The Nature of Rumors
"I'm sorry. I must have gotten confused for a moment. Please don't mind it."
Maeve spoke as she opened the carriage window, her chest tight with frustration. Only then did the boy uncross his arms.
She recalled how the butler had been watching the nanny's face for cues, and it was not difficult to deduce that the nanny was the one orchestrating everything.
What is she trying to gain by pulling a stunt like this?
Staring blankly out through the open window, Maeve sank into thought; the smile slowly faded from her face.
Once they crested a small hill, the road became neatly ordered, quite unlike the streets near the academy. Ornamental flowers, carefully tended, bloomed everywhere in beautiful displays that stole Maeve's gaze.
Aern, bothered by the woman whose expression had suddenly turned grave and emptied of laughter, turned his eyes in the same direction with a puzzled look. Finding nothing special in the scenery, he asked in a peevish voice,
"…What."
Maeve, chin propped on her hand and lost in thought, was pulled from her reverie by the boy's sulky tone.
She lowered her hand and turned her head toward Aern. Confirming the faintly restless look on his face, she deliberately smiled until her eyes curved.
"I was just thinking, young master."
"Thinking?"
Aern frowned as if he could not make sense of it. But Maeve had no intention of honestly sharing her worries with him.
In a situation where she could not tell how Aern regarded the nanny, she had no desire to poke a sleeping tiger for no reason.
"I was wondering when the young master might start treating me as his teacher."
The woman showed a mischievous smile and looked the boy straight in the face. At her voice thick with teasing, Aern's face crumpled as if he had heard something he should not have.
"Even if I'm only a temporary tutor, how long did you plan to keep speaking to me so casually? Between master and pupil, mutual respect is necessary."
"…I don't want to."
Maeve widened her eyes as if she had not quite caught that and kept smiling brightly. It was a silent pressure to hurry up and call her Teacher.
"Come on."
"…You're going to leave again in a few months anyway, so stop pretending to be a teacher."
Aern snapped sharply. The boy's short words held several suppressed emotions. Maeve caught the deepest and most sincere among them.
Distrust and irritation. Beyond those lay a thick revulsion. Even for a child still unskilled at hiding feelings, it was not an emotion one expected to find at this age.
What had made him this way? Had the previous tutors who never lasted long also been bought by the nanny? The woman wondered as she opened her mouth.
"Well. I don't know what the former tutors were like, but I will be different, young master."
A gentle breeze slipped through the open window frame in the clear weather and brushed past Aern's hair. A sweet floral scent drifted into the carriage with it. Aern frowned and let out a laugh of pure disbelief.
Whether it was mockery aimed at Maeve or self-mockery, the small snicker filled the quiet carriage. The boy opened his eyes for a moment and stared straight at the woman's face.
"Lie."
The answer came back cold and firm enough to frost over. In the way he spoke while staring fixedly outside without meeting her eyes, there was not a shred of expectation or hope toward her.
"Everyone's the same."
The sulky child jerked his chin up and glared at her fiercely.
Maeve briefly considered how to respond to Aern's defensive attitude. The previous tutors had worked so briefly that she had no proper information about them.
"Did something happen with the previous tutors? Was there anything in common about why they left?"
Maeve asked the boy in a worried tone. At her question Aern stiffened, unable to answer, and stuck out his lip while looking down at the floor for a moment. After scratching the back of his neck several times, he said,
"…I don't know. They hated being stuck with me from the start—do I have to know why they quit too?"
A twisted smile unsuited to a child remained thick on his face. The memory of five tutors changing in a single year had clearly been a great shock to him. Aern scratched the back of his left hand and turned his gaze the other way.
"I asked so that I would not make the same mistakes they did."
Maeve confirmed the reddened back of Aern's hand and neck, erased the faint remaining smile, and answered.
Instinctively understanding that a playful approach here would only backfire, Maeve looked at Aern with a serious face.
"I don't want to hurt you, young master. I want to become a teacher you can trust and rely on. Will you help me?"
The moment he heard the woman's calm voice, Aern's eyes wavered aimlessly as if they had nowhere to go.
His hands, which had been still for a while, fidgeted; he squeezed one sleeve with the other hand and mumbled. Aern cleared his throat low.
"…It's obvious without looking. They probably didn't like teaching a half-blood."
The boy said with a crooked smile. Aern sprang up from the seat and roughly shut the carriage window.
Maeve's gaze went to the boy's mottled, swollen neck and the backs of his hands. Seeing his eyes slightly bloodshot, she frowned and looked beyond the window. Outside, hyacinths bloomed beautifully in rows.
"If my attitude was even a little off, they'd say of course, given my origins."
Maeve turned her eyes and met his, yet could not bring herself to say a word.
