⊹ ☽ ⊹

The day the girl’s own mother sold Lanen off to the Rockefeller family.

Because the midwife who had assisted at Lanen’s birth and Lanen’s personal records were proudly preserved under the line item “family operating funds,” the fact that Lanen was of Rockefeller blood was easily proven.

“It’s been years since my brother-in-law passed. Do we really need to raise that lowborn wench within the noble walls of the Rockefellers? Can’t we just send her off to some branch family somewhere!”

That was the protest of the mistress of the house, who had once had her hair yanked out by the girl for saying the wrong thing.

But for all their claims of nobility, the Rockefellers were a family that had bought their way into the aristocracy with money. Which is to say, they had no roots.

Naturally, the only branch relatives to speak of were country bumpkins who, now that the family had risen, were trying to attach themselves by selling out even the most distant of connections, and sending the little girl to people who were always watching for a chance to get their hands on money was no different from throwing a piece of bait to a starving hyena.

Opinions were divided on her worth, but there was no disagreement that she was pretty, having taken after her father, whose only usefulness had been his face.

And so a conclusion was reached.

“She’ll be of use when it comes time to sell her into marriage. Our family has no daughters, after all.”

That was why she became a daughter of the family. Just as she had been carelessly sold to them, so that she might one day be carelessly sold away.

Once the appraisal she had never consented to was over and she was shown to her room, Lanen screamed silently to herself.

‘I never have to beg anymore!’

She was moved to tears by the joy of it, the fact that her days of scraping by were over.

From that day on, Lanen worked tirelessly to meet the standards the Rockefellers demanded.

She was quick to read a room, quick to play along. Hands trained by thieving were nimble, and the acting she had learned while begging was convincing enough.

Like a well-behaved dog picking up bread crumbs fallen beneath its master’s table, the beggar girl who had been starved for a life where she would not go hungry became “Lanen Rockefeller” in just that way.

That was how it was, up until then.

“Hers is a fate trailed by calamity. Whoever takes her in will soon become a calamity themselves.”

That was before the family’s fortune-teller named her a “calamity.”

The family’s fortune-teller.

The Rockefeller family, not having been born into the nobility, put blind faith in superstition, as befitted a family with no roots. The center of it all was that man. An old fortune-teller who went around in a crude priest’s robe bearing a pattern of thorned vines, though he was no priest.

“I hear you’ve taken in a daughter. She is fated to become a calamity.”

The fortune-teller, who had been speaking with the head of the family at the entrance to the Manor, pointed at the girl and spoke. The girl had just received her punishment from the mistress of the house and was on her way back to her room.

“Calamity, by its nature, is like a storm that begins with the small beat of a butterfly’s wings. If you keep that child in your household, she will one day bring the family to ruin.”

With that, the fortune-teller pushed forward a boy, claiming that a scapegoat was needed to ward off misfortune from the family.

That was him. A scrawny, unremarkable boy who had been thrown in as an extra when a donkey was sold.

“Take in a sacrificial servant. This child will carry away the small misfortunes and calamities that would otherwise obstruct the family’s prosperity and safety.”

‘Has he lost his mind?’

Lanen Rockefeller, who had been on her way back to her room and had just been insulted out of nowhere, thought exactly that.

‘Anyone can see this is just a scheme to sell a servant he bought cheap at a high price.’

Even through the eyes of a young girl, the con was obvious.

She watched the man work himself up trying to sell his goods and let out a scoff.

‘Who would believe such nonsense?’

But the Rockefeller family believed it. That she carried the label of calamity, and that a sacrificial servant was needed because of it.

And so they bought the boy and assigned him to the girl as her manservant.

The family’s attitude was that they had placed a scapegoat beside the girl called calamity, the way you put a cup over a bug, and that would do for now. The servants were glad to be rid of the bother of attending to a young lady who brought them no benefit.

Lanen sighed.

Ah, what foolish people. What a stupid prophecy. What an unreasonable world.

Lanen Rockefeller’s life, which had already been close to a mess, began to go badly wrong from that point on.

She had been too valuable to discard from the start, yet too troublesome to keep. All that had changed was the addition of the label “something impure,” and she was quickly being called the Rockefeller family’s unwanted burden.

A nuisance. A bastard of low blood. The family’s disgrace.

‘I thought I’d escaped a den of beggars, only to end up in a household of fools.’

Lanen looked at the cold, long-since-cooled soup sitting outside her door and let out a sigh.

She only learned later that the fortune-teller had been given the family’s absolute trust because he had been of great help in building the family’s wealth, but what did that matter? The girl she had been at the time had no way of knowing such things, and even if she had, her assessment of them as fools would not have changed.

“So we’re nothing but burdens nobody wanted. That’s all we are.”

Clatter.

Lanen passed the boy standing silently in the corner of the room and made her way to the creaking desk.

