What My Own Eyes Have Seen

Eleanor's eyes, fixed on the firmly closed door, darkened. The image of Viscountess Belvoir just before the door shut was still vivid before her—the woman worrying over the child she would leave behind if anything happened to her as well. The memory of her grief-clouded eyes brought a sting of heat to Eleanor's own.

This time, it will be different. It has to be!

"I'm thirsty……."

"……."

The words came out of nowhere. Just like that.

Eleanor, who had been clasping her hands together and anxiously waiting for the door to open, turned her head despite herself, dumbfounded by Joshua's complaint. Joshua, who had kept his silent vigil all this while, stood with his arms crossed, staring at her. She gave him no answer, no acknowledgment—she simply turned back to the door. She didn't even want to dignify it with a reply.

Hin scrunched up her face and blew a loud raspberry at him. Then she looked Joshua up and down, openly and deliberately.

"Shall I show you to the drawing room, then?"

Ever since she had witnessed his unexpected stunt—tracing the droplet clinging to the tip of Eleanor's chin with his index finger—Hin had been watching Joshua like a hawk. Like a mother bird shielding her chick, she stepped in front of Eleanor, blocking his path.

Hin had heard the rumors about this man—the second son of the barony, the young lady's fiancé. That he was cold and indifferent to everyone he met. Now that she had seen him with her own eyes, she knew the rumors were true.

Even so, it was in Hin's nature to have treated him with courtesy and proper manners. But reading Eleanor's face, she had decided that she herself had to step forward and protect the young lady from this man.

Hin knew perfectly well that she wasn't clever. But there was one thing she was confident in: her keen, almost instinctive ability to read her mistress's moods and respond to them the instant they shifted.

The young lady didn't dislike her fiancé—or so Hin had always believed. But today was different. Today, she genuinely despised him! And Hin believed that as Eleanor's faithful maid, she ought to move in perfect step with her.

The moment Joshua's gaze drifted to Eleanor's back, Hin glared at him fiercely and shifted her body squarely into his line of sight. The effort was, however, largely wasted—Hin stood only slightly taller than Eleanor. Joshua, irritated by her attitude, furrowed his brow.

"Are you telling me to go fetch water myself?"

"Why, yes."

Hin lifted her chin with cool indifference. There was real bite in her eyes, but Joshua paid it no mind.

"Shouldn't you be the one bringing it? I am, after all, your mistress's benefactor—and her fiancé, at that."

Eleanor had resolved to hold her tongue rather than trade words with Joshua, but that remark forced her head around. When their eyes met, he simply shrugged.

"I did save your teacher's life. Surely that qualifies me as a benefactor? And as for the fiancé part……"

He let the sentence trail off, glancing sidelong at Eleanor.

"It happens to be true."

It wasn't a lie, but that did nothing to improve her mood. It was, after all, thanks to Joshua that Eben had arrived in time.

"You can offer your thanks once this door opens. I hardly think it will be too late then."

"You know perfectly well who Eben Groi is, don't you?"

As befitted the exclusive physician to the Grand Duchy of Prihoson, Eben's skill was exceptional. He was a talent among talents—admitted to the Imperial Medical Academy at the top of the entrance examinations and graduated at the top of his class.

True to his reputation, most of the patients under his care at the National Hospital walked away restored to health. The fact that a physician of such caliber had taken a post with House Prihoson had set society circles abuzz for quite some time. Eleanor knew his abilities better than anyone.

"I don't doubt his skill. But whether he cures the Viscountess is beside the point. I only believe what I've confirmed with my own two eyes."

It had been different in her past life—and that was precisely why she had realized far too late that Joshua intended to cast her aside. Eleanor barely managed to smother the fury rising in her chest. Not yet. Not yet. Joshua, of course, had no idea what was going through her mind.

"I fail to see how those are two separate matters."

Joshua shook his head as though the very notion were absurd.

"Wouldn't it put your mind at ease to trust Eben and simply wait?"

"Trust doesn't solve everything. I've already learned that the world doesn't turn the way I believe it should. So all I'm saying is that rather than believing blindly, I choose to believe what I've seen for myself."

At that loaded remark, Joshua looked at her—even Hin did. Eleanor met their gazes without so much as a flicker.

