Tuition Fee
At Alexei’s words, Mikhail roughly raked back his platinum-blond hair—hair that somehow always looked fine no matter how carelessly he treated it.
“Is that your type? Filthy tastes you’ve got.”
What made Mikhail famous at the gambling tables, second only to his skill, was his face. Amid the rough, liquor-soaked men with bulbous red noses and burly frames, his lean, solid build and striking features stood out with brutal clarity.
Pale skin, delicate lines of face and body. Above all, that arrogant gaze that seemed to look down on everyone. Some whispered that Mikhail must be the bastard of some noble house. It was true, but he had never felt the least desire to confirm it.
“Don’t get the wrong idea, kid. A male? The meat’s tough and the stench is foul. And I don’t take women younger than myself. There’s no ripe flavor to them. Preferably a widow not long after her husband’s death—there’s a certain amusement when she calls my name while still crying out for him.”
“……”
Crazy bastard’s dogshit taste, Mikhail thought, but he didn’t bother saying it aloud.
“What I need is a quick-witted little shit who can lie without blinking. Even better if the face is halfway decent. Word came that a promising one had turned up, so I came to collect him.”
At that, Mikhail reached out and took the gold bar.
“Too bad. Looks like you’ll be going home empty-handed.”
The game ended quickly. Mikhail won. Even as the gold vanished into his coat, Alexei only grinned. That night Mikhail was loaded into the cargo hold of Alexei’s carriage and hauled off to his mansion.
It began with merciless beatings.
“It’s not that I particularly hate you. I simply need to break you in a little.”
Alexei said it while driving his fist into Mikhail, who was bound in the cellar. For all his talk of taming, he rather enjoyed the way Mikhail glared as though he meant to kill him. The endless thrashings went on for days and nights without end.
What the hell does this lunatic want?
Had he brought him here just to beat him to death? Yet he never hit quite hard enough to kill.
Then one night the man who always brought the meals slipped in and untied Mikhail’s hands and feet.
“I’ve got a little brother just like you. Hurry and run.”
“Thank… you.”
Having offered thanks to someone for the first time in a long while, Mikhail fled wildly toward the exit. The instant he emerged from the cellar—
“Took you long enough.”
As though he had been waiting, Alexei stood at the entrance with his arms folded.
“How…?”
You knew I would run, didn’t you? Ignoring the stunned Mikhail, Alexei called back down the corridor.
“See? I told you he’d just charge out without a shred of suspicion.”
A voice laced with snickering laughter drifted up from the dark basement hallway.
“Dumber and more naive than I expected. He even thanked me.”
The man who emerged laughing was the same one who had just freed him, claiming he looked like a younger brother. From the two men’s amusement Mikhail understood at once that they had been toying with him.
“You bastards—!”
But before he could reach Alexei a fist slammed into his gut again and darkness took him. When he woke he was bound in the same place once more. After that the same farce repeated: every time he thought he had a chance and bolted, Alexei was waiting.
Then came the day he freed himself. Mikhail did not leave. He simply sat and waited for Alexei to arrive. When the man finally entered, Mikhail spoke.
“I can’t leave this place until I kill you.”
“Those are the words I’ve been waiting for.”
From that day on Mikhail went everywhere with Alexei. People said that Alexei, who had neither wife nor children, had recognized the boy’s talent and taken him as an adopted son. Every time Mikhail heard it he had to fight not to laugh out loud.
Alexei taught him many things. First, from the cellar onward: trust no one. The world was full of hostility; everyone was after you; give your heart to nothing and no one. Only then could you protect the fortune he would one day hand over—and your life along with it.
Next came knowledge. Letters and numbers, scholarship, architecture, shipbuilding, trade, foreign tongues…. There was no end to what Mikhail had to learn.
“Your Ils is still pathetic. How do you expect to close a single deal like that?”
The moment Mikhail misspoke, Alexei slapped him without mercy. Staggering, Mikhail refused to fall; he worked his tongue again and spoke proper Ils.
He mastered the refined Novgord vocabulary even nobles rarely used. He learned to read ledgers and hunt for loopholes. He learned to fire a gun and exactly where to stab a man so he died at once.
To Mikhail, knowledge was nothing more than a means of survival. In all the time he spent learning, he never once enjoyed it.
Drawn from the past, Mikhail surfaced and looked at Anastasia diligently tracing letters. A smile still had not left her face.
A short while ago the page had been covered with his name; now it was full of the names of flowers. The letters were messy black-ink scrawls, yet somehow to Mikhail it looked as though flowers had bloomed across the paper.
Sensing his gaze, Anastasia lifted her head and met his eyes. The moment those green eyes locked with his, the unrest that had lingered from recalling Alexei after so long vanished at once, leaving him calm.
