#105

“…It’s not?”

“Pardon?”

The denial was simple. Alyona abruptly lifted her head.

“I said it’s not.”

I looked straight into her eyes and emphasized again.

“Didn’t I explain before? The ‘mad’ princess you mentioned is Johannes’ sister and my cousin. We look so alike that your misunderstanding seems hard to resolve.”

“B-but….”

Alyona’s gaze noticeably wavered.

“How… no matter how I look at it… No, besides that. You two, didn’t you come from Indridason?”

“No. We came from a place even farther away. I don’t remember well when or how I mentioned Indridason, but since that happened to be where we stayed on the day I lost consciousness, I must have blurted it out without thinking.”

“But still….”

“I said it’s not.”

Alyona’s shoulders flinched. Though I tried not to be too harsh despite my irritation, my voice was already rising.

“Do I look that unsound to you? Why do you keep prying? What, are you planning to report me to your lord if I admit you’re right? Or are you going to run to the church?”

“N-no, that’s not….”

“Fine, do as you wish. I won’t stop you. But know this one thing. Whatever you do, it’s all in vain. You have no evidence.”

“No, report? Of course not! How could I do such a thing!”

Alyona finally jumped up and shook her head. Clutching her apron tightly, the girl’s face turned as red as pomegranate seeds as she looked down at me.

“How could you say such hurtful things? If I had ill intentions, I wouldn’t have been rambling on to you like this, young lady.”

“……”

“I… I was trying to be brave in my own way, young lady. Because I felt so sorry for you. So… so….”

The kind-hearted girl finally choked up a bit. Her voice trailed off, tinged with tears.

I slowly relaxed my firmly set expression. As I stared at Alyona with a more neutral gaze than before, her excitement that had swelled up seemed to subside little by little.

Alyona probably didn’t know that I was actually the one relieved. At that moment, I almost sighed in relief. The firmness I had initially put on was deliberately feigned to hide my unease. For their own reasons, an uncomfortable silence fell briefly between the two of us, separately yet together.

“Um… My neck hurts. Do you want to sit down? Or should I stand up?”

I finally spoke to Alyona, who was starting to show signs of restlessness. The girl, who had been standing silently watching me without uttering a word, hesitantly sat down. I watched the slightly fidgeting Alyona for a while, then let out a deep sigh and asked:

“So what is it? Did you want to confirm if your guess was right? What kind of courage did you need for that….”

Although my tone was accusatory, I secretly wanted to give Alyona a chance to explain herself.

“It’s not just that.”

Alyona shook her head slightly and quickly. The girl’s eyes turned to empty space for a moment, as if recalling past events.

“You see, several knights have been coming and going at our inn these past few days. Of course, they’re just wandering knights, but even a bastard without land becomes a knight if he rides a horse and carries a spear…. They’re more on your level of conversation than us.”

“And?”

“Forgive my presumption, but I wish you would go out and see the world sometimes, young lady. Meet people too.”

I raised an eyebrow. Though I had seen the naive girl’s casual attitude for more than a day or two, the shock that day was unprecedented. Why? Before I could rationally consider the reason, my cheeks flushed hot. I felt as if I had been stripped naked in the middle of a banquet hall in broad daylight.

Disregarding all her previous efforts not to offend me, Alyona boldly went a step further.

“If you knew something and were enduring the knight’s beastly behavior, I would just think, ah, so that’s how it is, and let it go.”

I swallowed hard. Alyona’s manner of speaking was truly overwhelming. What makes her so confident? She said she now knows who we are, isn’t she afraid? Perhaps the gap is so vast that she can’t see it? To openly criticize the conduct of a ducal bloodline as beastly behavior. Even in front of someone of the same blood.

However, at that moment, more than the girl’s rudeness, the word ‘endure’ from her lips stuck in my mind. Endure. That word immediately lodged uncomfortably inside my chest. It felt like I had swallowed a fish bone. Though I didn’t particularly disagree and had thought so all along, hearing it through someone else’s mouth made it feel strangely different. Had I been enduring him?

The innocent Alyona probably had no idea of the shock or strange discomfort I felt then. The girl continued speaking.

“From what I can see, you seem to know too little about too many things, young lady. You’re so ignorant of the ways of the world that you don’t seem to have any other standard for judging people.”

“Ignorant….”

And in my strange stupor, I parroted back only the words that particularly stirred my insides, like a parrot.

“Because of that, it seems you can’t discern things properly either….”

“…I can’t discern properly, you say.”

“Yes, yes. To make matters worse, judging by how the knight has been acting lately, I don’t think your situation will be much different even after you two leave this place…. What’s the use of furnishing the room so luxuriously? When you can’t even go outside freely. No, this is no different from being in prison. Who on earth lives like this?”

“You’re now….”

