Please, Be Alive

Alpheus sat for a long while without a word, his mind gone utterly blank. The night forest was bitter enough to chill a man to the bone, and yet he only drew his coat tighter around the remains and sat there, staring into nothing.

I don't know.

His Jewel Eyes glimmered, dark. From the day he lost his parents in an accident, through the years he rose alone into Alpheus's place and took his stand at the vanguard of the Aristocratic Faction, he had clenched his teeth and driven himself without rest. But the Emperor, bent on taking the Aristocratic Faction by the leash, had forced an engagement between him and the imperial princess, and everything had come apart.

You did nothing wrong.

Because of that engagement he had belonged to the Aristocratic Faction and still been forced to weather the nobles' suspicion, and the Emperor's as well. Every day had felt like walking on thin ice. And so he had hated the Emperor's daughter. Isabel.

Looking back now, though, the princess had done nothing wrong at all. She, like him, had only been another victim of the political war.

"I was a fool past all forgiving."

Because the betrothal had been forced on him, Alpheus had given Isabel nothing but crueler words, and tried all the harder to withhold his heart. He had resented her. Even so, she had met their engagement with quiet faithfulness, and now and then she had tried to look after him.

Slowly, Alpheus lifted his head and stared blankly into the empty air.

"Ha……."

Had he already accepted her without even knowing it? Was that why he had tried so hard to push her away?

Realizing his own heart far too late, he began to weep, tears falling one after another. He could not remember the last time he had cried. Even when he had lost his parents without warning, he had been too busy surviving what crashed down on him to shed a single tear.

"I've lost my mind."

And yet now the tears came like madness. Alpheus let out a hollow laugh and scrubbed them roughly away. He wiped and wiped, and when they kept coming regardless, as if the absurdity of it finally reached him, he stopped wiping and laughed. Then he drew his back perfectly straight and clutched the remains in his arms still tighter.

"Fool."

His body shook, and his vision blurred, but he did not bow his head. He could not. Born a noble and raised a noble, he had never been permitted to lower his head to anyone but the Emperor. Seen from a distance, a man weeping with his spine held so rigidly upright did not look as though he were weeping at all.

He sat that way for a long time. Then, into the dark gone soft with tears, he lifted a trembling hand.

"……Please."

He dragged his face across his shaking palm and let out a hollow laugh thick with grief.

"Please, be alive."

He wished for something that had no hope of coming true. He begged and scraped as if his hands might wear themselves into feet—and then, all at once, Alpheus seized the flowers.

"No. You're alive, aren't you?"

Laughter broke from him, wild, his face gone mad.

"Dead? You? You're alive."

For a long while he swung back and forth between the two. Then, in a single instant, he collapsed.

Only then did the head that had never learned how to bow finally lower. He ground his grief-wrecked face against the earth, and with dirt smeared across his cheeks he broke into sobs like a child.

"Forgive me. Please—say something to me."

He pounded the ground with his fist again and again, and a beastlike wail spread through the trees.

"No, no…… you were startled, weren't you. I—I frightened you……."

When the remains slipped from his arms to the ground, he snatched them up in a panic and clutched them to his chest. Then he soothed and coaxed and apologized, asking whether his own shouting had scared her. How many times he repeated it—weeping, laughing, begging forgiveness like a man unhinged—he could not have said.

At last Alpheus drew Isabel's remains close and, for a moment, stopped everything. His cheeks were mottled with the tracks of tears.

Rustle.

A small sound stirred the forest that had been still: something moving through the undergrowth. At the noise Alpheus's eyes flew open, as if the madness had been nothing but a trick of the dark, and he glared toward it.

"Who's there."

The forest gave no answer.

He studied the brush, then rose and set one foot forward, then another. Following the sound, he realized before long that he had come to the place where the carriage he had ridden earlier still stood, and his eyes narrowed.

Rustle, rustle…….

Someone was standing beside the carriage, tracing the crest carved into its side with their fingers.

A thief? At this hour?

Alpheus drew his brows together, trying to make out who it was—and then his eyes went wide.

Platinum blond?

Hair of purest white-gold. Deep in the night, seen by moonlight alone, it spilled loosely from beneath a hat and shone.

Alpheus moved slowly toward the figure. The figure, as if it had sensed him in turn, turned around.

