PandoraHearts ~Caucus Race~, Vol. 2 (22 page)

In the end, Oscar emptied that bottle on his own and went home, looking satisfied.

After Break had seen him off in the corridor, he wondered whether he’d be all right to work tomorrow. Still, when he remembered his previous experiences of drinking with Oscar, he thought that, after a good night’s sleep, he’d be back at work as if nothing had happened, no matter how much he’d had to drink.

“I suppose you might even call that sort a ‘model drinker’… Well, I’ll take care not to emulate him.”

As he spoke, Break was conscious of a faint headache deep inside his skull.

“All right. Even I had a bit too much to drink. Let’s have some water, then—”

As he turned around…

“………………Break.”

Even though she should have been asleep long ago, Sharon was standing just behind him.

She wore a cardigan over her nightdress, and a dark, ominous aura over that. There was a tic at her temples, and as Sharon looked up at Break’s face, her eyes were steady and cold.

“Well, if it isn’t my lady. There’s a
beautiful
moon tonight, isn’t there.”

At Break’s cheerful greeting, Sharon said:

“…………………………”

Silently, she pointed into Break’s room:
Get inside.

As soon as she’d followed Break into the room, Sharon grimaced. “…I smell liquor.”

Then she looked around the room, counting the bottles scattered over the floor.

“There are ten of them… What is the meaning of this, Break?”

“Oscar-sama is truly unmanageable. He just barged in and helped himself to—”

“Be quiet. There’s quite enough liquor on your breath, too.”

Break had half been telling the truth, but when Sharon checked him sharply, all he could do was hold his tongue.

Ordered to “Sit down for a moment,” Break lowered himself into a chair.

Sharon took the other chair, across the table from him. She seemed amazed and disgusted more than angry, although she was probably that as well. Looking around the room once more, Sharon gave a long sigh. “Haaaaaaaaaah…

“—Break.”

“Yes?”

“I won’t tell you not to drink. I won’t say that, but…”

“Ah, I’m sorry, my lady.”

When Break raised his hand, interrupting her lecture, Sharon asked, “What is it?” Even as she spoke, she was glaring. “I’m thirsty, so I’m going to get some water,” Break informed her, getting up from his chair.

Watching the discontented Sharon out of the corner of his eye, he walked to the bedside shelf and poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher that sat on top of it. Returning to his chair, he drained it without coming up for air. Inwardly, he marveled at how plain water seemed like such nectar after one had been drinking.

“…Listen to me, Break.”

After waiting for him to finish his water, Sharon once again turned her sharp gaze on him. Break, who was feeling more like himself now, thought it would be prudent to listen like a good boy, and obediently looked small.

“I’m well aware that adults enjoy their alcohol. However.”

Sharon raised a brisk index finger and began the sermon.

“Although there is no problem with consumption in moderation, if you drink enough that the effects linger into the next day, it causes various issues. In any case, I hear that heavy drinking isn’t good for you… If you ruin your health with alcohol, believe me, no one will have any sympathy for you. And besides—”

Break had intended to at least look as if he was listening seriously, but the sense of intoxication that enveloped him was beckoning him to the depths of slumber, and his concentration kept breaking up.

Every time his mind strayed, the sharp-eyed Sharon would scold him:

“Break!”

And every time, he’d defend himself:

“I’m listening, I’m
listening
.”

After awhile, possibly because Sharon realized it was pointless to lecture a drunk, she murmured, “You’re a terribly hopeless adult…” and fell silent. He knew Sharon wasn’t just angry with him. She was worried about him.

Break himself was grateful to her for caring enough to get mad at him.

“However, it would be very odd for me to say that…”

As he murmured the words silently to himself, Break chuckled faintly. At that, Sharon said:

“What are you laughing at, Break?! You do realize you’re being scolded, don’t you?!”

“I
do
, I
know
. I’m sorry.”

I’m just like a child being lectured by his mother
, he thought.

The thought almost made him laugh again, but he managed to choke it back somehow. When he cast around for something else to think about, something suddenly struck him as odd. Sharon had been lecturing for quite some time, and she was just catching her breath. “By the way…” Break began.

“I thought you’d retired quite some time ago, my lady.”

It was already nearly three in the morning. Sharon had stopped by to tell him good night at about eleven that night, and she’d been yawning then. Sharon seemed at a loss as to how to answer Break’s question. She looked down, very slightly.

“Once I…got into bed, I found I couldn’t sleep.”

“Is something troubling you?”

Sharon shook her head, telling him that wasn’t it.

“I was thinking, but it wasn’t about anything important. This happens sometimes.”

…This sort of oddly sleepless night.

“Mm.” Break nodded.

True, at present, Sharon was frequently in the public eye as the next head of the House of Rainsworth, and it was likely that she sometimes fell captive to various concerns and was unable to sleep. Her earnest character made this seem all the more probable.

At such times, the thought that not resting would interfere with her work the next day would make it even harder to sleep.

“…I might be able to sleep if I drank a little myself—” Sharon murmured.

Hearing her, Break thought:

That would be a bit of a problem.

He didn’t say it, though. Instead, he said something else:

“Shall I sing you a lullaby?”

A lullaby?
Sharon’s lips moved, very slightly. Break nodded.

“It’s a melody Shelly-sama used to sing to you, long ago. I just happened to remember it today.”

On hearing
Shelly
, her mother’s name, Sharon looked taken aback. She might have remembered those nights when she was small and had drifted off to sleep to the sound of her mother’s lullaby. Sharon lowered her eyes to her knees and murmured something, too softly for Break to hear.

