Chapter 356
Lukas brought Narce back with him in no ti.
"This is the first ti eting you since you woke up, Senior."
"......"
The 98th Class Team A Captain said nothing, simply watching him before speaking in a low voice.
"Congratulations."
"Sa to you, Senior. I imagine we all feel like we've co back from the dead. So, why are you here?"
"Must I have special business to co visit? I'm simply here to offer my greetings. To sincerely congratulate Sir Askanian on the success of his operation."
The 98th Class Team A Captain said with a gentle smile.
"It was an honor to have fought alongside you in this operation."
"......"
Even at a glance, it was clear this was no ordinary greeting. This 98th Class student wore his usual mask, yet at the sa ti, he was more sincere than ever. I was witnessing the mont this person acknowledged him. Perhaps because the reply didn't co imdiately, Lukas opened his mouth with a slightly tense expression.
"Oh."
"What is it?"
The 98th Class Team A Captain kept his warm expression while sharpening his gaze. It was the look of soone bracing for a flippant remark, but conversely, the wariness that had filled Lukas's features lted away like snow, and a sun-bright smile appeared.
"I was just taken aback for a mont because that's an unusual thing to hear from you, Senior. I'm glad most of us made it back safely this ti as well."
A safe return.... Who was safe, and who would be safe? For the 98th Class Team A Captain, this was the textbook answer, but to , it was the one that felt hollow and empty. Yet unlike —barely keeping my own swirl of ambivalence in check while forcing out words for his sake—Lukas was sincere in himself. So had the 98th Class Team A Captain been, just before.
I had scrubbed away every kind of turmoil by every ans I knew, but the anguish rose again and my stomach churned. Before it could devour , I forced my awareness elsewhere.
'...He's doing a remarkable job hiding it, though.'
Whether Narce was that fast at relaying, or Lukas was that quick on his feet. It was an obvious inevitability that the truth about his hearing would reach everyone's ears eventually, yet he was defending it with everything he had.
"......"
A thought surfaced unbidden, and bitterness filled my mouth again. I'd tried to erase the turmoil, but the attempt failed. He wouldn't want to bear the flood of well-wishes and concern that would be directed at him right now, already exhausted as he was. The 98th Class Team A Captain, conscious of and Narce, turned to Lukas.
"Could we step sowhere else for a mont?"
"If it's not important, can't you just say it here?"
"......"
Only then did the 98th Class Team A Captain's smile stiffen at its edges. He began studying all of it with suspicion—Lukas's delayed response, the startled looks from Narce and . He'd sensed sothing was different from usual.
"It is important."
"Unless it's a written order, I don't consider it important. What do you think, Senior?"
"......"
At this discourteous reply, the 98th Class Team A Captain held his smile and locked eyes with Lukas for a beat before speaking calmly.
"I heard you'll be taking a brief period of convalescence after your last official event this week."
"?"
"...? Wasn't it you who applied for it?"
"What official event?"
"That has nothing to do with my business, so you can find out later. In any case, ...since you won't be able to go ho during your convalescence, you're welco to co to Neustrelitz if you'd like."
I let out a short breath.
The offer to co to his castle in cklenburg-Strelitz wasn't what mattered. Since you won't be able to go ho during your convalescence... So, he knows too. More than just Sir Nicolaus's identity—he knew far more. The mory of realizing, belatedly, that an exchange student from the Farnese family whom Lukas had barely known for long had directly heard about Lukas's circumstances—that mory jabbed at my throat.
I know now. He doesn't make rash decisions. He thinks it over again and again, crafting the best decision he can. There's always a reason behind his choices, so it's not my place to worry. Even setting that aside, however Lukas chose to use this person, I knew well that it was beyond my authority. Still.
"Ah."
Color returned to Lukas's face. In that instant, I could see countless calculations flashing through him.
"That sounds goo—"
"You'll need to stay in Bavaria, so traveling to Neustrelitz would be difficult."
This was a separate matter. Had his hearing been intact, I would have let him go. But not now. I saw his gaze fixed on my lips, and I understood the reason he went to such lengths to hide his condition even though he knew the news would eventually spread to everyone—yet I couldn't be the sort of person who simply stood by and watched. Regrettably. Fortunately.
