Mov. 2

“Good day, Mr. Clemens.”

“It’s been a while, Miss Avril. Right now……”

The distance was close enough to fall and bump noses.

A few meters’ walk along the snow-covered path and one arrived at the stately Eisenhaum estate.

Zoe pulled the bell hanging by the door without delay, and Clemens, the estate’s butler whom she knew by face, received her with courteous formality.

This man, whose warm appearance belied a seasoned professionalism as a servant, had always addressed Zoe as ‘Miss Avril’ with proper respect. Retrieving books from the high shelves of Mr. Eisenhaum’s study and placing them in her arms was invariably his task as well.

Zoe had therefore always regarded him as ‘an excellent butler who never loses the kindness and smile that are a servant’s chief virtues,’ but the smile he wore today was markedly forced.

The look of a man who’d witnessed something he’d rather an outsider not see.

Beads of sweat had even gathered in the deep creases of his brow.

Even so.

“……Please come in. The master and the young master should be upstairs.”

It was an unannounced visit. So he hadn’t been able to conceal it in time, and a strange sense of dissonance lingered.

She’d been on the verge of thinking she ought to turn back if something had gone wrong in the estate, but he suppressed the awkward air and guided Zoe inside. The estate, with its scent of aged wood and its high, refined ceilings that lent it a composed atmosphere, carried a subtly tense undercurrent that day.

Zoe got the impression that he found the atmosphere of the entire estate uncomfortable.

The difference between the peaceful, settled quality of quiet and the unfamiliar chill that came from a silence with no sound at all, if that was the precise way to put it.

Then, bang!

An ear-splitting noise. More precisely, something close to the sound of piano keys being struck wildly and at random.

The dissonance that overturned the still air, low and weighty yet sharp and clear, made Zoe reflexively cover her ears. Her brow furrowed before she could stop it.

Mr. Clemens, unable to move toward the stairs, stopped where he stood and let out a slow breath. A single bead of sweat that had been sliding down was wiped away by a white glove and vanished.

He could no longer conceal the estate’s strange atmosphere. He’d never had the means to do so in the first place.

By that point, Zoe had grown more certain in her judgment that she’d chosen a poor time to visit.

Her body, which didn’t usually flinch at ordinary provocations, went rigid and cold as a corpse. The feeling of the fine hairs rising on her arms and legs came from two sharp sounds that followed.

Crack, crash!

Even without seeing it, anyone could tell that was the sound of a palm striking a cheek, and then the sound of a pile of books being knocked over in defiance.

But Mr. Eisenhaum, dignified as Zoe knew him to be, was absolutely, absolutely not the kind of senile old man who raised his hand against the estate’s servants. That fact shocked her all the more.

Which left only one person she knew of.

His only family, the very grandson she’d come to visit.

Going by Mr. Clemens’s reaction and her own sharp instincts, she was certain the one who’d received the slap was Mr. Eisenhaum’s grandson. And, setting aside the rather unusual circumstances of his birth, the only person who could lay a hand on a young master of a fine house was that young master’s one and only grandfather.

Of course, she had no idea whatsoever of the circumstances that had led to this, and yet, judging by the behavior of slamming piano keys and toppling piles of books, the ‘grandson’ also seemed to possess a temper that was no small thing.

Still. Even so.

For a thirteen-year-old girl who hadn’t lost a parent’s warmth or the comfort of a home, even if she’d lost the family fortune, it was a sight that would leave an impression for a long time. Quite a shocking one.

Someone raised roughly might see it as a sheltered young lady making a fuss over a single slap, but in Zoe’s view, discipline and violence were plainly different things.

Zoe’s lips trembled, then pressed firmly shut.

“I think I should……”

It had been quite a shocking sight. Something like a disappointment in a person, one might say.

“Come back another time……”

She knew this wasn’t a situation she should be in. She tried to turn away, but her body was shaking and her feet wouldn’t move.

“……Oh, Zoe.”

Bang. Zoe turned her head again.

A door slammed shut roughly once more, and then the irregular sound of an angry boot grinding down each step of the staircase reached her ears.

When she turned, a familiar old gentleman was looking down at her. His lined face was draped in a shadow that defied description.

“……You’re here. I’m sorry to have kept you standing. The boy is upstairs.”

“Oh, Mr. Eisenhaum. I……”

“I’m sorry. You may go home…… the old fool showed you something he shouldn’t have. The boy…… no, no. What have I done.”

He muttered incomprehensible words in a ramble.

Disheveled gray hair, a flushed face, and breath coming in agitated, ragged gusts. It was the first and last time she would ever see that old gentleman in such complete disarray.

