Chapter 38 - Name

The following day, in Renée’s quarters.

Terisa blinked as she looked at Renée’s haggard face.

“You look rather tired.”

“Oh, I didn’t sleep very well...”

She looked a wreck. Dark circles stretched beneath her eyes, and sighs kept escaping her lips, as though something was weighing heavily on her mind.

Yet her beauty remained undiminished, lending even that disheveled appearance a decadent allure. Finding that rather amusing, Terisa chuckled before asking,

“So, have you found the answer to my riddle?”

Renée flinched. Pink energy began bubbling up around her once more. Only after it had risen to envelop her entire body did she nod.

“Yes...”

Her voice trembled faintly, tinged with shyness. She worked her lips as she searched for what to say next, then heaved a sigh and complained,

“I did come up with an answer, but...”

“What is troubling you?”

“... I don’t understand it.”

“Hmm?”

Terisa watched Renée begin to fret. After a long stretch of troubled noises and putting off her answer, Renée squeezed her eyes shut and let the words pour out.

“Well... I don’t know why I feel this way. Nothing really happened to make me feel like this, and there wasn’t any other trigger, either. It just happened all of a sudden...”

Her words rambled, laden with confusion. Watching Renée spill them out, not knowing what to do with herself, Terisa found herself thinking, ‘How can she be so adorable?’

A girl bewildered by the discovery of her first love—that clear, pure color was one Terisa loved dearly.

“There need not always be a reason.”

Her reply carried a hint of laughter. When Renée raised her head, Terisa continued with a broad smile.

“Wasn’t the answer in the riddle? An emotion that arrives without a reason, only for us to heap reasons onto it afterward. That is love.”

“Ah...!”

Renée’s face flushed scarlet. The word “love” alone had brought on that involuntary response. Hearing someone say outright the word she had been too embarrassed even to utter made her feel as though her insides were being squeezed tight.

“B-but still...!”

“I can promise you this much, Saintess. Whatever reason you attach to that feeling, it will not define your love. Love does not wish for a reason. It wishes only to be called love.”

Terisa continued. This was an understanding she had reached over a lifetime spent bearing the title of apostle of love.

“Love is love. It is a feeling that looks toward someone other than yourself. A feeling that finds yourself within them. That aching excitement is love, and so is a parent’s feeling as they look upon their child.”

Renée shifted again at those words.

“Love wears many garments. It is a terribly fickle child, sometimes arriving clothed in curiosity, sometimes in admiration, sometimes in hatred. And because its true form is so difficult to see, it is easily mistaken for something else.”

Each word pricked at Renée as she struggled to deny her own feelings.

“Yet even then, it is love in the end. Whatever covers it is no more than an outer shell. Love is an emotion that can be defined by no word other than love.”

Those words laid bare what she had been turning away from in embarrassment.

“Do not try to attach a reason to it. You need only accept the feeling inscribed upon your heart for what it is, Saintess.”

Renée considered the garments worn by the emotion she now called love.

Curiosity about why he treated her with such care.

Admiration for how much more mature he was, despite being only a few years older.

Resentment of the unconscious gestures that tormented her so.

Looking back, it had worn so many garments, and yet...

‘Th-that’s...’

All of it was love in the end.

Heat rushed through Renée’s entire body. It was so intense that she wondered whether she might simply cook through and die like this.

She needed to calm herself somehow, but why was her wretched heart so industrious only at times like these? It beat more vigorously than ever, carrying heat throughout her body.

Renée was now so red that an apple might have hailed her as its sibling. Terisa chuckled at the sight and concluded,

“It is perfectly natural. You are human, are you not, Saintess? There is no need to be so embarrassed.”

“W-well, w...”

Renée’s mouth, which had been malfunctioning so often lately, was once again spewing unfinished words. Her head bobbed stiffly up and down.

It was a truly ridiculous sight.

And to Terisa, it was more beautiful than anything else.

* * *

“Well done today.”

It was Bera’s voice. Its low, firm resonance made Renée’s heart pound fiercely.

“Yes...!”

“How was your lesson today?”

What had she done? What had Lady Terisa taught her?

She was too flushed to string her thoughts together. However hard she tried to remember, nothing came to mind.

In truth, she could not recall anything because they had not actually done anything. But Renée, whose head was filled with the need to answer Bera’s question, failed to realize that.

And so, yet another silly answer came out.

“I learned something good!”

No sooner had she answered than she squeezed her eyes shut and asked herself,

‘What good thing...!’

What sort of nonsense answer was that? What if Bera started thinking she was strange?

While Renée needlessly cursed her own mouth, Bera looked at her, nodded, and replied in his usual tone.

“Excellent.”

In fact, his response would have been the same no matter what she said. To Bera, Renée was faith itself, and truth. There was no reason for him to find even an answer like that strange.

