“Everyone, come out for a second. Xion’s back!”
Rebecca, who had been frozen in a daze, came to herself at the faint voice drifting down from overhead.
Realizing instinctively she shouldn’t be here, Rebecca hurried up the stairs without even taking the time to check the sword properly.
Then she closed the basement door and laid the soiled carpet back in its original place.
“Rebecca.”
“Gasp!”
At Xion’s voice right behind her, Rebecca started and sprang to her feet.
“Xion… You’re safe. Thank goodness.”
She tried hard to sound casual as she spoke—had he noticed her voice trembling?
Rebecca forced a smile as if nothing had happened, struggling to calm her heart pounding like mad.
Was it her imagination? Xion’s expression felt sharper than usual.
❖ ❖ ❖
“Oh my, Xion!”
When Xion and Reinhild had just arrived in Root, the village was in an uproar.
The entire village was running through the streets looking for Xion.
As he approached asking what had happened, people swarmed around him.
“You’re alive! That’s good. What a relief.”
“Hey, over here! Xion’s right here!”
“Where on earth did you go? We were all worried!”
Only then did Xion realize he’d run out of the village without a word, focused solely on Reinhild.
Normally, no one would have cared if Xion slipped out of the village and left home empty for a few days, but this was right after the knights had ransacked the place. It was natural the villagers were terrified.
They must have kept searching, worried he’d been dragged off by the knights or brutally killed.
“I’m all right. Thank you for worrying about me.”
“That’s not the issue right now. Hurry and get home.”
The villagers hurriedly pulled Xion along and took him home.
When Xion opened the door and stepped inside, the first thing that caught his eye was neither the crumbled wall visible through the open door nor the filthy water pooled on the floor.
What drew his gaze was Rebecca crouched in the kitchen, touching the carpet.
“Rebecca.”
Rebecca looked flustered at the sight of Xion, but she waved a hand as if it were nothing and backed away.
“The carpet was wet, so I was going to hang it up to dry.”
“It’s fine.”
At Xion’s words, Rebecca withdrew without any hesitation.
A demeanor clearly different from usual.
Xion watched Rebecca hurriedly leave the house.
Simply standing still, eyes fixed on her.
“No way!”
It was Reinhild’s voice that broke the silence.
Xion turned his head immediately at the sound.
Reinhild stood in front of the doorway with a desolate expression, staring at the collapsed wall.
“Our house…”
Our house.
It sounded wonderful.
Feeling the unpleasant emotion blooming in one corner of his chest subside, Xion went to Reinhild and gently pulled him into a hug.
“Xion, our house collapsed.”
Reinhild was furious, as if he would go find the one who caused this and smash them in kind right now.
The room where memories with Xion had piled up was a wreck, and the bed he had missed so much was more than half burned. Water mixed with dirt and ash had soaked the entire room, making restoration near impossible.
“My bed…”
Strictly speaking, it was Xion’s bed, but he had no room to care about that.
A not-so-soft bed, so that if you lay on it all night it would sink where you lay; the bed that, even when he woke and Xion wasn’t beside him, made him feel as if they were together…!
After every hardship, they’d finally returned to Root, only to have a broken house left to them.
Looking at the collapsed house made Reinhild feel as if his world were collapsing too.
Just then, as Reinhild stood dazed, one of the village humans approached and spoke to Xion.
“It’ll take quite a while to repair the house.”
Only then did Reinhild notice that humans had crowded in to watch everything, and he sidled behind Xion.
Hiding now was no use, though.
“While we were looking for you, we looked around, and those damned knights had all cleared out. Bastards. Anyway, you can probably fix the place with a bit more peace of mind. If we help, it’ll be done in no time.”
“It’s all right.”
“All right, my foot! Don’t worry too much about the house. The problem is you don’t have anywhere to stay in the meantime.”
As he said that, the man looked not at Xion but at Reinhild.
‘What does he expect me to do?’
Reinhild didn’t ignore the challenge the human seemed to be picking and glared right back.
“Ahem, ahem.”
