“Well, my family’s land is near the border with Xiarmah, you know. It’s a peaceful country, but we all learn how to defend ourselves just in case, both with a sword and with our bare hands.”
I see… They’re always preparing in case a war starts, basically.
Sorcié was at peace right now, but back at the academy I’d learned that this wasn’t always the case, and that, during wartime, nobles who lived near the borders would have to lead soldiers into battle. Since I was born and raised in the capital, far away from any border, I had just forgotten all about that.
“So you’re really strong, huh…” I remarked.
“As long as my opponent isn’t armed, I guess I can hold my own,” he conceded, but just like Maria, he had a habit of always being humble, so this probably meant that he’d never lose against anyone unless they had a weapon on them.
I knew that he was a powerful magic wielder, but realizing how strong he was with his hands came as a surprise. Despite the urgency of the situation, his movements during that little brawl were so beautiful that I could do nothing but stare at him.
So he’s handsome, smart, strong, and he’s even a department director at the Magical Ministry… He’s great. If only he could hold his own when faced with girls too, then he’d be perfect. So much wasted potential… I thought, staring at his face, and then he stopped walking all of a sudden. Huh?! Why’d he stop all of a sudden? Could he read my thoughts just now?! I panicked, but that didn’t turn out to be the case.
He entered a shop on the side of the street that we were walking on and spoke to someone inside. “Thank you for looking after him while I was away.”
“Oh, don’t mention it. And make sure you don’t get lost again, all right?” someone replied, and then Cyrus bowed and walked out, followed by a little kid. It was the kid I’d seen earlier—he had found him and brought him to safety.
“Is this the child you mentioned, Katarina?” he asked me.
“Yes, he is. Is he one of the orphanage’s?”
“He must be, since I saw him there earlier. He won’t say a word though,” he replied, looking distraught.
As for the kid, he wasn’t even looking at either of us, and he seemed annoyed to have been found by Cyrus.
“This girl right here,” Cyrus informed the boy, “saw you wander off by yourself, and had it not been for her, who knows what could have happened to you. You should thank her.”
The boy kept looking away from us without saying a word. He didn’t get lost, did he? He was probably trying to run away…
“Now, let’s go back to the orphanage before we run into any more trouble,” Cyrus declared.
“Nobody asked you to find me…” I heard the kid whisper. Just as I had thought, this probably meant that we’d caught him while he was trying to run away, but I couldn’t understand why. I wanted to ask him what he wanted to do all by himself, but as he walked by Cyrus’s side, he gave off a don’t talk to me aura so strong that I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Hmm? What?
I stopped and looked around. I couldn’t see anything out of place.
“What is the matter, Lady Katarina?” Maria asked.
“I just felt as if we were being watched by someone…but I must have imagined it.”
I started walking again. Truth be told, I didn’t believe that I had imagined it. I had experienced the same feeling back at the Ministry before… I could feel that someone with bad intentions was staring at me, giving me goosebumps.
However, I didn’t want to scare Maria, who’d already had enough scary experiences for today, so I just walked as close to Cyrus as I could. After that, I didn’t feel watched anymore, and we safely reached the orphanage.
“We’re back,” I told one of the orphanage employees once we were inside.
The woman turned around to face us, making her ponytail sway in the air.
“Welcome ba… Liam!” she exclaimed, surprised. Liam must have been the boy that was with us.
She bowed apologetically to Cyrus and asked him where he’d found Liam.
“In a back alley near the city’s center,” he replied.
“Again…?” Sighing to herself, the woman held her head in her hands.
So, not only was Liam trying to run away, but today’s had not even been his first attempt. The employee looked totally exasperated.
“I’m sorry, and thank you so much for bringing him back. I’ll take care of him now, so please go to the kitchen. The children are all waiting for you,” the woman said, snapping out of her moment of desperation.
I’d almost forgotten it with all that happened, but that’s right. We were out to buy ingredients. But even if I went to the kitchen with Maria, I can’t really help her cook. And I want to learn more about Liam too.
“Excuse me.” I turned to the orphanage employee. “I was the one who saw him out there, and I also saw him walking by himself at the orphanage earlier on. I’m kinda worried about him, so I’d like to stay with him for a bit… May I?”
She looked surprised at my straightforward request, but then she smiled at me.
