The Terminally-Ill Lord Desires Hospice Care

Camilla’s blade wreathed in electric current clashed with my cane vibrating enough to leave afterimages.
With a burst of force, the distance between us increased as Camilla began limping.

“Did you stay up all night chatting with your little sister? Your cane skills are pitiful.”
Certainly, I had conversed with Rizehl all day yesterday and seen her off this morning, but that couldn’t have affected my full power.

“…I suppose my body has grown a bit rusty lately. No doubt because I don’t have long left to live.”
“Could you stop…!”
A blade wreathed in even stronger currents than before came flying at my solar plexus.

“Don’t take my jokes seriously! Don’t you know how vexed we get?!”
“Regrettably, I’m quite lacking in the ability to distinguish such things.”
I swung my cane to warp the trajectory of the thrown blade. Of course, my hand felt quite numb.

“Hah…”
Having naturally caught her returned blade, Camilla clicked her tongue and charged at me again.

“You suddenly challenged me to a duel in that frail body of yours…what’s gotten into you?”
“My first reason was that I wished to face you with a clear mind.”
Camilla’s face instantly reddened as she began backing away.

“My second reason was to confirm the state of my declining skills. Soon, you may be my last worthy opponent.”
“So the second was the main reason, you damn weasel.”
“Additionally, I can see your face more clearly in sunlight than moonlight.”
“You obliviously shameless brat…”
Camilla shook her head while holding her forehead.
While I couldn’t understand her words, it was clear my lack of tact had negatively impacted her again.

“Hah, I’m not in the mood to fight anymore. That’s enough for today’s duel.”
“That’s not for you to decide unilaterally. Did you forget our studies under the teacher? A duel continues until one side is unable to respond.”
“You know…”
Camilla suddenly grabbed my wrists and threw me down.
“You’ve grown so weak that you’d just fall over if I pushed you.”
“But I still have enough strength to burst giants.”
It was simply a fact that mere strength alone was no longer enough to defeat Camilla.

“Could you consider my feelings about having to fight you in this weakened state?”
“Does that mean you dislike fighting the weaker me?”
“I mean, consider how I feel having to directly experience a friend’s decline. You’ve already glazed over my efforts to avert my eyes.”

I couldn’t understand. She was well aware that I was terminal. So why did she want to avert her eyes?

“Do you know how much your naivete, or idiocy, wounds me?”
“…I shall apologize then.”
“Don’t apologize if you don’t know what you did wrong.”
It had always been this way.
Camilla greatly disliked me bowing my head meaninglessly.
Since childhood, she had been the one who understood me best at my side.

“…I shall endeavor to refrain from actions you dislike going forward.”
My efforts would likely amount to nothing as usual, but I promised nonetheless.

“Haaah…just sit down.”
She released my wrists with a heavy sigh.
I didn’t know how such monstrous strength came from those slender, pale wrists, but considering her bloodline, that mystery was somewhat solved.
Camilla, the tempest’s only daughter, plopped down beside me and chugged down some brandy while munching on cheese she had packed as a lunchbox.

“Still quite invigorating.”
“That’s no way to speak to a lady.”
“You are no ordinary lady.”
“You seem to want to become an ordinary corpse.”
We exchanged such silly banter.
We enjoyed this unrefined drinking session from the same bottle, for we needed no pretenses between us. We had even seen each other’s bare bodies in childhood.

“There’s something I want to ask you, Camilla.”
“What, you want me to tell you my underwear color too?”
“…I want to know why you all are so good to me. I have no tact and am hardly suitable company. Surely I’m undeserving.”

“……Should I just tell you my underwear color?”
“……What meaning is there in knowing that?”
“Haaah alright, alright. We each have our own reasons, but…there’s at least one common reason. None of us were properly raised by our parents.”

The former emperor was an abnormal man, even to my eyes. He had an innate talent for architecture and making money, but ultimately did as he pleased – an eccentric lacking humanity.
The Empress’s parents were simply people who prioritized honor above all. Personally, I preferred not to meet them.

“Well, our parents were all trash, weren’t they?”
“Not me, though.”
“Don’t be stupid, your mother alone was that way, so what are you saying? Your family could hardly be called normal either.”
Camilla bluntly pointed out the flaw in my words.

