SN Chapter 2

"Then are you telling me my sister doesn't remember me?"

"I beg your pardon, but the young lady currently does not know who she herself is. However—when she noticed the family crest hanging in the room, she said 'Redwheel.' While she is in a state of temporary memory loss, it appears likely to return."

"...Likely, you said."

"The young lady is severely weakened right now. In truth, in such circumstances, one cannot guarantee anything, young master. What I can say is that restoring the young lady's health must be the first priority, and beyond that I can only speculate that her current symptoms will improve accordingly. The body and mind are closely connected, as they say..."

He was correct. There was nothing factually wrong with any of it, but Kallix bit down hard on his own lip against the frustration building in his chest. The servants and maids watching Kallix's set expression showed their own anxiety. He ran a hand through his hair, ruining it completely. The sight of his sister in that room would not leave his mind.

Hair that had always been worn neatly bound—disheveled. Eyes that had always carried sharpness—glazed. A voice scraping from a throat unused for too long. She had always carried small and large wounds as a matter of course, being a knight—but he had never imagined anything like this.

Subordinates were, by nature, deeply affected by their master's every action and mood. With their father away managing the border, it was he who needed to hold House Redwheel together. Kallix exhaled slowly and let his expression settle. It was a day for celebration. A day when a sister presumed dead had come home alive—not a face for that.

"Remove the remaining mourning cloths from the walls. Rosaline of Redwheel is safe. Has my father been informed?"

"Yes, young master."

"I must send my thanks to the Count of Iron-Bramble for the care given. Prepare a gift. I'll write the letter myself."

"Yes, young master."

"Assign a dedicated maid to my sister's room and limit who comes and goes. Ensure no strange talk circulates through Redwheel Territory."

"As you say, young master."

At Kallix's instructions, the servants moved in a flurry of activity. By the time the great castle had shed the dozens of white cloths covering it and stood revealed in its proper dignity, Kallix had managed to settle his mind to some degree.

Come home. Only come home alive. Had he not prayed it hundreds of times? Among all the knight orders, the Second Prince's White Night Order—to which Rosaline belonged—had suffered notably worse casualties than the others.

The Second Prince was a famous figure, a candidate for Crown Prince alongside the First Prince. As distinguished as his name was for the military achievements that built it, he had accumulated equally formidable enemies. Perhaps for that reason, this hunting competition incident had produced repeated accounts of the enemy pursuing the Second Prince with particular relentlessness. The losses twice those of other orders were not mere coincidence. And so the idea that Rosaline—a member of relatively modest ability—had died circulated and calcified into accepted fact.

But she had overturned all expectations. She had survived that battle with her arms and legs intact and functional. The physician said the odds of her memory returning were high. This was heaven's grace.

"Has my sister eaten anything?"

"She had a patient's meal at midday. We expected she wouldn't be able to manage much after going so long without food, but she got through three portions without any ill effect, so it seems she can manage dinner as well."

"Bring my meal up to her room. I'll eat with her."

"Yes, young master. I'll have it prepared at once."

Outside the window, the sun was going down. A red sunset dyed the castle walls, and servants were gathering in the last of the white cloths. The cloth fluttered. Kallix stared, and thought of his sister. She had been repeating the act of blinking—slowly closing and opening her eyes—but doing so with an awkward, disjointed consistency. There was a mechanical wrongness to it—an unnatural repetition that did not fit.

It had lodged in him and would not go down. Kallix folded that something carefully and tucked it into a corner of himself. A servant announced that dinner was ready.

The most important thing—he'd nearly forgotten it. He had the words ready: She has returned well. I am glad she is safe.

He would say them before dinner.

As it turned out, Kallix said none of it.

On account of the present scene, in which his sister was gripping a steak in both bare hands and tearing into it with frank, animal determination.

Both cheeks had puffed out to either side—squirrel, exactly. Steak juice and reddish-brown sauce dripped from her hands and her mouth in heavy drops. The blood running from the rare meat made it look, subtly, frightening.

Kallix had stopped in the doorway, unable to enter the room. The amount of time it took him to accept what he was seeing as reality was substantial.

Even the seasoned maid who had worked at House Redwheel for more than twenty years could not conceal her expression. The young lady had thrown propriety to the dogs and come back alive. Any concern that bare hands on steak must be hot, surely had retracted entirely in the face of the young lady gnawing through beef with frank, undaunted determination.

