Chapter 63: Memories of His Grandfather
One of the wooden boxes contained several small bottles. They resembled the recovery potion bottles he had seen at the Adventurers’ Guild shop.
(I wonder if there’s anything inside…)
They were covered in dust, so he hesitated to pick them up. Even if there were contents inside, they seemed quite old.
Deciding to leave the small bottles for later, he turned to another wooden box. This one had a lid.
With a slight sense of anticipation, he opened it. Inside were a large pair of leather gloves, what looked like a folded blanket, a leather canteen, a leather case, and a small burlap sack.
When he picked up the leather case, it was heavier than expected. A belt-like strap dangled loosely from it, swaying. It seemed to be something worn around the waist.
Curious, Ren unfastened it and peeked inside.
The first thing he took out was something wrapped in layers of leather. It felt long, narrow, and heavy. Undoing the tightly tied leather cord and opening it—
There was something like a crest on it, but it had been worn down and was hard to make out. Inside were flat, slender stones tucked into pocket-like slots. There were three types of stones.
“…Whetstones?”
One was rough and coarse, another slightly finer, and the last was smooth but not completely polished. Three types in total.
They looked like sharpening stones. Similar to the ones he had seen someone using to sharpen a knife in a corner of the guild.
“Huh…”
He thought they might be useful. But he didn’t know whose belongings they were. Looking for more clues, he found another leather case, shorter than the whetstone roll.
There was what appeared to be a branded crest on the surface. It looked like the emblem of Ren’s own family—the Cream Baron household.
“So it really does belong to someone from my family… maybe…”
When he opened it, there was a penknife inside. And a broken quill pen. It was unclear whether it had broken due to age, but the feather part was tattered—when he picked it up, it began to crumble apart. Ren hurriedly put the quill back, but his attention was drawn to the penknife.
The blade was thin and slender—perfect for cutting quills.
“I want to use this…”
It seemed extremely useful for making quill pens.
“Oh, right…”
He took out the quill pen he had been using and placed the blade against its tip.
Slice.
“Oh!”
Even without sharpening, it cut effortlessly. The cut was clean. After picking up the trimmed piece and examining it, Ren turned his gaze back to the penknife.
“…It might belong to Father, or Grandfather. But… if I leave it here, someone else might take it, right? …Yeah…”
After hesitating for a moment, Ren quietly placed the leather case back into the box.
“I’ll keep it safe. And… I’ll borrow it a little, okay?”
He spoke as if addressing his father or grandfather, though neither was present.
He hadn’t seen his grandfather in years. They hadn’t interacted much to begin with. The last time he remembered seeing him was when he was still very young—during his eldest brother Ryan’s Blessing Ceremony—but even that memory was vague.
He remembered the crystal shining in front of Ryan, and his grandfather frowning. That image had stuck with him. After that, he had no memory of his grandfather. He didn’t know whether his grandfather had left somewhere after that day, or if Ren simply hadn’t seen him since.
Later, he heard that his grandfather had moved somewhere within the territory. He thought he had overheard someone mention it when discussing whether his grandfather would attend his sister Liese’s or his second brother Louis’s Blessing Ceremony.
“I wonder how Grandfather is doing…”
As he thought that, the image of his grandfather’s frown during Ryan’s ceremony came back to him.
A sharp pain pricked his chest.
For the first time, he felt like he understood the meaning behind that expression.
“Could it be… because his skill wasn’t ‘Swordsmanship’…?”
His nose tingled. Pressing his lips together tightly, Ren lowered his gaze to the leather case.