Asti asked me on a date, and he brought me to the hills of Freiltorum.
“…Beautiful.”
The words slipped out before I could stop them.
The view was so open, so gentle, it felt as though the world had quietly widened.
Between Alstreil and Frailchest lay this place—an overlook famous among travelers. The path up the softly sloping hill was considered good exercise, and people came for the scenery as much as for the stroll.
“I’m glad,” Asti murmured, relief softening his expression.
“How did you even know about somewhere like this?”
“When I’d just started as an adventurer, I took quests around here sometimes. There were materials along the way, up to the top.”
So this was where local adventurers aimed next, after the Spirit Forest.
And yet, even though I’d lived in Frailchest, I had never known there was a place like this so close by.
“Frailchest is…over there?” I lifted my hand with confidence.
Asti pointed in the opposite direction.
Heat rushed up my neck. I quickly rotated my finger in a little circle as though I’d meant something else, then pulled my hand back as casually as I could manage.
A small sound—“pfft”—escaped him.
I turned. His shoulders were shaking.
It irritated me more than it should have. I set off with quick steps, pretending I wasn’t embarrassed at all.
“Sheila! I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t have to laugh. This is my first time here—of course I’d get it wrong.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
I kept walking, the pace stubborn, my cheeks still burning.
Asti followed, trying to keep up, but I refused to slow down. If I stopped, I felt like I would drown in my own shame.
And then—
“Ah!”
I hadn’t been watching my footing.
My toe caught on a small rise in the path and my body pitched forward.
Instinct screamed first: protect the baby.
I wrapped my arms around my belly and shut my eyes, bracing for the fall—
But instead, something tugged me sharply backward.
The world snapped upright.
When I opened my eyes, I was in Asti’s arms.
“Sorry,” he said, voice tight. “Are you alright?”
“I—I’m fine…”
My heart was pounding so hard it felt loud.
Maybe it was the near fall. Maybe it was the warmth at my back. Maybe it was the strange, sudden closeness of another person after so long.
He wasn’t exactly hugging me, but he was holding me steady—and that was enough to make my face go hot.
“I wasn’t teasing you,” Asti said quietly. “I just thought…you were really cute.”
“…I see.”
Cute.
Had anyone said that to me before?
Even as my mind tried to catch up, my pulse kept racing. It was ridiculous. I was supposed to be calm—older, composed, the kind of woman who didn’t fluster so easily.
Asti was still behind me, close enough that his voice brushed my ear.
“Sheila.”
“Y-Yes?!”
My answer came out far too high, and I hated myself for it.
He shifted slightly, and the warmth at my back intensified for a breath. My skin prickled. I barely dared to move.
“There’s something I want to talk to you about,” he said.
My heart gave a single heavy thump.
Then his arms released me.
The loss of heat felt oddly like a draft sneaking under my clothes. I turned, and Asti looked up at me with an earnest gaze that made my chest ache.
I nodded, trying to settle my breathing.
He smiled—just a little—like he’d been relieved by that alone.
“Standing is hard on you, isn’t it? There’s a gazebo over there. Let’s sit.”
He held out his hand.
When had it started to feel natural to place mine in it?
Only days ago, I’d refused his touch. And now—
I rested my fingers lightly on his palm, careful not to grip too much.
Asti’s hand closed around mine anyway, warm and steady, as if he had decided for both of us that I didn’t need to be afraid of falling again.
We walked slowly. It should have soothed me.
It didn’t.
My heart refused to quiet, and neither of us spoke. The only sound was the wind threading through grass and leaves.
At the gazebo, Asti purified the bench with a simple spell, then pulled a cushion from his storage magic and set it down for me as if he’d done it a hundred times.
He was so practiced that, without meaning to, a small unease rose in me.
Had he done this for someone else?
“Here,” he said, scratching his cheek a little. “It’s one I use. Sorry about that.”
“No—thank you.”
That awkward gesture, that faint embarrassment, made the unease dissolve as quickly as it had formed.
He was always like that—erasing my worries as if he’d read them before I admitted them.
“When I first found this place,” Asti said, sitting beside me, “I used to come here alone whenever I had too much on my mind. When I was frustrated, or angry at the world.”
The wind lifted his silver hair, letting it shimmer and sway. His violet eyes narrowed softly as he looked into the distance, and for a moment he seemed like someone resting on the edge of a long-held exhaustion.
As he spoke—about nothing in particular at first—he also told me how the Royal Knights were changing.
Expeditions were now being formed only of unmarried knights.
After Leon’s scandal, other married men had also been discovered hiding children, and the system was being overhauled.
Even the management of my recovery potions had become strict. No more unrecorded distribution. Anyone who used them had to write their name, unit, reason, and quantity, and any unused stock had to be returned.
It sounded troublesome.
But Asti said that once misuse outside of combat was uncovered and the responsibility gathered around Leon, the inside of the Order had nearly torn itself apart. Zahne was struggling to hold it together.
“They’ve gotten away with too much for too long,” Asti said. “Zahne was complaining that if you keep one eye shut, people start doing whatever they please. He said he had to open both eyes and drag everything into the light.”
“It sounds exhausting,” I murmured. “…But it’s the price of what they ignored.”
“It is. I hope they truly change.”
I did too.
If fewer children were hurt by adults’ betrayals, then perhaps the storm that began with my divorce would mean something beyond my own pain.
Perhaps it would ripple outward, forcing people to face what they preferred to hide.
“Still…” I said, turning toward him. “Thank you, Asti. Because of you, I was able to get this far. I feel like I hardly did anything.”
“If you tell me ‘thank you,’ I can move forever,” he said at once, far too serious for the absurdity of it. Then he added, gentler, “And it was half work. Don’t worry about it.”
Even if he said that, he had helped me more than I could count.
And the more he did, the more grateful I felt…and the more painfully aware I became of my own weakness.
But when Asti smiled, something in me loosened, as if my chest finally remembered how to breathe.
“Then…” I asked softly, “why do you do so much for me?”
Asti’s expression went blank.
He looked away.
For a moment, he seemed to struggle with something invisible. Then he took a slow breath, as though he’d made up his mind.
“…Sheila,” he began.
He kept his gaze fixed on the distance, but his voice had changed—sharper in its honesty, heavy with something he’d carried too long.
His shoulders rose slightly, then fell.
And when he spoke again, his words were quiet.
“I’m…a child born out of wedlock.”
The wind passed through the gazebo.
Between us, it felt as though the world had paused—just long enough for me to understand what he had finally chosen to place in my hands.
