Chapter 2-4

“……”

Ruelne stared at the letter.

Staring at it would not resolve the questions in his mind. Recently, as his body grew more comfortable, his thoughts had grown more tangled. He had too much time to think. It was inevitable. The better room he’d been given after receiving sponsorship was located near the main building, making it easier to attend morning classes.

For Ruelne, whose limited vision meant it took him twice as long as others to get anywhere, this saved him a great deal of time. And that wasn’t all. His once meager meals had improved; his body felt healthier than before, he had put on weight, and though it had only been a week, he could even feel that he’d grown slightly taller.

His clean uniform always carried the scent of sun-dried fabric. It fit comfortably, generous enough that climbing stairs no longer filled him with worry.

All of it was thanks to a sponsorship that claimed to ask for nothing in return.

No—there was a price.

This letter.

It was only when his patron sent a sixth letter that he finally, with proper courtesy, posed a polite question.

He truly was curious. What on earth was the scheme? What could she possibly want from him, to provide all of this?

And now, her reply lay in his hands.

Strangely, as he read the opening lines, he had the odd illusion that he could hear the unseen patron’s laughter.

The anonymous patron did not entirely conceal herself in her letters. Whether she realized it or not, the scattered clues were enough for a clever mind like Ruelne’s to begin assembling her, piece by piece.

A woman. Perhaps not very old. Wealthy. Properly educated.

…A businesswoman. And gentry.

‘Not the language of a noble.’

The epistolary style of the nobility was soft and flowing, yet hollow at its core.

Her letter, with its pursuit of efficiency, its talk of profit, its repeated mentions of trust, resembled that of a capable businesswoman far more than that of an aristocrat.

In that way, the patron revealed herself quite brazenly—without ever giving her name.

Masked behind the ridiculous title of “Tall Lady,” a parody of the popular “Daddy Long Legs.”

It gently stirred something long dormant—something he had not even known existed.

No. Not curiosity.

A hunting instinct.

“May I help you?”

He did not particularly enjoy being at school. It drew needless attention, and trouble found him easily. Among that trouble were the schemes of relatives who had no wish to see him rise again. So he often slipped away.

Ruelne knew very well that he was intelligent. Intelligent enough that he never forgot a voice once he had heard it. So it did not take him long to recognize that the woman who addressed him was the same one he had helped on the street not long ago.

She had brushed past him as if to collide on purpose; he had briefly wondered whether she was an assassin hired by his relatives. Instead, she turned out to be a scatterbrained woman who nearly got swept straight into a gutter after moving without looking.

“I have a spare pen. May I give it to you?”

Was it truly coincidence that he saw her again? Ruelne did not think so. There were no such things as coincidences in his life. That was why he accepted a kindness he would ordinarily have ignored.

The problem arose the moment their skin touched.

Ruelne felt something strange. A faint fragrance he had encountered somewhere before—like a cool breeze, like the scent of wildflowers…

‘This scent….’

His eyes widened.

Since his eyesight had weakened from the poison, the rest of his senses had developed dramatically, as if compensating—his sense of smell, taste, touch. Of them all, his sense of smell had sharpened the most.

The woman seemed not to notice his agitation.

‘Could it be…?’

The instant a hypothesis formed, his sense of touch sharpened further. Soft skin, yet calluses at the same time. Hands that handled papers often. And that familiar fragrance, constant and unmistakable.

He held his breath for a moment. He didn’t know why he felt so tense.

Ever since his family fell and he was left alone, everyone had waited for his life to plunge into ruin. Even he himself had not expected resurgence, nor a blooming future. The most optimistic future he had imagined was revenge against those who had toppled him. Nothing more.

And yet the letter from the nameless patron was so gentle it seemed it might vanish if touched. He mocked its contents, but he could not say he was unmoved.

For to his exhaustion, it was the first shelter—like a bench offered at last.

In that moment, the woman’s hand slipped away.

“Well then, I’ll be going. Ah—I’ll be sitting just over there… I mean, to your right, sir. Just leave the pen on your seat when you’re done, and I’ll retrieve it.”

“Wait.”

The space her touch had occupied felt regretfully empty. He felt parched. Ruelne did not understand why he was overtaken by such unfamiliar sensations. Yet he knew he did not want to let this go.

The woman, her gaze fixed on his hand, failed to realize that his eyes were directed squarely at her face.

A faint silhouette—slender, but little more discernible than that.

Brown hair? Or blonde?

Ruelne felt a twinge of disappointment.

He remained seated for a long while. Pretending disinterest, how long had he lingered? It was near sunset when the woman finally rose.

Her attention had lingered on the letter in his grasp the entire time.

“You keep staring at that letter. I wondered if perhaps the sender had been rude enough to send something you couldn’t read.”

As he continued speaking with her, he felt something uncanny.

“If you dislike braille, why not ask someone to read it to you? These days, there are professional readers everywhere.”

It brought matters closer to what he had suspected.

‘As I thought… it’s her.’

At the mention of a reader, his doubt stood on the edge of certainty. A sudden whim surged through him. To extend something he considered his own—something he would never ordinarily do.

The woman hesitated, yet accepted his strange request. Unexpected.

And then—

“…I only hope that, as time passes, my actions may prove my sincerity better than this short letter ever could—that the day will come when everything is proven.”

