I Tried To Escape Through Death

“…I did.” 

I had missed all the important stuff.

I furrowed my brow and suddenly remembered the last time I had heard this voice.

This voice belonged to a knight named Ishar. He was a man of high standing within the Order of Hertrio and was one whom Calix trusted greatly. 

‘What was going on that needed Ishar to report?’

Then, a clear voice rang through the closed door. 

“I didn’t find Troxia’s ring there either.”

‘What…?’

I was shocked by what I had overheard. 

‘The ring of Troxia?’

Why was my house’s ring mentioned here? 

Regardless of my confusion, the conversations continued on the other side of the door.

“Then the ring…”

Ishar proceeded to move closer to Calix again, and so, I was unfortunately unable to continue to hear the rest of their conversation. I waited a bit longer by the door in case I was able to hear anything else, but before I could hear anything, I heard Ishar open the door and walk out. 

As soon as I heard the thud of the door closing, I hurried back to my bed and lay down, pretending not to have left. My motivation to apologize to Calix was fading, and I planned to instead pretend to be asleep in case Calix walked in. 

But by the end of the night, Calix had not once knocked on my door. 

***

I spent the whole night in confusion, trying to figure out what Calix’s intentions were. 

‘Did Calix order him to look for a ring with the seal of Troxia on it without telling me about it?’

I stayed up all night. In the early hours of the morning, before Calix came to my room, I tossed and turned sleeplessly into my pillow. 

The Ring of Troxia. 

There was only one ring of Troxia that he could be talking about. It was a signet ring, engraved with the family crest. I, who was the successor of Troxia, had only been able to have seen it once. 

What was he planning on using it for? 

If he needed something, he could have just asked me. 

But I didn’t even have the ring with me. If Calix tried to find the ring through a different method…

For a moment, the thought that he had secretly been preparing this, finding my family’s seal, as a surprise for me flashed through my mind, but it was quickly dismissed. There was no way Calix, who was so terrified of losing me to the Emperor, would put something so conspicuous on my finger. 

‘Well, then the guess that he’s secretly up to something is the most reasonable one.’ 

The problem was that I had no clue what he was up to. 

I sighed deeply and saw the morning sun rising through the window. 

At the same time, I heard footsteps from the room next door. It meant that Calix had woken up and was coming to see me. 

Soon my door, which was connected to Calix’s room, opened slightly. I quickly closed my eyes and pretended to sleep with my face on the pillow. 

I could hear Calix walking across the room toward me. I kept my eyes closed tightly, desperately trying to keep a straight face. 

Normally, Calix would stand by the side of the bed and simply look down at me, but something was different today. I felt the spot next to me on the bed sink down, his presence closer than usual. 

He had climbed onto the bed with his hand on mine. He leaned his head down and I was able to feel his breath on my skin. I felt his hand caress my cheek. 

“…Rena.” 

After calling my name, Calix said nothing for a while. I continued to pretend to be asleep, trying to breathe evenly. 

I desperately clutched the pillowcase in my hands, trying to steady myself. If I didn’t, I felt like my heart would race and that I would grab hold of him at any moment. 

“Rena, I.”

He had a low voice, perhaps it was because it had not been long since he had woken up. I waited for his next words, but he kept his mouth shut and left the bed. 

I sat up as soon as he closed the door and left my room.

“What…?”

I murmured out loud, but of course, there was no answer. 

“What…”

‘Why?’

I felt uneasy for no particular reason and rubbed the cheek where Calix’s hand had touched me. I tried to ease the lingering ghost of his touch, but the more I tried to do so, the more I was reminded of his eyes that were looking down at me. 

“Calix.”

How he looked down at me. 

I thought of him over and over again, inside the room where he was gone. 

***

In the first place, my daily routine at the mansion did not have much overlap with Calix’s. If I didn’t want to meet him, I was able to go my entire day without seeing him, and it wasn’t very likely that the Duke of Hertrio would go find me first. 

There were often days when we would never cross paths until it was dinner. There didn’t need to be anything special happening for me to not see him. Until the day we met again, weren’t we living without each other anyways? 

But it bothered me so much that I never encountered him even just once while I was walking around the mansion today. 

‘Are you avoiding me?’ 

The reason why I was thinking such things, even though I knew it wasn’t true, was due to my being anxious. 

This was probably due to the fact that everything is unclear, alongside not knowing what Calix was thinking. 

Later this evening, when I meet Calix, I wanted to speak to him again. I wanted to tell him that I’d like to visit the old Troxia estate, and on the way there, I’d like to stop by the village where I used to live. 

If Calix said no…

‘Well, he’s going to have to deal with it.’ 

As I walked through the courtyard outside of the mansion, lost in thought, a group of familiar-looking maids popped out from around the corner. 

