Chapter 84

House Doak was a titled noble house. But they had no domain, and the whole of their property amounted to a modest Doak family townhouse in the capital. Like most nobles, their title was closer to an honorary one.

House Doak made its living by its brains.

Baron Doak's father had been a lawyer. The baron himself was a professor. His eldest daughter, who would inherit the title in due course, was a doctor, and she and her nurse husband had opened a hospital and were living off that.

They weren't wealthy enough to go trading on the title anywhere, but they lived comfortably enough. Baron Doak was tremendously proud of that.

A person must learn. Whatever you learn is worth something. And if there's one thing you've learned particularly well, you can make a living by it. Look — that's how our family has lived.

The youngest child, Leopold Doak, thought his father was right. But he didn't have the confidence to study his whole life the way his father and older sister had.

So Leopold became a soldier. The northern base was always short on hands, and Leopold was a welcome one. An academy diploma was all it took for Leopold to be treated as top-tier talent in the harsh north.

His father hadn't seemed particularly pleased about it, but he didn't stand in his youngest son's way. Both older sisters cheered him on. From time to time, before snow closed the roads for the winter, Leopold exchanged letters with his family. This year, with the commander heading to the capital earlier than usual and Leopold coming along, he'd secretly hoped that if he was lucky he might find the time to see his family.

Fortunately, the commander himself had told him to go home first, and Leopold headed there in high spirits.

"Father!"

But the sight of the darkened house told him something was wrong.

Maybe the family had just gone out. He hadn't been able to write ahead about coming to the capital, so it was possible. But for a spring day, the air inside the house was strangely cold — and something about it unsettled him.

Creak. A door opening upstairs. Slow footsteps. Leopold looked up.

"...Leopold?"

His father's voice came from the top of the stairs. Leopold's chest unclenched.

"Yes, it's me, Father. The commander came down to the capital this time and I came with him. It was a last-minute decision — coming down myself was faster than sending a letter."

"I see..."

"Why do you have the house so dark when you're home?"

Baron Doak came down the stairs holding a single dim lamp.

"...Father?"

His nightshirt was buttoned wrong, with some kind of unidentifiable stain on it. For the meticulous father Leopold knew, that was impossible.

The lamp wasn't bright, but the house was so dark the light felt unusually stark. With each step his father took down the stairs, the shadows shifted enormously. His father had always been on the thin side, but seeing his face — sunken to the point where there was nothing left but skin — Leopold felt a surge of worry.

Was he ill?

Watching his father's unfocused eyes, Leopold asked carefully.

"Father. Are you ill? Are you all right?"

"I'm all right..."

The murmur was so faint it was nearly inaudible.

"Father. You're really all right?"

"I said I'm all right."

Baron Doak nodded slowly.

He wasn't in any state where that answer could be trusted. Leopold tried a different question.

"Father. Where's my sister?"

"Your sister..."

"Father?"

Baron Doak answered after a long pause.

"She moved closer to the hospital in the fall. Said it'd be easier being nearby."

"I think she mentioned something like that in her letter last year."

In the last letter before snow had closed the roads, his eldest sister had written something along those lines.

But even setting aside his eldest sister the doctor, there was no trace of his second sister anywhere in the house. Had she moved too? The newspaper office was near his eldest sister's hospital.

"Father, is—"

"Your room's just as you left it."

Baron Doak cut him off. Judging by those unfocused eyes, it didn't look like he'd done it on purpose.

Baron Doak murmured, gazing at some point in the air.

"Andrea will come by tomorrow at lunch. The hospital's closed tomorrow, so she said she'd come. You'll see her without even having to reach out."

"That's... uh, good?"

"Mm..."

Baron Doak swayed slowly back and forth.

Leopold's mouth closed on the question he'd been about to ask about his second sister. Baron Doak looked at his son with hazy, unfocused eyes and then turned away. Watching his father go back up the stairs as slowly as he'd come down, Leopold turned on the living room light after he heard the bedroom door close.

The furniture had at least been kept up, and looked the same as Leopold remembered. He'd ask his sister when she came tomorrow. Leopold told himself so, optimistic. He had no idea what news was waiting for him.

"Leopold!"

"Sis."

"I didn't think you'd get here this early."

His eldest sister — much older than him — looked relieved as she pulled Leopold into a hug. Leopold, who'd been raised under Andrea's care ever since their mother had died, hugged her back and broke into a wide smile.

Andrea cupped Leopold's face in both hands and checked him over for any injuries.

"If I'd known you were coming today, I'd have brought your brother-in-law too!"

"Is he doing well?"

"Of course. How long are you in the capital? I'll have to call your brother-in-law over. We can have dinner together."

Andrea hugged Leopold again. His eldest sister had always been expressive, but something about her felt different from usual.

He couldn't have said exactly what was different, but it was clearly different. Leopold twisted to see Andrea's face.

"I heard the northern base is busy in the spring, so I thought it'd take you longer. Even the letter would have taken time to reach you."

"Letter?"

"I'm sorry, Leopold. I didn't want to tell you that kind of news in a letter..."

Leopold thought back to how strange his father had been.

