PDCOO Chapter 17

The big dumb bear who was impossible to hold a conversation with.

Bertram, clearly.

"...Though the two of you nodding along is also a problem."

"We'll rectify that immediately!"

Nothing more to extract from the trafficking ring. It was confirmed that Bertram was in this city—now it would require actual legwork.

The soldiers filed out one by one.

The trafficking ring's relief lasted only a moment.

When the fourth soldier—who looked unusually gentle, partly on account of his spectacles—put his hand on the door, Franz said:

"Erich."

"Yes, sir!"

"Go out and close the door."

The soldier called Erich did as instructed and closed the door. Not only that—a moment later came the sound of him leaning against it from the other side, as if keeping watch.

A cold premonition crawled up the spines of the trafficking ring.

Franz remained in the room. He smiled brilliantly and raised his foot.

"'That man' being enormous and near-impossible to hold a conversation with—I'll grant you that."

"...Yes?"

"But you lot referring to him so casually. That I won't allow."

Franz's boot came down on their mouths.

The chief drank through the entire evening. At this rate, he would drink away everything he'd made from the wolf pelts before dawn. Anna spiked his cup with straight spirits at intervals, which meant he'd needed Bertram to support him on repeated trips to the privy.

As for the soldier who wandered into the restaurant at some point, looking around for someone—that was no business of Anna's.

Before long, the chief was finished. Bertram picked him up and deposited him into the men's inn room, dropping him onto the bed with something approaching care.

Tucking him in and grumbling about it—that was Anna's job.

"The chief lives his life entirely for himself, I swear. He'll definitely fall asleep now and wake at the crack of dawn tomorrow to lecture us about how young people these days are so lazy. If he tries to put you to work tomorrow, just ignore him completely."

"Is he like this every market day?"

"No. He reads the room. He only acts like this when I come along."

"Meaning he trusts you."

Anna narrowed her eyes.

"No charitable interpretations of the chief."

"...I apologize."

"Well. I might end up as the next chief someday, but still."

"Oh? Is the position unrelated to primogeniture?"

"What's so important about a thankless job in a village like this? People who don't mind the trouble just take turns. Mostly men, but given everything I do for this village—in about twenty years, it could easily be me."

There was something in her voice as she said it. Not volume, exactly. Weight. The quiet pride of someone who has earned the right to complain about a place. Bertram recognized that kind of thing.

The sentence that followed was a little harder to follow.

"This wretched village—who else would take responsibility for it if not me? Honestly."

"Do you dislike your home village?"

"What? No. If I hated it I wouldn't take responsibility for it."

"You sighed."

"Ahaha—it's, well, you know how old friends, or married couples, will look at each other and say ugh, you again—but they're still attached? It's like that."

"Of course, if that insight comes from your own experience of marriage, I would not presume to call it wrong."

Bertram's guileless eyes turned toward her.

Normally the height difference meant she could barely make out his expression. But he happened to be sitting on the bed now, and at this angle they could see each other's faces clearly.

Anna felt like a five-year-old was bombarding her with questions she had no business answering.

"Not once in my life! I've never even had a boyfriend! My own parents bickered constantly right up until my father died—ugh, that man, he's such a bother—and after he was gone my mother regretted every word of it. So forgive me for assuming that's just how it goes."

"..."

She still thought so, actually.

But there was no need to insist, to someone who believed in eternal love, that every couple eventually tires of each other and after that it's just inertia keeping them going.

Bertram accepted the correction graciously.

"Thank you for being honest with me. I hope the person who finds you will be someone you can love forever."

"Right. Same to you."

Anna answered without her soul in it.

But Bertram's response to those hollow words was not hollow at all.

"My parents—both gone now—every morning they would wake in the same bed and ask each other: 'did your dream-journey last night go well, the one I wasn't in?'"

Anna's mouth fell open. This giant had grown up around people like that?

"I understand. After I recover my emotions. When I finally meet the companion I am meant for—I will devote eternal love to them. This is a vow I stake on every step I have taken and every day I have left."

Anna's face went red.

