# Chapter 46
I crawled backward using my elbows. Even as I pulled my legs out from under Rite one by one, he remained still. Just as I completely freed myself from him and got up to my knees, a large hand suddenly grabbed my ankle.
One glance from him weighed heavier than a thousand words. I took a deep breath to collect my emotions. I didn’t want to crumble in front of Rite. I always wanted to stand firm and give him a sense of security. Just like Plin had done for me.
“You need to send him away. Are you going to leave him like that?”
“…”
“I won’t talk long. I’ll just tell him nothing’s wrong and to go back down.”
I put on a calm expression, pretending everything was fine. Rite observed me carefully. My heart shrank under that gaze, but I continued to feign composure.
“Then let me ask you again, Arden.”
“…Yes.”
“What if he opens the door and comes in?”
It was the exact same question as before, not a single syllable changed. I closed my eyes tightly, then opened them again to find those purple eyes still staring intently at me.
“I won’t let him in. I’ll make sure he can’t come in.”
Seemingly satisfied with my answer, he finally released his grip on my ankle. When his unusually hot hand let go, my ankle felt cold.
“I won’t give you much time. I’m at my limit right now.”
Rite pointed to the horns sprouting from his head. Even the hand pointing was his right one, covered in scales. Though I didn’t respond, urgency was evident in my steps. Rite would surely notice this too.
I approached the door and looked back. From where I stood, Rite wasn’t visible. Only then did I feel reassured enough to open the door. The door that wouldn’t budge when Jack tried to open it now opened easily for me.
“Arden!”
I staggered as soon as I opened the door. Jack, who had been about to lunge toward the door, spotted me and quickly slowed down, but our shoulders still collided. If Jack hadn’t reached out to catch me, I would have fallen backward, but I removed his hand without thanking him.
Rite couldn’t be seen from here, which meant he probably couldn’t see me either. Despite knowing this, my heart raced. I felt exactly like a child doing something wrong.
“Is everything okay? I kept hearing strange sounds from inside…”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“But there were sounds…”
Jack tried to look past me into the house, but I shifted my body to block his view. He gave an awkward smile and apologized for this, but I just nodded.
Jack was sweating profusely despite the weather. At first, I thought he was just wet from the rain, but as he came closer, I could smell the sweat and feel the heat, which told me it wasn’t rainwater. The hood of his raincoat had even come off, showing how much effort he’d put into trying to open the door.
“Everything’s fine, so please go back down.”
“Are you sure nothing’s wrong? You don’t look well.”
“Please go down.”
I couldn’t say anything more. I couldn’t ask why he’d come, or tell him to go down carefully. Just because Rite couldn’t see me didn’t mean he couldn’t hear my voice.
Jack looked at me with concerned eyes, then gave an awkward smile. I thought he might finally leave, but he spoke again. Perhaps noticing my impatience, his speech quickened as if he too was in a hurry.
“You haven’t been coming down to the village. With the rain, I was worried the path might be icy and preventing you from coming down.”
Jack showed me the large packages he’d set down beside him. There were two bundles wrapped in blue waterproof plastic and tied again with string to create handles. They were quite large, each about the size of three or four human heads.
“This one is food. And this…”
“…”
“There’s forest all around, but just in case, I brought firewood too.”
Jack reached out and placed the two bundles on the floor inside the house. He hesitated, as if there was something else he wanted to say.
“And…”
“…”
“It’s better if you don’t come down to the village for a while. The atmosphere isn’t very good.”
“It might be excessive worry though,” Jack added with a smile. As he put his raincoat hood back on, he still looked at me with concerned eyes.
“You said nothing’s wrong, but… if anything happens, tell me.”
“…Nothing will happen.”
“Be careful. My father said the rain probably won’t stop anytime soon.”
Jack turned toward the forest exit. I closed the door after making sure he had passed the treehouse.
* * *
After sending Jack away, the house became quiet. Even as I stood leaning against the closed front door in a daze, Rite was nowhere to be seen. As I snapped out of it and walked through the living room toward the bedroom, my eyes met Rite’s, who was sitting on the living room floor looking up at me. He was in exactly the same position where we had confronted each other earlier. It was as if he hadn’t moved a single step from that spot.
“…It’s okay for me.”
It was a suffocating eye contact. Rite remained perfectly still, as if he wasn’t even breathing.
“You can do this to me as much as you want, it’s fine.”
