"Answer me."
Was this chill because of the cold night air?
Or was it because of her gaze, fixed squarely on me?
Her face was half-shrouded in shadow.
Between those deep shadows, her eyes glowed blue like the moon.
Her eyes and lips were both elegantly curved in a smile, yet her gaze was not smiling at all.
It almost felt as though there were a hint of madness mixed into her eyes.
Her lips demanded an answer from me.
But her gaze said she would not accept excuses.
I had no idea what I was supposed to say to her as she sent me that icy stare.
Sorry? I forgot?
No matter what answer I gave, it did not seem like that look in her eyes would change.
A heavy, suffocating silence stretched long between us.
"Mister."
At last, it was Dolnesia who broke that taut silence.
"Y-yes?"
Fuck, I thought I was going to bite my tongue.
That word, mister, sure made my heart leap right out of my chest.
With that sudden “mister” slipping into the brief silence, I squeaked without meaning to and blurted out a polite response.
Dolnesia, who had been quietly looking down at me, soon let out a small snicker.
"Anyone would think I was about to eat you alive."
"Weren’t you?"
I could not exactly say, even as a joke, that she had not looked like she was about to devour me.
She had looked like she was about to bury me somewhere, no matter who saw her.
At my retort, the corners of Dolnesia’s eyes rose slightly, and she gave an incredulous laugh.
Then, without answering me at all, she quietly moved over and sat beside me.
Right beside me, at that.
Unlike when I had first sat beside her, leaving about a handspan of space between us, she pressed herself openly against my side from the start.
Her shoulder nearly brushed mine, and her faint fragrance tickled the tip of my nose at the suddenly shortened distance.
When I flinched slightly at the unexpected contact, Dolnesia turned her gaze toward me.
As if she still had not heard my answer to her earlier question, she said nothing and wore no expression, merely staring quietly at my face.
Our time off would soon be over.
But if I did not give her the answer she wanted, she looked like she would keep me trapped here all night.
"...How did you know?"
Averting my eyes at an angle, I spoke quietly as I steadied my trembling.
It was not an answer, but still.
As though satisfied with that question, Dolnesia looked ahead again.
"You showed me your face when you left. Do you think there are one or two faces as menacing as yours?"
Dolnesia spoke in a whispering voice laced with a small laugh.
So that was it after all?
Well, I could admit that this face was not an easy impression to forget.
Still, it hurt a little when she said it that bluntly.
So it was such a trivial reason.
When I had returned from Dreamland and first encountered her as Dolnesia rather than Dorothy, she had seemed not to know me, so I thought she had forgotten.
And I had assumed that the reason she had been friendly with me all this time was because Ian, before I possessed him, had built up her affection for him.
Had she known from the very beginning?
Then...
Exactly since when had she known?
Had it been from the first time she met me?
Or from the first time she met Ian before I possessed him?
The memories in this body did not show me anything from after the past had been altered.
To be honest, I had no way of knowing what relationship she had had with Ian before I possessed him, after she entered the Logres family.
But when I had met her as Dolnesia, she had seemed to know the original owner of this body well.
She had been remarkably familiar when she came into my room, too.
"Then..."
Just as I was about to ask my second question—
Crackle, crackle.
Beneath a streetlamp that flickered to life once more—
"It was thanks to Sancho."
As if she had anticipated my question, Dolnesia cut me off and began speaking.
"Sancho?"
"When I first saw you, I thought you were that mister..."
Crackle.
The streetlamp’s light surged unsteadily once more, flickering precariously.
Within the boundary where shadow and light wavered—
"But you were not him."
In a low whisper, she began recounting what had happened during that blank stretch of time before I returned from Dreamland to my original time.
#
"I’m sorry, Dolnesia."
Those were the last words he left behind.
Then hands filled with apology roughly pushed me out of the cave.
As I was shoved out into empty air, the figure of that mister vanished like a lie beyond my narrow field of vision.
Sadly, that was the end of my encounter with him.
As though he had never existed in this world from the start.
Without leaving behind a single trace or scrap of warmth, he evaporated in an instant.
There were traces, though.
In my hands was the old helmet that he had placed upon my head.
And I could clearly feel the connection with Rocinante that I had seen alongside him.
The cold sensation of him pushing me outside.
His final voice, murmuring that he was sorry.
The roguish smile he wore while pretending everything was fine.
Even the salty taste of the jerky he had slipped into my tiny hand.
That mister’s menacing face.
The tiny promise I had made to employ him.
I remembered everything clearly.
But I could not see him.
Why? Why on earth?
Had I seemed too presumptuous, saying that I would employ him?
Or had he grown tired of me now that I was such a burden?
Why did he suddenly disappear?
Why... did he leave only me behind again?
I was left all alone again.
Like Father... that mister had abandoned me and left too.
He had spoken as though he would stay with me forever, so why did he leave?
If he was going to leave so mercilessly, he should not have saved me in the first place.
He should not have given me something like that jerky that made my heart waver...!
Surging betrayal blurred my vision with tears.
I swung my arm to throw the one thing that mister had left me—the old, worn iron helmet—onto the ground.
At that very moment.
Fwoosh—!
Vines sprang up from somewhere and coiled around my wrist, stopping me.
