The Worst Choice (2) *Revised
After my conversation with the Duke ended, I went straight to find my mother.
I'd have to keep up a delinquent act that was never in my stars, but I still meant to tell her the whole story from beginning to end. Watching her blame herself for raising her child wrong was something I truly couldn't stand to see.
As expected, Mother flew into a towering rage—so fierce that I found myself wondering whether she was even the same woman as that gentle, soft-spoken mother I knew.
But of course she was angry. This was her own child. Her own child, who had grown up denied the treatment given to his direct-line siblings, all because he'd been born a bastard. Her own child, who had just come home from his own father carrying nothing but an order to sacrifice himself for the family—on the strength of a single supposed lack of talent. What mother on earth could sit still after hearing that? Naturally, she looked ready to storm the Duke's office then and there.
And naturally, I had to hold her back. If she actually went through with something like that, I'd be worrying for her safety before the day was out.
"Jenison... this isn't right, you know. Bastard or not, no child deserves to be treated this way..."
"I'm truly fine with it, Mother."
"Jenison... please..."
Still, watching her weep hurt. She already carried a quiet guilt over being common-born as it was, and I dreaded the thought of her pinning this on herself too, sooner or later. Honestly, it was one worry after another.
"Jenison, can't you think it over one more time?"
"...."
"Jenisooooon...!!"
I barely managed to calm her after she came close to fainting several times over the course of my explanation, but her anxious gaze never left me afterward. She probably knew all too well how terrifying people's stares could be—gossip had swirled around her once, too, the common-born Duchess of a great house.
Of course I knew the order was unjust. But what could I possibly do? My counterpart was the Duke of one of the most eminent houses in the empire. If I were even my old self, I might at least have seized a knife and fought back. In this young, frail body, even that was impossible. I'd assumed that being born into a ducal house meant an easy life, and I'd let the conditioning of my body slide all this while because of it.
Well, that carelessness was mine and no one else's—no one to blame for it but me...
'...Fine. I'll just start conditioning this body little by little from here on out.'
Which left the question of how, exactly, one went about playing a delinquent...
"Young master!!"
"...?"
I spun around at the shout to find Ella running toward me, looking somehow absolutely livid...? Hm?
"Young master! I heard everything from the madam!!"
"...Ah."
"This is outrageous!! You have talent, young master!! You manifested two crests!!"
Left to her own devices, I was fairly certain she'd march straight off to take the Duke to task, so I had to coax and soothe her by whatever means I could—and it took burning through two entire tea-and-pastry sets before she finally settled down.
"I'm really fine, so don't trouble yourself over it, Ella."
"...I don't know about that. I'll head in first."
She was thoroughly sulking—she turned her back on me with a sharp little huff. And still, I was grateful. Grateful that she worried for someone like me.
'...If I'm grateful, then I ought to protect her.'
Yes. I had to protect her. She, like my mother, was one of the only people in this world I would risk everything to keep safe.
Before long the next year arrived, and on the day I turned eleven, I entered the Academy just as I was—carrying the Duke's secret orders to play the delinquent.
'...Huh. That easy?'
Playing the delinquent proved simpler than I'd expected. All I had to do was cull a gang from among the leeches who latched onto me to feed on my name and family—the third-rate ones only, and even then only those with rotten characters and worse conduct.
"Lord Jenison!!"
"Hehe, right here, Lord Jenison..."
Even assembling the gang was easy. Most of them were snot-nosed little brats who threw their weight around on the strength of their family backgrounds alone—and of all of them, I happened to carry the most powerful background of all. Perhaps it was only natural that they fell in line behind me.
And yet, there was one thing I couldn't bring myself to do no matter how I tried. Bullying someone.
I could kill a man without inflicting pain—I had. I'd seen every kind of agonizing torture up close as well. But taking children far younger than even I was and breaking them with my own hands—that, I simply could not do. And it wasn't as though I'd see them for a day or two and be done with it. I'd be seeing their faces every single day.
So I needed to find a way to keep whoever the target turned out to be from suffering any more than necessary. After a few minutes of hard thought, a good idea finally came to me.
'Time to find a part-time job.'
A cover job, so to speak.
The Academy collected its tuition by semester. Befitting the Empire's most prestigious institution, its lessons were full of knowledge that couldn't easily be learned anywhere else—and the fees were every bit as extraordinary. Nearly impossible for commoners to shoulder.
Even so, countless commoners applied for admission every year, for one simple reason: to lift their families back up. An Academy diploma was proof of the qualification to work anywhere you pleased after graduation.
But somewhere out there, surely, were students for whom that tuition was a crushing burden. All I had to do was find those commoners and make my proposal.
'I'll take full responsibility for your tuition—so how about letting me bully you?'
Any third party overhearing that would call it utter madness, but think it through calmly and it wasn't a bad deal at all. As I said, Academy tuition was money even nobles didn't part with lightly. How much heavier must it weigh on commoners, then? Beyond imagining, probably. And that burden fell squarely on the shoulders of the commoner students attending the Academy.
