“Khalid.”
Nox tore through the annex as if he were turning it upside down with his bare hands. But the child was nowhere to be found—not in the annex, not in the storage rooms. He even checked the stables on the off chance, and still he did not find so much as a single strand of the boy’s hair.
He grew more agitated with every passing moment. What if the child had run outside the estate? What if he had and then never managed to come back…?
After searching the annex from end to end, he headed for the main residence. If he found the boy there, that alone would be a mercy.
Nox searched every guest room in the main residence, but even by evening he had not found him. He let out a deep breath and swept a hand across his forehead, damp with a thin sheen of sweat.
“Where on earth did you go, Khalid…?”
As he exhaled, something flashed through his mind.
A place the child might hide. A place the child would think of as the safest.
Nox realized he had never checked his own room.
He turned at once and hurried there. He looked around, but the child still was nowhere in sight. Even so, he began to search the room slowly, carefully, calling the boy’s name as gently as he could.
“Khalid…?”
There was no answer.
“Khalid, it’s me. Nox.”
At those words, he heard a small, stifled sob from somewhere nearby. He moved at once toward the sound. It was coming from inside the wardrobe standing in one corner of his dressing room.
So as not to startle the child, Nox opened the wardrobe doors slowly.
Inside, a tiny boy sat curled into himself.
For a moment Nox lost the power of speech and could only stare.
His eyes were still swollen and red from how much he had cried, and in the week Nox had not seen him, he had wasted away alarmingly. Without realizing what he was doing, Nox pulled him into his arms. Khalid burrowed into his embrace as if he had been waiting for that very moment.
“Y-young, young master. Hic—”
“It’s all right. Khalid. I’m here. I’m here.”
Holding the child tightly, he stroked him again and again, soothing him, calling his name over and over. Khalid gasped for breath and pressed even closer into his arms. He was so thin that it felt as if their bones might knock together.
Yes. The child had hidden inside this wardrobe for that entire week, waiting for him.
Nox felt heat gather at the corners of his eyes. It was as though he could feel, in full, the terror this child must have endured while trembling in the dark inside that wardrobe all that time.
“…I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Khalid.”
“Hic… ngh…”
Nox swore to himself that never again—never again—would he let the child be separated from him.
Khalid could not even cry properly; he kept swallowing the sobs back down. Nox carefully lifted him and laid him on the bed, but even then the boy clutched at his clothes, trying not to let him move away.
“It’s all right. I’m not going anywhere.”
Nox lay down beside him and gathered that frail, wasted little body into his arms.
Never again would he leave him alone.
He made that vow over and over.
By the time Nox was having the healer examine Khalid’s emaciated body, his mother, Olga Rainerio, was in her room receiving a report from Maeta about everything that had happened.
She looked down at the teacup a maid had set out for her, then shifted her gaze to the side.
“So.”
“S-so the child ran away, and the master has done nothing but drink.”
“And Nox?”
“Y-young Master is having the child examined by a healer. It seems he judged treatment necessary, since Khalid had gone without food the entire week…”
“Hah.”
Olga let out a slow breath, as though forcing it out of herself. At that single breath, Maeta stiffened at once. One of the maids, sensing her mistress’s displeasure, opened the window. Warm air drifted in through it. The breeze lightly stirred the hair beside Olga’s face and wound softly through the room.
“First my husband, and now my son as well…”
She murmured to herself and lifted her teacup. The tea was just warm enough to suit her taste, and that alone seemed to calm the seething irritation in her stomach, if only a little. Olga looked toward the maid. The moment their eyes met, the woman lowered her head quietly.
“Tch. I’ll watch for a while.”
Her voice was cold. Maeta bent even deeper at the waist, striving not to provoke her any further.
The maid who had opened the window sat softly beside her and whispered,
“The young master is clever. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”
“Yes. He’ll come to his senses soon enough.”
At Olga’s reply, the maid nodded and wrapped both hands around Olga’s hand. Olga allowed it, then gave Maeta an order.
“If anything happens between Nox and that child from now on, report it to me immediately.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Olga set down her cup.
As she looked at the red tea inside, nearly drained to the bottom, she thought to herself: My son is a clever child. So he will come to his senses soon enough and stop wasting his attention on a servant like that.
But if he did not—
Her eyes turned glacially cold.