The problem was Master Kallix, who had chosen this precise moment to walk in and witness the scene, and whose mouth had fallen open and showed no intention of closing. The maid stood uselessly in place, unable to decide whether to assist the young lady with her vigorous meal or attend to the young master, whose composure was quietly dissolving. The room was filled with nothing but the wet, rhythmic smack of chewing.

Kallix managed to collect himself and sat beside her.

"..."

"...Is it all right to eat meat already? Won't it be too much?"

He made a determined effort to ignore what was directly in front of him. The maid adopted a similar approach—quite willing to attend to the young lady's shoulder stitches, but treating the matter in her hand as though it had ceased to exist—

"She was fed small amounts of soup and patient meals even while unconscious, I understand. We put finely minced meat into the soup this morning and she came through it without any trouble, so she should be fine at dinner as well."

—and answered accordingly.

"I see..."

Kallix pulled her portion of soup toward himself. The destination of what should have been his steak required no inquiry.

"I'll have your meal brought up shortly."

"All right."

Kallix put the thin, unseasoned soup in his mouth. It tasted of nothing. He was not in a state of sufficient leisure to savor it.

Rosaline stuffed the remaining third of the steak into her mouth. Kallix watched her cheeks puff out, a wistful, bittersweet softness coloring his gaze.

"...Slowly, please. What will you do if you choke?"

Rosaline gave a single nod and chewed. Thoroughly. She had always been an adult—almost absurdly so given their two-year gap. This childlike quality was something he had never seen before. He felt the strange, faint sensation of having a meal with the sister of their early years. He was starting to smile, just slightly, when he had to undo the expression entirely.

Rosaline had extended her tongue to lick the sauce from her hand.

Thwack.

Fortunately, it came to nothing—Kallix had moved fast enough to catch her wrist. His heart lurched.

"I'm not quite mentally prepared for that yet, Sister."

The difference between before and now was immense. His sister had been a woman of dignity in every individual movement, of knightly conduct in each gesture—the image of her licking sauce was too devastating a thing to absorb. Rosaline frowned at Kallix's intervention. It was the first emotion that had appeared on an otherwise expressionless face.

Irritation.

Something escaped him—somewhere in the neighborhood of a laugh. Rosaline, irritated. Of all things.

She had always been gentle and good by nature, generous toward others and strict toward herself. However unjust the treatment she received, she would use it as an occasion to examine herself more closely and train harder. A person whose rigid principles were enough to make anyone’s chest ache with frustration.

But right now the elongated eyes that were a Redwheel family inheritance down the generations—sharp enough already—had grown sharper still. Kallix, seeing the displeasure written across her face, quickly gentled his voice.

"Here—your avocado salad. The one you enjoy. This—"

He had been about to say eat this, but switched tracks fast. Rosaline's expression upon seeing the salad had grown markedly more hostile. What are these weeds. Her eyes were stating it plainly.

"—don't bother with it. I'll have them bring more steak shortly, so just eat a little more of that. A little."

Rosaline's expression cleared. She nodded. Kallix drew the finger bowl toward himself and washed her hands, doing a rough job of it. She produced a sound of discontent but surrendered her hands to him without resistance.

When he thought about it, they were truly uncomplicated siblings, he and she. Not a single hug exchanged between them. Not a peck on the cheek. He had grabbed her wrist to stop the hand-licking, but this brief contact was awkward enough in its own right. Twenty-one years old, holding his sister's hand for the first time. He smiled without much kindness in it.

She promptly grabbed the lemon from the finger bowl and ate it whole, then made a retching sound, and whatever sentiment he'd been building dissipated entirely—but regardless, his chest felt oddly restless. A strangely abrupt fluttering he didn't recognize.

"Sister."

Rosaline's eyes rolled toward Kallix. Eyes that received the assessment looks like she's glaring or looks like she's angry whenever she wasn't smiling—sharp eyes, long and narrow. The same face, but today's various incidents had rendered them somehow dim.

"Do you know who I am, Sister?"

He had asked their great-grandfather something similar once, during the period of dementia—the memory surfaced, and Kallix produced a low sound in his throat. Rosaline shook her head.

"I am Kallix, your brother, two years your junior. We haven't seen each other often lately, as you've been occupied with the knight order—though you did send letters to keep in touch. Even at your busiest, you always sent one at least once a month. Ah—Sister, you are a member of an imperial knight order. Specifically, the Second Prince's direct escort unit: the White Night Order. You're a junior knight."

Rosaline appeared to be listening carefully to Kallix's words. She didn't nod or say I see. But it seemed, somehow, as though she were listening.