"When I did my best they'd rant that I was just trying to mimic the surface, and then what did they want from me."
Even people long steeped in noble society found the vicious rumors of high society hard to endure. For a boy still attending the academy to bear them must have been harder than she could imagine.
"Adults just need someone to tear down while they drink tea."
His mood thoroughly soured, the boy snorted and stared hard at her. The eyes that still held a touch of baby fat and looked round sharpened upward; the red irises rather resembled the duke's.
Those piercing eyes seemed to say that she too was just another adult. Maeve pressed her lips tightly shut.
"So I lived up to those expectations. Happy now?"
This was not criticism aimed solely at Maeve. Only now could she understand the boy's constantly edged manner.
To this child, adults had never been people he could lean on. Already wounded to the limit, the boy muttered as if spitting venom. The long-suppressed rage burst free and the corner of his mouth trembled.
"I don't even know why you want to be my teacher, but if you've heard everything you wanted to hear, just disappear from in front of me."
It was a voice packed tight with anger.
"It's annoying."
The boy muttered low. Maeve had no idea what words she could offer to comfort him here.
"What do you even know that you keep butting in since last time."
Maeve listened to Aern to the end and slowly closed her eyes. She calmly arranged the words that rose in her mind.
"Then, do you plan to live like that for the rest of your life?"
The words came out so calmly that even she was surprised.
"Close your eyes, cover your ears, turn away from reality, and stay still until everyone loses interest—until someday this harassment turns toward someone else?"
The boy who had been scraping the carriage floor with his toe lifted his head at Maeve's words. His face said he had no idea what she was babbling about. His mouth was clamped shut as if he were grinding his molars.
"What? What are you saying right now."
"Enduring can sometimes be a good solution, but in a case like this it is not a particularly good idea."
Maeve knew better than anyone that these were not words one should say to a wounded child. Yet as someone who knew the terrible ending this kind of avoidance had produced, she found it hard to stay silent.
"Since I am nominally a temporary tutor, shall we begin a lesson a little early?"
Maeve straightened her back and neatly folded her hands.
"First, rumors have a nature of their own."
She began explaining slowly to her new pupil.
"There are rumors that naturally fade with time, and there are rumors that swell and come to be treated as fact the longer time passes—even if they are not true."
The boy blinked his narrowed eyes. From the lips drooping as if they would bore through the floor and the arms crossed, it was clear he found the woman bothersome, but she paid it no mind and continued.
"When the subject of the rumor is insignificant, or the rumor is not sensational, or the difference between rumor and fact is quickly exposed, it falls into the former category, and there is no need to respond directly to such rumors."
Maeve unfolded her fingers one by one, counting them out in front of the boy.
"So what."
Maeve looked at Aern's somewhat surly expression and spoke clearly.
"Unfortunately, young master, you match none of those three."
She folded her fingers one by one again as she continued the explanation.
"The subject of the rumor is the heir who will succeed the great northern house of Cardenas; it is a matter of bloodline; and for nearly two years the rumor has never been corrected."
She was not speaking from guesswork. In her previous life Aern had never been free of that half-blood stigma until the day he died.
Even regarding his final sacrifice, people had crossed the line and said that if base blood was to inherit a ducal house, that much had to be endured.
"If you leave it alone, even after you inherit the dukedom the half-blood label will follow you forever. The day you make even a small mistake, high society will grow noisy again."
The hand that had been crossed twitched. Sensing the agitation, Maeve quickly pressed on.
"Is that what you want?"
At her words Aern gripped his forearm tightly with his hand. The well-ironed shirt wrinkled in the boy's grip. After biting his lower lip for a long while, the boy finally opened his mouth.
"What if I say I don't want it? Does that change anything?"
It was the attitude of someone who had already given up. The thin laugh leaking from the corner of the child's mouth felt a little sorrowful.
"And heir?"
This time Aern truly seemed to have heard something absurd; he let out a deep sigh and tilted his head slightly downward.
The shape of the boy's mouth paused for an instant at "Du—." Thinking he had nearly revealed the distance between himself and the duke in front of someone again, the child closed his mouth.
After hesitating a moment he finally gave up on correcting it and spoke in a bristling tone.
"Does His Grace even intend to pass the title to me?"
His insides twisted; the eyes looking up at the woman had gone cold.
"He only keeps repeating that I should do as I like and shows no interest in me at all. If he thought of me as the heir… if he even thought of me as a son, he would have sent at least one letter."
Listening quietly to the child who poured out the words in a rush of spite, Maeve noted the matter of the letter in her mind and opened her mouth softly.
"Conversely, young master—do you yourself have any desire to become the heir?"
Aern closed his mouth.