---
Lilia had worked as a guard maid in the royal harem of the Asura Kingdom.
During the day, she changed her mistress’s clothes and attended to her meals. She remembered the identities of visitors, as well as where their eyes lingered. When trouble arose, she gathered her skirts and drew her sword.
Her evaluation as a maid had not been poor. Her hands were quick, she knew proper etiquette, and even when she heard words she was not meant to hear, her expression never changed.
As a swordswoman, she was ordinary.
The fundamentals she had learned at the dojo remained with her. She could subdue an unarmed person or an untrained soldier without much difficulty. But those who infiltrated a place where royalty lived were not such opponents.
Assassins, magicians, and the private soldiers of nobles who concealed their names.
Against them, ordinary skill meant only that one could hold out a little longer.
Lilia had taken a dagger to the thigh while stopping an assassin who had targeted a newborn princess. The wound itself was not deep, but the poison on the blade had been the problem.
Healing magic had closed the wound, and a physician had drawn out the poison, saving her life. After rehabilitation, she had no particular trouble walking.
But whenever she tried to run, her injured leg followed a beat too late.
At the moment she needed to lunge forward to cut down an opponent, her foot would not move.
For a swordswoman, that was fatal.
The royal palace did not keep an injured guard maid for long. Considering how many secrets she knew, they had been kind enough to let her leave unharmed, so Lilia did not complain.
After leaving the capital, she changed carriages several times. It was to make certain no one was following her. She had no intention of hiding the fact that she had worked in the harem, but neither did she intend to become entangled again with anyone who wished to make use of that experience.
That was how she arrived in the Fittoa Region.
Other than Roa, it was a land of endless fields and small villages. News from the capital arrived late, and people worried more about how much rain would fall that year than which noble would seize power next.
It was close to the place Lilia had been looking for.
There was not much work she could do with an injured leg. While looking for a position as a maid, she noticed a recruitment notice that had come up from Buena Village.
A knight was seeking a maid.
Those with experience in childbirth and childcare were preferred, and room, board, and wages would be provided.
The employer’s name was Paul Greyrat.
Lilia remembered that name.
He had been a noble boy who suddenly rolled into the dojo where she had once learned swordsmanship. There had been rumors that he had fought with his family and run away from home, and he certainly had not seemed like someone raised to behave himself.
He had been frivolous by nature. Whenever he saw a woman, he would strike up a conversation, and his body moved before his thoughts could catch up.
But he had talent with the sword.
He saw a movement Lilia had spent years learning and copied it after a single viewing. Before long, he could use it faster and more powerfully than she could. He had annoyed her then, but looking back, it had simply been a difference in skill.
It had come as a surprise that Paul had become a knight in the borderlands and even married.
When she went to see for herself, his wife Zenith was close to giving birth. Paul had been delighted the moment he recognized Lilia, and Zenith also valued Lilia’s experience assisting with childbirth and childcare in the harem.
The wages were better than she had expected as well.
She thought she could remain there for a long time.
At least, until the children were born.
---
The birth proceeded smoothly.
Though in pain, Zenith breathed as Lilia instructed, while Paul wandered pointlessly about the room and was scolded several times.
The first child was a boy.
After receiving him into her arms, Lilia immediately checked his nose and mouth.
He did not cry.
She rubbed his back and touched the soles of his feet. The child was breathing, and his pulse was normal. There was strength in his body as well.
Yet he did not cry.
He simply stared into empty space with his eyes open.
"Ah... ah."
After a moment, the child made a small sound.
It was closer to a sound forced out with his breath than a cry, but Lilia finally relaxed. If there was nothing wrong with his health, perhaps he was simply a quiet child.
The second child was also a boy.
That child did not cry either.
With practiced hands, Lilia checked his condition. His breathing, temperature, and pulse were all normal. He was not weaker than the first child, either.
The second child opened his eyes and turned his gaze toward Lilia’s face.
A baby’s eyes could not yet focus properly. Lilia knew that, yet she felt as though their eyes had met.
His gaze lingered for too long.
When she lightly patted his back, the child made a brief sound. When Lilia did not touch him again, he soon fell quiet.
It looked as though he had reacted only as much as was necessary.
