The Knight Came to Hate the Ball (6)
"Kunta has a question!"
"What is it you wish to know?"
"Why do the sultan and the mage come to see the mage chick? Is there a reason?"
"This is only my own guess, but in the Magic Tower's case, I suspect they wish to confirm whether the young lady's talent truly lives up to the rumors."
"Why check that?"
"They want to take the young lady back to the Magic Tower, I should think."
"Why?"
"The Magic Tower is always thus. They want mages of excellent talent under their banner. A sort of trophy, I imagine."
"Sneaky reason. Kunta thinks he understands why Instructor hates mages."
"Come now. The instructor isn't at the level of mere dislike, is he? He treats them like vermin that ought to be wiped out."
"Mm. That is true."
Arno and Garand were forever the ones who answered Kunta's questions. They sparred and drilled together so often that, at some point, the arrangement had settled into place on its own.
"Then why did the Lord of the Desert come?"
"Lord of the Desert? Ah—you mean the sultan?"
"The sultan... I imagine he covets the young lady's ability itself. Magic that commands water has always been prized in the West, and in that sense Lady Irene's magic—magic that can set even a river surging—could hardly fail to tempt the sultan. No, the whole of the West would covet it."
In the West, where water was scarce, Irene's magic could call the rain and find even hidden veins beneath the earth. It was nothing short of a god's miracle. Take her away with him, and she would set the sultan's authority, and the very foundation of his power, on firmer ground than ever.
"Mmm. They need a trophy there too!"
"In a manner of speaking."
"Even so, it won't be easy. Behind that young lady stands none other than His Grace, the Duke of the Magic Sword. Our old man says that if His Grace ever got serious, burning the whole of the West would be possible. I wonder whether that lot has the guts to sour the mood of a man that frightening."
"Chick's dad is scary."
"He is rather more than simply scary."
Seen in that light, the sultan's and the Magic Tower's boldness looked, at a glance, like sheer recklessness. No different from moths hurling themselves into the fire.
"Mmm. Head hurts."
The explanations his friends kept offering were slowly cooking the barbarian's brain. Too much information at once, most likely, and this was the price.
"We scarcely said anything. Is it a barbarian's shortcoming?"
"I doubt it. That one only spends his head on using his body. The barbarian in our company is sharp enough to keep the accounts."
"So even barbarians differ from person to person. More than that, a barbarian accountant... I should like to meet him."
"Heh. If the chance comes, I'll invite you."
Before they knew it the talk was over, and they meant to return to training. Ever since the Sacrifice Barrier had been spread across the grounds, a fever of drilling had seized the sword faculty, and they were among the very best. If they did not want to be overtaken, they would have to give everything they had.
Only—
"...But."
"Do you have yet another question?"
"Mm. Not that. What is Instructor doing now?"
"Practicing a new joint lock, or a striking art? Looks strange."
"...Mm."
At Kunta's words their eyes slid, all at once, toward the instructor, and they saw it together. Crack. Crunch. Already more than ten heavy sand dummies had been smashed past recognition.
"Hah. This is harder than I thought."
It was rare to see the instructor so openly at a loss, and the two students could hardly believe their eyes.
"And that is supposed to be dance practice..."
"We ought to pray for his partner's soul in advance."
Dance. What people commonly called social dance, the dance of a ballroom—the instructor was making a sour face over learning it, and the reason was nothing ordinary.
Whump—crash.
He kept throwing techniques at his dance partner. And not ordinary techniques: only the brutish sort one might fairly call killing arts.
"So that is instinct... How brutal."
"Brutal doesn't cover it. It's frightening. Downright frightening."
A murder dance. The instructor was inventing, in all seriousness, the steps of death, and the figures he cut sent a chill down even their spines. Crunch. A dummy's waist folded clean in two.
"For crying out loud. There's more to prepare than I thought."
Lee Han grumbled. An unexpected chance to get a look at the Magic Tower's spell-mongers had fallen into his lap, but if he meant to make contact, he would have to attend the party himself. Slipping in unseen was one option. For the moment, he had decided to approach them the proper way.
Not because he intended to handle the Magic Tower with care.
"Please, Master..."
He simply could not win against Bear-Girl, hands clasped, eyes desperate and pleading.
Where did she pick up a finishing move like that?
And she had learned it properly. The hands, the eyes, even the set of her body—all of it drove straight at a man's pity and swelled the sadness around her until Lee Han could not bring himself to bull ahead however he pleased. So here he was, having chosen the orthodox approach, learning party manners and all the rest of that culture.
Deciding to learn it and actually learning it were different matters.
"As a rule, one does not touch the food at a party. It isn't made to be eaten. It is made only to be looked at and enjoyed."
"Why waste good food like that?"
The trouble was that the ordeal began at the very first step. Lee Han was furious. Making a game of food ranked among the five things he hated most in the world, and Levi, who was the one teaching him party etiquette, broke into a sweat and hurried to add what came next.
"E-even so, the servants take it all, or eat it, so it isn't thrown away."
"Obviously it shouldn't be."
"Oh, and even if you need something to drink, raising your hand is not the act of a gentleman or a lady. You have to wait until the people serving drinks come to you."
"And when you use a cup, your hands must move like this."
"...I might actually pass out."
The more he heard, the dizzier he became.
If I'd known it would be like this, should I have learned it back when Jake offered to teach me?
