Luman stepped into the carriage and, for a moment, simply looked at Ren.

Moonlight filtered faintly through the carriage window, falling softly across him. The face floating pale in that light didn’t look bloodless so much as... bright, like a pebble shining under sunlight.

Without realizing it, Luman stood there quietly looking down at him.

Seeing him asleep so peacefully made something in his chest ache.

Why?

It was a question that would bring no answer if he threw it out now.

How could a Hero possibly know exactly why he felt this way, or what this feeling even was?

Luman was not someone who clung stubbornly to difficult questions. When the time came, it would unravel on its own. And if even turning it over in his mind felt strangely welcome, then wasn’t he perhaps out of his mind? He had the distinct sense that he had understood the reason for this capricious heart of his a long time ago, and yet once again, Luman pretended not to know.

For a moment, he wished time would stop. Then his chest tightened at the thought that the snow he wanted to watch together might stop falling, and in the end, he decided to wake Ren. As much as he liked the sight of Ren sleeping, he liked the sight of those bright, shining eyes even more. And if those eyes held him in them, that would be better still.

“Ren. Ren.”

That faint voice woke him.

Ren blinked his eyes open, groggy, and thought the touch waking him felt awfully nice. The way it rocked him gently and softly felt almost like someone soothing him back to sleep. Like he was lying in a cradle....

He didn’t actually remember being touched like that, but he felt like there had been a line like that in one of the fairy tales the old apothecary used to tell him.

When Ren turned in his sleep with a faint smile under Luman’s hand, Luman suddenly found it hard to wake him anymore. After a brief hesitation, he shut the carriage door and sat down. Looking thoughtfully between his own lap and Ren, Luman finally slipped one hand beneath Ren’s head and carefully lifted it onto his lap.

The heat of the child’s body quickly warmed Luman’s knees.

He carefully smoothed back the mussed blond hair.

A clean, neat forehead appeared.

Such a gentle face.

Looking at the cheek swollen in blotchy patches, Luman thought that. Seen like this, he was unmistakably just a child. Did a child like this really have to suffer this much? Luman couldn’t bring himself to touch Ren’s cheek and only let his hand hover in the air instead. Light gathered briefly at his fingertips, then faded. He couldn’t help thinking that way. He had already given Ren... that.

Luman knew better than anyone how brutal this era was, and he had lived through more than enough of it.

He knew countless war orphans, beggars starving to death in the streets, and people condemned to miserable lives under the shackles of family. Some lives were so terrible that starving to death was almost a blessing. Some were bad enough that being bound to something felt like mercy. From one point of view, being the brother of a Hero could even be called glorious, and the pain Ren had suffered could be brushed aside as nothing much.

But that was only the sentiment of outsiders.

How many times had Ren heard things like that?

Your brother’s a Hero.

How many times had words like that wounded him?

The thought made Luman miserable. He couldn’t possibly measure which was greater: the benefits Ren had gained from being a Hero’s brother, or the sorrow he had been forced to endure because he was a Hero’s brother.

What if Ren had not been a Hero’s brother?

Without parents to shelter him, if even his brother had been an ordinary man, then Ren probably wouldn’t even have survived this long.

No.

If he had been born into an ordinary, comfortable family....

For Luman, it was a foolish and happy fantasy he had never entertained before.

If that had been the case, Ren would have grown up bright and ordinary. He would have eaten good things and put on a healthy softness. He would have run wild around the village with children his own age, playing at being gang leaders in the alleyways. It would not have been a life of having everything taken from him....

Luman knew it was a meaningless hypothetical, and yet he couldn’t stop imagining it.

A comfortable, warm, happy, ordinary life that even he himself did not know. Piecing it together from lines he had read somewhere, glimpses he had once seen, and a fairy tale book he had read and torn apart in early childhood.

He imagined Ren growing up clear and unblemished beneath the protection of a family. A world where he would not have to snarl and bare his thorns just to protect himself. He let that dreamlike fantasy continue.

What waited at the end of it was pity.

“Ren....”

This kind of imagining changed nothing. Even if Luman felt this way, what would be any different?

And yet the sorrow that drove him to imagine it at all tormented him.

“The snow won’t stop anytime soon.”

Luman looked out at the falling snow through the window.

The campfire rolled and flickered, lighting the darkness of the black forest, while white snow slowly covered the silent woods. The drifting flakes, tiny as fireflies, seemed to swallow every sound around them. Black shadows trembled and danced.

Beautiful.

He had never known he was capable of a thought like that.

He had seen breathtaking night skies spill over countless battlefields drowned in blood, yet not once in all those years had Luman ever thought such a sky—or any landscape at all—was beautiful.

