Chapter 9
A shadow fell over the carriage.
The 「Norheim Wall」—human technology layered over the backbone of nature, a tunnel bored straight through an entire massive mountain range.
We passed through the tunnel inside that enormous mountain.
In the darkness, the carriage skis clattered loudly as they scraped over the stone floor.
A short while later.
Fwoosh-!
Blinding light poured in from the end of the tunnel.
At the same time, the savage wind that had been battering our ears died down as if by magic.
At last, Imperial territory.
We had entered the borderlands of the Northgard Grand Duchy.
“Whew... I finally feel like I can breathe again.”
Count Eisen, crumpled in the opposite corner, let out a long breath.
Thanks to the Wall blocking the northern wind, the temperature inside the carriage seemed to settle rapidly.
Eisen fumbled as he tried to take off the fur clothing he had bundled himself in.
But.
“Nngh... hrrngh... urgh!”
The cramped space.
The luggage crates piled atop his knees like a mountain.
And the bundles of luggage filling both sides.
He did not even have enough room to pull out his arms, and writhed alone, grunting with effort.
He looked like a lobster that had flipped onto its back after failing to shed its shell.
“Would you like some help?”
“N-no! Ngh... I can do it myself... Nngh....”
The proud administrator strained until his face turned bright red, and finally managed to remove one layer of fur clothing.
Kara and I gazed sympathetically at him, drenched in sweat, then turned our eyes toward the window.
“......”
It was utterly unfamiliar.
The world spread out beyond the window was completely different from the north I knew.
If Norheim had been a grand, irregular snow-covered mountain wilderness, this place was a world where everything had been cut to fit efficiency.
Rectangular stone buildings lined up straight as though measured with a ruler.
Street trees planted at regular intervals.
Guards patrolling in neat rows and files.
As a military city where the families of border troops and knights lived, suffocating practicality and discipline ruled here rather than splendor.
‘So this is the Empire’s border. It’s straight enough to be boring.’
The air was different from the open snowfields.
The Empire was vast.
Perhaps this new scenery would be where we lived once we enrolled in the academy.
And as time passed, although a massive Wall blocked the way for now, the day would come when freely traveling through that tunnel would no longer be anything special.
When that day came, this place would also be a home where we—and our child—would have to live.
Just then, Kara, who had been studying the view outside, reacted unexpectedly.
“Hmm... It’s not bad.”
“Not bad? Isn’t it too stiff?”
“No. I thought the Imperial bastards would love nothing but empty pomp and hang useless jewels all over every building. But there’s no excess here. It has exactly what it needs.”
Kara’s eyes sparkled.
From a warrior’s perspective, she seemed to like the city’s design, which maximized efficiency in both defense and daily life.
“The roads are wide enough for war chariots or cavalry to race through, and the buildings are arranged to create blind spots for one another. Whoever built this must have been pretty clever.”
At her praise, Count Eisen’s ears pricked up as he tidied the fur clothing he had shed across from us.
He adjusted his glasses and interjected in a deliberately dignified voice.
“Unfortunately, the place where the two of you will be staying is not this border region. I plan to take you to my territory farther inland, closer to the capital.”
Though he said it was unfortunate, the corners of his mouth were twitching uncontrollably upward.
He looked extremely pleased.
“Why is that? Did something good happen?”
When I asked, Count Eisen opened his mouth in an excited voice, as though he had been waiting for the question.
“Actually, this city was redeveloped more than twenty years ago. At the time, I personally designed and supervised it at His Grace the Grand Duke’s command.”
“Oh, you did, Count?”
“That’s right. As you can see, I calculated the width of that road so that even four carriages could pass through simultaneously in wartime without causing a bottleneck. And the buildings are arranged to block the northern wind while maximizing sunlight...”
Count Eisen began enthusiastically boasting about the city, pointing outside the window.
“Do you see that drainage ditch? That wasn’t built without a purpose, either. Its slope was calculated so that, in an emergency, melted snow could be used as firefighting water....”
His usual cool composure was nowhere to be seen.
His eyes sparkled as he launched into an impassioned speech like a child showing off his toy blocks.
Kara listened to his explanation and nodded along with interest.
“That’s certainly true. It would be advantageous for defense. Count Eisen, you really do have an eye for this.”
“Hahaha! You flatter me, Lady Kara!”
The atmosphere was warm and friendly.
But my expression as I watched them grew strangely stiff.
‘What the hell? Why do the two of them get along so well?’
A strange feeling stirred in a corner of my heart.
Thinking back, there had been opinions that appeared frequently enough in the comments section while the original was being serialized.
『Honestly, dump that junker of a male lead and go to Benz Eisen.』
『What does the age gap matter? Count Eisen would probably make Kara happy.』
『Author, please, just give us a Kara X Eisen route ㅠㅠ』
They were the faction of readers who paired Count Eisen, one of the few people who genuinely worried about Kara, with Kara—the so-called poisoned-cup stock lovers.
Back then, I had agreed too, thinking, ‘Exactly. Eisen is a hundred times better than that bastard Kairon.’
But seeing my own wife click with another man—even if he was old enough to be her father, he was still another man—left me feeling strange.
‘Is this jealousy?’
I felt an entirely unnecessary sense of crisis.
I quietly interlaced my fingers with Kara’s and squeezed the hand resting on her knee.
Warmth flowed into my palm through her hand.
‘She’s my wife. Wake up.’
It was childish possessiveness, but the warmth of our joined hands melted the jealousy that had been creeping up inside me like snow under the sun.