“Well, who am I to insult who? Our father was a drunkard dog, our mother abandoned us when I was young after an affair with a servant, our brother knows nothing but work.”
“…Indeed.”
Her family was famous enough to frequently be the subject of gossip even among commoners.
The war minister was recently spotted walking the streets drunk and naked. Camilla’s mother had run away when Camilla was young. And Camilla’s brother was so stubbornly single-minded that even I found him vexing.

“Your family is quite abnormal.”
“That wording sounds rather unsavory.”
Camilla poked out her tongue and started jabbing me with the knife she had brought to cut the cheese.

“It’s dangerous, so I’ll take that.”
“…But you’ve never talked about your father before. What was he like?”
“……My father.”
He was quite difficult to summarize in a single word.
I would have to fish for a suitable expression from the sea of language, having drifted there for quite some time.

“He was like a clown.”
“A clown, like those circus performers?”
“Yes, clown would be the most fitting description. Sickly as he was, he tirelessly strived to make me laugh every day.”

He had an appearance where it wouldn’t be strange if he died any day, yet he always smiled as if something delighted him. Even when his illness worsened and he coughed up blood before me, he’d make silly remarks like ‘Who wants tomato stew~~~?’
Whenever he fell or tumbled down stairs, he’d ask if it wasn’t funny. Each time, I answered that I couldn’t find someone getting hurt funny. Then he’d lament it was a pity and vow to fall more dramatically next time.

He often playfully pinched my mother’s cheeks, put pepper in the tea I drank, and once painted Rizehl’s dog with fluorescent dye, making her cry in the middle of the night.

“……That’s about what he was like.”
“When I met him, he seemed quite solemn.”
“Actually, he said he put a cricket in your dress the first time he saw you.”
“Your dad was the culprit?”

In any case, that’s what my father was like.
There were even rumors that when he pulled such pranks on the former emperor, even he could only helplessly let it go.

“And he was the one who opposed me going to the battlefield until the very end.”
That day, my father grew angry for the first time, cursing that I should only make such unfunny jokes in my dreams, along with verbal abuse.
That day, my father went to our teacher and swung his fists for three hours, but our teacher merely dusted off his clothes and returned.

Despite his weakness, I could not understand why he had done that. Why he had raged so for someone like me, I simply could not comprehend.

“I may never understand that person until I die.”
The reason he brought me candy and constantly apologized whenever my mother scolded me.
The reason he covered my mother’s mouth when she said ‘I regret giving birth to trash like…’
The reason he deliberately fell before me with exaggerated motions whenever my mother hit me.
I may never understand for my entire life.

“While I cannot understand, he was an excessively wonderful person to me. That’s why…yes, that’s why mother will never forgive me even more.”
“…Are you talking about being unable to attend your father’s deathbed?”
“To not even be present at the deathbed of such a wonderful father, am I not an ungrateful wretch deserving of hatred?”
“You know better than anyone, the situation back then…!”
“Regardless of the circumstances.”
Yes, regardless of the circumstances.
“I am an ungrateful wretch who did not repay what I received.”

All the amusing acts he performed before me, the sweetness of every candy he gave me, the reasons he opposed me going to the battlefield –
I did not even minimally repay those things whose principles I could not understand, yet provided small consolations.

“…Your father’s anniversary is coming up soon.”
“Yes.”
“It looks like I’ll have cause to go to the capital soon as well. I’ll have to deliver that letter you wrote for your fiancée. While I’m at it…write a letter to leave at your father’s grave too.”

I couldn’t understand.
My father was already buried in the ground.
What meaning was there in delivering a letter?

“Do at least that much in repayment.”
“…I wonder if father will forgive me.”
“Don’t make your father out to be such a petty person. That would be the true unfilial act.”

Like in the old days, Camilla began admonishing me again.
Even though I was being scolded, the familiarity made my expression soften, if only slightly.
Just slightly. Just slightly, the corners of my mouth turned upward.

“This brat keeps making that shameless face whenever he gets scolded!”
“…Camilla.”
I looked at Camilla and asked again:
“You said that aside from the common reason, you each have your own personal reasons for looking after me.”
“Yes, so what about it?”
“I want to know your personal reason.”
Camilla’s face suddenly reddened as if intoxicated and she fled.

“…I was simply curious when I asked.”
It seemed that reason too would be something I could never understand until my death.
For I was a more dull-witted man than anyone.