steadily.

As she put her weight on the boat while holding his hand, the small craft gently rocked.

Riana carefully sat down and balanced herself on one side of the boat.

Once she was seated, Sched pushed the boat onto the lake and climbed aboard.

The two sat facing each other on the small craft.

Just as they had done so long ago.

Riana raised her head, lost in thought.

The small boat was already gliding smoothly across the water’s surface.

The little ferry created long ripples on the lake as it moved towards the center.

As the sun was obscured by a fragment of cloud drifting across the blue sky, shadows fell over the lake below.

The shoreline, not long after being purified, was still barren and lifeless without grass growing.

The willows with their long drooping branches and dried leaves looked desolate, and patches of moss gave a gloomy impression.

Louise’s expression sank heavily at the darkened scenery of the lake.

But soon the clouds cleared and sunlight shone once again.

The barren, swaying willow branches seemed to come alive, and the mosses with their green hues spread like a soft carpet.

With just the lifting of shadows, the landscape shed its gloom and donned a warm beauty.

Nothing had actually changed, yet a single ray of light made the world seem completely different.

Riana lifted her face towards the sunlit sky.

Sunlight fell upon her cheeks as well.

Sched, who had been rowing, gazed at her sitting in the sunlight.

Yes, you were like this that day too.

It was the day he first accompanied Louise on her boat ride.

He was a slave then, not qualified to board a boat with a noble young lady.

The people of the Count’s household made him wait by the shore.

Louise and one knight boarded the small boat.

The knight rowed, taking her around the lake.

A slave’s role was to watch from afar.

He had no choice but to stare at the young girl enjoying her boat ride.

The boat went quite far, to the middle of the lake.

But at that moment, the boat carrying Louise lost its balance, rocked, and capsized in an instant.

“Young lady!”

Sched called out to her without thinking and ran towards the lake.

Though an accident had occurred, he believed the knight rowing would surely rescue Louise.

But the knight was merely splashing about in the water.

Was he a knight who couldn’t swim? Or had he gotten a leg cramp or panicked?

No… To Sched’s eyes, it strangely seemed as if he was deliberately not rescuing her.

As if he had intentionally capsized the boat and tried to make Louise fall into the water.

The Lupus slave quickly looked around, but the servants and maids all seemed not to have noticed her falling in, busy with other tasks.

Louise, who had never learned to swim, frantically tried to grab the overturned boat in fear.

It took less than 3 seconds for Sched to assess the entire situation and dive into the lake.

The place where the boat capsized was the center of the lake, the deepest part.

It would take several minutes to swim there from the shore, no matter how fast one went.

He desperately cut through the water and swam, but in that time Louise had completely disappeared from the surface.

‘Damn it…!’

Reaching the boat, Sched dove underwater to search for the vanished Louise.

Through the clear water, he saw the unconscious girl.

The slave dove deep, following the girl.

In the middle of the clear lake, deep at the bottom. A white body was sinking into the pitch-black depths.

Sched held his breath against the pressure and stretched his arm with all his might towards the descending life.

His fingertips touched the ice-cold body.

He pulled the frozen form into his arms.

He swam up towards the sunlight shimmering on the water’s surface, holding the girl.

The breath he had desperately held in his lungs during the long, rough swim and dive gradually wore thin.

As his breath grew faint, he held Louise even tighter.

And finally, he reached the surface that had seemed never to draw closer.

“Gasp, haa…, young lady…!”

Setting aside even catching his ragged breath, he shook the girl in his arms to try and wake her.

But the limp young lady showed no reaction.

It felt as if his heart had frozen.

Sched headed for the nearest shore, holding her close.

The cold body lay heavily on the grass.

There was no time for other thoughts. He hurriedly untied the ribbon of her clothes that were constricting her body.

Then he pressed on her chest several times, compressing it.

Looking at her pale face devoid of color, he became afraid.

It seemed the slender life might be snuffed out at any moment.

How long had she been underwater?

In his urgency, he couldn’t even estimate the time.

Anxiety grew that it might already be too late, but he couldn’t give up like this.

The slave dared to press his lips to the young lady’s and breathe into her.

He breathed into the cold body again and again.

And then.

“Cough, cough!”

After a long while, breath finally burst from the pale lips that seemed covered in frost.

She painfully coughed up water and breathed unsteadily.

“Young lady, are you alright?”

Sched patted her back to calm her.

Only then did Louise’s breathing gradually return to its normal rhythm.

Her eyes were rimmed with red.

The fear of death was clear in her watery eyes.

Sched tightly embraced the cold, shivering body.

“It’s alright, young lady.”

That was all he could say.

It’s alright. You are here, alive before me.

Sched, who had lived cursing the gods, thanked them for the first time.

