On a Moonlit Night (1)
Judged by the outcome alone, the affair had fizzled into nothing.
Sorting out who was right and who was wrong would have taken forever, and by a knight's code either the vice-captain ought to have died or the man who had run his mouth so impudently ought to have. The count's house was never going to stand for either. Nor could Lee Han, even if he had meant to raise hell, ignore the line a man was obliged to keep when he had only just pinned on an instructor's badge. Caught unable to go one way or the other, the incident had somehow already been closed—with nothing whatsoever resolved.
And there was one person who found this neither-here-nor-there state profoundly unpleasant.
None other than—
"You did run wild most splendidly."
Isis set the newspaper down and wet her throat with a drink that had gone lightly cold. It was a sight like a painting. Anyone watching might have thought she was being shot for a pictorial, but this was merely her ordinary day. She was a woman whose daily life was itself a magazine spread. Those who knew her well, however, would have caught the thin thread of displeasure running through that pictorial grace.
"...Don't lay into me too hard. The dean already chewed me out."
Across from her sat a man, turning his head aside as he spun out an excuse that was not quite an excuse. Lee Han, who had taken the front page of today's paper, drank as if his insides were on fire.
"Heh heh. Sir Lee Han's looks do him credit."
"Yes, he's so cool!"
Albert and Layla, whether they grasped how he felt or not, kept lighting up over the photograph in the paper, and Lee Han's bitter smile only had to grow longer. This world was medieval, and yet it was strangely crowded with advanced technology. Cameras, for one.
When did they even take that?
Barbaric medieval reporters. They treated a man's right to his own face like garbage.
...He wanted to smash every last one of them.
Shocking Affair: Violence at the Royal Academy?!
Does the Count's House Mean to Turn Its Back on the Royal House?
Might This Be a Message from the Forsaken Lion to the Silver Lions—
Riiip!
"Will you look at these?"
Half the paper was given over to cursing Lee Han, and tearing him down was the order of the day. Plenty of it was unfit to say aloud. Afraid of what would follow if they touched the count, they had apparently settled for cutting him down instead.
...Pieces of shit.
"Heh heh. Had Sir Lee Han's fame been a little better known, none of this would have come to pass. That much is a pity."
"It's not as if I went out of my way to suppress it. They misunderstand on their own and won't believe the facts. What am I supposed to do?"
"That, too, is so."
Someone might well have found it strange. Lee Han was lowborn, true. Even so, he was a veteran of the war, a talent who had entered a knight order from the lowest of births. Above all, he was a knight chosen by the hand of that Baltar Grace himself. That alone already made him a considerable man, and one who ought not to have been touched lightly. And yet the reporters—no, not only the reporters, but others besides—treated him as an easy mark. It was, in a word, a goddamn mess.
Sadly, people did not know these achievements of his.
The reason was none other than this.
"They do not believe. In most cases they deny Sir Lee Han's very existence."
Astonishing as it was, this country believed not one of the things Lee Han had done. No—denial was the truer word.
That he was a veteran of the war? He was nothing more than a Common Soldier who had joined the fight and survived by luck. That Baltar Grace had personally chosen him for a knight? The upper reaches of the royal house had stopped that information from spreading.
The reason? Simple. Their lordships did not want a second Baltar born. They would rather decline any further Superhumans they could not control. For the same cause, the extraordinary martial power he possessed was scarcely known either.
Of course, now and then someone in their cups, or someone making a joke, would boast of how extraordinary Lee Han was. And yet, astonishingly—
And so, however widely one aired Lee Han's story, no one believed it. Consider it. He had no noble blood worth the name, and he did not even know the Fighting Art. Was it sensible to claim that such a man was strong enough to fight an Aura User? That was why, tell it to anyone, and those who believed were vanishingly few. The talk of Lee Han was judged a groundless rumor, and his fame was buried as a matter of course.
Had he been a knight scrambling for renown, hungry to rise in the world, the tale might have been different. Even now he could have sought out the great houses of the sword, requested a match, and proved himself where the public could see. That would have been enough—just as a martial man wins his name through the joust and the sword tournament.
But.
Why would I do something like that?
Lee Han had no wish to become a spectacle, and no ambition to climb by seizing fame and power. If he had a wish, it was to lay hands on a martial strength by which no one could oppress him at a whim. In short, he felt it more efficient to spend the hours others gave to fame on the work of becoming the genuine article. Of course, that was only his private sense of things. It was not his to force on anyone.
...Which was precisely why.
"A truly wretched philosophy."
"...Where I'm from, we call that romance."
"And does romance feed you?"
"...Mm."
It was also the sort of talk some people could not accept. Lee Han, who had become a man hiding his strength without ever meaning to, smiled bitterly, and Isis, finding it distasteful, only knit her brow.
He knew he had caused a large incident. He had been a little irritated, and he had the sense he had made it larger still for that.
Still.
"If I hadn't done that there, how cheaply would they have taken me? Look cheap, and sounding out the people I'm supposed to watch gets that much harder."
"......"
"I'll admit I went too far. So please stop being angry."
In his own way, Lee Han was working to ease Isis's mood. Ordinarily he would not have gone this far, but she was his patron, wasn't she? ...And she had brought him Ambrosia of two percent purity, besides. For that much he was willing to humor her. She did not soften easily.
