Older Woman, Younger Man

“My name is Pai.”

Pai said it.

Keith seemed abashed that half a day had gone by since they met without his once asking her name, and he spoke up in a resolute tone.

“I will remember it without fail. I swear it.”

Too much.

Had the excess been the ordinary sort of exaggeration, Pai would never have spent her newly won chance on talking him around. But he meant it. He might tell a lie now and then over the course of a life, but that took nothing from his sincerity.

Pai answered with a smile.

“Of course you mustn’t forget it. It’s an incredibly easy name. Even a parrot could learn it, I’d think.”

Then she caught her blunder and hurried to add:

“I’m not comparing you to a birdbrain, Lord Keith!”

“Birdbrain…”

“…”

“Is your mouth always, hm. A little…”

“…Coarse, yes. Ahem. I’m t-trying to fix it. Especially in front of the young lady.”

“It is fine just now. She’s asleep, dead to the world.”

Keith’s gaze came to rest on Ardine. The child’s brows were drawn tight together, and she did not look to be having a good dream. His lips curled slightly inward. It was the face of a man half out of his mind with pity for his one and only niece.

To cherish her this much, and still refuse the regency.

Whether to call it appalling or admirable, I can’t decide.

“What sort of things did you talk about, when you met?”

Keith broke the silence out of nowhere.

“Miss Pai, who helped the young lady ‘escape.’”

“Ah.”

Right. That’s what we were talking about.

— Clatter, clatter.

— Rattle, clunk…

At some point the rhythmic noise had fallen into time with the calm beat of a heart.

Keith folded his arms in comfort. His legs were so long that he had to angle his knees off to one side to keep them from reaching the opposite seat.

“…”

There was something dogged in the gaze crossing the carriage toward her. She was a woman who did not flinch at most kinds of pressure, and yet for some reason her mouth went bone-dry.

Meaning he didn’t get to be the Mercenary King by bluffing his way there.

But she was hard on the strong and gentle with the weak, and she had never once looked away from a level stare.

“I heard a little about Mareni. They say she was the nanny who looked after the young lady from the time she was a newborn… So I thought perhaps you might know something, Lord Keith?”

“Ah… Is she a Maktan, by any chance?”

“I think she must be. The young lady said she used to sing her a Makta lullaby. Do you know any Maktans yourself, Lord Keith?”

“…All kinds of people gather in a guild.”

“That’s true, but the Makta are another matter. They’re a closed people, aren’t they. I was lucky enough to stay in one of their villages once…”

It was an old story. More than ten years ago now. Back then Pai had lost the master she’d served for years and was wandering the continent. The parting from that master had been dreadful, but she carried a memory of finding some comfort in a Makta village she’d happened into. Ordinarily they would never have taken in an outsider, but it was the season of the festival they held once a year, and by good fortune she imposed on them for a few days.

That traditional liquor they poured for me was really something. Heh heh.

Delighted by the rare bout of nostalgia, she chattered on about this and that, right up until Keith, who had been listening and murmuring his agreement, tilted his head.

“Forgive me.”

“Yes?”

“May I ask how old you are.”

“…Why.”

Pai came back defensive in her surprise, and Keith, thrown just as badly, stumbled over his words.

“Th-that is, I don’t mean anything in particular by it, I don’t.”

“Yes.”

“You said it was ten years ago that you stayed a while in a Makta village, which would put the arithmetic at some ten-odd years old, wandering the continent alone… And the drinking, as well…”

Pai realized her mistake.

Right. I regressed!

Having died and come back to the past had not made her life feel cut into pieces. It had simply been like magic worked over a single night, the feeling of waking clear-headed out of a long, deep sleep. Being thrown into a life at once familiar and strange raised no resistance in her; if anything, her heart quickened. With anticipation…

I can change it.

With choices unlike her last life’s, she could try walking a different road. Even if things did not go as she had planned, she was not uneasy. Uncertainty was only another name for the nature of life. Simply to have been given the chance to try differently was enough to leave Pai grateful.

And besides…

She looked up at Keith. The beautiful man’s face was flushed with fluster. It was good to see him, this man who at the slightest teasing would go red to the earlobes and start stammering.

Hello, Keith. It’s been a long time.

She whispered it only inwardly, and then she spoke.

“How old do you think?”

“…Sorry?”

“How old do I look.”

“…”

Keith broke into a cold sweat, like a man who had run up against the greatest problem on earth. His red eyes wavered anxiously this way and that. In the end he apologized, ‘I’m sorry.’

Pai giggled.

“You must have taken me for quite young.”

“Th…at’s right.”

“Perhaps I am.”

