A Lesson in Love and Loss

“Elaborate.”

Ferren, a master of drawing people out, beamed upon seeing Rhine’s interest.

“Hah, for such a young lad, you possess an old soul, always interested in such matters.”

“When I was your age, I hadn’t even become a knight, let alone an apprentice.”

“Was your background not prominent?”

“Not at all. They call me ‘Lord Ferren,’ rather than using my surname, like ‘Lord Cavendish.’”

“My origins are nothing to boast about, and my surname is not for outsiders to know.”

“Then how did you become a knight?” Rhine inquired, a puzzled frown on his face.

Ordinarily, the path to knighthood required becoming an apprentice to a renowned Great Knight, an expense only the children of nobility could afford.

Failing that, one had to ascend through the ranks of a knight order, starting from the very bottom, and hope sheer perseverance would catch the eye of a powerful figure.

This latter route was clearly far more arduous and intensely competitive.

“My hometown was a small village within a southern viscount’s territory. My father was a tenant farmer, and I was the third child in our family.”

“You know black bread, don’t you? Perhaps you’ve never even seen it. Back then, we ate that stuff almost every day, and it often made our teeth ache.”

“Times weren’t like they are now; everyone was dirt poor, and our family didn’t even have a single copper coin…”

“Stop! I couldn’t care less about your past hardships.”

“Get to the point; I’ve heard these old stories so many times my ears are practically calloused.”

“Such disrespect.”

Ferren clicked his tongue, abandoning his rambling, gossipy tone.

A nostalgic glint appeared in the corner of his eye.

“I remember it vividly. It was the Festival of Saints, and my friends and I went to play in the streets.”

“We had to queue and even sleep on the streets just to get tickets for the opera troupe.”

“You had tickets?!”

Even Rhine, in his younger days, had never managed to procure tickets when he wished to see a play.

One could not truly grasp the value of “tickets being impossible to find” without personally witnessing such throngs of people.

“Indeed. A distant uncle of one of my friends was a scalper.”

“On the day the play opened, I was squatting by the roadside, waiting for the theater doors to open, when a girl walked right past me…”

“The play was truly magnificent, depicting ‘Slaying the Dragon,’ the fourth act of the Norman founding.”

Catching the keywords, a sudden realization dawned on Rhine.

He cleared his throat and launched into a theatrical aria:

“In the opening scene of that act, the Emperor pointed to the heavens and declared:”

“‘The founding of our nation has been promised to the Lord. All four provinces have been reclaimed, and a Norman realm of equality shall rise upon this troubled land!’”

Ferren raised an eyebrow, then spontaneously joined in, echoing the words:

“Mourinho proclaimed: ‘Yet dragon calamities run rampant, lives are laid waste, and the people, in their desperation, eat anything they can find. Who then shall confront the mighty Black Dragon?’”

“The Emperor declared: ‘Though the Black Dragon’s claws and fangs are sharp, it is but a beast of the air and land! Man-made disasters can be quelled, but natural calamities have no cause. If one side must ultimately shed blood and sacrifice, then I shall take up my sword—’”

Both simultaneously brought down their hands like blades, shouting in unison:

“Slay the Dragon!!”

It was the greatest aspiration of their adolescent, rebellious days.

“You’ve seen it?” Ferren asked, puzzled.

“Of course! Who in the Norman Empire hasn’t seen that play?”

Rhine retorted dismissively, only to swiftly realize the subtle implications of his current identity as a young boy.

He quickly amended his statement.

“Uh, what I meant was, I’ve read the script beneath the tower, and there are recordings in crystal balls…”

“Oh, never mind! Let’s not get sidetracked. You’re telling the story, so continue!”

Given permission, Ferren began gesticulating wildly, his hands dancing in the air.

“In that moment, the Emperor and the Black Dragon battled so fiercely that the heavens turned dark and the very earth seemed to crumble.”

“The stage lights whizzed from one side to the other, ‘whoosh, whoosh, whoosh’!”

“The Black Dragon’s fiery breath felt so real that the phosphorescent flames burned away the entire stage curtain!”