“Hello, Miss Wizard!” 

“Hello.”

I bowed my head, and we greeted each other, almost like it was a reflex. There were many people who felt uncomfortable with me, but most people were kind to me as having the presence of a wizard was proven helpful. 

The group of maids were the friendliest of all and seemed eager to make my acquaintance. The liveliest of them, a maid named Allie, spoke to me with admiration.

“Miss Wizard, isn’t your hair especially shiny today?”

“Shiny?”

My eyes widened at the offhand remark while the other maids around her nodded in agreement.

“Yes. Just like that, you sparkle every time the sun shines on you!”

At their words, I smiled and chimed in out of habit.

“Ah, I must have caught something in it. Thank you.” 

But as soon as I turned around the corner and was out of sight, I clenched my teeth.

‘It’s shiny?’ 

I lifted up my hair, which had been fluttering around my shoulders, and took a closer look at it. How long has it been since I’ve last dyed my hair?

The hair dye was not completely effective, so it had to be reapplied at least once a month. It wasn’t that I couldn’t dye my hair with magic, but the cost-efficiency was extremely bad because I would have had to continuously use magic in order to maintain the dye. If it looked like it was shining under the sun…

Is it because the black hair dye was fading?

Sure enough, upon closer inspection, my hair appeared to be slightly brown in colour, almost like it was revealing a hidden reddish colour. 

It was clear that I was stuck in a less-than-favourable situation. This meant that I had to go down to the village and get hair dye, all while avoiding the eyes of Calix. 

Since this happened, there was nothing else I could do. 

Speaking of which, I’d need to fix this issue as soon as possible. 

I sighed deeply and headed to the duke’s office located on the top floor of the mansion. It was time to negotiate with Calix. 

Despite what happened last evening, Calix greeted me in his usual manner. It was as though he was unaware of the events that had occurred. This morning as well, he acted as if it hadn’t happened at all, and I couldn’t help but be impressed. 

“What’s going on? You’ve come when I hadn’t even called for you.”

I took a deep breath and opened my mouth to speak to Calix, who had greeted me with a wide smile.

“I want to go to Troxia.”

“…Troxia?”

Calix’s face and smile stiffened. I pretended not to notice the change in his expression and headed towards a shady corner of the office, one that was out of the sun’s reach. 

“Yes. Maybe if I went there, I would be able to recover some of my memories.”

“…”

Even though we had that conversation last night, I decided to use such an excuse again.

Maybe Calix was right. Maybe I wanted to avoid my situation because I was a coward. It was a convenient lie, saying that I’d lost my memory. 

I purposely had given Calix trauma that would have followed him for the rest of his life, making him live alone while I just ran away. Maybe he wanted to turn a blind eye to my cowardice. 

But I couldn’t help it. This was the only way for me to survive. 

“And on the way, I want to stop by the village I had stayed in.”

I quickly added before Calix had the chance to disagree with anything.

“It’s been a while since I’ve been there, and I want to meet the people there again, as well as see if I’ve left anything behind.”

“…”

Calix put his hands together and placed them on his desk. He looked like he was about to say no, but before he could, I quickly spat out more words.

“If you say no, I’ll do it on my own…”

“Okay.”

“I’ll go… huh?”

“Okay. Alright.”

“It’s alright?”

When I asked again in surprise, Calix nodded, rising from his seat. 

“Okay, alright. If you want to go there.”

“…”

“But on one condition.”

“Tell me.”

I nodded, mesmerized by his words. Calix smiled.

“I’ll be going with you.”

That was fine. I figured that Calix would have wanted to tag along in the first place.

I agreed, and the rest is history. I watched in bewilderment as Calix pushed back on his inspection of the territory, which had been scheduled for the next day.

…It was almost like he’d been waiting for me to request this.

And as things went, the next day we boarded a carriage bound for Troxia. 

Calix looked fine during the trip to Troxia, contrary to his claims of having severe motion sickness caused by carriage rides during our previous trip.

No, I stand corrected. It didn’t seem like he was completely unharmed. 

If I wasn’t in his field of vision or not by his side at any point, he became anxious. 

It was as if I’d been transported back to when he’d first found me again after all of those years. It was as if Calix was a territorial feline—as soon as we left Hertrio, his anxiety came back. 

But right now, I couldn’t afford to care about him. I was too overwhelmed with taking care of myself and making sure that he doesn’t see my fading hair colour. 

I should get hair dye before the colour washes out. 

Aside from Calix, who knew that I was faking having amnesia, there were still others in the mansion. I couldn’t bring myself to reveal my real hair in front of them. 

A total of five people were going on this impulsively improvised trip to Troxia, with three of them being knights who came as attendants. It was a fairly small scale for a duke’s outing.