MB Chapter 28

"Thank you for calling on me, my lady."

"Thank you for coming."

Goiyo offered a faint smile to the knight who arrived in simpler attire than before.

She had summoned Razine Eliom again after three days—because Goiyo had made up her mind to enter the hunting competition.

What had settled her deliberation was a single offhand remark of Entzi's. Not a request for a rabbit-fur muffler. He had said that Wortien would grow quickly.

She had heard more than once, in passing, that growth accelerates when there is a purpose—and had paid it no particular mind. But the earlier remark had contained no adverb. It had not said rapidly.

'How large can it grow, if I really try?'

'With real effort—it could grow to the size of an actual whale within two years.'

'Heavens, that large? Then in about a year?'

'Even without much effort, it would reach the size of a dolphin.'

A subject introduced without much forethought over breakfast had done something unexpected—it had stirred something in Goiyo. Something that could only be called ambition. Faint, barely perceptible, and entirely surprising in its existence.

The moment Entzi left the estate for the imperial palace, Goiyo had called Wortien to her—still slightly animated—and spent some time moving the whale this way and that.

That this creature, smaller than a child's head, could grow to such proportions—she found it difficult to believe. This new and unfamiliar emotion, ambition, had formed a small wish, and that wish had fanned the embers of her listlessness.

Goiyo's usual way of filling idle hours was tea and improving literature, or summoning the whale to keep her company. But an existence without variation was tedious. Was that not why she had ventured to the tea party she would otherwise have declined?

Goiyo Bethelgius found herself mildly astonished by her own languid tranquility.

The home she had spent most of her life in was, naturally, the Rubiette Ducal Estate—but the place she had dwelled longest in recent memory was the Alte mansion.

At Rubiette, her days were full with lessons and education—not busy enough to exhaust her, but not dull enough to bore her.

At Alte, as at Bethelgius, she had been given no duties. She was idle. But idle was not something Goiyo could feel at Alte.

She had watched the faces of everyone there—hoping, fearing, growing anxious, growing sad, sinking into despair.

Where emotions churn and crash like weather, something as light as boredom cannot find purchase.

By the time she had moved toward ending her life, everything inside her had been raked clean, leaving only shell—her body moving mechanically, purely by habit.

Boredom, then, was an unfamiliar sensation for Goiyo.

'The situation isn't actually any better than before, though.'

What was it about this place—this life—that produced something she had never once felt at those two estates?

Ease. The absence of expectation.

Goiyo Bethelgius had no sense of obligation pressing her to be anything, no weight of responsibility demanding she hold anyone up. No duties to take on. No education to receive.

Neither mental strain nor physical. And so—she had grown bored. She had grown peaceful.

That a life stripped of hope could be this calm seemed, from one angle, a contradiction. And yet she thought of it as a not-unfair trade.

Entzi Bethelgius was kind and warm and occasionally, genuinely, seemed to like her. The household staff were scrupulous in their courtesy.

The food she had once swallowed mechanically had, since Entzi's peculiar intervention, begun slowly to acquire dimension—preferences, aversions—and she had learned, in some small way, what it meant to take pleasure in a meal.

Everything grand and lavish in this place she was still only learning to grow accustomed to—but if all of this was the price of a short life, there was no reason not to feel satisfied.

Between decades of suffering and a year of peace, what Goiyo Bethelgius would choose was obvious. It had always been obvious.

And so she had been making what she could of her quiet days—until something interesting appeared, and the quiet ceased to be quite enough. If emotions had a hierarchy, tedium occupied the very lowest rung.

Goiyo made up her mind not long after Entzi left the estate, and summoned Razine through Lukurue.

Lukurue had worn a peculiar expression—suppressing what appeared to be amusement—but answered pleasantly and fetched Razine Eliom regardless.

"I did ask for your help, but I confess I have no idea whatsoever where to begin."

After Razine had been shown to the drawing room, Goiyo spoke first.

"You've said before that you've only been summoning it on your own, up to now. Starting from nothing must feel daunting then. Did the Marquess say anything more that might help?"

"He left for the imperial palace this morning—and I made my decision immediately after, so."

"I see. If I understood correctly from before—you move the whale through something like imagination?"

"Yes. More than imagination, though—it feels like moving limbs that are too heavy. But the sensation is mine."

As she groped through her thoughts for the right words, Goiyo's own arm moved—creak—jerky and unconscious, as though enacting what her words could not quite reach. Razine, who had been listening with every appearance of gravity, was forced to take a hurried sip of tea to swallow her laughter.

"Lady Razine?"

"Ah—no. My throat was a little dry. Ahem. Well—might I suggest beginning with the most fundamental method?"

"The most fundamental method?"

Razine smiled at her, bright and easy, and reached into her bag.

Inside: two thick hardcovers. Goiyo's expression dimmed.

"I borrowed these on the chance they might be useful. Two foundational texts—well regarded in the field of spirit magic scholarship."

"Ah..."

"People around me know I have a keen interest in magic, so they'll assume I borrowed them out of curiosity. You needn't worry about anyone finding it suspicious."

"Yes. Of course."

Goiyo accepted the books from Razine in a voice that had quietly evacuated its soul.

She had only ever been tutored at home, and had never studied from texts this thick.

Just holding them, her arms ached with some anticipated weight, and Goiyo's gaze sank very, very deep.

'I think I've found something I dislike.'

9:52 AM. Not particularly late—but not early either, given his usual hour of rising.

Therio Alte checked the time. That face—built in broad, definitive strokes—creased into a frown, and he exhaled.

He had meant to rise, but the hangover pounding through his skull made him hesitate.