“I’m happy that you would care so much about one of our children. Unfortunately, however, I cannot give you permission myself. We’d need to ask the director. Would that be fine with you?”
“Of course,” I replied.
I could see that Maria and Cyrus only looked slightly confused. On the other hand, Liam’s cold stare betrayed just how much I annoyed him.
“Follow me then. I’ll show you where her office is,” she invited, and I followed her and Liam there.
“Miss Maggie, may we come in?”
“Sure, come inside,” Maggie replied to us through the door, and we walked into her office.
“Oh? Now these are three people I didn’t expect to visit me together.” As she looked at us in surprise, the woman who was with us explained the situation.
“This girl,” the woman then pointed at me, “would like to spend some time with Liam. May she?”
It all came down to Maggie’s decision. If she said that I couldn’t stay with Liam, I would have to give up.
“Oh?” Maggie looked me in the eye, and I returned her stare. After a while, she smiled at me.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine if it’s her. She has my permission.”
“Thank you!” I said, bowing at her. I wasn’t so sure about why she’d been convinced to give me permission just by staring at me, but I was happy about it anyway.
Once that was out of the way, Maggie moved on to the main point of discussion on the agenda.
“Now, Liam,” she began, looking at the boy, “do you know how many times you’ve tried running away already?”
He didn’t reply. He just defiantly avoided her gaze.
“Three, Liam. Thankfully, this time our guests found you right away, but the other two times it didn’t go so well, did it? Everyone in the orphanage had to look for you, and we even had to ask for help from the townspeople. I thought I had already told you more than enough times that you shouldn’t do anything like this anymore.”
So this was far from his first time trying to run away…
“Why are you doing this? Both other times you apologized and told us that you wouldn’t do it anymore, but you didn’t tell us what reason you had for doing it in the first place. Let me ask you the same thing I asked you before. Did anything bad happen to you here? I know that it can’t be easy for you, since you just moved in from another country. If you’d just tell me, we could come up with a solution together. If the problem is that you can’t get along with the other children, we can also think of transferring you to a different orphanage.”
Maggie sounded calm and reassuring, but somehow still authoritative.
“Excuse me,” I whispered to the orphanage employee standing next to me. “Liam is from another country?”
That part had caught my attention.
“Yes. A while back there was some trouble involving Ethenell at an international port, and he was rescued there.”
“I see…” I replied nonchalantly, but I was actually shocked.
Could she be talking about the kidnapping incident that I was involved with?! That was trouble all right.
Cezar and the people at the Magical Ministry had made sure that the public wouldn’t know about the kidnapping incident or the human trafficking, but obviously the rumors of some kind of nondescript “trouble” happening had already spread.
I don’t remember seeing this kid… I wonder if he was there back then? But he doesn’t seem to recognize me, and I heard that, apart from the ones I met, there were more kids who had been rescued, so he must have been one of them.
I was also surprised to learn that those kidnappers—those scum—didn’t just snatch Sorcié kids, but children from other countries as well.
“I can’t help you if you don’t help me, Liam,” Maggie spoke with quiet strength in her voice, but the boy didn’t utter a word.
I could only imagine how sad it must have been for him, being kidnapped, sent into a different country, and then finding himself in an orphanage.
Then, I guess that there’s only one solution…
“Do you want to go back to your country?” I asked.
Liam twitched as if he was startled, and then he stared at me with fire in his eyes. I had probably hit the nail on the head.
“Is that so, Liam? Do you want to go back there? But I heard that you were living by yourself in the slums there,” Maggie asked him, looking at him with surprise, and the boy clicked his tongue in annoyance.
“Yeah, I wanna go back to the slums. So what?”
“But what are you going to do there? Here you are safe, you have food to eat, clothes to wear, and a roof over your head,” Maggie replied.
“I hate this prissy, boring country. It makes me sick.”
“Liam…” The old woman furrowed her brow, not knowing what to say.
“I wanna go back. Lemme go home!” he shouted.
“But that would be too dangerous… You might not make it out safely this time around,” Maggie tried to convince him, but to no avail.
“I wanna go! Lemme go!” he kept shouting.
“Excuse me…” I raised my hand, wanting to do something about this awkward situation.
The orphanage employee didn’t look very pleased with that, as if it wasn’t really a good time for me to talk, but Maggie gave me permission to speak.
