ERTHMB Chapter 169

Coming Like Waves

“I’ve sharpened my blade, packed water and a towel… and the weather’s nice too.”

Turning her eyes from the blazing sun outside the window, Helena headed toward the black forest. Dressed in light hunting attire, a sword of appropriate weight occasionally brushed against her legs.

The forest that was once a den of magical beasts was now quiet. Thanks to frequent subjugations made possible by their improved finances, it had become just the right training ground.

Helena often visited the forest to improve her swordsmanship. Swinging her sword against magical beasts made it much easier to remove hesitation from her movements.

Arriving at the forest entrance, Helena looked around and drew her sword. Fortunately, Eugene was nowhere to be seen.

‘It’s not that he’s bothersome… but he follows me around too much like a shadow.’

After that horrific night, Eugene had stared blankly out the window like someone who’d lost their mind. It took some time for him to return to normal daily life.

During that time, Helena simply stayed by his side without any special consideration or care. Whatever about her actions had helped, Eugene gradually regained his vitality.

Now it was she who often found herself lost in nostalgia because of him.

The summer when she first met him. Eugene seemed to have returned exactly to that season.

Every day he gave her bouquets, spoke to her about trivial matters, apologized for small mistakes, or confessed his simple affection.

He was mending the torn pieces one by one. It looked just like a rain-soaked puppy whimpering. That’s why Helena hesitated about whether to let him into her domain.

Even if she didn’t love out of pity, Eugene did.

“Ugh!”

Her thoughts were interrupted by a magical beast charging from the side. Helena quickly stepped back. With minimal, compact movements, she dodged the Cerberus and scraped the tip of her blade against its tough hide.

One of the viciously growling heads immediately opened wide and lunged. Helena rolled on the ground and brought her sword down on the head that was now embedded where she had just been standing.

The severed head fell away in one stroke. Instead of clashing head-on, she calmly removed the remaining heads while deflecting their force.

Ending the breath remaining in the torso was the easiest part of today’s training. It didn’t take long before the Cerberus’s legs buckled and it collapsed with a thud.

Helena leaned against her catch and checked the pocket watch hanging at her waist.

“Today… 14 minutes and 21 seconds.”

Her ultimate goal was to handle it within 10 minutes. Helena caught her ragged breath and drank some water.

‘If it were Ian, he would’ve finished in 5 minutes.’

Maybe even 3 minutes.

As she did now, Helena thought of him little by little. Neither too much nor too little, she thought of him casually, as if he were still part of her daily life.

Enough to have room for other thoughts like this.

—Keeek!

A low-grade magical beast flying toward her was pierced by a dagger she threw while drinking water. As the bird-shaped magical beast fell with a thud, Helena also set down her water bottle and stood up.

“Tsk.”

Unfortunately, though her thirst was quenched, her precious dagger was now stuck in a tall tree. Since it was one that Gelda had given her after having Flam repair it, she absolutely had to retrieve it.

Fortunately, the tree next to it had many branches extending from the bottom. If she climbed up stepping on those, she should be able to reach it.

Helena climbed the tree without hesitation. She stopped beneath a precariously thin branch and reached out her hand. Several futile grasps just barely missed.

After glancing down, Helena swallowed a shout and leaned her body far out. Just as the dagger seemed to enter her grasp, there was a cracking sound beneath her feet. Helena fell along with the broken branch.

And then.

“That’s dangerous, Helena.”

There was a stable embrace to catch her. Helena thought for a moment with her eyes still closed.

If it were Ian, how wonderful would that be.

But he didn’t smell of cigars. As she slowly opened her eyes, Eugene moved his arm under her knees to make it easier to hold her and murmured.

“What if you’d gotten hurt.”

Unusually for Eugene lately, his words had a sharp edge. To him with his angry face, Helena mumbled like a child trying to avoid a scolding.

“I saw you approaching this way.”

“What does that have to do with it.”

“Even if I fell, I thought you’d catch me.”

“……”

With Eugene saying nothing, Helena looked up at him intently.

“……Was it hard? Did you get hurt? Put me down quickly—”

“No. I’m not hurt. It wasn’t hard at all.”

“……?”

Eugene watched Helena worrying for a bit longer, then shook his head slightly and set her down.

“I’m happy. That’s why.”

Indeed, the corners of his mouth were slightly turned up. Though she couldn’t understand why he suddenly became happy after being angry, Helena quietly followed behind him as he walked ahead, gathering her belongings.

Eugene’s stride, unlike his long legs, wasn’t large, making him easy to follow.

On the way back to the castle after leaving the forest, Helena carefully opened the conversation.

“Come to think of it, I’ve been wondering about something recently—about what I saw in your memories last time.”

Eugene nodded to indicate she could continue. Helena asked.