The maid, noticing what Olga was thinking, forced a weak smile.
Young Master really must come to his senses soon, she thought anxiously.
*****
It took a full three months for the child to recover.
Nox watched over Khalid with painstaking care until he was well enough to work properly again, and Khalid, as if repaying him for that devotion, recovered quickly and got back to his feet. By the time the boy was fully up again, it had become the height of summer.
If anything, Khalid returned to his duties in even better health than before.
It happened on a day when torrential rain was pouring down so hard that Nox could not even attend the knights’ training and had been shut up in his room all day.
There was more than enough for him to study anyway, and for the first time in a long while Nox had buried himself among books and was concentrating on his writing.
Click.
A cup of tea was set down on the desk before him.
When Nox looked up, Khalid was standing there holding the teapot. Nox gave a slight motion with his eyes, telling him to set it down. Khalid placed the teapot on another table, then came around the desk and approached his side.
Then Nox asked,
“Can you read?”
“Ah, no…”
Khalid lowered his head as though embarrassed, but Nox thought nothing of it. Commoners busy with the struggle of daily survival usually did not know how to read.
So he gestured for the boy to come closer, took out a blank sheet of parchment, and picked up his pen. He wrote out a line of basic letters one after another, then said,
“I’ll teach you.”
“…What?”
“Do you not want to learn?”
“No, no. I do!”
Khalid nodded so hard it was almost frantic. His gray-blond hair swayed like a puppy’s ears.
Without thinking, Nox reached out and stroked that hair.
The child’s face flushed red. At that reaction, Nox found himself touching the boy’s ear as well, almost without meaning to.
“Ah.”
Khalid hunched his shoulders a little, wearing an expression that seemed uncertain whether he was embarrassed or ticklish.
Nox looked at him for a moment, then withdrew his hand.
“There was something on you.”
“Y-yes…”
It was nothing but an excuse.
The child touched at his reddened ear. Nox remembered the sensation that had brushed against his fingertips. And he looked at that face, dyed scarlet.
I like the feeling of being loved by this child.
It was a selfish thought.
The very act of letting feelings grow this far when he could never accept them—
Ridiculous.
A foolish father. A domineering mother. A house that looked perfect from the outside, yet in truth was as hollow as an empty vault. And within that house was a child like a ball of soft yarn, trailing after him. It felt unbearably good. Because it made him feel loved. Because it made him feel, for a moment, as though he were someone worthy of being loved.
Nox cut the thought short and spoke again.
“This is read like this…”
Pointing to each letter one by one, he taught the boy how to pronounce them.
Khalid learned well—memorized well too. He followed the movement of Nox’s fingertips with desperate focus.
Nox did not know.
He did not know that the child’s gaze was fixed not on the letters but on his fingers. That he felt proud of the fact that those neatly trimmed nails were something he himself had helped create. Nor did Nox know that the child’s heart had grown far larger than he imagined.
“You’re rather good at it.”
“…Yes.”
The boy tried hard not to let that truth show on his face.
Young Master, if you knew how much I like you, you would probably be astonished.
Sometimes he wanted to say words like that aloud, just once. But he knew.
Even at that young age, he understood that it was a love that could never be returned.
But…
It did not matter.
If only he could remain at Nox’s side and watch him grow—watch him become an adult bigger than himself—then nothing else mattered. If only he could remain by his side forever and attend to him, then even if Nox never poured affection back onto him—
Or even if—
Even if he married someone else.
Even then, he thought he could bear it.
Nox and Khalid spent peaceful days together.
Unlike the way he treated others, Nox was gentle with Khalid, and Khalid devoted himself wholly to him in return.
It was a stretch of time so perfect it might have been painted.
That damned father did not show so much as the tip of his nose for a long while. The house was stable. Even the weather after the torrential rains had passed was bright and good.
But then, one day, as if to herald misfortune, his strong, unshakable mother fell ill.
*****
It was the winter when he was fifteen.
The branches had withered, and the ground had hardened in the cold. The chill wind that slipped through one’s collar made everyone draw into themselves, and in such a season, the sudden onset of his mother’s illness was enough to shake the entire house.
“Get out!”
Crash!
The flowerpot Olga hurled grazed past a maid and smashed into the wall. The maid shrieked and collapsed where she stood. Olga stared at her own arm, trembling violently after throwing a single vase, and screamed in fury.