SN Chapter 28

Rosaline was, objectively speaking, an excellent superior. She looked after them well. She taught them well. And yet Eberhardt and Rhaetisia found her somewhat difficult to approach—not simply because she was their direct superior, or because of her rank. Mysterious. Unfathomable. Those were roughly the words one might reach for in describing the atmosphere that enveloped her. Ordinary people tended to feel uncomfortable about the things they couldn't fully understand. They were no different. Between her formidable swordsmanship and her inscrutable air, they swung between admiring her and finding her a little daunting, going back and forth in considerable confusion.

Eberhardt lay with his cheek pressed against the dirt, watching Rosaline where she stood. She had been looking elsewhere—then turned her eyes to him. She had an uncanny way of sensing when a gaze found her. The moment their eyes met, as if that were a signal, Rosaline grasped the back of his collar and hoisted him smoothly upright. It had the look of a mother cat lifting a kitten by the scruff. She performed the same maneuver on Rhaetisia shortly after. Their hearts and legs, which had been trembling with residual alarm, seemed to stabilize somewhat. Rosaline tap-tapped the dirt from their uniforms.

The two of them stood stiffly and received their superior's attentions in silence.

Rosaline dusted the grime from Eberhardt's backside as well. Fwmp. Fwmp. Her hands were entirely without hesitation. There was a particular concentration of dirt there, and so Rosaline's hand lingered.

Eberhardt watched his superior in silence.

Rhaetisia turned her head to avoid witnessing the transgression.

Kallix covered both eyes with one hand from atop the wall. The headache he hadn't suffered in some time had returned.

Behind the rigid set of his expression, Eberhardt swallowed a laugh. The unfathomable air that surrounded her had a way of being neutralized by exactly this kind of subtle, inadvertent kindness. Perhaps that was why, when fellow trainee knights asked him about her, he had given the awkward answer of 'uh... er... she's a good person?' Rhaetisia had contributed the assessment of 'Ah! Dame Rosaline is really a good person! A good person, but...' with a certain unresolved trailing quality—before declining to continue—which meant both of them had arrived, by different routes, at the same conclusion.

Their subtly-but-genuinely good superior finished tidying their appearances. Eberhardt and Rhaetisia saluted and departed for the training yard. Brisk, almost jaunty footsteps—a plucky, defiant rhythm for people who had just died.

Kallix descended from the wall, watching their retreating backs. He wore a strange expression—neither quite crying nor quite laughing.

"Sister. You mustn't carelessly touch other people's—especially the opposite sex's—that is to say, a man's body parts."

It had been quite some time since a you mustn't. Kallix's scolding words gave her something settled. Redwheel Castle—where the it that had become human had first put down roots. Those were words that recalled it.

"I didn't touch."

She hadn't, technically. Certainly that rough-handed removal of dust could not accurately be described as touching. If pressed, struck was closer. Thwacked. Kallix realized this and revised: "You mustn't make contact carelessly." He wanted to add especially the backside, but somehow felt too flustered for that particular phrase to actually leave his mouth.

She didn't appear to have fully understood, but nodded anyway. That alone made Kallix's chest a little easier.

They walked through the wide flower garden, talking of this and that. Only a month apart, and so much had happened. His sister could cause any number of incidents if he took his eyes off her for even an hour—a month's worth must have been truly incalculable. Rosaline chattered on like a songbird, expressionless the whole while. The loose, bright air of the garden, gleaming in every color, softly enveloped his sister. It was different from her former taciturn self. In language, in action. But the quality that made the space around her warm even with an expressionless face—that was entirely Rosaline. White butterflies drifted around her.

Whether flower petals fell into her hair or butterflies settled on her shoulders, Rosaline talked on and on. Just listening set something warm and ticklish loose in his chest. The same things she had written in the letters she'd sent him—but Kallix listened intently with a blunt face, responding faithfully to each item. Raymond had given cookies, and macarons. She'd sparred with a lower knight, beaten him, won. Visited the infirmary. When meeting His Highness Rikardis, her heart had pounded wildly.

What was that, Rosaline asked calmly. Why does the heart pound so.

Kallix answered "I wonder" with an expression one shade more sulky than usual.

It was the first insincere answer he had ever given her. He followed it with a lie: "My heart pounds when I see His Highness Rikardis as well. No need to concern yourself over it."

