My Wife Waited in the Wheat Fields - Chapter 34: #Memories (2)

PR: Cursed

Normally, when one thought of the sun going down, one would think that the world was being shrouded in darkness and silence.

But that day had been different for her.

“Young Lady!”

“Young Master!”

The entire neighborhood had been in an uproar, with servants of both houses searching for Elric and Tyria, who hadn’t returned home.

Tyria’s heart had been pounding in her chest, but Elric had just smiled as if he was used to it and continued to lead her on.

“Come on, let me show you my secret base!”

He led her to a spot under a stone bridge at the mouth of the village.

There stood a tent that sagged cozily, and despite the shade, it didn’t feel too humid.

Inside the tent, completely cut off from the outside world, Elric had lit a fire.

In the flickering light, his gaunt face showed no sign of anxiety.

Tyria had been intrigued, and asked.

“Aren’t you scared?”

“Of what?”

“Eh? If you get caught, won’t you get in trouble…?”

It wouldn’t just be a scolding.

There would be corporal punishment beyond anything she’d ever experienced before, and maybe she’d have to live under strict surveillance, never to go outside again.

So she had asked him if he was afraid of that, and his answer had still been the same as before.

“It’s okay! My dad doesn’t care about me!”

He had sounded cheerful, but it didn’t take long for her to realize that there was a hint of sadness in his voice.

It was something new for Tyria, to see such a thing in the normally cheerful child.

Perhaps that was why her curiosity about Elric had intensified.

A sense of identification, of sympathy, overlaid her gaze as she watched him.

She wanted to ask.

What was his family like? Why doesn’t he get along with them? How did he hold on when they gave him a hard time?

But, before she could ask, Elric spoke.

“They say that my mother had paid the price of death for my birth.”

Tyria’s fingertips trembled.

Elric stared blankly into the fire and continued.

“They say that I was too big for her to carry me, and so they had brought in a doctor from the capital, who also said that she couldn’t make it.”

“…”

“My dad supposedly cried a lot that day, but I can’t really imagine it. My dad is always so expressionless after all.”

Crackle, crackle–

The fire flickered.

The light that was shining was just as wide as Elric’s face.

She wondered if it was because of the words or the atmosphere.

The hollowness of the fire had seemed to draw sadness across Elric’s face.

“I haven’t talked to Dad much. And he doesn’t talk to me much.”

Elric held up a branch.

He flicked it in the air, staring at the end of it.

And then he smirked.

“So I’m going to be a knight.”

“…So suddenly?”

“What do you mean, “suddenly”? Don’t you understand?!”

“…?”

Tyria didn’t understand.

Her common sense was too strong to understand the flimsy, if not nonexistent connection between having a bad relationship with one’s father and becoming a knight.

Elric sighed.

Then he shook his head and explained.

“Being a knight would make me higher than my father, and I’d be cool, so he’d never be able to ignore me again.”

Elric crossed his arms across his chest, acting very arrogantly.

Tyria blinked hard, then nodded.

“…Sure.”

There was no more argument to counter, and it was only a roughly improvised answer. In response, Elric exclaimed, “This is why it’s so hard to communicate with girls!” before venting his frustration.

To this, Tyria apologized insincerely.

“I’m sorry.”

“Huh? Why are you sorry?”

“Just…”

“Don’t apologize without a reason. You’ll look shallow if you’re the first to apologize.”

Herein, his logic still eluded her.

But this time, unlike his dreams of becoming a knight, his words had stuck with her.

The idea of not having to apologize was so foreign to Tyria at the time.

And so, for some reason, Tyria lowered her head due to a feeling of unease.

Then, feeling her face heat up, she replied in a shaky voice,

“…Yeah, I’m not sorry then.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah! When someone asks you what you did wrong, just throw a rock in their face so that they don’t say it again!”

“Hehehe….”

She had laughed.

Tyria had laughed so heartily that she didn’t know if she’d ever laughed so hard before.

She now knew the joy of laughing out loud.

And she liked the boy who taught her that a little better.

Of course, if one had asked if it was a crush, she would have said that it wasn’t.

Until that point in time, in Tyria’s mind, Elric had been a strange and curious peer, someone who it was fun to be around.

