FSW Chapter 5

Red

Their gazes had barely met before he dropped his eyes, so she couldn't be certain—but she was probably not wrong.

She tracked his wayward gaze relentlessly beneath the fringe of long lashes. Even went so far as to tilt her own head down to catch his eye. When their glances crossed a second time, he flinched visibly and turned his head away.

The more he avoided her, the more her stubbornness rose to meet it. True, not many people could hold a conversation with royalty eye-to-eye—but this had nothing to do with rank. This man would surely be exactly the same in front of anyone else, not just the imperial family.

More than anything, Nishina had no particular interest in learning things while staring at the crown of her teacher's head. Proper communication required eye contact. That was simply how it was done.

Dissatisfied, she shifted her body in the direction he'd turned and met his gaze again. When he started and swung his head to the other side, she followed, doggedly pressing her gaze against his. After she'd done this several times, he must have realized he couldn't escape—he stopped turning his head. Instead, he simply closed his eyes entirely.

Nishina swallowed a rising sigh and finally parted her lips.

"Say—is it really so impossible to look at me while we talk?"

"…Will it not be uncomfortable for you?"

Mixed into the low, settled voice was concern. It wasn't hard to guess why such an ordinary thing as eye contact had become cause for worry. For a long time, he must have been told that those eyes made people unhappy—and so he should keep his gaze lowered at all times.

But an eye color was simply the shade of an iris. Not knowledge that circulated widely through the empire, but anyone who had studied physiology would know it. Yet no one had ever said that to him.

That a person should be persecuted simply because the color of their iris was unusual—that was unjust. On the contrary, a rare color this beautiful deserved to be praised.

"Uncomfortable? They look just like camellia flowers. They're beautiful."

Against the achromatic silver of his hair, the saturated red truly was beautiful. Beautiful enough to make one seriously wonder whether the reason people called it the devil's color was simply that it was too beautiful for anything else.

"When I first saw them, they were so pretty the words just came flying out of my mouth."

"You might have heard."

When she said it with a smile, his head finally lifted—as though he'd forgotten even his habit, his eyes came up and met hers, blank with surprise. She held his wavering red gaze without looking away. It reminded her of her own camellia trembling in the wind, and she felt a small, quiet pleasure.

Under Nishina's unhurried but relentless attention, he finally dropped his gaze again. Only this time, what pressed his head down was not resignation worn smooth by habit—it was embarrassment.

He turned sharply away, lips pressed shut.

"…I will demonstrate first."

There was no particular need for a demonstration of running. Through the gleam of silver hair, his ears looked faintly red.

Nishina smiled to herself and followed slowly after him. Whatever the case, red suited this man remarkably well.

She had understood gravity to be proportional to mass—apparently that was not how it worked.

Feeling as though gravity had multiplied tenfold and was pressing her flat into the earth, Nishina collapsed onto the bed without any strength. Her whole body was a mess of dirt and sweat, but she couldn't bring herself to move an inch.

If she lay down without washing, Joy would scold her. She knew this, and buried her face in the sheets anyway—and Joy, as though she'd been waiting for exactly that, launched into her complaints.

"Your Highness! You have to wash before you lie down! Doesn't it feel awful?"

"Ah, Joy. A moment, just a moment. The earth is pulling me down with ten times the usual force right now. If I stand up I might go completely flat."

"My goodness, was training really that hard?"

"…I thought I was going to die."

The leisure with which she'd followed him had lasted all of half a lap. The moment she'd set out around the training ground, Nishina had understood. Ten laps was absolutely, categorically impossible.

Not wanting to disappoint her teacher on the first day, she'd pushed herself—but two laps was her limit. Lavis, who only realized belatedly that Nishina was nearly dying behind him, had startled and halted. Her lungs were unable to draw breath; training was swiftly called off—but by then, Nishina's body was already ruined.

Even now, past her pounding heart, she could almost hear her body screaming at her.

"You'll feel better after a soak in warm water. Now, come on, up you get."

"Ugh, fine…."

She made her way to the bathroom at Joy's insistence, practically crawling. She stripped off her clothes—sticky and clinging everywhere—and sank into the prepared bath. Dried rose petals floated on the surface, but she couldn't spare the attention to appreciate them.

A groan escaped her at the languorous sensation of warmth closing around her body. It was as though all that accumulated exhaustion was melting away like ice cream. Though her muscles, shocked by the sudden exercise, were still stiff throughout. With this degree of tightening, she'd certainly have soreness tomorrow. She kneaded at her calves with hands that had no strength left in them, groaning all the while, and gave up shortly after. It was too much effort to move even a single finger.

"Joy, can you make the water a little hotter?"

"Won't it be too hot?"

"Mm, please."

Joy poured in a measured amount of heated water from above. In place of a massage, the hot water seemed to ease the tightened muscles into loosening.

She rested there for a few minutes. The water had been noticeably hotter than usual; her pale skin had turned faintly red.

She gazed blankly down at the reddened color, and suddenly thought of the young man who had been similarly red.

The man who had cut her throat without hesitation. Without blood, without tears.

The cool eyes and firmly sealed lips had been rather similar to how the original text described him—but the eyes that couldn't hide their agitation, and the reddened ears, were far from the image in the book. And just before training ended, when she'd pressed the madeleine she'd brought as thanks into his hands, he'd made a strange expression but hadn't refused.

