“We’re the same...” He mumbled again and walked away.
He thought as he walked. His father was scared of Jacob, just as the boy was scared of him. Blitzdonner was afraid of getting close because if his son rejected him, he might never recover.
“......”
Jacob couldn’t find a way to approach his father, especially since their relationship was so unusual. He kept walking.
“Jacob?” The girl in the red dress, who made him think of his father, was in front of him. “Aren’t you going to see the major... I mean, your father?”
“I don’t need to.” Jacob replied spitefully to Rebecca’s question.
“Jacob, I don’t have a parent.” Rebecca spoke sadly to Jacob. “So will you teach me? Do parent and child only meet when it’s necessary?”
“.....................”
She wasn’t asking sarcastically. Both Blitzdonner and Jacob were important to Rebecca. It was painful for her to see the miscommunication between them. Nonetheless, if they claimed they didn’t mind, then she didn’t intend to interfere. Her duty was to fulfill their wishes, even if it meant she was tormented by feelings that tore her to pieces. So...
“Are you sure?”
She needed to make sure his answer was really the right choice.
“That’s, um...”
The boy mumbled and Rebecca handed him a small bag.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a roche.”
A roche was a baked sweet. Its name meant rock. It was baked with egg whites and sugar mixed with almonds and other nuts.
“Former Captain Langart told me you like these.”
Roche was a common bakery sweet. Baking bread required lots of eggs, with the yolks often used for glazes. The leftover egg whites were whipped into a meringue for making the roche that were lined up in a corner of the bakery.
“This is all I can do.” Rebecca’s shoulders shook in frustration at her powerlessness. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?” Jacob felt hopeless as he replied to the red girl, who was crying.
“I...”
What should he do?
All of a sudden, someone else spoke to the boy, who was looking away as if he didn’t know how to fix his mistake.
“What’s up, you two?” It was Milly, the apprentice at Tockerbrot.
“What? Why is the red girl crying? Did you do that, you jerk?!”
“No!” Usually, Jacob would reply with a joke, but now he wasn’t emotionally capable of any smooth talk.
“Anyway, Marlene told me to find you.”
“Marlene wants to see me?”
“You and... What a coincidence! You too, red girl.”
“My name is Rebecca. What does she want me for?”
Rebecca and Marlene had met during the recent rebellion in the royal capital.
“Will you come to the church tonight? Red girl... you too, please.”
“Huh?”
Then Milly said she was busy and hurried off.
“What the...?” Rebecca had just been thinking that she had missed her chance to see Marlene. But she couldn’t help tilting her head at how unexpected this was.
About 130 years ago, there lived a man called the Lion Emperor. He ended the hierarchical system of the Holy Empire—which then still existed as the world order, though a mere shell of its former self—and he almost achieved the first continent-wide rule since the European Empire. Even after his death, his name lived on and became a byword for “revolutionary.”
He had started as a petty officer born on a small rural island, but rose rapidly in status by taking advantage of the troubled times. The Lion Emperor was a powerful and invincible general, almost god-like, and he possessed a demonic wisdom as a politician.
Not many people knew that he was also a keen archaeologist. When he was a petty officer, he joined a mission to explore ancient ruins. There was no record of what ruins he investigated or where they were. However, all the members of that mission died mysteriously, except the Lion Emperor. Some said the deaths were due to a curse from the old royal families. And those who spread such rumors also died mysteriously.
The Lion Emperor tried to maintain his success, and started calling himself the emperor, but the expeditions he sent to the Greyten Empire and northern nations met with successive failure, and gradually his rule weakened. This was the sad fate of a man who had risen to such heights in one generation. His rule through absolute power instantly collapsed the moment that power faltered.
In the end, attendants betrayed him—or more accurately, those he believed to be his attendants—and he was imprisoned on the small rural island of his birth.
“Why?!” The Lion Emperor roared and snarled inside a shabby mansion on the small rural island. He no longer had the lion-like dignity signified by his title. His howls were those of a wild dog that has been beaten.
“Why must I suffer like this? The fools! They shouldn’t underestimate me! This is poppycock!” He hurled a chair against the wall, breaking it and ripping the wallpaper. The wine bottle on the table shattered. “How did this happen? Why? I did everything just as you told me to!!” The Lion Emperor’s eyes were wild as they stared at the girl in the corner of the room.
No public documents recorded her name. Only a history book that was more like a cheap novel made slight reference to her. It said, “The Lion Emperor always had a girl with unchanging features by his side.”
“Calm down, Master. Tee hee hee...”
The girl was as beautiful as an angel. Anyone who saw her would think she really was an angel. She was beautiful enough to suggest that angels don’t really have wings.
“You didn’t make any mistakes, Master. You are playing all your roles to perfection.” The girl spoke to the Lion Emperor in the voice of an angel.