"……!"

Had the moonlight bewitched him? There was no other explanation.

"Isabel?"

Why am I seeing you?

"Isabel?"

My head hurt so badly I clutched it and groaned. The more the man raised his voice, the worse the pain became. It felt as though my skull were splitting, and I could only stand frozen, nailed in place. My teeth locked of their own accord.

What is this?

He had already pressed in close. His hand closed on my shoulder, and he shouted.

"Isabel, is it you?!"

Isabel? What is Isabel?

I met the eyes of the man holding me. They glittered so like jewels that I could see myself, clear as glass, inside them.

"This is a dream—no, a hallucination—what is this……."

He fumbled at my cheek, then traced my eyes and my nose with his fingertips, as if he had to confirm each one.

"Impossible…… this, right now, I……."

I wanted that hand gone. My chest was blazing hot and ice-cold at once, and I clenched my fist as if I might swing at him that very moment, but no strength would enter it.

Then, as if someone were whispering at my ear, voices reached me.

Only then did I know who this man was.

The one who had tormented me in memory. The one who made me sick just to look at him. Instinct screamed at me to run.

Smack!

I barely clawed my wits together and struck away the hand that held me. When I lifted my head and glared, he startled and stumbled back.

"Your eyes—"

I used that stunned instant to retreat, then kicked off the ground and ran.

"Isabel!"

A shout like a scream chased me, but I did not stop. Breath climbed all the way to my throat. My mind was a blank. My head still throbbed. I ran for a long while without a single thought, until a familiar scent caught me and I remembered him at last.

I want to see the furball.

……I changed direction.

Chesian raked a hand back through his hair, his face worn thin with exhaustion and shining with sweat.

"It's the forest."

Before him a pitch-black wood gaped, as if it meant to swallow him whole. A forest at night was dangerous, but he had had no choice except to run without rest toward this one, a fair distance from the village. At the inn where he had happened to take a room, the woman who handed him the key had said she had seen the zombie.

When he said it with that darkened face—the companion who had come with him—the woman's eyes narrowed.

He nodded and took the key. For a moment her eyes went wide; then she tilted her head, as if something did not sit right.

Urgency made him press her, question after question. Flustered at first, she gathered herself and went on, clear and steady.

"Where in the world are you."

He refused her advice that the hour was late and he ought to wait until tomorrow, and went straight for the forest to find the zombie. But the wood was dark, and searching it for a zombie was too dangerous even for Chesian.

"This is a problem."

The forest kept a stark divide between night and day. Green and beautiful, it was a place lovers often sought. Once night fell, though, it became the haunt of every sort of beast and monster—a thoroughly ominous ground. At the cry of some animal far off, Chesian squeezed his eyes shut.

I let my heart run too far ahead.

To wander a forest on a night like this, he should have brought at least a small knife. All he held was a single lantern from the inn.

"This is enough to drive me mad."

He had heard only that the zombie was in the forest and come running like a lunatic, and so he had brought nothing at all.

"Go in there and I might die."

Even he knew it was madness. He was simply too worried about the zombie to see anything else.

"……."

He stood a moment at the edge of the trees, then lifted his head. For a while he watched, in silence, the leaves shivering in the wind.

Step. Step.

As if the hesitation of a moment ago had been a dream, he walked into the black forest without a shred of pause. The wood took him the way a mouth takes prey, and in an instant it swallowed the lantern-light in his hand.

"Where in the world are you."

Sweat poured like rain. The lantern flickered, its glow gone faint, as if it might die at any moment. Chesian's violet hair was soaked through and clung to his face. In the wavering light his expression was drawn tight.

No matter what happens, I have to find her.

Just then he heard grass brushing past.

Swish! A gust—!

A wind slammed through at the same moment, and the lantern, already near the end of its life, went out.

The wind?

Chesian searched the sudden dark. When his eyes had adjusted enough to see, he set his teeth. He had stopped where he stood, and still the sound of something moving through the grass went on.

A beast. Or a monster.

He glanced about for anything he could use as a weapon and found nothing. A bleak, empty laugh left him.

Damn it. A perfect way to die.

He had already run himself empty getting here—stamina gone, strength gone. Being eaten was all too likely.

"Grrrh……."

A beast's cry rose from nearby, and he lifted his head.

A wolf?