BPOTWC Chapter 24

A pained sound leaked out through the gaps of the mask.

"Uncomfortable, maybe?" Clarisse asked the Duchess, but she had no way of knowing either, and only shook her head.

"I don't know. Whether it would do the boy good or harm, to take that mask off without asking him."

"But his breathing looks so difficult..."

Clarisse took a careful step toward the bed where the boy lay.

The Duchess tried to stop her, but Clarisse was quicker. The girl reached her hand toward the mask.

That was the moment.

"D-don't touch me!"

The boy sprang upright as though flung from the bed, his voice cracking as he shouted.

Long, sky-blue hair spread wide behind the cat mask, like a pair of wings.

Startled, Clarisse toppled backward and landed with a thud on the floor.

The boy adjusted the mask with slender fingers and looked around him.

He seemed badly shaken, so Clarisse tried to tell him he was safe now. But the instant she met the dark gleam of his eyes behind the mask—

Clarisse went stiff, as if frozen solid—she couldn't get a single word out.

"Dear."

The Duchess wrapped an arm around Clarisse's shoulder and managed to force out that much.

But that was as far as it went.

Purple powder bloomed from the boy's outstretched fingertips, and in an instant, without so much as a sound, he was gone.

At the Duchess's startled scream, the knight standing watch outside rushed in at once, took stock of the situation, and began searching for the boy.

Clarisse, meanwhile, was permitted by the Duchess to return to her own room.

Alone in the quiet, empty room, Clarisse threw the window open wide. A cold wind came flowing in at once.

Along with a length of long, sky-blue hair.

"I heard you'd be here."

Clarisse said this, resting her chin on the windowsill, glancing sideways. Out on the window ledge, precariously perched, sat the cat-masked boy.

Clarisse pulled the red pebble from her pocket and held it out.

"I'm Clarisse."

Noah's gaze flicked between the girl and the red pebble, but he made no move to take it.

"Isn't he your friend?"

At those words, offered a second time, a muffled answer finally emerged.

"...He's not my friend."

Clarisse thought it a little funny that his manner of speaking resembled the red pebble's so closely. Though she didn't bother saying so aloud.

"You're Noah Sinnett, aren't you?"

Since it didn't seem the boy meant to introduce himself, Clarisse spoke up first, showing she already knew.

Noah gave a small start of surprise.

"Your friend the stone told me."

"...I said he isn't my friend."

Clarisse decided the boy must be quite the stubborn one.

"Want to come into my room? It's cold out there."

Clarisse pulled the curtain, fluttering in the wind, off to one side, making it easier for Noah to climb in.

"I... mean to disappear. From this world."

"To where?"

"Somewhere I can't come back from."

Clarisse understood at once—he meant 'death.'

Her own father and brother had gone there not long ago, after all. Even so, his wish was something Clarisse simply couldn't make sense of.

"Why do you want to go?"

Clarisse leaned her whole body out over the windowsill, gazing steadily up at him. Her small feet lifted slightly off the floor, swinging in the air.

"That person... is there. Waiting."

"That person?"

The steady gaze seemed to weigh on him, and Noah turned his masked face away.

"Who is it?"

Clarisse leaned a little further out over the windowsill as she asked—and in that instant lost her balance, tipping forward.

"...!"

Too startled even to cry out at the sudden feeling of falling—

Clarisse only screwed both eyes shut.

Into that darkened sight, in that instant, flowed a scene Clarisse had no knowledge of.

"You're a very special child. I promise you, someone will come along who sees your true self for what it is. Plenty of good things will happen to you yet."

What in the world was this?

Clarisse opened her eyes again, bewildered.

Noah had caught her arm just as she pitched forward—thank goodness, her feet were safely back on the floor.

Clarisse looked down at the hand gripping hers.

"...Girl!"

Noah, too, seemed to have felt something strange, and hastily shook her arm free.

"What in the world are you? Are you a mage?!"

Clarisse shook her head.

"I'm Clarisse. A prisoner indebted to Sheridan's care."

"A prisoner?"

"Mm-hm."

"How could a prisoner possibly do such a—"

While he trailed off, unable to finish the thought, Clarisse gave him a bright smile.

"That person was someone very precious to you, wasn't he."

The gentle old man she'd glimpsed in his touch had looked somehow frail—and in Noah's heart, thinking of him, lay a deep grief and longing.

"None of your concern."

"But I want to know."

The boy was plainly human, and yet somehow he carried a feeling like that of a talking stone.

It felt strange, and yet also, somehow, welcome. If he was that kind of boy, then surely he wouldn't think it odd, even if Clarisse told him she talked to stones.

"And I agree with what he told you. Living really does mean lots of good things happen to you."

"Don't act like you understand, child."

"This isn't acting like I understand. I actually do understand."

