Volmo.

Volmo.

“If anything, it’s better this way. It was risky to begin with, clinging to that one woman as your only lifeline out here in a foreign land. From now on, you can lean on me more.”

“I….”

Ugli straightened Jack’s sleeve for him, smoothing it into place as he spoke.

“You don’t need to worry so much.”

“Really? I won’t worry, then.”

“No — I think maybe you ought to worry a little.”

“Then I’ll worry a little.”

Jack finished chewing the last pieces of apple still in his mouth and swallowed them down. Only after he’d licked the sugar clean off his teeth with his tongue did he open his mouth again.

“It’s a secret, but… I’m not that smart.”

“Don’t say things like that.”

“No, really. The truth is, I’m pretty dumb. Surprised you, didn’t it? Doesn’t really show on the outside.”

“…Yeah.”

“So when I think deeply about things, I don’t end up with any better answer than when I think shallowly about them. So….”

The last piece of apple candy, clinging precariously to its stick, finally tumbled to the ground.

“Worrying a little is hard. I’ll just not worry at all.”

“No, but… Okay. Still, I think at times like this the two of us ought to rely on each other more, not on the castle lord or the madam. Lately—”

“Oh, a butterfly.”

“Jack, wait….”

Ugli hurried after his sweetheart in small, scrambling steps as the man took off chasing the butterfly before him.

“I can’t chase it anymore. Please, just sit down.”

“That butterfly’s pretty fast.”

“I was wondering halfway through whether I should tell you or not, but — that’s not a butterfly, it’s a dragonfly.”

“It’s a butterfly.”

The two sweethearts, having chased the insect, were catching their breath at the edge of the village. The creature had flown up too high and was no longer visible.

“No, anyone could see it was a dragonfly.”

“It only exists in my memory now anyway. So if I remember it as a butterfly, it’s a butterfly.”

Jack caught his breath and looked back down the road they’d come running. The scenery and smell at the village outskirts were different from what they’d been moments before. Beneath their feet the stone path still stretched on, but the surroundings had emptied out: just a mill here, a shed there.

“We’ve come a fair way. Still, it’s nice here. You’d get a good view of the fireworks from here. Should we just stay until sundown?”

“There are no fireworks here.”

“Really? Festivals mean fireworks for us.”

“There aren’t many grown-ups around here who feel happy hearing the sound of explosives.”

Ugli shot the words back with a barbed edge. After steadying his breath once or twice more, he continued in a tone softer than usual, as if to smooth things over.

“We’ll float lanterns instead. That’s got its own charm, you know.”

Picking out a rock that hadn’t gathered much snow, Ugli took off his overcoat and gestured for Jack to sit. Jack perched on one half, letting a whole buttock soak through, and arranged the other half of the coat so that Ugli could sit on it.

“Jack.”

“Hm?”

Ugli barely managed to settle his own behind on the other half, thinking to himself: Wouldn’t it be better for one of us to sit properly than for both of us to get half-soaked?

“Stop pretending to be stupid.”

“Huh?”

“I know you’re not that much of an idiot.”

Jack blinked, his face at a loss for how to respond. Ugli went on.

“You’re not stupid…. …You’re not that stupid.”

“That doesn’t sound like a compliment.”

“That’s because it isn’t.”

He blinked slowly.

“It’s not that you’re stupid. You just don’t think enough for it to matter whether you’re stupid or clever.”

“Well, that’s a kind of skill too. The skill of letting things slide.”

“That’s why I can’t stand the madam.”

At the topic that had come out of nowhere, Jack’s already round eyes opened wider, full-moon-wide.

“I can’t stand that woman. You know what I mean? She sits perfectly still herself, and meanwhile she changes everyone around her. And then she sits there with a face that says, ‘I didn’t do a thing.’”

“…She’s never done anyone any harm.”

“That’s exactly it! Isn’t that idiotic? Why not do harm? She got shoved and swept aside by others and driven all the way out to this frontier. And she doesn’t feel like getting revenge? She isn’t furious? Doesn’t she resent the castle lord? Why not? Is she a fool?”

“Ugli.”

“The fact that that woman doesn’t get hurt — it makes me sick. You know why? I — the people of this northern castle — we’ve spent our whole lives fighting. We’ve scraped and scrabbled just to survive on this barren land. Because if you don’t live like that here, you can’t live at all; so you won’t starve, so you won’t freeze to death… even the castle lord was the same.”

His voice faltered, but he pressed on regardless.

