If Kasumireaz was worried about this, then he should have just said so clearly.
I know. It’s completely unfair resentment.
And yet, even knowing that, Masumi couldn’t help but spit out her irritation. The target of her tantrum was Kasumireaz—of course, only in her head.
There was no way she had the composure to say it out loud.
Not when she’d been forced into this so-called “wall slam” position and had no room to breathe.
At a distance close enough to feel his breath, Arc’s displeased face loomed near. The gaze that looked ready to bite was fixed on Masumi’s nape.
“So this is it. The reason Kasumireaz went out of his way to lend you a cloak.”
The cloak that had come up in conversation—apparently the guard captain’s desperate measure, anticipating exactly this—was stripped away without ceremony. Thrown down onto the floor, it lay crumpled there, looking almost apologetic, as if it were saying, Sorry I couldn’t help.
It had happened the moment she stepped out of the bath.
With no explanation and no time to process, what could Masumi do besides stare, her eyes darting back and forth?
“Dirty, underhanded little trick.”
Masumi couldn’t tell who Arc was spitting that at.
His narrowed eyes seethed with anger and irritation, raw negative emotion bleeding through. Even on that first night—when she’d been treated like a complete suspect—Arc hadn’t shown this kind of ferocity.
Why, all of a sudden?
Masumi swallowed hard. Her back was pressed to the cold wall; her escape route had been cut off a long time ago. She felt her fingertips go cold with tension.
“Why… are you so angry?”
“Hah?”
A sharp stare stabbed into her, and Masumi fell silent.
The fury was intense.
She knew she was good with her mouth, but this wasn’t an atmosphere where she could toss out a quip. The air was razor-edged, pinning her in place. He was close to serious—maybe nearly fully so. She hesitated even to make a small move like pushing back against that thick chest.
No one told her he could be this terrifying.
The sheer gap in strength—one she couldn’t overcome even if she fought with everything she had. Because she understood the simple difference between them, her body trembled at the fact she could never escape.
If Arc didn’t hold back, there was nothing Masumi could do, no matter what she said.
“Did I do something?”
With their height difference, she inevitably had to look up at him.
Arc said nothing. Silence settled.
Then, in the next instant, Masumi’s world spun.
A flash of light caught her eye—the luxurious chandelier overhead. It wasn’t electricity or flame, but clusters of small light orbs glittering like bells on a branch.
And before she could even cry out, Masumi’s body sank into the bed.
She squinted at the impact. As Arc loosened the collar of his knight’s uniform, his body came down over her.
＊ ＊ ＊ ＊
It was the year she lost important people one after another.
Fourteen years old, the summer of her second year of middle school.
After two long years of illness, her mother passed away as if drifting into sleep. The only thing Masumi remembered clearly was her mother’s hand at the end—thin, shrunken, with fragile fingertips that seemed like they might shatter if she tried to play the violin.
Two years was more than enough time to change a person beyond recognition.
Masumi thought she must have been preparing herself somewhere deep down.
Her mother was going far away—somewhere Masumi’s hand could never reach. She understood it without anyone telling her. She wasn’t so childish anymore that she could believe, If I wish hard enough, it’ll come true.
And yet, her mother’s hollow cheeks and sunken eyes blurred into something indistinct. Even when she tried to recall them, it was like looking through mist. The mother who smiled in Masumi’s mind was always the mother from before the illness took hold.
The teacher who held Masumi close and comforted her in that grief followed soon after, dying that winter.
Already elderly, he caught a bad cold, and once pneumonia was diagnosed, he was gone within a week. It was too fast. Masumi couldn’t find words.
When it came to the keepsake he’d left her, she refused at first.
He’d once run a small hobby studio, but in his youth he’d placed in international competitions and played in a professional orchestra. Masumi had heard his cherished instrument was worth the price of a house.
It was far too much for a girl who didn’t even know if she could become a professional.
Even so, she eventually agreed to accept it—because she learned just how deeply her teacher had worried about her.
Masumi was his last student. At his funeral, many of her senior fellow pupils were present. Some had shown talent from early on and now performed as soloists on the world stage. Others held positions like concertmaster in one of the country’s finest orchestras—an array of faces she could only call dazzling.
They spoke to Masumi, who sat alone at the edge of the hall with nowhere to belong.
They told her the teacher spoke of her often.
Our dear little junior, they said. If you ever need help, we’ll be there. Please—please accept the instrument that stayed by the teacher’s side until the very end.
A sound clearer than anyone’s.