“I’m really, truly worried sick about you, young lady. It seems you’ve been confined for so long that you can’t judge properly what kind of person the knight is.”

Alyona sighed deeply as she finished speaking, then suddenly widened her eyes uncharacteristically. The back of her small clenched fist looked quite firm.

“So, young lady. If you want, I’ll help you. Even though I’m scared of the knight, I can’t just stand by and watch anymore in good conscience. Please, at least while you’re staying here, go out and see the world a bit. Once you leave for a distant land, just the two of you, you won’t have chances for such deviations anymore. Ah! Of course, you’ll have to be careful with your words and actions…. Though it seems only I have noticed for now, you never know when others might become suspicious.”

“……”

“What do you think, young lady? Do you want to go out?”

“…Stop it. Johannes is not a bad person like you say…. No, good heavens, I’ve told you I’m not that woman?”

I couldn’t take it anymore. I threw my head back onto the edge of the bed with a thud and covered my forehead. Perhaps because of the relentless shocks, my temples began to throb, and somehow even my vision wavered like waves.

“Alyona. If you ever have to deal with other nobles besides us, you should be more careful with your words and actions then.”

“Huh? Why?”

“While there’s no way to stop you from jumping to conclusions about the private affairs of your betters, if you meddle so openly like today, those folks will be furious and want to punish you. No, not just furious. You know what, they might even try to cut out your tongue.”

“Eek…. Is this really such excessive meddling…?”

“Yes. As you said, it was presumptuous talk. The lord of Pessoa must be quite lenient, hmm? It’s amazing you’ve managed to keep your life so far…. Hey, what would you do if I slapped your cheek or complained to Johannes? He would believe whatever I say. Johannes, Johannes, listen to me! That insolent serving girl treated you like a beast and a bandit….”

“W-would you do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“…Please don’t?”

“Depends on what you do….”

I turned my body and pressed my chest close to the bed surface as I replied. I immediately crawled up and flopped down face first. My stomach churned. It wasn’t just an expression of my hurt feelings; I actually felt unwell. Perhaps I had used too much medicine after all. For some reason, chills ran through me, and the dizziness that had started earlier seemed to be intensifying as time passed.

But my mood wasn’t bad. Alyona’s tearful face was quite cute, erasing the initial shock long ago. With my face buried in the pillow and arms wrapped around my stomach, I glanced to the side and saw Alyona sitting close to the bed, her nose scrunched up. The girl was visibly pale, her shoulders trembling. I moved my lips slightly.

“Why are you so scared? I won’t tell.”

“…Really?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my…. I thought my heart was going to stop….”

Alyona made a gesture of clutching her chest. I stared at the girl for a while, then muttered while pressing my throbbing temples against the pillowcase.

“More than that… Johannes will worry.”

In truth, it would be anxiety rather than worry.

“Pardon?”

“If I wander around outside, I mean.”

Alyona’s eyes widened. The girl, instantly regaining her cheerful demeanor, hopped onto the edge of the bed and chattered away as if she had never been frightened.

“That’s quite a luxury, to worry about such things. Is going out such a big deal? No, it’s not even really going out. The main building is right in front of us. Let’s just sneak out quickly without the knight knowing, take a look at some people, and come back early. That’ll do, right?”

“If Johannes finds out….”

You’re lucky.

That was the moment. With a sharp ringing in the back of my head, my heart sank with a thud. For an instant, the scene before my eyes turned black, receded to a point, then came back.

What was that? I froze in place. The bed seemed to be spinning around me, and my vision went dark. It felt like a taut string was stretched from one eardrum to the other. A faint ringing filled the space left by the sharp voice.

Why? Are you trying to deceive me again, saying it’s just lonely curiosity?

Just as I was about to lose my mind from this sudden abnormality, my childhood self sneered briefly along that string. The chills that had been seeping into my skin were now cutting deep into my bones.

“The knight is bad.”

Alyona spoke from beyond my dizzy vision that seemed to have spun dozens of times in place.

“He is… truly a vicious person.”

“…Don’t say that. You… don’t know our circumstances.”

I stammered an excuse, then rolled my tongue around in my mouth. Perhaps because I was so startled by my physical condition, even my own voice felt foreign. Strange. It was clearly a sound produced by vibrating my vocal cords and shaping it with my tongue. Before I could ponder this oddity, my vision blacked out once again. I struggled to lift my eyelids.

“No. I guarantee, I know much more than you think, young la… Young lady?”

Alyona was shaking her head when she suddenly raised her eyebrows. She seemed to have finally noticed that my condition was not normal. However, the girl casually touched my forehead as usual. Only when the girl’s skin made contact did I realize I was sweating cold. Alyona murmured as she wiped the edges of my sweat-soaked forehead with her fingertips.