The 98th Class Team A Captain's eyes turned to . Narce wore nothing but an inscrutable smile, and—whether he'd relayed my words imdiately—Lukas looked at in surprise. I gazed down into Lukas's eyes and continued.
"......"
"Because you need to receive treatnt. I wonder what Sir Askanian thinks."
I had no intention of intervening further. The rest was Lukas's to decide.
***
I went to visit the seniors admitted to the intensive care unit. A doctor standing outside the two seniors' rooms gave a brief update on the situation.
"Fortunately, the prognosis is good. The ergency suturing is complete, so as long as we keep supplying magic power, the flow of magic throughout the body should return to normal circulation, sa as before."
For sothing supposedly good, the file he'd handed over was still bristling with narcotic painkillers. But it was only my heightened worry stoking my skepticism; the doctor's assessnt wouldn't be wrong.
I exchanged brief greetings with the dical staff there, then moved back to the Munich Residenz to attend the royal eting. The banquet was fine with just my friends enjoying it. It was ti to settle what remained after the operation.
"How is your friend doing right now? I heard the news that he's lost his hearing."
"......"
It was after the thirty-minute eting had concluded, when only His Majesty the King and I remained. My friend—not Nicolaus Ernst but my friend. And so, to His Majesty's question, I could be certain of nothing. I stared down at my notes and answered briefly.
"I don't know, Your Majesty."
I think again of the intensive care unit. Injuries in battle are inevitable. The era of spilled blood must end at my hand. Even if that wish is nothing but an idle dream, I must make it possible. A position was reserved for where I had to believe in the dream yet be more grounded in reality than anyone.
So I must not let myself be consud by my friend's injury. He was a person building the era I wished for, and I was soone who had to do the sa. We, who did not yet live in the era we wished for, had to endure this one. Yet I rembered the bewildernt that flickered in Lukas's eyes, the cheerfulness he rarely showed to , the hours he had endured, and the fact that today's peace was sustained by that suffering.
I couldn't tell what was right.
The spring breeze was as cold as winter wind. After the eting, I leaned against the balcony of the Munich Residenz and looked down at the ground below. From behind, Narce's voice reached , having approached without a sound.
"You always make the sa choice."
"......"
The banquet hall is downstairs, Narce. I was about to say that, then closed my mouth.
Always? Could there be a more hollow word? Even now, as the days of always shattered and chaos and sorrow engulfed , he said I was the sa as ever. I couldn't even laugh. Right now, in this mont, I felt every kind of ambivalence sweeping over , felt indescribable shock and unease. I couldn't even tell what I'd supposedly chosen. As if reading my thoughts, Narce smiled.
"You went round and round and ended up choosing the sa path after all—can you really say otherwise? What are you worried about? You've always been sincere."
"I'm amazed to hear sothing like this on the worst day of my life."
"It may be the worst day of your life, but it'll turn out to be the best choice. At least, that's how you'll see it."
I gazed at Lukas's friend, whom I could never read from the start and still couldn't read now. Seeing the future all by yourself, are you? I couldn't tell which version of he was speaking of, but to the present , the words felt fleeting.
"Narce. I know you've helped us and saved countless people. I can't help but be grateful for your existence. But isn't it dangerous to be certain of a future that hasn't happened yet? Is it a clergy thing—hearing confessions people didn't ask to give?"
"I'm not trying to wield clerical authority. I simply believe I know you a little better than you know yourself."
His voice, so frail it seed it would crumble in the wind, was piercingly familiar. I thought it was like a crucifix nailed firmly into the altar behind him. Between two things so different, I couldn't define which it was. I pressed a hand to my head.
"I may not know myself anymore either, but even so."
"......"
"Tell Lukas I'll see him tomorrow. Don't be too harsh."
***
"I've been looking all over for you, hey."
A hand ca down on my shoulder. I couldn't mistake the owner of the magic power that burst from that touch. I silently watched the red fragnts drifting through the air. The afterimage, shining as though I'd stepped into a vision, remained whether I opened or closed my eyes.
