“I already thought I belonged to my lady, so I changed all the labels on my work clothes and my lantern.”

“Really? To what?”

“’Lady Lanen’s Cedarwood.’”

What? Lanen echoed back, then burst out laughing.

“What happened to your surname?”

“Carlisle is the name of the inn where I was supposedly born. It had no meaning to begin with, so it doesn’t matter if it disappears. My given name too… is the same.”

But being someone’s Cedarwood was different.

Having a name because you belonged to someone. Wasn’t that a meaningless thing gaining meaning?

The way a boy who would have been nothing more than a scrawny wandering sl*ve on his own became Lady’s Cedarwood and wore his reason for existing around his neck.

“By that logic, Lanen doesn’t mean much either.”

Lanen added, gathering the vegetables into the folds of her skirt.

“My name was taken from the name of a flower my father gave my birth mother, apparently. Whether that’s true or not, I can’t say. Neither of them is around anymore.”

A rather romantic naming, and yet when it actually came time to write the name down, one letter was misspelled, and so she became Lanen.

“Isn’t that just ridiculous?”

The girl smiled.

“What I mean is, the meaning is something you make for yourself anyway. So there’s no need to be ‘my Cedarwood’ specifically.”

⊹ ☼ ⊹

“But my lady, I have to be your Cedarwood. If I’m not that, then there is nothing between you and me at all.”

Cedarwood murmured, stroking the hair of the sleeping Lanen.

Lanen was sprawled out on the bed, her eyes swollen from crying.

Beside the bed lay a half-eaten piece of bread and a fallen wine glass.

Cedarwood tidied the scattered floor and laid Lanen properly on the bed.

“You had no idea what might have been in there, and you ate it so carelessly. I warned you all those years not to eat things given to you by suspicious people…”

He carefully wiped the bread crumbs from the corners of Lanen’s mouth with a handkerchief and smoothed her disheveled hair.

Her hair, glossier and softer now than in the days when she had darted around the kitchen garden like a dirt-covered rabbit, wound around his fingers like rope.

“But you ate it anyway, my lady… so I suppose that means you still believe I’m not a suspicious person to you?”

At that, the desire locked away in the deepest, darkest corner of his subconscious began screaming its wretched demand for release. But he refused to acknowledge it. Absolutely refused. He was a gentleman. The damned gentleman his young lady had named as her ideal type above all others. And a gentleman did not sneak a kiss onto the cheek of a sleeping young lady.

His inner cynic smiled as it suppressed the twisted desire.

Cedarwood’s hand, which had been running through her hair, pulled away. Unable to bring itself to touch the face sleeping so peacefully, it drifted aimlessly downward along the curve of her shoulder, down, down.

His wandering hand came to rest on her pale ankle.

Her small feet, always so quick to run away. Cedarwood pressed his thumb gently into the hollow of her ankle bone. Thinking of that girl who had once put a leash around his neck with her own hands, and then taken it off with her own hands.

“Sorry, apparently that’s only for animals.”

That chattering voice tickles at his ear.

The little girl had apologized like that. But the person he was now had, regrettably, long since thrown away any sense of shame.

“Unlike you, I have no such thing as a sorry feeling.”

Clank. A bleak metallic sound rang out.

Cedarwood looked at the shackle fastened snugly around the pale ankle.

You won’t smile at me the way you used to anymore.

‘Because once you find out I’ve put a shackle on your ankle, you, who love your freedom, will never forgive me.’

Cedarwood pulled the blanket over her slowly rising and falling chest. He turned off the oil lamp that had been burning softly, and darkness settled over the room at once.

“So rest comfortably for now. When you wake up, many things will have changed.”

Clank.

The room after he had gone. Only the sound of the door locking echoed bleakly through it.

“Welcome back, Captain.”

Deep in the forest, where the cedars soared so high that no moonlight reached the ground, leaving everything dark.

