Mirha returned to her quarters. The nameless boy she brought back the day before and her student Taniel were there.

She brought him along on something of an impulse, unable to simply look the other way, but Mirha still didn’t know so much as the boy’s name or age.

She tried asking carefully once or twice on the way back. But every time she watched him go pale and tremble pitifully, she couldn’t bring herself to press further and gave up early.

Perhaps because he understood that Mirha saved him, or perhaps because she took such careful care of him on the journey, the boy relaxed fairly well whenever Mirha was in sight.

Even so, she felt it was still a little too soon to leave him alone with others.

She worried a great deal when she left the boy and her student at the quarters the night before, but with the order commander and the chief senator both expecting her report right away, she couldn’t bring the child along and settled for the next best option.

Fortunately, Taniel didn’t disappoint her teacher’s expectations. She looked after the mute boy with great care.

When Mirha returned to her quarters that night, exhausted after finishing her report, the boy was curled up on the bed like a rabbit, sleeping soundly, and Taniel sat keeping watch beside the bed like an adorable little sentinel.

She was only eleven herself, yet there she was, looking after the boy with such dependability. How proud it made her.

Mirha was never stingy with praise and encouragement toward her student, but that day she felt a particular swell of pride for her admirably grown-up young apprentice.

[Thank you, Taniel. You did well.]

Mirha offered her sincere thanks and patted the girl on the shoulder, and the girl flushed pink with pleasure. That sight was endearing too.

Today again, Taniel was in the quarters looking after the nameless boy. Thanks to Mirha giving him his first proper bath that morning, the child was far less grimy than the day before.

Once the layers of old grime were scrubbed from his small face and thin body, his hair washed fluffy and clean, and fresh clothes put on him, the boy looked reasonably like any ordinary child his age.

Still, the boy carried an air of gloom and withdrawal. The marks of *buse, loneliness, and hunger, not yet erased, clung to him like a stubborn fog.

Clearing those marks away entirely would take steady care and attention.

The child was too thin in body and spirit alike. What he needed was nourishment to fill not only his wasted body but his tattered heart.

Mirha opened the front door and stepped inside. She stood still in the entryway and listened. A bright voice drifted from the direction of the bedroom. A clear, lively girl’s voice.

“…And so the brave knight, after defeating the wicked monster, ventured into the deep, dark forest. There, the knight met a fairy who guarded the fountain of blessings…”

Her sweet student seemed to be reading the boy a picture book. Mirha stepped into the room with a smile.

Sure enough, the two children sat side by side on the edge of the bed, and the girl with her rich chocolate-brown hair tied back had a large picture book open on her lap.

The boy with the black curly hair stared with wide blue eyes, watching not the book but the girl. His expression was almost entranced.

Taniel looked up sharply from the book when Mirha entered. She broke into a wide smile.

“Teacher!”

Taniel called out in a bright voice and snapped the picture book shut. She climbed down from the bed and came running to Mirha. The teacher looked down at her student and smiled back warmly.

“Teacher, did the hearing go all right?”

“Yes, it went fine.”

“…Did you end up receiving a disciplinary action?”

“It came to that.”

Taniel’s expression clouded. Eleven was a great deal younger than thirty-three, but it was nowhere near young enough to be ignorant of everything.

“That’s an unjust decision. Teacher only upheld her convictions as a knight. Isn’t protecting the weak and practicing justice the highest goal of our order?”

“I’m not sure whose student she is, but you’re quite sharp, Taniel. If knighthood were decided by oratory alone, you would have shed your trainee status long ago.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“See? Quite sharp indeed. You have a real talent for hitting the mark.”

Taniel grumbled, and Mirha laughed softly and patted the girl’s cheek with affection. Taniel still wore an expression of deep displeasure. The girl puffed out her soft cheeks like a squirrel.

“At times like this, I wonder whether striving to become a knight is even the right thing to do.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Just… what you teach me and how the other adults behave are so different.”

Taniel muttered with a rebellious edge. Now it was Mirha’s expression that clouded. She bent her knees and lowered herself to meet the girl at eye level. The adult looked at the child and spoke with gentle seriousness.

“Taniel, that’s exactly when you need to hold on to your conviction more firmly. Having doubts and questions is not wrong or strange at all. In fact, it’s by sitting with each of those questions, thinking them through deeply, and finding your own answers that you grow. As a knight, and as a person.”

“What if I can’t find the answer? What then?”

“It’s all right if you can’t. But if you don’t even try, there’s no way to know whether you failed to find the answer or simply chose not to look. The first means you did your best, and you can let it go. But the second will leave something unresolved. And when something unresolved sits long enough, it becomes regret, and regret gnaws at you from the inside.”

“…Yes, Teacher.”

The eleven-year-old student couldn’t fully grasp all the wisdom of a teacher who lived three times as long. But she could at least nod. Mirha smiled gently.

“It’s all right to have doubts. It’s all right to feel confused. But don’t give up just yet. You still have a long way to go in your training. If you truly want to quit, there will be plenty of chances to turn back before your formal ordination. For now, let’s just give our best to what’s in front of us.”

“Yes, Teacher. I’ll keep that in mind.”

The girl reaffirmed her resolve with steadier eyes, and the knight smiled more deeply with a tender expression. It was a smile that came from the heart.

“I am truly fortunate. To have such a remarkable student.”

The teacher’s unguarded whisper made the girl flush with joy and pride. It was an almost overwhelming sight.

While Mirha and Taniel spoke, the boy sat on the bed watching the two of them.

His heart was unsettled with an unfamiliar feeling. There was a heaviness in his chest, like something stuck, and a faint tingling just below his sternum.

‘I envy them.’

It was much later that the boy came to understand that the inexplicable stirring was a longing for the warmth and sense of belonging he never once experienced.

The boy fidgeted with his bony fingers and stole glances at the two of them. The devotion in the student’s eyes toward her teacher, the gentle warmth in the teacher’s expression as she looked at her student, all of it was foreign to him.

Mirha noticed the boy’s gaze first. She looked away from Taniel and turned to the boy. She smiled and came toward him.

“How are you feeling today? Are you all right?”

Mirha bent her knees again and lowered herself, looking up at the boy warmly. It was a small but deliberate act of consideration.

Bringing the child to the capital, Mirha noticed that the boy seemed to fear adults who looked down at him from above. Or perhaps he feared people altogether.

‘Understandably so.’

A cold fury twisted somewhere near Mirha’s heart. She thought of the auction house managers, the customers, and the slave hunters she left half-dead.

‘A shame I couldn’t kill them.’

When dealing with that filth, she exercised considerable restraint. She crushed, tore, and broke them enough to cripple them for life, while stopping just short of killing them. And still her anger wasn’t fully spent.

‘Nothing to be done about it. If I actually killed them, it wouldn’t have ended with just a disciplinary action.’

Because no one died, it ended with a simple hearing. If there had been fatalities, it would have gone to trial as a knight killing civilians.

‘It’s fine. I saved the child. At least I did the right thing.’

The worn-down knight Mirha had to make peace with reality, so she didn’t complain that the disciplinary action was unjust. At the same time, not for a single moment did she think she did anything wrong.

The one regret that remained was that she couldn’t save everyone. She saved one, but there were too many suffering people in this world, and the kind-hearted knight was always, in some corner of herself, sad.