By Zephyria =======
Water droplets dripped from the ends of the golden hair clinging to his chest. Moisture glistened across his upper body. Flour was scattered across his forearms, fists, and abdominals like droplets of blood.
Watching him, a hollow laugh escaped. With the very hands that had hacked twenty-seven people to death with an axe moments ago, he was now kneading dough. And with great focus, at that. Push, fold, quarter turn. Push, fold, quarter turn again.
Well, that’s how warriors are. The kind of bastards who greedily tear into meat in front of piles of rotting corpses.
Silver knocked on the door with the back of his hand.
“What are you doing?”
As he asked while descending the stairs to the kitchen, Stuffy Field Mouse looked up. Surprise flickered in eyes that took on a ruby hue under the light of the hearth.
“You came out in the rain?”
“It’s just rain.”
“Just? Doesn’t sound like something a person who was sick all night should say.”
“You.”
Silver stopped talking and walked toward him with heavy steps. Rainwater dripped from the hem of his robe.
“You were quite useful. Taking out twenty-seven people in one strike.”
“You counted them all?”
Stuffy Field Mouse frowned as he pressed the dough with his palm. Silver suddenly felt irritated. Fuck, does it look like I’m actually interested in this guy?
“I was just curious where your corpses ended up lying.”
“Even so, you come out in this weather? How long has it even been since your fever broke?”
“I just wanted to pay back my debt.”
“Fine. Since you’re here, have some food.”
Stuffy Field Mouse gestured with his chin toward a chair in front of the workbench.
“I was trying to quickly bake some bread and take it before the cooking duty arrived. Damn, the food rations for rookies here are too stingy. By the way, where do you get your meals? I’ve never seen you in the communal dining hall.”
“In the mountains and the sea.”
Silver sat in the chair.
“Ah, there was that method. I was too rigid for insisting on the communal dining hall.”
Stuffy Field Mouse shrugged. Even while exchanging words, his hands never stopped kneading the dough. He looked accustomed to kitchen work. The white flour stains under his eyes, the sound of the dough hitting the wood—all of it blended with the man like a teacup belonging to a kettle.
However, Silver felt a strange sense of incongruity. The scene before him looked bizarre, like a lone tree’s shadow stretching long at noon. It took a moment to understand the nature of this twisted order.
It was Stuffy Field Mouse’s hand movements. Push, fold, quarter turn. The angle at which he tilted his wrist when folding the dough, the technique of keeping the lump of dough fixed in the center of the workbench—every single movement was excessively precise. It seemed he had reached a level where his body remembered through years of repetition. Like someone who had spent more time in front of a kitchen workbench than in a combat training ground or a battlefield.
Come to think of it, that Attendant fellow was a baking apprentice.
A goddamn thought intruded like an unwelcome guest. Soon, Silver roughly grabbed the guest by the collar and threw him out. Stop it already, for fuck’s sake.
Stuffy Field Mouse’s hand movements weren’t particularly special. Since anyone who was a Stoll Person knew how to bake bread. Along with repairing nets, sharpening knives, and butchering meat, it was something one absolutely had to learn. Even Black Weasel, who lived as a wanderer, had borrowed an inn’s kitchen to teach Silver how to bake bread. His skill with flour dough was as proficient as an innkeeper’s, and he used to make bear-shaped bread for the young Silver.
Look at what’s in front of you. Look at his aptitude. Look at his Stoll language skills.
Stop overlapping him with that Attendant bastard!
Immediately after urging himself thus, the words came out.
“Do you know Prince Red Eagle?”
At this point, Silver wanted to rip out his own tongue. It was too pathetic a question to excuse as a mere impulse.
“Red Eagle?”
Stuffy Field Mouse stopped his hands and looked up. For a moment, something sparkled in his amber eyes. The glint vanished quickly, like a fish changing direction in dark water, and was replaced by light curiosity.
“If it’s that prince, I don’t know him personally. I’ve only picked up some stories.”
“What kind of stories? You don’t have to tell me if it’s the story about the fake prince.”
He didn’t want to hear that story again. They say the fake prince and the Attendant fled for ten days. As the perimeter tightened, the exits closed one by one, and they were finally driven into a dead end, the fake prince threw himself off a cliff in front of the Attendant. The body was never found. The fake prince’s status and name were passed to the Attendant. He almost received the fiancée as well, but due to the refusal of the Lebanon Royal Family, the marriage did not take place.
