TRHK Chapter 12

If she meant had we grown close—I honestly didn't know.

Kahron was still an icy gust of wind in my direction, and he ignored what I said more often than not. If not for the agreement between us, he wouldn't be coming to the forest with me at all. He had even grabbed me by the throat when I'd mentioned his Madness.

And yet at the same time, we had exchanged two 'strange' kisses. He had, 'strangely,' put his hands on my thigh and my backside. And as a result, my own feelings had shifted into something 'strange' as well.

Already too full of strange to make sense of it, I spilled everything to Eifel like someone who simply couldn't hold it in.

"I don't know. It's strange."

"What's strange?"

"Wait, the red-haired knight? The one from the rumors?"

"Who is he?! Are you seeing someone, Maylin?"

The other maids pressed in, suddenly riveted.

"It's just... I'm not even sure if we've gotten close, but when I look at him something keeps feeling off, and—"

"Have you slept with him?"

One of them asked it flatly. Another jabbed her in the side with an elbow—"Hey!"—but her own eyes were sparkling with undisguised curiosity. I was mildly caught off guard.

"Sleep? No, I—"

"Ah well. You don't really know a man until you've slept with him."

"That's true enough. The bedside is really what matters."

At first I'd taken them literally. Then, listening further, I understood that they weren't.

Which meant that neither kind of sleeping—the literal kind, nor the other kind—had occurred between Kahron and me. Even the mere thought made my face feel like it might combust.

"I—I should go."

"You're running away because you're embarrassed, aren't you."

"I'm not! Tell the head maid I've finished my work for the day!"

"Alright, alright. Go slowly."

Eifel said go slowly, but I was out of that room at a full sprint. Laughter erupted behind me as I fled—but staying any longer would have left nothing of my heart intact. We weren't even lovers, Kahron and I. Why on earth would they ask something like that—

...But if we weren't lovers, did people who weren't lovers do that kind of kissing? And grip someone's backside like that?

The question that surfaced carried my feet toward the hill before I'd consciously decided to go there. My head was in disarray, and seeing Kahron made it worse—but not seeing him wasn't an option. We still had herbs to find. And since I seemed to be the only one showing any enthusiasm for the task, I thought I ought to encourage him somewhat.

"He's not here."

Kahron, who I'd expected to find napping beneath the oak, was nowhere in sight. As I walked toward the training grounds, I came face-to-face with Knight Commander Landale. Bracing to be reprimanded, I was already angling toward a storage building when he said, flatly:

"I saw you."

"...Hello, Sir Landale."

"Mm."

He was an immense person in every sense, no matter how many times you encountered him. Likely the tallest, or one of the tallest, in the entire estate. Even his squared jaw suited the severity of his bearing perfectly. I asked carefully:

"I'm looking for Kahron..."

"That one is currently receiving punishment."

"Punishment?"

Inexplicable punishment, suddenly? I blinked, and Landale gave a brief explanation.

"Apparently he broke a merchant's arm in the village."

The moment he said it, the scene from a few days ago came back whole. After the forest, in the square—the merchant who'd been pestering me, whom Kahron had then dealt with rather thoroughly.

Whether he'd done it on my account was still something I couldn't quite pin down. What I could pin down was the distinct unease that settled over me now, hearing Kahron was being punished for it.

"That merchant was... provoking me. That's why it happened. Kahron was only helping me..."

Probably.

"If someone must be punished, let it be me."

"Nonsense."

I'd steeled myself to say it. Landale answered before the words were quite finished, in a tone that left no room for reconsideration.

I deflated, looking down. 'Would he at least tell me what the punishment was, if I asked?' That thought was forming when Landale passed by me and said, almost as an aside:

"He's running laps around the training grounds. If you'd like... you may wait inside."

My head came up sharply. Wait inside?

"Really? I can go into the training grounds?"

"There's no one else in there now. That's why I'm permitting it."

"Thank you!"

I offered my gratitude inelegantly and hurried inside. I thought I heard something like a dry, rueful exhale behind me.

There was no need to look around. Kahron, mid-lap around the vast training grounds, came into view immediately. He didn't look labored. His expression held no particular darkness. That much, at least, was a relief.

I crouched in a corner so as not to disturb him and waited for the punishment to end.

'...Why isn't it ending?'

Landale had definitely said a few laps. But it wasn't a few—it was dozens upon dozens, and Kahron showed no sign of stopping. He still hadn't noticed me; he hadn't so much as glanced in this direction.