After replying, Bera looked at Renée’s flushed complexion and thought,

‘Is her schedule too demanding?’

What came to him was concern. Unable to imagine even a fraction of what was going on inside her, Bera worried over her odd behavior.

Seen from a distance, it would have been a truly comical scene.

Once again today, the two walked on with entirely different thoughts in mind.

* * *

Three days were enough for Renée to accept her feelings.

Walking beside the flower beds with her hand in Bera’s, she kept her head bowed and continued to ponder.

What did Bera think of her?

That was what occupied her mind. Not the thoughts he displayed outwardly, but the feelings buried deeper within him. What lay in the heart he did not reveal?

She did not wonder whether Bera loved her too.

Renée knew. What Bera felt for her was certainly not love. He showed it so plainly, almost blatantly, that she could hardly fail to notice.

His feelings were too unimpassioned to be called love, and somehow fell short even of affection. If she had to describe them, they were stiff, closer to reverence.

His devoted manner, his unfailingly calm voice, and the way he quietly remained by her side even now all told her as much.

Renée felt her insides tighten. Her own heart was fluttering so much, yet he seemed to feel nothing of the sort. She could not help it.

Her first love was a needlessly steadfast man who showed not the slightest hint of personal desire.

‘I wouldn’t mind...’

He could have a little personal interest in her.

A moment too late, Renée realized what she had just thought and drew in a sharp breath.

“Saintess?”

“I-it’s nothing.”

Her shoulders jerked, and heat flared up once more.

As her lips fidgeted, the question “What do you think of me?” remained poised behind them all the while. She could not bring herself to ask, afraid that the answer might hurt.

She knew what his answer would be, but she did not want to hear it from Bera’s own lips.

Renée did not want the warmth of his hand in hers to slip away.

Even if it was only her own delusion, that was fine. Surely she was allowed to imagine a “what if”—to imagine that Bera might harbor the same feelings she did.

The click of her cane was followed by the tap of a footstep. With an ache reverberating inside her, Renée walked on to the accompaniment of that steady rhythm.

Another thought followed.

... No, this time it was a fantasy.

What would it have been like if she could see?

Renée recalled the face she had once traced with her hands, the face she had drawn in her mind, and pictured herself beside it.

She pictured the two of them smiling at one another. She knew it could never happen, but she pictured it anyway.

In that scene, she was not the Saintess, and Bera was not a holy knight. They smiled, and Bera took both her hands and said,

“Renée.”

Renée gave a sudden jolt. The thought that she had imagined something far too intimate had startled her.

Then her body tensed of its own accord, and her hand began squeezing Bera’s tightly.

Bera tilted his head as he watched Renée abruptly tighten her grip on his hand. She sometimes reacted this way during their walks, and by now he had grown quite used to it.

Whenever he called to her, wondering whether something was wrong, she always told him it was nothing. So he no longer asked. He merely checked her complexion in silence.

That was a great mercy for Renée. Had she realized she had reacted strangely yet again, she would surely have squirmed in shame.

Unaware of what she was doing, she struggled to brush away her wandering thoughts, only for another idea to occur to her.

She could not see Bera, but...

‘H-hearing him say my name...’

Surely that much was possible?

It was a rather enticing prospect. She was not asking him to do anything terribly difficult. It was only her name. Surely Bera would say it for her.

Hadn’t he called her “Lady Renée” back in the village?

He only had to go a little further—just a tiny bit further—and drop the “Lady.”

Renée worked her lips and deliberated for a moment, then squeezed her eyes shut and blurted out,

“Sir Knight!”

“Yes?”

“Well...”

She stopped short. She had meant to ask on impulse, but only now did she wonder how she was supposed to phrase the request.

Renée deliberated, breaking out in a cold sweat. Bera patiently waited for her to continue.

She finally spoke again after they had walked another half circuit of the flower beds in silence.

“... Well! I was thinking, aren’t we being too formal with each other? We’re going to keep seeing each other, so couldn’t we be a little friendlier? That’s what I was thinking!”

The words came out with the inflection of a snake-oil salesman. Thinking, ‘Something sounds wrong here,’ Renée hurried to add,

“I-isn’t that right? We’re going to k-k-keep being together! So wouldn’t it be good to feel a little closer? I mean, for example, we could call each other by our names!”

She had charged straight ahead. She had tried to make a logical case, but unable to come up with any excuse at all, she had simply fired the words out.

Her heart began thumping wildly, awash in nervousness and excitement. Listening intently, Renée tilted her head slightly toward Bera and waited for his answer.

Bera’s answer came after they had taken five more steps.

“... Please withdraw that request. It is far too great an honor for me.”

And so, his reply took the form of a refusal.