A pumpkin emerged from the shadows.
Like this old helmet mister had given me, it was the one thing Father had given me.
Sancho stopped my arm with his vines and shook his head.
The same went for Rocinante, who had appeared without my noticing when.
He trembled faintly, perhaps terrified by the sight of Sancho.
Neighhh.
But as if telling me to calm down, he wrapped me in his warm wings.
Thud.
Feeling that breeze, my strength gave out, and my knees buckled as I collapsed weakly to the ground.
This was hard.
I had only just learned it.
That even for a child like me, who had wandered the back alleys, there were people in this world who could offer a piece of jerky out of kindness without asking for anything in return.
I had only just learned that there were people in reality who could help someone because they were in danger, without any ulterior motive or expectation of reward.
No matter how menacing his face was, I thought I could safely make it all the way to the far northern reaches of Logres with him. I had even promised that I would employ him once we arrived.
So now, if I had been abandoned even after all that...
"What am I supposed to do...?"
"Th-that... is not... so, my lord."
At that moment, a voice carefully spoke in clumsy, halting words.
Fwoosh—.
The vines that had rapidly extended now gently embraced my entire body.
As though soothing the sorrow that had burst from me, those stems became warm, kind arms that calmed me.
It was Sancho.
A foolish pumpkin that had always done nothing but cry out for its lord, possessing not even a shred of wisdom.
Pressing his hard forehead against mine, he quietly radiated warmth as if squeezing every bit of his ignorance dry.
"The knight... returned. My lord... was not abandoned... He was sorry..."
Sancho continued, carefully speaking one word after another in his unskilled, halting voice.
"These eyes... saw everything... Sancho may be stupid... but his eyes are good. I saw it all clearly... That knight would never abandon my lord."
"Then... how can I meet him again?"
I wanted to meet him. Desperately.
Though our time together had been as brief as a fleeting instant.
The kindness he had shown me for the first time, the warmth of the salty jerky he had placed in my hand, and above all, that mister with the menacing face.
I wanted to meet all of it... again.
"You can meet him..."
"I can?"
As if in answer.
A flame flickered within the hollow carved into the shape of a pumpkin’s face.
Father had once told me something.
A scarecrow has no wisdom.
Because the flame that arose deep within its head to grant it life had burned away all of its brain, no wisdom remained in its place.
But.
It was thanks to that very warm flame that he possessed a heart fuller of warmth than anyone else in the world.
Just as Father had said, though Sancho might lack wisdom, he seemed to know the true answer. He spoke confidently, though his voice was still halting.
"If my lord... reaches Logres, surely..."
With those words, perhaps having squeezed out every last bit of his wisdom, Sancho fell into deep silence.
"Sancho...?"
I softly called his name, but he had already returned to being the mindless scarecrow he had been before.
All he did was repeat the simple cry of “my looord” in his clumsy voice.
Still, I thought I knew what I had to do now.
Logres.
The destination I was originally meant to reach.
If I went there, I could meet that mister again.
Once I thought that, my tears finally stopped.
I rose to my feet and brushed the dust from my knees, where it had stuck after I fell to the ground.
Holding only that one feeling in my heart, after countless twists and turns, I was finally able to arrive.
Logres in the north, where icy winds blew.
Logres was rather different from the rumors that drifted through the back alleys.
The Duke of Logres, whom people said ate men alive, was merely a somewhat brusque man, while Cassian was, despite his cold exterior, practically a doting fool when it came to his younger sister.
Only then did I think I understood why Father had told me to come here if anything happened to him.
After hearing my circumstances, the two of them readily accepted me into the Logres family.
But status like that was not what mattered to me.
There had been a note Father left before he went mad that was why I came here, but what mattered far more was the possibility of meeting that mister again.
Yet the only information I had was that mister’s name was Don Quixote, the old helmet he had left behind,
and the fact that he had an exceptionally menacing face.
Naturally, there did not seem to be a knight like that in Logres.
I asked Cassian and Head Butler Alfred just in case, but they merely said they had never heard of such a knight.
Was that mister not here after all?
Had what Sancho said truly been nothing more than a kind lie?
I had half given up and was walking desolately down the corridor.
Thump—!
I crashed hard into someone.
Had I failed to look ahead because I was lost in thought? I quickly lifted my head to apologize.
Big.
Not as big as that mister, but still a massive, burly build.
Had someone like this been in our family?
Just as I was about to open my mouth and apologize—
"Are you all right?"
Are you all right?
The moment I heard that low voice—
Ah.
The image of that person, buried away in my memories, began to overlap with him.
"Mister?"
His body was smaller than it had been then, but he had the same menacing face.
And that voice was unmistakably—
It was him.
Ah, he would not recognize me as I was now.
Back then, I had brown hair covered all over in dirt and dust.
But he knew my name, so surely...!
Holding that small hope in my heart—
"Mister, do you remember me? I’m Dorothy."
I carefully spoke to him in a trembling voice.
But what came back was—
"Dorothy...? Who... Ah. You must be Lady Dolnesia, who joined our family today."
It was an indifferent response that cruelly pierced my heart.
He did not recognize me at all.
"What?"
It was a merciless answer, as though he were seeing me for the first time.
The answer I least wanted to hear came from his lips.
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