A knight was a knight, and his station required him to know the basic culture of the nobility. Lee Han, however, would rather lift a dumbbell one more time than learn any such thing, and thanks to that preference he did not know a single point of noble etiquette. The dance was his first as well. In every direction, the situation was an awkward one.
"...I didn't know learning to dance would be this hard."
"Instructor, isn't it less that the dance is difficult, and more that you're unskilled at regulating your strength?"
"I'm confident in regulating my strength. The problem is the instinct. Put a person in front of me and I habitually try to throw them, or threaten them."
"...It's an admirable stance for a knight, but your partner would be unfortunate."
Levi could understand the habit, in a way. Even so, she clicked her tongue at the thought that it was no small hindrance in ordinary life.
"It isn't a habit I show with just anyone. Only with strangers. In practice—"
He stepped in, close and solid.
"Look. When it's someone familiar, I can come right up to them and I don't threaten them at all."
"Bear-Girl?"
"H-haaah...!"
Lee Han blinked, lost.
The strength had gone out of Levi's waist. That he had come to her side without the slightest reservation had excited her far too much.
This man, honestly...
She knew perfectly well how shameful she looked, and still she could not stop the flush rising in her face. Excitement was excitement, and joy was joy.
He said he's at ease with me...
Toward someone familiar, the habitual threat did not come. That meant he trusted the woman called Levi, and the knowledge came to her as a joy beyond anything she could ask for. She had learned that the man she liked bore her goodwill. How could she be anything but glad?
She was basking in that happiness, and perhaps today's luck was not finished yet.
"Oh, right. Now that I think of it, they said this was etiquette too."
Levi's eyes went wide.
From inside his coat Lee Han drew a ribbon of deep navy, a color that sat well with her. In Pendragon, a man taking out a ribbon and offering it to a woman meant precisely this.
"Th-that's right, isn't it? This is how you do it?"
She had frozen, with no reaction at all, and Lee Han took the measure of her condition at once.
"...So a person really can faint with their eyes open."
He had learned something remarkable. Levi was discovering in her own body that when happiness overflowed, one could lose one's senses.
"Why is Lady Levi like that?"
"I haven't the faintest idea."
Laying her in a hammock in the shade, Lee Han gave a shrug, as if there were nothing he could guess.
"It's a good thing I happened to bring a blanket."
"...And how you just happen to have one, I couldn't say."
"Hehe."
Layla Winter, the maid whose braids suited her so well, drew the blanket with gentle care over Levi, who slept like a girl.
"There's a smile at her lips. She must be having a happy dream."
"...Not only people's hearts. Now you see through their dreams as well, Miss Layla."
Layla only blinked at him, the picture of innocence.
"Honestly. Look at her at a time like this and she's nothing but a ditz."
And yet there were moments when the maid showed an eye sharper than anyone's, and strangely, in front of this person, Lee Han turned into a gentle lamb. She was too frail, too pure, a living thing that posed not one shred of threat. Knowing that, he supposed, he couldn't help going quiet himself.
"Rather than that, Sir Knight, is the dance difficult to learn?"
"...My progress is only slow. It will come along, little by little."
"Can you learn all of it within four days?"
For the record, that was how long remained until the party. A sharp observation, and Lee Han was letting his dismay show when she bounced up.
"Then don't be like that. Practice with me!"
"Miss Layla?"
"I know the basic dances too."
"That is..."
The chance that he might hurt the maid left him at a loss beyond words.
And yet—
She came in without hesitation, soft as an embrace, and clung to him. Then she simply danced, and before he quite knew it Lee Han was matching her lead.
"...Huh?"
Not two seconds into the dance, his eyes had gone round.
He was dancing. Clumsy, yes, but what mattered was that he was dancing properly.
"Like this, here. The gentleman has to support his partner. Take her by the waist, no hesitation."
"...I'm afraid it might snap."
"Hee, I'm plenty sturdy!"
"That... is true."
Her waist was slender, and soft. He worried that if he seized it something terrible would happen, and though he knew her abnormal sturdiness and thought he might safely worry a little less—
Strangely, I can't quite manage that...
Now that they were actually touching, she felt infinitely weak, and infinitely precious. Something he was meant to protect.
"There, a careful turn!"
"...Like this?"
"Yes! You really are good with your body."
"Am I."
"Yep!"
"Ha..."
The movement of hands and feet, and eyes the color of beautiful honey, fixed on him alone. It was a beautiful, hazy moment, as if he were dreaming a midsummer dream.
And then, at a certain instant—
"Well? It's working, isn't it?"
"...Yes. So it seems."
As a dream must someday break, the dance had ended. For the first time Lee Han had succeeded in dancing properly, and yet he felt no sense of achievement at all. He was simply blank.
"Hehe, I dance better than you thought, don't I? Royal maids sometimes have to go to balls and parties, so we learn ahead of time. I made a lot of mistakes when I first learned, though."
For an instant, the fact that she might go to a party with someone other than him came over Lee Han as something terribly uncomfortable. The thought that those eyes might turn toward another man tightened his chest in a way he could not account for.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"It's nothing. I was only thinking nonsense."
"Hmm..."
Her eyes seemed, somehow, to see straight through him, and Lee Han turned his gaze aside as if invoking the right to remain silent.
And as he did, he thought.
Ah. All of a sudden, I hate the ball.
The knight had come to hate the ball.
Terribly.