It was an absurd thought.
Lilia wrapped the child in cloth and handed him to Zenith.
The first was Rudeus.
The second was Eugene.
Paul laughed as he called his two sons’ names over and over. Zenith, exhausted as she was, held the children in turn and smiled.
Lilia congratulated them sincerely.
That night, she was relieved that both children were healthy.
It was afterward that she began to feel uneasy.
---
From the moment Rudeus began to crawl, he searched every corner of the house.
He found not only the kitchen and storeroom, but even the narrow spaces where cleaning tools were kept. If she looked away for a moment, he disappeared; when she found him, he was doing something he should not have been doing.
One could have thought him a curious child.
But there was something strange about him.
He roamed all over the house, yet rarely went outside the door. He spent long stretches sitting before the window and looking out, but whenever the door opened, he instead retreated farther inside.
It was the same when he heard the footsteps of other people.
He seemed afraid of the villagers.
What Lilia found harder to endure than that was Rudeus’s expression.
Whenever women’s undergarments appeared while she was sorting laundry, the child’s breathing changed. When she picked him up, he tried to press his face against her chest more than necessary.
It could have been because he was a baby.
Perhaps he was hungry, seeking warmth, or mistaking her for his mother’s embrace.
But Lilia had seen similar eyes in the harem.
Men who spoke of dignity while their eyes roamed over a maid’s body.
That vulgar look would occasionally appear on the face of a small child.
One day, Lilia secretly bought a talisman and dried herbs. She even tried the warding rites she had learned in her hometown.
They had no effect.
The next day, Rudeus was still letting out strange little laughs as he looked at the laundry.
At least, he did not look like an evil spirit sneering at a talisman. He simply seemed to have always been that sort of child.
Eugene, in an entirely different sense, required no tending.
Even when he was hungry, he did not cry loudly. If his diaper was wet, he made a short sound or moved his fingertips. When picked up, he entrusted his body to her, but he never reached out his arms first.
His body was healthy.
He had scarcely ever run a fever, his appetite was consistent, and even his sleeping hours were rarely disturbed.
"I think Eugene is too quiet," Zenith once said, looking worried.
Lilia examined the child’s body again.
"There is nothing wrong with his health."
That was all she could say.
Children were ordinarily creatures who demanded much attention. They cried, fussed, tugged at people, and asked to be held for no reason at all.
Eugene had almost none of those demands.
It made things easier.
---
It was not long after the children had learned to hold up their heads.
In the middle of the night, Lilia entered their room to check on them.
Rudeus lay in his bed. His eyes were closed, but she could see his gaze moving beneath his eyelids.
Eugene’s bed was empty.
Her heart lurched.
Lilia immediately searched the room.
Eugene was sitting atop a low box beneath the window.
He was not yet old enough to climb up there by himself. Yet his back was straight, and his head did not wobble.
A faint light floated above his tiny hand.
It did not flicker like candlelight, and it lacked the flow she sensed in water or fire magic. A small bluish mass held a steady shape over his palm.
Lilia caught her breath.
The moment she took a step, Eugene turned his head.
Their gazes met.
There was no look of being caught on the child’s face.
He seemed only to have confirmed that Lilia had entered the room.
The light above his hand vanished.
Then Eugene’s form grew hazy.
He had not become invisible. Lilia knew he was sitting by the window. Yet whenever she looked away for even a moment, it felt as though no one had ever been there.
There had been people in the harem skilled at concealing their presence. They stilled their breath and footsteps, and in darkness moved so they could not be distinguished from shadows.
What Eugene had used was different from that kind of technique.
Her eyes could not hold on to the child.
Lilia could not even think of moving her hands.
A moment later, Eugene’s form became clear again.
His small body rose from atop the box.
He floated no higher than the width of a palm. But his feet were clearly off the floor.
Eugene moved into his bed just like that and quietly lay down.
Rudeus had opened his eyes.
His face was stiff as he looked back and forth between his younger brother and Lilia.
It seemed that he, too, had seen everything.
Without saying anything, Lilia left the room.
Only once she entered the hallway did she let out a long breath.
Should she tell Paul?
He probably would not believe her at first. Once he saw it himself, though, there was a good chance he would laugh loudly and boast that his son was a genius.
