The New Attendant (3)
The other attendants were guaranteed free time once training ended. Adel, however, transitioned straight into escort duty. Until Sien's daily schedule was finished, he was expected to remain at her side.
After dinner, Adel stood outside the family head's office. A full day of punishing drills ought to have left him exhausted, yet there was not a single gap to be found in his bearing.
"Adel. Are you outside?"
Sien's voice drifted from within the office.
"Yes. I am outside."
"Would you come in for a moment?"
At her command, Adel took hold of the door handle. Stepping inside, he found a woman bent over a stack of documents.
"Have a seat."
Adel did as she asked and settled onto the sofa. Several minutes passed before Sien lifted her gaze from the papers and spoke.
"How was it? Your first real day at Lichtenauer."
"It was good."
"Be honest."
"It truly was good."
A calm expression. A voice without the slightest tremor. The picture of a man telling the truth. Sien gave a small nod.
"I heard today's training was quite grueling."
"...Was it?"
That hardly qualifies as grueling.
Adel muttered the thought to himself.
"If you're tired, you're welcome to go rest first."
"I am fine."
"I'm fine too, so you can go."
"I am truly fine. I am not tired in the slightest."
Adel was stating a simple fact. To Sien's eyes, however, it could only look like a man determined to fulfill his duty as her escort.
Training as an attendant, then working as a bodyguard on top of it — he was enduring twice the hardship of anyone else, and yet he never once said it was hard, never once let it show on his face. It made her feel terribly sorry, and just as grateful. She wanted to look after him more, and for that, Adel needed to find his footing here as quickly as possible.
"Just hold on a little longer. Once you post a certain score in training, you'll be assigned more escort work."
"...You need not go to the trouble."
"No. You're my escort. If I don't look after you, who will?"
At her words, Adel thought: having no time to rest, the way things were now... that wasn't so bad. He'd welcome something even harder.
"There's a sparring match tomorrow morning, isn't there?"
"So I have heard."
"Nothing difficult or worrying from your perspective, I imagine."
Adel nodded. The attendants he'd seen today were, to a one, children. Their attitudes were good and their will wasn't lacking, but with no real experience, that was as far as they would go no matter how generously one looked at it.
"Then tomorrow, go easy on them."
"...Go easy, you say?"
"Yes. Go easy."
Don't overwhelm them. Take a few hits, then win. That was what Sien meant by the words.
"...Understood. I will go easy."
Unfortunately, "going easy" meant something entirely different to Adel. In Ulfhedinn, that phrase was far more terrifying than anything Sien had in mind.
She wants me to handle them a bit roughly, then.
The next day, the attendants' scheduled sparring matches began. They faced one another with wooden swords, observing the minimum of courtesy as they fought. Showing no mercy to demonic beasts was only natural — but they would not be fighting demonic beasts forever. Conflicts with other territories, even other nations, were always a possibility. And in those battles, knights played a vital role.
"I look forward to learning from you."
"The pleasure is mine."
The attendants began their matches under the instructors' watchful eyes, drawing out everything they had.
Crack! Snap—!
"Ugh!"
"Stop. That's enough."
The moment a weapon was dropped or a defeat conceded, the match ended just like that.
"Well fought."
"Thank you."
Winner and loser alike maintained their manners to the end. After several such matches, Adel's turn finally arrived.
"...You did pick the order carefully, right, senior?"
"We matched him against the best of the attendants, at least."
"I'm still worried. Will it be all right?"
Adel's opponent was the finest attendant the instructors had been able to select — a relatively young man of nineteen, and the fastest to improve. He was the most promising talent among them, a cut above the rest in skill. And still, the instructors were sick with worry.
Promising or not, they're on completely different levels. Completely!
Where in the world would you find an attendant who had slain a third-rank demonic beast? Only here, at Lichtenauer. A genius attendant had appeared, just like that.
"Hey. Look. Over there."
Just as the two were about to begin, a stir ran through the instructors. Sien had appeared at the far end of the training ground, the knight commander at her side.
"Family Head."
Every instructor bowed at the waist.
"What brings you all the way out here?"
"I heard the attendants were sparring. These are the new talents who will lead Lichtenauer someday. I wanted to see how high their level is. Am I interrupting?"
"Not at all, Family Head. It is an honor, if anything."
"Is that so. Thank you for saying so."
At Sien's reply, the instructors glanced toward Adel. The family head had almost certainly come to watch that young man. Whatever the case, it wasn't a bad thing for the other attendants either.