“If he wants to go back to his country so badly… Can’t you just let him go then?”
Liam, shocked, stared at me.
“Huh?! What are you talking about?!” the employee sputtered. “Send a child back to the slums?! Do you think you can just say whatever you want because you’re not responsible for him like we are?!”
She was furious, but Maggie gestured for her to stop.
“What do you mean?” the director inquired. Both she and Liam were now staring at me.
“I mean exactly what I said. Just let him go back to his country.”
“Y-You…” The employee was giving me the angriest of looks, but I was so used to being scolded that it barely registered.
“But,” I continued, “he’d need to prepare himself first.”
“Prepare myself?” he asked, confused.
“Yes. Here at the orphanage you can learn a lot of things that you couldn’t learn in the slums,” I explained, walking closer to him and crouching down to his eye level. “One of my friends is from the Ethenell slums, you know. Fortunately for him, when he was still a kid, he met a man from another country who taught him all kinds of things.”
“The Ethenell slums…?” the boy repeated contemplatively. I could tell that I had his full attention; maybe his home country was Ethenell too.
“And my friend, he told me that this knowledge is what helped him survive. You see, Liam, knowledge is a weapon that you can’t do without.”
“Really?”
“Yes. He told me that on a battlefield you need a sword or a spear, but that in daily life you need knowledge. Sounds cool, doesn’t it?” With a smile, I added, “So, if you want to go back, you are going to need a lot of knowledge. You can always go back after learning as much as you can here, right?”
He stared at me wordlessly, but I could tell that the light in his eyes had changed.
It took a while for the silence in the room to be broken by the sound of someone chuckling. I looked up and saw that it was Maggie.
“Ahahaha, I think we won’t have any more problems now,” she declared. She clapped her hands together, as if to place a period on that whole topic, and said, “Well, look at the time. We must go and help with preparing dinner.”
She then led all three of us to the dining hall. Liam remained silent the whole time, and just stared at the floor instead of giving me any more angry looks.
Maggie, keeping her voice down so that only I could hear her, thanked me. “Thank you, Lady Katarina. The rumors about you at the academy were true.”
I knew that she was aware of Cyrus’s identity, but it turned out she knew who I was as well.
But wait, what rumors is she talking about? Good ones? Bad ones?
I wanted to ask her, but she smiled at me and started walking faster, leaving me with no opportunity to do so.
★★★★★★
I, Cyrus Lanchester, was nervously walking toward the kitchen. The reason for my nervousness was that Maria Campbell, a girl I happened to like, was walking next to me.
Had this happened at work, where she also happened to be my subordinate, I would be so focused on my job that her proximity would not cause me any anxiety, but now, finding myself alone with her in my off time, I could barely stay calm. It wasn’t so bad while Katarina was with us, but, now that it was just the two of us, it was much worse. My own reaction made me feel pathetic.
That being said, interacting with Katarina on a regular basis had helped me get used to girls, if only in part. I had never told her, or anybody else, but at the start of my academy years, I was once invited to tea by a noble lady from the same class as me. I still hadn’t learned to hide my accent or to behave according to the local etiquette, and I had been thoroughly made fun of for it. That made my fear of girls even worse.
After that traumatic experience, I started assuming that all the girls living in the capital were refined and fashionable and that they had nothing but disdain for country folk like me. However, meeting someone as unique as Katarina made me realize that not everyone was like the noble ladies who had made fun of me. She had something about her that reminded me of the old ladies who worked on the fields back in my hometown, and that allowed me to talk with her without any problem.
But when it came to Maria, I seemed to be unable to get used to her company. I always became nervous. When I was around her, I couldn’t act in the same relaxed way as I did with Katarina. I definitely didn’t want to show Maria my less cool side.
Today, when we were out shopping and I saw a group of men harass Maria, I felt the angriest I had ever been in my whole life. Seeing them touch her with their filthy hands, I wanted to scare them a little bit, so they’d leave her alone…but I ended up knocking out four of them.
She probably didn’t notice it, but I went so hard on the one who dared lay his hand on her that he wouldn’t be able to get back up for several hours. I considered myself a cool and collected individual, but, to my surprise, I wasn’t immune to rage.
