Chapter 62
A day without Felix was peaceful and quiet. And unbearably dull.
On the one hand, it was certainly easier. Without Felix around, Abel no longer found himself worrying about what kind of mood he was in or watching how everyone else treated him, so there were fewer troublesome things to occupy his mind.
But at the same time, a day that stirred absolutely no emotion in him was painfully boring.
Catching a glimpse of blond hair out of the corner of his eye, Abel instinctively looked up only to realize it wasn’t Felix. He quietly returned his gaze to the front.
“Lord Abel, are you perhaps looking for something?”
Several priests asked after noticing the same behavior repeating itself over and over. But if Abel admitted that he missed Felix, it would almost certainly rob Felix of his long-awaited day off. So he kept his mouth shut.
And so the morning passed, and the afternoon began.
By the afternoon, Abel had begun to grow somewhat accustomed to Felix’s absence.
At the very least, he had stopped turning his head every time he caught sight of blond hair that looked nothing like Felix’s.
Instead of blond hair, however, he found himself staring more and more often at the armor worn by the holy knights.
“Lord Abel.”
Once again, Abel had been intently watching the armor of someone approaching from the front when a voice called out to him, prompting him to raise his head.
That was when he realized the armor didn’t belong to an ordinary holy knight.
It was the Commander’s.
“Would you spare me a moment of your time?”
Whenever Felix is away, someone connected to him shows up. Is that some sort of trend?
Abel carefully studied the face of the Holy Knight Commander, who was looking at him with a solemn expression.
Wrinkled skin. Short-cropped brown hair. Ordinary brown eyes.
An entirely average, unremarkable face, devoid of any distinguishing features.
His tall stature, broad build, and ramrod-straight posture weren’t noteworthy either. They were qualities shared by most holy knights.
It was the sort of appearance Abel would have no trouble forgetting.
“Very well.”
Since Abel was just as curious about the man, he dismissed the priests following behind him and walked with the Commander through a quiet corridor.
Matching his slow pace, the Commander walked beside him. Abel asked:
“So? What is it you wanted to say to me?”
The Commander remained silent for a moment before replying with a question of his own.
“Lord Abel, do you know my name?”
Asking out of the blue? Even so, Abel answered the question without hesitation.
“I don’t.”
“You don’t remember even a single part of it?”
He had no idea. He had always simply called him the Commander of the Holy Knights.
“Brian?”
“It’s Benjamin.”
But was it really important for Abel to know the Commander’s name right now?
Looking up at him with an unreadable expression, Abel waited.
The Commander’s questions, however, did not end there.
“Do you know that I once served as your personal guard?”
“No.”
Without showing the slightest hint of disappointment, the Commander nodded.
“It was a long time ago.”
He explained that he had attended Abel from the time Abel was ten until he turned fifteen, adding that it was only natural for such distant memories to have faded. Then he continued.
“Do you remember that I was the one who taught you the basics of swordsmanship?”
“No.”
Abel remembered learning the sword.
But after only a month, the lessons had been canceled because everyone had fussed over the possibility of the precious Messenger of God getting hurt—even though any injury would have been healed almost immediately.
He couldn’t remember his instructor’s face. He did remember the training itself being rather grueling.
“Do you remember healing me after I was injured? It was quite a serious wound. My arm had been nearly severed.”
“I don’t remember.”
Back when the Temple did not yet occupy the overwhelmingly dominant position it held today—in other words, during the period when Abel refrained from appearing in public—he had often been responsible for treating influential figures to expand the Temple’s influence. He had also stepped in during emergencies where no one but him could provide healing.
If a knight’s arm had been nearly severed, then the Commander had probably been one of those emergency cases.
After the prayer assembly, however, Abel’s services became more valuable than even the holy water produced and sold by the Temple, and such incidents disappeared, eventually fading from his memory.
“Is that so?”
The Commander appeared completely unfazed by Abel’s repeated denials, as though he had never expected him to remember in the first place.
At that, Abel came to a stop.
“What is it you’re really trying to say?”
It was an order to stop talking about all that and get to the real point.
Meeting Abel’s gaze, the Commander finally spoke.
Utterly ordinary eyes.
Neither wicked nor kind, but carrying the quiet dignity etched by the passage of years. Those eyes rested on Abel.
“I implore you not to lay a hand on Sir Felix.”
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