He felt he could forgive the gods who had brought him all manner of trials until now.

The trembling of the small body in his arms subsided.

“Thank you, Sched…”

A living voice flowed into his ears.

Louise raised her soaked face.

Clear eyes looked up at him.

For a moment, his heart pounded.

Sched then realized he had forgotten his status.

The slave hastily released the young lady.

Belatedly, Louise’s appearance registered in his eyes one by one.

Her thin clothes were wet, revealing the flesh underneath.

Due to the ribbon he had loosened to help her breathe, her clothes had slackened, revealing a crescent-shaped birthmark above her white collarbone.

In that moment, he felt an emotion a slave should not feel.

An improper and vulgar feeling he should not dare harbor towards the young lady.

“I’ll… go call someone.”

As Sched rose to flee, a delicate hand grabbed him.

“Take me with you, Sched.”

As if telling him not to leave her alone, she staggered to her feet.

The wind blowing over her wet clothes was cold.

Her small body shivered from the cold, and her pale lips looked precarious.

He could no longer just stand by and watch her.

The slave dared to wrap his arms around the young lady.

It was from that day. That whenever the Ideana family’s young lady rode a boat, the Lupus slave was always seated across from her.

And Sched loved those times when they were alone, far from the world, when the girl trusted him completely.

There were such times.

And now the boy who had become a duke was rowing across the lake with a maid seated opposite him.

“Riana.”

At his call, Riana turned her head from gazing at the blue sky embroidered with barriers.

“The Lester family plans to rebuild Paradel systematically from now on.”

He brought up the conversation he had had with his retainers and Eclas.

The old Ideana had fallen. But thanks to that, they could now build a new city on a blank slate.

He intended to make Paradel a planned city. They would divide it into blocks to create districts and place appropriate buildings and spaces accordingly.

It would become a much more efficient city, but for Riana it might mean the disappearance of long-held memories.

But Riana simply nodded quietly.

As if his decision was natural.

At that moment, the boat that had been gliding across the lake came to a gentle stop and floated on the water’s surface.

“I’d like to… hear your opinion.”

“My opinion?”

“At least about Ideana, you would know best.”

Riana, no, Louise Ideana was, as far as he knew, the person who knew the Ideana lands best.

The person who had dreamed of the prosperity and abundance of this land since childhood, along with the retainers.

At Sched’s question, Riana gazed at the calm water’s surface for a moment before parting her lips.

“…Starting from the Leche River would make organizing a bit easier, wouldn’t it?”

The Leche River was the lifeline that flowed through Paradel and traversed Ideana. Goods would inevitably come and go along the great river, and markets would form around it.

“The fishermen who caught fish in this Lake Anteros used to sell their fish along the Leche River banks too.”

Riana spoke in a calm voice as she gazed at the clear lake.

There are no fish living in Lake Anteros now, but once the purification is complete, fishing will begin here again someday.

“Money will circulate around the market center, so large roads and financial businesses will settle around it. It should connect directly to the city gates where goods enter by land route too.”

Step by step, a new map of Ideana centered on the river and lake was drawn.

Roads and blocks fitting the terrain were established, and residences, commercial areas, inns, squares, and government offices were laid out according to their relationships.

“The northern wall should be reinforced higher than other places. Because…”

“Monsters often appear there.”

When Sched answered, Riana nodded.

He would know well the threats coming from the north, having gone on monster hunts.

Riana mentioned a few points that were inadequate and regrettable in the previous Ideana.

The same went for roads that couldn’t be newly developed because buildings were already in place and people were living there.

She knew this land inside and out.

The advantages and disadvantages created by hills, the direction of rivers and problems according to seasons, the differences between paths extending to farmland and roads connecting to other cities.

Even the nooks and crannies that others would find difficult to consider, she knew about and could ponder over.

Sched looked at Riana’s cheeks, flushed as she talked about Ideana.

A rosy peach color had come to her two cheeks that had been so pale before.

Gradually her voice resounded in his mind, and he became deeply immersed in her as if falling into a fantasy.

Was the spring sun too hot?

Sched felt a heat that was gradually making his body burn. The warmth that spread from his solar plexus radiated throughout his entire body.

He tried to shield the sunlight with his palm to shake off the inexplicable heat.

A small shadow fell over his face, but the burning heat suffusing his entire body did not subside.

And that heat continued to consume his body more and more.

It was strange. His chest felt like it would burst, and he couldn’t breathe.

That suffocation soon filled up to his Adam’s apple.

“Haa, haa…”

He exhaled hot breaths as he undid the buttons that had been done up to his collarbone.

“Your Grace, are you alright?”

Then Riana’s voice brushed his ear.

Her feather-like voice tickled him.

Along with a tingling sensation throughout his body, an abnormal impulse engulfed him.