“You should only look at me, why do you always do other things every morning?”
Perhaps overwhelmed with grievance while speaking, Rose started crying again. It was such a pitiful crying sound that it made even the listener’s eyes sting.
“You should only look at me and only cherish me, are other things more important to Elijah than me?”
Elijah didn’t think he’d been so indifferent to Rose that he would say such things.
They spent every moment of the day together. The only times Elijah took his eyes off Rose were when writing letters to his Master or doing housework.
However, Rose seemed unable to bear even those brief moments. If he had friends his own age to play with, he wouldn’t cling to him this much.
Thinking that made him feel unnecessarily sorry. Since he was the only one who could protect Rose in these mountains, as Rose said, he should have watched over him better.
“I’m sorry.”
Each time his eyelids closed, transparent tears dripped down. Elijah diligently wiped away the tears streaming down through the long, soaked eyelashes.
Red eyes glistening with moisture looked up at Elijah with resentment. His tightly closed lips drooped downward as far as they could go. At the same moment a teardrop clinging to his chin tip, trembling with tension, fell, his round nose tip wriggled as he sniffled.
“I’m sorry, Rose. I’ll watch you well next time.”
It was a face that made him apologize even though he’d done nothing wrong. Elijah took in each lovable and varied change in Rose’s expression one by one, wiping away the snot beading at his nose tip with his sleeve.
“You have to keep looking only at me, okay?”
“Yes. I’ll only look at you.”
Rose rested his cheek against his chest with a dispirited face. Elijah continued patting his back. Rose’s breath, which had been rising and falling steeply, gradually stabilized evenly. His small hand gripped Elijah’s collar as he mumbled an apology.
“I’m sorry too…, Elijah.”
Rose, who had placed his ear against Elijah’s chest to check his heartbeat, raised his head. His face already had quite a bit of the crying mood gone.
“Were you very startled?”
“No.”
Elijah answered quietly, clenching his fingertips that were still trembling faintly. Though he’d nearly lost his soul to a degree that the expression “startled” was insufficient, he couldn’t show that in front of Rose.
“Then are you angry?”
“No, I’m not angry. But from next time, absolutely don’t climb trees. Understand?”
“What will you do if I climb again? Will you scold me?”
“No.”
“Then? Will you save me with magic like this time?”
“…Huh?”
Rose, rounding his lips, made a whooshing sound and spread both arms wide.
“Like this, like before?”
Elijah smiled a bit with a bemused expression. That he could safely catch Rose was thanks to the tree branches caught in between slowing the fall, not because of magic. If he’d had that level of magical skill, life in the mountains wouldn’t have been this difficult all along.
He didn’t know what misunderstanding Rose had, but in a frightened situation, it was entirely possible to be mistaken. Elijah just nodded to reassure him.
“Of course. I’ll definitely protect you. Except for climbing up trees.”
“…”
Rose tilted his head and stared at Elijah. In Elijah’s opinion, Rose sometimes seemed to selectively respond only to what he wanted to hear. This time too, as expected, Rose naturally held out his hair tie, pretending not to understand his words.
“Elijah, my hair.”
He turned around in Elijah’s arms, showing his back.
“Did you hear me? You can’t climb up trees.”
“Mmmmm.”
An ambiguous act of cuteness came back, neither answer nor whining. In the end, Elijah let out a small sigh and slowly arranged the disheveled silver-white hair with his hands.
What was the point of nagging more? Since he’d already experienced it once to the point of losing his soul, Rose would be careful next time too.
It took quite a while just to untangle the tangled curls without causing pain. After several minutes of labor, Elijah was finally able to neatly tie Rose’s hair.
When he swept the fine stray hairs back behind his ear with his hand and poked the protruding cheek, Rose swung his two legs stretched forward left and right.
“Have you calmed down a bit now?”
“Yes. I’m good.”
Rose, raising his hand behind to fiddle with the end of the ribbon tied in his hair, asked,
“Did you tie it prettily?”
“Yes. It’s pretty.”
“Hehe.”
He leaned back and fell into Elijah’s embrace. His face, completely free of crying now, was already grinning broadly.
Rose’s mood changed quickly. Even when crying as pitifully as anything, a few minutes later he would smile as quickly as flipping over a palm. He didn’t know if this was a characteristic of children or just Rose.
“Ah.”
His eyes, which had been curved like a crescent moon, suddenly widened. His red eyes sparkled like jewels, capturing the brilliance of the sunlight.
“That’s right!”
He clapped his hands and turned to Elijah.
“You know, Elijah. I have something to show you.”
“What is it?”
