It Wasn’t Me She Fell For...

“…Mm.”

I heard a small voice, and I lifted my face from the document I had been reading.

Lady Shitoen’s eyelids trembled as if spasming, then slowly opened. Her violet eyes, catching the orange glow of the lantern hanging from the tent ceiling, looked paler than usual.

“Where is this…?”

She lifted her head a little from the feather pillow, then frowned again. Her stomach might still have been hurting.

I rose from the chair and moved to the bed.

When I sat right beside her, it creaked loudly.

It was only something made by lining up boxes, laying planks across them that could also serve as shields, and spreading a mat on top, but it was not such a bad bed. I thought so, at least.

“We’re inside a tent. Don’t you remember?”

I spoke to her in the language of Tania. There were only the two of us inside the tent anyway.

It had already been four hours since we carried her here from the carriage.

The sun had set, and it was quite dark outside.

But since I had borrowed over a dozen guards from the lord’s mansion, there was no issue with safety. In fact, they had blazing bonfires lit everywhere, and although the roadblock had been lifted, my knights were still manning the checkpoint.

“…Yeah.”

A drowsy reply slipped from her lips.

I thought she might still be half asleep.

While she was lying on the bed, Eaton had made her swallow several doses of powdered medicine with water. When I asked what kind of medicine it was, it turned out almost all of it was sleeping medicine.

“Isn’t there some kind of medicine that actually cures it?”

When I asked that without thinking, Eaton treated me like an idiot. There was no such thing, she said.

Apparently, all she could do was sleep and endure the pain.

Just hearing that made me feel sorry for her. So she had to live with this kind of pain every month.

“Does it still hurt anywhere?”

I leaned my face closer. “Mm…” After letting out a syrupy little sound, she groaned for a long moment, “Mmm—…” Her brows were drawn together, so it probably hurt.

Come to think of it, Eaton had been rubbing her lower back, so I stood up and moved around to her back.

I knelt on the bed again and rubbed around her waist over the blanket.

“Like this?”

“No. Not like that.”

Oh, that was a very clear denial. Unusual for Lady Shitoen.

“Press.”

“Press?”

Press how? While I was hesitating, she said in an almost annoyed voice, “Hard, with your thumbs.”

“At the base of my spine! Like, really press.”

“Where is the base of your spine!?”

“At the very bottom of the backbone… A little lower!”

She shouted at me.

I panicked, I panicked.

“All right, then I’ll press.”

When I pulled back the blanket, I saw that she was curled on her side with her knees drawn up.

At some point, Eaton must have changed her into nightclothes. With the dress, there had been so many frills and layers I could not tell, but like this, I could probably figure out where her waist was.

I pressed with my thumbs around where I thought it might be, but—

…How should I put this?

She was so slender. Or rather, bony. Was this her backbone? What was this.

“A little lower.”

“Lower?”

Lady Shitoen usually spoke politely even in the language of Tania.

She really must have been groggy from the medicine.

She spoke to me in a familiar way.

“Lower. Press hard.”

“When you say lower…”

That was basically her butt, right here!!!!

Here? Really, here?!

Timidly, very timidly, I pressed with my thumbs right at the very edge where her back and butt practically met.

“There… Ahh…”

The moment she let out a breathy little sound, I yelped and threw both hands up.

“Keep going!”

Then she scolded me right away.

W-w-w-wait. I had no ulterior motives. I was just desperate.

“Uh, here? Here, right?”

When I pressed hard with my fingers on the place where she had made that strange sound earlier, she said things like “Haaah…” and “That feels good,” and honestly, what was I supposed to do?

But.

It definitely seemed to be making her feel better.

The tension faded from her face, and her voice grew quieter and quieter, all soft and melting.

“Shitoen? Are you sleepy?”

Thinking she might drift off again, I spoke to her.

“Yeah.”

She answered.

And then.

She began speaking words I had never heard before.

Without thinking, I stopped moving.

Huh, what language was that? I had never heard it before.

She must have already been half asleep.

She did not tell me to continue or not to stop.

She just kept speaking.

In a language I could not identify.

“Atsuhito.”

Rolling over, she looked at me.

My reflection was in her violet eyes.

“Atsuhito…”

She murmured it, and tears spilled one after another from her eyes.

Before I knew it, she was holding my hand.

I— could not move.

Lady Shitoen was still saying things in that language I could not understand.

But.

It sounded.

Very much like a pleading tone.

And just like that.

Her eyes slowly fell shut.

As if pushed out, several streams of tears ran down Lady Shitoen’s cheeks.

Her tears looked like the earrings I had bought yesterday.

Holding the tent’s light inside them, taking the shape of droplets, they trickled down one after another.

Watching them, I became certain.

She had.

Fallen for something inside me.

She had not fallen for me.