IDIBC SS 6

Ricardo’s Awakening, Back Then (2) 

After Harold left, Ricardo dismissed everyone around them. Once they had disappeared from sight, Ricardo drew close to her.

“First, let’s start with how to hold a sword.”

“Oh……”

The unexpected contact made Lienne’s mind go completely blank.

Watching her barely manage to collect herself and shake her head, Ricardo smiled faintly. Soon Freddy appeared and brought him a wooden sword.

“That one’s a slightly different color, isn’t it?”

At Lienne’s words, Ricardo held out the wooden sword he was carrying toward her as though it were nothing special.

“This belongs to Resotia.”

When Lienne’s eyes lit up at the mention of Resotia, Ricardo’s brow furrowed. It displeased him that she still harbored longing for Resotia. But he feigned indifference and continued.

“It’s a sword made from wood of the Black Forest.”

“I get to use it?”

“Yes, swing it as freely as you like.”

Lienne extended the sword toward him with clumsy movements. When sunlight caught it, the wooden sword gleamed with a polished shine.

Ricardo, who had been carefully observing her posture, stepped closer and took hold of her shoulder. Her body flinched instinctively, but Lienne tried to keep a calm expression on her face.

“Be careful not to let the shoulder on your sword side rise up.”

Next, he firmly gripped her hips to correct her stance. Lienne felt the force travel all the way to the tip of the blade in an instant.

“Wow, that’s truly remarkable.”

She turned to look at him with a bright smile, and he gazed at her expression for a moment before smiling meaningfully.

“Do you know something?”

Ricardo cupped her cheeks in both hands, turned her head back to face forward, and pressed his body even closer against hers.

When his knee came to rest against her thigh, Lienne felt inexplicably embarrassed and the words that came out were not gentle ones.

“If you say it like that, how am I supposed to know what you mean.”

Speaking irritably, Lienne barely managed to pull away from him, pressed her lips firmly together, and readjusted her grip on the sword.

Having finished correcting her posture, he stood before her and gave a nod as if to say, go ahead and try.

Whoosh, whoosh — Lienne diligently swung the sword the way she had been taught so far, but Ricardo watching her squeezed his eyes shut and chuckled.

It felt as though he were laughing at her, and Lienne bit down hard on her lower lip. It was only natural to be poor at it when she had barely begun learning swordsmanship, yet it puzzled her why her pride was stung this deeply.

“So what is it you’re trying to say.”

“I was always in a bad mood, originally. I was especially in a bad mood on fine days, but lately I’m in a bad mood even on cloudy days.”

“Are you saying that’s because of me?”

“Yes.”

“Pardon?”

She asked back casually and was checking whether she was gripping the sword properly when Ricardo’s shadow fell over her in a long sweep.

She looked up because the world around her had suddenly darkened, and Ricardo brought his lips against hers with a soft, audible press. It happened so fast that she had no chance whatsoever to do anything about it.

“Wh-what do you think you’re doing?”

Watching her ask in a face of astonishment, Ricardo burst out laughing.

“I thought very carefully about exactly why I would do such a thing.”

“……”

“You asked how it’s possible to run into each other so coincidentally in this vast mansion, didn’t you?”

Taking two large steps back, he spoke while lightly flicking the sword toward her as he talked. Lienne was so occupied with fending off his sudden attacks that she could neither think nor give a proper answer.

“A little slower, please.”

“No, because then you’ll definitely lose your nerve and run away.”

Ricardo stepped in toward Lienne as she kept trying to retreat, and brought the sword down from overhead; she raised both arms and just barely blocked his sword.

Ricardo looked down at her, then brought his lips against hers once more — this time with a deeper sound than before.

Lienne, who had for a moment lost her senses and let her eyes flutter shut, startled sharply and shouted at him.

“Young Duke!”

“It couldn’t possibly be coincidence.”

Unable to make sense of what Ricardo was saying, Lienne felt as though she were in a state of panic. He created distance between them again, and this time lowered his arms and gave a nod as if telling Lienne to attack.

“Try attacking.”

Inexplicably furious, she swung the sword at him almost without realizing it. It was a completely absurd movement that entirely disregarded even the basic techniques she had spent four days learning.

He easily deflected Lienne’s sword, and when he seized one of her arms as she charged and twisted it behind her back, her body naturally ended up facing away from him.

In the moment she turned in surprise to look back, Ricardo pressed his lips against hers in a deep, lingering kiss.

The brightness around her flooded with darkness, and all the ragged breaths that had been making her chest heave until just a moment ago passed over to him entirely.

Lienne could not grasp at all what was happening.

Her entire body melted softly. It was sweetly, dizzily overwhelming — impossible to shake off.

She had been forcing herself to look away.

She had felt that his burning gaze followed her wherever she went and never left her for even a moment, yet she pretended not to notice. She had known that it was frequent for him to take her arm and tuck her behind his back as though she were his possession, yet she turned a blind eye. She had an idea as to why Judith Fan Monzania harbored a pathological hatred for her, yet she played ignorant.