Just as her name promised.
Hearing from her seniors that her teacher had always spoken of her with such pride, Masumi nodded and accepted the keepsake.
From that day onward, she played the violin whenever she wasn’t at school.
Part of it was because the loneliness threatened to crush her. But more than that, she pursued—single-mindedly—the sound her teacher had loved. Only when the vibration of the notes resonated in her body could she believe, I’m alive. The rest of the time, she didn’t know how to exist. There was nothing else she wanted besides playing.
After the funeral, one of her senior students began checking in on her now and then. He was the teacher’s first disciple, a world-renowned soloist.
Despite his busy life, he always came—never letting more than half a year pass.
Each time, he told her the same thing.
Her sound was becoming more refined, clearer.
At first, he truly seemed happy. He even narrowed his eyes and said, “I understand why Teacher loved it.”
When did that begin to cloud over?
Masumi could never forget what he told her close to her high school graduation.
“A sky so far away even a bird’s wings can’t reach it. A lake so clear you can see all the way to a bottom where no fish live. Your sound is that beautifully pure. But it’s distant.”
It’s out of reach—he said, and his eyes looked sad.
He didn’t seem to know what to do. Masumi didn’t, either. And time kept passing, without either of them turning back.
After her mother’s death, Masumi’s life alone with her father didn’t last even five years.
As the years passed, Masumi began to resemble her mother more and more, and her father’s anguish deepened. It felt, he said, like the woman he had once loved had grown up and was meeting him again as someone new.
It was painful, he said.
Masumi didn’t blame him when he brought it up, face twisted with suffering. Her father drank night after night, as if flooding himself with alcohol, searching endlessly for the shadow of his beloved wife. Masumi pitied him more than she resented him.
As long as she stayed by his side, he would suffer forever. Realizing that, Masumi wanted to free him before the thought could even become unbearable.
“It’s okay. If I ever need help, I’ll call. I promise.”
She never once kept that promise.
It was what Masumi said when her father left the house. They would live apart, but it didn’t mean their bond as parent and child was severed. In fact, he still paid her university tuition.
But she never told him anything—not that she entered an international competition, not that she took second place and was still torn apart by critics, not that she found a job, not even that stress ruined her health and she quit.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love him.
She just couldn’t bring herself to pile more weight onto the man who had torn himself away from the past and built a new family.
Ten years since graduating high school.
That was how long Masumi had lived on her own.
The last time she cried was at her teacher’s funeral. She had always clenched her teeth and endured. She’d thrown away the weakness that cried, and lived with nothing but desperation to survive.
Her mother was smiling in front of her now—gentle, bathed in white light.
And here, she always realized it.
I’m dreaming.
She realized it because no matter how far she reached, she could never touch her mother.
＊ ＊ ＊ ＊
The dream drifted away slowly, and it felt unreal to the end.
Her mother, her teacher, her father, her senior pupil—one by one, like a reel of memories, they vanished into distant light.
It was an entirely gentle sensation. She hadn’t been unconditionally happy, but as she looked back, she could see she had been blessed. Even now, she felt a faint loneliness for family far away, but her resolve to live alone hadn’t dimmed. Warmth like that had always been something beyond her reach—something she’d given up on long ago.
Masumi opened her eyes.
Luxurious curtains, left half-drawn, filled her vision. Beyond the window, the world was dim and bluish with dawn. It was still early morning.
“…”
She exhaled deeply.
Her whole body felt heavy as lead. Taking Arc’s violent emotions head-on had drained her quickly. She hadn’t been allowed to resist; pleasure had been forced onto her without regard for her will, until her body screamed, and somewhere along the way her consciousness cut out.
She had every right to be furious—to call it being used and discarded.
It had been that one-sided a night.
And yet, there was a part of her that couldn’t bring herself to blame him.
Because she remembered Arc’s eyes, wavering in the dark.
His anger had shifted into confusion, and then into something like regret.
She didn’t know what had pushed him there. All she had was the image lingering at the edge of her memory: in the midst of that ferocity, pain and conflict had flickered through.
One day, those eyes would turn fully toward her.
The other person would be troubled, suffering, and then fall silent—as if to say, It won’t reach. And Masumi couldn’t understand. She was Masumi. She had never once tried to be distant.
Still on her side, Masumi slowly pushed herself upright. Behind her, steady breathing told her Arc was sleeping deeply. She looked back with only her neck, and saw the arms that must have held her all night now slack and thrown out loosely.