“Ah.”

“And perhaps I’m older than you, Lord Keith.”

The Keith before her now was twenty-seven. She had grown up an orphan and did not know her own age exactly, but she knew it ran close to his. And now, somehow, that man had ended up the younger one. It was one of the unexpected and entertaining things about regression.

“Then may I close my eyes a while, until we arrive?”

“Please do.”

“Thank you. I’ll only sleep a little and be up again.”

“Sleep well.”

Pai smiled softly and shut her eyes.

Because she fell asleep in an instant, she did not hear Keith whisper, ‘Dream well.’

That night, the village where they came to stay had exactly one shop that could be called an inn. It would be nearer the truth to call it a place that always kept a floor or so empty for the occasional guest who dropped in like this, rather than one that made its living from lodging.

At first the innkeeper gave them a large room with a single bed.

“That bed will hold two grown-ups with room to spare. And the little one, let’s see… She could squeeze in between Mom and Dad, I should think.”

“Is there not one more small room?”

“Why. Does the little one say she doesn’t like it cramped?”

Before answering, Keith cut a sidelong glance at Pai. She was down on her knees, loosening the laces of Ardine’s boots.

“It’s that we aren’t husband and wife.”

“Oh my, not husband and wife? Then the child?”

“My niece.”

“Th-then the two of you are traveling, you and your brother’s wife…?”

The words came out thoroughly unseemly, and Keith was flustered. He looked urgently at Pai, his eyes begging for rescue.

Pai put on the most benevolent smile she could manage and explained.

“I’m this child’s nanny.”

“Ah…”

The innkeeper still wore a doubtful expression. That was because the word ‘nanny’ normally called to mind a woman old enough to have raised children of her own. Even so, she was a sensible sort. Rather than pry into their private affairs, she gave Keith a room to use alone.

“I’ll let you know as soon as the bathwater is ready. Rest yourselves.”

— Clack.

The moment the door shut, Keith let out a short sigh. The room, furnished chiefly in pine, had a calm feeling to it overall, though a deep-pink quilted blanket had been laid diagonally across the bed, corners up, in a diamond turn. He hung his outer coat on the rack, drew the excessively adorable blanket aside a little, and set himself down on the end of the bed.

From the capital of the ducal domain to Jurgia, a small coastal village in the south, was a week by carriage. A spatial-transfer magic scroll could cut that roughly in half.

He drew a map of the North in his head. By tomorrow they would reach the hub city. From there, a scroll to the southern hub city, then on to Jurgia by carriage…

“Three days or so one way, is it.”

How long they stayed in Jurgia would be the crux of it, but reckoning that at a day for now, it came to a week there and back.

“…Not bad.”

The bathwater was ready soon after. He warmed himself briefly and contacted Bishe straight away; any tolerably wealthy castle was bound to keep a communication artifact. Bishe would have had the gist of it from Enri already, so the call ended quickly.

His business handled, the next thing Keith did was take up a sturdy rope and stand in front of a door.

“…”

In front of the room Pai and Ardine were using, that is.

He drew a deep breath and knocked politely.

— Knock, knock.

“…”

Once more, knock, knock.

Light, soft footsteps came from inside. Pai opened the door a hand’s width, her index finger against her lips.

“The young lady has only just fallen asleep.”

Whispering, she stepped out into the corridor, shut the door carefully, and asked:

“What is it?”

But Keith could not properly meet her eyes. He turned his gaze away in a fluster and mumbled.

“That, your clothes…”

They had set out on a long journey with no preparation of any kind, so of course there were no spare clothes. Which meant not so much as a nightgown.

And yet, perhaps because the innkeeper kept a few on hand for her women guests, Pai stood there in a light nightgown that her skin showed faintly through. Below the long, straight line of her neck, her collarbones stood out, and beneath those, skin that looked soft as cream…

— Gulp.

The sound of him swallowing was blatant enough to be mortifying.

“Clothes? What about them, ah… Ah!”

“…”

“Ju-ust a moment.”

Pai slipped quickly back inside and came out with a wool blanket thrown over her.

“Will this do?”

“Ahem.”

“Hmm, is it still a bit racy…”

“Th…!”

“There. That’s done.”

She drew the end of the blanket across, tied it in a knot, and gave a bashful little smile. Beside the pulled line of her mouth, a dimple pressed in faintly. Keith caught himself staring at the small hollow in her cheek before he hurriedly turned his head away.

“So… is there some sort of problem?”

Her tone was utterly composed, as though she had expected Keith to come looking for her.

He stood gripping the rope in his hand, hemming and hawing for a long while, and finally spoke.

“Could you… tie me up?”