The girl set the soup down there and had eaten a few spoonfuls when, from somewhere, came a loud rumbling sound. It was coming from the boy’s stomach.

It was so thunderous that the girl forgot to close her mouth and just blinked.

After a moment, she set down her spoon and giggled.

“You’re absolutely starving right now, aren’t you. I know that feeling. Go about two days without eating and that’s exactly the sound you get. Here, come over.”

At Lanen’s gesture, the boy, who had been staring fixedly at the soup, hurried over.

The girl cut the dense bread in half and held out what she judged to be the slightly smaller piece to the boy.

“By the way, everyone’s been calling you a scapegoat. What does that mean? I only know what a regular sheep is.”

The boy, who had been stuffing the bread into his mouth, shook his head. Is that so? Lanen dipped her bread generously into the soup and ate.

“Maybe it’s because your hair is as white as wool.”

The boy, who had been licking the crumbs from his hand, looked at the girl.

Just then, the midday sunlight poured through the window and lit up the space where they stood in a brilliant glow.

The girl’s flowing brown hair caught the light and shimmered like the glittering surface of a lake.

‘Look at that. That is the Form of calamity.’

The boy recalled the words of the fortune-teller, who had pressed down firmly on his shoulder and pointed at the girl.

A girl standing in the middle of hydrangeas in full bloom, holding a water bucket, under the harsh summer sun.

She was being punished, she had said. For being inattentive during the mistress of the house’s lessons, or something like that.

“From now on, you’ll serve that little girl as your master.”

The girl’s face had been flushed red with what seemed like indignation, and she was rubbing hard at the corners of her eyes. The sight of her looked strangely like a pale pink summer flower ripened in the sunlight, and the boy’s gaze had been held there for a long while.

“You must die with your master when the time comes.”

At those added words from the man, Cedarwood thought:

‘Does that mean I won’t have to wander anymore?’

He didn’t know about scapegoats or masters or calamity or any of that, but having a place where you were meant to die, that meant something.

It meant having a place you had to come back to, no matter what happened.

“I don’t know what it all means, but they said I always have to be by your side.”

Cedarwood put the remaining piece of bread in his mouth and said it plainly.

“Always by my side?”

“Yes.”

Lanen looked at the boy. The boy was still licking his lips, apparently still hungry.

When Lanen cut off another small piece of the bread she was holding, his small, mouse-like indigo eyes followed her hand back and forth. Like a glass marble rolling wherever it was rolled, like a dog’s wagging tail.

Whatever it was, it tickled something in the girl’s heart.

“All right. Whatever it is, ‘being together’ is the same as being ‘family’!”

Lanen, who had been wondering what name to give this relationship, gave herself and the boy the name she considered the most affectionate.

A small fence built by a boy and a girl, each dropped into an unfamiliar place, to wrap up a loneliness they had not yet recognized in themselves.

A bond born from something close to fondness.

And so Lanen Rockefeller smiled as she gave the boy more than half of her share.

“I’m Lanen Rockefeller. From now on, I’ll be your family, and your young lady.”

⊹ ☼ ⊹

“And yet you held that person’s funeral with your own hands…”

Lanen murmured.

One moment he was making the engagement happen faster than a bullet to the head, and now he was kidnapping her and telling her she didn’t need to get married after all.

If his aim had been to make a fool of her, he had succeeded. He had made her, someone who had been through everything and barely blinked at anything, not just blink but squeeze her eyes shut entirely.

“Have you lost your mind? Cedarwood.”

On top of everything, sitting in the same position for so long had left her arms numb and her legs stiff. Yet another ordeal.

“Well, you were only ever family in words. You never once thought of me as a sibling.”

Was that not obvious? Who thinks of the person they have feelings for as a sibling?

But Lanen held her tongue. Her legs had begun to go numb, betraying her desperate wish that she would at least be spared a cramp.

Ha. She exhaled in short breaths trying to minimize the pain somehow, but it was no use at all.

It was maddening.

Meanwhile, Cedarwood, with no way of knowing about her private struggle, was quietly looking down at Lanen’s pale face.

The exasperated sigh, the voice thick with distress, the trembling legs, the contemptuous gaze.

Even so, it was all right. She was looking at him, even with that expression.

‘It’s still all right, for now.’

At the same time, Cedarwood recalled that day.

That day, the moment the girl had reached out her hand and asked him to be family. The moment the boy’s place to die was decided to be at the girl’s side.

Scapegoat, master, calamity, none of that had ever been any of his concern. Then or now, the only thing that mattered was Lanen Rockefeller, my lady, the place where he was meant to die.

And yet.

“I’m not your young lady anymore.”

She was telling him to let her go, after all this time.

“Lanen.”

Her name, spoken without any honorific, settled heavily between them like something that should not have been touched.

Cedarwood moved toward her without a sound and pressed his forehead against Lanen’s shoulder.

“How long did you think I was going to keep playing this family game?”