Behind the Manor where Lanen lay sleeping, Cedarwood’s subordinates emerged from the shadows of the trees where they had been waiting.

Cedarwood removed the black coat he had been wearing. A subordinate quickly retrieved his uniform and musket from the carriage.

“That man.”

“We have him tied up over there.”

The subordinate pointed to the old stable beside the Manor.

Cedarwood checked the musket’s magazine and gave a jerk of his chin. His subordinates went straight into the stable and dragged a man out.

“Mmph, mmph!”

A man with a gag in his mouth was hauled out.

In the faint moonlight, Cedarwood took one step toward the man. The man’s eyes, recognizing him, shook wildly.

Cedarwood Carlisle.

There was no one in the empire who would not know that face. The man who had put an end to the war against the foreign tribes that had been fought so fiercely for over twenty years, and the young officer the military had been backing.

‘But why is that man coming after me…!’

The man thrashed, and Cedarwood’s subordinates slammed him to the ground the way you pin down a pheasant.

“Ugh, mmph!”

Cedarwood looked the man over.

‘A spy the Rockefellers had planted on Lanen. The lowlife who was always hovering around my lady and watching her with those shifty eyes.’

“It seems one watcher wasn’t enough for them. Though I’d say I served them loyally for quite a long time.”

“What shall we do?”

One of his subordinates asked. At those words, the man pinned to the ground thrashed with a pale face.

But no one paid him any attention. The reason was simple. That question had not been directed at him.

Cedarwood looked toward where the subordinate’s question pointed. The second-floor window of the Manor. Where Lanen lay sleeping.

The scent of her still lingered at his fingertips.

Cedarwood curled his fingers slowly around the musket’s trigger, the way you might try to hold on to a fading scent.

“Keep watch so she can’t get out.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mmph, wah!”

And then, bang.

A single gunshot rang out through the silent forest.

⊹ ☼ ⊹

Bang.

A gunshot from somewhere jolted the boy awake.

Was today a day for boar hunting? Young Cedarwood looked out the window. The sun had not yet risen and everything was dark.

As he reached to close the window to crawl back into bed, the boy spotted a small figure in the bushes.

“…My lady?”

It was his young lady.

Lanen stood there with eyes swollen from crying, clutching a small cloth knapsack to her chest.

“I’m going to run away.”

She had even packed her things this time, so it didn’t seem like an empty threat. Could she actually be serious? Cedarwood let out a small sigh.

“Where do you plan to go looking like that?”

At that, tears immediately welled up in Lanen’s eyes. Oh no… Cedarwood quickly pulled his sleeve down and rubbed at her eyes.

“You know the apple branch my governess carries around?”

“Yes.”

“She hit me with it.”

The boy was considerably shocked by that. He had thought his young lady was the sort of person who, if it ever came to that, would snap the branch and tell the woman not to think about raising a hand to her again until it had grown into a full apple tree.

‘She’s more delicate than I thought…’

“She hit you? Where?”

“My calves.”

The girl lifted the wide leg of her pajama trousers. Even in the dim light, the red welts were vivid.

That’ll last two days at least. Cedarwood examined the bruised calves and spoke.

“Does it hurt?”

“It hurts terribly.”

Lanen complained at once.

Honestly, it wasn’t bad enough to be called terrible.

But his standards and hers weren’t necessarily the same… Cedarwood scratched his head.

“Don’t go.”

The boy blew a soft breath against his young lady’s calves.

“No, I’m going.”

“Why?”

“Why? Are you stupid, why are you asking something so obvious? If I don’t run away now, I’ll obviously get hit again. She wants me to memorize all of imperial history by the day after tomorrow. That’s absurd. I only just learned to read properly. And blowing on a wound doesn’t make it heal faster, you know? It feels like it hurts more, so stop.”

Lanen grumbled sharply, but the boy didn’t take his mouth away.