"I heard you know how to restore senses, so I put the Neustrelitz decision on hold. Hurry up and teach ."
Lukas locked the royal training hall doors with practiced ease and tossed his jacket aside. Then he sprawled out on the training hall floor as if it were his own ho.
"Making yourself comfortable in soone else's training hall...."
I said that much before erasing my smile. He wouldn't hear it. Instead of surrendering to emotions that kept seesawing, I imdiately pulled a black box from my bag and held it out to him.
"Hm? What's this?"
"......"
An artifact I'd received as a birthday present when I was young. Those words lingered on my tongue. Lukas opened the lid, saw the thick journal and quill pen, and raised an eyebrow. A note I'd written sat on top.
[It's an artifact that transcribes whatever you say.]
"...You're telling sothing like this existed?! Then I didn't need to use Cl*veNote... no, I didn't need to use Philip as my note-taking mule?"
"Official use."
Though I'd never trained in reading lips, I opened my mouth wide and spoke a single phrase as clearly as I could. At that, Lukas plopped down and gestured to the space before him.
"Ah.... Right. Didn't catch that, but understood loud and clear. Let try this thing—go ahead, say sothing."
Had he been able to hear, he would've snickered about how soone gets an official-use item as a birthday present. Bitterly, he didn't. I placed my hand on the thick hardcover and channeled magic power into it. I felt Lukas's gaze shifting between my lips and the journal. What should I say? I decided to speak the words I'd rehearsed countless tis before my secretary as a child.
"Hello, Lukas."
"Oh, it actually writes it down."
Lukas smiled at the handwriting appearing in the journal and went on.
"Alright, so. I'm well aware you went ahead and filed my sick leave for . To find that out through Senior cklenburg, of all people."
"Mmm."
"So, for the week you filed my sick leave, I'm supposed to be stuck in Bavaria."
"You can go to Neustrelitz if you want."
Lukas opened his mouth and looked up from the writing in the journal.
"...Why? That's not like you."
"You want to tell you to stay here?"
"It's not exactly that—I just thought it was remarkable since I expected us to actually agree for once. This ti, no matter what you say you're going to do, I'm staying put in Bavaria."
"Why?"
"Don't I need to get my hearing back as soon as possible? You said you know how."
Right, that's what he ca here wanting. I gestured for him to stand, and Lukas grabbed the journal and got to his feet. I loosened my hands while tilting my head and spoke.
"Are your ears weaker than your eyes? Seeing as they were the first to be destroyed."
"I wouldn't think so. But do we really need to analyze which part is weaker? Normally, people don't say the analysis results out loud in a situation like this."
"You have to know what's weak to compensate for it. I need to make you stronger."
"...Hm? That's enough. You've already done so much to help get stronger."
Lukas watched with skeptical eyes. I reached for the wand holster on my thigh. I saw Lukas's mouth fall open.
"Hey, wait. How are you going to attack without sound—!"
"I can."
You fought a bishop blindfolded, and you think this can't be done? I swallowed those words and lashed out with my wand. The boom from where his red magic power t mine sent my ears ringing.
***
The only light entering through the glass do ceiling was moonlight. Night had already fallen. At this ti yesterday, we were in Corniviano. And Lukas and I were still in Corniviano. No—perhaps only I was.
Breathing rose from the floor. I wiped my sweat and looked down at Lukas, sprawled on the ground as though he'd traded his soul to the floorboards.
"...This is your thod for restoring hearing? One more round and I'll be in the afterlife."
"As if."
I flipped through the journal that Lukas had flung aside—I'd caught it before it hit the floor and set it down gently—and murmured. Not that my murmuring could be heard. Lukas began imitating my manner of speech.
"...Predicted response. 'As if. Get up. Let's fight.'"
"There's no way I'd tell you to get up when you're so exhausted you're stuck to the floor."
Whenever I said things like this, Lukas would always snap and yell, How is that supposed to make sense? Given my track record of pushing him even after he said he'd had enough, he had every right to. No answer ca back. The desolation that washed in from that silence made turn my head away.
"So why did you suddenly start with training? Regular training can't be enough to restore hearing."