The fake prince who was once called Red Eagle. When Silver recalled that face, frozen forever at seventeen, his chest stung. Poor bastard.
“Were you perhaps looking for personal stories? Like secret sexual lives? Unfortunately, I don’t know about that side of things.”
Stuffy Field Mouse moved his hands again. His tone was leisurely, as if discussing the lunch menu.
“That as the son of White Deer, his talent as a warrior is outstanding. That he suffers from assassination threats from his half-siblings. That the King has no affection for him, so he’s mostly sent to frontier battles. Those are the stories everyone knows.”
Stuffy Field Mouse brushed the flour off his forearm.
“But it’s unexpected. If there’s a royal family member people are curious about, it’s King Bronze-beaked Hawk a hundred percent of the time.”
“Why?”
“Well… ah, wait.”
Stuffy Field Mouse tore off a piece of dough and shaped it with his palm. As if concentrating, his following words sounded slightly half-hearted.
“Because he’s the biggest topic of conversation across Stoll and Atania. He fights a war roughly once every three days to turn Stoll into a centralized monarchy. Everyone expects that once that work is finished, he’ll turn his blade toward Atania. In Atania, they call it the second coming of the ‘Great’ Thorny Spider King. Even to me, the Bronze-beaked Hawk side sounds much more interesting than the story of Prince Red Eagle.”
“Stop talking nonsense. It’s not interesting.”
“Non…?”
Stuffy Field Mouse looked up. He had a bewildered expression.
“What. Why. Is that Uncle eavesdropping or something?”
“Uncle?”
“Should I call him old man? He’s not an Aunt, after all.”
“That’s true. But why are you curious about Prince Red Eagle?”
“I don’t want to tell you.”
“You want my answer, but you won’t give yours? Isn’t that unfair?”
“Then you don’t answer either.”
“Wow. Prickly.”
The corners of Stuffy Field Mouse’s mouth curled up. It was a smile that seemed to find it amusing, or perhaps one that was struggling to hold back anger.
“But you know. Your name is Silver, right?”
Silver didn’t answer. It was a trivial question, but for some reason, he felt as if he had been caught off guard.
Stuffy Field Mouse tore off another piece of dough.
“I overheard it from the seniors. That your name is Silver. But why did you ask me if I knew a guy named Silver? Is there a special reason?”
“No.”
“There is. Right?”
“Think whatever you want.”
“Fine, I’ll tell you what I think. You met someone who looks similar to me a long time ago. Probably someone from the Stoll Royal Family. So, on the beach, you mistook me for that person. To make a bolder guess, that person’s name is Red Eagle.”
“More nonsense.”
Silver countered without being particularly surprised. Unless someone was a drug addict, anyone could easily deduce this much.
“Is talking bullshit your hobby? Were you expecting me to fall over in surprise at your words?”
“A little.”
“So? How is it?”
“I’m disappointed. You weren’t surprised at all.”
Stuffy Field Mouse stared intently this way while shaping the dough.
“Then won’t you tell me this either? Are you from Atania? Or a mixed blood?”
For the first time, Silver hesitated. There was a time… long ago… when he had shared his personal stories, even slightly, with someone. Infuriatingly, that person happened to be Wolf.
Well, I can tell him about my lineage.
“No, I’m a Stoll Person. Not a single drop of Atanian blood is mixed in.”
“If you’re a Stoll Person, why that name?”
“Silver is a nickname given by my mother’s lover. My real name is Silver Wolf.”
“Silver Wolf?”
Stuffy Field Mouse’s eyes widened. The hands that had been shaping dough without pause during the conversation stopped for a beat before moving again. Silver tapped the table with his fingertips.
“What? You’re surprised?”
“Because it’s unexpected.”
“Isn’t it a perfectly predictable name? Compared to Die-Quick-Mouse or Stuffy Field Mouse, anyway.”
He spoke lightly on purpose. Suppressing the awkward feeling of sharing personal history with a man he had only known for a few days.
“It’s a name as common as pebbles rolling on the street. If you walk into any pub and shout ‘Silver Wolf,’ five drunks would look back. My mother and I both preferred the nickname Silver.”
Even Black Weasel preferred the nickname. Though he had never said it out loud, Silver knew. With that personality, if the nickname had bothered him, he would have called him only Silver Wolf.
98 – Hell’s Execution Order