Always the green of a forest, he thought. Especially when he faced that deep, lucid transparency, it looked like a pond sunk in the woods.
“Lord Mikhail?”
At her voice he frowned. He had heard the title constantly, yet suddenly it grated. Wondering why the sound of his own name irritated him, he realized the useless honorific was still attached.
“Can we drop the ‘Lord’ now?”
“Pardon?”
Caught off guard, Anastasia wondered if she had been addressing him wrongly all along. Didn’t everyone call him Lord Mikhail? Igor, Yury, Natasha—every one of them. She had simply followed Natasha, whom she judged closest to her own station….
Was there some other proper form?
Hoping, she tried an honorific she had once overheard in passing.
“Then… Sir Mikhail?”
The crease between his brows deepened further. Wrong again, it seemed.
“I meant you may call me by my name alone.”
Afraid she would only spiral into fretting if left to guess, Mikhail finally supplied the answer himself. Anastasia looked ready to leap from her chair in shock.
“I couldn’t!”
“Why not?”
“Why not? Lord Mikhail is….”
She did not know how to explain. From their first meeting she had known he was different. A stranger who had appeared without warning in the world that had once contained only Edenhurst. At first she had been afraid, yet he had given her what no one else ever had.
He had offered his own clean, splendid, comfortable bed. He had brought a physician, given her medicine, gifted her new things of which she was the first owner.
When he returned he had saved her from danger, given her so many things she still dared not count them all, assigned her a maid, shared meals with her. And now—he was even taking time to teach her the writing she had so desperately wanted to know.
So Anastasia believed it: Mikhail was an angel God had sent to her.
No wings, no halo—yet a man who shone brightly enough without them that there could be no mistake. To call such a person by name alone….
The only people she had ever addressed by bare name were the children she had grown up with in the village long ago. After coming to Edenhurst she had rarely needed to call other servants directly, so attaching an honorific had become second nature.
“Sir? Dreadful. I’m still a commoner like you—I don’t even hold a title yet.”
“But…”
Still she hesitated, unable to speak his name. Mikhail suddenly seemed to lose interest; he drew back a little and said,
“If it’s difficult, there’s no need to force it. Let’s try writing some other letters instead.”
“……”
She ought to have been grateful he was not pressing her, yet somehow she felt disappointed.
Should I have tried calling it after all…?
If she practiced a few times it might stop feeling strange. Just once….
Just then Mikhail held a fresh sheet out in front of her.
“How did you say this is read?”
The paper was covered edge to edge with letters—the very ones she had practiced over and over the moment she entered the study, murmuring them in her heart as she wrote.
“Mikhail?”
When she read the name aloud he shrugged.
“See? You say it just fine. Call me that way.”
“Uh…?”
Briefly dazed, Anastasia grasped what he had done. He had tricked her into saying his bare name. Feeling somehow cheated, she sprang to her feet.
“Lord Mikhai—”
“Mikhail.”
He cut the honorific off cleanly and stepped in close. Because he came so near she might have touched him, Anastasia tried to retreat—only the desk was behind her. She ended up bracing both hands on its edge, looking up at him.
He had lowered his head slightly so their eyes met. It was a face she had seen every day for more than a week, yet her breath caught as though she were seeing it for the first time.
He was beautiful no matter when she looked—beautiful enough to erase every other memory the instant she saw him. Sunlight pouring into the study struck his bright platinum hair and shattered into brilliance. And the deep blue eyes facing hers: though she had never seen the sea, she thought the endless ocean must be exactly this color.
She wanted to reach out. What would that hair feel like beneath her fingers? The softest thing she had ever touched in her life had been the velvet of the shoe box he had given her; she had stroked it countless times because she loved the way it wrapped around her fingertips… yet somehow Mikhail’s hair looked softer still.
When her hand rose without thought, his face came even closer, as if inviting the touch. A lock of hair slipped free and swayed right before her eyes. In that instant Anastasia realized how dangerously close they stood.
It would touch.
The moment the thought formed she squeezed her eyes shut. Soft strands tickled her forehead. As though that were a signal, scorching heat flooded her face. Then something soft and yielding pressed lightly against her brow.
A brief, gentle pressure—then it was gone. Mikhail’s voice followed.
“Let’s call that the tuition fee.”
“…Pardon?”
When the startled Anastasia opened her eyes he had already stepped several paces back. He turned as though there was nothing more to see.
“Take the paper and pen and practice. I’ll take my leave.”
He left the study as swiftly as a man fleeing. Because of that, Anastasia never saw what he held in his hand.
In an instant he was gone. Alone in the study, she touched her forehead with a dazed expression.
Nothing rested there now, yet it felt as though a searing brand had been stamped into her skin.