Chapter 5

“A few simple documents will be submitted during the morning. You only need to process those today. Since they only require approval, you just need to sign at the bottom.”

Kalif looked at the new knight commander who seemed lost in thought.

“If you have any questions or other tasks you’d like done, please let me know anytime.”

“Are there no female knights here?”

“Pardon? …Female, you say?”

Faced with this completely unexpected question, Kalif’s face involuntarily stiffened. A particular person instantly came to mind.

“There are no female knights…, but there is a spy affiliated with this place.”

Kalif quickly composed his stiffened expression and answered respectfully. However, as if dissatisfied with his answer, the commander maintained a silence so heavy it felt oppressive.

This made Kalif feel like his throat was burning up. Though the commander’s face was expressionless, making it difficult to read his thoughts, Kalif could clearly sense that he was displeased.

It felt like two minutes had passed. The commander’s firmly closed lips finally opened.

“She had a small build, with short black hair. Does this match the description of who I’m talking about?”

“…Being a spy, she rarely shows her face. I don’t know her face well either, so I’m not sure if she’s the woman you’re looking for.”

Though he answered professionally, he nearly choked on his words. The commander was asking precisely about the person Kalif had in mind.

“May I ask why you’re looking for this woman?”

No answer came. His face, so cold it seemed like frost might form, appeared to have been lost in thought for a long time. Kalif quietly bowed and left the commander’s office. As soon as he reached the corridor, he began running toward somewhere.

About five minutes later, at the knight order’s training ground.

“Sir Anasha!”

This was what Kalif, who had turned pale with worry, shouted as he burst into the training ground. The knights who were training all lowered their swords and looked at him. It was behavior unlike him, who valued dignity and appearance above all else.

“Anasha…, where is Sir Anasha right now.”

“Asha? Well, she’s probably sleeping in her room at this hour.”

Mavrik answered while wiping sweat from his forehead. Upon hearing this, Kalif immediately turned and left the training ground. There was some talk about whether they should stop him since he looked so agitated, but it didn’t last long. They concluded that Anasha, the fastest person in the knight order, would be able to escape well enough on her own.

Meanwhile, Kalif arrived at the dormitory and went up to the second floor. Then he opened the door located at the very end of the corridor.

Anasha opened her eyes in surprise at the sound of the door bursting open. Someone was striding into the room. As she rubbed her eyes and raised her upper body, she saw a very familiar face.

‘Why is the vice-commander in my room?’

Wondering if this might be a dream, she was staring at him with narrowed eyes when Kalif approached and grabbed both her shoulders.

“What have you done this time!!”

“Wh-what trouble are you saying I caused! I’ve been behaving myself today!”

Anasha immediately shouted in indignation. After all, the only thing she had done today was just wake up.

“Then how does the new commander know you, and why is he asking about you!”

“He asked about me?”

For a moment, Anasha thought she had misheard. But judging by his serious face, it seemed she had heard correctly.

“How does he know me? No, why, I mean……”

Anasha was just as perplexed. She demanded an explanation, but he only stared at her with suspicious eyes.

“I didn’t do anything! I didn’t even go to the inauguration ceremony.”

“Then how does he recite your exact physical description!”

“How would I know that!”

Anasha’s face showed that she was truly at a loss.

But Kalif didn’t believe her protests. She had been constantly voicing her opposition to the new commander’s appointment. It was natural to suspect that she had sought out the new commander before the inauguration ceremony and caused some trouble.

“Anyway…, what’s important is that the new commander is looking for you. And after talking about you, he seemed very displeased. So I pretended not to know about you. Sir Anasha, this is a very serious matter……”

Anasha felt like covering her ears as his nagging continued. But she knew from past experience that doing so would only double the amount of nagging.

“You still don’t seem to understand the seriousness of the situation, but our new commander is a very famous person. Famous for being mercilessly cruel among his enemies.”

“Cruel……”

“Yes. It’s said that professional torture technicians have learned with admiration the torture methods that have been passed down through his family for generations.”

Anasha dropped the fingernail she had been biting with a clicking sound.

“…Does he pull out fingernails?”

