FSW Chapter 29

"When you think about it, you're my instructor. I can't possibly do that."

By this point, there should have been a refusal tinged with displeasure. A command to replace her with someone else—anyone else but her.

But there was no refusal whatsoever in that gentle voice. And instructor, no less. At such an excessive title, bewilderment settled over his face.

However, what bewildered him more was the Princess's behavior. She lowered her head to meet his eyes directly, and when he flinched away in surprise, she now even followed the direction of his gaze, chasing after it, trying desperately to make eye contact. He couldn't predict at all what she was trying to accomplish, but he avoided her gaze desperately. Eventually, he even closed his eyes.

"Look, can't you talk to me while making eye contact?"

Her voice carried a hint of sulkiness, as if his behavior displeased her.

In the darkness, he agonized. These were words he should be unspeakably grateful for—someone who actually wanted to meet his gaze, even once. But he couldn't easily nod his head.

'If you're not going to gouge out those disgusting eyeballs, then keep your eyes lowered at all times. Just looking at them makes me uncomfortable.'

His father's caustic words had been repeated so naturally they'd become reflex. He had always followed his father's advice well, except when facing enemies on the battlefield.

But if it was Her Imperial Highness's command...

"...Would it not make you uncomfortable?"

Revolting. Nauseating. Grotesque. Of all the modifiers he'd heard, he chose the mildest one to ask.

But the answer he received was—he would stake his life on it—the first he'd ever heard.

"Uncomfortable? They're pretty, like camellia blossoms."

Like flowers. Pretty. Could those words possibly attach themselves to his eyes? He seriously wondered if perhaps those words had some other meaning he didn't know. Maybe his ears had gone strange. Just as he was considering this entirely plausible hypothesis, she delivered the finishing blow.

"When I first saw them, they were so pretty that the words just burst out."

Only then did he face her. Their gazes met. Her eyes, curved in a bright smile, were undeniably fixed on him.

That murmur about being pretty had been about his eyes. He lost the ability to speak. A compliment that would be ordinary to anyone else was, to him alone, a story that turned the world upside down. He might sooner believe that the sky was actually the ground, and the ground the sky.

He stared at her for a long while, yet she didn't look away. She didn't fill her gaze with contempt. Rather, it was full of nothing but goodwill.

An unidentifiable emotion surged up to his throat. It felt as if all his hot blood was rushing to his eyes and throat. So hot he wanted to close his eyes. He wanted to clutch his throat. But he remained frozen like someone bound tight, only staring at her.

In her blue eyes that sparkled through her crescent-moon smile, he alone was reflected. And there, he suddenly realized—

There was a sky here that even someone like him was allowed to look at.

Contrary to his firm belief, he was not replaced. The blue eyes that were no longer unfamiliar disappeared behind eyelids, then appeared halfway, repeating the cycle. She'd looked particularly tired today, and it seemed sleep was claiming her.

Her nodding head soon dropped onto his shoulder with a soft thump. At the weight that arrived without warning, he held his breath. His body went rigid. He carefully relaxed his shoulder, lest she be uncomfortable.

His gaze settled cautiously on Her Imperial Highness. Her smooth cheeks were full of vitality, and the hair that fell forward was soft as ebony. The white skin and red lips that everyone praised were beautiful too, but he thought the blue eyes hidden beneath those long lashes were the most beautiful of all.

To be precise, he was grateful that those eyes turned toward him. When those clear, unmarred eyes rested on him, he felt a liberation like raising his head. In each moment he drew breath through his nose and mouth, comfort spread through him instead of torment. These were things he could only feel—even as imitation—when imagining his end. Her Imperial Highness made them possible as if it were nothing.

He now looked forward to this time more than any training hour of the day. Her Imperial Highness, who frequently called him pretty, remained an unknown existence to him, yet even so, as their shared time accumulated, he'd learned things.

For instance, that Her Imperial Highness smiled often, was terrible at lying, had stamina that was a bit... no, very poor, but was an incredibly kind person.

He fingered the single remaining mint macaron. He had no standards for likes and dislikes. He'd never had the luxury to judge such things. But he'd learned through her that he liked sweet things.

The snacks she brought him every time were sweet. As sweet as the time they shared together, so unreal he could scarcely believe it. Each time, he saved the bags that had held the snacks.

When he woke from nightmares, he habitually checked them. And took comfort. That none of it had been a dream or delusion. The cookie bag he'd started with, and all the various bags that had accumulated since—they were definitely real. While he found solace in that, he simultaneously wondered.

'Why is she so kind to me?'