Reinhild didn’t know why, but the man turned his reddening face aside with a fake cough.
There was clearly something wrong with his blood circulation.
“Rain. How about going to Audrit while we repair the house?”
Xion stepped lightly in front of Reinhild as he said it.
Somehow the phrasing sounded odd.
It sounded not like “let’s go to Audrit together,” but like he was telling him to go alone.
No way.
“We’re going together, right?”
“I have to fix the house.”
“Then I’ll stay here too.”
“I can’t let you sleep on a cold floor, Rein. Please wait just one day. I’ll finish the repairs before dawn tomorrow and come get you.”
They’d only just been reunited, and now they had to be far apart.
Reinhild grabbed Xion’s clothes with a shocked face.
‘I don’t want to leave this place.’
He held back from asking whether rich Xion couldn’t just rent out an entire house from some villager and stay there. Soft-hearted Xion was pretending to be poor out of consideration so the others wouldn’t feel the wealth gap.
But being far from Xion was worse than being sealed in a cave again.
‘What do I do?’
As Reinhild only hesitated, unable to decide, one of the men tossed out a suggestion.
“Then how about staying at Mr. Philip’s place?”
Easy to throw out any opinion when it’s not his problem.
“They have rooms to spare and like having guests.”
“Right, that should do it. Those folks would tell you to stay not just a night but ten.”
“Mr. Philip was just over there, so I asked him a moment ago, and he said you can stay as long as you like!”
Reinhild hadn’t said a word, yet the humans were getting excited and deciding everything among themselves.
It was the first time he’d been surrounded by humans who weren’t trying to kill him, and the way they acted as if they’d known him for ages left him bewildered.
“Rein. Let’s go to Audrit.”
Regardless of what the humans were saying, Xion ignored all that Philip talk and spoke firmly.
At that moment Reinhild snapped to his senses.
If he wasn’t going to that human Philip’s house, he’d have to go to Audrit.
He did not want to be so far from Xion.
Audrit without Xion was, to Reinhild, only a cold, hungry, lonely place.
“I’ll go—Philip’s house!”
Reinhild quickly shouted to the humans before Xion could say anything.
Being shut in a space with humans instead of Xion was horrifying, but being far from Xion was worse.
For now he’d pretend to stay at another human’s house and, after some time, slip back to Xion’s side.
‘If I come back late at night, Xion won’t be able to send me to Audrit.’
The plan was perfect.
“Good, very good thinking. But where did Rebecca go? She was just here.”
The people suddenly backed away en masse, calling for Rebecca.
Before Xion could stop him, Reinhild hurried out after them.
❖ ❖ ❖
“Rein…”
Xion hadn’t expected Reinhild to just follow someone else like that, and he was taken aback.
But the look in Reinhild’s eyes as he left the house was too earnest to stop him.
“Sigh.”
Looking at the collapsed house, he could only sigh.
Fixing the house wouldn’t be hard, but it pained him that he’d have to be apart from Reinhild in the meantime.
By now he’d thought they’d be lying together on the bed, chatting softly.
As it was, he had no choice but to finish the repairs as quickly as possible and bring Reinhild back.
‘I should finish before night falls.’
If he temporarily lined the wall with cloth to block the wind, it should do somehow.
But there was something he had to do first.
Step, step,
Xion crossed the wet floor toward the kitchen.
There were suspicious marks left on the carpet.
A distinct handprint.
The trace of someone touching the wet carpet, then the moisture drying and fixing it in place.
Faint enough not to catch the eye, but to Xion it stood out as if that part alone were magnified.
“…”
Xion slowly lifted the carpet.
Under it he saw traces where water had been wiped away.
Did someone cleaning up the fire scene open the basement door? It had been a mistake not to seal the door leading down.
Creak—
When he opened it, he was sure.
Someone had gone down there.
Xion slowly straightened up.
“Rebecca…”
He recalled Rebecca, who had just been laying the carpet back down when they arrived.
And the fact that the place Reinhild had gone to was the house where Rebecca and her father, Philip, lived.
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