TRHK Chapter 7

The original red-haired knight in the novel had suffered from a hereditary madness passed down through his family line.

The defining symptoms were headaches, violence, and an overwhelming urge to destroy.

They'd called every physician of repute and tried every medicine available, but as with the generations before him, nothing had produced any meaningful effect.

To suppress the Madness, the red-haired knight had trained in swordsmanship until he became a Sword Master, and had spent his days seeking out monsters to kill. Watching blood flow was the only thing that held the Madness in check.

But as time passed, the pain and the urges had grown more frequent. Eventually, even the sight of monster blood began to lose its effect.

And it was at precisely that point—when the Madness had begun to consume his eyes—

That the novel's protagonist, once thoroughly defeated by the red-haired knight, returned as a Sword Master himself and challenged him again. It was then that the protagonist's companion, a wandering healer, recognized the knight's affliction and showed him how to treat it.

At last having found a way to cure his Madness, the red-haired knight was so moved that he made the healer his lifelong benefactor.

This "red-haired knight," of course, was Kahron.

Just as the novel had described: overwhelming skill with a blade, chronic headaches from the Madness, and a character who would, going forward, be consumed by it further and further.

Left alone, the protagonist's party would eventually come and help him. That much was a certainty.

But I intended to steal their credit.

I wasn't nearly as knowledgeable as the novel's wandering healer, but I knew herbs well enough. And more crucially—I remembered exactly which herbs the healer had combined to give Kahron.

'There are two... minor problems, though.'

The first was that collecting those herbs required wandering through forests and various other locations, and the forests of this world were full of monsters. The second was the method of administering the finished medicine.

In the original novel, there had been a particular specification about the treatment for the red-haired knight's Madness. It required another person's bodily fluids when taken.

How exactly the original Kahron had resolved that particular detail, the novel hadn't examined closely. I only knew that he had taken the medicine and ultimately been cured.

'Maybe they'd mixed blood...? Ah, but if bodily fluids includes saliva, then that means possibly... like last time...?'

The moment I thought back to what had happened in the forest, heat rushed up my face without my permission.

"...I'll think about that part later."

I hadn't even gathered the ingredients yet. There was no reason to torture myself over the method of administration when the materials weren't secured.

What I needed to focus on right now was—

"Hey, what are you doing out here? Looking for someone?"

I'd deliberately waited far from the training grounds to avoid being caught by the Knight Commander again, but somehow, without fail, knights who'd finished training would make their way directly to my side and speak to me as they passed. Some fairly rudely. Others with excessive courtesy.

The swaggering knight in front of me belonged to the rude category. He'd shoved me against the storage wall without preamble and was talking at me from that position.

Kahron, Landale, Seyron, Hwirozen—every knight I'd encountered had been tall and broad-shouldered, but this one was comparatively shorter. He leaned close to the blond hair I still hadn't quite gotten used to and sniffed.

Sniff. Sniff.

"Ahh, you smell good."

I, for my part, was experiencing the opposite with every word out of his mouth.

He seemed to have developed an interest in me as a woman—a variety of attention I found entirely foreign and uncomfortable. When someone looked down on me, I could simply look down on them in return. But sniffing my hair was not something I had any desire to reciprocate. I had absolutely no curiosity about what his hair smelled like.

"This face, and then your body is also—"

Huff. He breathed warm air directly onto my face, his gaze dropping to fix somewhere below my chin. As though he could see straight through the maid's uniform to what was beneath.

At this point I found myself genuinely weighing whether to kick him in the shins or between the legs.

Then, past his shoulder, in the distance—I spotted Kahron stepping out of the training grounds.

"Hey—hey!"

I shoved the man blocking my path aside and bolted toward Kahron. He walked quickly; I'd have to move fast or lose him entirely. The knight called after me, but I ignored him completely.

"Ka—!"

I'd started to call his name and caught myself. The memory of how he'd snapped at me for using it without permission surfaced at exactly the wrong moment, and I shut my mouth.

Fortunately, Kahron seemed to have heard my approach and looked back with indifferent eyes. The look on his face gave me fresh doubts as to whether there existed, anywhere in this world, a method for getting close to him.

But I knew how to cure his Madness. And I'd had lessons from Eifel on making friends. I intended to use both to their fullest.

"What now?"

Kahron pushed his red hair back with one hand. I'd given him herbs, and he still couldn't open with anything resembling civility. Was even that not enough?

To be fair, the herbs I'd given him had only a mild effect on headaches—they weren't medicine for the Madness itself—and even that effect wasn't sustained. Useful in an emergency, but nothing more.

"Is your head feeling any better now?"

I used the gentlest tone I could manage, as Eifel had instructed. But my eyes kept drifting to his lips again. And to the memory of being bullied while trying to give him medicine in the forest. That sensation had, for some reason I preferred not to examine, refused to leave my head for quite some time afterward.

"What if it isn't?"

Why does every single word out of this man's mouth have to land like a challenge?

Slightly cowed, I held out the water bottle I'd prepared. He'd just come out of training, so he'd be thirsty.

He didn't take it immediately. He simply looked down at it.

"I thought you might be thirsty. I mixed in a little powdered herb that helps with mood. It doesn't taste bitter at all."

