Lee Han Has Been Demoted
Most knights came from noble houses. Some took their commission and struck out on their own, but it went without saying that life was easier with the family's backing still in hand.
Noble sons, especially, were creatures who had lived from birth to adulthood with someone always tending them. In the worst cases there were grotesque spoiled brats who could not even wash their own bodies or change their own clothes.
Attend the Academy, where dormitory life was simply the way of things, or grow used to a knight's routine, and the habit faded little by little. But fade or not, could a lifetime of being coddled be mended overnight? Plenty of them still went about with attendants stuck to their heels even after they had become knights. A nursemaid or a butler waited at all hours, ready to come running the instant anything was the least bit inconvenient. You would not believe how ridiculous it looked.
Lee Han understood it least of all. More than once he had clicked his tongue and asked, honestly, were they not embarrassed?
And yet.
"Well, well. Rihan bringing a maid? That's a first."
"Judging by the clothes, a royal maid? Did someone bestow her on him?"
"Quite the beauty. Perhaps a cup of tea..."
"...Rihan's right behind you."
"Ghk!"
That humiliating scene had landed on him. He had never intended any of it.
"...Damn it."
Lee Han let the curse sit in his mouth.
"So. Who might that beautiful lady be?"
"Beautiful? Doesn't she look a bit vacant?"
"...She does look a little drowsy."
Jake took in the lady his friend had brought for the very first time, slapped Lee Han across the back, and grinned. Unlike the others, Lee Han had never taken a lover or a wife and clung stubbornly to bachelorhood. How pitiful he had seemed. In truth, perhaps something was wrong with his body, or he preferred men to wom—
"I don't know what you're thinking, but I suddenly feel sick."
"Ahem. What did I even say? Don't go framing an innocent man."
"...Was I wrong?"
Uncanny bastard. If reading a room had realms of mastery, he would have been an Aura User.
Jake stole a glance around, then looked at the woman seated on the grass at the far edge of the order's training yard, her drowsy face already sliding toward sleep. Drool was threatening. She was plainly about to sleep like the dead.
"...She does look very tired."
"Haa."
"What are you two, really? You wouldn't have hired her."
"...Just know there are circumstances. It wasn't my idea. And I'm sending her back soon."
"Hmm. Did a named commission come down from the royal house?"
"......"
"I'll keep my mouth shut, then."
Jake nodded as if he finally understood. The others were no different. Perhaps they had already guessed as much from the simple fact of a royal maid.
It happened now and then: the royal house named a knight and issued a command. An honor beyond measure, and a commission that had to be kept in absolute secrecy. Being chosen stirred envy and jealousy, but questioning a royal decision was unthinkable. Respect and loyalty toward royalty—toward the royal house of Pendragon—lived in everyone, regardless of station.
"Do your best. I'll be cheering for you."
"You don't even know what the commission is."
"Not the commission. That young lady. A little vacant, maybe, but she's beautiful, isn't she? Haha!"
"......"
"Hm? Why did it suddenly get cold..."
Lee Han considered beating the man to a pulp. This was not even teasing someone else.
I want a lover too, you bastard!
A miserable secret he could never say aloud, anywhere. He kept it off his face and howled inside like a dog.
Layla Winter. That was the maid's name.
He was choking the situation down like mustard through tears, but the one he resented was the wicked old woman who had made it, not this vacant maid. He ought to remember her name, at least.
"Miss Maid, from now on don't do this here. Just rest at the house. Or go back to the palace."
"No, Sir Knight. I still have to do my very best at the work I've been given. I'm being paid for it, hehe."
"......"
A little slow in the head, that was all. She was a good kid. Only twenty-two. Take off the tinted glasses and she was nothing if not a diligent, earnest young woman trying her hardest.
...The problem was that every time she worked, things got destroyed one by one.
Did that old woman send her to smash my whole household to pieces?
He was hovering somewhere between suspicion and certainty when a voice cut in.
"A cute child. Wasted on you."
"...Please make some noise when you walk around. Do you realize that sometimes you look more like the ex-assassin than I do?"
"There was an assassin among my friends, back in the day. I killed him with my own hand, mind you."
"......"
"Heheh."
Crazy old man. His flaw was that even when he said something that bloodthirsty as if it were nothing, it never once sounded like a boast. And yet someone would praise even that flaw and flatter him for it.
"What's got you here? No meeting today?"
"Why would an old man like me go to a place like that? The young ones will handle it."
"Still doing it your own way."
