I laughed awkwardly and trailed off.

“Then you’ll have noticed this as well.”

Rodion settled into the seat across from me and continued.

“I am not gifted with words. Small talk and pleasantries, of course…… and I have no talent whatsoever for lying, in particular.”

When he said “lying,” he looked directly into my eyes. This seemed connected to what he had said earlier about me being a shameless liar.

“Are you calling me a liar? I thought you were a gentleman, Rodion Nikolayevich.”

“And you called me a brown bear.”

……He heard that?

“It isn’t the first time I’ve been mistaken for one. I try to avoid black clothing when I can, but being in service to His Majesty the Emperor……”

He let the end of the sentence trail off with an air of mild irritation. Whether it was a joke or not was unclear, but that didn’t seem to be the important thing right now.

“So you have a proposal you wish to make to me?”

“You see right through me.”

He nodded. Then, with a very grave expression, he continued.

“First, let me give you my word. You will come to no harm from this. Whatever the arrangement, it will not be formally announced.”

It won’t be formally announced? So it only needs to reach the ears of a specific person, not the general public?

Ah, could this be that? The cliché that appeared so often in romance novels?

“Are you being pressured into an unwanted engagement?”

Was this the kind of story where he needed a fake fiancée as an excuse to refuse the advances of some high-born woman he couldn’t openly turn down?

At my question, Rodion stared at me blankly for a moment, then gave a small laugh and shook his head.

“An interesting theory. But no. If an unwanted proposal came my way, I would simply decline. I’m not particularly concerned with my reputation.”

“Then who are you trying to deceive?”

For some reason, Rodion paused before answering.

“There is someone…… to whom I owe a great debt. A retired colonel in Saint Petersburg…… In fact, the reason I came to this town was because he personally instructed me to.”

I knew almost nothing about Rodion, unlike the other major characters in this novel.

What I knew was that after Ivan’s death, Rodion would take over the new story, and that what he experienced in this town would serve as some kind of turning point in his life.

Beyond that, I knew nothing of his background or his character.

But considering the historical setting, the reason he had left Saint Petersburg was easy enough to guess.

Russia at this time was struggling with political instability and questions of ideology and reform in the wake of a disastrous military defeat.

With the emancipation of the serfs not far off, tensions between the tsar, the nobility, and the peasants had reached a breaking point.

In other words, Saint Petersburg at this time was not a comfortable place for a landowning noble officer to remain.

“What concerns me is the colonel’s health. He is quite old now…… and lives alone, with no family or relatives. He is a stubborn man by nature, and if I were to visit without his permission, he would refuse to see me again.”

I was beginning to wonder whether this conversation was going somewhere entirely unexpected, when Rodion looked at me again.

“But if I were coming to introduce a fiancée, that would be a different matter. He is to me what a father would be, and he has called me his son.”

“You are asking me to play the role of your fiancée as a pretext to visit the colonel.”

“Precisely.”

That was, if anything, a rather modest reason. Was that truly all there was to it? Could there be some other motive lurking beneath?

Rodion continued as I furrowed my brow.

“And…… what I said earlier about being impressed by you was not a lie. Not only your talent for deception…… I’m not sure how this will sound, but you have a way of reading people. She is not someone who trusts easily, my aunt.”

A way of reading people……

“That may be true.”

“If I’ve been rude……”

“No, there’s no need to apologize. When you spend a long time caring for someone who is ill, it comes naturally.”

“Someone who is ill?”

I smiled at Rodion’s puzzled look and explained.

“My mother was bedridden for quite a long time.”

And that was one of the few things Katerina and I had in common.

That our mothers had been ill for a very long time. And that we had each kept vigil at their deathbeds alone.

“Rodion Nikolayevich, there is one more thing I should tell you. The truth is, I already have a fiancé……”

The carriage lurched to a sudden stop.

My body pitched forward, and before I could fall, Rodion caught me in a rush.

“Oh, thank you.”

I ended up half in his arms as a result, but that was better than landing face-first on the floor.

To push myself upright, I instinctively placed my hand on his thigh.

‘Oh.’

Oh?