She doesn't yield an inch. Joshua let out a short laugh. To be precise, it was an unmistakable sneer.

Hin rolled her eyes, then soon took her leave first—having realized that Joshua wasn't going to get anywhere tormenting Eleanor.

Joshua simply gazed at Eleanor for a long moment. Then, step by measured step, he began to close the distance between them. Soon his gaze fell upon her tightly clasped hands. He had seen them a little while ago.

"So the woman who trusts only what she sees with her own eyes—did she gather those hands together and pray to God?"

Joshua recalled Eleanor with her hands folded in prayer and scoffed.

"People are strange creatures, aren't they? Their words never match front to back."

"……."

"Why do you all work so hard to lie?"

"……."

"My lady. Is that how you've lived all this time?"

Joshua treated her like a practiced liar. The moment Eleanor lifted her head to look at him, his face from her past life superimposed itself over the present one. The way he flew into a rage at everything she did. The eyes forever narrowed in displeasure. The cutting, reproachful tone of his voice. Joshua had drawn near before she realized it, and at the sight of him so close, Eleanor's face drained white and she stumbled back a step. However much she willed herself not to, her body reacted before her mind could stop it.

Joshua flinched at the look on her face, visibly startled. His posture turned awkward, as though he were the one who had committed some great wrong. But when Eleanor raised her eyes again, the confusion had vanished from them entirely, as if it had never been there.

"God is immortal, isn't He? I've never seen His true form, but I'm hardly the only one who believes—countless others do as well, so that faith can't be a lie. Are you saying the faith of all those people is false? God was never mine to believe in or dismiss at will. One simply believes. That's all."

Eleanor let the corner of her mouth curl upward, just as Joshua had done.

"And I don't actually think lying is a sin. Have you ever met a single person who's gone through life without telling one lie?"

At those pointed words, Joshua's brow creased.

"Is that meant to be about me?"

Eleanor put on an expression of artful mystification, as if she'd just heard something hilarious.

"I never said it was. But if that's how you took it, perhaps it would do you good to reflect—carefully—on whether you've ever wronged anyone with a lie, and to repent while you're at it."

What on earth is she saying? Frowning at her answer, Joshua found himself instinctively trying to cut her off. The more he listened, the more his head felt as though it had been plunged into boiling water, heat rising off it in waves.

The sidelong glances and whispered voices that followed me everywhere as I grew up. The endless comparisons to my brother, the pitying looks. Of everything I've endured in my life, this feels somehow the most humiliating of all.

Her tone was smooth and measured, yet Joshua could feel the deep contempt and loathing laced through her words. What he felt now was, if anything, worse than any insult he had ever suffered—certainly no less. Today, of all days, the buttons fastened all the way up to his throat felt unbearably stifling.

Just then, Eleanor pointed a finger at her own chest and spoke.

"And one more thing. I'm older than you."

"Is that supposed to matter right now?"

Joshua gave a short, incredulous laugh at the non sequitur. But to her, it mattered a great deal. Joshua was in the habit of speaking in casual, familiar speech to everyone he considered close. Eleanor's gaze turned frost-cold and razor-sharp.

"It matters to me. So if you want to be respected, you'll use polite speech with me from now on—every single time. Not one word of casual talk mixed in. Do I make myself clear?"

"……."

"If you must, you can simply call me 'big sister.'"

At the smile that accompanied it—sweet on the surface, lethal underneath, and asking you will, won't you?—a chill ran down Joshua's spine. Who was it that said it? That this woman had no learning, no refinement, no manners, and was meek and timid besides. He might have made peace with the rest, but that word—timid—didn't fit Eleanor in the slightest. Watching her set, unyielding face, so determined to bend nothing of her own will, Joshua clicked his tongue.

So the truly ridiculous rumors could never be taken at face value. In fairness, he did feel a flicker of remorse—he had judged her all this time on nothing but the gossip that circulated, without ever looking into her properly. They were engaged, and yet whenever their paths crossed, he had offered nothing more than a nod and a perfunctory greeting. It had never once occurred to him to wonder what kind of person she actually was.

But that didn't mean he had developed any fondness for this fiancée of his. In Joshua's eyes, Eleanor was still nothing more than a woman marginally luckier than himself.