He said it in that deep, unhurried voice, as though the words were simply a fact about the world. Like weather is a fact. Like stone is a fact.

It was entirely unfair. Her heart lurched straight to her throat.

A bride who heard those words at her altar would be turning them over on her deathbed.

'B-but he's not saying it to me! Heart, stop being embarrassing. Are you listening? Settle down— Now.'

"...Anna. Your cheeks are red. Have you had too much to drink?"

"I—"

She hadn't. A few cups of beer was the whole of it.

But she wasn't about to admit that a hypothetical proposal had left her blushing, so Anna made something up.

"The drinks are hitting me all at once, I think."

"Then allow me to walk you to the women's room."

"What? ...Eek!"

Bertram simply picked her up.

The chief had looked like a boy beside Bertram, but Anna just—dangled. Like a cat lifted by the scruff. Cradled in one of his arms with zero romance involved. This, Anna felt with the full sincerity of her being.

"Put me down. I can walk."

"No. The chief asked me to look after all of you until the very end, and I intend to fulfill that duty."

"What could possibly happen in one corridor?"

Bertram did not listen.

He carried her to the women's room in long strides, set her down carefully, and placed a glass of water on the nightstand. Removing her shoes was apparently included in the service.

This was too much. Anna cried out.

"I can manage that myself!"

"But—"

"This is a bit much, isn't it! ...Oh, Lara. Perfect timing. Why are you standing in the corridor? Get in here and help me."

Anna reached for reinforcements.

But Lara—rather than taking Anna's side—stood in the doorway with a face the color of a radish.

"...Lara. Why aren't you coming in?"

"...I'll make myself scarce."

"What?"

"I didn't realize you two had made vows to each other! And for this to be your last night—it's just too sad! I'll step away for a bit. Thirty minutes should be enough? I can't give more than that!"

"Hold on—where did you even—how did you get any of that from—Lara—"

"Enjoy your time together!"

You've got it completely wrong get back here right now come inside close that door behind you and say out loud every warm romantic completely wrong thing in your head—

Before that sentence could escape.

The door closed.

Lara's footsteps pattered cheerfully down the corridor.

Anna stood frozen.

Bertram, holding her shoes, offered:

"...Shall I put these back on, or would you prefer to be carried? If you intend to go after Lara, the latter would be faster."

This man's instincts were lightning in every direction that served absolutely no purpose. Anna sighed somewhere deep inside her chest. She didn't have the energy for another round.

'Thirty minutes.'

Lara had nearly been kidnapped today. She wouldn't do anything dangerous. At worst she'd be killing time in the ground-floor restaurant.

The misunderstanding could be sorted out when they shared a room for the night.

But this was the last thirty minutes before Bertram left.

Anna had made up her mind. She turned to face him.

In all the strays she'd taken in over the years, there had been plenty of interesting ones. Strong ones, good-looking ones. Among them, Bertram stood in a category entirely his own for strangeness and strength and—she was being honest now—looks. But none of that had drawn out anything she'd call a different kind of interest.

Until a few minutes ago, when she'd heard that hypothetical promise.

Something had moved in her. Not the usual kind.

Anna's face was still red. She asked him her question.

It was a question she could only ask because Bertram had no emotions—because he was someone she would soon say goodbye to.

"Um……. I was wondering—do people who have truly sworn to love each other forever—how do they actually… love each other……?"

Anna had barely finished before she was waving her own hands against the question, as though she could bat the words back out of the air.

"I— I know it's a strange thing to ask! I know that, but……"

"Please speak freely. I will not judge your intentions, Miss Anna."

"Right. It's just…… everyone around me says the sensible thing is to marry someone local. They'll indulge a first crush up to a point, but the moment anyone talks about 'marrying for love,' everyone laughs. Feelings disappear anyway, they say—believe in them and you're the only one who ends up hurt."

The boy who read tales of chivalry and dreamed of his own lady was laughed at.

The girl who wanted to receive a bouquet from her beloved was told: A bolt of cloth you can have made into clothes is wiser than something as useless as that.

This mood had grown worse since the war.