Restless, I gnawed at my lower lip. The thought that he was being punished because of me refused to leave. What if I waited and it still didn't end? How many laps had Landale actually ordered?

"Ah."

Without thinking, I'd bitten down too hard, and blood welled on my lower lip. I was dragging my thumb across it with some gloom when a shadow fell across my face.

I looked up.

Kahron stood there. He had just run enough laps to circle a vast training ground several dozen times, and he hadn't broken a single sweat.

I nearly toppled backward in shock.

"What are you doing here? Maylin."

'What—why is he suddenly using my—' He seemed to have read something in my expression, because he added, without inflection:

"You told me to use your name."

"...Yes. Oh—no. More importantly, they said you were being punished? Are you alright?"

He didn't bother to answer that. He looked down at me and asked:

"Is that mine?"

I nodded without thinking, and he plucked the water bottle from my hands. He usually refused it even when I pressed it on him directly, but apparently several dozen laps was enough to produce some thirst. 'Brought the herb water for a reason,' I thought, and asked:

"How did the Knight Commander even know about it? Surely that man didn't come all the way here?"

On second thought—that merchant sold goods to the Count's estate. Accessing the castle wouldn't be difficult for him. Kahron finished the water and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Can you please just say something? Anything?"

'Why won't he say anything. I'm worried, and this really isn't helping—'

If he couldn't speak from exhaustion, I could at least understand that much. But he had only taken a few swallows of water and he looked thoroughly, infuriatingly fine.

"If he'd come here, you think running laps would've been the end of it?"

Kahron answered carelessly and handed the bottle back. I fell into step behind him as he moved off somewhere.

"So he didn't come, then?"

"......"

"If he does come later, don't get involved—just tell me. I'll break his other arm myself."

I'd do something like that and probably be punished by the head maid for it. Getting dismissed entirely would honestly be ideal, at this point. Then Kahron turned and looked back at me. The steady, unreadable gaze made something in me go uncertain.

"Wh—why?"

'Was that too aggressive just now—'

But the words he actually produced had nothing to do with that.

"How far are you planning to follow me?"

He said it, and shrugged his shirt off. I managed an internal scream while covering my eyes with my fingers.

"Why—why are you taking your shirt off?"

From the brief glimpse I'd caught—chest, abdomen—my heart was pounding in a way that was genuinely inconvenient. A lean, and somehow beautiful, body. With my vision blocked and my other senses embarrassingly heightened, Kahron's voice came through with something like exasperation.

"She expects a man to bathe with his clothes on."

Bathe...? I cautiously lowered my fingers. Making every effort not to look directly at Kahron, I surveyed the surroundings—and only then realized we were somewhere entirely different.

The place we were standing appeared to be the knights' outdoor bathing area. Water buckets and bathing tubs were arranged at intervals throughout. My face flared up again.

"I—I'm sorry. I didn't realize what kind of place it was."

I stumbled backward in a flustered rush, and my heel caught on moisture left on the ground—slip—before I could right myself. Kahron had caught me by the waist. His expression said, very clearly: must I witness this kind of thing. I wanted to find the nearest hole and disappear into it.

"I only followed you because I was worried..."

"Worry about yourself."

"......"

'Did he have to put it quite like that.' I was grumbling internally when Kahron's face began to draw closer. By the time I'd registered that fact, soft lips had pressed once against my bleeding lower lip and drawn away. I stared at him, vacant.

"You're bleeding."

He seemed to mean the lip I'd bitten raw while waiting. Which was true. But—knowing that—using one's own mouth to—wasn't that also, a little... strange?

"I—I know."

I was clearly the only one in turmoil. Kahron released me without ceremony.

I watched his back turn, opening and closing my mouth with no idea what to say, when he began to remove his trousers. I erupted into motion like someone struck by lightning and fled the area entirely.

Somehow, increasingly, being around Kahron left less and less of my heart intact.

The binding contract remained unresolved, and the anxiety of it was constant. But I had been so disoriented by relationships shifting faster than I could track—since the moment I'd woken up in this world—that I had let myself become careless.

That was why, I think, I had let myself forget. That the misfortune coming for 'Maylin' wasn't some distant future concern.

"Mind that! The Countess is particular about the decorations!"

"How are the party preparations coming along?"

"Keep moving! The party isn't far off!"

The head maid and the butler moved briskly through the hall. I worked diligently at what they asked while my mind was somewhere else entirely.

Joel Courtner was coming back from the academy for the school break. Soon.

For someone who had read the original novel, he was someone to be avoided with every resource I had.