The Imperial Princess and Jenison (Revised)
The moment I stepped into the Sparring Ground, a transparent barrier began to rise around the arena where the Princess and I would face each other, as if to mark out the boundaries of our duel. It existed to shield the spectating cadets from any stray blows—and to keep duels from degenerating into drawn-out wars of attrition.
For someone who had barely scraped out a win against Leon by stalling for time, this was unwelcome news indeed.
The Princess watched me rack my brain over how, exactly, to fight this duel, then opened her mouth with a look of open disapproval.
"What is there to think so hard about? You're going to lose to me regardless."
"You're right."
"Deny it all you like, but you and I are still going to—... Huh?"
Apparently she had expected me to put up at least a token objection, because a look of utter bewilderment crossed her face.
"I will lose to you, Your Highness. I was simply pondering how I ought to lose."
"...Someone as arrogant as you actually entertains such thoughts?"
"I know my own strength well enough, you see."
"Well, at least you've learned to know your place. I only wish you'd had that much self-awareness when we first met."
Ah. So she was bringing up that.
Our first meeting was something even I would have to call the worst encounter of her life.
The Imperial Princess of the Empire, Kiana, was in an exceptionally good mood that day.
She had whined and wheedled at her father until, at long last, he granted her the Academy life she had dreamed of!!
For a girl raised under unrelenting strictness from childhood, the thought that no one would be there to tie her down made her giddy—and the chance to escape a palace where she had not a single peer her own age, to make brand-new friends, delighted her beyond words.
The Academy, after all, had promised that status would mean nothing there, that all were equal—so surely friends would come easily.
And yet the first day at the Academy she had dreamed of for so long turned out to be, quite simply, the worst.
Who is this man? Why does he keep getting under my skin?
Kiana, who had come early in the morning to get a head start on Academy life, was now having her time wasted by a drunken lout.
"Come onnn, just one drink with me~... Hic."
"Please let go of me. Judging by your uniform, you're an Academy cadet, aren't you? Drinking is a violation of school regulations."
"And whooo are you~ to be lecturing me? Do you have any idea who I am?!"
"...And who might that be?"
"I'm the second son of the faaamous House Reinhardt, that's whooo!"
It was infuriating.
This drunken lout was sullying the very first day of the Academy she had looked forward to so much.
House Reinhardt was supposed to be the most illustrious of illustrious families. And the second son of such a house was stumbling around drunk in broad daylight?
He didn't seem to have any idea who she was, either. Was he simply the sort of man who ignored everything people said and forced his demands on them regardless?
Kiana was slowly beginning to boil over, and Jenison noticed it perfectly well—but kept prodding her temper anyway.
The truth was that Jenison wasn't actually drunk in the slightest, and he knew exactly who stood before him.
He was putting on this act to sink his own reputation even lower—and to have his infamy driven home through the Princess's own connections.
Of course, to the Princess, who had no way of knowing any of Jenison's circumstances, the whole situation was simply infuriating.
"You... do you know who I am, and still treat me this way?"
"Hic... Whaaat? And whooo might you be??"
"I knew the second son of House Reinhardt kept himself away from high society, but I never imagined he wouldn't recognize the Imperial Princess of the Empire."
At that, Jenison put on an expression of monumental shock.
"H... Your Highness the Princess...? Hic."
"I have no intention of accepting your greetings at this point, so let's simply go our separate ways. And don't bother greeting me again, either."
With that, the Princess sprinted straight for the Academy without so much as a backward glance, and Jenison, having confirmed she was gone, let his face slacken and exhaled a long sigh.
The Princess's opinion of Jenison began to sour further and further.
At first, she could have excused it all as a mistake made by a man who simply hadn't recognized her—but once the stories of his reputation reached her ears, such charity withered away entirely.
That he tormented girls smaller than himself without mercy.
That he was a lecher who rotated through women night after night.
That he treated his own servants so brutally that they couldn't endure it and abandoned the ducal house altogether.
Every ugly rumor imaginable found its way to the Princess's ears, and since she had witnessed his cruelty toward a girl with her own eyes, Jenison was sealed in her heart as a villain.
Could she not rescue the child suffering under him? How could she make him reap the karma he had sown? As she turned these questions over day after day, a piece of news arrived.
The rumor that he had been cast out of his family.
Some versions claimed he had left the house of his own accord, but considering how he had swaggered about on the strength of his family's name, he would never have walked out willingly.
And when the Princess learned that he had been so shattered by it that he'd stopped coming to the Academy, she approached the very cadet he had been tormenting without a moment's delay.
To hear the girl's circumstances, to help her in every way she could—and to pry her out of his hands for good.
