Chapter 9.
The Less Tiny One and the Even Tinier One (7)
Cyril subtly turned his head away, avoiding Adrienne’s gaze.
Adrienne, who had been talking animatedly with her mouth wide open, blinked in confusion.
Even though he knew she had noticed, Cyril stubbornly kept his eyes turned away.
For some reason, he felt strongly that he shouldn’t look at Adrienne right now.
After a brief moment, another tap tap sound pricked his ears.
Cyril had no choice but to look back again.
Adrienne was curling her finger, gesturing for him to come closer.
If he ignored her, she would obviously keep knocking on the window.
Better to be annoyed once than many times.
For the first time, Cyril got up and walked toward the window.
“Why are you calling me?”
Speaking through the glass, Cyril saw Adrienne break into a wide smile.
She had the nerve to smile so brightly after bothering a sick person.
She really was strange in every way.
Cyril thought sourly.
Hoo—
Unaware of his thoughts, Adrienne started another strange act.
She blew breath onto the perfectly fine window, clearly up to something.
After breathing on it for a long time and creating a large patch of fog, Adrienne pressed her finger against it and began to write.
“……”
Cyril’s eyes wavered as he silently watched the letters appear under her fingertip.
[같 이 하 자]
Let’s do it together.
The handwriting, written exactly as she saw it without any thought of how it looked to others, clearly said “Let’s do it together.”
The letters were terribly slanted—generously speaking, messy handwriting.
And asking him to do something together when she clearly knew he was sick was rather cruel.
But still—
“…I’ll think about it.”
Adrienne was Cyril’s first-ever friend.
And this was the first time a friend had asked him to do something together.
That fact stirred his heart, and Cyril nodded.
Behind the fading fog on the window, Adrienne smiled brightly.
For some reason, Cyril didn’t feel confident enough to face that smile and turned away, pretending not to see it.
＊ ＊ ＊
But that was all it amounted to.
Four months later, Cyril couldn’t understand at all why he had acted that way that day.
“Ah!”
Cyril flinched at the light impact.
The vague fluttering feeling that had been tickling his chest vanished instantly, startled away by the hard knock of a wooden sword.
“Why didn’t you dodge?”
Adrienne, who had just mercilessly struck his shoulder, tilted her head with an innocent face.
As if the sword flying toward him hadn’t been obvious.
Cyril felt unfairly wronged.
With his sickly body and poor stamina, even basic running drills exhausted him.
He had spent three full months building strength, and had only started holding a sword a month ago.
“Again.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
It was far too early for a proper sparring match, but the knight didn’t stop them.
After all, children were supposed to grow up fighting.
The only problem was that these “children” were the count’s daughter and the Duke of Tesar’s son.
Even then, calling it a match was generous.
“Ah!”
“Why didn’t you dodge?”
The sparring almost always turned into Adrienne hitting Cyril one-sidedly.
The knight tried to intervene, but Cyril stubbornly refused, breathing hard with frustration.
From the knight’s point of view, the outcome had been decided from the start.
Adrienne was taller than her peers, had better stamina, and had started sword training months earlier.
Of course she would win.
The knight knew that Count Casinel sometimes thought,
If only Adrienne were the heir.
Cyril, on the other hand, was thin and weak.
His determination was admirable, but without skill, it was meaningless for now.
Still… who knows what will happen in time.
This was already their third clash.
The knight watched Cyril, who calmly raised his sword despite the sting in his arm.
For a child who had spent so long bedridden, Cyril was building stamina quickly.
He was still small, but his arms and legs were long for his height—a promising build.
If he grew without major setbacks, he would one day become a fine young man.
By then, the young lady would have grown as well.
They might even make a good match.
The aging knight smiled warmly at the bickering children.
Growing up together from childhood—his wife would find it terribly romantic.
What kind of nonsense is that?
Cyril, one half of that “pair,” was grinding his teeth.
Romance and destiny meant nothing to him.
Only revenge and the flames of a duel filled his mind.
“Cyril, do you like getting hit?”
“Do you think I do?”
“Should I go easy on you?”
“Don’t even say that.”