No, but I'm the one eating the curses. Why is this woman like this?
He was quietly registering how odd it was when she struck her own breast, as if pent up.
"Do you think it is for that reason that I am angry?"
"...Pardon?"
For an instant her voice lanced out, cold. Lee Han was wondering what she meant out of nowhere.
"There are two reasons for my anger. One: that not even a count, but a mere second son of a count, insulted my sworn younger brother. The other: that I feel contempt for the filthy press, which, without so much as looking into the facts, brands my sworn younger brother a lawless man! Creatures baser than the plague—!"
"...Mm."
It was an exceedingly aristocratic way of speaking, and to a lowborn ear it sat a little sour. Still, she was taking his side, so it did not sound wholly bad.
What's gotten into this sister of mine?
"Hmph. That one of mine should be reviled means that I myself am reviled. To look on in silence is a humiliation of the royal house! How, then, am I not to be angry?"
"...Ah. So that was it."
Right. She isn't angry because I got cursed out. She's angry because her own standing took a hit.
...Figures.
Lee Han shook his head once, as if he had known it all along, and decided to correct her a little.
"Let me fix two things you said, Sister. One: other people don't know you and I are close. Two: I'm not your man. Anyway, you're not the one being cursed, so quit being angry. You're starting to scare me."
"...Impudent."
"Where else are you going to find a humble guy like me?"
"......"
"Stop glaring."
If a look could fling hidden weapons, she would certainly have flung them dozens of times. Her gaze was that fierce, that murderous. How long they stayed that way, he could not have said.
Then, all at once, she spoke.
"What would you have me do with the count?"
"...?"
"...What kind of bullshit is that?"
"It is not empty talk."
From her eyes poured a chill like needles of frost.
"You are in the midst of carrying out my request. For noise to arise already will not do. I am, at present, deeply displeased, and I wish it resolved swiftly."
"......"
Because her own heart was displeased, she wanted that displeasure cleared away at once. Power and strength, honor and authority—words possible only because she stood nearest the summit of all of them. And now, if Lee Han asked her help, every bit of it would come to pass. In this moment he was as good as a man who had won the right to wield the Magic Sword.
Which was why—
"Here. Drink some water and get a hold of yourself. Your eyes have rolled."
"...I am in no mood for jests."
"Neither am I. So I'll say it straight. Just stay put. Don't step in and throw the ecosystem out of balance."
"...You call me a hindrance?"
"Yes."
"...Wretched boy."
A refusal like a knife. And yet, precisely because of that firmness, she felt her anger draining away.
This impudent sworn brother of mine...!
"You said you'd leave the whole thing to me, didn't you, Sister? Then it's settled. I made an enemy of the count's house over this? Then I made an enemy. If they pick a fight again, I fight. If I'm outmatched, I run. That's all there is to it."
"...You would?"
"While I'm running, mind you, I'd go around erasing everything tied to the count's house."
"......"
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"...You stand before me and boldly declare that you will erase an entire royalist house. How should I not be dumbfounded?"
"Oh. That fellow was a royalist? Well, knightly houses do all belong to the royalist faction."
He recalled that the count he had met the day before was a knight of considerable attainment.
"...You did not even know that?"
"Wasn't interested. Anyway, I've made my position clear enough. So just stay still."
"...Haa."
Whenever she spoke with him, Isis always felt that she was the one being reined in. Was it because she had taken him as a sworn younger brother, or was she strangely soft toward him? Whatever the cause, truly—
An amusing man.
In the tedium of her life, an unexpected source of vigor. Finding, in her heart, that she rather liked this man who played beyond her control, Isis let out a soft breath of laughter.
"—Very well. Since you have spoken so impudently, it is no longer my place to interfere. I shall observe no further."
However.
"Where I'm from, we call that the hegemon's way."
"The road of a king is, by rights, the hegemon's road."
"...I always think this, but you're the most dangerous one of all."
"Ho ho. A pleasant thing to hear."
Thwack.
And so she struck his head once more with her fan, and then, in a moment—
A soft unraveling.
"Until we meet again."
Like snow melting in sunlight, Isis vanished in an instant. All that proved she had been there was a puddle soaking the floor.
"...A mastermind, if ever I saw one."
"I'll clean it uuup!"
"...Maid, the way you help is by staying still."
"Huuh?"
"...Just clean it up."
"Okaaay!!"
Getting through to a girl whose brain was pure innocence was considerably difficult work. How did he know? ...He hadn't wanted to know. But keep company with this maid, and a man learned.
"...Old man, you don't vanish like that?"
"Heh heh. How could an old man such as I squander the Mystery of magic?"
"It's just that you don't need magic, isn't it?"
"Heh heh."
...As he had thought.
Lee Han shook his head, watching the maid slip while wiping the puddle and crumple into a tearful face, and the butler melt secretly away as if dissolving into shadow. He probably ought not to say it, but the longer he looked—
If I'm the unorthodox sect, those people are the demonic cult. The demonic cult.
Somehow the royal house seemed stocked with no one but people more bizarre than he was, and he was the one who had been subjected to human experimentation.