Chapter 6. Jealousy (5)
“There were rumors that they took in street children to feed and shelter them, but most of the children who gathered there were driven away without even being able to set foot in the monastery. It was a day when snow fell relentlessly, piling up to ankle height……”
They probably knew too. That if they drove them away like that, the children who had already been trembling from hunger and cold for so long wouldn’t be able to endure it.
The door that closed mercilessly—the gazes looking down at the children from beyond it were as cold as the snow accumulating on their shoulders. He had rarely received warm, caring looks in his life, but never before had such a bitter wind filled his chest.
It was probably because he had been swollen with expectation. Because he had uncharacteristically harbored hope, that empty space that had foolishly slipped away felt enormous.
“If they had just let us warm our bodies for a moment, if they had shared a meal with us, perhaps some of the children who grew cold one by one might have lived.”
By my side. Ronen bit his lips hard, unable to speak the rest.
In truth, he had seen corpses to the point of being sick of them. People who were dying from illness and exhaustion were sprawled in every alley. Everyone was indifferent to death. I’ll probably end up like that soon too. He seemed to have thought that way. Since it was enough for him alone to survive no matter who died, he somehow filled his stomach while avoiding others’ eyes. So he regarded children dying as just daily life and providence……
That day when even his last hope disappeared. As evening fell and the blizzard became fiercer, making it impossible to come and go, the children gathered in one place and relied on each other’s body heat. He felt with his whole body as the children who had been huddled together collapsed one by one, grew cold, and eventually hardened stiffly.
All through the night, until dawn broke while he remained the sole survivor, he crouched among the children who were freezing to death.
That was probably the first time he had such a thought. Even death is not easily granted to me.
“Why on earth……”
At the words Eckart barely managed to utter, Ronen smiled self-deprecatingly.
“Because that place isn’t an orphanage. Of course, there seem to be some monasteries that take in children and serve them without any compensation, but St. Michael Monastery wasn’t one of them. They had no need for children without any talent. Like me.”
Ronen raised his arms and waved his hands this way and that. For a man, his body was slender with unnecessarily delicate lines. If he had been angular here and there but strong instead, his life might have been different.
“……Ah. This could also be considered my talent, I suppose. Anyway, I’ve lived by begging with this body until now, so even if it’s not the path I wanted, it might be a better life than others. It just wasn’t the talent that St. Michael Monastery desired.”
Right. The children who died buried in the snow that cold day might have envied him. His tenacious life and his body that satisfied men.
“When I think about it, it’s strange for a coincidence. A few days after being driven out of the monastery, the wheels of a carriage passing in front of me got stuck because the ground was muddy from melted snow. A lady opened the window to assess the situation and discovered me crouching on the street. My talent that wasn’t needed at the monastery was quite desperately needed by that lady, so she bought me with bread and clothes…… Well, you can guess what happened after that.”
Ronen let out a weak laugh. It was Lady Cornelia who had extended a hand to him—to him who wasn’t even easily granted death, to him who was gasping in pain just enough not to die.
Like the innocent boy who had once gotten into her carriage, Ronen got into the carriage that way. He didn’t care about anything as long as he could escape the immediate hunger and cold. Not knowing that everywhere around him was full of beasts drooling to devour him, he sold his soul for just a piece of bread.
Eckart’s pale blue eyes were trembling finely as if greatly shocked.
“If the monastery had accepted me then, even if I couldn’t have become a knight like you, wouldn’t I have been ordained and lived the life of a clergyman?”
It had been the life he most desired. Though it didn’t suit his current appearance at all, he seemed to have once desperately dreamed of it. Days of living for God within God’s embrace.
“But such assumptions are all futile. In the end, it didn’t happen that way, and I wasn’t even given such an opportunity.”
Being driven out that day, surviving for several more days, and thus encountering Lady Cornelia who was in the carriage when its wheels got stuck in front of him—it was surely fate and God’s will.
After opening a path to survival, He had let him choose whether to survive even on such a path or simply meet death on the street. And he had chosen to survive, even as a sinner.
Likewise, for Eckart too, it was surely a harsh but unavoidable fate.