Rose got up from his seat and brushed off his bottom. Perhaps having already forgotten the big incident from just moments ago, he grabbed Elijah’s arm with an excited face.
“Get up. Quickly.”
When he first saw him, Rose had been like a small flour dough that could fit in one arm, but now he’d grown so much that standing on tiptoe he reached Elijah’s waist. He’d surpassed in just two years the height that ordinary humans would take 6-7 years to grow.
Moreover, he’d become quite strong, so with just a light pull, Elijah’s body was tugged along. Elijah, unable to resist the urging, got up and was led by him, swaying as he walked.
“Go slowly, Rose.”
Rose hopped along, leading Elijah for quite a while.
“There are so many Igrit heads over there!”
Elijah was a bit surprised inwardly. To come out this far alone… Well, he was a child who climbed to the top of trees alone, so there was probably nowhere he couldn’t go now.
“Look at this. I was right, wasn’t I? Lots of Igrit heads have grown!”
Rose pointed somewhere with a proud expression.
“…”
Elijah looked at the pomegranate tree he was pointing at. On a tree that had grown a bit taller than Elijah’s height, red fruits like rubies hung temptingly.
“Yes, I see.”
Though Rose might be seeing it for the first time, Elijah had already seen this tree dozens of times. He’d first met Igrit here too.
‘I am Igrit, the Avatar of Fire. And you?’
He remembered the moment when a bright red pomegranate with no eyes, nose, or mouth drawn on it had arrogantly spoken to him. On that day, Elijah brought Igrit back and made him a body and facial features.
Rose, who couldn’t possibly know that fact, excitedly explained as if expounding on some tremendous truth.
“If we lose Igrit, we can make another one here.”
“…But this is a pomegranate. Not Igrit’s head.”
Even if they were all the same pomegranates, how could Igrit, who had been with him for 200 years, be the same as a pomegranate fruit that bore this year? Igrit was a friend who had stayed by his side through those long years without rotting.
Rose pursed his lips and muttered as if he didn’t understand.
“But, Igrit’s head is just a pomegranate… His body is cotton…”
Elijah bent his knees and sat down to match Rose’s eye level. Rose didn’t get along very well with Igrit. To be precise, it was closer to Igrit being unilaterally afraid of Rose.
Rose no longer roughly grabbed and pulled at Igrit’s head like before. At one point, he would constantly separate and hide Igrit’s body and head at every opportunity, which was troublesome, but as he grew, he seemed to have lost interest.
However, whenever Elijah was talking with Igrit, Rose would particularly cling to Elijah and interfere with the conversation. Because of that, opportunities to have long conversations with Igrit had significantly decreased compared to before.
Elijah, who had always felt guilty about unintentionally alienating Igrit, quietly admonished Rose.
“Don’t do that and get along well with Igrit.”
“…”
Rose tightly shut his mouth as if displeased. However, even for Elijah, this was something that couldn’t be helped.
No matter how cute Rose was, there were two things Elijah absolutely could not compromise on. The first was the letters to his Master. And the second was precisely Igrit.
“Does Elijah like Igrit more than me?”
“No.”
“Then you like me more?”
“You’re both precious.”
Rose tilted his head with a puzzled face as if he truly couldn’t understand. Sweeping the stray hair stuck to his cheek back behind his ear, he spoke in a clear tone without a shred of doubt.
“I’m pretty and cute.”
“…That’s right.”
“I can hug Elijah, and I can hold your hand too.”
“I know.”
“I’m not the same as just a pomegranate.”
Elijah let out a small sigh and stroked his cheek. It was quite a logical approach for something that came from a six or seven-year-old child’s head. Of course, just because it was logical didn’t mean his words were the correct answer.
“Igrit is our friend. He’s not just a pomegranate.”
At the word “friend,” Rose wrinkled his nose. After staring at Elijah quietly for a few seconds, lost in thought, he asked another question.
“If Igrit is a friend, then what am I?”
“…”
Elijah fell into contemplation about how he should answer. Simply calling him a friend felt a bit disappointing as his caregiver. Rose was an existence a bit closer than a friend to him. But to say they were a parent-child relationship…, he hadn’t given birth to Rose.
They weren’t blood relatives so they weren’t family, and they weren’t master and disciple either. Among the forms of human relationships Elijah knew, he couldn’t find any that fit perfectly with his and Rose’s relationship.
“You know, Elijah. I’m…”
While he was alone, quite deeply lost in thought, Rose suddenly lowered his voice and gestured. As if about to tell some tremendously secret story, he pressed his lips close to Elijah’s ear and whispered,
“I’m Elijah’s prince.”