Right, it couldn't. But before I could move for his sake, I needed to settle my own heart first. I couldn't face this once-in-a-lifeti friend while caught in a maelstrom of thoughts whose substance even I didn't know. I couldn't drag him into that. Not for my sake but for his—I absolutely couldn't.
But now it was proper to give a different reason. One action often has more than one justification.
I spoke an incantation aloud to Lukas, who was looking up at , then opened a different page of the journal and wrote directly for him to see.
[Did you catch what I just said?]
"Not at all. What did you say? Say it again."
Lukas answered while nearly glaring at my lips. I could feel his resolve to get it this ti. Without so much as a twitch of my lips, I struck Lukas's shoulder. As magic power crackled and the familiar Healing Magic seeped into him, only then did Lukas snap his fingers with a look of regret.
"Ah, 3 John. Okay.... So the idea is I should train to read incantations just in case."
"......"
"...Honestly, training with you, I could lose a whole sense and still make it into the Imperial Guard...."
Lukas grimaced in exasperation, let out a snort, then rolled over. But then, like soone who'd just rembered sothing, he bolted upright and snatched the journal from my hands.
"Oh, while we're at it—here's what I think. You know how you grow plants in your room and pour magic power into them, using them almost like sensors?"
"Yeah."
"In my view, that seems unreasonable. As you well know, we have an obligation as mbers of this society not to infringe on each individual's freedom. We also have the right not to be infringed upon."
"From you?"
"......"
Lukas stared blankly at the words, then burst out laughing and swung the journal.
"...!"
"This bastard, seriously...."
Lukas's magic power—the color of sunset—flared with gusto. I tilted my head back to dodge the strike and found my gaze stolen by that light, then collected myself and smiled. Lukas doggedly sent a jolt of his magic power into my shoulder and grumbled, Ugh. My shoulder tingled.
"Leo."
"Yeah?"
I raised an eyebrow and answered with a gesture, and Lukas, who'd been studying , leaned his back against the training hall wall with a thud, folded his arms, and closed his eyes as if he'd fall asleep any mont.
"No matter how I think about it, being seventeen is creepy as hell...."
"Creep... what? You've said that before—what do you an?"
I said it even knowing he couldn't hear. No answer ca. For a long while, I gazed at the stars coming through the glass ceiling and let a question slip out.
"Do you really want things to go back to how they were?"
An answer ca to a question I'd never expected a response to. Lukas jerked his head up and grinned.
"Why do you keep asking that? Huh? Don't want to give my hearing back?"
As if. That wasn't my purpose. Nor was this question the right ans toward one.
What is it that you truly want? I tried to put that question to my lips, then tried to press it into the pen nib, but in the end couldn't commit it to either, and buried it in my heart.
I lowered my gaze slightly to the journal that wouldn't leave his hand. Even in the mont I thought he was asleep, he'd been watching the words being written in the journal through this darkness. There was no way he was alright. I couldn't presu to know the longing and fear of a lost sense.
"Have you ever put every sugar cube into your coffee?"
"No. That'd be... a taste so sweet it'd kill you, I think."
"I think so too."
I think of the narcotic painkillers in the intensive care unit. I think of the night at Corniviano and the friend and comrade who vanished before my eyes in the final monts of that day. My thoughts climb to the pool of blood in Brandenburg. To Pentalon, to the Primrose Path.... To all those monts where, without his unknowable power, he would have long since drawn his last breath.
Words closer to a whisper slipped quietly through my teeth.
"It'd beco a lump that you couldn't even call coffee anymore."
"Just wasting coffee."
"Lukas. Are you happy?"
"That's suddenly philosophical...."
Lukas broke into a laugh, lifted his eyes from the journal, and looked at .
I call myself your one and only friend, yet because I'm not you, I don't know what you truly want. But selfishly, I do know what I truly want.
I don't want you to die. Would that sound absurd? Because we're alive and breathing right now, because I know another operation of uncertain outco awaits us and yet in this mont you and I are looking each other in the eye, because you can turn back ti....
My wish shatters powerless against the wall that is him.