“Would he stop at just fingernails? He would cut off fingers.”

A chilling sensation ran down her spine. Anasha immediately got under the blanket to calm herself. But even in the warm blanket, her back continued to feel cold.

Kalif sighed as he looked down at Anasha, who was sitting curled up in her blanket. His eyes showed disbelief.

“You kill people silently but are afraid of losing your fingers? You’re truly incomprehensible.”

“Of course it’s scary when I think about my own fingers!”

“I don’t know what wrong you’ve committed, but what’s done is done. …For now, I’ll stay by the new commander’s side and try to find out what he intends to do with you. Until then, make absolutely sure you don’t catch the new commander’s eye. Until I give permission, absolutely. Ab-so-lutely.”

“I was planning to avoid him anyway.”

Anasha meekly retorted to him as he emphasized “absolutely” twice.

After he left, Anasha got back under the blanket and racked her brain. No matter how much she thought about it, she couldn’t remember doing anything in the past few days that would have offended the new commander. In fact, she wondered if she had even met him at all.

‘…How does he really know about me?’

She had heard until her ears were worn out that the new commander was a high-ranking noble. What were the chances that someone like her would even accidentally encounter such a person on the street?

After all, she never went to balls or banquets where nobles gathered. At most, she would visit the markets on the outskirts of the capital, so where would she have met such a high noble……

‘Wait.’

Anasha narrowed her eyes. Although she hadn’t seen him at a ball, she had met a beautiful man who looked like a noble. Moreover, he had excellent swordsmanship.

She felt goosebumps on her forearm as everything seemed to fit together. The way he beheaded people in one stroke was honestly a bit cruel. Usually, people didn’t kill so readily.

When she also recalled the man’s words that they would meet again, Anasha had no choice but to jump up.

Anasha hurriedly got out of bed and changed her clothes. Then she escaped through the window and climbed up the wall to the roof.

After running and moving from place to place, she finally reached the roof of the main building. Anasha carefully climbed down the wall. Then she hung from above the commander’s office window and secretly peeked inside.

In the inverted landscape, a man with platinum blonde hair was sitting. Dressed in a splendid uniform embroidered with gold, sitting at the commander’s desk reviewing documents, he was indeed the man she had seen that day.

‘This can’t be.’

Anasha hid her body above the window again. She could feel her startled heart pounding. She tried to recall as calmly as possible whether she had done anything that might have seemed disrespectful that day.

Fortunately, it didn’t seem like she had. Perhaps calling the high noble “you” at most? And saying “are you insane” when he dropped his sword?

‘But I didn’t know!’

Anasha clutched her head and groaned. She had dared to call a high noble “you” and even got angry saying “are you insane.” She might lose a pinky fingernail, if not an entire finger.

After crouching on the roof and trembling for a while, she quickly got up and left the place. She vowed to stay hidden until she found out why he was looking for her and what he intended to do.

⁕⁕⁕

It was the tenth day since his appointment to the knight order.

During that time, Rihirt had to deal with work without a break. As important materials to be handed over and backlogged documents were mixed in, work processing naturally slowed down. On top of that, he had been working overnight for several days dealing with tasks coming up from his duchy.

Fortunately, today it seemed he could escape from work on time. Rihirt briefly set aside what he was doing and went outside.

For someone more accustomed to using his body than his mind, such long hours of desk work didn’t suit him well. Although he wanted to loosen up his body with sword training, he was unfortunately in his formal uniform suitable for administrative duties. So he decided to go out for a short walk.

There was no one in the wide corridor except him. The scenery of the corridor, where sunset light was beginning to settle, was serene. Though it was a rare moment of leisure, it gave him no emotional response whatsoever.

He had no interest in anything other than official matters. From a young age, he had been thoroughly educated as a family head and had grown up that way. Not only did he have no leisure to expend mental energy on trivial things, but this had become so natural to him that he couldn’t feel deep interest in anything.

It would be correct to say he was indifferent to everything. While he might be a perfect figure as a family head or commander, this was his greatest flaw.

Recently, however, one thing had caught his interest. It was how he could meet the woman who had helped him that day.