Who Are You?

Her eyelids felt heavy.

The moment she registered that weight, the rest of her body's senses stirred awake one by one. Sensations she hadn't been aware of flowed into her mind in a slow tide, and reality gradually seeped into her skin.

Her first thought was that she was alive.

There was pain in her body, and every now and then an unfamiliar sensation prickled at her fingertips. At times a tightness seized her chest, squeezing at her heart.

Which meant that all of this — every ache, every sting — was something she could feel only because she had survived.

Her eyelids might as well have been deliberately glued shut. As she struggled against them, she felt a soft texture covering her cheek and the area around her eyes. Still floating in that hazy, adrift state, she managed to raise a hand with effort and roughly swept the thing off her face. Only then could she force her eyes open.

After a brief moment of adjustment, she was able to take in her surroundings.

Recognizing the crude ceiling of a barracks, she turned her head a little. Her neck was stiff and her head swam, but she could move well enough.

Beside the spot where she lay sat a folding chair, the seat slightly creased as if someone had been using it until quite recently, and next to it lay the disheveled contents of what appeared to be a field medical bag. Now that she thought of it, bandages were wrapped all over her body.

A smile spread across her face.

She had been saved. She had escaped that wretched demonic cave. The figure she'd seen just before collapsing had been no mirage, and in the end, she had lived.

"Ha…."

Covering her face with both hands, she bowed forward and let out a long, deep breath of relief.

She had no idea who had rescued her, or where she was, or what had become of her — but still, she was relieved. Granted, the moment her body recovered she would likely be dragged off to an interrogation chamber or an underground cell of the Order on charges of failing her duty. But looked at another way, the fact that she was the sole survivor would become her lifeline.

How had she even survived?

She calmly began to sort through her thoughts. Once they confirmed she was awake, a high-ranking priest would come straight away to assess the situation. When he did, she would have to raise her own value — letting precious information slip out slowly, making it impossible for them to simply dispose of her.

In the middle of her scheming, she happened to glance down at her palm, where that prickling sensation still lingered.

She had been an utter wreck when she fled the cave — her hands caked in dirt and blood — and yet they were clean now. Evidently whoever had tended to her had also tidied her up. If they had truly intended to treat her as a criminal from the start, they wouldn't have cared for her so attentively. That was, on the whole, an encouraging sign.

Besides, she now possessed a trump card of her own. If they refused to listen and tried to kill her, she had only to reveal her true identity. Then, at the very least, they couldn't kill her on the spot.

The more she organized the situation, the calmer her mind settled. Having finished washing up her thoughts, she pushed back the thin wool blanket that covered her. Apparently her clothes had been changed for treatment as well — she was wearing a thin, loose-fitting dress.

She had just carefully lowered herself off the bed and was beginning to rise when someone strode briskly through the barracks door.

"The Lux—"

He was a man of such imposing build that the doorway seemed to narrow around him. He had entered the barracks mid-conversation, and at the sight of her standing beside the bed, he stopped dead in his tracks.

It was unmistakably the same man she had seen before losing consciousness.

The certainty came the instant she saw his golden hair. The mouth of the cave had collapsed, and he had stood with his back to the sunlight pouring through the crack — that brilliantly shining gold hair, seared into her memory. And those clear, vivid green eyes that had stared straight at her.

"Ah — you're awake."

She had been staring blankly at the man, and now snapped back to herself. Behind him appeared a woman who, judging from their interrupted conversation, had evidently been speaking with him just moments ago. A white coat draped over a uniform of strange, unfamiliar cut — from her attire alone, she seemed to be a medic.

"How are you feeling? I've run every examination I could, and there's nothing in particular—"

At a slight motion of the man's hand, the woman, who had been chattering as she approached, shut her mouth at once and stopped. That alone spoke volumes about the hierarchy between the two of them.

Which meant that the person she ought to be speaking with right now was the man. The man who had saved her. Her gaze slid back to him — and for some reason, he looked rather troubled.

"If you intended to use my clothing for this purpose, you would have done well to report it to me beforehand, Knight Hina."

"I beg your pardon? Ah — that! My spare uniform was too small, and there was a risk it would press on the wound sites and aggravate your injuries. So I judged that the shirt of Captain Asselin, the largest man in the unit, was the most suitable option."

Listening quietly to this baffling exchange, she finally realized that what she wore was not a dress at all, but that man's shirt. And that the man was a vice-captain, that the woman beside him was presumably a knight as well, and that this place was likely a knights' barracks.

If they were knights — were they a holy order belonging to the Order, then? But their uniforms and armor were unfamiliar, and she had never seen these faces before.

The Order had no shortage of holy knights; it wasn't as though she could know every last one of them by sight. Still, she had been fairly well acquainted with those of high rank. The vice-captain she knew was not this man, but a middle-aged man with a thick beard and a ruddy flush to his face.

Given how strange their armor looked to begin with, it was far more plausible that all of them belonged to some newly founded unit. Though she'd never heard any word of a new unit being established….

Come to think of it — how much time had passed?

In the cave, the passage of time had been impossible to gauge. No one had ever tried to measure it precisely. It simply didn't matter. Whether a day had gone by or two — what difference would it make? They had all believed they would never again live to see the sun.

"Hina, step outside for now."

"Pardon? But now that she's awake, I need to conduct a follow-up examination—"

"Wait in the corridor. I'll call for you presently."

Cut off so decisively that further protest was clearly not on the table, the woman called Hina quietly fell silent. She gave a wordless bow and left the barracks.

Only after confirming she was gone did the man turn to face her. The trace of bewilderment that had flickered across his face for an instant was now settled into calm.

"My name is Asselin Frixus. In my modest capacity as Vice-Captain of Radilion's Central Holy Knights, I carry out the teachings of the Order."

"Ah…."

…The Central Holy Knights changed their armor recently? And — vice-captain?

Blinking rapidly, she pressed her lips together. No matter how many times she turned the name Asselin Frixus over in her mind, nothing came to her. The surname Frixus seemed vaguely familiar, but if nothing concrete surfaced, it could hardly be a house of any consequence. And yet — could a minor family produce a vice-captain in a matter of days, or even weeks?

Had there been some sweeping reorganization after the punitive expedition's failure…?

"Do you understand what I am saying?"

At her long silence, Asselin asked calmly. Only then did she hurry to nod.

"I understand. Though the vice-captain of the Central Holy Knights, as I remember him, is not you."

She broached it carefully, lacing her words with the suspicion that he might be concealing something — and at that, Asselin fell briefly silent, a strange expression on his face. She stared at him with narrowing eyes, her suspicion hardening into conviction, and spoke again in a voice far colder than before.

"Does Vice-Captain Actaeon know that someone is going around impersonating him like this?"

Dropping the vice-captain's name so freely had been a deliberate show of force. A warning, letting them know not to lay a careless hand on her.

But Asselin showed no sign of alarm. If anything, his expression grew stranger still — like a man who had just heard something he could not possibly believe.

"There is something you were trying to tell me, just before you lost consciousness. Do you remember it?"

"No. I wasn't in any state to think at the time."

Was she imagining things? She felt as though she were the one being interrogated — though Asselin wasn't brandishing a weapon at her, or even glowering at her with menace.

"Then I shall ask you directly."

His voice was perfectly courteous, and yet an undercurrent of pressure pressed in on her from somewhere. Perhaps it was the sheer bulk of him. She swallowed dryly without meaning to.

"Who are you?"