His state of mind had grown increasingly tangled of late, and he had perhaps been too heavy-handed with the drink. To say nothing of the nightmares that came to call on him every single night.

'Pathetic, for a knight.'

He circulated his mana and burned away the last of the alcohol. In the same instant—as though timed for it—came knock, knock, soft at the door. Come in. The words had barely left his mouth before the butler stepped inside.

"Good morning, Master Therio."

"Yes. What is it?"

"You are summoned by his lordship. He asks that you come down to the indoor garden when you're ready."

I knew it was coming around to this. Therio nodded, bathed quickly, and left his room.

His room was on the second floor, so the indoor garden was not far. He descended the stairs with his long stride and stepped out from the mansion—the garden was immediately before him.

"You called for me, Father."

The middle-aged man who had been trimming branches with gardening shears set the tool down and turned.

He was perhaps slightly shorter than Therio Alte, and though he was the Duke of Alte, aside from the dark blue of his eyes, father and son bore no particular resemblance to each other. With eyes less warm than those he'd turned on his trees, the Duke offered a brief greeting. You came.

"I heard you postponed the engagement."

"My training has been going well lately. I only deferred slightly to avoid wasting the momentum—there's nothing to concern yourself with."

"Spare me the feeble excuse. I may be a figurehead, but I'm not blind to the fact that you've been drinking yourself hollow every night."

He hadn't made a thorough effort to conceal it, so the revelation held no particular sting. Therio listened to his father's words with an expressionless face.

"What is it you're dissatisfied with? It was you who said you wanted to marry that young woman. Don't tell me your feelings have shifted again and you've taken a fancy to someone new—or that you've started to regret letting go of the other one?"

"...It's nothing like that."

Tsk. The sound of his tongue clicked clear and deliberate in the quiet garden.

"Bear this in mind, Therio. I have no intention of waiting much longer. Since your mother died, I've not had a single shred of attachment left to this house."

"I know."

"If you cannot make yourself fit before my patience runs out, you won't become duke. Alte is not a family without roots—we do not pass the title to a man with no household of his own."

Kontraz Alte—who had become duke after Giselle Alte's death—had long been desperate to shed the position of head of Alte, a seat coveted by anyone who looked on it. He had not made it so conspicuous while Therio was young; but from the moment Therio came of age, he had been goading him to make himself fit as soon as possible.

Therio found his father's manner exhausting—and yet, in some part of himself, gratifying. Because as a knight who aspired to be called noble, Therio Alte harbored an acute desire for a high position.

The Duke of Alte knew of Therio's ambition and used it as a lure, dangling it to manipulate his son. Take this heavy, dreadful chain from me. Take it quickly.

And yet—now that his father had dangled the dukedom before him once again—Therio felt nothing beyond a leaden fatigue. Neither rage at the petty provocation, nor hunger for the seat.

Perhaps because he felt no genuine crisis in the possibility of his younger brother inheriting instead.

Therio lowered his heavy eyelids for a moment, then lifted them.

"April seems fitting—though earlier wouldn't be unwelcome."

"It is my engagement. My marriage."

"No. It is Alte's engagement. Alte's marriage."

And the woman you yourself chose.

At those last words, Therio had nothing more to say. Breaking the engagement with Goiyo and choosing to marry Melishi—that had been his decision. He could not dispute it.

"I gave you freedom, and you mistook it for license. There are no more choices. Marry that girl."

"...Yes. I understand."

Therio Alte bowed his head at last.

He left the indoor garden and returned to the mansion. He needed to eat and change into attire suited for the training ground before heading there—he had come out in haste, and what he wore was not fit for swordsmanship.

But as he climbed the second step of the central staircase, a faint headache began to make itself known.

A sensation like ants moving across the back of his skull—unpleasant, but familiar.

It had not yet been a month. Yet this small, persistent ache came to him at any hour without warning, and had made itself feel as intimate as a family member of ten years.

In truth, it was not only the headache that had attached itself to him. A certain nightmare that went to work on his chest every night—that had arrived even earlier.

On the night he decided to break the engagement with Goiyo and betroth himself to Melishi, Therio Alte had dreamed for the first time.

The dream begins with him crossing a steep mountain with the knights of Alte.

They ride at a gallop, as though some urgent matter demands it, and enter a cave. The moment they do, violet light erupts—and he squints against its brightness.

Then, through the light, he glimpses something white. His heart goes cold. And he is running toward it, frantic, driven by no reason he can name.

The urgency inside him is frantic; the vision, by contrast, moves with agonizing slowness—the hammering of his heart, the way the wind splits against his skin—every sensation registering with a strange, meticulous clarity.

And then, running through that blinding light, he reaches out his hand—his fingers finally make contact with something—and in that same instant he wakes.

The reason this unremarkable dream is called a nightmare lies precisely in the moment of waking.

The moment his eyes open and find the ceiling of his bedroom, he understands again—every time. The way his heart is hammering just as it did in the dream. The way his entire body is clammy with cold sweat. And the corners of his eyes, and the pillowcase—soaked through and ruined.

What on earth does he run toward with such desperation. Why must he wake in tears every single time.

Having grown sick of a nightmare that explained nothing, Therio had grown morbidly curious—but the dream, faithful in its repetition, revealed nothing of what he wanted to know.

Until a week ago, to be precise. Until then, it had revealed nothing at all.

Recently the nightmare had grown somewhat longer, and Therio Alte had been kept inside it somewhat longer.

Just before the spreading violet light gathered itself into gold—Therio confirmed what his hand had touched.

It was—

A coffin.

A white coffin, and someone sleeping inside it.

Whose face lay there, eyes closed, within that white. The wordless ache turned to pain and crept in to consume his heart.