EP.69 – The Knight Cheers the Young On (3) / Check the Afterword
"At a debutante—that is, for a lady on the verge of entering society—what matters most?"
The question came gently from a beautiful woman dressed with neat precision. She was a teacher in the Academy's elementary division, charged with pupils who were little more than toddlers, and her lessons ran chiefly to etiquette, language, and the kingdom's social customs. The children adored their kind, graceful teacher. They beamed and shot their hands into the air without a moment's hesitation.
"A pretty dress!"
"Our puppy!"
"Um, uh... a handkerchief?"
Each offered the best answer they knew, and the woman could only laugh. The replies were so unstained, so utterly pure.
"Yes, none of you are entirely wrong. A dress matters, of course. A puppy would certainly be adorable. And embroidery on a handkerchief is one of a lady's accomplishments, so that matters as well."
Affirmed by their teacher, the children burst into delighted giggles. She kept her gentle smile and went on.
"But before the dress, the puppy, or the handkerchief, there is something more important."
"?"
"It is called a chaperone."
"??"
"In simple terms, it means a guardian."
"Ohh."
The response was lukewarm, as if they could not quite see why any of it should matter.
"It truly is important. A chaperone, put simply, is someone who vouches for your credit. She is a quiet means of letting the world know that a woman's chastity is beyond question."
"......?"
"Hehe. Hard to understand just now, isn't it? When you are grown, you will know it well—what a chaperone does, and why it matters. And who can say? Someday I may even serve as chaperone for one of you."
"M-me! Pick me! I like you, Teacher!"
"Me too!"
"Me...!!"
"Ohoho."
The woman could only hope the children's purity would endure forever, even on the day they finally stood their debutantes.
"A chaperone, simply put, is a matchmaker. A matchmaker. A watcher your parents stick on you so you'll land a decent man."
"Th-that's what it is?"
"Yes. It isn't a very wholesome institution. It isn't written into law, but you know the sort of thing—a custom hardened into an unspoken rule. A bad custom, in other words."
"To that extent?"
"Of course. The noble ladies who serve as chaperones are almost all nobility-first snobs who judge people by rank. And fussy? You wouldn't believe how fussy. They'll pick a fight over the color of your eyes or the length of your hair, over the angle of your teacup, over how you smile, even over how you eat."
"Hah..."
"And a lady must never exercise, they say. Exercise, and you've no dignity. Something like that."
"A thoroughly senseless bad custom, that."
"Right!"
The knight, having finished the lesson down at her eye level, gave a great nod. The girl, whose childhood purity was long gone, grinned. Such was the heartlessness of time.
Mm. Boiled down, it's a brake on youthful heat.
He sounded as if he simply agreed with his student, but Lee Han had already kept what was worth hearing and discarded the rest. He knew a chaperone was not the pure vicious custom Chick Number Twelve had made it out to be.
Kids that age run hot. That's just how it is.
An age ruled by hormones rather than the head. An age when a little playing with fire could all too easily start a real blaze, and when running away from home or slipping off in the night was nothing unusual—the storm and stress of blood running high.
Think I'm exaggerating?
At the last faculty meeting they said something like fifty pairs of students caused a scandal last year and beat the wedding to it, didn't they?
Instead of the studying they were meant to do, they had been busy strengthening the realm's population. Well, rich nobles falling for one another and marrying was no great worry. The trouble was that what they called love so often came apart after two or three years. As the saying went, love like fire: one moment it roars up, and the next it is suddenly gone.
In truth, young noble couples divorcing within a year came to nearly eighty percent across the whole kingdom. Lee Han's narrow view of the nobility had not sprung from nowhere.
There are far too many of them who throw their bodies around without a second thought.
Could anyone believe that the flesh-drenched scenes from those films of his past life—films drawn from the lives of medieval European nobles—played out the moment a party opened its doors? Debauchery at its peak. Honestly, the nobles had enough of the beast about them that the decadence on screen looked like nothing at all. Which was why the kingdom's lawyers were always busy. Divorce was one matter; suits to confirm paternity after an affair kept them just as frantic. And so a chaperone could not simply be dismissed as a vicious custom.
The young caused this much wreckage, and divorce and adultery burned through a house's fortune. What parent could leave them unsupervised? Watcher or whatever else you called it, someone had to be attached.
And yet.
"Why are you asking me to do it?"
Lee Han could not, for the life of him, understand why his student was making this request. Understanding what a chaperone actually did only made it worse. A woman vouching for another woman made sense. Set a man like him up as guarantor, and the whole thing was a wash, wasn't it? A perfectly reasonable question, as far as he was concerned.
To that question:
"Oh, that's all right. Honestly, Britannia and the Empire are strict as a blade about the custom, but Pendragon doesn't cut it that fine."
"Yeah?"
"Women are the usual chaperones, of course, but male ones aren't unheard of. People ask a knight famous for his honor, an old knight, or else some distant cousin of the house."
