Chapter 261: Roy Dragor

I walked behind my parents toward a carriage said to be waiting outside the castle.

The weakness they had shown at Instructor Raide’s words was already gone.

I had not looked this carefully at their backs since I started pushing back... no. Not since people started calling me a hero’s son.

Entering the academy, Instructor Raide’s training, meeting all kinds of people. That must have changed me.

Now I was startled by how large my parents’ backs were. How large were they?

There are good teachers, he said... I had not even noticed that, Instructor Raide.

The me from before would have thought I would catch up someday, that I would pass them.

But Instructor Raide and the academy classes taught me it was fine to grow as myself.

Then I would burn my parents’ figures into my eyes and study, as Instructor Raide and King Adom had said.

Father, walking ahead, suddenly turned only his eyes toward me behind him and smiled, fu.

I tilted my head, wondering what it was. Mother did the same, and I tilted my head further.

Father shook his head a little as if to say it was nothing, then spoke with a wry smile.

"I will have to apologize for calling him an instructor of all people..."

"Yes. That is so..."

"...Aah. I think Instructor Raide probably does not mind?"

My parents looked a little surprised at my words. I smiled with a troubled face and told them Instructor Raide often says he is "just a combat instructor and a tavern keeper."

So he was not angry at "an instructor of all people." I think he got angry then because the words insulted me and Teacher Croana.

Hearing that, my parents blinked several times, said "I see," and started laughing happily.

As we came up to the carriage parked in front of the main gate, a royal guard opened the door.

Mother boarded first, then Father. As he did, Father put on a serious face and whispered something in the guard’s ear.

The guard nodded hard. Father nodded back as if answering and boarded.

I thanked the guard as well, boarded, and sat across from my parents.

...How long has it been since I stared at my parents’ faces from the front?

I thought that and laughed alone, kus. My parents tilted their heads with puzzled faces.

I kept the troubled smile, waved one hand lightly, and explained what I had just thought.

"I had not even noticed my son’s growth..."

"Roy... you have grown."

"No. Not yet. I still have far too many places that fall short..."

Inside the moving carriage I told my parents what I had experienced.

Meeting Instructor Raide. Saving Lucy and her mother. The matter of Sheelin and Runen. Stampede, and making comrades-in-arms.

More than anything I must not forget that Instructor Raide saved my older sister.

Father and Mother narrowed their eyes and smiled, nodded now and then, and listened quietly without cutting in.

We had kept in touch by letter, but speaking out loud was truly the first time in a long while. My mouth would not stop.

How long has it been since I talked with my parents this happily? When I finished I laughed again with a troubled face.

Seeing that, Father smiled with a hint of self-mockery, looked out of the carriage, and muttered.

"If only... an instructor like him had been there then..."

"Dear..."

"..."

From my parents’ look I immediately knew it was the Alek-san matter Instructor Raide had spoken of.

But I did not speak on purpose and waited quietly for their words. I also hesitated. Was it all right to step in...?

A little silence wrapped the carriage. Mother said nothing and gently stroked Father’s knee.

Father, still looking outside, let out a small sigh, turned his face to me with a look like regret, and started talking.

"From when we were small we had a friend we could call a close friend. He was not even a noble, and he was more excellent than we were... a quiet one, but we got along and often acted together. That did not change even after we grew and started running across battlefields."

"...Alek-san’s story, is it?"

"Aah. That is right. ...We stopped at that village while withdrawing. We had fallen for an enemy scheme and been forced to pull back. We stopped at the village then and the villagers took care of us. There we grew close with one girl..."

Father kept talking with a pained look. Mother’s face looked pained too.

The war situation near that village was bad. With the forces they had then, defending the village and fighting at the same time was impossible.

They were worrying with their superior and putting out ideas when Bern said to leave Alek alone, go to the town they were withdrawing to, call support, and come back.

Honestly there was no other method at the time. If leaving soldiers in the village would provoke the enemy country, leaving Alek alone in the village was safer.

But when Father and Mother’s unit reached the town, word came that the village had been attacked. They hurried back with the support soldiers.

But they were too late, or the village was burning. Father and Mother tried to go to the rescue at once... but.

"Our superior stopped our movement and ordered that driving out the enemy soldiers came first... Now we are called heroes, but at the time our standing as country nobles was low, and a superior’s order was absolute. We drove the enemy back, but the village was destroyed. There were no survivors except Alek, and by the superior’s order we could not even see his face."

"...Destroyed."

"We were negotiating with our superior to meet him somehow when Bern brought evidence that Alek had been in contact with the enemy country. When you confirm a crime the number of pieces of evidence talks, and from Alek’s Magic Bag a large amount of what looked like evidence of collusion came out. Maar and I both said it was stupid... but before we knew it Alek had already been taken to the capital."

They tried to follow at once and go to the capital, but by bad luck the enemy country attacked the town.

Leaving the town would have been treated as fleeing before the enemy.

They drove the enemy from the town, and just when they were about to go to the capital, word came that Alek had been executed... and Father and Mother forgot Alek-san’s "face" and "voice."

No matter how hard they tried they could not recall the outline or shape of the "face," and they forgot the "voice" they had heard so many times.

"We thought it was only us, from the shock, but when we went home and checked, everyone had forgotten Alek. ...To think the Bern who cried and regretted it then was the culprit. No. We are the same. If we had not followed our superior’s order and had put saving the village first..."

Father dropped his face, his body shaking a little, and gripped both hands on his knees hard.

I had been listening calmly. It was not a doubt exactly, but something bothered me.

If they did not know the "face" and "voice," would they not also not know whether he was alive?

To say more, they could not even confirm whether he had truly been executed, could they? I thought that.

I said that question to Mother, who was gently stroking Father’s back with a sad face. She stopped, her eyes went wide, and she opened her mouth.

"Roy... do you mean Alek may be alive?"

"Maybe. My lovers like romantic stories and we often read them together. I do not know what power worked, but I suddenly thought the reason they made the ’face’ and ’voice’ unknown might have been so Father and Mother would notice. If you think of it as some kind of foreshadowing, that is."

"Foreshadowing, ’face’ and ’voice’... dear, do you remember? We often played the message game to teach Alek letters."

"Ah, aah... I remember. A nostalgic memory. Maar, what about that?"

"Handwriting cannot be changed. Dear, handwriting cannot be changed easily."

Father must have noticed something. He jerked his face up and looked at me. I smiled with a troubled face and tilted my head a little.

Next he turned to Mother. "If we search the study it should be there... it is a precious memory," he said. Mother nodded hard.

At that timing the carriage stopped. Outside the window an old mansion came into view.

Father looked up at the ceiling once, took a deep breath, and turned his face to me. There was the father people call a hero.

Not only Father. Mother too. Pressure filled the carriage. Before I knew it I had tightened myself and put on a serious face.

When the royal guard opened the door and Father went out, he looked at my face sideways, grinned, and spoke.

"Follow."

"Do not fall behind, all right?"

"Yes."

Mother said it too as she got down from the carriage. I answered quietly, but with strong will, and nodded.

...Instructor Raide, studying is not easy either, is it?

I muttered that in my heart and followed my parents as they advanced on the mansion, releasing pressure.

As an aside, the author of the romance novels Lucy and the others are hooked on is apparently a married couple writing together.

The husband writes the male point of view, and Laumi-san, the wife, writes the female point of view and the story. That is what my lovers told me.

That is probably why Laumi-san’s romance novels were very popular.

Not knowing the husband’s name is one of the charms too, Lucy had insisted.