What had changed, that this scene now felt beautiful to him?

The small sound of Ren’s breathing rang in Luman’s ears like thunder.

So why did his heart feel this sorrowful, this tender?

Luman carefully stroked Ren’s forehead.

There would probably never be another time when the two of them could be alone like this. For one brief instant, Luman felt the urge to kiss that round forehead. His fingers moved gently over it instead. Ren must have liked the feel of Luman’s cold fingers against his skin, because he made a small sound and rubbed his forehead into Luman’s hand. Luman, who had gone still as stone, carefully lowered his hand.

This was already more time than he deserved.

Hoping the snow would not stop, he stayed in the carriage for a long time.

“Mmgh....”

Ren stirred in his sleep and woke. A cold hand touched his cheek. He had thought it was a dream, but apparently someone had really come to wake him. Ren’s clear eyes rolled lazily, then found the owner of the hand resting on his forehead.

It was Luman.

Leaning against the carriage wall, he had fallen asleep with Ren’s head pillowed on his lap. The quiet sound of his breathing settled over Ren.

He looks really young.

Ren thought that suddenly.

The handsome young man’s face, eyes closed, looked much younger than it did when he was awake. His long lashes lying over his face and his full lips were lovely. Ren realized this was almost the first time he had seen Luman’s face without that mocking, teasing expression on it, and he stared at him in fascination. His platinum-blond hair had fallen loose.

“It’s snowing....”

After staring at Luman for a long time, Ren’s gaze finally caught on the snow drifting down in silence outside. Quietly, the boy lifted Luman’s hand away and sat up. Luman must have been deeply asleep, because he didn’t wake even when Ren moved. Holding his breath so he wouldn’t wake him, Ren watched the snow. Under the quiet night, it gleamed white in the moonlight.

Ren’s gaze drifted farther away.

It made him think of long ago.

Of Temar, when he left for the Seven-Year War.

That warm feeling from earlier, the feeling of being laid down in a cradle, froze solid.

Ren was afraid of snow.

Because on snowy days, too many precious things had been taken from him.

It was a memory he did not want to recall.

After quietly looking at the sleeping Luman, the boy lay back down again on his lap just as before. Burying his face there, Ren began to cry. Tears spilled silently from his eyes. Luman’s thigh slowly grew damp.

Ren sobbed for a long time before he finally drifted back to sleep, and only after his crying had quieted did Luman open his eyes.

Those thoroughly wet lashes felt like they were stabbing into Luman’s chest.

“What were you thinking about?”

The hand that brushed at eyes already gone dry was gentle.

“Why aren’t you coming out—”

“Shh!”

“Ghk. Sorry....”

“He only just fell asleep. I was going to wake him later.”

“I had no idea falling snow could look this beautiful. It’d be nice if Ren woke up soon so he could see it with us.”

Seeing Jepeto say that with such obvious regret, Luman only gave a short laugh.

A little while ago, he’d gone into the carriage intent on waking Ren so they could watch the snow together, so why was his response so lukewarm now? Jepeto thought that, but didn’t bother saying it aloud.

Jepeto had come to the carriage to avoid Temar’s heavy mood, only to get nothing for it and be forced back to the campfire again.

“Ahem. Ren must really be asleep.”

Feeling rather awkward about returning alone, Jepeto sat down beside Temar and tried to make casual conversation.

Crackle. Crackle.

Temar, who had been feeding wood into the fire, looked at Jepeto and nodded.

“I see.”

He didn’t seem in the mood to talk. It felt like he had only answered because Jepeto had spoken to him first. Rather than bother a Hero who seemed to want to sit alone with his thoughts, Jepeto chose to go to sleep early instead. He dug out even more layers of clothing than usual, spread them out, then stuffed himself into his sleeping bag.

“I’ll turn in first, Hero. Sleep well!”

“Yes. Rest well.”

Even as he answered mechanically, Temar’s eyes were still following the snow.

Before long, Jepeto’s snoring began to ring out. The air in the silent forest felt a little lighter for it.

Temar’s heart did not.

Temar was thinking of a dream.

Or some memory he could not be sure was a dream at all.

Why had he suddenly remembered something from when he was very young?

Snow....

The moment he thought about how he had walked, pushing through snow, pain he’d thought buried long ago came surging back.

This was no time to drown in memories. He was a Hero who did not look back.

Temar lowered his gaze from the sky and looked down at his clasped hands. Thick, scarred hands stained yellow and red by the campfire.

Then, with his eyes, he traced upward along them in search of the marks left by the Hero’s miracle.