Chapter 50

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“Of course! What, do you think my memory’s that bad? If it’s Philioche, I can figure out where and how even a single grass grows!”

At Edwin’s question, Herietta snorted and said confidently.

“Come quickly!”

Without waiting for his answer, Herietta jumped up from her seat and ran to the tree. Edwin looked at her with a puzzled face and shook his head lightly. He forgot for a moment how hard it was to discourage her once she decides to do something.

Edwin slowly stood up and followed Herietta. She stood in front of the tree and looked at the trunk. She held a blunt twig in her hand that she picked up somewhere. As she moved passionately, he thought she was already engraving something.

“What are you doing?”

“I was thinking about what to engrave. Once you write it down, you can’t take it back.”

In response to Edwin’s question, Herietta said with a stern look on her face. It was a meaningless, graffiti-like joke, but she seemed to take it quite seriously. The look on her face as she looked at the wooden trunk was like that of a priest who was about to write a Bible to be enshrined in the temple.

“Ah! Something good came to mind!”

Herietta let out an exclamation and moved her hand. Using the tip of the branch she was holding, she began to engrave something on the tree trunk. The blunt tip was so blunt that the words engraved on the pillars were very faint even though they were pressed firmly. She had to overwrite it several times.

Edwin, who was silently standing behind Herietta and watching her movement, read the words she had carved on the tree and smiled.

I’ll be more careful in the future.

Maybe.

— H —

“What is this?”

“What is it? This is my promise to you.”

Herietta said in a tone that sounded as if she was stating the obvious.

“The same thing goes for what happened earlier. You say that I’m so clumsy and careless that your blood seems to be drying up. So, I promise to be more careful in the future.”

“I understand that, but… Why did you write the ‘probably’ here?”

Edwin asked, pointing his chin to the inscription on the wood. Herietta smiled mischievously.

“In case there is an unavoidable circumstance where I cannot be careful…”

“In case you cannot be careful. What the hell kind of case is that?”

“I don’t know yet. So I wrote it down. ‘Probably’.”

Herietta shrugged her shoulders. It was a reckless logic of saying that if you put it on the ear, it would be an earring, if it was hung on the nose, it would be a nose ring.

“I see.”

“Would you like to write too, Edwin? Here.”

When Edwin showed a sign of refusal, Herietta quickly put the branch in his hand. She must have tried to silence him before the annoying words came out.

“It’s just for fun, don’t take it too seriously.”

‘Who was so serious like she was deciding the most important thing in life?’

Edwin looked at Herietta with amused eyes. Then she secretly avoided his gaze to see if there was any place to carve.

I won’t look until you’ve written it all down. She mumbled in an expectant voice.

‘A promise.’

Edwin thought for a moment. He glanced at Herrieta, who was pretending not to look but was inwardly wondering what he was going to engrave.

He turned his gaze forward again and read Herrietta’s engravings on the tree. Then he smiled silently and began to move his hand. Scratch, scratch. In the quiet space, only the sound of scraping could be heard.

“I wrote it.”

“Already? What did you write?”

Herietta was startled by Edwin’s words and turned around. She checked the words he had engraved with eyes full of anticipation.

It was engraved just below the words she had engraved. Unlike her, which had crooked letters and lines, it was written correctly in line with each other.

I will always be by your side.

Maybe.

— E —

Herietta’s face, which was smiling just a while ago, looked disturbed. Her twinkling eyes sank, and her open mouth was also closed. She looked at the words quietly.

It felt like she had swallowed a handful of hard-boiled eggs. Edwin would have engraved it playfully, as she did. It wasn’t even a sad phrase. It was a sweet phrase with a joke. Still, for some reason, as she read the words he engraved on the tree, her heart sank.

“You don’t like it?”

Edwin, who had misunderstood Herietta’s silence to mean something else, asked her quietly. He narrowed his eyebrows a little nervously.

“‘Maybe’ is a joke.”

Worried that it might have offended her, he added a stern explanation.

Herietta’s neck moved. She shook her head from side to side.

“It’s so perfect.”