“……Katerina Vladimirovna?”

I looked up and met Rodion’s startled eyes. I snatched my hand away from his firm thigh.

“Oh! I’m so sorry! I wasn’t trying to, that is, I wasn’t trying to stroke your thigh!”

The coachman knocked on the window at just the right moment and called out.

“I beg your pardon, sir! Are you hurt?”

I scrambled back to my seat. Rodion gave a small cough and asked.

“I’m fine. What happened?”

“I’m not entirely sure, sir, but there are people gathered on the bridge!”

Rodion rose from his seat.

“I’ll go and see what’s happening.”

“I’ll come with you.”

Stepping out of the carriage, a cold river wind hit my face. I was wearing a thick wool coat, but it did little to keep out the cold.

On the bridge, shabbily dressed people were pressed against the railing, all looking down at the river below. Their faces were plainly shaken.

“What’s going on.”

Rodion asked, and another coachman who had been mixed in among the crowd stepped forward.

“I, I did nothing wrong, sir. My passenger said he had ‘forgotten something,’ and so I……”

His face was ashen and his eyes were brimming with tears.

Rodion pushed through the crowd and looked over the railing, then his expression hardened immediately.

“Someone has fallen in! Why hasn’t anyone called for the police?”

What?

I ran to the railing. The river was frozen, but not solid all the way through. The current beneath the ice, cracked by the force of the fall, was still strong.

A birch tree that had been felled during embankment work happened to be caught on the riverbank, and sure enough, a young man was barely clinging to it.

And that young man looked terribly…… familiar.

“Ivan?!”

The one who had fallen into the frozen river was unmistakably my fiancé Ivan. The way his body kept rising and sinking against the birch branches, up to his chest in the water, was precarious beyond words.

It was a miracle he hadn’t been swept away by the current, but in this weather he would succumb to hypothermia before long.

But had there been a scene like this in the early part of the novel? Ivan Ivanovich was supposed to come down with a severe fever……

Ah.

He fell into the river. That was why he came down with a fever. He had jumped into the river in weather like this.

“I begged and begged him not to call the police, no matter what! He even pressed money into my hand, I never imagined something like this would……”

The coachman sobbed out the words.

Wait, though. The fact that he was alive at the start of the story meant someone had saved him, didn’t it?

‘But who?’

The thought had barely formed when, splash, someone leapt into the frozen river.

“Sir!”

It was Rodion.

* * *

By the time I reached the riverbank, Rodion had already hoisted a soaking Ivan onto his back and was walking out of the water.

I ran over and tried to drape the black coat Rodion had thrown off onto him. But Rodion shook his head.

“Cover him with it. I’ll need to fetch the coachman.”

Rodion laid Ivan down on the bank.

I had watched Ivan die more times than I could count. Fortunately, this time it didn’t look life-threatening.

His face was blue and his body was shaking violently, but his breathing was steady, and the eyes that flickered half-open showed consciousness returning.

I covered Ivan and turned to Rodion.

“Why did you do something so reckless?”

“Pardon?”

“Jumping into the river in weather like this could have caused a heart attack. You could have died, Rodion Nikolayevich.”

The words came out sharper than I intended. Before I could even think to apologize, an answer came back.

“Because it was something I could do.”

I was left without a word to say.

The coachman came running down the bank just then.

“Is there anything I can do to help, sir?!”

“This man needs to be moved to my house for now. Tell the other coachman to fetch a doctor.”

The coachman nodded and headed back up to the bridge.

I went to Ivan and knelt at his side.

“Is he someone you know?”

Rodion asked.

Do I know Ivan Ivanovich? What an interesting question. There was probably no one in this world who knew him better than I did.

But I couldn’t say that.

“You likely know him as well. This is Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov.”

“……The one of the empty vodka bottle?”

“Yes, his son. And…… my fiancé, as it happens.”

Rodion’s lips parted slightly.

Ivan turned his head then, coughing hard, and retched up a rush of water. He looked around in confusion, then found me looking down at him.

“Katerina…… Vladimirovna……?”

“Ivan Ivanovich, are you with me? Can you move on your own?”