The Empire was seizing up more with each passing day. Hiaka watched the room. The king was absent for longer and longer stretches, and the royal family created sothing inside Hiaka called the “Dungeon Investigation Bureau” to go looking for “dungeons” that might or might not even exist.
“Find it! Find the dungeon!!”
Everyone who had a clue now knew this was the two-horned demon Setian’s fit of madness in his search for the Demon King. Yet no matter how hard Setian tried, he could not find a “dungeon.” Only Hiaka’s anxiety swelled.
Ti passed in that tangled political climate.
While the world reeled, there was soone who seed even more shaken than that.
Da Lay of the Shadow Guard had been increasingly on edge of late. Because of her mistress, Princess Rebecca.
For days now Rebecca had barricaded herself into a corner of her room, drunk out of her mind.
Lay visited several tis, but the only answer she got was to be left alone. In all Lay’s years in the shadows, this was the first «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» ti anything like this had happened.
“Your Highness. Are you all right?”
She eased the door open.
What she saw inside was a rather shocking state. Rebecca hadn’t washed properly; she was filthy, and she kept gnawing her nails.
Tuk, tuk—
She had been like that for days ever since the Hero Party selection match.
With the light gone from her eyes, she stared vacantly at the floor while sothing dripped. It ran down the back of her hand and fell, one drop at a ti, staining her clothes and the floor.
“Your Highness.”
Lay’s heart lurched and she flung the door wide. Those dead-black eyes lifted and looked at her.
“...Would you leave.”
“Your Highness. Please don’t do this. I beg you. Do you not see the state you’re in right now?”
“......”
“For what possible reason are you like this? You yourself said this is no ti to be doing this. You said you had to attend class.”
“......”
After the selection match, Professor Dante Hiakapo had gathered the Hero Party for a special lecture—Glory, Rebecca, Balmung, and Adele Mouin, all four to hear him together.
Rebecca refused point-blank to attend.
Dante had co by once or twice, but Lay had sent him away at the threshold.
‘It wasn’t this bad.’
Lay was frustrated.
The day the Hero Party selection ended—
Rebecca’s expression had been wrong.
She’d been dazed all day.
Even at als she only pushed food around; she couldn’t bring herself to eat.
She even gagged after a single sip.
Like soone whose soul had been threshed out and gone sowhere, but up to then Lay let it pass. Rebecca, fundantally, was not a ntally healthy person.
— Why that... that...!!
Then, when she grabbed a porcelain piece on display at ho and wound up to throw it—
Lay realized sothing was very wrong.
— ......
Rebecca did not throw the porcelain to smash it.
She gently set it down.
Then suddenly hugged it, pressed her forehead to it, and began to snivel.
— Why...? Why...
If she had just thrown it, that would have been fine.
She often broke things when she couldn’t contain her temper.
That was when Rebecca held herself noble and decided the problem was others.
She would break porcelain in place of the offending person to vent her stress.
But for Rebecca to set the porcelain down gently like that, and to bite her nails only to a “moderate” extent even now (what she’d been dripping wasn’t blood but drool!)—it gave Lay the feeling that sothing was fundantally off.
Even if she was blind drunk.
For the princess ranked among the most elegant in Hiaka to show this kind of disgrace??
“Your Highness. Icky. Icky...”
Using a word she hadn’t used in over a dozen years, Lay took out a handkerchief and wiped Rebecca’s drool.
Rebecca began crumpling every feature of her face; it was a truly ugly expression Lay had never seen before.
“Laayee...”
“Yes, yes, Your Highness. It’s , Lay.”
“What do I do...”
“What is it, Your Highness. Please. Tell sothing. Only then can I share your sorrow.”
“......”
With even her mouth shaped like a square, Rebecca began to whine.
“...I don’t know. Get out...”
It was enough to drive one mad.
***
‘Ah. I can’t let this go any further.’
In the end, when Rebecca—who’d spent a week in that state, refusing food and drinking only liquor—fainted, Lay’s patience snapped.
She had no choice but to take extre asures.
“Your Highness. Out. Now!”
She was going to drag the shut-in hikikomori out of her corner by force!
“...Let gooo...”
Rebecca, who had barely awakened from her faint only to jam the bottle back down her throat, whined and put up a pitiful resistance.
“Let go, my foot! Out, this instant! I really can’t stand it one more second!”
“...Insolent. I’m a princess, and you’re Shadow Guard...”
“Shut it. I’m the older sister here and you’re a spoiled brat who wrecked her life. You’re drunk enough you won’t rember anyway, so I don’t even need to speak politely!”
“Ughh... I said let go...”
She was no match in strength.
Rebecca, her wrist seized, was dragged out.
Lay shoved an elixir between her lips. “Mmf, mmff...!” She flailed, but with her hair clenched, resistance was aningless. The red liquid went down in gulps.
Then Lay scrubbed her face hard with a wet towel. A face with painfully swollen eyes erged.
“Ugly!”
“...Sob, that’s an...”
“Smile. Now! Big and bright!”
“......”
Even in all this, the drunk Rebecca smiled wide. The sight left Lay with mixed feelings. For all her filthy temper, she was still a child who looked this cute when she smiled. What on earth had happened to her all of a sudden?
“First, let’s wash.”
“......”
Lay hauled her to the bath, tornted her a bit with cold water—“Uuugh...” (after days of emotional labor, she had no desire to pamper her)—and scrubbed her hair diligently.
She’d never thought there would co a day, as an assassin, when she’d stand bath-attendant.
