Chapter 34
Normally, when one says ‘the sun is setting,’ they imagine a scene where the world dons a cloak of darkness and paints a portrait of silence.
But that day was different.
“Young Lady!”
“Young Master!”
The servants of both households had turned the entire neighborhood upside down, searching for Elric and Tiria, who had not returned home.
For Tiria, it was a heart-pounding, nerve-wracking situation, but Elric, perhaps used to such things, led her along with a bright smile.
“Come on! I’ll show you my secret base!”
Led by him, they arrived at a spot beneath a stone bridge at the edge of the village.
A tent was pitched there quite cozily, and despite being in the shade, it didn’t feel particularly damp.
Inside the tent, completely cut off from the outside world, Elric lit an oil lamp.
His mischievous face, revealed beneath the flickering light, bore no trace of anxiety.
Tiria found it so strange that she asked,
“Aren’t you scared?”
“Of what?”
“If… if we get caught, we’ll be in trouble….”
It wouldn’t just be ‘getting in trouble.’
A punishment incomparable to anything she had experienced would surely be waiting, and perhaps she would have to live under strict surveillance so that she could never step outside again.
She asked if he wasn’t afraid of such things, and the answer that came back was the same as before.
“It’s fine! Dad doesn’t care about me!”
He spoke triumphantly, but she could immediately sense a shadow lurking somewhere within those words.
The crestfallen expression of the boy she thought was only ever spirited was a completely new sight for Tiria.
Perhaps that was why her curiosity about Elric deepened.
Feelings like a sense of kinship and compassion were layered over the gaze she directed toward him.
She wanted to ask.
What his family was like, why he didn’t get along with them, and how he endured it when his family made things difficult.
However, before the questions could be asked, Elric spoke first.
“They say I’m the child who ate my mother and was born.”
Tiria’s fingertips flinched and trembled.
Elric continued to speak as he stared blankly at the oil lamp.
“I was so big that Mom had a hard time giving birth to me. They even brought in a doctor from the capital, but in the end, they said Mom couldn’t hold on.”
“…….”
“They said Dad cried his eyes out that day. I can’t really imagine it. My dad is always expressionless.”
Crackle, crackle.
The flame of the lamp swayed back and forth.
That light wavered across Elric’s face in the same manner.
Was it the words he spoke, or was it the atmosphere?
It felt as if the flickering light was painting sorrow onto Elric’s face.
“I haven’t talked to Dad much. He doesn’t really speak to me.”
Elric was holding a twig.
While waving it through the air and staring at its tip, Elric eventually let out these words.
He had a wide grin on his face.
“That’s why I’m going to become a knight.”
“……Suddenly?”
“What do you mean suddenly! You don’t understand this?!”
“……?”
Tiria couldn’t understand.
Tiria’s common sense was too rigid to grasp the correlation between not getting along with one’s father and becoming a knight.
Elric let out a sigh as he spoke.
Then, after shaking his head vigorously, he added an explanation.
“If I become a knight, I’ll be someone higher than Dad. Plus, it’s cool. He won’t be able to ignore me anymore, right?”
Elric looked very arrogant with his arms crossed.
Tiria blinked several times before finally nodding her head.
“……Yeah.”
It was an answer given haphazardly because she had no particular rebuttal, to which Elric vented his frustration, saying, ‘This is why I can’t talk to girls!’
Tiria apologized habitually.
“I’m sorry.”
“Huh? Why are you sorry?”
“Just because…….”
“Don’t apologize if there’s no reason. You big dummy. If you apologize first, people look down on you.”
It was still an incomprehensible logic.
However, unlike his dream of becoming a knight, these words definitely dug deep into her heart.
To the Tiria of that time, being told she didn’t have to apologize was something far too unfamiliar.
Feeling a tickle in her chest for no reason, Tiria lowered her head deeply.
Then, feeling her face grow hot, she replied in a trembling voice.
“……Okay, then I won’t be sorry.”
“Right, right. If someone asks what you did wrong, just throw a rock at their face! Then they’ll never say that again!”
“Pffft…….”
Laughter escaped her.
Tiria laughed so loudly that she wondered if she had ever laughed like this before.
Now, Tiria knew the joy of laughing out loud.
She came to like the boy who taught her that a little more.
Of course, if one were to ask if it was romantic love, the answer was no.
Until then, in Tiria’s mind, Elric was an unfamiliar and fascinating peer, a child who was fun to be with.