Up until recently, I thought of girls as alien creatures who only existed to make me miserable, and I never spoke with them outside of work, let alone thought of romancing one. I took this situation for granted, until, on that fateful day, I saw Maria’s smile. I wasn’t satisfied with things as they were anymore. I wanted to talk with her, get closer to her.
On the other hand, despite this desire of mine, even just breathing became a struggle when she was close to me.
I wish I could touch her. I couldn’t possibly touch her. But I wish I could touch her…
I wasn’t even sure of my own thoughts myself. Katarina, to thank me for teaching her about farming, made several attempts to help me out, but I didn’t even have the courage to follow her lead. I wished I could start my life all over again.
That being said, today I made a step in the right direction. Heeding Katarina’s instructions, I held Maria’s hand. It was soft, much softer than I could have ever imagined.
I shall never wash this hand of mine again… No, that would be gross… But, if it’s just for a few days…
“Excuse me, Mister Cyrus.”
“U-Ugh! Yes?” I replied as I was startled out of my unsharable thoughts.
“That martial art that you used earlier… Do you think I would be able to use it too?”
“Oh, of course. Even women without much strength can use it.”
“Then…would you teach it to me?” Maria asked, fiercely staring at me. I could tell just how serious she was.
“That may have looked easy, but I assure you it’s not. Just being taught how it works isn’t necessarily enough.”
One needed to apply the correct amount of force to very specific spots in order for that technique to have any effect. Mastering it could be difficult. I asked her if she still wanted to learn it despite this, and she nodded in reply.
“My Light Magic is of no use in situations like the one we ran into today,” she explained.
“That may be true, but it was an exceptional situation. In general, you would always be around someone who could protect you. There is no need to learn to defend yourself to such an extent…”
Maria was a Wielder of Light, which already made her rare and valuable for our country. Furthermore, she was young and kindhearted. There was no shortage of men who would gladly protect her from any sort of trouble. And yet, she demurred.
“I don’t want to only be able to rely on others to protect me. I want to be able to protect those dear to me as well.”
The strength that radiated from her face as she spoke made her appear even more beautiful than usual.
Oh… My heart is racing…again.
I had believed that I was as infatuated with her as a man could possibly be, but this fighting spirit within her made me fall even deeper in love.
Who would have thought that, one day, I’d feel this way for a girl?
“As you wish. I will teach you in your spare time then,” I assented, having to muster all of my willpower to look away from those gorgeous eyes.
“Thank you so much,” she said, elated, and when I looked back at her, I was greeted by a smile too adorable for words to describe.
After that, my head went blank, and it stayed that way for quite a while.
★★★★★★
After eating dinner at the orphanage, it was time for us to leave. Since it was already late, Cyrus arranged for the carriages to carry each of us all the way to our homes. Jeord and Alan headed to the castle, Mary to her home, the Ascart siblings to theirs, Maria and Cyrus (who was once again riding with the coachman) to the Magical Ministry dormitories, and Keith and I to Claes Manor.
Everyone had told me about their day while we were eating dinner, and despite some of them initially saying that they wished they could have just played with the kids too, they all seemed to have had fun in the end.
Even after Nicol was relieved of his teaching duties, Jeord and Keith continued helping the kids with their homework. Their little students said that they were even better than their teachers. That wasn’t a surprise to me, considering how I had relied on those two to get through my Academy of Magic studies.
The same also applied to Mary and Sophia. The children were still asking questions well after their lesson time had ended. They both said that they enjoyed the opportunity to feel like an older sister for once.
I mostly talked about my games with the children, including the details about Alan and Nicol. I skipped most of the details about my shopping trip with Maria and Cyrus, just mentioning how crowded the town was because of the traveling entertainers.
I didn’t want to make my friends worry by telling them of the incident with the drunks, and I still wasn’t sure of what to make of Liam’s story. I did end up telling Keith about him, however, after we had told everyone else goodbye and were riding home by ourselves.
“Why do you think he would want to go back to the slums rather than stay in the orphanage?” I asked my brother.
I had used Sora’s words to persuade Liam, but I honestly still had no idea why he would want to go back to his home country in the first place. Back there, staying alive was already a struggle, while here he had three hot meals to eat every day without fail. The latter looked much better to me. I wanted to ask him directly, but he just had dinner by himself and then quickly went back to his room before I could do so. I noticed a hint of anxiety in his face that had me slightly worried.