The girl was a commoner, exactly as expected, and the Princess concluded that he had done such things to her precisely because of her low birth.
There was no other reason to be found—to him, perhaps, any commoner would have done.
Under the delusion that she now understood the whole picture, the Princess invited the girl into her faction.
However deranged the man was, she reasoned, even a commoner would grasp what it meant to lay a hand on the Imperial Princess's faction.
Lianna herself, for her part, had agreed to the arrangement in the first place, and joining the Princess's faction was a burden far too heavy for her—so she attempted a tactful refusal.
But the Princess was not the sort to stand by quietly and watch that happen.
She wanted to save the girl—and to see Jenison pay a proper price for what he had done to her.
And so, with the girl half-forced into her faction and the Princess still deliberating over what punishment to inflict on him, the news that arrived was this: Jenison had returned to the Academy, and the moment he did, he had fought a Duel of Honor against Leon Venil—and had even tried to kill his opponent.
Even in a match where killing was permitted, she had never imagined he would attempt it without a flicker of hesitation.
Her misunderstanding of him swelled and swelled, until at the very moment her image of Jenison was about to harden into that of a great evil—
for reasons unknown, no one had applied to pair with her, and she found herself automatically matched against Jenison.
Well, this works out nicely. In this duel, I'll show you beyond all doubt that you are a villain—and that villains deserve their punishment.
With that resolve, the Princess stepped into the Sparring Ground with every confidence.
"To tell the truth, I don't particularly dislike you, Your Highness."
"Well, I dislike you. Your conduct is so disgraceful I could doubt the blood of the Four Great Families even runs in your veins."
"...Then what, may I ask, is proper conduct for a noble?"
"One who devotes themselves to the Empire and serves it of their own will. That is what I believe."
"And you, for your part, are a man who would bring the Empire harm—hardly one who serves it."
At the Princess's final words, my blood pressure shot up all over again.
Service? Devotion?
Why in the world should I have to?
I know it's pathetic. I know full well it's not the sort of thing a man my age should be doing. I know it's the fruit of my own impossibly simple choices.
It's fine if no one gives me credit for it. There was never any need for credit in the first place.
This is just me venting my anger. Rage at having failed, for the first time in my life, to protect the family I'd finally gained.
I've been discarded even by that most exalted of gods—what is there left I cannot do now?
"...What has the Empire ever done for me, that it now expects my devotion?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I asked what the Empire has ever given me, that it should presume to demand my devotion."
At this, the Princess let out a scoff of pure incredulity and pressed on.
"When you were a noble. The clothes you wore. The food you ate. The mansion you lived in—all of it!!"
"..."
"Do you truly not understand that every last bit of it was the Empire's grace?"
I clamped my mouth shut for a moment, then opened it again, facing the Princess, who still looked at me as though I were something scraped off her shoe.
"Would you happen to know this, Your Highness?"
"...?"
"From the age of eleven, I received next to nothing from my family. On the grounds that I had no talent."
"...What are you saying? And yet someone like that lived in such luxury all this time?"
"That money was, strictly speaking, an allowance for keeping up appearances. And even that, I scraped together by borrowing nearly all of my mother's share."
The Princess, struck speechless, quietly listened to my story.
The story of a son who drained his mother's lifeblood, feigned blindness to her suffering, and lived with her sacrifice loaded on his back.
"My mother's health failed her like that, little by little, until before long she could no longer rise from her bed."
"...Why are you telling me this—"
"Be quiet and listen."
Looking at the Princess's dumbstruck face, I carried on.
"She endured and endured, and on the day my mother finally passed away—on that very day, would you believe it, a small sum of money arrived from the Empire. They called it 'condolence money.'"
"......"
"What, precisely, is this 'grace' the Empire is said to have bestowed?"
"......"
"Because as far as I can tell, I never received anything of the kind."
"......"
"It would have been wonderful indeed if the 'grace' the Empire spoke of back then had been enough to keep my mother alive."
"......"
"So could you tell me once more, clearly—what grace is it that I have received?"
The Princess soon gathered herself and shook her head, but her expression had unmistakably softened from before, and she began to speak, slowly.
"...Even so, that doesn't justify your misdeeds."
"It's an act you were never going to understand anyway, Your Highness—O noble blood of the Empire."
At my sneering tone, the Princess seemed to finally lose her temper; she struck the ground with her staff and readied herself for the duel.
"...You nearly swayed me there for a moment. But you are a villain, all the same."
"The way you press your own opinions through regardless. A truly admirable sight."
I answered her with the widest smile I could manufacture, and she stared at that smile as though she'd seen a demon. We faced each other down.
Before long, the signal to begin the duel rang out.
Beeeep———