Chapter 12
Kairon's eyes trembled as he leaned over the terrace railing.
The only woman on the gray street who possessed any color.
Only then did the figures beside her enter his field of vision.
‘...Huh?’
Kairon furrowed his brow.
A middle-aged gentleman was leading the way in front of the woman.
He looked familiar.
A neat gray suit.
Severe-looking yet dignified silver-rimmed glasses.
‘That's... Count Eisen, isn't it?’
The retainer who oversaw the administration of the Northgard Grand Duchy and his father's former right-hand man.
He was also the only person who had planted 「the Romance of the North」 in young Kairon.
『Young master, beyond that barrier live monstrous warriors whom the people of the Empire cannot even imagine.』
When Kairon was young, Count Eisen would often finish his work reports, sit the boy on his knee, and tell him stories about the borderlands.
What he praised most enthusiastically was Gorgon, chieftain of the 「Winterclaw Tribe」.
『A man named Gorgon? Haha, well, I can say this with certainty: no knight in the Empire could defeat him, no matter who challenged him.』
『No way. Our dad, the captain of the knights, is the strongest.』
『No. That martial prowess, feared even by wild snow bears... is on another level. If he had been even slightly more ambitious, he might have become 「Khan」, king of the legendary Revered Peoples, and threatened the entire continent by now.』
Those were the warriors whom Count Eisen, famous for being strict and never offering empty praise, recognized so highly.
Those stories lit a fire in young Kairon's heart and became the decisive reason he stubbornly insisted on inspecting this distant borderland before entering the academy.
‘Father clearly said that Count Eisen recently retired from the front lines...’
And yet that great man, the mentor who had inspired his dream of the North, was personally guiding her.
A calculator began spinning rapidly inside Kairon's head.
‘If Count Eisen is treating her with that much deference... is she a hidden relative of House Eisen? Or the daughter of a central noble house?’
Either way, it didn't matter.
What mattered was that she was very likely a noblewoman of unquestionable status.
If so, there would be no problem with him approaching her.
But then.
‘What's that fellow behind her?’
Kairon's gaze shifted to the enormous man walking closely beside the woman.
He had a beastlike build and was draped in a drab hood that looked like a ragged sack.
‘I suppose he's just a bodyguard who's all bulk.’
But his attitude was extremely irritating.
It wasn't enough that he dared to walk side by side with his mistress; he kept bowing his head and whispering something into her ear.
To Kairon, it looked less like lovers being affectionate and more like an oblivious servant reporting to his master.
‘An ignorant lout who knows nothing of etiquette. How dare he put his mouth near a lady's ear?’
Kairon clicked his tongue.
What if he stepped in, taught such an insolent bodyguard a lesson, and rescued her?
『Eek! Lord Kairon, you're so cool!』
It was the perfect first-meeting scenario.
“Let's go.”
Kairon set down his teacup and sprang to his feet.
“We'll follow them.”
* * *
Meanwhile, completely unaware of any of this, our group was following Count Eisen down an alley.
“Count, is the restaurant this way? It's getting... um, gloomy.”
Kara asked while looking around.
After passing through the splendid main avenue, we entered a back alley lined with shabby taverns.
There were spit stains left by drunken patrons on the ground, but fortunately, the cold weather meant there was no stale, damp smell.
“Don't worry. True hidden gems are always tucked away.”
Count Eisen confidently led the way.
Then he stopped in front of a shabby wooden building.
The faint words 「The Haven Between Winter and Spring」 were written on a creaking wooden sign.
“Here we are.”
“......Here?”
Kara and I looked over the building with doubtful eyes.
The windows were stained with grease, and a strong smell of meat drifted out of the entrance along with raucous shouting and singing.
“It may look like this from the outside, but it's the finest restaurant in the borderlands. When I was the youngest member of a delegation twenty-five years ago, I used to soothe my soul with the stew here whenever I was worn down by overwork.”
Count Eisen smacked his lips, seeming lost in old memories.
“It isn't an Imperial-style feast, but it's rustic and rough... yes, it has ‘a man's taste.’”
There was no way we could refuse after he spoke of it so highly.
More than anything, the smell was incredible.
“All right. Let's go in.”
We entered the restaurant without hesitation.
And a little while later.
Step, step.
Another group arrived at the entrance of the restaurant.
* * *
Escort knights in gleaming silver armor surrounded a boy in splendid clothing.
It was Kairon.
“Y-Young Master!”
The captain of the escort knights hurriedly stepped in front of him.
“This is a place frequented by common soldiers! Its sanitary conditions haven't been verified, and more importantly, how could someone of your exalted status enter such a shabby place....”
The captain was right.
This was a place where border guards and mercenaries came to fill their bellies cheaply, not somewhere the young master of the Grand Ducal House should visit.
But there was no breaking Kairon's stubbornness.
“Silence.”
Kairon spoke with gleaming eyes.
“A true commander must understand his soldiers' hardships. I will experience firsthand what they eat and what they discuss among themselves.”
“B-but....”
“Out of the way. That's an order.”
‘Actually, I don't care about any of that.’
There was only one thing on his mind.
He wanted to see the 「blue-eyed Valkyrie」 who had just gone inside up close.
Since she had entered such a shabby place, she clearly had a bold personality that valued substance over appearances.
She was a perfect match for his ideal type.
Creak-
Kairon brushed aside his attendants' protests and boldly…
…reached for the door, only to flinch at the grease on the doorknob before opening the old restaurant door.
* * *
The inside of the restaurant was noisy.
“Two more beers over here!”
“Those new recruits who came in this time, they're completely spineless....”
