Lize always had a way of intimidating people and making them shrink back.
Mars had always hated that about her.
“You know very well, Mars. That’s why I can’t write it for you. I can’t possibly recommend someone who has nothing to do with chivalry to become an imperial knight.”
“You’re saying I have no sense of chivalry right now?”
Lize merely looked at him without answering.
One corner of her lips curled upward as a hollow laugh escaped her. Her face was full of disbelief, as though even the question itself was absurd.
Of course, Mars knew exactly what incident Lize was thinking of.
But he felt wronged about that too.
“Is this because of what happened yesterday? That was an accident. You know that!”
It wasn’t like he had deliberately tried to kill her. He had only pushed her.
Hadn’t Lize always bragged about how exceptional her abilities were?
Then she should have dodged it herself or hung onto the cliff and climbed back up.
Lize herself was the one who had made people think that way about her.
So if there was any responsibility for yesterday’s incident, shouldn’t it belong to Lize?
If she had just avoided it properly, she never would have fallen in the first place. In the end, she was the one who caused that outcome.
And most importantly, she hadn’t even died.
Thinking that, Mars fumed inwardly before saying it all directly to Lize.
“So! It makes no sense for you to refuse to write my recommendation letter over something so trivial. That’s completely shameless!”
Lize blinked slowly.
Was she convinced?
“Mars.”
“If you get it now, hurry up and write the recommendation.”
“A knight should at least be capable of properly reflecting on what they’re doing and what they’ve done. But you…”
“I did reflect on it and explained it properly. Were you not listening to what I said earlier?”
After concluding that he had done nothing wrong, Mars became even more confident and began scolding Lize instead.
A look of astonishment appeared on Lize’s face. Mars couldn’t understand what was so shocking.
With a resigned expression, Lize spoke.
“I’ll ask you one more thing. Why did you act alone during the match?”
Mars had no idea that question was his last chance.
“Act alone?”
Mars frowned at the negatively loaded phrase.
“Why was an attacker like you positioned with the defensive side without discussing it with your teammates?”
“Oh, come on, Lize! That’s just how it’s done. Stop asking pointless questions and hurry up with the recommendation already!”
It was driving him insane that instead of doing what he asked, she kept bringing up unrelated things.
Mars stomped his feet loudly.
“You have to stand out during a match to get recognized more! If I just followed tactics all the time, how would I ever stand out? Why are you even asking such obvious questions?!”
Lize nodded twice.
A faint smile appeared on her previously stiff, resigned face.
“Alright. That’s enough.”
“Finally? Then hurry and—”
“I still can’t write it for you, Mars.”
“…What?”
“Writing you a recommendation would be no different from neglecting my duty.”
“What does that even—”
“Knowing what kind of person you are, I can’t allow you to bear the title of knight—especially not a knight entrusted with protecting the imperial family and the empire.”
After finishing her words, Lize turned to leave.
Startled, Mars quickly grabbed her shoulder.
“Wait! You promised you’d write my recommendation letter in exchange for handling your marriage arrangement yourself! Then what about the marriage proposal? You’re accepting it quietly, right?”
“I already sent my refusal.”
“What? When?!”
“This morning.”
“Y-you…!”
From Mars’s perspective, he had secretly been looking forward to the marriage alliance with the ducal family.
After all, becoming related to a duke’s household would obviously bring many benefits.
But now both the recommendation letter and the marriage had vanished into thin air?
Mars’s mind boiled with fury, as though the world itself were collapsing.
“Hey!”
He swung his fist at Lize as she tried to turn away again.
But Lize easily dodged the punch and twisted his arm behind his back, restraining him.
“Aagh! I-it’s going to break!”
From behind him, Lize spoke calmly.
“Mars, please do me a favor. From now on, try not to get hurt in front of me.”
“…”
“From now on, no matter how badly you get injured—whether your bones break or you get cut apart—I will never help you again.”
“W-what?”
“That includes injuries I cause myself.”