“And her? And you? I can’t afford to live that idly. Someone like me, if I went around forgiving people, I’d have dropped dead long ago.”

“Forgiveness is a good thing. She’s trying to accept it and live well.”

“Why? She was obviously driven out unfairly — anyone can see that — so why accept it? All my life… do you think I’ve spent my life raging at the unfairness of things because I didn’t want an easy life? You think I don’t know how much easier it is to shut your mouth and live cooped up in a room?”

“You’re weird right now. You’re scaring me.”

“We don’t have marble rooms to be cooped up in. The reason she can live that helplessly and still survive is only because she’s so goddamn precious-born!”

“….”

The silence that fell the instant he finished shouting was as awkward as daybreak. Even the woodpecker tapping in the distance had stopped at some point.

“That’s why you annoy me sometimes too. The way you act stupid — it’s the same thing. It’s helplessness. You aren’t dumb; you’ve given up on thinking deeply. You don’t ask questions, and you don’t know how to dig into anything.”

“I don’t get what you’re saying. I’m… I’m… just, you know, originally dumb. That’s why I’ve never been good at understanding what people say, or reading situations, or….”

“Jack.”

Jack stared silently at his suddenly unfamiliar sweetheart.

Ugli had eyes that narrowed and stretched long, the kind where the slightest lift of the cheeks turned his face into a smile. Jack thought the shape was like a crescent moon; the madam called them fox-eyes.

That day, for the first time, Jack noticed his sweetheart’s mist-like pupils. He felt as if he were seeing the whole of his irises for the first time.

“What is it you want me to think about, then?”

“…Be on my side.”

“I’ve always been on your side.”

Jack gave an awkward, half-hearted smile.

“More than your master?”

“We’re all on the same side anyway, aren’t we?”

Ugli glared, his jaw clenched like a man holding something back at the base of his throat.

The wind must have shifted; the smells of liquor and oil from the town no longer drifted over. Instead, from the forest came the scent of pine resin, of earth, of rotting wood, filling the air around them.

“…You know, I think maybe you’re right. I want to understand why you’re like this, but whenever I try to think deeply, my head just stops.”

Rubbing his face dry, Ugli cleared his throat back into his usual gentlemanly voice.

“No, there’s no need for that. It’s just… sorry, I’m tired. There’s been a lot going on lately.”

“Mm, I’ve been asking a lot of you lately too.”

After a short silence, the young knight continued.

“Do you… hate me?”

“If I hated you, why would I put up with your idiocy.”

Jack gazed at him for a moment, and then, as he always did, stopped thinking any further.

Is this… right?

Volmo’s inner self was in turmoil, like a man swept up in a flash flood. He’d been carried off by a surging tide over the mountains to a strange country, and now the current had, naturally as could be, set him down on the ground and stood him back up on his own two feet.

In the place the two attendants had vacated, only Gus, Aspara, and Volmo remained, the three of them awkwardly together. The bustling noise of the crossroads at least filled the stiffened air between them.

Aspara, who had been wandering about looking at stalls and banners with vague interest, finally opened her mouth.

“Boy, what’s the… the word.”

Aspara pondered for a moment.

“You know how sometimes a group of people gets together to do something as a group. Out of social decorum, everyone agrees to do the thing, but really not a single one of them actually wants to do it… and in the end, no one wants to do it, but they all slog through it together and waste time….”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“There was a word for that.”

“I’ll let you know the moment it comes to me. On my life.”

“Don’t stake your life on it….”

He couldn’t come up with a reply, and shuffled back uncertainly.

The situation was like a tactless friend crashing someone else’s date. Then again, anyone dropped between newlyweds to relay their words back and forth would feel exactly like this.

How on earth did my senior manage to pull it off so naturally…?

Volmo’s thoughts went to the vanished blond knight.

He must be an extraordinarily capable knight.

But since he himself was no such talent, he could only glance about and shuffle vaguely behind his new mistress.

As for Aspara’s husband, the man was standing even further back than Volmo the attendant. Volmo took one look at him and thought:

He looks like a mongrel pup watching a rabbit from the top of a hill.

Volmo was glancing down at the castle lord on the sly, but the instant their eyes met he instinctively dropped his gaze to the ground.

His brain was now turning far more cleverly than it had a few dozen minutes earlier, when adrenaline had been spiking his voice, and so it knew full well that if he took another hit here, it wouldn’t end prettily.

“What does it feel like, I wonder.”

“Pardon?”

“Hm? No, nothing….”