If she kept this up, might she someday receive even a little of his pity? The possibility of him feeling sorry for her and killing her anyway seemed a hundred times more likely than his sparing her out of sympathy—but. Regardless.

Tomorrow she'd have to ask Joy to prepare almond cookies. She didn't know how effective it would be, but she was planning to go with the strategy of: No such thing as a bad person who gives you food! And if she could show herself to be a diligent, excellent student on top of that, it might lend more weight to the former possibility.

Of course, to do that, she'd have to do something about this cursed body of hers.

Clicking her tongue at her own pathetically low fitness level, Nishina let out a long yawn. Her vision had gone hazy, and her thoughts along with it. She needed to form a more detailed plan—but with a brain that had dissolved to mush, further thinking was impossible.

She let herself go limp in the hands that lathered her with the care of someone handling a glass bowl. There was no certainty about anything—but one thing she was sure of tonight: she would sleep deeply.

'I should have asked Joy to arrange a massage rather than counting on the warm water.'

Swallowing a noise that wanted to be a ugh, Nishina wobbled forward like a newborn foal. Was this the level of pain that Little Mermaid had felt when she walked on her newly human legs? The magnitude of it probably wasn't so different. Just the extent.

If Little Mermaid's pain had been the soles of her feet being torn apart, Nishina was experiencing the entirety of both legs being torn apart. With every step, a groan came out involuntarily. The imperial physician had advised that movement was the fastest cure for muscle soreness, so she'd waved off Sir Hilton's offer to support her. Sir Hilton hovered anxiously at her unstable gait, but she pressed forward regardless.

Carlos, the uncompromisingly strict Imperial Studies instructor, hated tardiness most of all.

'I'm already in poor standing with him—there's nothing to be gained by being even further in the negative.'

Nishina shoved open the door to the private study reserved for lessons.

One minute to the start of class.

Safe—barely.

She settled into her seat, feeling the satisfaction of all that persistent walking paying off. Nishina's expression was one of quiet pride; Carlos, by contrast, was clearly displeased.

His already-sharp eyes went sharper still, and the words he produced were just as pointed.

"What a rare occasion—you've arrived on time today."

"Oh—if being late was actually acceptable, could I possibly go rest a little longer? I did some exercise for the first time in a while yesterday and I'm not feeling well…."

"Your Highness!"

"I'm joking, I'm joking."

She hadn't been joking at all, but she withdrew the remark for the sake of Carlos, whose face had gone through several shades of red. Seemingly embarrassed in hindsight by his own raised voice, he cleared his throat—hmm—and hastily opened his book.

"Today we will continue the lesson on political philosophy that we were unable to finish last time."

"Oh…."

She'd known it would come to this, but the political philosophy unit. Among the books he taught, this was the one she liked least. The economics lessons were tedious enough, but this was the worst. The scrunching of Nishina's brow—which Carlos had clearly noticed—didn't stop him from pressing on regardless.

"A ruler need not follow what people consider admirable conduct. For a strong state, a strong ruler is necessary—and a strong ruler must sometimes act against benevolence in order to assert dominance."

"…Benevolence is surely listed among the virtues a wise ruler should possess."

"What a ruler needs is not benevolence itself, but the appearance of benevolence. What is required of a ruler is not mercy, fairness, or moderation—it is calculation and a sense of reality."

At Carlos's firm pronouncement, Nishina's lips pressed shut.

She held no illusions about those who held power. But every time she was pushed toward cold calculation, she was reminded afresh: she was an exceptionally poor fit for the seat of ruler.

A ruler must not forgive too easily, must not give sympathy lightly, Carlos had said. All things that were impossible for Nishina. From a very young age, she had found herself easily moved by others' pain and sorrow. No matter how hard she tried to judge coldly, the moment she understood someone, she'd forgiven them. Pitied them.

Even knowing the future in which she would die at Aiden's hands—she could not hate him even slightly. Because she understood the wounds he had received. Even if he hated her, took everything from her, and in the end killed her, she could not resent him for it.

That person was the same. If she hadn't known the circumstances, she might have acted shrewdly to earn his sympathy. But she had read the original novel. She knew better than anyone how much he had suffered, and so she had no choice but to pity him.

Even if one day he cut her throat with those hands.

A person who wished happiness for Aiden—who would one day order her death—and for Sir Russell—who would therefore carry it out—could never, truly, become a ruler.

Ironically, Nishina was studying how to become a ruler, and in doing so was realizing, once again, that she was not the stuff of which rulers are made.

"Your Highness, perhaps today you should rest—"

"No."

"But—"

"I'm going to training, so stop following me."

Nishina said it decisively and pressed Sir Hilton's back with firm, insistent hands, nudging him away. He retreated reluctantly, glancing back again and again—she shooed him with a wave, and only then did he turn away, dejected.

She set off only after his retreating figure disappeared from view. Her destination was the training ground. She was in no condition to run—walking the path to the training ground was itself an ordeal—but she couldn't afford to be absent.

The only time she could see him was one hour each afternoon. Nowhere near enough time to build a friendship. She couldn't afford to waste that precious hour. And if she made a poor impression on top of it, that would be disastrous. Having attended for just one day and then missing—he might think she was lazy.

She'd moved briskly, but her pace was so much slower than usual that she arrived late all the same—she'd been moving at what amounted to several times slower than usual. Nishina hurried toward the silver-haired young man standing at the center of the training ground.