Lady Verloren, who was undoubtedly harboring some unsavory misunderstanding due to last night's incident.
I tried to speak to her, braving the embarrassment, to explain the detailed circumstances.
Honestly, it was mortifying... but misunderstandings should be cleared up, shouldn't they?
I didn't want to be seen as a woman who puts on a water show in someone else's house by the person who had become my master.
Rather than living with such a misunderstanding, it would be much better to endure a moment of embarrassment and confess to find enlightenment.
"Um, Master. About last night..."
"Th-there's no need to explain. It's fine."
...But this isn't easy.
As soon as the word "last night" escaped my mouth, Lady Verloren turned her head away startled, like a girl who had spotted a centipede crawling out from under her pillow.
It seemed she had thoroughly misunderstood. To the extent that she was uncomfortable even hearing anything related to it.
"No, you seem to be misunderstanding something. You see..."
"It's fine, I tell you! That, well, I was certainly a bit surprised... but, well, you're in your prime. So, I under- I can understand."
What understanding, Mada- no, Master. Everything is wrong from start to finish. I didn't do such a thing.
...At least not in this house.
"No, I mean, forget understanding, from the start—"
"Uh... between women, I was a bit surprised? Surprised, but! However, yes. There are such loves in this world too. I know that much. I'll understand."
This isn't getting through.
Lady Verloren nodded, forcing a smile as if to say she would understand and be considerate as an adult.
Her trembling lips and reddened ears revealed that she was currently exercising the greatest understanding of her life.
I was just dumbfounded. Watching her fantasize on her own and try to understand on her own.
If I had really been caught doing such a thing, I might have been embarrassed but grateful, but how could I be grateful for a situation where I'm being understood for something I didn't even do?
So please, let me explain, let me explain.
"If you'd let me explain—"
"Come to think of it, His Highness's letter also said 'privately close relationship'."
That bastard Argentir, what on earth did he write in the introduction letter? I should have just torn off the seal and read it.
"I thought it meant close friends like sisters, but my thinking was shallow. To think you were even closer than that. Ah, I don't mean it's bad, so you don't need to worry..."
...Ah, now's not the time to worry about such things.
"No, it's true that Friede and I are lovers, but yesterday was—"
"I-I said that's fine, didn't I? I understand."
My words are cut off again.
I gritted my teeth in frustration and lifted my head.
If I didn't, I felt like my fist might fly out without my realizing it.
Hadn't they said from ancient times that to calm a flustered person, you should first strike them once? I was starting to feel like that saying was the truth.
"Hoo..."
Be patient, be patient...
Calm down, Hilde, this is your master...
You know that if you swing your fist, you're the one who'll get beaten up...
"I was just a bit flustered because it was unexpected, but I have no intention of interfering with such private matters. Just, well, I need to sleep too, so if you could just keep the noise down a bit..."
Lady Verloren, not seeming to notice my expression, went on preaching based on her own delusions.
I sensed it. If I tried to explain the whole story politely like before, I wouldn't even have a chance to explain even if a whole day passed.
"We didn't do it! We didn't! Just tickling! It was just tickling!"
So I just shouted quickly, throwing away all courtesy.
"...What? Tickling?"
Lady Verloren tilted her head as if to say 'What are you talking about?', blinked her eyes a couple of times, and then in the next moment her entire face turned bright red.
"Oh, um, then... So that sound was, um... tickling?"
Finally, she's listening to me.
"Haah... Yes. That's all it was. I apologize for causing a disturbance in the middle of the night, but we were just playing around a bit, we didn't do what you're thinking."
I finally explained what happened last night with a sigh of relief at the opportunity for explanation that had finally come.
"...How shameful of me. To make such a fuss over a needless misunderstanding... Such an unbecoming act at my age. It was my oversight."
Lady Verloren, having cleared up the misunderstanding, was so embarrassed she couldn't even look at me properly, and was busy fanning her bright red face with her hand.
Being in the north, it cooled down quickly.
* * *
Perhaps thanks to the tickling incident, which was a series of misunderstandings and embarrassments.
After that day, I felt that the emotional distance between Lady Verloren and me had narrowed somewhat compared to before.
If before she had been close to treating me impersonally like a military instructor, now it felt more like a somewhat strict private tutor?
She would even take breaks during training and offer to share fruit as a snack, saying Marika had procured some good fruit.