“Do you understand now? It was said that you were treasured. That was because you were actually precious. You stood out from that young age, didn’t you? Even though you starved the same, you alone grew tall, and even though you were nothing but bones, you weren’t weak at all. You were agile like a beast cub, so there was no way to handle you when you charged, and even though no one taught you, that young child used tools well—how could they not recognize that talent? You were already special, so it was a fate you had no choice but to meet.”
Eckart, who had been looking at him with surprised eyes at Ronen’s words, asked in a bewildered voice.
“……How do you know that?”
“Because I saw it.”
Ronen looked at Eckart, who had already grown so much, and tried hard to recall the now-faded image of his childhood. The boy who had saved him when he was being beaten by several children over a piece of hard bread.
“It would be natural for you not to remember me.”
It was when they were too young. While it remained vivid for him since he had received help and Eckart’s appearance itself was quite unique.
Since they were from the same village, they often passed by each other after that. Once he became conscious of him, even from far away, that black hair caught his eye. Without realizing it, his gaze was drawn to him.
That boy suddenly disappeared one day.
“I heard that the monastery had taken you. So I followed too, thinking they might accept me as well. I didn’t know then how very different you and I were.”
Ronen muttered as if talking to himself while resting his chin on his hand.
“The long, long procession heading to the battlefield…… When I spotted you among them, I realized. Ah, that’s why I wasn’t accepted…… The reason you were accepted and I wasn’t was so clear, but I didn’t know it……”
Suddenly Eckart recalled that day when he had been extremely tense and perhaps afraid. It was the path heading to a battlefield where blood and corpses already formed rivers. Though he didn’t know how many times this procession had passed, the spectators poured out endless cheers and encouragement toward those departing for the battlefield. In the midst of all the noise and chaos, his eyes met with a boy who had come to the front row to watch the procession.
The boy reached out his hand toward him. For some reason, Eckart seemed to have been seized by the feeling that he had to grasp that hand. He seemed to have thought he wanted to save that boy with his innocent yet sad face.
So he also reached out his arm, but the hands of the two people, which had seemed close enough to touch, missed each other. Eckart was pushed by the soldier following behind him, while the boy was dragged away by someone else, gradually growing distant. For quite a long time, Eckart looked at the boy disappearing into the crowd until he could no longer see him even when craning his neck back as far as possible.
Now, beyond that hazy memory, only the fact that the boy’s eyes had been such a mysterious and vivid light green color became increasingly clear. Eckart’s eyes gradually widened. As it overlapped with Ronen sitting in front of him, a thrilling sensation pierced through his entire body as if struck by lightning.
A bewildered voice flowed through his trembling lips.
“Could it be, that day I was leaving for the battlefield…… the boy who reached out his hand to me……”
A look of surprise spread across Ronen’s face as well. Seeing his expression that even seemed to contain joy, Eckart realized his thoughts were correct.
“I didn’t expect you to remember me too.”
Even after hearing confirmation from Ronen’s mouth, unable to believe it, Eckart looked down at his own hands with vacant eyes. The memory of looking down at his palms whenever he had a chance while heading to the battlefield also surfaced. Though he didn’t know why he regretted not being able to hold that unknown boy’s hand, why he felt guilty, he kept mulling it over.
Was it because of his earnestness? Wasn’t it because the face of the boy looking at him was too pitiful? He had thought of the boy like that for quite a long time, but after setting foot on the battlefield reeking of death and beginning to be most urgently concerned with surviving above all else, it gradually sank into his deep unconscious.
Eckart lightly curled his fingers and opened his mouth.
“Why did you reach out your hand to me then?”
Why had he reached out to him with such an expression, such eyes—it had remained a question. Eckart, who could finally ask now, looked at Ronen.
Ronen hesitated for a moment with his mouth slightly open, then answered with a faint smile like a sigh.
“……I wanted you to take me with you.”
“To the battlefield, you mean?”
At Eckart’s puzzled question, Ronen nodded.
“Yes. I wanted to escape. Even if that place was a battlefield, I didn’t care.”
As if recalling that time, Ronen’s eyes sank mournfully. Eckart felt his heart sink with a thud. That day too, it seemed to have been this feeling. Without knowing the reason, he had simply wanted to help.
Because he was pitiful and sorrowful…… Because he was so precarious that he kept catching his eye.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