That was the only way she could describe their relationship.

Yet, that perception of hers had changed that night, funnily enough.

It was that time of night when drowsiness started creeping in, and Elric had already started dozing off, as his head rocked back and forth.

Due to the approaching winter, the night air was very cold.

Eventually, Elric, unable to resist his drowsiness, pulled out a blanket and said,

“Come here, let’s sleep now.”

There had only been one blanket, but it had been large enough to cover two small children.

Thus, Elric had embraced Tyria in his arms and rolled the blanket over her.

Tyria stiffened.

Then Elric patted her on the back.

“This helps me sleep. I know, because my nanny does it all the time.”

Tyria didn’t know the full story behind his words.

But surely enough, she did feel relaxed once Elric started patting her back.

And as her body relaxed, so did her mind.

Tyria had started thinking back to the events of the previous day.

Suddenly, she started to cry.

“Sob…”

Perhaps it was due to the extreme temperature difference.

But she saw that there was a large gap between her father’s outstretched hand, flying towards her in anger, and Elric’s hand, which patted her back in a soothing manner.

“Hmm…”

Tyria had never known human body heat to be so warm.

Her parents had never hugged her.

And every night, Tyria worried about what tomorrow would bring.

She often fell asleep wondering if she would be able to do well in tomorrow’s class, or if she would not be able to do well tomorrow at all.

So this was a first.

For the first time ever, today, Tyria wasn’t afraid of tomorrow.

“Hik…”

“What’s wrong?”

“Sob…”

“You’re crying again? Seriously, you’ll become a pro at crying at this point.”

Tears had streamed down her face and wouldn’t stop.

And Elric had grumbled, but he didn’t stop patting her on the back.

Tyria was grateful for that.

Burying her face in his arms, she felt the warmth deepen.

It felt warmer here than in the cozy rooms of the manor, and the boy’s body temperature in the tent under the bridge was warm enough to make her feel hot inside.

That must be why.

The reason why Tyria had slept without nightmares that night.

Instead, she dreamed of being bathed in sunlight in a green garden.

It wasn’t until the next morning that she realized why she felt so warm in her dream.

She hadn’t let go of Elric until the moment she had woken up, and she had shared his warmth all night.

When she finally opened her eyes to the brightness of the morning, she saw Elric still there and had realized,

‘I’m not scared.’

With Elric by her side, she wasn’t afraid of going to sleep or waking up in the morning.

He was a boy who made it so.

He was the kind of person who would build a giant fence around another so that they were not afraid of anything in the world.

It was a love still young, but a love nonetheless.

The kind that only made one’s heart flutter.

It wasn’t about not wanting to be apart or wanting to stay together.

The infantile idea of taking eternity for granted clearly belonged to the realm of children, and that was why it was something that touched on the essence of first love.

Tyria smiled wryly and wringed her hands, for she had lived her life without Elric up to that point, and now it seemed as if she could not live without him.

Then Elric had stirred.

“Mmm… It’s stuffy.”

Elric grimaced as he opened his eyes.

They had slept so closely together, snuggled in the blankets, that their faces had been only inches from each other, their noses almost touching.

Tyria’s heart had started racing in excitement.

Elric, with his eyes clear, as if he had been awakened from a dream, looked just like a prince from a fairy tale.

“Ugh, Ugly.”

…If only he hadn’t opened his mouth.

“Turn your face away, you’re scaring me.”

“No.”

“What?”

“No. And I’m not sorry.”

Tyria had finally found a dream to reach for that day.

It wasn’t just a dream she had when she slept, but an ideal she truly wanted to fulfill.

She wanted to go to sleep with Elric and wake up with him every day.

And she knew how she could make that happen.

“I want to marry you.”

Her father and teacher had always said that if two people got married, they would be together every day.

The girl who had been living only due to the desires of others, the girl who had just awakened to her own desires for the first time, had spoken bluntly and directly.

But there was something she couldn’t predict.

“I don’t want to, you’re ugly.”

Marriage was supposed to be something mutually agreed upon.

And,

“I’m going to marry a beauty. In knight stories, they always marry a beauty in the end.”

That day, Elric had been a naive six-year-old who had lacked maturity.