Empire 《Mikayuu/YuuMika》

⥈ Chapter Eleven ⥈

Despite not having left the countryside for over a week, as he rode Asuramaru down the path, which was coughing dust behind them as the black steed's hooves collided with the ground, galloping at a speed that sent Yuuichirou's untamable raven hair flying back against the wind, he reminisced his childhood and the sunsets out where there were no hills to subtract from its beauty. The horizon framed the setting sun perfectly, like a priceless painting.

The sky was painted in vivid pinks and oranges and purples, the red sun dwindling over the horizon like raw meat hanging over a butcher's counter. God had not yet cut the string that kept it upright, so it remained. The precarious position of the sun reminded Yuuichirou of the time and told him to make things short.

It was on his mind the entire ride: how was his parents going to react once he came home without a notification of where he had been, or that he was going to be gone at all? Let alone, that he was knighted by a prince, who had been his friend since childhood and who he had not seen in eight years. They would dismiss him as a nutcase and tell him to be up bright and early for the chores in the morning. Of course, he had plans to meet Mikaela after the sun had set, and he had no intentions of putting those plans aside to return to his former life.

The serene, bucolic scene aside, he somehow felt safe from what was to come. His parents reprimanding him was in the past, but he believed they deserved an explanation of what happened to him.

He knocked on the shabby door as if he had not lived in that cottage his entire life, knowing that a few feet behind it, his mother was wiping the flour off her hands and dusting off her apron so she would look presentable for whoever was standing before her residence.

Sure enough, the door opened, presenting his mother, with her wiry chestnut hair and tired green eyes. An expression of shock appeared on her face before she spoke a word to her son. Then, that expression turned to one of anger.

"Just where have you been, Yuuichirou?"

He flinched at her stern tone. She only called him Yuuichirou when he was in deep trouble. He opened his mouth to answer, but was interrupted by his mother gripping tightly on his wrist and pulling him into the cottage, where rolled dough was abandoned on the counter and his unmade cot lying in the same, disorderly fashion in which he left it nearly a week before. An unamused man sat at the small, rickety table made from splintery wood, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyebrow twitching in anger at the sight of his child.

"Where have you been, Yuuichirou?" he repeated.

His mother released her grip from Yuuichirou's wrist, leaving him to rub the pained, reddened skin. He sat down in the chair beside him. "I was at the castle."

His father's face matched the color of the roses in Mikaela's garden, his eyes narrowing. "Did you get arrested?"

"No," Yuuichirou told him. It was not completely a lie, as he was not at the castle for that purpose. He was subject to public humiliation, but that was the only time. "I did not. Honestly, I would not expect you to believe what I endured."

His father cast a glare at him, which sent a cold shiver down his spine. Out of fear, he confessed the whole story to his parents. Meeting Mikaela out in the woods, Shibuya, his foolish dreams of becoming a knight (about which they already knew), the public humiliation, the knighting, everything but that he had fallen for the prince who had salvaged him.

His mother gave him a disappointed look, and guilt flashed behind his green eyes. "I'm sorry, Mum. I was going to tell you."

"Lying again, Yuuichirou?"

"No, Father. I-I-I really was...!"

"I told you when you were twelve that this knight nonsense had to stop, but now, claiming you've actually become a knight! How absurd!"