His father hadn't come down even by morning. When he'd knocked, the answer that came back was that he was fine, but...

He'd never received the letter Andrea was talking about, but if she was making a face this worried... his father was gravely ill. Leopold bit his lower lip.

"Sis. Father..."

"Since Rosemarie died, Father hasn't been able to pull himself together. I thought seeing your face might help a little."

Andrea glanced up the stairs with a worried face. Toward their father's bedroom.

Their father was still trapped in the winter Rosemarie had died in. It wasn't that Andrea didn't miss her lost sister, but she'd been the one who had to hold it together. That sense of responsibility was what had kept her going.

"...What?"

"Father didn't have breakfast, did he?"

"H— hold on, Sis."

"Hm?"

Leopold caught Andrea's arm quickly, stopping her before she could go up the stairs.

Andrea looked at her youngest brother. His face had gone bone-white.

"What do you mean my sister died?! Why would she have died?"

Andrea's mouth opened slowly. Looking at his suddenly ashen face and shaking hands, she started to piece it together. Her own face went pale.

"Oh, Leopold."

Andrea pulled her brother into an urgent embrace.

"You didn't know?"

Leopold collapsed against his eldest sister. His father's strange state and the coldly dark house — it all made sense now.

"Oh, no. Leopold, I thought you knew. Father said he'd sent you a letter..."

"A letter? I don't know. I never got one."

Leopold clutched at a fistful of her skirt. He felt like an ignorant child.

"I... I came up to the capital for work. The, the commander... said I could go home while, while I recovered from the trip, and, and so I came..."

"I'm sorry, Leopold. I shouldn't have told you like this. I'm so sorry."

He wanted to dismiss it as a cruel joke and forget it. But his eldest sister's eyes, apologizing to him, were welling with tears.

The unsteady voice, the trembling hands. The changes weren't as drastic as their father's, but only now did he register how much thinner her face was than he remembered.

"There was a carriage accident in the winter. I wanted to reach you, but the road to the northern base was closed..."

Leopold looked at his eldest sister through a face streaked with tears. It didn't sink in at all. It still felt as if his second sister might come bounding down the stairs any moment and pull him into a hug.

He hadn't thought his sister's presence in his life could disappear in an instant like this. It was as if someone had simply cut her out with a knife.

"And so..."

In the end his eldest sister broke down crying too.

Leopold couldn't even begin to imagine how hard it must have been for her, going through it alone. The tears he'd only just gotten under control came pouring down again.

"I'm sorry, Leopold. You said you came to the capital for work?"

Leopold pulled himself together.

Even with the curtains thrown wide open, the house was oddly dark. If their father had been like this since winter... he couldn't keep piling more onto his eldest sister, who had already been overwhelmed with the hospital.

Rosemarie. Rosemarie too...

He couldn't get his thoughts in order. But he knew what he had to do.

"I— I need to step out for a bit."

"Hm?"

"To the— the commander. To ask for leave."

"Leopold?"

"I'll stay in the capital... as long as I can."

"Are you sure you're up to that?"

"Of course."

Leopold said it firmly.

What had he been doing this past winter? Grumbling about the endless snow coming down from the sky, probably. Clearing the snow piling up in front of the barracks, nothing worth remembering.

While Leopold had been living without a care, in the capital...

Leopold clenched his fist. He didn't want to fall apart any further in front of the sister who'd been through so much.

But Andrea seemed to have caught on to what her youngest brother was feeling; a faint smile crossed her face and she pulled him into one more firm hug. He'd thought he could hold his own by now, but in his eldest sister's eyes, apparently he still had a way to go.

Leopold couldn't remember how he'd left the house or gotten into the carriage. Somehow he must have managed to give the commander's residence as the address.

"Doak? What's happened? Is something wrong at home?"

When he came back to himself, Northern Commander Ricardo was calling his name with a worried look.

Leopold had meant to explain calmly. But he couldn't get himself as steady as he'd wanted. Ricardo held his shoulders and spoke slowly.

"Leopold. You settled?"

"...Yes."

As Leopold had expected, the commander granted him leave without hesitation. Worried about his father and sister, Leopold was about to head straight back home.

He'd been too distraught to even ask about Rosemarie's funeral or grave. If her accident had been in the winter, they would have held the funeral without him.

"Doak."

But a voice called him back. It was Sir Bertholdt — the very reason for this capital trip.

Leopold had asked a royal guardsman himself to let Sir Bertholdt know the commander had arrived, but he'd forgotten about it entirely until Harold's face was in front of him.

"Sorry, but there's something I need to ask you."

"Yes?"

"Your sister who died. Was her name Rosemarie Doak, by any chance?"

Leopold looked at Harold.

He hadn't hidden the fact that he had two older sisters from his fellow soldiers. But there was something a little sensitive about his second sister's situation, so he'd deliberately avoided going into detail.

Doak was a common enough surname, but there weren't likely to be two Doaks who had died in carriage accidents that winter. Even so, to ask that kind of question in the first place, Sir Bertholdt would have had to already know Rosemarie Doak.

"...How do you know that, Sir Bertholdt?"