Clarisse, seeming to have already forgotten her brush with danger just moments ago, leaned precariously out over the windowsill once more.

"Since I begged for my life at the execution ground—I've had good things happen, again and again, all the way up to today."

"..."

"So living is better."

"I don't believe that."

The boy straightened the mask, slightly askew from the wind, and murmured low.

"Whatever my teacher taught me, I've held to as my creed—in everything. But this... this alone, I cannot believe."

There was something forlorn in his voice.

'Perhaps...'

Clarisse found herself wondering whether the boy, too, had lived through a great deal of being turned away by others.

Just as she had.

For a moment, she thought she might ask the red pebble about Noah's past. The pebble was on friendly terms with her; it might well be willing to tell her.

But she decided against it, and turned back to him instead.

"I'll prove to you, right here, that what your teacher said was true."

"Prove it?"

"Mm-hm."

Clarisse rose onto her toes and held out a hand toward him.

"I'll be your friend."

The cat mask turned sharply toward her. She couldn't see his expression, but somehow she could tell he found the idea absurd.

"..."

When nothing but that steady stare followed, with no answer at all, Clarisse's face crumpled into something close to tears, and she asked carefully.

"Do you... not like me?"

"..."

"I... like you."

Especially the part of him that felt a bit like stone.

They'd only just met, and yet somehow it felt oddly familiar.

The boy, who had kept silent for a long while, finally offered something like a mumbled reply.

"...I'm a monster."

A monster? Clarisse looked him over carefully, but nothing of the sort showed anywhere.

If anything, his sky-blue hair fluttered like an angel's wings, and she thought he looked lovely.

But she suspected praising him so plainly would only embarrass him, so instead she answered with a playful smile.

"So what if you're a monster? I'm a prisoner!"

A small huff of laughter slipped out.

That seemed to mean something in Noah had shifted, if only a little, so Clarisse quickly stretched her hand out further.

"Let's shake on it!"

"..."

But Noah only gazed down at her hand for a long moment before finally, reluctantly, offering up the hem of his sleeve instead.

Even just the sleeve would do. Clarisse shook it eagerly—and nearly pitched forward again.

"You almost fell again, just now!"

Even as he said this, Noah quickly caught her wrist once more.

"Wow, that really scared me."

Properly startled this time, Clarisse pressed a hand to her chest and stepped back several paces from the window.

Their hands parted naturally as she did.

Noah kept the lingering warmth still resting in his own palm and tucked it away behind his back.

'...Warmth?'

He turned the unfamiliar word that had risen in his mind over once more.

His body, made monstrous as it was, had always been cold. Cold enough that anyone it touched would be chilled through in an instant.

To something like him, warmth was practically a thing out of legend—something he'd scarcely ever had cause to feel at all.

And yet the hand that had touched that girl's, even now, still—

'No. It was a mistake.'

He caught hold of the thought threatening to run off on its own and, for no good reason, shook out his hand, though nothing remained there at all.

There was nothing to feel now.

Whatever had happened a moment ago must have been some kind of illusion, nothing more.

"Noah!"

At the sudden, friendly call of his name, he startled and looked up.

"Aren't you coming in? I'm cold if you leave the window open."

Clarisse had come back to the window and was tugging at his robe.

"I—I..."

Noah had no choice but to shuffle awkwardly in through Clarisse's window.

It seemed odder, somehow, to refuse any further at this point.

Once he'd climbed down, Clarisse shut the window and the shutters tightly and went scampering over to the fireplace.

Rubbing her two hands together in front of the roaring fire, she waved Noah over.

"Come here—stand by the fire and you'll melt right through in no time."

That was the sort of thing humans did—it had nothing to do with a monster like him.

"Come here already, I said?"

But he couldn't very well refuse the pestering request of this noisy little girl, stamping her feet as she asked. She'd only get noisier still, he suspected, and Noah couldn't stand noise.

"...F-fine."

He had no choice but to go and stand beside her.

The fire was burning briskly enough that the surrounding air was probably fairly warm, he supposed—though beyond that, he didn't feel much of anything in particular.

"Don't just stand there, hold your hands out like this."

Clarisse said this, wiggling her outstretched hands gently.

"..."

A monster, warming his hands by a fire.

It struck him as somehow grotesque, but Noah, unwilling to put up with her chattering any longer, grudgingly held his hands out in front of him.

A creature towering barely above his shoulder—he supposed he could afford her that much generosity.

"Well?"

As he held his hands out, Clarisse stepped closer, her amber eyes sparkling as she asked.

"Nice and warm, isn't it? Feels like you're melting, doesn't it?"

Noah gazed steadily at Clarisse for a moment, then quickly stepped back three paces, dropping his head to the side.

"...I—I can't really tell."

It was just—how to put it.

Only a faint, itching sensation at his fingertips. Though he couldn't have said why.