The old man stared blankly down at his leather-gloved hands, then suddenly exhaled and scrubbed roughly at his flushed face. His dry lips moved in something like a confession. Zoe read it as ‘regret.’

Good intentions, wrong methods, wounds left on both sides, irreversible.

After muttering for a long while, he pressed a hand to his forehead, dry and crumbling as old kindling.

“……Having someone with him is probably better than leaving him alone.”

“……”

“He doesn’t take to the old man. The more we talk, the deeper the rift grows. An unbroken colt, back-talking and contrary. Acting like some abandoned wildcat.”

“……”

He paced restlessly.

“Still, he’s not a truly bad boy, so…… could you spare a little of your time? Yes, I think…… having someone there really is better than leaving him alone. If he’s rough with you, you don’t ever have to come back, but if he talks, just listen, and if he goes quiet, just stay beside him.”

“……”

“……Please. Will you help me?”

It was a request that was hard to refuse.

Truthfully, Zoe didn’t think she would be any kind of meaningful comfort to Mr. Eisenhaum’s ‘rude and pitiable grandson.’ Awkwardly well-meaning words could easily come across as presumptuous.

Yet the reason refusing wasn’t as easy as usual was simply that listening when he talked and sitting quietly beside him when he didn’t wasn’t a particularly difficult thing to do.

And she had nothing to lose. A small calculation of gains and losses, and a thin, childish sympathy. That was all.

“Yes, I will.”

“……Thank you.”

Zoe nodded readily, and Mr. Eisenhaum smiled with a shadowed face, a bitter smile. Faint as light spreading through shadow. Easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention.

“Go on up. I’ll be in the study. Feel free to borrow any book you’d like, whether you read with the boy or on your own, come by anytime.”

Zoe nodded firmly again. And she would spend the rest of her life regretting that small decision.

Because if they’d never met, there would have been nothing to wound and nothing to wound with.

If only your life hadn’t filled mine so completely.

―Leode Eisenhaum, if only I could cut you out of my life.

***

‘What on earth is going on.’

Turning the whirlwind of events over in her mind, Zoe climbed the stairs to the upper floor in long strides.

Her thoughts kept chasing their own tails, but there was nothing to be gained from it either way. She hadn’t done anything wrong, so there was no reason to tread carefully.

When she finally arrived before the firmly shut door of ‘the grandson’s’ room, Zoe chose not to knock timidly. Instead she leaned her back against the door and dropped down to sit in front of it.

“I’ll come in if you open the door, and if you don’t, I’ll just sit here for a while and leave. You can say something if you want, or not.”

“……”

“You’re not going to open it, are you?”

“……”

“Right, figured as much. Do as you like.”

The boy behind the solid wood gave no answer, and Zoe held no particular attachment to that.

She’d planned to kill some time and go anyway.

She pulled a crisp cookie from the picnic basket, took a bite, and waited.

A kind of auditory provocation, one might say.

With someone clearly sitting right outside the door, it was impossible not to be aware of it. Zoe took another bite of cookie, at her leisure. After the sound of regular crunching had repeated several more times, she finally heard the boy’s voice.

The voice that came through the door was calmer than expected, gentler than expected, and younger-sounding than expected.

“Who are you?”

Zoe answered simply.

“Next door.”

“The Avril family?”

“That’s right.”

“Oh, I think I know who you are.”

“What, you’ve seen me before?”

The unexpected answer made Zoe, who’d been chewing her cookie with mild indifference, tilt her head sideways.

She hadn’t thought the conversation would even get started. And there was something faintly irritating about a person she’d never once laid eyes on knowing her face. Zoe pressed for details.

“Where did you see me? Is it actually me?”

“Through the window. Red hair. Or am I wrong?”

“Hey. Don’t spy on people. How come you know my face and I don’t know yours?”

“What am I supposed to do? All that falls here all day long is boring piles of snow, and your house is the only thing visible from the window. You’re the one who was always flitting around.”

“Forget it. I need to buy some curtains.”

Annoying. He had a comeback for everything.

She was just as quick to grab the tail end of his words, but Zoe cut off her own sharpness and chose to exercise a degree of generosity.

He’d been through something serious, his relationship with his grandfather was far from good, he’d been cooped up inside for a week, and he had no friends. It was entirely reasonable that he’d have absolutely nothing to do.

If the way he’d been passing the time was watching the girl next door through the window, who looked quite pretty from a distance, in Zoe Avril’s own subjective opinion, and if that had given the boy even a small measure of relief from his boredom, she could afford to let him keep looking.

On the condition that his answer was satisfactory.

“What were you thinking when you looked at me?”

“I thought your head was on fire. Your hair was so red you stood out the most.”

Zoe’s pretty face puffed up and then crumpled like a badly made rye loaf.

Kill him or let him live?

***