There Are Parents Who Try to Beat Their Children
The investiture ceremony was over far more quickly than I had expected. A few words of blessing rang out from the lips of the veiled Saintess, a halo of light unfurled behind her, and the Emperor tapped my shoulder twice with a blade washed in water steeped in holy power — and that was the whole of it.
"Jenison. By my name, Siegfried Frabel, I hereby confer upon you the title of Baron."
...
"Your strength shall be spent in service of the Empire, and your loyalty shall belong to me and me alone."
...
"Do you swear this?"
"...I swear it."
Save for a few exchanges stiff enough to make me want to shrivel up on the spot, everything went off without a hitch. It wasn't as if I cared much for titles in the first place, and right now something weighed on me far more than any of this — Aria's safety. The moment this event wrapped up, I intended to go straight to her.
"Haha... so you're that Jenison I'd only ever heard of in rumors... a student, no — a baron now, I see?"
"Getting along well with my daughter, are you? I saw your true worth long ago and made sure to get ahead of the—"
"Let's skip straight to the point, shall we? Might you be considering a tie with our family—"
Yes, I'm certain that was exactly what they intended. Until just a moment ago, that is. Before this many nobles came flocking, it was surely so.
"Ahem. Do you happen to remember me? I did lay eyes on you once, when you were four..."
"My, my... you've grown into the very face I remember from society, haven't you?"
"Looking at you, I find myself thinking of the late Lady Reinhardt—"
A man prattling on about a time when he'd never once even crossed my path, an old woman claiming to have seen me at society gatherings I had never in my life attended, a noblewoman who saw fit to bring up my mother — the woman who had been too frail to leave her bed from one day's end to the next — and on and on. People I had no acquaintance with, never mind friendship, were gathering before me in droves, all clamoring for a conversation.
"Haha... by the way, my boy... you haven't happened to hear anything privately from His Majesty the Emperor, have you...?"
"There are matters I'd like to discuss with you alone, at a later date... how about paying a visit to my estate sometime?"
"...If it wouldn't be too great an imposition, I would very much like to extend an invitation to our family."
...Overwhelming. The nobles had crowded in front of me like a pack of stray dogs, and I could see it plain as day — eyes brimming over with every manner of desire turning my way, bodies straining in a desperate scramble to find some thread connecting me to the Emperor.
What about this young punk could possibly have been so charming that he'd won an Emperor's favor? Had he played some hidden card of his own? Or was he genuinely worth that much? The nobles' thoughts felt as though they were seeping straight into my skull.
'...Stare all you like. I didn't actually do anything, you know.'
"Move."
"Hey, just who do you think you're giving orders to... urk—!"
"...Do you have some complaint?"
"N-no, of course not. How could I ever... against His Grace the Duke of Reinhardt... haha."
And then it happened. The nobles packed in front of me split apart like the Red Sea before Moses — and in the same breath, a man's voice reached my ears.
"...It's been a while."
...
A deep, weighty voice — one I couldn't exactly call welcome.
The moment Jenison received his title, the nobles had swarmed him like wild dogs. And one man watched the spectacle from a distance.
"Reinhardt, have you lost your mind? Why do you keep doing things you've never once done before?"
At the rebuke from beside him, the man's head turned, slow and unhurried — wearing that trademark expressionless look of his, the one that showed neither joy nor sorrow.
"...Pay me no mind."
"I don't waste my concern on the likes of you anyway. Go on — keep doing whatever it was you were doing."
...
"This time, I really will land a hit."
Once more, blue mana rose from Melissa's small frame, drawn up and aimed at one person — and one person only.
But he did nothing. Truly nothing at all. Even with that vivid blue mana — the kind that sets your teeth on edge just from standing near it — swirling around him, he made no move. He simply kept his gaze fixed somewhere else entirely.
"What exactly are you playing at? Even if you mean to stand there and take my attack head-on, there'll be no for—"
"Huh? Hey... wait, where are you going? Hey?!"
After all that back-and-forth, his body finally moved. Not toward her, of course — toward the knot of nobles crowded together in the distance.
"...There are limits to how long you can ignore me."