The stories flowed, and eventually arrived at catching a number of assassins. Kallix's eyes sharpened. His voice, by contrast, went quieter. His face drew closer to hers.

"Assassins?"

"Yes. I caught them all."

She was thoroughly pleased with herself, expressionless face and all. Like the cat at Redwheel Castle that used to bring back sparrows—chest puffed out.

"Why didn't you write that in the letters?"

"I did write it..."

Caught.

Moonstone Castle applied strict security not only to people but also to goods and documents of all kinds. Every letter exchanged with the outside was read in full before being permitted in or out.

Rosaline's letters were naturally subject to this examination—and any content relating to the internal affairs of Moonstone Castle, let alone the Second Prince's personal safety, was confiscated without question. Because her letters mentioned catching two assassins, Rosaline had been summoned before Itserion himself—the Second Prince's secretary—and thoroughly reprimanded.

The Redwheel family of the First Prince faction was already being watched closely, and now this knight was trying to leak the castle's internal affairs to her own household?

Itserion had decided he would bring this knight to ruin, and called her in.

'I find it troublesome if you write such content, Dame Rosaline.'

'What content are you referring to?'

'Unless my eyes deceive me, there is the word assassin. Do you not understand the problem?'

At his pointed words, Rosaline asked in return, with an expressionless face:

'Then if I write 'bad person' instead of assassin, may I send it?'

Itserion shut his mouth tight.

His expression at that moment resembled the look one gave a person who had dressed in full winter clothes on a summer's day. 'Why is this person acting like this. Is she not quite right.' Appropriate puzzlement, appropriate suspicion, combined in equal measure.

He read her confiscated letter again. Composed with the vocabulary of an eight-year-old. Some spelling errors scattered through. The handwriting entirely that of a young child. She said she had lost her memories—perhaps she had lost everything from the past decade or more.

Itserion's anger, owing to the sympathy that had risen in him for the years Rosaline had lost, softened—and then shriveled entirely. She had been someone so brilliantly sharp-minded...

He loaded his pale violet eyes with the full weight of his compassion.

'No.'

Sympathy or otherwise—what cannot be done cannot be done.

After that, Rosaline expressed assassins variously as "humans wearing black clothing," "the person attacking His Highness," "a man carrying poison," and so on—and was repeatedly summoned before Itserion—until she had more or less grasped what kinds of content were not permitted.

Kallix made a low sound at the back of his throat. Indeed. Significant content relating to the prince's safety could not possibly be allowed to leave the castle. He had forgotten such basic things while worrying only about his sister.

The many exploits she hadn't been able to relay through letters were genuinely remarkable. Rosaline raised her left hand and said "this is me," and raised her right hand and said "this is the assassin." Her left hand moved with sudden speed and subdued the right. Like this, and like this—she explained one by one the many assassins she had caught while escorting the Second Prince.

It might be a simple matter for who she was now—but Dark Moon assassins were famous for being covert and formidable. For his former sister, it would have been anything but simple. Perhaps even if she had genuinely survived the accident and returned, there would have been a very high chance of her dying in this castle.

The reason Kallix had come all the way to the imperial capital was simple. Please stop. Walking that path full of nothing but difficulty and brutal hardship—he had come only to say those words. Being cut and hurt and dying was said to be the fate of a knight, but as a family member, fully accepting all of it was enormously difficult. Whatever the current "Rosaline" truly was, she was his sister.

But his sister, met again after a long separation, had scaled a wall as high as a tree without making a sound. She had smelled the malice on a person wearing another person's face as a mask, and recognized them at once. If she had the will, whether what stood before her were rock or steel, she could cut through it even with that thin sword.

Watching Rosaline drop onto her trainee knights, something in Kallix's head shattered.

He had briefly forgotten it while they were apart. Ah—of course. She was strong. Strong enough to twist an adult man's neck with her bare hands. The reason he had worried about her was perhaps simply because she was 'Rosaline.' Because the Rosaline before him was his sister. My only—my precious—

"Sister."

Rosaline's left hand was still subduing the right in various ways. Kallix enclosed her left hand in both of his. At the warmth that transferred at the touch, Rosaline looked at him.

"You must come back safely. I will prepare your favorite food and wait for you."