"We were just about to start a match. Would you care to observe?"
"I think I will."
Smiling, Sien turned her gaze toward the attendants. The faces of those standing there flushed crimson in an instant. There was talk of demon blood mixed in her veins, and worse — but the beauty she possessed could not be hidden by such slander. If anything, perhaps it was thanks to the demon blood that ran through her. She was more beautiful than any woman in the world. Her face, her every step, the very way she carried herself — if light itself were shaped into a person, it would look like her.
Adel's opponent had the same reaction. This was the first time he had seen the new family head from so close. And she was more beautiful than any woman alive. If that smile were directed at him, he would want for nothing else.
Suddenly, the desire to catch her attention — no, a man's instinct — seized the young man's heart. He knew perfectly well that the opponent before him was a powerhouse beyond any comparison to himself, a man already proven by both the family head and the commander. And yet, if he gave it everything, if he showed her something impressive... might that radiant woman remember him?
"I look forward to a good match!!"
He offered his greeting at the top of his lungs.
"...I look forward to it."
Adel's voice, by contrast, was perfectly ordinary. For a brief moment, Sien's gaze shifted toward the young man. Heartened by that, the attendant settled into his stance.
I may not be able to win, but I'll show her something good! I'll have the honor of having my name remembered by my future lord! I'll hear the words "well done" from those lovely lips!
"Here I come! Hyaaaaah!!"
The young man charged in with a roar. Adel watched him for a moment, then casually lifted his wooden sword.
KRAAAAAANG—!!
...What just happened?
What was that? What on earth had just occurred?
The same thought ran through everyone gathered around.
There had clearly been an attendant charging at Adel. Now there wasn't. Even scanning the surroundings, he was nowhere to be found.
"Ah."
A groan came from somewhere — the instructor standing farthest away. The attendant who should have been in the center of the training ground had been sent flying all the way to the far edge, where he now lay crumpled.
"A s-stretcher!"
"Stretcher!"
The instructors rushed to check his condition. He was breathing. Nothing was broken or shattered. Fortunately, he had only been knocked unconscious — not a scratch on him. The wooden sword had snapped, dispersing the shock through his body, and being launched backward had halved the remaining force. That was why he was still in one piece.
Whether he had been extraordinarily lucky, or whether Adel had struck with precisely that much force and no more — either way, it was not an injury worth worrying over.
"Hm."
Adel blinked, gazing in that direction. The referee let out a sigh of sheer disbelief, then decided to do his job.
"Uh. Right. Adel wins."
There were no cheers. No applause. Everyone simply stared at Adel in a daze.
Meanwhile, Adel checked Sien's reaction. Her mouth hung open; she made no effort to hide her shock.
She likes it.
He had no idea what part of this was supposed to be enjoyable, but in Adel's experience, surprising someone had always been a good thing. Whenever he startled someone, something good always followed.
One of the important duties of an escort is to keep one's lord entertained.
Entertaining her. That was what mattered. And she had asked him to go easy, besides. Adel had used just enough force to surprise Sien moderately.
He wasn't going to die anyway.
The wooden sword snapping would have offset the impact, and rather than dropping him where he stood, Adel had sent him flying backward. It looked a bit rough, but he had been considerate in his own way.
If his old comrades had seen this, they might have grumbled that he was going too easy — that it wasn't even a quarter of what he used to do.
Sien, however, was not entertained. She was horrified.
What was that?!
She had wanted him to go easy so they could have a proper match. Adel had even said he understood. So what was this? That had blown past "going easy" by an astronomical margin.
Is this a silent protest? Asking me to promote him to full escort faster?
From Sien's perspective, the misunderstanding was perfectly reasonable. There was no other explanation for something that outrageous!
After glancing at the attendant being carried off on a stretcher, Sien looked back at Adel — and caught something strange. He was looking straight at her, and he was smiling, just slightly.
Adel was pleased: he had gone easy, just as she'd asked. Sien, who had no way of knowing what was going on in his head, took it entirely differently.
Ah... did he do that on purpose...?
Adel was the escort of the Lichtenauer family head. And that family head had come to observe. Perhaps, for the sake of her dignity — to prove that the woman who had appointed him as her escort had been right — he had put in a little extra force.
Y-you really didn't have to do that... Adel...
The two of them were drifting into a peculiar misunderstanding, each in their own strange direction.