TOWER 1

The place where I wander is a land of white snow.

Before my eyes, snowflakes fall so heavily they appear blurred instead. On the snowy field where the air is thin, a blizzard like a ghost’s song rages. The perception of time and space gradually grows dull.

Seu was trapped within it.

He laid his listless body upon the frozen earth and helplessly allowed the snow to pile up over him. His limbs, burning with a high fever, already felt like a pit of fire. The disparity—like a cliff—between the heavy snow and the fever was something far too familiar.

He likely would not hold out for long. Before long, a long rest would come. Even if his physical body remained here to freeze, his soul alone would be gathered by someone from beyond.

When he thought that way, his mind felt a little more at ease. He would be able to let go of his foolish attachments before it was too late. May this farewell go according to his will. May it not fail.

Squeezing his aching chest, he exhaled his final breath and finally let go.

‘Goodbye.’

A final greeting with no one to hear is a meager thing.

At that moment, from a distant place where the direction could not be gauged, the sound of a small song drifted in.

A tender sound, resembling light green sprouts, pushed through the snowflakes and approached to wrap around Seu’s body. It blocked the angry blizzard, soothed the fever blossoms blooming on his body, and gently released the two hands that had gripped his heart.

‘…’

A moderate and gentle sound heard from a very distant place.

Seu feels as though he has known that song from a long time ago.

He lifted his heavy eyelids.

Beyond his blurred vision, the familiar face of a servant—who now seemed like an old mother or perhaps a longtime sister—approached. Concern, fatigue, and undisguised joy were etched into her wrinkled face.

‘Erde.’

As he blinked, a faint smile bloomed on the wrinkled face of the servant. It was a ritual of their own, where they felt glad to see each other, felt relief, and yet felt an enduring sense of apology. One side for not being able to make him recover faster, the other for stubbornly surviving through a tenacious life.

Erde, who met his gaze deeply, stood up while picking up the basin by the bedside. She was going to change the water that had become lukewarm.

Watching her hunched back as she left through the door, the corners of Seu’s eyes twitched slightly.

Now that his eyes were open and he could breathe, he had to accept it. He was not dead yet.

₊˚ ❆

Winter had arrived in the northern kingdom of Maro.

Along with the presence of winter, Seu lay sick for a long time, like a priest on a pilgrimage to an ice wall. His spiritless body had given up without even attempting to adapt to the harsh cold. While he himself was incredibly tenacious for having crossed yet another hurdle with such a feeble body, it was also true that the winter of this country was unspeakably harsh. The only way to escape the cold of the northern kingdom would be death.

The only shield that blocked that death was not Seu himself, but Erde. Seu knew that her steadfastness in feeding and caring for his weak body to keep it alive, the benevolent smile she showed him when he returned from the brink of death, and the warmth of her touch were the only lights sustaining his life. Therefore, he had to live. Even if it was a useless life where he did nothing.

At the sound of the stiff wooden door opening, he turned his head to see Erde entering, laboriously supporting the fresh water she had fetched. She would be fifty-three when the year changed; she had aged much during the four years they had been together. Seu had been watching his only servant grow old through hard work from this bed all along.

Erde’s hands took down the soup pot boiling on the fireplace and put fresh water on a small copper stove. Once the water became moderately hot, she would personally wash his body, which had been unable to move for several days. However, the meal came first. Erde, supporting a soup bowl on a wooden tray, approached the bed.

“…”

The hands that had set the tray down on the old table and were helping Seu’s upper body up hesitated. Seu did not notice that brief agitation, and Erde dwelled on the sensation in her fingertips for a while.

Even through the thick indoor clothes, the bony joints of his gaunt back could be felt so clearly that her heart sank once again. The young master she served had shed yet another layer of his earthly shell. It was a result that was not surprising, created by an excessively poor environment and diet, a deficient prescription worse than folk remedies, and a mediocre will to live. However, just because she was used to it did not mean it did not hurt her heart.

Struggling to shake off the touch of the dry back, Erde handed him a water glass. After letting him moisten his throat with warm water, she held the soup to his mouth, and Seu slowly accepted and ate it. When he was more intact than this, she would let him eat alone, but because he moved his hands infinitely slowly and the food often went cold, it was easier for her mind to feed him directly. Furthermore, he likely didn’t even have the strength to hold a spoon right now.