Icicles bloomed at her back — shaved and honed and whittled down until each one was like a single arrow.
"I don't know what's got you so preoccupied... but..."
And then they were gone — the icicle arrows that had waited only for the instant of release. The mana that had been dancing around her faded away as well, and slowly, she turned her back on him. Because she had seen. Where he was heading. And who stood at the end of that road.
'...Still, I ought to let him see it through. Well — he'll be sent packing soon enough.'
The old men who had blocked my path were all swept off somewhere, and a bitterness I had forgotten ages ago came looking for me.
"...It's been a while."
...
A thoroughly hackneyed line, that. The Duke's face, after all this time, was no different than before. If anything had changed, it was that I no longer held a shred of expectation toward him.
"...I've heard every rumor there is about you."
"Is that so."
The same gruffness as ever — and yet threaded through it was the faintest trace of warmth. The people around us seemed to catch it too; their eyes went round.
"Do you resent me?"
A single sentence. One that seemed to carry a great deal within it, spoken past the Duke's lips with those same eyes devoid of all feeling.
"I ask — do you resent the me who gave you that order, back then?"
Resent, is it. How was I supposed to respond? Should I rage at him — demand to know whether he had ever seen me as anything but the family's scapegoat? Or simply carry this conversation on in silence? Or else bow my head to him, quiet and obedient?
Perhaps he took the silence that hung alongside my deliberation for an answer, because his mouth opened once more.
"I have passed through regret, over and over again. More times than I could ever count."
Regret. A word that suited him not at all. Even now he was watching me with that blank expression. Where on that face was a single speck of remorse supposed to remain?
"Why did I do that to you? Why was I so harsh with you? I turned it over countless times — whether there might have been another way."
...
"But the conclusion was always the same."
His steps carried him a single pace closer to me. Without so much as a flicker of expression.
"Even if I returned to that moment, I would judge exactly as I did."
"...I see."
"Yes. The you of those days was useless enough to leave me no choice but to make it."
They say no parent can ever beat their child — now who was it who said that? Here before me stood a parent, teeth gritted, dead set on trouncing his own child. A man straining with everything he had to prove that his own choice had been the right one.
"I don't know whether you'll resent me for what I did, but such has always been the fate of a family head—"
"...I know that, now."
"...?"
So I answered him. Slowly, clearly, so that anyone could understand. That I no longer resented him. That the family honor and the family head's duty he always kept on his lips — that I could even understand his choosing me as the scapegoat for all of it. So there was no need to explain himself any further.
At my words, the Duke's expression brightened — only a little, but it did. Like a father gazing fondly upon a child who had finally grown.
"Good. I'm glad you understand."
How did I look in his eyes, I wondered? As the proud son who had never once spared himself for the family's sake? Or still as a convenient tool, easy to make use of? The Duke's upturned lip — lifted the barest fraction higher than usual today — had begun to grate on my nerves terribly.
"Then come back. You were ours to begin with."
He moved to reclaim me as though it were only natural. As though a lost possession rightly belonged back in its owner's hands.
"And you will put that strength to use for the family. You've grown strong enough to manage it."
'Grown strong,' he says. Who might he be talking about? I hadn't changed one bit from back then. Not even after I walked out of that house.
I wanted to ask him. Did you measure people by their strength? Did you want a beast that lived by the law of the jungle, rather than a human being — someone who lived among other people, helping and being helped? Today of all days, I wanted, desperately, maddeningly, to ask.
'...Not that I needed to. I knew perfectly well he'd answer yes.'
"I shall grant you special permission to return to the family. Cast aside that worthless little title and come. And..."
...
"A family ought to be together, should it not?"
A worthless little title... So that was what this looked like to him. Without the faintest notion of what it meant to me.
So he had been capable of saying such things after all. Come back to the family. Live together, as family. So there had been a warm word like that inside him all along — words he never gave me when I was far younger than I am now, and he chose now, of all moments, to say them.
"...You really are full of sh—"
"...What?"
"...Ah."
Oh no. It had slipped out all on its own — that word I had spent the entire conversation swallowing back down as mere thought.
...This is bad. I don't think I'll ever get the expression on his face just now out of my memory. Of course — in a good way.