Of course, it's not like she treated me like her own daughter, there was still a subtle distance remaining... Ah, right. Daughter's friend would be appropriate.
Lady Verloren treated me like her daughter's friend who had come to visit. She treated Friede the same way too.
"Um... Why are you looking at me like that...? Do you have something to say to me...?"
"Ah, excuse me. It's nothing, Lady Siegfriede."
Perhaps because she knew we were lovers, she would occasionally look at Friede with somewhat subtle eyes.
Such daily life continued.
Days of building mutual affection and feelings between people while repeating harsh training.
Then came a certain night.
Knock knock.
"Excuse me. May I come in for a moment?"
It was when I impulsively knocked on the door of Lady Verloren's private room, where I had always seen her drinking with a gloomy expression whenever I wandered the corridors at night.
"Lady Brunhilde...? At this hour, what... No, just a moment please."
Was she so deeply lost in thought that she didn't even notice my presence? A slightly flustered voice flowed through the gap in the door.
After a while.
"...You may enter."
At the answer that came in a much calmer voice, I gently opened the door and stepped into her private room.
A bed in one corner of the room with disheveled bedding. A small desk and wooden chair. Someone's portrait hanging on the wall. Armor and a longsword hanging on a stand.
It was a bedroom so plain it should be called a knight's room rather than a woman's room.
Near the left wall of such a room, Lady Verloren was sitting diagonally on a leather-covered sofa. Wearing only a simple overcoat over the negligee she wore as sleepwear.
Perhaps due to the alcohol, her face was slightly flushed, and her neatly braided hair was also disheveled.
"What brings you here? At such a late hour..."
A thick brandy scent permeating her exhaled breath. Every time she opened her mouth, a sweet fragrance like concentrated grapes flowed out and filled the room.
No, how much has this woman been drinking? This doesn't seem like just a glass or two.
"No, sit down first. Don't just stand there like that."
"Yes, I will."
I picked up the wooden chair in front of the desk, placed it opposite her, and sat down.
Lady Verloren, who had been quietly watching this, filled her own glass full of alcohol once I sat down, and then opened her mouth again.
"So, I'll ask again. What brings you here at this hour? You should know that it's behavior that goes against etiquette, right?"
A soft reprimand. Or should I say admonishment? Although her words were saying it was rude, she didn't particularly seem to be in a bad mood.
"Um... well... you see..."
I trailed off while lightly touching the hair near my ear.
Now that I was sitting like this, I was at a loss for words. After all, entering this room was just something I had done impulsively.
"Hmm...?"
When I hesitated like that, Lady Verloren tilted her head while pausing her drinking. Her cheeks were slightly puffed up with alcohol.
"Well..."
I'm not sure how to bring this up. Should I just speak honestly...?
...Yes, let's do that.
"You see... You looked a bit depressed, Master. You've been doing this often at night, so I wondered if something was wrong... if you were alright... that's why."
I honestly confessed the reason I had knocked on the door. That I was worried seeing her drinking and being melancholic every night, so I came to check on her.
"Every night... Well. I suppose I have been. It must have bothered you. When I'm like this, I end up forgetting that there are two guests in this mansion."
"No, I didn't mean it bothered or inconvenienced me—"
"But you came to check like this, didn't you?"
Lady Verloren shut my mouth with a short remark, then brought her glass back to her lips and took a sip. Her soft-looking neckline twitched a couple of times.
"Depressed... Yes, maybe I am indeed."
Eventually, Lady Verloren, who had put her glass back down, muttered softly with a bitter smile.
"You must have heard from His Highness, so you probably already know? About my daughter, Fernhilde."
"...Yes. That she went missing."
"Hah... Yes, missing. She disappeared without leaving a single trace..."
The empty glass was filled again with new alcohol. Lady Verloren spoke with a voice mixed with regret as she let out a sigh full of alcohol.
"Where did it all go wrong, I wonder... From when..."
The reason she soothed her heart with alcohol every night, the reason she couldn't sleep unless she was drunk with such a depressed face.
I quietly listened to that story.
* * *
It wasn't particularly special. A common story found anywhere. It was just the story of a mother who had lost her child.
A woman who held honor, pride, and a sense of duty in her position as a knight.
A husband who cheated and divorced, saying he was tired of her.
A sense of debt towards the daughter who had to grow up without a father, and the affection to raise her to be a better person than herself because of that.
