Karl tenderly brushed the uneven golden ends of Charlotte's hair beside her ear. They felt somewhat coarse, stripped of the smooth, lustrous afterglow he remembered, like sunlight flowing through his fingers. Firelight danced over her slightly messy short hair, adding to her travel-worn exhaustion, yet strangely bringing out a different kind of fragile stubbornness.
"Your hair... what happened to it?"
Charlotte shifted in his arms and raised her face. Her tear tracks had not yet dried, glinting in tiny fragments beneath the firelight, but her sapphire-blue eyes had regained their usual clarity. Only a thin veil of mist remained over them, making them seem all the more crystalline.
She raised a hand and, somewhat clumsily because of her injury, wiped at her eyes. Avoiding his overly intent gaze, she tried to sound casual, even carrying a rare trace of willfulness. "Nothing happened. I... I just like short hair now. It's convenient, neat, and it won't get in the way when I'm fighting. It's... easier to take care of, too."
But Karl knew her too well. He knew every subtle shift in her expression, the faint tremble of her lashes when she was pretending to be calm, the slight press of her lips when she did not wish to complain.
He gazed into her eyes—the eyes that had always reflected the deepest emotions in his heart. Yet now, they seemed to be fleeing from something. He asked softly, with more certainty than doubt in his tone, "It was because of... Klein, wasn't it?"
Charlotte's body visibly stiffened in his embrace. She abruptly looked up, the mist in her eyes instantly replaced by shock and a flash of caught-off-guard panic. Her blue eyes widened as though she had heard something utterly unbelievable.
"Y-you already knew?!" Her voice rose uncontrollably, sharp with disbelief.