Chapter 22

The reason Daphne started making her way to the other side of the lake, making clumsy excuses, was to find a fast and safe path leading to the mountain range.

She couldn’t roam the forest freely on her own, but it was a different story with Johannes. Johannes wanted to hide himself from the Allied Forces, so Daphne decided to use this to her advantage.

It must have looked highly suspicious for her to claim she was looking for a dagger, yet Johannes silently followed her ten paces behind, no matter where her steps led. There were very rare moments when he would intervene.

“There’s a cliff ahead.”

Gasp. Daphne, whose attention was more on Johannes behind her than what was in front, was startled and scrambled backward.

Right after that, the distance between him and her shrank from ten paces to five. It became a little harder for Daphne to concentrate.

The thought of him being behind her brought a feeling that was similar to walking through the forest alone, yet completely different. It was like fear in that it swelled uncontrollably. It was probably similar to sadness, too, in that it would surge up without warning.

But while fear and sadness were murky like a swamp, pulling her down, this feeling floated up, up like a fluffy cloud and shone white.

Just the fact that he was behind her made the night forest feel completely different. As if buoyed by some vertically ascending emotion, her tongue slipped out of her control.

“I think we’re the same age, or you might be a year or two older than me.”

“How tall are you? Have you been this tall since you were little?”

“Do you take after your mother or your father? You didn’t look much like Leopold.”

To her indiscriminate chatter, he answered half the time and didn’t answer the other half. His answers were always one-word or a single sentence at most, never extending to two sentences or more.

Daphne would laugh at every one of his small reactions until her cheeks tingled and her forehead grew hot. As if she were a simple infant, just like that. So, she had no time to worry about whether she was talking too much or laughing too freely.

The exploration to find the dagger- though it was an excuse, of course- continued.

He, who had been five paces behind, was at some point three paces behind.

When she came to her senses, he was suddenly walking right beside her.

The time they came out to the forest got earlier, and the time they stayed grew just as long. Daphne felt as though she had become a little more on his side.

Walking side-by-side had clear disadvantages and advantages. The disadvantage was that it was hard to concentrate on her surroundings, but the advantage was that it became easier to steal glances at Johannes.

Daphne would sometimes forget to look ahead and would stare intently at his black, curly hair and the pale face beneath it. His face, bathed in moonlight instead of red torchlight, was one that, no matter how much she looked, suited the description of “fine” and “pretty.”

Of course, with his features as sharply defined as if carved by a very keen knife, and his well-defined eyebrows and jaw, one couldn’t say he was soft like a woman. The strange thing was that despite this, he didn’t give off a sharp impression.

The way his throat moved when he yawned. His hair, blacker than the star-glittering night. His hands, where tendons rippled. There was no escaping these things that captured her gaze. In the forest full of all sorts of scents, only the smell of the ointment he used was distinct.

『…….』

Daphne forced her gaze away from him, recalling how cold his eyes were and how he had pushed her away that day she had brought her hand to his eyes as if bewitched. She endured the strange heat that occasionally enveloped her by simply holding it in. As if in tune with her, she felt the nights grow progressively hotter.

💎

Strolling through the forest, climbing a steep hill. Sometimes, it was Johannes who would speak first.

When they had to climb over large rocks as if they were stairs, he taught her how to step on the ones that wouldn’t collapse, or how to tie a rope with vines. Sometimes, he taught her how to follow a fragrant scent to find fruit to fill their bellies, and if they found a spring hidden among the bushes, how to distinguish the drinkable water.

Daphne was happy, but she gradually became puzzled. It was because she felt as if he were helping her escape.

“I am not on your side, either.”

…He, who did not wish for the Allied Forces’ victory, had no reason to help me run away, so that couldn’t be it.

Just as Daphne was trying to think that, Johannes approached a small spring and suddenly bent his knees, saying.

“If you see that fish, this water is safe to drink. Remember it, as its distinguishing feature is its belly that shines silver even in the dark.”

Then he placed one hand on the ground and leaned his body forward. The muscles of his forearm supporting his upper body bulged and then disappeared. With his head bowed, he reached out his other hand and drank from the spring.

Johannes, do you perhaps know that I’m trying to run away? Daphne, who was watching him out of habit, suddenly saw the droplets of water flowing down his arm, and a drop that slid from his chin tracing the curve of his chest. And then she forgot her question.

For a while, Daphne couldn’t take her eyes off that flow. Her gaze, which had been slowly moving down along the water droplet, came to a sudden halt. She lifted her gaze.

『…….』

Johannes’s blue eyes were looking into hers. His shadowed eyes looked a deep navy blue. It wasn’t the first time she’d been caught staring at him, but Daphne was greatly flustered. He usually turned his gaze away indifferently as soon as their eyes met, but for some reason, this time he did not avert his steady gaze.

At the unidentifiable intensity, Daphne’s mouth went dry for a moment. When she swallowed unconsciously, the sound was embarrassingly loud.

He blinked, as if gauging the source of the sound. She felt her face turn beet red and, unable to overcome her embarrassment, she faintly furrowed her brow. It was as if she had revealed the source herself.

Johannes showed a rare sign of hesitation. And then, surprisingly, he let out a short laugh.

At the sight of his smile, which she had never seen before, Daphne’s mouth fell open like a fool.

Johannes Tennan smiled in a way that made it unbelievable that he was a man who had been drenched in blood thousands, tens of thousands of times. His expressionless face, which felt as distant as the moon, and his warm, playful smile were polar opposites. His soft, fluttering black, curly hair and his cheeks, flushed pink in the pale surroundings, were particularly striking.

He was a man who fundamentally pretended to be blunt, and the fact that this clear, pure smile he showed was a great rarity was something one could know without him having to say it. Daphne’s whole body turned red. She felt grateful for the darkness of the night, for the pale moonlight that stripped away color.

Johannes, who was slowly rubbing the corner of his mouth where the trace of his smile lingered, looked away at a distant point and said.

“Let’s go back now.”

For a moment, Daphne couldn’t answer and could only manage to nod.

The smell of pomegranate from her own body, the herb-like scent from his. The fragrance of flowers that clung to their footsteps as they walked through the lavender, and the smell of clean sweat shed on a hot night.

Her head and heart reeled with them. She had never drunk alcohol and thus had never been drunk, but she wondered if this was what being drunk felt like.

By then, Daphne knew the forest like the back of her hand. But there was also no reason to stop going out into the forest. The reason she had to go was clear.

She couldn’t stop looking at him.

💎

There were also very rare days when Daphne taught Johannes.

The two, who had climbed up a rocky crevice with wide strides, looked for a place to catch their breath. They happened to see a tree just right for leaning against. There, with a slight view of the lake below, they sat side by side, about five handspans apart.

Daphne quietly gazed for a moment at the mountain range she would soon have to cross with Thisbene. She was now confident she could cross the forest with her eyes closed, but the mountain range still frightened her.

She had tried to make a map of her own, but compared to the forest part, which was filled with dense drawings, the more important part- the mountain range and what lay beyond- was still completely white. From the books she could access, all she could find out was that the mountain range stretched long to the northwest, that a huge river called the Utulis flowed beyond it, and that if one crossed the Utulis to the western end of the continent, a completely different world existed.

Is it really impossible for just Thisbene and me to escape?

She felt a sense of hopelessness. Just as a faint shadow of worry settled on Daphne’s face.