SBTMK Chapter 11

"Flora. Wait—!"

Simen's voice went up sharply. He grabbed her arm.

She startled badly, eyes going wide.

'What's he shouting for all of a sudden—'

His expression had gone rigid. Something had locked in it, like a mechanism that had jammed.

Their eyes met. He turned away from her immediately and completely, looking at the opposite wall.

"You're changing clothes. Tell me to leave."

"Oh—yes!"

As he said it, she caught the tips of his ears. Faintly red.

'Surely not—was he embarrassed?'

For an emperor of notorious appetites, that was a remarkably innocent reaction.

"Was that—were you trying to use your looks on me deliberately? Was I being obtuse?"

"No. I was just excited about going outside and didn't think—"

"If it wasn't intentional, be more careful. Didn't I say it before. I'm a man."

"Yes. I was careless."

"Next time I'll draw the wrong conclusion. And I won't hear any explanation after."

"Yes…"

Whatever the truth of it, Flora accepted that she had been careless.

The environment she had grown up in had simply not left room for embarrassment. It had removed that category from the available options. That was not Simen's fault for reddening.

Perhaps the rumors and misreadings from Cenkan had come from the same carelessness. She hadn't thought much of it at the time. But the fact that those words still rang in her ears like tinnitus, all this time later—perhaps she had been hurt by them, after all.

"…Would you please step out, then?"

Simen's brow pulled together slightly. He'd heard something drain from her voice.

He hadn't said anything that bad.

Still. It sat on him.

"I'll send Lugaria in. Wait here."

"Yes."

He left her standing there, stiff and quiet, and went out.

Something was off.

Flora was unlike any woman he had encountered. Interesting—but also this: a specific discomfort, arriving without warning.

He felt someone's attention and turned. Erne's violet eyes met his.

"Flora clearly doesn't think of me as a man. Not even slightly!"

He'd said it before he'd chosen to.

Erne blinked.

〈Is it necessary for her to do so?〉

"That's not the point… but she's still too careless."

Erne, without the full context, could not precisely follow the complaint.

He said nothing. Simen, unable to hold the irritation any longer, continued.

"She was about to undress right in front of me. And the thing that bothers me most is that there was nothing calculated about it. If it were a deliberate approach, I'd at least have something to work with. But what was that? She wasn't even embarrassed."

〈…〉

"I'm worried she'll do it in front of someone else."

Erne considered for a moment before delivering his thought carefully.

〈…If the issue is ignorance of propriety, would it not make sense to assign someone to instruct her?〉

"Instruction? Do I actually have to do that?"

Simen was genuinely weighing it when the door opened.

The blue dress, scattered with embroidered stars, suited Flora's pale complexion—suited her, in fact, precisely. Against the silver of her hair, embroidered with what looked like stars, it was a perfect match.

Their eyes met. Flora glanced away immediately and began fiddling with the hem of the skirt.

She looked like a noble's daughter. Anyone would have believed it. Nothing like the wild young predator he'd found on that mountain..

Simen had forgotten what he'd been weighing.

〈…Your Majesty?〉

Erne's voice arrived in his head a beat later than usual. He cleared his throat.

"My eye for these things is apparently reliable. Let's go."

Simen turned first. Flora followed, not wanting to lose him.

Somewhere along the way, they were alone. The man who had radiated killing intent at Simen's back had disappeared to wherever he went.

"Is the walking uncomfortable?"

"Yes."

Flora was paying close attention to her feet. One wrong step and her ankle would give—she could feel it—and she was directing every available faculty at preventing this. She hadn't been on the ground for days. The heels made her body feel foreign to itself. The irritation was close to the surface.

"You're managing well enough."

"This is something I actually trained for—"

She stopped.

Simen said "Mm?" and she shook her head. Nothing.

She had been about to say: this is something I trained for. High heels on mission. Yes. Not the moment to say that.

Fortunately Simen didn't press. He held out his hand instead.

"Take it. You'll be steadier."

"Oh—I'm fine."

"Come on. If you twist your ankle at this rate, I don't know what Eden will do to me."

"Eden would do something to you? That doesn't make any sense."

'How could that beautiful Eden—'

Flora gave Simen a skeptical look, and then, reluctantly, rested her hand lightly on top of his.

He seemed satisfied. He walked on.

She matched his pace.

It was noticeably more stable than walking alone. Someone holding you steady from beside you made more difference than it had any right to.

"You've gotten close to Eden?"