He was sure it had been her mother’s name. Presently, Sharon shook her head slowly.

“I’m fine.”

Her voice was quiet. She didn’t sound angry or displeased.

Break gazed at Sharon. Sharon continued:

“A lullaby—I’m no longer such a child that I can’t sleep without relying on something like that.”

“I see. Shall we test it, then?” Break asked.

“Wha—?” Sharon was startled. If it didn’t make her the least bit sleepy, that would be that. If she did get sleepy, she could just go back to her room at that point, he told her, and he began to sing right away.

It was a slow, soft melody that flowed through a distant, nostalgic scene. A gentle song Shelly would hum to the young Sharon when she tucked her into bed. Lyrics that he’d managed to remember completely, thanks to Reim.

“Wha… Break!?”

Sharon started to rise, calling his name, but Break paid no attention. He kept singing.

Although she’d spoken, Sharon didn’t actually try to stop him. …She didn’t seem able to. She resettled herself in her chair, holding still, looking vaguely bewildered. She might have been embarrassed. She couldn’t look straight at Break as he sang, and her gaze wandered restlessly through space.

That said, after all, Break’s recollection was dim, and the song came out a bit unsteadily.

He also thought that lullabies were effective only when mothers sang them.

But, well—

Even if he couldn’t hope for an immediate effect.

It should at least serve to divert her…

Cradle of light

Cradle of light

Blown by the winds of time

Drift on waves of dappled sunlight

And, before you know it,

Reach the shores of “a happy tomorrow”

…“A happy tomorrow.”

I see
, he’d thought, when Reim had told him the lyric.
No wonder I couldn’t remember it.
The words were practically foreign to him. How much time had passed since he’d stopped wishing for something like that? Since he’d begun to think he wasn’t qualified to wish for such a thing?

In an attempt to protect the people of the house he’d served as the knight Kevin Legnard, he’d tried to twist their deaths into another destiny. As a result, he’d lost everyone who was important to him.

They’d been lost because of what he’d done.

He’d thought it could never be all right for someone like him to wish for “tomorrow.”

But if it wasn’t for him… If it was for someone else…

If his wish were simply that she would be visited by a happy tomorrow…

He thought that might be permitted.

“…My.”

After he’d repeated the short lyrics and the leisurely
melody a few times, Sharon was breathing peacefully, sound asleep, still seated in her chair. Break was startled that it had worked. Sharon must have been sleepy to begin with, but still.

That said, the plan had been for her to return to her room if she began to feel sleepy.

Her face looked so young as she slept that he was reminded of when he’d met her. He thought it might be nice to gaze at that face for a while, but then thought better of it.

For a short while, Break thought, but there was only one answer.

“…I suppose there’s no help for it,” he murmured.

He got up from his chair and went around to stand beside the sleeping Sharon. Then, with practiced hands, he lifted Sharon’s petite body, cradling her sideways in the position commonly known as a princess carry. Holding Sharon, he walked to the door, opened it dexterously, and went out into the deserted corridor.

As he made his way to Sharon’s room, he came across the white cat Reim had been chasing. Apparently it had managed to lose Reim and come back. “Mew,” the cat said, looking up at him, and Break cautioned it: “Shh.”

Then, in a hushed, mischievous voice, he said, “Listen.

“You
mustn’t
disturb my lady’s slumber.”

He walked along the silent corridor, climbed the stairs, and entered Sharon’s room.

He laid Sharon down on the bed and gently pulled the down comforter over her.

Sharon showed no signs of waking. This was only natural: The sun would be up in another two hours. Sharon sometimes stayed up late, either working or reading romance novels, but she was seldom up at this hour.

Walking silently so as not to wake her, Break began to move away from the bedside.

“…………No.”

The voice was so very small it might have been a sigh. At the same time, Break felt a slight pull on his coat. When he looked, he saw that Sharon had put her hand out from under the comforter and caught his coattail. For a moment, thinking she might have awakened, he almost spoke to her, but Sharon’s eyelids were closed.

She’d spoken in her sleep. Break admonished her in a hushed voice:

“…My lady, I’m tired, too. Let go, please,
there’s
a good girl.”

Gently, he tried to pry Sharon’s fingers away, but she had a surprisingly firm grip on his coattail, and she wouldn’t let go. Break scratched his cheek in perplexity, thought with his still-intoxicated brain, then leaned close to Sharon’s sleeping face. Putting his lips next to her ear, he whispered:

“…You mustn’t do that, Sharon. Ladies shouldn’t detain gentlemen in their bedrooms—”

“
”

Sharon spoke, almost inaudibly. Murmuring in her sleep.

“No…… Xerx-niisan—”

The fingers curled around Break’s coat tightened, as if begging,
Don’t go.

Her tone was something heard in a scene from a distant, nostalgic day.

“That’s torn it,” Break muttered silently.

He was on the verge of being pulled back as well. Young Sharon had been there, and Shelly, and Reim, and he’d been there, his heart growing more stable every day, little by little, thanks to them. Into the peaceful time spent in the shade of
the trees in the garden of the Rainsworth mansion, under a clear blue sky.

Drift on waves of dappled sunlight and, before you know it, reach the shores of a happy tomorrow…

He hoped it would be so.

Break put a hand out to Sharon’s forehead, brushing her bangs aside with his finger, and spoke them:

“Good night, Sharon. Sweet dreams.”

The words of a prayer for rest.

~ Fin ~