“Hmm,” Keith replied after thinking for a while, “maybe he misses his family and friends?”
“He supposedly doesn’t have a family there, but maybe he did have friends,” I agreed. That was certainly a possibility.
“But if it were me, if there were people I cared about who lived in a dangerous place, I’d have them come to safety rather than try to go back to them.”
He was right—even if Liam did have any friends he was worried about, he wouldn’t be able to help them just by going back. I still couldn’t figure out that child’s motivations. I thoughtfully cocked my head to one side.
Keith spoke up again. “I had a rough childhood, but it certainly wouldn’t compare to living in the slums, so I’m afraid that I can’t really understand what goes through the head of someone who was raised there. Maybe you should ask someone who has that kind of past,” he suggested.
“You’re right! Thanks, Keith.”
I decided that the next day, at work, I would ask Sora, who had actually lived in the slums.
As soon as I reached the Magical Ministry, I walked into the Magical Tool Laboratory. Newcomers like me and Sora came in early to prepare the office for the day.
“Good morning, Sora.”
“Morning,” he replied, stifling a yawn, and I lost no time in telling him about Liam.
“He’s lucky enough to be in an orphanage and he wants to go back to the slums? Weird kid,” was Sora’s first reaction.
To be honest, I had to agree with him.
“I thought that maybe you’d understand him, since you also grew up there.”
“Sure, I grew up in the same place, but I’m not him. I have no idea what goes through that kid’s head. I’d be more than happy to stay in this safe, clean place rather than have to go back to that dump.” He sounded proud of himself. It was the kind of thing that I expected him to say.
“Oh, right, I was also thinking that maybe he has some friends back in his home country, and he misses them. Do you think that’d make sense?”
“Hmm… It’s not impossible, but then it’d make no sense to want to go back there by himself. If it were me, I’d get a grown-up to come along. Possibly one who’s easy to talk into stuff,” he mused, as if he was retracing the conversation Keith and I had yesterday.
Even someone like me, who was raised in Sorcié, away from all danger, realized that going back to the slums alone wouldn’t be of much use, so there was no way that Liam, who grew up there, didn’t understand it. But that meant that I didn’t have the first clue about Liam’s reason for wanting to go back home.
I suddenly remembered what he had said about life in Sorcié.
“You know, he said that this place is too ‘prissy’ for him. That it’s boring here. Maybe, more than wanting to go back to the slums, he just doesn’t like the orphanage…”
“Personally, I’d take a boring place over a dangerous one every day of the week…” Sora’s rebuttal was all the more persuasive coming from someone who had experienced life in the slums firsthand.
I realized that asking Sora was probably not going to help me, and my look must have betrayed that thought, since he added, “I’m not good with people’s feelings and other delicate stuff like that. You’d do better to ask someone who is.”
“And who would that be?”
“There happens to be someone like that right in our department, and you’re going to get private lessons from him later today. Sounds like the perfect occasion to ask him,” he responded, making it rather obvious who he was talking about.
“You mean Raphael?”
“Yeah. He’s good at understanding people. If he weren’t, he wouldn’t be able to keep this department running despite Larna and all the other weirdos we have in here. You want to know what that kid feels like, right? Then Raphael’s probably your guy.”
I had never thought of it in that way, but what Sora had said made sense. Raphael had always been a people person, even back at the academy in the student council. It felt like he could read people’s feelings and direct them accordingly, and he was doing something like that during the Dark Magic lessons with me too. He was always thinking of how to make them entertaining and avoid having them be too hard for me. And since I was going to have another lesson with him today, that was, just as Sora had said, the perfect occasion to ask him for some advice on Liam’s situation. Thinking that Raphael was indeed my guy, I tried to finish the morning preparations in the office as fast as possible.
“Shall we start today’s lesson?” Raphael asked after he walked in the room behind me.
“Actually, there’s something I’d like to ask you before that,” I answered, and I told him Liam’s story.
I tried to give him as many details as possible, including how we had gone to the orphanage, how we had found him walking into a back alley while we were out shopping, and what he had told me in Maggie’s office. There was a lot to explain, and I wasn’t very good with words. I jumped around from one part of the story to the other, often forgetting to give enough context, but Raphael never interrupted me and listened carefully to everything I said.