Kara looked at me as though puzzled by my touch, but I pretended not to notice and did not let go of her hand.
“And the fountain in that central square is... Ahem, ahem!”
Count Eisen, who had been talking on and on, seemed to notice my blank stare—or, more precisely, the warning look I gave him while gripping Kara’s hand—so he cleared his throat and fell silent.
Apparently realizing how overexcited he had become, he swept back his disheveled hair with a reddened face.
“...I seem to have talked too much. I apologize.”
“Not at all. It was interesting. I didn’t know you were the one who built it, Count.”
“Haha... It’s embarrassing. I’ve recently handed most of the family’s responsibilities over to my son, so... I suppose I’ve let myself relax a little. I got carried away.”
He smiled sheepishly and looked out the window.
Deep affection and pride for the city he had built showed in his eyes.
But I couldn’t help retorting inwardly to his words.
‘Relaxed?’
He ought to have retired and been resting, yet he had come all the way to this harsh border region himself and volunteered to serve as our driver.
He was even the man who had personally drawn up Kara’s pregnancy schedule and my training schedule?
‘This man really is an incurable workaholic.’
If this was him after relaxing, just how much of his life had he spent doing nothing but work when he was still active?
It was a miracle he had not died of overwork in the original.
In any case, we ought to be grateful: it was thanks to his fussiness and perfectionism that we had reached this place safely.
‘Wait, come to think of it... how did this fellow die in the original?’
Rummaging through my memories, I realized it had not been from overwork.
He had died taking an assassin’s blade meant for Kairon while cleaning up the political disputes caused by the jalopy male lead.
A tragic end for a loyal vassal.
And that death had been the decisive trigger that caused Count Eisen’s son—the ‘Heinkel Junior’ he had just mentioned—to hate Kairon and turn evil.
‘Huh? If that’s the case...’
For one thing, most of Kairon’s trolling had come from the emotional inferiority complex of loving Kara but being unable to express it.
But now Kara was ‘my woman,’ and even looking at her was a sin.
My woman.
No matter how pathetic a young master he was, he probably wouldn’t covet a married woman.
‘….’
Or not?
Well, anyway, since I’d removed the cause of Kairon’s trolling, the count wouldn’t die.
His son wouldn’t fall into villainy either.
‘Thanks to me, I’ve saved this man’s life and erased one future villain as well?’
I realized the butterfly effect I had caused might be far greater than I’d expected.
“Now, we’ll soon come to a fork in the road. From there, a direct road leads to my territory, 「Eisengard」.”
Count Eisen returned to his calm guide mode.
But I saw it.
As he gathered his map case, he secretly raised the corners of his mouth in smug satisfaction.
He wasn’t a bad partner.
Though the carriage was painfully cramped.
A short while later, the carriage came to a stop.
It was a huge repair station in the center of the border city.
“Let’s get out. We’ll have to change the carriage wheels anyway if we’re heading to a region without snow. We might as well have the carriage serviced here and buy some supplies, too.”
Count Eisen said this as he gave the coachman his instructions.
We crawled out of the carriage, stretching our stiff bodies as though unfolding crumpled paper.
“Aaah... my back.”
“I can’t feel my legs....”
As Kara and I groaned while stretching, Count Eisen stared seriously into the cramped carriage and spoke.
“And... I’ll arrange another carriage when we head to my territory.”
“Pardon?”
“We can’t continue... crammed in like this. At my age, my back won’t allow it.”
At his solemn declaration, Kara and I vigorously nodded in unison.
“I agree, Count!”
“Me too! I thought I was going to suffocate!”
It was a moment when all three of us desperately needed liberation.
Count Eisen adjusted his glasses and pointed toward the shopping district across from the repair station.
“Replacing this carriage and arranging another will take a little time. You two should get some clothes fitted at the shop up ahead.”
“Clothes?”
“Yes. Unlike the capital, this is a military district where the larger you are, the more respect you receive, so it should be much easier to find large sizes that fit you two.”
I nodded at his words.
‘A military city where the bigger you are, the better you’re treated...’
Memories from my previous life flashed through my mind.
Itaewon.
Or the clothing shops near the U.S. military base in Dongducheon.
A paradise for hulking men, where 3XL and 4XL sizes—which ordinary stores didn’t even carry—were everywhere.
‘So this is a paradise of big-size specialty shops. Haha, whether it’s the Empire or Earth, people are the same wherever you go.’
With the physique of a barbarian, shopping here would surely be far easier for me than at the sedate aristocratic clothing shops in the capital.
“Understood. We’ll be back.”
“Ah, Mr. Varg!”
Count Eisen, who had been heading toward the repair station, stopped short, turned around, and called out.
“Comfortable clothes are fine, but be sure to see whether they have any formal attire you like, too! Something you could wear to the academy interview!”
“Understood!”
We parted from Count Eisen for a while and entered the clothing-shop district.
Even the clothes hanging on the stalls looked unusual.
Shirts with sleeves as wide as a person’s thigh, and enormous coats that looked big enough for a bear to wear.
“Wow... Varg, look at that! It’s huge!”
Kara opened her eyes wide in wonder.
“It sure is. This is our world.”
I chuckled and opened the door of the largest-looking shop.
Jingle.
With a cheerful jingle, our first shopping trip in the Empire began.
“Welco.... Gasp! Barbarians?!”
It looks like things won’t be easy from the start.
Being called a barbarian at our first meeting.