What I want more than anything right now is your survival. A voice that won't reach him clogs my throat. The result of the countless firing lines you cross saves many, but I want you to live. Not anyone else but you—in whatever form, no matter what you beco—I want you to live, and so I....
"......"
I swallowed the words lingering on the tip of my tongue. I would reserve these words for later. For us, neither Pentalon, nor Brandenburg, nor Munich-Freising had been the end, and the day we truly face the end might still co.
Before the only force that could topple everything I'd built—the soil of my childhood, the past of who I am now—I returned to the starting point. I was wrong. Before you, I was wrong about everything. What I aspired to beco, the image of the great predecessors I'd chased with swelling dreams, everything I'd protected—all of it crumbled beneath the single thought that I didn't want my irreplaceable friend to die.
"I should get so sleep. Sleeping in the training hall isn't bad, either."
After I'd said nothing for a long while, Lukas's voice ca from the darkness. Another long stretch of silence passed, and I looked up at the night sky and swallowed my breath.
"I don't know why I always beco a fool in front of you."
I want to be free of this anguish. If I were, could I beco the person I wish to be? Paradoxically, I knew that the further I pulled away from him, the further I'd drift from myself. This was who I was. This was how I looked in the mont I faced what I wanted to protect in this world. No matter how I struggled, the ideal and reality were different, and I was used to swallowing the bitter taste of a wretched reality. I had to, in order to move forward. Today was no different.
"Lukas. Are you alright?"
"......"
"When every sound around you went completely silent, what did you think? Is this just an episode that'll resolve itself with ti?"
"......"
"Have the dangers we face now piled up so high that sothing like this doesn't faze you anymore? As if. My pain stays new with each passing day—there's no way your sense of it has dulled."
As night fell, the world grew quieter still. On this spring night, no wind disturbed us—only your ears kept my words from reaching you. Only the operation that cost you your hearing.
"On the day this danger pierces not just your hearing but your heart, what will you think? How far do you think it is from ear to heart? On the day the transferred command authority and the dal around your neck today cut off your breath?"
The doctor's words, dissolving along with steam, lingered hazily in my mind. The doctor's perception and reassurance gave no comfort. Why?
"Rather than erect a tombstone at your grave, I thought I'd rather you had breath still in you—in any form."
Because what I feared lay beyond Lukas's loss of a sense. What lay beyond? Today, this was not the end. Until his breath stopped, Lukas would repeat whatever he had to, and I could lose the friend who'd beco a part of my life at any mont. I'd always known that. Knowing it, I'd prepared myself to accept it. That was how it was—until he ca back having lost a sense he once had, and as of today, I realized that preparation had been arrogance. Yet the thought that I could do anything about it was arrogance, too.
"What I'm saying now isn't any different from what I said when we were still at the academy, when I faced you coming into my room. The sa words, the sa situation repeated—it might bore you. I feel the sa way. If one doesn't constantly strive to improve, a person stagnates, and nothing changes."
The ti has co to treat you differently. The ti has co to correct the way I feel toward you, and I only now face that head-on.
"It's ti I stepped out of my self-righteous stubbornness and acknowledged it. No matter how much I try to keep you by my side, you are you. And I am ."
"......"
"You clearly wanted to escape your elder sibling's grasp, but the death I'm speaking of is an entirely different kind from that sort of murder. So.... It can't be wrong to ask this."
I slowly shifted my gaze away from the Milky Way.
"Are you happy, Lukas? Do you find happiness in the peace you build by burning yourself away?"
And so, I looked at the face of my friend looking back at . In that mont, I wore the best smile I could give my friend and spoke quietly.
"Even if you answer yes, I can't just let you run wild as you please. But if I want my own will to be acknowledged, then I have to acknowledge yours."
"......"
"If this is truly your will, then all I can do, no matter what cos, is keep you alive."
A searing pain across the back of my hand. The sudden, incomprehensible agony wasn't enough to break my reflection. I looked into those resolute eyes and spoke.
"Rember this."
And I saw myself reflected in those eyes.
"The one life you lose is mine."
A light that belonged to neither nor Lukas—to no one, surely—rose from below. A vision struck, as though unknown mories were piercing through flesh and seeping in.
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