However, a woman who had lived her entire life as a knight didn't even know how to properly express affection.
She said she only realized this after her daughter, fed up with the harsh training and strict mother, had run away leaving only a letter.
Lady Verloren only then realized that she hadn't properly faced her daughter, and had just been forcing her own ways and making things difficult...
"But by then... it was already too late."
What awaited her as she ran out of the mansion and searched for her daughter's whereabouts was only news of her daughter Fernhilde's disappearance.
She's still trying to inquire about her daughter's whereabouts by asking Prince Argentir, with whom she has connections, but she still hasn't obtained any information.
"...Why is it, I wonder? Realizations always come too late."
Lady Verloren, who had been recounting past events, lamented as she drank her glass of alcohol. Her fingertips were trembling, perhaps due to intoxication.
"Only after everything is too late... As if reproaching my own mistakes."
It was a face that looked like it might cry.
A face that seemed like it would burst into tears the moment it heard such blame, while hoping to be blamed that it was all her fault.
'Haah...'
I sighed inwardly. Newly cursing Argentir who had proposed to borrow her daughter's identity for disguise from such a woman.
As befitting someone with squinty eyes, a truly heartless bastard without blood, tears, or conscience. He had driven a huge nail into someone's heart.
Moreover, he had passed the task of pulling out that nail to my conscience.
'Damn bastard. Maybe I should just let him be killed by his brother.'
I inwardly spat out curses once again, then got up from the chair and approached Lady Verloren's side.
Perhaps because her emotions were heightened due to regret, Lady Verloren just hung her head low without reacting even as I approached.
"...It'll be alright. You'll be able to find her, for sure."
I carefully sat down beside her and gently placed my hand on her shoulder covered by the overcoat, offering clumsy words of comfort.
"Is she... still alive, I wonder...? After searching for so long..."
"She's alive. She's the daughter of Lady Verloren, taught by Lady Verloren. If I've become this strong after learning for just a short while, she must be even stronger than me by now, right?"
"Surely... surely she must resent me. Looking back, I only made her do difficult things..."
"That can't be. There's no way she'd resent you. It was quite doable when I tried it. Rather... rather, I'm sure she's grateful. Because thanks to that she became strong, and thanks to that she must be living well."
My best attempt at comfort.
Although it was purely optimistic and hopeful consolation, it wasn't completely unfounded and deceptive nonsense.
Honestly, if she had undergone this level of training that I'm experiencing now for over 5 years, unless she encountered some natural disaster, there's no way she could have died away from home.
"..."
Lady Verloren turned her head to look at me. Something like small droplets hung at the ends of her sharp eyes.
"...Really, really?"
"Shall I make you believe it?"
I wiped her eyes gently with the hem of my clothes and smiled as if soothing a crying child.
"I'll find her. No, I'll make her come back on her own."
"How...?"
"I'll make a name for myself, with this name, the name Fernhilde, enough for the whole world to hear. Loud enough for your daughter, wherever she is in this world, to hear. Then, won't she come to check out of curiosity about who's impersonating her?"
Lady Verloren's face became a bit dazed.
"Don't worry. Believe it or not, I'm a genius at spreading fame. The whole world knows my name, you know?"
I lightly embraced her shoulder and gave a confident smile as if to reassure her.
"That's infamy, isn't it..."
Lady Verloren let out a laugh of disbelief. At first it was just a soft chuckle, but later she shook her shoulders and laughed heartily.
"Hehe... What an odd way to comfort someone. Really."
She didn't seem to really believe my words, but at least her depressed mood seemed to have lifted a little.
That's good enough.
"Still... thank you. For saying that."
Lady Verloren wiped away the tears that had formed from laughing, then leaned her upper body to embrace my shoulder and expressed her gratitude.
"His Highness must have misjudged you. Brunhilde, you're a good person."
It was a compliment that made me feel embarrassed. It was also a statement that made me even more curious about what Argentir had written in my introduction letter.
"Oh... that's too much praise. It's making me a bit embarrassed."
"There's no need to be shy like a child... Ah, come to think of it, you're only twenty years old. You are a child."
Lady Verloren gave a gentle smile. Judging by her half-glazed eyes, it seemed the alcohol had fully hit her as she laughed.
"Shall I call you a good child?"
"...Please spare me that much."
I lowered my head and asked her to refrain from that.
Good child, at my age? It was embarrassing to the point of giving me goosebumps.