It was the kind of water I used to prepare for my mother when she was irritable. One cup, followed by quietly reading aloud to her, and even the deepest furrow in her brow would slowly ease.

I'd brought some to the elderly noblewoman today as well. And for the first time, I'd seen her smile. Thinking back on the morning, a smile found its way to my own lips without effort.

"......"

Kahron stared at my face with an expression I couldn't read. Waiting for his answer, I kept my gaze steady—and then his lips came into view again, and I dropped my eyes to the ground.

Some time passed before he spoke. You...

"In heat, are you?"

For a moment I thought I'd misheard. I'd expected either thank you or I don't need it—one of the two. What I actually heard was from an entirely different dimension.

"...Excuse me?"

"That's why you like being in places crawling with men?"

He still hadn't taken the water bottle I was holding out, and he kept saying things that had nothing to do with it. And the reason I was here, in a place full of men, was precisely because of him.

Eifel's careful advice about using a kind tone developed a crack in it, and a complaint slipped out before I could stop it.

"I came here because of Kahron."

I'd been holding my arm out long enough. I let it drop.

Kahron's brow tightened. A moment later I registered that I'd called his name without permission. Again.

"Ah, I didn't mean to call your name like that—"

"......"

"...Can I just call you that?"

Since I'd already done it, I thought I might as well try for permission.

"Kahron calls me Maylin too, doesn't he?"

How was I supposed to get closer to someone when I couldn't even use their name? Eifel and Hwirozen called each other pet names—practically darling. We weren't lovers, so names would do.

Kahron let out a short, derisive laugh—as if the whole thing was too absurd to bother with—and walked straight past me.

"Where are you going?"

I hadn't expected an answer. As predicted, none came.

"Aren't you thirsty?"

I scrambled after him. A few knights standing nearby stared blankly at us. Mercifully, Knight Commander Landale was nowhere in sight.

"Head Maid, I'll be heading out now."

I brought the cleaning tools and water bucket back to their places and said it carefully. The Head Maid confirmed me with a sharp look.

"You've cleaned the elderly noblewoman's room thoroughly?"

"Yes."

"Is she resting?"

"Yes. She just fell asleep."

The noblewoman was not a difficult person. Preparing her meals, supporting her for a short walk, washing her, showing her the view from the window, laying her down and reading to her—that was the routine, and with it, she always fell into peaceful sleep.

In her room, I could shed some of the tension I carried everywhere else. Since opening my eyes in this world, I'd been stumbling through interactions with people in a kind of daze—and in truth, some part of me still hadn't found its footing. Still found everything here quietly strange.

"Very well. Go on."

"Yes!"

I pushed off the moment the permission landed—and the other maids' commentary followed me through the door like thrown stones.

"Off to seduce more naive knights again, is she."

"Who is she running to see like that today?"

Eifel, standing among them, looked thoroughly uncomfortable.

I stopped mid-step and turned back sharply. The maids delivering their remarks—not behind my back, directly to my face—flinched.

"I'm going to meet the red-haired knight."

"...What?"

They seemed curious about who I was going to see. So I answered.

I didn't add anything further and went where Kahron would be. According to what Eifel had heard from her boyfriend, at this hour he'd be shirking responsibilities on the hill. The very same hill where I'd first met Kahron.

When I reached the oak tree on the hillside, Kahron was indeed lying in the shade.

He had the kind of face that made you lose your train of thought no matter how many times you'd seen it. Was it possible to be that beautiful simply because he was a character in a novel? I let out a breath and called his name.

"Kahron."

I'd announced myself first—I had no desire to be called a little rat again—but the closed eyelids didn't so much as twitch.

I considered for a moment, then took a few more steps forward. I didn't want to disturb him if he was resting, but if he wasn't actually asleep, there was something I needed to say. Of course, if he truly was asleep, I didn't particularly want to wake him.

"......"

It occurred to me, mid-creep, that the sight of myself sneaking carefully toward a sleeping man was indistinguishable from an actual rat slinking across a floor. This embarrassing thought arrived at precisely the moment I was already close enough to reach out and touch him.

Perhaps because he spent so much time lounging in shade like this—Kahron's skin was paler than the other knights'. Or perhaps it was simply his nature.

Without quite meaning to, I forgot what I'd come here for. I slowly bent my knees and crouched down beside him.

Watching Kahron sleep from this close turned out to be a more heart-pounding experience than I'd anticipated. My pulse was more insistent than the time I'd found a rare herb in the forest, which was medically suspicious enough that I briefly considered I might be the one who needed medicine.

"Kahron."

I called his name in barely more than a whisper. No response. He really was asleep. Only then did I relax and look at him freely.

And then a single green leaf detached from a branch above and drifted down to settle on his chest.

I reached out to remove it—

—and found myself looking directly into Kahron's open eyes.

"Oh!"

My hand jerked sideways in surprise, my upper body tilted forward, and—

Fwump.

By the time I recovered my senses, I'd already collapsed face-down onto Kahron's chest. Solid. Beneath me.

"...It's warm weather, isn't it."

I rearranged my still-outstretched hand into a fanning shape and began fanning him.

He looked at me as though my existence was fundamentally baffling to him.

"Are you out of your mind?"