But she’d done it often raising a child, so it was doable.
“......”
In that ti, Rebecca seed to be coming to her senses. Her mouth, which a mont ago had been a stiff, blocky “□,” returned to her usual slim “∧” shape.
Ssshhhaaa—
Under the pouring water—
Lay broached it carefully.
“Your Highness. If sothing is hard, you can tell .”
“......”
Perhaps the warmth of the water.
Or maybe Lay’s gentle touch.
Perhaps it opened her heart.
Rebecca nodded and slowly began to speak.
“...I t the Reaper Constellation Ω a little while ago.”
And out flowed the talk from that “walk.”
To Lay listening, it was an outrageous story.
“He told Your Highness you’d be discarded?”
“...Mm.”
“In that case, Your Highness should discard first.”
“......”
She had said it half in jest.
But Rebecca’s face darkened.
What did that expression an?
‘Oh no.’
Lay closed her eyes.
No way.
Surely not.
“Your Highness.”
“...Mm.”
“Do you... like Professor Dante Hiakapo?”
“......”
No answer ca back.
Lay’s mouth slowly fell open too.
This was Rebecca, who had once given the order to kill a man without batting an eye.
That Rebecca now could not say a word.
“Your Highness...”
“No. I should be clear now. No.”
“‘No’...? Ah, so it isn’t, after all?”
“Mm. I don’t like him.”
“Ahh, of course... Your Highness is far too good for that. And this isn’t the ti for such talk anyway.”
“I love him.”
The next instant, Rebecca covered her face.
Lay froze as she was.
Between the bars of her hands a dead-mouse-small voice leaked out.
“...I love Dante.”
Ssshhha.
With the water streaming down, Lay couldn’t say a thing.
***
The mont they ca out from washing, Rebecca tried to reach for liquor again, and Lay hauled her by the scruff into her own room.
This was no ti to get drunk again and flee reality.
‘Where do I even start.’
Sohow.
Sohow!
She had suspected as much.
Since when? Rebecca’s expression had changed a lot. She’d softened far more than before, and the sharp angles of her personality had been worn down.
“Since when?”
“I don’t know. I don’t, but...”
Rebecca then spoke frankly to Lay about mories from childhood.
The ti she was betrayed by her foster father and sold off. And the fine clothes she wore once she reached the royal castle.
After repeated fights with the royal soldiers. The free ti she got after smiling and saying she was fine.
Around then, she returned to her birth ho and saw her foster father sleeping on the living room floor, saw the gold bars and cash piled beside him. At the end of swearing revenge, she tied a rope to the ceiling and kicked the chair.
At the very mont Rebecca, in a pretty dress, hung suspended in the air, there was a man who appeared before her eyes.
Dante Hiakapo.
“...Maybe it was from then.”
Lay’s jaw dropped.
That happened?
It was the first ti she’d heard it in her life, a truly shocking episode.
“Did you realize that from the start?”
“No. When I saw him again at the Academy I didn’t. But the longer we stayed close, the more things started to co back. The voice. The expression.”
“......”
In that mont Lay began to understand how Rebecca had fallen for Dante like this. If sothing like that had happened, even Rebecca—who thought of people like stones—might open her heart to him.
‘Oh, hell.’
But what rose at the sa ti was that Da Lay’s head had been hamred:
The way Professor Dante
looked at the warrior nad “Eve.”
‘...!!!?!’
That girl with sky-blue hair who always wore her hood up.
When Dante was with her, he conversed in hand signs every day and t her gaze for long stretches. The sa for Eve.
They were, so to speak, the two closest friends in the group.
Even when everyone was present, no one understood their conversation. It was as if there was a wall of isolation between them and the rest of the world.
‘...In that case, it’s enough to drive you mad.’
Da Lay, too, had nursed a childhood crush, so she knew. The feeling when the one I like does not like —how miserable that is.
Setting aside the conflict that ca with being a princess, this was Princess Rebecca, hoisted up and adored by the whole world.
And the first person she had ever liked in her life seed to like soone other than Princess Rebecca more.
‘Wait. What. Dante Hiakapo. That’s a total bastard, isn’t it?’
He wooed the Reaper Constellation Ω and dumped them.
He wooed the princess and dumped her.
Then won’t he end up wooing and dumping that sky-blue-haired girl too...?
...Up to that point, she couldn’t know.
“What do I do.”
Rebecca stared at the floor with vacant eyes.
What do I do.
It was, truly, a question with a thousand anings.
After all the circling, the answer was simple.
So Lay thought.
“Your Highness.”
“Yeah.”
“But this isn’t the ti for us to be like this, is it.”
“Right.”
“You have to attend class. Train your magic. You said Professor Dante would die soon. Even if he’s revived with the 「Rune of Revival♥」, you’ll have to care for him.”
“I suppose... He’ll need a mage.”
Lay pressed her temples.
In this situation there was only one answer.
“Confess.”
Rebecca’s hands, which had been fidgeting about restlessly, stopped.
“...We’re married...”
“What aning does that asly contract marriage have? Confess. Tell him to date you properly. It may sound childish—no, who cares, human feelings are childish to begin with. Say it honestly!”
“...Say what?”
“‘Date seriously!’”
Lay, choking up, pointed at the curse doll placed off to one side of Rebecca’s room.
And—
“Stop playing with that thing!”
Focus returned to Rebecca’s blank eyes.
“...Will that work?”
“You don’t know until you try.”
“......”
Her fingertips began to fidget again.
“......”
That night was a night neither of them could sleep.
Reviews
All reviews (0)