It was Avelin Pollach, a high-ranking cleric with a kind face framed by soft caramel-colored hair gone salt-and-pepper. She was dressed in ordinary clothes rather than clerical robes, and she carried a large paper bag in her arms.

“Taniel is here too. And this child is……?”

“This is my new apprentice, Rain. It’s good to see you again, Senator.”

Mirha greeted her politely. Even so, she opened her knight’s senses to their fullest, searching for the source of the unease she felt moments ago.

‘It’s gone.’

She could feel nothing more. Was it truly just her imagination? Mirha shook off the lingering discomfort and turned her attention to Avelin.

“Ah, so you are the child Dame Mirha brought in. Pleased to meet you. I’m Avelin Pollach.”

“It is an honor to meet you, Senator.”

The perceptive boy, drawing on the honorific Mirha used moments ago to infer the woman’s rank, quickly bowed his head. Avelin looked down at Rain with gentle eyes and a sorrowful expression.

“I heard a little about what you went through until now. As a senator and cleric of this nation, I am sorry we could not rescue you sooner. You, and the other children in the same situation.”

“Not at all, Senator.”

Rain answered quickly. He didn’t want to be misunderstood as daring to blame a high-ranking member of the clergy.

In truth, Rain felt no resentment toward Avelin Pollach. Just as he felt no bitterness toward Mirha for coming to save him too late.

The Elapha Order, which protected the weak, and the church, which carried out justice in accordance with the will of the divine. He could have been angry that their failure to fulfill their roles properly was why he lived in suffering, but Rain was not.

It wasn’t that Rain was particularly broad-minded or mature. He simply never expected anything to begin with.

The world he knew was always cold and cruel. The kind Mirha who saved him, the lovely Taniel who treated him warmly, the elder Avelin who now bowed her head in apology, they were the strange ones.

So it was fine. If anything, he only felt a little bewildered. He never once resented this person, and yet here was someone of all people, a senator of this nation, bowing her head to apologize to someone as insignificant as him.

“This nation will surely improve. I and the other senators will make certain of it. So even if you find us lacking, please wait with a generous heart.”

“Yes, Senator.”

Avelin’s earnest plea left Rain feeling rather overwhelmed. It was awkward, but not unpleasant. A ticklish feeling, different in quality from when Taniel first took his hand.

Taniel, on the other hand, watched Avelin with a somewhat stiff expression. The girl’s manner was precisely and only as courteous as formality required.

‘That woman makes me uncomfortable.’

She couldn’t help it. Taniel’s mother was the highest elder, and Kelena Zinion and Avelin Pollach did not get along particularly well. Their political inclinations didn’t quite align.

Taniel acknowledged that she might simply be carrying her mother’s influence and harboring a bias against Senator Avelin, but eleven was too young an age to fully overcome that bias.

It was natural for a child to be shaped by the people close to them, especially their parents, and the girl was still too young to have built a fully independent perspective of her own.

Sensing the girl’s discomfort, Avelin made no particular effort to draw Taniel into conversation. Avelin turned her gaze back to Mirha.

“I take it you went out to celebrate taking on a new apprentice. Did you all eat something good?”

“Yes, Senator. We just finished dining out and were on our way back to the Moonlight Night Palace.”

“I see. I stepped out briefly to pick something up and I’m on my way back to the temple. Shall we walk together until our paths diverge?”

“It would be an honor.”

Most clergy commuted to the temple, but a high-ranking cleric of Avelin’s standing resided in the temple’s annex.

And so three became four. Two children, one knight, and one cleric walked side by side beneath the overcast sky, matching their strides.

“That said, you have quite the nerve going out on a day like today. You received your confinement order just this morning, after all.”

“Are you reprimanding me?”

“No, I mean it exactly as I said. You need that kind of nerve to call yourself a knight.”

“I imagine the other knights would see it differently. They’d probably call it defiance rather than nerve.”

“Ha, would they really? Did you go out on purpose to get back at the superiors who gave you the confinement order?”

“Nothing of the sort. My new apprentice had never been to Santir before. I wanted to show him around while there was time, so I brought him out.”