Their relationship could be explained to that extent.
The night that perception changed was, amusingly enough, that very night.
It was a time when drowsiness was creeping in, and Elric was already nodding off, his head swaying.
Because winter was just around the corner, the night air was very cold.
Finally unable to overcome his sleepiness, Elric pulled out a blanket and said,
“Come here, let’s sleep now.”
Even though there was only one blanket, it was large enough for two young children to cover themselves.
Elric took Tiria into his arms and lay down, wrapping the blanket around them.
Tiria froze stiff.
Then, Elric patted Tiria’s back.
“If you do this, you’ll fall asleep easily. I know because my nanny does it for me sometimes.”
It was something Tiria didn’t know.
But certainly, as Elric patted her back, she felt her body become comfortable.
As her body, which had been tense all along, relaxed, her heart also crumbled.
Only then did Tiria reflect on the events of the previous day.
And then, she suddenly felt like crying.
“Uuuhhh…….”
It was probably because of the extreme difference in temperature.
There was a gap that large between the hand of her father, which had reached out while letting out a hideous shout, and the hand of Elric, who was patting her back with a gentle voice.
“Huuuuhhh…….”
Tiria hadn’t known that a person’s body heat could be this warm.
It was because her parents had never held her.
Every night, Tiria worried about tomorrow.
She fell asleep worrying about whether she would be able to listen to tomorrow’s lessons well, and whether she might not be hit tomorrow.
That was why it was the first time.
Today was the first time Tiria was not afraid of tomorrow.
“Khhuuu…….”
“What’s wrong?”
“Huuu…….”
“She’s crying again. You’re really going to become the Chief of Butt-Hairs.”
Tears flowed endlessly and simply wouldn’t stop.
Despite his complaints, Elric did not stop patting her back.
Tiria was so grateful for that.
As she buried her face in his arms, the warmth intensified.
To the point where this place felt warmer than a room in a cozy mansion, the body heat of the boy inside the tent under the bridge was warm enough to heat her very soul.
That must have been why.
Tiria fell asleep that day without having a nightmare.
Instead of a nightmare, she dreamed of basking in the sunlight on a comfortable hill.
She realized the reason why she felt such a warm energy even though it was a dream the next morning.
She had received his warmth throughout the night, not letting go of the Elric she had embraced until the moment she woke up.
And so, the moment she finally opened her eyes as morning broke, Tiria looked at Elric, who was still there, and realized.
‘I’m not scared.’
That as long as Elric was there, she wasn’t afraid of falling asleep or waking up in the morning.
That this boy made it so.
That this boy was someone who could become a great fence so that she wouldn’t have to fear anything in the world.
It was a very young heart, but it was a precious one nonetheless.
It was a heart that made her own go pit-a-pat.
Not wanting to be apart, or wanting to stay together forever.
The childish notion of taking ‘forever’ for granted was certainly the domain of a young child, and thus, it touched the essence of a first love.
Even though she had lived a life without Elric until then, she fell into the thought that she wouldn’t be able to live without him, and Tiria smiled softly while wiggling her hands.
Then, Elric woke up from his sleep.
“Uuuugh…… it’s stuffy.”
Elric, with his eyes half-open, spoke with a frown.
Because they had slept tightly together wrapped in the blanket, their faces were close enough for the tips of their noses to touch.
Thump-thump. Tiria’s heart raced.
Elric’s eyes, even when just waking up, were so clear that he looked like a prince from a fairy tale.
“Ugh, you’re ugly.”
……If only he hadn’t opened his mouth.
“Move your face, it’s scary.”
“I don’t want to.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to. And I’m not sorry.”
Tiria finally gained a dream that day.
It wasn’t a dream one has while sleeping, but an ideal she wanted to achieve in reality.
She wanted to fall asleep and wake up with Elric every day.
And Tiria knew the way to make that dream come true.
“I want to marry you.”
If she were to enter into the marriage that her father and teachers always spoke of, they would spend every day together.
A girl in love is proactive. Having lived according to the desires of others, the girl who had awakened her own desires for the first time spoke shamelessly and directly.
However, there was something the Tiria of that time didn’t know.
“I don’t want to? You’re ugly.”
Marriage was originally something conducted under mutual agreement.
And,
“I’m going to marry a peerless beauty. Aldio said knights live with beauties.”
The Elric of that day was a six-year-old brat who was far too immature.
The Wife Waited in the Wheat Field (Serialization)