Lienne had not even noticed that her own body had already turned toward him. Everything in the world seemed to fade away except for the air grazing the fine hairs on her face — leaving only herself and him.

She could not shake off this sensation that was simultaneously like floating in mid-air and plummeting to the ground.

“You knew it wasn’t coincidence too.”

Their eyes met again, and it was only when she saw him smile gently that Lienne realized she had somehow wrapped her arms around his neck and was clinging to him. Not that realizing it meant she could pull away.

“You weren’t unaware of my feelings.”

No — Lienne ought not to have known. She should have turned away from the fact that he would invariably find her no matter where she was, that he would draw out his words at the ends of sentences only when speaking to her as though sulking, that he would do absolutely anything for her even while saying he didn’t want to.

“You didn’t dislike it either.”

Thump, thump, thump — Ricardo’s low voice resonated through her heart. She could not refute a single word he said. Perhaps her heart had already been entirely stolen by him in that forest where she had met him again.

It had been quite some time since her heart had begun to plunge endlessly at the mere sight of this beautiful man’s shadow.

“N-no, that’s not true.”

Even so, Lienne denied it. He already had a fiancée acknowledged not only by his family but by the heavens themselves.

Having regained her senses, she stepped back — and he advanced by the same amount. Whatever ease had lingered in Ricardo’s eyes until just moments ago had already vanished entirely.

“Not true?”

Seen from a slightly greater distance, the man was still smiling. It was a smile so beautiful it made her chest ache. Lienne stepped back more decisively, leveled her sword at him, and said:

“I decline any man who already has a fiancée.”

“I have a fiancée?”

“Don’t joke with me.”

“Me? Right now?”

“Of course. Don’t try to deceive me just because I’m a naive woman from the Principality.”

“Whatever else may be said, you’re not naive.”

She glared at him with all her might, but offered no particular rebuttal. Just as Ricardo said, she was not naive enough to be unaware of where she stood.

“That’s right, I’m not naive. What I mean is that I have absolutely no intention of becoming your hidden woman.”

“Does that mean you think I’m trying to make you my mistress?”

He refused to drop his smile even while saying such shameless things.

“Stay back. This is my final warning.”

“You mean to strike me with that sword?”

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to someone utterly shameless.”

Go ahead and try — he didn’t say it aloud, but he looked at Lienne with precisely that expression. Lienne, suddenly burning with indignation, charged at him with her sword raised.

Ricardo smiled as though he found it laughable and did not take up any defensive stance whatsoever.

At the thought that he might actually end up getting hit by the wooden sword at this rate, Lienne hesitated at the last moment. In doing so, her foot caught on a stone she hadn’t seen, and as she felt her body pitching forward, she simply squeezed her eyes shut.

Thwack!

Simultaneously with a tremendous impact, Ricardo’s firm hands wrapped around Lienne’s waist. Lienne realized that she had struck Ricardo squarely in the forehead with full force.

When she reflexively opened her eyes, Ricardo was right before her face — wearing an expression she had never once seen on him before.

“Young… Duke, are you all right?”

Before the question had even finished leaving her lips — a blindingly pure white light flashed once across the entire world. The clear sky turning pitch black with darkness in the same instant was equally something that happened in the blink of an eye.

Lienne, who had been fumbling along his arm, felt her own body growing scorching hot, as though engulfed in flames.

‘H-hot……’

Sudden fear swept over her and she tried to pull away from him.

“Lienne……”

But at the sound of her name called softly, her movement stopped.

“Even if I forget you, I will inevitably come to love you. I know it with certainty.”

‘What?’

Before she could even ask what the words she had just heard meant, Lienne’s consciousness grew hazy. But she could feel it with her entire being.

The very beginning of an ability held only by the imperial family and the three Grand Ducal houses of the Empire. The fact that an awakening had occurred.

++++

Two days after Stuart’s funeral, the royal couple of Resotia completed their preparations to return to their own country.

Mariette demonstrated an unprecedented level of lavish state treatment, announcing to the world just how strong the alliance between the two nations was.

Mariette gazed at the carriages lined up stretching far into the distance to see them off, and drew up the corners of her lips.

They were waiting their turn to step down from the carriages in order to greet the royal couple of Resotia. Around the time Count Enehaz had just finished his greetings and turned to leave, Mariette spoke quietly.

“I, too, would like to spend my old age in Resotia.”

Lienne gave a nod at her words. All Resotians dream of life in Dermeier, yet those who have lived lives of splendor in turn yearn for the tranquility of Resotia.

Lienne thought of Duke and Duchess Rochester.

Gerald had ultimately not passed the title on to Ricardo. It was because he had made clear his intention to remain in Dermeier.

After that, the Duke of Rochester presided over Stuart’s funeral from beginning to end.

It was a decision made by two people who understood better than anyone that Gerald supporting the imperial household as a duke of the Empire would provide a firm foundation for Mariette’s standing within it.