"He and Lugaria were the only people I saw every day while I was in my room. We talked a lot during that time."

"Then you've become friends."

"…I'm not sure."

"What kind of answer is that?"

"I don't know whether we're friends. We talked. That's all."

Are we friends? Making that determination on her own, without asking the other person, without any basis for it—that had never gone well. It felt like theft.

Flora was a person who carried death.

Everyone she had wanted near her had died.

'I never said I wanted to be your friend, you freak. I helped you out of pity, and now you're going around telling people what? Do you want me to die young?'

'How many more people is she going to get killed. Honestly. Monster.'

That was why no one wanted to be near her. What remained were the people who approached with purpose. She had made the mistake of believing some of them—the cleverer ones, the ones who knew which warmth to offer—and every time, it had returned as betrayal.

No one wanted to be closer to her.

She wanted to be Eden's friend. But wanting it and having it were not the same thing. Eden might recoil. Someone with that much light in him had no reason to take on someone marked the way she was marked.

"Exchanging pleasantries every day, having ordinary conversations that come naturally—that's already being friends."

"No. Eden never said he wanted to be my friend."

"What. Does someone need to formally announce: from today, we are friends! before the relationship can exist?"

"…Deciding on your own, without checking—that's worse than being mistaken."

Simen stopped walking.

"Ah. So by that logic I have no friends at all. That one landed. I'm hurt."

"No, I didn't mean you—"

He pinched her cheek lightly.

"Flora. You have strange gaps in your confidence."

'Am I being scolded.'

She blinked at the directness of his voice.

"You'll run toward mortal danger alone to save someone else. But a few dresses feel above your station. And now this—you talk as if being called close by someone would cause them to hate you."

"…"

"It's the same now. My answer, if Eden knew what you'd just said, would be that he'd find it quite hurtful."

Flora lowered her eyes slightly and pressed her lower lip between her teeth.

"One careless word from me and people near me have died. Even so—would they still be hurt?"

"What does that mean?"

Simen's brow drew in.

"Exactly what it says. The people near me die."

She added quickly:

"I know people don't make friends the way I do. But I've had too much happen to do it any other way. I thought I had friends, and I was wrong, and I had to hear about it afterward. Every time."

"…"

"I understand. No one wants to be kept beside someone who costs them their life. What am I, after all. I can't even protect the people who matter—"

She heard the words coming out and couldn't stop them. She registered, distantly, that she was showing far more than the situation called for. This had not needed to be said. Not any of it.

'I must look foolish.'

She came back to herself and looked at Simen.

He had been watching her in silence for a long moment. Slowly, he spoke.

"I don't know what kind of life you've lived. But it sounds like you're carrying a great deal. Flora." A pause. "I know that feeling. What it is to watch everything you held carefully get destroyed. The helplessness of not being able to hold onto what's yours."

His words carried something real in them. The same quality she had recognized in him the first time they met—some shared frequency she had noticed and not named.

"But if you're trapped in that feeling and all you can do is blame yourself, nothing remains in the end. I'd like you to be able to put some of that weight down. To rest a little, now."

"…"

"Everyone near you dies? Don't say it like it's fixed. It won't always be true."

The hand holding hers tightened slightly. Why that was warm, she couldn't have said. His eyes—the orange of them, moving like sunlight held in water—were the same way.

Simen's warmth was different from Eden's. This particular quality was part of why she had decided to stay in Haenkan in the first place—wanting to feel it a little longer.

Each thing he said seemed to press directly into her chest.

"I'll show you. That you can stand beside me and I won't die."

"Simen…"

"We already call each other by name. That's already close."

"…"

"I'll be your friend."

The restlessness she'd been holding cleared, quietly, without announcement. A faint smile had settled at the corner of her mouth without her noticing.

"You want to be my friend? You don't even know what kind of person I am."

"Even so—I don't think there's anyone who wouldn't want to be your friend."

Flora's eyes—dark as a night sky—wavered.

"You don't trust me. I still have things I can't tell you."

"So—don't tell me you're actually going to refuse? Becoming friends with an emperor is an immense honor, I'll have you know."

He was faintly indignant about it. Flora laughed.

"I know. More than I deserve." She paused. "So—on the day our masks come off. If the offer is still standing then. Let's be real friends."

Simen smiled at that, finally. He muttered something about what an unusual person she was, and nodded.

For now, the fact that he had offered so readily—that was enough.

'I don't think there's anyone who wouldn't want to be your friend.'

Something knotted in a corner of her chest seemed, little by little, to be changing.