Her blue eyes were utterly innocent, yet she swung her sword mercilessly.
Cyril burned inside.
I’ll win. I swear I will.
He stared fiercely at his sword.
And so, a small seed that had nearly become something in his heart was struck by a wooden sword, shattered halfway, and buried deep—silent for a very long time.
＊ ＊ ＊
“…He’s not dead!”
A trembling voice rang in Cyril’s ears.
Even in his haze, Cyril thought, So noisy.
He heard hurried footsteps nearby, as if someone were stamping around.
Voices continued urgently, but unfortunately his muddled mind couldn’t make sense of them.
Why…
Feeling as if a heavy stone was pressing on his head, Cyril frowned.
Now that he thought about it, the floor felt far too hard.
More precisely, his head felt soft, but his back felt like it would bruise at any moment.
It was like lying on the floor with only a pillow under his head.
Casinel was inferior to Tesar in many ways, but the beds weren’t bad enough to feel like bare ground.
So what was wrong?
Why did the bed he’d slept in comfortably for months suddenly feel like the floor?
As Cyril pondered this, a thought surfaced.
…Did I collapse?
Just earlier, he had been leaning against the headboard, reading a book.
Reading unsteady letters by dim light was one of his small pleasures.
Then he had seen a strange shadow by the window.
It had seemed suspicious, so he’d gone closer.
He’d seen something.
And the moment their eyes met, Cyril had blacked out.
Yes.
That was his last memory.
He was sure he had witnessed something extremely confusing.
What was it again?
Still keeping his eyes closed, Cyril continued thinking.
“Ariana! He’s not dead, right? He’s not dead, is he?!”
“No. He’s alive.”
Voices slipped into his fading consciousness.
“See? He’s breathing.”
A warm touch—probably a finger—briefly brushed beneath Cyril’s nose.
The overly clear voice felt strangely familiar.
Adrienne.
The name suddenly came to him.
Right. Adrienne definitely—
The moment he thought of her, the last scene he’d seen returned as well.
Cyril recalled two figures peering out in the darkness, lit faintly by moonlight.
There were two of them.
A chill ran through him.
Cyril startled and opened his eyes.
As his blurry vision cleared, the surroundings came into focus.
Two pairs of blue eyes were looking down at him.
Blue eyes like gemstones were familiar—
but seeing two pairs was not.
“He woke up! See? I told you he was alive.”
“Thank goodness… thank goodness…”
Staring blankly on the left was Adrienne.
On the right, with a worried, tearful expression, was Adrienne again.
Without thinking, Cyril fixed his gaze on the one to the left.
That one’s the real one.
The thought came naturally.
“Oh my—! My lady, could you please explain what on earth happened? First, let’s move the young master to the bed.”
With a loud crash, the door burst open and Jerome rushed in, quickly lifting Cyril into his arms.
Compared to before, the movement felt heavier.
That meant one of two things.
Either Jerome had gotten older—
or Cyril had gotten heavier.
Possibly both.
As he was carried to the bed, Cyril found himself hoping it was the latter.
That would mean he’d gotten healthier.
“Reed wanted to see Cyril, but since Cyril was asleep, we didn’t want to wake him, so we just looked through the window a little.”
“We really were just looking. But then he suddenly collapsed. I think he got startled. We were too much, right? We didn’t mean to…”
As Jerome treated him, two voices spoke rapidly.
One word in particular caught Cyril’s attention.
Reed?
He felt like he’d heard that name somewhere.
Blinking twice, Cyril’s eyes widened.
“Reed?”
The heir of the Casinel family.
Adrienne’s older brother.
That name fit.
Reed de Casinel Blois.
Cyril had heard about Reed in passing before.
Adrienne often talked about her brother.
When Cyril had asked where he was, she’d answered,
“Reed’s with Grandma.”
Meaning Lady Blois—the matriarch of the Blois family, Adrienne’s maternal grandmother—kept Reed by her side due to her poor health.
Cyril had known Reed was her brother.
But he had never imagined they would look exactly alike.
Cyril alternated his gaze between Adrienne and Reed—her twin brother, born a mere five minutes earlier.