Sniff. Whether talking about it had made her sad again, tears began to bead and fall from the girl’s round eyes.

Her mouth was stubbornly clamped shut, refusing to let out any sound of crying, while her nose kept sniffling, and it made the girl look even younger than usual.

What do I do? It made the boy feel strangely anxious, and Cedarwood opened and closed his hand a few times.

The reason he had told her not to go was because he had heard a hunter’s gunshot in his sleep just now. He was afraid that his young lady, roughly the size of a young boar, might be wandering through the bushes and get shot.

“Cedar, is it fine with you if I get punished? You’re my servant. A servant is supposed to take the master’s side.”

But no matter how he thought about it, the sulking girl didn’t seem like she would listen to that.

“…Then call for me next time. I’ll take the punishment in your place. I’ve walked around so much more than you that my calves have toughened up, so getting hit with an apple branch doesn’t hurt me at all.”

“Really?”

Cedarwood was about to nod. From the direction of the servants’ quarters came the clicking of a fire starter before the oil lamp was lit.

Lanen leapt up and grabbed Cedarwood’s sleeve in a panic.

“Shh, if they find out I was trying to run away, it’s all over.”

Come on! Lanen gestured.

The boy could have gone back to his quarters, but he couldn’t refuse his young lady’s order, so he followed her.

A shadowed corner of the Manor, where a large spruce tree had been planted. The room on the second floor above it was Lanen’s.

Lanen rolled up her sleeves and began climbing the tree.

“What are you doing! Hurry up!”

Watching her shoot up in an instant, it was clear this was not her first time.

Only after slipping three times and scraping his palms raw did Cedarwood manage to climb into Lanen’s room.

Lanen checked that no one was in the corridor, then hid the knapsack she had been carrying deep inside the wardrobe.

“Are you hurt?”

Lanen asked Cedarwood, who was staring at his palms. Blood was welling up in the scrapes. Feeling a little guilty, the girl took a round tin of ointment from her pocket.

“Give me your hand.”

“You have medicine. Why didn’t you use it on your calves?”

“It stings when you put it on.”

“…So it’s fine if my hands sting?”

“You’re not going to say it hurts anyway.”

It was true, so Cedarwood said nothing and let Lanen do as she liked.

Small, gentle hands moved across his palm.

A scrape like this would heal fine if he just licked it, but his young lady seemed to think he would hurt just as much as she did.

‘Judging by how thick she’s spreading the ointment…’

Round teardrops fell one after another onto the ointment being quietly applied.

Cedarwood lifted his head and looked at Lanen.

Her tearful face looked like spun sugar glass that might shatter at any moment. Like that indignant face holding a water bucket in the hydrangea garden once upon a time…

“You’re the one who stopped me from running away, so you’re responsible for all of it.”

My poor young lady, who resembles a bright and pure summer flower.

“Go on, promise me you’ll take responsibility.”

“…I promise.”

Cedarwood opened and closed his palm, sticky with ointment and tears. A stickiness that was different from anxiety clung to it.

“You’re doing tomorrow’s homework too.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Even if the boy stayed up all night, tomorrow’s homework would never truly be finished.

“You’re going to sit in on the etiquette lessons too. I hate that teacher. Always comparing me to Reagan Rockefeller.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Not that a boy who had learned nothing but odd jobs would know anything about etiquette.

“And stop the head butler from hitting my hands at every meal.”

“Yes.”

The boy knew how unreasonable the promises his young lady was demanding were.

He knew. But he couldn’t help it.

“Stay by my side.”

This small, young lady who came and gripped his hand tight with her swollen face, she was pitiful and she weighed on him, and also…

‘I want to protect her.’

He wanted to protect her so she would not cry.

“I swear it.”

The boy simply could not bring himself to leave his young lady’s side.

But contrary to his young lady’s manservant having assessed her as “small and fragile-looking,” Lanen Rockefeller was, for her age, quite sturdily built, and very far from fragile.