His hair was as white as an old man's, yet it gleamed with a moist luster, and his skin was so full of spring that it was hard to believe he was in his seventies. His frame was slight and might have looked unimpressive, but deep eyes and a subtle presence drifting about his body made him anything but ordinary. If this world had been a martial arts tale rather than medieval fantasy, the nickname that would have suited him perfectly was something like Sword Immortal.
Baltar Grace. He had begun as a gladiator, caught the eye of the king of that age, and become a knight; then he had distinguished himself in war until he rose to Aura User, a self-made knight of legend.
"If you meet Baltar on the battlefield, run."
There were so many martial anecdotes that even a poem of war-merit existed. He could only be called a legendary rarity of a man. He was a knight so great that even royalty could not treat him lightly, and an eccentric who had refused the post of supreme commander of the military to remain head of the 3rd Order.
...From Lee Han's point of view, he was also a mountain that would have to be crossed someday.
"Seriously, why did you come? You don't even visit the order."
"Hoh hoh. I heard you'd brought a woman, so curiosity brought me."
"...Must be disgustingly idle."
"At my age, would you have me still trudging off to work?"
"......I really have nothing to say."
Aura User or not, he was well past the age to have retired. He only looked this young because Aura had held his body at its prime for a long time. That was the thing.
"I'm jealous all over again, honestly. I hear you took another wife."
"Not a wife. A lover. Don't go making a married man of me."
"You've had ten children. Admit it already, would you? It's undignified."
"A young body means a young heart. I am still in the spring of my youth. Heheh."
"......The country's in great shape."
Funny thing was, look at him and the image of a wind-swept immortal rose unbidden, and yet the old man was extraordinarily vigorous for all that. Women who were plainly wives, whom he insisted on calling lovers, numbered more than ten, and he had fathered ten children besides. Hadn't a great-grandchild been born recently? And still he would not admit he was a married man. No wedding ceremony, so it didn't count, or something of the sort.
And yet, strangely, he had a sense of loyalty. He cherished the women who had borne his children and played the faithful father, so a household that ought to have been full of discord was, they said, oddly warm.
...If you asked Lee Han, this old man was more of a real protagonist than any romance-fantasy heroine or regression-story hero.
I'm jealous.
Some people had lived thirty years and never once properly held a woman's hand. Hm? Add the past life, and how many years was that altogether?
...Shut up.
"You look unusually troubled today."
"...There's a reason. A chance came to find something I'd given up on, but the road there looks like it'll be messy."
"Heheh. That's not like you. Go at it as stubbornly as ever. That is what suits you."
"Easy for you to say."
"Hoh hoh."
He burst into a hearty laugh, and only then did the knights of the order feel his presence and freeze. Once he set out to hide himself, noticing him was nearly impossible.
"C-Captain, sir!"
Sincere salutes followed, one after another. Some here were surely seeing Baltar for the first time, and plenty more had only ever heard the name. He was like some sacred spirit-beast. Merely laying eyes on him was a rare thing.
And everyone who looked at him showed the same feeling: yearning. They were gazing at a man who had been a legend before they were born, so of course every eye went bright. Jord Decker, the new knight who had fought Lee Han, burned brighter than anyone. In practice Baltar was the pinnacle of the kingdom's knights. For orthodox knights, the reaction was only natural.
"All of you, see to your work. I'll be gone once I've seen to mine."
A flood of heated gazes did not earn them his attention. He was smiling, and yet the air made him hard to approach. Many longed to beg him for instruction, and he himself was the reason no one could draw near him easily. And Lee Han—
"Hoard a technique long enough and it turns to compost. What's so grand that you won't teach it?"
"Enough. I loathe troublesome things myself."
Baltar was famous, oddly for an Aura User, for refusing to take even a single disciple. Even the children of his who had become knights had never received one lesson from him, which said everything about how eccentric he was.
Then—
"Come to the rear garden later. I'll give you a letter of appointment."
A voice tickled Lee Han's ear. A voice only he could hear. Not Aura—a method that applied Fighting Art. Even someone who had learned Fighting Art could not have imitated it easily. The technique was that advanced.
And the man on the receiving end of a technique that advanced, admiration and all—
"Seeing a rare marvel is nice and all, but let's just talk with our mouths. A man's voice ringing in my ear doesn't feel great."
"...Impudent brat. You ought to play along when the moment calls for it."
"It gives me the creeps."
"...Before we talk, shall we converse with swords first?"
"Heheh, that I like. Follow me up to the roof, old man!"
"And where, exactly, is the roof?"
Shring.
Baltar accepted the impudent provocation, and Lee Han could not have been more pleased.