"...Mm. Feels a bit strange coming out of my own mouth, but you said it's also a way of proving chastity. A man doing that is a little off, isn't it?"
"It can be. And in another sense, it isn't."
"Hm?"
"You won't like this, Instructor, but the language of the nobility isn't direct. They speak not only with words, but with conduct, with the things they carry, with ornament. In that sense, bringing a man along as your guardian means this: I can prove my chastity well enough to choose a man as my protector."
"...That works?"
"It does. And if someone turns it around and sneers that they don't believe you, that's no problem either. You duel."
"?"
"That's why so many male chaperones are knights. If they're insulted, they can demand a duel on the spot."
"I-isn't that way too violent all of a sudden?"
Call it proof if you liked. In the end, you were forcing submission with strength. They had called it the language of nobles, and here it had turned without warning into the language of thugs. Lee Han was more certain than ever that noble society sat closer to the fist than to the law.
"Still your style, though, Instructor?"
"...I won't deny it."
If someone insulted his kids, there was no need to waste energy thinking. You just fought with your fists. Intuitive. He liked it.
"But I'm not asking just because you're strong. You only make a request like this of an adult you can truly trust. And the adult I trust most, as far as I know, is you, Instructor."
"...Flattery, from a chick who hasn't even grown proper down."
"Then why are you giving me jerky?"
"Because you said it prettily. That's a fact."
"Ahaha!"
Lirina laughed, bright and unrestrained, and Lee Han rubbed the tip of his nose. His thirties—hardly the season when a man ought to be growing sentimental—and yet he found himself rather proud of his student. No...
Those little things are already trying to grow their combs.
He was taking a fair amount of pride in the fact that he had earned the trust of his students. Plural.
"Lirina, you're cutting in line!"
"No business ethics at all. Honestly."
"Without even an agreement, this is—!"
"Hmph. Whoever's quickest claims him. Obviously."
"!!?"
The ones cutting into the conversation were the rest of the chicks. A step late, they had overheard and flown into a rage. Which meant they, too, had meant to ask Lee Han to serve as their chaperone. To him it was the picture of having become an adult others could lean on, and a small, warm satisfaction was all he felt.
A question still nagged at him, though.
"But a debutante, now?"
He was sure they had already had one last year, and he tilted his head. It had been in the second term, not so long ago...
"That was more of a rehearsal for entering society, Master."
"...I didn't say anything."
"Your face did. Hehe."
"Ahem."
The girl who had read the question straight off his face—one blossom among the One Hundred and Eight Arhats—drew up beside him with a bright smile. Levi. For Lee Han, who knew little of noble culture, she offered a calm, compact explanation.
"A debutante, the process by which young noble ladies and young masters enter society, may look excessive to you, Instructor, but it requires countless procedures and steps. In that sense, last year's ball was practice ahead of the real thing."
"Then this year?"
"The real debutante has been announced. His Highness the royal grandson's first birthday will be held before long."
"...?"
"To put it plainly, it means countless nobles are finally coming up to the capital."
"More detail."
"There's a saying. If you want to catch fish, go to a river or the sea. If you want to see snowfields, go to the North. If you want to enter society, gather in the Royal Capital. Whatever anyone says, the heart of society can only be the Royal Capital."
"For the connections?"
"Something like that. As expected, you catch on at once."
True to her gift for explanation, she made it easy for Lee Han to follow.
"One thing more. Traditionally, a debutante is often held under the pretext of a royal birthday, or a princess's coming of age. But in recent years, Pendragon's royals..."
"Got wiped out, the lot of them."
"M-Master..."
"It's fine. Nobody's listening."
In that moment Lee Han understood why the chicks were so worked up. Right. After that sister of his had been confirmed as heir to the throne, every other blood relative had died or been shut away. There had been children among them, but they too had been sent far off, as if into exile. Given that...
So a proper banquet like this in the Royal Capital is the first in years.
No wonder the chicks were excited. Not only the chicks here, either. The young. Every youth of nineteen and older would be steeped in anticipation.
"...The Royal Capital's going to be packed."
"Yes. Enormously. It's been quiet so long that the flood will be tremendous. The rulers of every region, of course, and I imagine several of the great nobles will show themselves as well. The one and only royal grandson is stepping onto the official stage for the first time, after all. ...I wonder what sort of person he is."
Levi, rarely, showed curiosity toward someone else. Understandable. He was a royal born of a prince of Britannia and a princess of Pendragon. A living bridge between two nations—how extraordinary he must be...!
"A bit small. Doesn't eat well, maybe, so he's scrawnier than the other babies. The name's a little ominous, too. Arthur? What's with Arthur..."
"...Pardon?"
"Still cute enough, in his way. Can't ignore blood, after all. Spitting image of his mother."
"?"
"Mm. Wonder if he's grown a bit by now."
"???"
Why did he speak as if he had actually seen the child?
......So plainly that it did not sound like a joke.