Herietta whispered as if she were speaking to herself, and turned around to see Edwin standing next to her. And she realized it naturally. Now, she can no longer express her feelings for him with just one word.

“You have to keep your promise, Edwin.”

Herietta smiled like a flower in full bloom.

* * *

Time passed, and the date of Hugo’s enlistment came. The Mackenzies and Hugo, who do not know the details of the story, broke into tears as they parted ways without promise. It was because they weren’t sure if they would be able to live and meet again if they parted like this. However, only Herietta had a calm face.

“Do not worry, Hugo. You will be back soon.”

Herietta told Hugo. There was still no news from the capital, but she firmly believed that it was only a matter of time before the documents bearing the royal coat of arms arrived.

“It won’t take long. So, hold on a little longer.”

Herrietta gave Hugo a light kiss on his round forehead and she said her goodbyes to him.

A few days after Hugo left for Bangola, a messenger came to Mackenzie’s mansion. Herietta was delighted and she welcomed him, but she soon hardened her expression as she read the letter he had given her. Coincidentally, the sender of the letter was not the Brimdel royal family she had been waiting for.

* * *

“Welcome.”

As Herietta entered the room, the man standing by the window greeted her. It was such a friendly greeting that anyone who didn’t know anything would have mistakenly thought that they got on well. Herietta frowned at that. For the rest of her life, she never wanted to see this man again.

‘Nothing’s going to happen with the leech.’

Herietta muttered inside. When she left Lavant, she thought that her bad relationship with Shawn was over. But she could not understand why he was in Philioche of all places.

“You don’t look so happy with me.”

“When did we start welcoming each other?”

Herietta responded coldly to Shawn’s smirk. It wasn’t wrong, so he chuckled.

“Would you like to sit down?”

“I don’t want to have long conversations with Sir Shawn that require me to sit down. You will just be talking about things right?”

“Whether you like it or not, the conversation is going to take a while, that’s why I told you to sit down.”

Shawn pointed to the chair placed in the room with his chin and suggested it again. His eyes were full of certainty. Herietta looked at him distastefully, but she soon accepted his invitation. He came all the way here so she had to at least hear what he was trying to say to her.

As Herietta sat down, Shawn slowly walked over and sat across from her.

“Your town is seriously small. You don’t have anything. Even the inns that exist are so cheap that it’s a waste to give them money.”

“Of course, it’s not a town that people like you often visit.”

Herietta let out a short breath. She wanted to leave this place as soon as possible.

“So what’s the matter, Sir Shawn?”

“Aren’t you in too much of a hurry? I have come a long way to meet you.”

“So, I have answered your call. There’s no way you’d have run that far for nothing.”

Herietta clearly explained what she meant without getting caught up in Shawn’s words.

“Just tell me. Otherwise, I will go back.”

Despite Herietta’s non-threatening threats, Shawn did not lose his composure. What’s so interesting, he had a cynical smile on his lips as he leaned back and sat comfortably. Then, he raised his upper body and leaned forward.

“As I told you, you didn’t tell that bastard Redford about this meeting?”

“… Not yet. I don’t know what will happen later depending on the situation.”

“Well done. It doesn’t matter if that bastard knows, but it’ll be easier for him to just stay unaware of this thing.”

‘Thing?’

Herietta narrowed her eyebrows at the inexplicable words.

“How long ago was your brother conscripted and taken away? And to Bangola, where the skirmish is taking place?”

Herietta didn’t feel well at Shawn’s tone, as if he was thinking about something. No. Most of all, she hated the fact that he knew about her brother, whom he had never met before.

“How does Sir Shawn know that?”

“Have you not heard of the saying that birds hear the words of the day and mice hear the words of the night? Fortunately, I have a lot of birds and mice.”

“You care so much about the Mackenzie household that I don’t know where to put myself.”

Herietta blatantly ridiculed Shawn. There’s no way he wasn’t aware of that, but Shawn didn’t seem offended in the slightest and laughed out loud.

“There are a lot of guys in the Bangola area who are my ears. Information is power.”

“…”

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