Zenith would worry. She might call for a priest or try to find out whether something had happened to Eugene.
The problem was what came after.
One thing Lilia had learned while working in the harem was that once a secret left one’s lips, it no longer belonged to the person who had spoken it.
If Eugene’s power became known, there was no telling who might take an interest.
The Asuran royal family might learn of it. Magicians or nobles might come looking. Above all, Eugene had not harmed anyone yet.
Lilia decided to keep silent.
Instead, she began watching him more closely.
---
Rudeus took an interest in books.
At first, Lilia thought he was merely pretending to turn the pages. But he stared at the same page for long periods, and whenever an adult read aloud to him, he alternated between studying the letters and the sounds.
He learned to speak quickly as well.
He still occasionally wore an unpleasant expression, but unlike before, not all of his attention was directed toward strange things.
When Zenith called him, he turned his head. When Paul played with him, he laughed. He even seemed to be trying to find his own place within the household.
He remained a strange child.
Still, it seemed possible that he could grow up like a human child.
Eugene barely changed.
There had even been a time when Lilia thought he could not speak.
But one night, while passing the room of the two children, she heard a small voice.
Rudeus kept asking something in a pronunciation that was difficult to understand.
For a while, there was no answer.
Then Eugene spoke.
"What a bother."
It was only a short sentence, but his pronunciation was astonishingly precise.
It was not that he had failed to learn to speak.
He had simply never opened his mouth because he did not consider it necessary.
Zenith did not know that.
Every day, she held Eugene and taught him words. Smiling, she stroked his head and told him to try saying Mama, and before bed, she sang to him.
Eugene did not avoid her.
But whenever her hand touched his head, his shoulders stiffened ever so slightly.
Zenith seemed to notice it, too. Sometimes she stopped her hand and watched the child’s reaction.
Even so, she never withdrew it.
"You can take your time."
One afternoon, Zenith said this as she stroked Eugene’s head.
Eugene did not answer.
But that day, he did not lean away from her either.
Even as Lilia returned to the kitchen, she kept thinking about the sight for a long time.
Perhaps that child did not dislike people after all.
Perhaps he simply did not know how to lean into someone’s embrace.
She began to think that way after the day Rudeus fell.
Rudeus had lost his balance while trying to take a book from a shelf and struck his forehead against the floor. Before Zenith could run over, Eugene turned his head first.
Crying, Rudeus held out his hand toward his younger brother.
Eugene’s hand lifted slightly as well.
But he could not extend it all the way.
He paused for a moment with his hand raised, then watched Zenith pick Rudeus up.
His was not an indifferent expression.
But neither was it the expression of someone who knew what he ought to do.
After that, whenever Eugene was too quiet, Lilia checked the sound of his breathing. At night, she made certain his bed was not empty.
At first, it was something she had begun out of fear.
Repeating it every day turned it into routine.
If Rudeus reached for the laundry, she lightly smacked the back of his hand. If he was reading, she merely moved away the candle and sharp objects.
If Eugene left food uneaten, she checked whether he had a fever. When his body was too stiff in Zenith’s arms, Lilia pretended not to notice and busied herself with other work to give them time.
Thus, their first year passed.
"Lilia."
One day, Zenith asked cautiously.
"Rudy and Eugene will be all right, won’t they?"
Lilia could not answer at once.
Rudeus was peculiar, but at least he wanted things. He wanted to look at books, enjoyed being praised, and wore a satisfied expression when Zenith held him.
What Eugene wanted, she still did not know.
Nor could Lilia tell Zenith what she had seen.
"They will be fine."
In the end, that was how she answered.
She had no basis for saying it.
Zenith smiled with relief.
The next morning, Lilia changed the two children’s diapers as usual.
When Rudeus’s clothes were removed, he laughed while making a strange sound. Lilia lightly pushed his forehead with a finger, and he quieted down.
Eugene was looking at the ceiling.
"Please stay still for a moment."
Eugene turned his eyes toward Lilia.
After tying the diaper straps, she rested her palm briefly over his stomach. He was warm, and his breathing continued evenly.
From the kitchen came the sound of water boiling.
Lilia gathered up the laundry and left the room.
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register