At last, he was certain.

The fragrance from the letter and the scent that drifted from her whenever the wind stirred matched perfectly. Hands soft yet marked with firm calluses. A slender, gentle voice. A straight posture, though he could see only her outline.

The patron he had known only through letters stood before him.

Ruelne moved closer—close enough to share breath—wanting to capture the face of this unknown patron in his eyes.

…He could not. And that, too, was a disappointment.

“What do you think?”

“Mm? Pardon?”

“The contents of the letter.”

He could tell from her breathing alone that she was flustered. But it steadied almost instantly—as if she were someone accustomed to regaining composure.

“Well… I’m not sure who it is, but I can feel that they think about you a great deal. Perhaps they’re simply very concerned?”

“That would not be a good thing. A patron’s interest is rarely good.”

“No!”

She startled.

“Why assume that? It could just be pure concern—no, genuine feeling—for you to live well. It even says so here. You can’t see—ah. Ahem.”

A faint laugh escaped Ruelne. Unaware that she was staring at him blankly, he lightly covered his mouth with his hand, suddenly self-conscious.

“Yes. I cannot see.”

“Sorry…”

“Thank you for reading it to me.”

Ruelne rose. He extended a hand in her direction. It was time to take back what was his. No matter that it had been in the sender’s hands—this letter belonged to him.

“You have shown me such kindness, yet I did not even learn your name. I am Ruelne Scharnhost, a first-year at Cademel Private Academy.”

“Ah… um.”

He felt her lips press together. A brief, troubled breath.

“Unfortunately, it’s not a name worthy of sharing with a gentleman. Ah—and you may keep the pen. Goodbye!”

She turned and left at once. As if there were something about her ‘name’ that pricked at her conscience.

But left alone, Ruelne merely tilted his head, unflustered.

“Th-thank you so much for helping me. I’d at least like to know your name. Ah, mine is Jane…”

He already knew her name.

And so passed the first—no, the second—meeting with the patron known only to him.

“…Jane.”

A woman who had appeared out of nowhere, showering him with money and kindness.

A patron who boldly claimed to want nothing in return…

In a world where the more one possessed, the greedier one became, she was a peculiar existence indeed.

The young boy’s gaze lingered long in the direction she had vanished. As the sun slowly set, his beautiful violet eyes deepened in color.

For a very long time.

---

A month passed.

Strangely enough, people around Jane began remarking that her face had brightened considerably.

“What’s this? Got yourself a lover? Introduce him to me.”

“What are you talking about, Camilla? When would I even have time to date?”

“Oh please. Your face has completely lit up.”

It started with her business partner Camilla, then Max, her lawyer Glen, and even Bianca, the secretary who was always by her side. All of them said the same thing.

In truth, Jane felt it herself. The gloom that had once weighed down every corner of her life had begun to lift. Whatever she did, she enjoyed it, and she no longer pushed herself past her limits. She wanted to write to her sponsored student in the best possible condition.

‘Honestly, this has turned into something I enjoy even more, hasn’t it?’

It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling.

Of course, she hadn’t been able to see Ruelne since that day. She had resumed work. After deciding to cut ties with the Bellingham Merchant Guild, she’d had to choose a new trading company and practically rebuild her business from scratch, leaving her swamped from dawn till dusk.

‘Well, Ruelne will be just fine either way.’

If anyone was disappointed, it was only her.

One curious thing, though—at some point, Ruelne had begun replying consistently.

He had written back before, of course, but where he once responded to every two or three letters, now there was a reply for each one she sent.

If she had to pinpoint when it changed… yes. It must have been after the day she met Ruelne and read the letter aloud to him.

‘Ugh, my face was burning so badly I thought I’d die.’

Even now, just thinking about that day made her cheeks flush. Reading a letter she had written in front of its recipient felt unnervingly like reading her diary out loud. It was only bearable because she was nearing her mid-twenties; if someone had forced her to do that during her oversensitive teenage years, she would have bolted on the spot. Well—she had bolted that day too. For a different reason.

‘It’s a shame, but I can’t tell him my name.’

She had confirmed just how negatively Ruelne viewed the idea of patronage. So she resolved to take responsibility for him until his graduation without ever revealing her name or identity. Somehow, that felt like the only way to prove her kindness was genuine.

With a brief lull in her schedule, Jane opened her drawer. Inside lay a neat stack of carefully kept letters. She smiled.

The one resting on top was the reply to the letter she had read aloud to Ruelne that day.

What had come back to her was a letter far more sincere than she had ever expected.

That day, Jane felt a joy akin to a stray cat finally opening its heart and offering up its head to be petted.

So she immediately summoned Bianca, asked what a first-year student at Cademel School would need, and purchased a full year’s worth of supplies along with books said to be good for students—then sent them all to Ruelne.

She had originally intended to send all six years’ worth of materials at once, but Bianca had vehemently stopped her, insisting that trends changed every year.

And she’d even been scolded by her sponsored student. That day, she had felt a little dejected.

In any case, her gloom was fading with each passing day, and simply thinking of Ruelne gave Jane strength.

‘I’ll support him all the way to graduation—without ever revealing who I am or becoming a burden!’

Of course, she must never appear before him again.

Without knowing what Ruelne truly thought, she made that resolution firmly.

And that resolve lasted for a very long time.