“…As the play reached its climax, the Emperor, treading upon the countless corpses of his knightly brethren, plunged his bloodied Holy Oath into the Black Dragon’s skull!”

“With a sudden ‘whoosh!’ thousands within the theater surged onto the stage in unison, a force even the entire Knight Order couldn’t restrain!”

“By the stars! That’s incredible! You actually managed to get a ticket for that?!”

“Right?!”

“So, you rushed onto the stage too?!”

“No, of course not. What would I rush for? I wasn’t even in the theater.”

Rhine’s excited tone faltered, and he asked with a bewildered expression:

“Wait, if you weren’t in the theater, where were you?”

“I was on a date with my future wife, up on the hill.”

“Are you kidding me?! Then who told you all this?”

“My friends were inside. They told me about it afterward.”

“You missed ‘Slaying the Dragon’?”

“Absolutely.”

“Just for the sake of dating some random girl you’d never met before, on some rundown hill?!”

“Oh, wait. You really should have seen her. She was like a celestial maiden descended to earth.”

“I don’t understand! Even if she was beautiful to that extent…”

“You don’t understand. She made the moon that night pale in comparison.”

“Damn it all! Didn’t your friends try to stop you?!”

“They couldn’t.”

“What do you mean, ‘they couldn’t’? What the hell did you tell them?”

“I just swept the tickets towards them and said, ‘Sorry, brothers, but I’m going to find a girl.’”

Rhine burst into boisterous laughter.

“You just said, ‘I’m going to find a girl’? And they just let you go?”

“Yes, they saw the earnestness in my eyes.”

Ferren sat beside Rhine, gazing at the setting sun.

Being a head taller, he smiled as he turned his gaze towards Rhine’s eyes.

Rhine finally realized that this man was absolutely earnest.

“I… wow…”

He waved a small, helpless hand.

“And then? You, you continue.”

“It was only the next day that I learned she was the viscount’s youngest daughter, who had snuck out to play.”

“No way, what a coincidence?”

“Indeed, it was precisely that coincidental.”

“Hey, you’re not about to tell some cliché story, are you? The tale of a commoner boy who strives tirelessly to become the renowned Divine Retribution Knight, all to pursue a noble girl?”

Ferren nodded.

“Yes, precisely that.”

“Just like that?!”

“Just like that.”

Rhine was dumbfounded. After such an elaborate buildup, it turned out to be such a hackneyed plot.

He felt foolish for having held any expectations.

“So, where is your wife now? Is she still in your hometown?”

Ferren fell silent for a moment, then stood up, running a hand over the locust tree.

The setting sun cast its glow upon his weathered face.

“She went to the heavens.”

His voice was calm, achingly calm, a tranquility that pierced one to the very bone.

“…Why?”

“Because of a dragon disaster, my hometown was destroyed, that theater vanished, and my wife passed away.”

“…”

“Don’t you regret it?”

“Regret? Regret what?”

“How much did you sacrifice for your wife? She just passed away unexpectedly, and you’re destined to live the rest of your life purely on faith, steeped in regret. Don’t you think that’s incredibly impractical?”

Rhine had always been unburdened by interpersonal relationships, always walked alone, and invariably regarded any debts of gratitude as burdens.

He simply felt Ferren’s sacrifices were in vain.

“You are mistaken. Utterly mistaken.”

Ferren smiled, his expression profoundly innocent.

“You don’t understand what it feels like to awaken beside the woman you cherish.”

“You don’t understand the sensation of shedding all pretense before your beloved.”

“You don’t understand the profound happiness of holding your wife in the afternoon sun, discussing your dreams for a blissful family.”

“Child, you are lonely. You can openly admit that, yet you will never concede that you need someone to hold your hand.”

“You fear love, you fear responsibility, you fear family…”

“Get out! Get out, now!”

Rhine abruptly rose to his feet.

“I don’t need you, a man whose wife has died, to lecture me! I don’t need you to teach me these things!”

“Don’t stand there acting like an arrogant elder, thinking you can educate me!”

“It’s best we don’t meet again.”

Beneath the locust tree, the youth departed, their encounter ending in discord.