Rough-looking soldiers sat around old wooden tables, enjoying stew and beer.
It was a quintessential soldiers' rest stop, thick with cigarette smoke and filled with a mixture of curses and laughter.
“Auntie! Three special stews, a whole roast, and... barley tea!”
Count Eisen ordered with practiced familiarity.
After glancing at Kara, he ordered barley tea instead of beer, brewed and cooled with snow.
His tone was quite thick and earthy, unlike his usual fussy noble manner of speaking.
But I couldn't simply enjoy myself.
“Um, Count. The cigarette smell here is a little strong....”
When I subtly pointed this out, Count Eisen flinched and looked around.
A haze of cigarette smoke.
Only then did he realize his mistake, turn pale, and lower his head.
“I'm sorry, Mr. Varg. I wasn't thinking.”
He fidgeted restlessly and looked at Kara.
“I became so lost in my memories that I forgot the most important fact. Miss Kara is pregnant, even if she's only in the early stages... How could I bring her to a place that smells like this? Let's leave at once.”
“No, it's all right.”
Kara waved her hands, but Eisen's self-reproach continued.
Apparently, after retiring from the front lines, Count Eisen had personally taken on the role of our patron as an excuse to revisit his memories.
Since this had been his first posting, it was only natural that the place held special meaning for him.
He had been intoxicated by the passion and memories of twenty-five years ago, and his sense of reality had briefly grown dull.
Perhaps Kara understood Eisen's feelings, because she rummaged around in her pocket and pulled something out.
“This will do.”
What she took out was a crude, mask-like filter woven from layers of dried herbs.
“Granny Baba packed it for me.”
『The smell of those lazy Imperial bastards isn't good for the baby, so make sure you wear it!』
It was a mask she'd packed along with that somewhat regionally prejudiced fussing.
Kara held the herbal filter over her nose and mouth and tied the strings.
Its shape, jutting out like a duck's bill, looked slightly comical.
But the muffled way she spoke through it was simply cute to me.
“How does it look? Is it weird?”
“No, it's cute. Like a forest fairy.”
“Hmph, liar.”
We took a seat at a spacious table in the corner.
I considered taking off the hood I had borrowed from the shop, but decided against it.
People were already staring because of my size, and if I exposed my bare upper body too, I worried I might get indigestion while eating.
I pushed the hood back just to my chin and drank some water.
That was when it happened.
Jingle-!
The restaurant door opened, and a strange atmosphere flowed inside.
“......?”
The noisy restaurant fell silent in an instant, as though someone had thrown cold water over it.
All the soldiers' gazes turned toward the entrance.
Standing there were figures completely out of place in this establishment.
Elite knights in gleaming armor.
And entering under their escort was a black-haired boy wearing a top-quality velvet coat.
An overwhelming aura of nobility.
Anyone could see that a person of high standing had arrived.
The soldiers gaped blankly with their spoons still in their hands.
I too stopped as I was about to drink my water.
‘...Huh?’
A familiar face.
Black hair and red eyes exactly matching the novel-cover illustration from my memories of my previous life.
That gaze was arrogant, yet somehow seemed to harbor a deep emptiness.
‘Kairon von Northgard...? Already?’
The original male lead was standing right before my eyes.
‘But... he's smaller than I expected.’
I watched him with interest.
Kairon in the illustration was a handsome man over 185 centimeters tall, but the boy before me was still in the middle of his growth.
He looked shorter than Kara, and his shoulders were still narrow.
‘Right. The setting said he grew much taller after entering the academy.’
For now, he was just a sixteen-year-old brat, three years younger than Kara.
But that small body contained astonishing talent.
He had entered the academy three years ahead of his peers at that young age, and would later become the monster who earned the title of ‘the youngest Swordmaster’ in the history of the Empire.
In the original story, his sense of inadequacy caused him to grow into a thoroughly warped person who committed countless trollish acts, but his abilities were the real deal.
‘But why is he here?’
He wasn't someone of a station that should be visiting a place this shabby.
Just as I was wondering, Kairon's gaze moved.
His eyes locked precisely onto our table, as though he had no interest in the restaurant or the soldiers at all.
More precisely, they locked onto Kara, sitting beside me.
Burning.
The boy's eyes looked ready to shoot lasers.
‘......Ah.’
I grasped the situation immediately.
That look.
The intensely primal, instinctive look of a male targeting a female.
‘So fate is still in effect.’
Even though the original had been twisted, the magnetic pull between the male and female leads apparently remained.
Even though one of them had become a married woman.
Even though her belly already carried the fruit of their union.
‘But I'm surprised myself.’
I had expected hostility to flare up reflexively the instant I saw him.
But when I saw how young he looked, with even his baby fat not yet gone, the hostility that had been about to ignite quickly cooled.
‘I suppose so.’
I had hated him because, despite his grown body, everything he did was more pathetic than a child's.
He was so wretched that, as another man, I had felt a visceral revulsion toward him.
But the person before my eyes was just an inexperienced little brat.
I chuckled and rested my chin on my hand.
‘Go ahead and try it, brat.’
That was when it happened.
“Here, honey. Say ah~”
Kara blew on the stew until it cooled, then held a spoonful right in front of my mouth.
It was an utterly natural, everyday action between newlyweds.
“Aah.”
I opened my mouth and accepted it without a hint of embarrassment.
Warm, savory stew spread across my tongue.
“Is it good?”
“Yeah. It tastes even better because you're feeding me.”
At the very moment we exchanged sugary gazes.
Crack.
Something broke near the entrance.
Kairon stood frozen like a stone statue, gripping the doorknob.
His eyes shook violently, as though an earthquake had struck.