“…”
“But later on, you can’t do this to other people.”
Rite, who had been sitting quietly like a doll, finally reacted. What started as a small, sardonic chuckle extended into prolonged laughter. Somehow, it sounded less like laughter and more like the coughing of someone who had been ill for a long time.
“That’s not right, Arden.”
With those words, the laughter abruptly stopped. Like it had been cut off with a knife.
“You should say, ‘How could you do this to me?’ You should push me away, hit me, say don’t treat me carelessly. Instead, why are you worrying about future people?”
How could I do that? It was entirely my fault that Rite was in such an uncomfortable situation.
“In the future, who else would I love besides Arden, and who else would love me besides Arden?”
I didn’t want to hear any more. Rite didn’t try to stop me. I entered the room and closed the door.
Once alone in the room with the door closed, all the emotions I had been suppressing surged back up. I felt like I had raised Rite too small. All he wanted was the affection of his guardian. Even though Rite had been born in the imperial palace, he had been by my side since he first opened his eyes. Having grown up seeing only the lackluster white scenery, he didn’t know how to be greedy.
The white things had taken away everything within reach. They devoured every scene the eye could see and every sound the ear could hear. In the snow-covered forest, no matter how loud you shouted, it would never carry far beyond the forest. It just circled around here and disappeared. The voracious white remained white no matter what it consumed. As if even that wasn’t enough.
I was sick of the pure white things. They swallowed all truth and erased everything to white. The disguised clean land just melted coldly when touched. I wanted to show Rite the green of summer.
“Haa…”
Even though no one was watching me, the tears that had built up inside wouldn’t come out. As if I’d forgotten how to bring them out, I just breathed dampened breaths for a long while. Then suddenly, a book spine caught my eye. Worn notebooks were neatly arranged. The familiar handwriting there evoked nostalgia.
Opening the diary was an impulse. I grabbed one at random and saw content I had read once before.
The director was right. The child had talent for alchemy. A good foundation for becoming an engineer.
I put the diary back and opened a different one. As I quickly flipped through the pages, I noticed that at some point, my name began to appear quite frequently. Going back a few pages, I saw a day from the past that was still vivid in my memory.
Arden has passed the imperial palace exam.
The entry began with those words.
Arden has passed the imperial palace exam.
I expected it, but I don’t feel good about it. There’s less than a month left until the welcome ceremony.
There’s nothing I need to prepare, yet I feel anxious. The kid will certainly handle everything well, but I keep worrying. Maybe I’m getting old.
This was new information to me. Plin had never once expressed opposition to me becoming an imperial engineer. After earning my engineer’s license, I immediately applied for the examination to become an imperial engineer. That year, they accepted an unusually large number of successful candidates, allowing me to pass on my first attempt. Back then, I didn’t think deeply about why they were accepting so many; I just thought I was lucky, but now looking back, the purpose seemed obvious.
After that, only Plin’s daily stories were written. I was about to turn the page when there was no mention of my name the next day, but then I belatedly noticed it mentioned at the end of the entry. I stopped turning the page and read the words written in the diary.
I still don’t know. I knew very well what kind of place it was. But it was Arden’s lifelong dream, so how could I stop him?
I never dreamed Plin had such thoughts. I had always thought he was someone who didn’t heavily involve himself in my choices.
The question about how Plin knew the imperial palace so well was easily answered in the next sentence.
Maybe things are different now. Even that rotten palace might have changed since I was there.
I had wondered why someone with his skills never considered becoming an imperial engineer, but that was a misguided curiosity to begin with. It wasn’t that he never became one; he had been one and then quit. Realizing this, I thought it was very like Plin. He preferred a comfortable life true to his personality over honor or money.
So much so that Plin was known as the eccentric old man in the neighborhood. I never thought his personality was that unusual, but they said that was because I resembled Plin. After Plin adopted me, people whispered that I wasn’t the adopted son of the eccentric old man but his biological child. Maybe I didn’t notice anything particularly strange because we were similar people.
But the last sentence Plin wrote wasn’t like him at all. For such a realistic person, he must have known things don’t change that easily. The moment I thought that…
‘The rain will stop before then.’
I had said the same thing, expressing a hope with no foundation. Realizing this, a small laugh escaped me. Plin or me, do we all change like this when raising a child?
Even as I turned the pages, for a long time, his worries about me continued.