His head felt like it might melt from the first kindness he'd ever received. She approached without hesitation and invaded his colorless world, painting it with all manner of colors. Even if it was unfamiliar, he didn't dislike it. No—rather, he looked forward to it.

It had been a life without desires or emotions. Yet for the first time, he anticipated tomorrow. He hadn't cared what the weather might bring, but now he felt keenly the warm sunlight and gentle air.

It was all one person's influence.

The Princess's brow furrowed as the sunlight shifted and slanted across her face. He quickly raised his other hand. Only when the shadow of his hand covered her eyes did her brow smooth.

Satisfied, he slowly turned his gaze to their surroundings. Grass and wildflowers full of vitality. Beneath a tree with lush, drooping branches, he quietly closed his eyes.

A gentle breeze ruffled through his hair and departed. It was spring—so very warm.

Long ago, the father who had checked the eyes of his newborn child recoiled in disgust and discarded the name he'd thought up for the child. A name hastily chosen by a servant, created only because one was needed for the family register. That had become his name.

"Lavis."

Objects are defined into existence through names. The moment the soft syllables left her lips, he was finally defined in this world.

Being called by name was far stranger than he'd prepared for. It was clearly his name, yet it didn't feel like his own. A name called in a voice so full of affection couldn't possibly be his.

But the owner of that name was undoubtedly himself. He recognized it in her voice and fixed gaze.

He felt that his hands and feet, which had been floating formlessly in the void, had finally come to rest fully upon the ground.

She became special to him in an instant.

"Lavi!"

That affectionate voice calling him.

"Then we're friends, right?"

A relationship so intimate, granted without hesitation.

"You're really amazing!"

Even the gentle touch full of pride. It would be absurd to say he didn't become special to her.

He had never once thought himself valuable. But if there was such a thing as value in him, it had all been created by this person. All his worth had been made only through her.

The small hand that had fearlessly grabbed his own now tousled his hair. She stroked the silver strands tangled between her fingers again and again with tenderness. Well done. You did so well. As if telling him so.

On the battlefield, silver hair was nothing but a color that made you an easy target. This silver hair that made him roll twice as much as others showed blood stains more clearly than anyone else's. And it was exactly like his father's, too.

So he hadn't particularly liked his hair. But under this touch that seemed to cherish something precious, he came to like his silver hair. If Her Imperial Highness liked it, he thought, then he liked anything.

"Here! This is a cream puff. Actually, I heard from Sir Hilton beforehand that you won. I wanted to congratulate you..."

Her Imperial Highness's cheeks reddened slightly as she slipped out a basket she'd hidden behind her back. After a small clearing of her throat, she handed him a large cream puff. He bit into the puff that filled his palm. As the sweetness of cream spread through his mouth, he nearly suffocated on the sense of fulfillment.

She'd already given him an armful, yet now gave him another. More than he could handle even with both arms spread wide. Had he ever in his life received something so valuable, so much of it? His head wasn't just melting anymore—now he felt dizzy.

And it wasn't just this.

The sweet snacks she brought every time, making eye contact with him without fail, saying—impossibly—that his eyes were like flowers, calling him by name, calling him by a nickname. Reaching out her hand without hesitation, gazing at him with a kindness he'd never seen anywhere, gently stroking his head, smiling at him, getting angry and upset on his behalf instead of him.

All of this was a first.

The more these unfamiliar experiences accumulated, the less he could understand her. No—actually, it wasn't that he couldn't understand her.

He couldn't understand the pain that stabbed the center of his solar plexus each time he received something from her, the tingling in his fingertips, the emotion called happiness itself. They said misfortune and happiness were like two sides of the same coin, flipping constantly. But having lived through nothing but repeated misfortune, he hadn't even known of happiness's existence as the other side.

So he defined this sensation of clutching his chest, this fulfillment rising to his throat, as pain. It wasn't entirely wrong. Learning happiness, he'd also come to feel the pain of the misfortune he'd accepted as natural.

Through her, he learned for the first time that another person's warmth could be this warm. So paradoxically, he realized his room was cold. That the emotion he felt waking alone in that room was loneliness.

Now he knew.

Having lost his ignorance, he became a bit more pained but also a bit more human. Like ordinary people, he became able to wish for something other than the end that would someday come.

"This is all yours, Lavi, so you can eat it slowly."

Her Imperial Highness, smiling softly, reached out naturally. And as always, with a gentle touch she wiped the cream from the corner of his mouth.

Pain spread from where her fingertips touched, and he thought: even if it's not directed at me,

I hope you'll smile.

That one thing alone—he wished for it desperately.