In the blue half-dark, his sleeping face looked young.
As if last night’s intensity had been a lie.
Her body ached with fatigue, but she couldn’t make herself lie down again. Masumi drew her knees up into a triangle, rested her arms on them, and buried her forehead.
No matter where she lived, nothing would change now.
That city where she’d spent twenty-eight years since birth—if someone asked whether it was truly where she wanted to return, she wasn’t confident she could nod. Ever since she decided she would live alone without relying on anyone, she’d made sure not to create anyone precious.
There was no one she wanted to see.
And she didn’t want anyone who would make her want to.
“Can’t sleep?”
With the rustle of fabric, a voice came—slightly hoarse with sleep.
“What time is it…?”
Arc slipped his right hand out from under the covers and floated a single small light orb. It drifted softly through the air like a firefly, then stopped near the fireplace behind the long settee in the sitting area.
Above the fireplace sat a gold-decorated mantel clock.
The face, indistinct in the dim dawn, rose into view as the orb’s light illuminated it.
“…Four.”
Murmuring tiredly, Arc rolled toward Masumi.
From beneath the coverlet he’d shifted aside to summon the light, bare shoulder and chest peeked out. In the warm orange glow that softly lit the room, his well-defined muscles stood out in shadow and relief.
“Sorry. I woke you.”
“That’s where you’d normally complain.”
With a breath that could have been a yawn or a sigh, Arc’s hand traced along the hem of Masumi’s nightdress.
“Complaining is too mild. You can hit me.”
“What is that supposed to mean? All that does is make my hand hurt.”
“…I’m sorry.”
His rough fingers touched the hem, but carefully avoided touching Masumi herself. The consideration seeping through that restraint felt like whiplash, and Masumi tilted her head.
“It’s fine. I’m an adult. Things like that happen.”
There was no reason to brood over it. Masumi gave a small shrug.
Whatever else it was, their relationship was something she could compartmentalize.
A man and a woman of their age sharing a bed—of course something could happen.
But that was all.
Masumi had learned in the past that sleeping together didn’t mean anything had to change.
“Hey.”
Still with her forehead against her knees, Masumi looked at Arc.
“You were angry, weren’t you? Can I ask why?”
She should have the right to ask, at least about this.
Otherwise there was no reason for Arc to apologize. If the fault had been Masumi’s, he wouldn’t have said sorry.
In the quiet of the pale dawn, she waited.
But Arc only looked up at her, lips sealed. Their gazes tangled and didn’t break.
“…Are you searching?”
“For what.”
“For words. Are you hesitating—trying to figure out how to explain it?”
“Why would you think that.”
“Because everyone was like that.”
A faint tension gathered between Arc’s brows.
Her troubled senior pupil, her father sinking into anguish—those images brushed past Masumi’s eyelids. But she didn’t intend to explain further. Her personal history wasn’t the point. What she wanted to know was why Arc had flown into a rage.
Perhaps sensing her silence, Arc finally spoke, quietly.
“I won’t make your spy suspicion public.”
This time it was Masumi’s turn to blink.
“So the suspicion isn’t going to disappear…”
“No.”
“Then what is my position?”
“Externally, call yourself my dedicated musician. Understand? Always.”
“But I promised I’d take care of the others too.”
“It shouldn’t happen, but as an emergency measure, the reality can be that. I’ll inform the other knight orders as well—you are the commander’s dedicated musician.”
“Can’t I just be ‘the Fourth Knight Order’s musician’?”
“On this matter, I will not compromise any further.”
For that one moment, the soft haze of waking sharpened into the same blade-like edge as last night. He didn’t press down on her again—reason must have been holding him back—but the pressure was still absolute. Masumi could only nod.
“Stray sparks… no.”
“Sparks?”
“Forget it.”
Arc caught Masumi’s wrist and gave it a gentle tug, as if inviting her.
“It’s still early. Sleep.”
The discussion was cut off.
Masumi didn’t resist as she lay back down, and Arc, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, pulled her into his arms. In the calm warmth of the bed, Masumi gave up on thinking any further.
Her awareness sank slowly.
“People already think we’ve fallen to the depths. It doesn’t matter.”
She couldn’t fight the drowsiness long enough to weigh the meaning of the words murmured at her ear.
That her spy suspicion would be kept only within the commander and the guard captain.
That stubborn insistence on “dedicated,” allowing nothing else.
What disadvantage could possibly be waiting—just from a difference in what she called herself?
No matter how she thought about it, she couldn’t understand.