So what if they accepted my offer? In exchange for playing my victim, I would cover their tuition in its entirety. I wouldn't torment them brutally, either—endure a few moments a day, and a small fortune came rolling in. The process would sting, admittedly. But their own burden would lighten, and they could even send something home to their parents...
Someone was bound to take the bait, no?
'Well. Time to start looking...'
And so I began making inquiries—hunting for commoners struggling under the weight of their tuition.
The right candidate turned up faster than I'd expected, which surprised me a little—but find her I did.
Lianna. A student entering the Academy the same year as me, a commoner my own age. She had blue hair and emerald eyes, her long hair falling past her shoulders with a soft, healthy sheen—but the patches sewn here and there into her Academy uniform said everything that needed saying about her family's finances.
Her looks had drawn plenty of attention early in the term, but the moment word got around that she was a commoner, most people lost interest just as quickly. These days, by all accounts, she lived under the spiteful stares of a handful of noble daughters.
No one could have been better suited to this. Her family was poor enough that she must have been crushed beneath the duty of reviving it herself—and she could never bring herself to tell her parents she was being bullied at the Academy. Because she absolutely had to graduate from this place and succeed. No matter what.
Impressive, the longer I looked. Truly, a candidate tailored to my exact circumstances.
"U-um... is there... something you needed...?"
At a glance, she seemed afraid of me. I didn't let that sway me one way or the other. I'd kicked up more than one scandal since enrolling; my reputation had already sunk as low as it could go. Of course she was frightened, even if I'd summoned her for no particular reason.
"Sorry for calling you out of nowhere. Must have startled you."
"N-no, not at all..."
"I asked you here because there's a favor I'd like to ask of you."
"A favor... you mean...?"
I laid out the whole story for her, just as it was—from why I had to play the delinquent, down to the compensation she'd receive if she agreed.
"Well? Did you follow all of that?"
"Y-yes..."
"Then I'd like to hear your answer."
Having heard me out, she began to deliberate at length. Fair enough, really. The terms were simply too good. Accept, and a little manufactured harassment would wipe away the burden pressing on her parents—and ease the pressure crushing her, too. Whatever money was left over could buy her a more comfortable life, or give her own development a real push and carry her that much closer to success.
"H-how... how would I know you'd keep your word...?"
At last, something very much like acceptance slipped out of her endlessly deliberating mouth, and I didn't let it pass me by.
"I'll swear it on my family's name. You do know what an Oath of the Family means, don't you?"
The moment the words left me, her jaw dropped open and she began stammering out a meaningless "Yes... yes...?"—which, viewed a certain way, was only natural. Among the nobility, an oath sworn on one's house carried tremendous weight. Swearing on your family's name, in a world where people lived and died by honor? Even a snot-nosed toddler playing by the roadside would topple over backward from the shock. Everyone knew exactly what befell those who broke an oath sworn on their house.
Every sort of rumor would spread through high society, for one. Those of lower-ranked houses would sneer you down as a senseless fool who'd thrown away his honor, and if your own family caught wind of it, you'd be cast out of the name itself—every scrap of support you received, severed.
"Y-you'd swear that... for a commoner like me...?"
"That's right. Got a problem with that?"
Not that it mattered to me either way. I had no intention of breaking it. If I didn't arrange things like this, I'd be stuck targeting some innocent soul and tormenting them regardless. If it had to be done at all, wasn't an arrangement where everyone walked away a winner the better bargain?
"No—I'll do... I'll do it!!"
And just as I'd predicted, she accepted my offer with the deepest gratitude.
Good.
Very good.
The offer was accepted, and everything after proceeded without a hitch. I paid no mind to anyone else and "bullied" her alone, and my reputation in high society plummeted in real time.
Not that I actually tormented her all that badly. When my followers hurled insults that crossed the line at her, I shut them down and apologized to her privately afterward. When her uniform was stolen, I procured her a new one from a high-end tailor. Every so often I slipped her a modest allowance for her leisure, so she could enjoy her life a little. Of course, no one saw any of this behind-the-scenes maneuvering, so my reputation went right on sinking.
And so it didn't take long for the admiring, expectant glances of my early days to be replaced by looks of loathing and contempt. I won't claim the stares left me entirely unscarred. But I'd long since grown used to eyes like those—and the knowledge that a single misstep here would put my mother's safety at risk carried me through without causing any real trouble.
Fear, though, was another matter entirely. My position in the family was that of a cast-off burden—literally the household's dead weight, someone no one would miss if I vanished. What if the Duke woke up one morning with a change of heart and threw me out? There would be nothing I could do. I had no one to stand behind me, no one to shield me.
'So... for now, I'd best keep my head down as much as I can.'
Ridiculous as it sounds, that was the first goal of my school days. Not for glory, not for anything else—to protect my mother.
And so the years slipped by. Six years after I entered the Academy, in the year I turned seventeen, my mother passed away.