“Prissy and boring, huh… Do you remember what his face looked like while he said that?”
“Yes. It didn’t seem like he was actually disgusted. He looked sad more than anything,” I replied.
That was what worried me so much. There was a weird contrast, a disconnect between what he said and the way he said it. I couldn’t ignore that if I wanted to.
“I see…” Raphael muttered to himself, before starting to silently think about what I had told him.
Even for someone like him, trying to understand the feelings of a child he had never met must have been no easy task. He also had a tendency to worry too much about everything, so I didn’t want to trouble him with extra stuff to think about.
I should take this matter in my own hands. I can’t rely so much on him.
“Actually, you know, you don’t nee—” I tried to tell him as much, but he actually started talking.
“I have never met this child, nor have I ever experienced life in the slums. Therefore, the best I can come up with is a hypothesis based on speculation. Would you still like to hear it?” he inquired, his brows lowered toward his eyes.
I nodded.
“Every once in a while—very rarely, truth to be told—I find myself overtaken by a sudden fear: the fear that out of the blue, the happy life I am living could be completely shattered.”
I was wondering why he would talk about himself to explain his ideas about Liam, but knowing that Raphael wouldn’t say something like that unless he had a good reason to, I kept listening.
“This is definitely because of what I have been through in the past. I lived happily with my mother until the Dieke family took all of that away, throwing me into despair. The only reason I had to stay alive was to find revenge. It was a living hell.”
Raphael’s beautiful face turned slightly darker.
“Until one day, I took the hand that you had offered me and found happiness once again. Now I am surrounded by people that I care about, in a place where I can smile and have them smile back at me.” He emphasized his point by giving me a feeble smile, gentle and sad, that reminded me of that day when I saw him cry so painfully.
He told us that he hated us, that he wanted us to go away, but he cried as one who had been hurt. It felt like a very remote memory, but it had only been a few years since then. In that time he had been able to face his trauma, turn his life around, and get to the point where he could care and worry about other people. Raphael Wolt was truly an incredible human being.
“Despite this present happiness…I can’t shake off the fear. The fear of losing it all, of having it taken away without a reason just like before. Because then, I wouldn’t know what to do,” he added quietly, turning his eyes down.
“I won’t let anyone do that to you!” I shouted without really thinking about it. “If anyone tries to take this happiness away from you, I’ll beat them right up!”
At first, he was surprised by my sudden shouting, but then he started chuckling.
“Thank you, Katarina. I’m happy that you would say that, but I’m not a kid anymore, and if somebody tried to threaten this life that I have built for myself, trust me…this time I’d fight back.”
The confidence in his voice convinced me that there was no need to worry about him anymore.
“I can all say this because I’m an adult now,” he continued, “but it’s different for a child. One day you find a comfortable place for yourself, and the next you lose it because a grown-up has decided that that’s how things should be.”
“So, what you mean is…”
“That maybe this Liam child fears the same thing. That even if he were to find happiness, he would have no guarantee that he wouldn’t lose it all of a sudden. Of course, it’s possible that he doesn’t even fully understand this himself since he’s only a child. But I think that what drives him may be fear of loss, rather than hate.”
Not hate, but fear of losing the happiness that he’s found. That was only Raphael’s hypothesis, but what Liam said and did that day, and the look on his face… It all seemed to make sense.
“I think you could be right, Raphael. I’ll try to talk to him about that the next time I see him.”
“Please do. And if he really is scared…”
“Yes? What should I do?”
“Please tell him that it’s fine to take the hands of those who reach out to you. Tell him that it’s fine to reach out to others for help too. Tell him that there’s always someone who will go through life together with him.” He smiled at me kindly. The sheer beauty of that smile made me understand why everyone was crazy about him.
Asking him for help was the right thing to do!
I fanned my face with my hand, trying to cool off the heat that Raphael’s handsomeness had caused.
“Still, it’s incredible that you’d be able to theorize so much just from what I told you,” I complimented him.
“It’s just that the things he said reminded me of my own feelings,” he calmly explained. He then mentioned that, if I managed to talk with Liam again, I could ask him for more advice. “Oh, right,” he added, trying to bring our discussion of Liam and his situation to a conclusion, “parting with the happiness that you’ve grown accustomed to is dreadful. But…”