“You were also falsely accused and nearly died. Did your mother really plot rebellion? I can’t think of any reasonable motive for it.”

Eugene stopped walking. Helena stopped following him.

Eugene removed a strand of hair stuck to Helena’s cheek and gently soothed her.

“It’s okay now. Christine is in prison with an unsound mind, and there’s nothing left that can harm you.”

As he said, the present was very different. Nothing was flowing the same way as the previous life. But that didn’t mean the past could simply be forgotten, though at least there was no need to worry.

Helena started walking again. Eugene walked close beside her.

The two were quiet until they passed through the castle gate. Helena occasionally glanced at Eugene at his unusual demeanor, but his face was sunken in thought.

She could hear his voice only when they reached her door.

Handing over her things, he asked dampily.

“All this time… you must have had such a hard time. Alone.”

His words came out intermittently, as if choking up. It seemed he had spent the entire journey home interpreting a simple question as anxiety.

Helena took her things and tapped Eugene’s furrowed brow.

“Like you said, it’s okay. In this life, no one will die. Right?”

Eugene obediently nodded in agreement. Helena rose on her tiptoes and patted his head.

“See you at dinner.”

Helena disappeared beyond the door before Eugene’s eyes.

Eugene also returned to his room, closed the door, and leaned against it. The answer he couldn’t bring himself to give her lingered in his mouth.

‘Yes. You won’t die. I’ll save you, and I’ll live too. Together with you.’

During the time he spent in a daze, Eugene had thought a lot. He set up many hypotheses, searched for reasons, and craved meaning.

In doing so, he remembered how he felt when making their first contract. That’s how he realized it. Since he had made Helena cry, he had to be the one to make her smile.

Eugene understood what this changed life meant.

‘The reason I turned back time was to finally have you completely.’

****

Summer passed quickly. Throughout that summer, Helena’s room was colorful with all kinds of flowers.

Today too, Helena was greeted by a purple fragrance as soon as she opened her door. Eugene would leave a bouquet at her door like a morning greeting.

Helena sometimes found it fascinating that such diverse colors came from a man who had been so monochrome.

‘He really has changed so much.’

The lilac bouquet was somewhat more crudely wrapped than usual. But it was so cute that Helena sniffed it and headed to the smithy to find Flam.

Even after sufficient personnel had been assembled, he still wielded the hammer himself, so he would be there at this hour.

As she entered the smithy, Flam stopped what he was doing and gestured as expected. Helena followed with quick steps as he went into the office first.

After closing the door and turning around, he was unlocking a large chest placed on the desk. Flam wiped the soot from his face and hands with a towel and pulled out a thick rolled-up paper from the chest, handing it to her.

“Thank you as always.”

Flam closed his eyes and nodded slightly as if it was nothing. There was also a hint of urging in his manner, so Helena immediately untied the string and unrolled the paper.

“……”

“Not this one either?”

As she nodded with a disappointed face, Flam patted Helena’s shoulder.

“Don’t be too discouraged. Who knows? He might be a huge catch. Big ones are usually in the deep sea, you know.”

At his warm consolation, Helena forced her expression to relax and playfully poked his ribs.

“Let’s go fishing together later. We’ll catch a big one.”

“Well, that’s good too, of course… but I’m not joking.”

Flam scratched his forehead. As Helena looked up at him questioningly, he cleared his throat a bit and said.

“Actually, I’m trying to obtain a portrait of Emperor Rihalt. Since he rarely leaves the palace after the civil war ended, it’ll take some time, but I’ll manage to get one somehow.”

The Emperor of Rihalt. The words felt so unreal that Helena couldn’t help but smile a little.

After Ian left, it had already been over half a year since she had searched indiscriminately for men around her age with silver hair and purple eyes.

Though she only knew the name Ian, she had used every means to obtain portraits. The list she compiled even included the Emperor of Rihalt.

Of course, there was some distance to that possibility, but thinking of the Ian she had seen, it wasn’t entirely impossible either.

“Thank you, Flam.”

Helena gave her thanks saying she should be going, and picked up the bouquet she had left on the table.

Then, seeing the bouquet, Flam made a knowing sound.

“I thought I heard sneezing from the courtyard since dawn. Did he make that for you? What a world we live in.”

There was a reason the bouquet’s appearance was more crude than usual.

‘He made it himself.’

The scent of lilacs brushed her nose. Helena rubbed her index finger with her thumbnail.

Perhaps her expression was somewhat dark, because Flam asked.

“A flower you don’t particularly like?”

Knowing he was referring not to the flower but to a person, Helena hesitated before shaking her head.

“I don’t know.”

As she unconsciously looked out the window, Eugene’s form caught in her view far away.

Helena murmured while watching him.

“He’s just selfish, pitiful, shabby… and dear to me.”