PAGE 10. My One and Only

[You’re really annoying. How can you do this?]

“What on earth……”

A forehead as beautiful as untrodden snow narrowed finely. The boy holding a letter dripping with resentment sighed as if he couldn’t understand why.

It wasn’t the first time he’s received such content. That’s why it was even more incomprehensible.

Not sending replies? Carol would never do such a thing.

Heartless betrayal and indefinite waiting had happened many times. Carol, who had experienced that pain firsthand, had never wanted his correspondent to feel that anxiety.

He swore it.

Though he had become slower than before as he aged, Carol had faithfully written replies to Asha. This was the same for Asha.

No matter how busy, letters returned within a month. Carol, who had made it his pleasure to exchange brief greetings and long updates, sighed again at the mysterious scolding.

He had written replies properly.

He had even watched the postal worker in the painting properly take them away.

“You really sent them properly, right?”

The boy who had been tormented by bookkeeping from dawn until late afternoon could only visit the corridor on the mansion’s top floor after sunset.

His sharp blue eyes narrowed as he glared at the postal worker in the painting. The postal worker, painted over in pale, dim colors, remained silent.

Whether it was a product of magic or fairy mischief, his long fingers meaninglessly caressed the frame’s edge before putting it down.

When he first sent letters through the painting, he had been a span smaller than now. Carol stared at his fingertips, which were no different from his two brothers’—no, slightly longer if you measured.

That much time had passed.

Long, long enough for less mature hands to grow as large as an adult’s.

Faint bite marks appeared on his roughened lips. Dark blue sky showed through the gaps in the heavy curtains. Long-stretched tree branches swayed as if they might touch the window.

Mulling over, mulling over, mulling over.

Unlike his straightforward eldest brother or simple second brother, the third son who worried and thought too much bit his lips and racked his brain.

If there was no problem on this end, it was a problem on the receiving end.

“But how?”

The path for Carol’s letters to reach Asha was simple. The postal worker in the painting used a secret passage to throw them outside the painting in Asha’s house.

If he couldn’t send them outside the painting, the postal worker should have brought Carol’s letters back. As a concept of ‘return to sender.’

If there was no problem with sending, there was only one reason Asha couldn’t receive the letters.

“Someone stole them…… No way.”

He reflexively shook his head and muttered again with an uneasy expression.

“No way……”

If someone had intentionally stolen the letters.

Why?

Though guessing an unknown person’s motives was merely ‘imagination,’ his spinning mind couldn’t stop.

Grandfather? Lucio? Rosette? A third party?

Carol, who recalled the people Asha frequently mentioned in order, frowned and rubbed his face dry.

Even analyzing like this, there was no way to tell Asha.

Writing letters without an exact address would obviously result in them being returned, and might accidentally reveal their relationship to the wrong person.

While Carol tore at his hair analyzing the cause, the temperature kept dropping steadily.

At some point, Asha’s letters had begun ending with ‘I’ll wait for your reply.’ Whether she pressed hard while writing, touching the back of the paper revealed a bumpy texture matching the letters.

As much as Asha waited, as much as she raged, as much as she pleaded, Carol’s insides burned up. Letters urging replies went out once a month without stopping.

Carol sent letters each time—no, much more often than that—but none reached the girl his age.

He even tried sending blank letters as Asha had demanded, but the result was the same.

As letters that received no replies piled up, Carol felt both overwhelming anxiety and strange elation simultaneously.

Asha, whose patience was gradually wearing thin, began freely scribbling stories she hadn’t told before, things she had intentionally omitted or wrapped up.

Perhaps she did so thinking Carol ‘wouldn’t see them,’ or maybe she intended to provoke a reaction by laying out any words.

Or perhaps she simply wanted to tell Carol.

One by one, two by two, letters that hadn’t received replies piled up at Carol’s bedside. That kid still called Carol her friend and waited for replies.

Though it was unfair from the position of faithfully writing and sending letters, he was also somewhat excited by the thought that Asha hadn’t given up on him even after not receiving letters for months.

It was childish satisfaction. It quickly disappeared in the pain of being unable to convey his news.

What meaning could letters that couldn’t be exchanged have? In the vast, vast kingdom, Asha was the only person curious about what kind of person Carol was, what he ate today, and what he would do tomorrow.

“Asha……”

Quietly calling out a name that couldn’t reach her, the boy unconsciously calculated the distance between Kasoche and Iota. Though he had never left the village, it wasn’t impossible.

Since Kasoche was such a small place, if he could just arrive, he could probably find her by asking around.

Right, it wasn’t difficult.

In fact, if he put his mind to it, he could try anytime. The reason he couldn’t was because the two of them, because Carol……

[To dear Carol

Grandfather passed away.

I miss you.

I miss you.]

With those words, Carol received no more letters.

Kasoche had begun its severe cold earlier than usual.

※※※

He was completely trapped in the mansion, unable to move.

The towering snow-covered mountains surrounding Kasoche had transformed into solid fortresses and iron bars. The youngest boy in the mansion sat down in a corridor rarely visited by servants, chewing only the inside of his mouth.

Familiar yet detestable snow.

If he drew back the thick curtains, his vision would be filled with white that made it impossible to distinguish directions. The flesh inside his mouth that he probed with his tongue was unsightly and raw, and his neat appearance was full of melancholy.

Detestable severe cold.

Every year during this season, the mansion’s third son became more irritable and depressed than usual. Since snow piled up so much that he couldn’t go outside, he had no choice but to rub shoulders with his family, and the relatives who visited during this time made Carol uncomfortable.

Moreover, since no one took Carol’s emotions seriously, as the youngest with virtually no voice, he had no choice but to desperately avoid them.

It would be better not to meet at all.

Before too, while seeking such an escape, he had begun exchanging letters with a woman living at the southern end.

Carol stared at the back of his hand that had grown considerably, at the distinct joints, then leaned his back against the wall. Though he had locked the windows tight and drawn double curtains, he couldn’t block the piercing cold.

Was Asha okay? She used to groan in pain when the temperature dropped even slightly.

Carol frowned, recalling days when replies came slower than usual. His friend who would casually say she was so sick she couldn’t even read letters.

The person who would summarize in two lines how her throat had swollen so much she couldn’t speak a word for three days.

The boy’s only friend was used to being sick, but he wasn’t. Her indifferent, casual news made him restless, made him stamp his feet, made him pace back and forth in his bedroom.

The helplessness of being unable to do anything, and the fresh question of what he could do then.

Incomprehensible confusion would gnaw at his small heart bit by bit, yet he would feel relieved by a single thick letter.

The letters no longer came.

Carol, trapped in the long, painful severe cold, spent boring and sharp days like before he met Asha. The youngest had no authority to skip ‘family’ meals and ‘family’ tea time.

Asha’s letters had come through even terrible blizzards, and he had so much to say, no……

Carol endlessly read letters missing several essential components that should be observed when writing correspondence.

[Grandfather passed away.]

[I miss you.]

“I miss you……”

The sentence that lingered on his lips was both a reading and an answer. Carol, who had curled his upper body, repeated the short, short sentence over and over.

[Dear Sha

I want to ask if you’re okay. Even if I hear the reproach ‘Would you be okay?’ I want to ask like that. Whether you say you’re okay or not, I,]

Incomplete sentences wandered at the pen’s tip.

He wanted to tell her anything, yet he couldn’t say anything. A boy whose feet were bound by blizzards, a nineteen-year-old who had never been outside the village.

Who couldn’t properly send even one letter without relying on luck.