Lize’s voice was cold and low. It sounded emotionless, yet beneath it lay a deep fury compressed over a very long time.
Strength drained from Mars’s legs.
His hands trembled violently.
Lize practically threw him aside before leaving the room.
“So most recently, you lost consciousness?”
The temple. Priest Julius’s private office.
Julius stroked the golden rabbit’s head thoughtfully.
Pang!
The golden rabbit smacked his hand away.
But Julius merely treated it as a cute little tantrum and continued cooing at the rabbit.
“Sir Julius?”
“Ah, Lady Lize, my apologies. So you fainted, you said.”
Julius lifted his head from fussing over the rabbit.
His eyes, fixed on me from across the table, were filled with concern.
I regularly came to the temple like this to meet with Julius and receive medicine infused with divine power.
Because Julius was one of the very few people who knew about my illness—the condition that caused me agony whenever I saw moonlight.
“Yes. The window had been open that day. I think it was worse because I was directly exposed to the moonlight.”
“Have you ever been directly exposed to it before?”
“I have, but…”
I searched through my memories. When was it again?
“Probably during the monster war a few years ago…”
When I had gone as reinforcement in the war against monsters, it had happened then too.
I had still been a cadet at the time, but the scale of the war had been so enormous that even cadets were dispatched to areas lacking manpower.
“That battle happened to fall on a full moon night.”
Back then, I had hidden beneath the shade of a secluded tree.
Even now, I remembered how miserable I had felt, hiding while my comrades continued fighting.
But I also knew that moving around in that condition would have been nothing more than reckless pride.
Even while sitting beneath the tree, every time the leaves rustled or the moon shifted, the moonlight tightened around me.
Would it feel like this if a monster’s claws pierced through me?
The pain was so intense that desperate pleas for help slipped out without me realizing it.
“But I don’t think I fainted back then.”
I had sat there breathing like a corpse, and only after several hours—when clouds covered the moon and dawn began to break, weakening the light—had I managed to force strength into my trembling body and stand again.
“But I still don’t know how I made it back to camp that time…”
“Ppii.”
The golden rabbit, who had been silently listening, suddenly chimed in.
Since it was rabbit language, I had no idea what it meant.
“Hm? Golden Rabbit?”
As always, I gently asked while meeting its golden eyes.
But then—
‘Lize!’
At that moment, a sleeping memory suddenly resurfaced.
Back then, I had met someone at the entrance of the forest, and they had carried me back.
Now that I thought about it, that voice and that back…
“Ah, no way.”
“Lady Lize?”
“It can’t be.”
“What do you mean?”
“…”
Was it Cassium who had carried me back then?
His tone, his voice.
They were similar to what I had heard recently when I nearly drowned—the voice from that dream, or hallucination, or whatever it had been.
Even in that dream, Cassium had called out to me with overwhelming concern, wearing an expression that somehow looked frightened.
‘Though I don’t know if it really was a dream.’
Was it?
Or wasn’t it?
On the day we trained with the Visel Knights, after the match ended, I had gone to see Commander Denver.
‘Commander, there’s something I want to ask.’
And stopping the busy commander, I had asked once more.
‘About Cassium. What kind of mission is he carrying out?’
I had already heard the answer once before, so asking again might have made Commander Denver feel I didn’t trust him.
But I wanted to confirm it again.
Especially because I couldn’t shake the feeling that the moment he saved me might not have been merely a dream or hallucination.
‘Why are you suddenly asking that?’
‘Because there are too many things about his recent behavior that differ from his usual performance.’
The words Has something happened to him? rose all the way to the tip of my tongue, but…
‘How many days remain until the council of elders?’
‘One week.’
‘I’ll tell you then. Return for now.’
That was what Commander Denver had said to me.
While speaking with him, I had nearly let words of concern slip out without realizing it.
‘Am I worried about him? About Cassium? But why?’
As that thought crossed my mind, I glanced at the golden rabbit.
My tangled thoughts only became more complicated as my gaze lingered on it.