Silence pooled in the joints of the slow time. They did not need conversation. Seu had been a man of few words since he was young, and Erde, whose virtues as a court servant were ingrained in her, was also tight-lipped. Seu was not a difficult master who was picky about this and that, and Erde always carefully considered Seu’s habits and circumstances.

In addition to this, there was a decisive reason for their silence.

A fact that was once an unfathomable tragedy but had now become a matter of indifference.

Seu had never opened his mouth once since the winter four years ago. By his own will.

It was because his mind had imprisoned language.

Following the only one she shared her daily life with, Erde naturally put a latch on her mouth as well. The silence they built up here was now no different from the familiar tableware. She opened her mouth once in a while only because she hoped Seu would not sink forever into his own silence. In a deep place she did not reveal, Erde was waiting for Seu’s mouth to open. Someday, please, someday.

Seu could not finish the soup bowl. It seemed that putting crushed meat and bread into it out of greed for the first meal in several days since regaining consciousness had made it heavy very quickly. Since his body could not accept it, she could not urge him further. Since he was naturally of a gentle disposition, she had to be grateful that he had followed her will this much.

“I will wash your body.”

Enclosed by stone walls and having a high ceiling, the heating here was terrible. The embers in the fireplace always bloomed only small flowers, and even those did not last long. While Seu had his slow meal, the water in the copper stove had barely gone beyond lukewarm. Erde approached Seu, who was sitting quietly, with a white cloth and a basin filled with water.

Seu, who had been blankly staring at the edge of the bed, turned his head and looked at Erde.

A small face and thin black hair, large eyes and a prominent nose, and narrow lips quietly closed. He looked youthful enough to be believed even if called a boy who had just passed puberty. At the same time, his bloodless pale complexion, parched dry lips, and the darkly sunken look in his eyes made him look like an old man who had lived all his given years and had no more expectations for life.

In such moments, Erde could not endure the silence that was as familiar as air.

“It snowed a lot while you were ill.”

At those words, a lukewarm intelligence swirled in Seu’s eyes. Erde let out a held breath at the sight of him nodding slightly and turning his head toward the window where one shutter had fallen off.

Seu began to take off his clothes with sluggish hands. A long-sleeved tunic that was loose-fitting and reached the ankles, and the sleeveless tunics layered several times inside it; his skeletal body was revealed under the low light. It was before sunset, but the room was always dark as the outer walls were thick, the windows were small, and the light from the fireplace was all that illuminated the interior. And Erde was grateful for that darkness. Considering the bumpy texture of the dry back felt beyond the dampened cloth, and the back that was scarred because it had stopped healing haphazardly, it was something to be sufficiently grateful for.

It wasn’t just the back. Fleshy places like the chest, flanks, and thighs were all full of scars from being cut and torn, and marks from being scorched remained on the tips of his fingernails and toenails. His shinbones and both ankles were abnormally twisted and protruding, and sometimes when Seu looked down at his own body with an expressionless face, Erde wanted to turn off all the lights in the room. That was something she could never become indifferent to, no matter how much time passed.

While Erde washed his body, Seu moved his body here and there according to her wordless requests. The actions of lifting arms and legs, straightening his hunched chest, and then hunching his back again continued sluggishly. A gentle young man who was never fastidious except for being physically ill. She had not known she would come to ‘serve’ this person. Having entered the royal palace as the eldest daughter of a fallen family, it was the winter four years ago when her master changed.

When she bowed her head to signify that she was done after carefully washing his body, Seu reached for the new tunic placed on one side of the bed. Erde left the room carrying the clothes Seu had worn and the basin.

When leaving the door, beyond a short hallway, there were Erde’s bedroom and two rooms being used as food storage, and on the side, a long staircase leading outside followed. Something like a drawing room was a spatial concept that could not exist here.

To begin with, it was a place not built for people to live in. When they first came here, simple furniture and even a fireplace were looked after, but they could not hope for a labor-intensive water supply facility. Because of that, Erde had to personally fetch all the water used for living from outside. Such a laborious task would be the work of a transition maid who had just entered the palace, not a head servant, but she had forgotten such things long ago.

Whenever she moved between the cramped hallway where light did not enter and the long staircase, her shoulders stiffened with condensed tension. Not only might she lose her footing, but the heavy darkness and the cold air flowing from the stone walls reminded her that this place could never be a base for living—that it was a place imprisoned under the name of a taboo. However, there was light beyond there.