“I see. You really are a fine teacher.”

“You flatter me.”

While Mirha and Avelin exchanged words, Rain kept stealing glances at them.

Hearing that Mirha broke her confinement order for his sake, Rain flinched with guilt, but at the same time felt a strange thrill.

‘Teacher broke her confinement order for me. For someone as small as me.’

He knew he shouldn’t dare feel happy about something like this, yet a smile kept tugging at his lips in spite of himself. Rain quietly bit down on his lip, suppressing the presumptuous joy.

Taniel, meanwhile, kept a sulky expression. Just moments ago she was enjoying a cozy outing with her teacher and Rain, and now she felt the senator barged in without reading the room and ruined everything.

She was jealous. It was the possessiveness of a pampered girl from a good family, accustomed to getting most of what she wanted. Her teacher and Rain were clearly her people, and it irritated her, feeling as though Avelin had temporarily taken them away.

Whether Taniel quietly sulked on her own or not, Mirha continued her conversation with Avelin, and Rain listened to their words with keen, hungry attention. That continued until they reached the fork in the road.

“Then I’ll go this way. Dame Mirha, Rain, Taniel. Take care, all of you.”

“Take care, Senator.”

“Goodbye, Senator.”

“……Goodbye.”

Taniel said her farewell last, with a slight curtness. Avelin smiled warmly at all of them, then turned and walked away unhurriedly, carrying the paper bag she said held sweets to hand out to young worshippers.

Mirha turned away without hesitation. Only then did she notice her first apprentice’s pouty expression, and a laugh escaped her before she could stop it.

‘How adorable.’

It was a little sad to see Taniel, shaped by her mother’s influence, irrationally wary of such a person of good character, but the sight of her puffing her cheeks out like a sulking squirrel was undeniably cute.

Rain, on the other hand, watched Avelin’s retreating figure with a look of quiet thirst as she grew smaller in the distance.

The blind devotion Mirha sometimes caught in the boy’s gaze when he looked at her now covered his eyes entirely.

Mirha felt a dull ache in her chest again, that familiar pang of sorrow. The sight of the boy, who never received affection in his life, clinging desperately to kind adults who could replace a parent, was unbearably pitiful.

“Taniel, Rain, let’s go.”

Mirha reached out her hand to Rain. Hoping that her own devotion, and Taniel’s kindness, and the sense of belonging he would come to feel in the Elapha Order, would nourish and enrich Rain’s starved heart.

“Yes, Teacher.”

Rain said quietly. He took the adult’s hand. Inside the knight’s strong, calloused hand, the child’s hand was so small and thin.

Taniel promptly took Rain’s other hand. Rain was now connected on one side to Mirha and on the other to Taniel.

Rain flushed with happiness. Like this, he felt like a beloved youngest child out on an errand holding the hands of his mother and older sister. A luxury he never dared imagine.

The three of them walked side by side again. Just like a real family, just as when they left the Moonlight Night Palace earlier.

The unknown gaze Mirha sensed before was nowhere to be found.

* * *

Mirha registered Rain’s name in the apprentice knight roster the very next day.

She didn’t attach a surname. Rain, who forgot his original name, couldn’t remember a family name either, and besides, once he became a knight he would be granted the name of Elapha.

Of course, there was also the possibility that Rain might realize too late that the path of a knight wasn’t his calling and stop his training. But she decided to think about that if and when it actually came to that.

‘The way things are going, that’s probably not something to worry about.’

She could tell from just a few weeks of training. Being a knight was the boy’s calling.

Rain wasn’t only born with strong sacred power. He clearly had a talent for swordsmanship, and he showed promise in the theoretical aspects as well.

The thought that a boy like this could have ended up a slave or a criminal made Mirha’s head swim, and then the thought that countless other children were still trapped in the gutter made her chest ache.

Each time that happened, Mirha tried to wash away the guilt by focusing all the more intensely on Rain’s training.

If rescuing only Rain was a sin, then so be it. There were surely others in that place who needed help besides Rain.