There Was No Hesitation
A woman came stumbling straight at him, wine bottle tipping, ready to douse him.
Leon thought,
What kind of nuisance is this.
That alcohol was about to cascade over his face and body? Just imagining it was revolting. The stench alone would be unbearable. He’d have to change clothes, too.
Catching her as she fell was out of the question. Why should he?
So Leon decided to handle it without laying a hand on her.
A low thrum rose from his dantian as he drew up mana. He set his palm forward and released a short, dense pulse of force.
A sharp detonation cracked the air. The atmosphere itself recoiled in a single wave. A controlled blast of wind pressure swept through a tightly limited space.
The finely modulated force was more than enough to shove the falling woman upright again. She snapped back into place like a weighted doll righting itself.
“Kyaa!?”
Her eyes squeezed shut under the sudden pressure. Her carefully styled pink hair exploded into a wild tangle, streaming backward.
And of course the wine that had been arcing through the air was flung right back the way it came.
A wet splash.
The crimson liquid reversed course and drenched her face completely. That porcelain-white skin turned a vivid, dripping red.
In a single instant her appearance was ruined.
A heavy silence settled over the surroundings. Stunned stares pinned them both in place.
Drip. Drip.
“….”
The sound of falling droplets rang loud in the quiet.
Between Leon and the woman, residual mana flickered pale blue before fading away.
Leon arranged his features into something carefully sympathetic.
“My, you ought to be more careful. That could have been dangerous.”
The triangle in Leon’s heart didn’t so much as twitch.
He could have simply stepped aside, after all. Then she would have gone sprawling across the floor and hurt herself badly.
He’d kept her from falling—so he’d helped her. Getting soaked in wine was just a secondary detail.
“…Ah.”
The woman’s lips parted. She produced a handkerchief from somewhere and wiped her face, then opened her eyes.
To his surprise, she painted on a bright smile without the slightest hesitation.
“Thank you for helping me, young master. I nearly hurt myself quite badly.”
Hm?
Leon felt another flicker of wrongness.
What he’d done was purely self-serving. From her position, anger would have been the proper response. Even the most even-tempered person would have shown at least a flicker of displeasure or a subdued reaction.
Smiling like that was distinctly odd. It wasn’t a normal response.
She kept talking.
“I’d rather not introduce myself looking like this. I should go change first…”
Even as she chattered, she wiped around her face, smoothed her windblown hair, and straightened her rumpled clothes. Her hands moved with remarkable speed.
Then she deliberately twisted her expression into a pained grimace.
“I think I’ve twisted my ankle… walking is difficult. Young master, I’m sorry, but could you help me just once more? If you could just take me over there…”
She looked up at him with her head bowed, eyes full of pitiful appeal. It practically compelled a hand to reach out. As if she’d practiced the look somewhere.
That was when it happened.
“What’s going on?”
Esabel and Celia appeared from left and right. Celia’s eyes as she stared at the woman were ice-cold.
“Ah, Esabel?”
“…Sister Shardia.”
Esabel clearly knew her.
“Ah, so you two are acquainted?”
Leon spoke as if this were convenient.
“Your Highness. Would you mind helping her? She says she’s injured her ankle.”
“Sure, all right.”
Esabel nodded readily. She approached the woman—Shardia—and began supporting her away.
“Young master, I’ll come find you again later…!”
Shardia twisted her head around with effort and waved her hand lightly. Leon gave a noncommittal nod and called to Celia beside him.
“Celia.”
“Huh?”
Leon crooked his index and middle fingers in a small beckoning gesture.
Outside the ballroom, on a sparsely populated terrace.
A soft hiss.
Flame flickered at the tip of a cigarette. Celia lit it, drew in a lungful of smoke, and spoke.
“…That woman earlier.”
“Yeah.”
“She felt a little… off.”
Leon answered evenly.
“I know.”
“You do?”
Celia left it at that and didn’t add anything further. She wasn’t the type to stand around badmouthing people behind their backs.
Instead she brought up something else.
“Leon, and later…”
Second floor of the ballroom.
“No, isn’t that guy a complete lunatic?!”
Shardia, freshly redone hair and all, was throwing a full-blown tantrum.
A silver-haired man let out a sigh.
“Pathetic. What exactly do you think you did well.”
He regarded her with cold eyes.
“You were so confident I left it to you, and that half-baked plan of yours was what? Falling over while dumping wine?”
Shardia flinched under that gaze but still voiced her grievances.
“The weird one is the guy who didn’t catch me, okay…? It’s not like I’ve only done this once or twice. A woman is collapsing right in front of him and he shoves her with wind?”
The man didn’t so much as blink as he countered.
“You already knew the bastard’s head was screwed on wrong.”
Shardia roughly raked her fingers through her hair and muttered.
“And then those other bitches just had to show up right then…”
“Enough with the excuses.”
The man fixed her with a hard stare.
“He’s back. Get down there again. Do it properly this time.”
“…Yes.”
—Ugh?!
A heavy thud.
Billy’s sword tip forced his opponent into a misstep, and the man went down hard.
Billy leveled his blade with a flourish, and cheers erupted from the women gathered around.
“Huh? Wait, he just walked right into that obvious move…”
“Hand it over.”
“Tch.”
Watching from a distance, Leon snickered as he took a gold coin from Celia. He’d won the bet. Leon had called three exchanges; Celia had gone with six. Leon had been right.
Billy was dueling nobles who’d picked a fight with him, just as in the original story. This was already the fifth opponent to go down.
Every eye in the ballroom that could be drawn was fixed on that spot. The women in particular had flocked over to watch Billy—skilled with a sword and handsome to boot.
…And yet.
“Wow, so Young Master actually defeated someone like that?”
Shardia El Latnia. A distant collateral branch, but unmistakably a member of the imperial family. She had glued herself to Leon’s side and refused to leave.
She kept chattering nonstop. No matter how many pointed looks Celia shot her, she didn’t budge an inch. That smiling face might as well have been cast in iron.
The situation had already dragged on for ten full minutes.
Hmm.
Leon considered.
It’s not like she’s doing this because she’s actually interested in me.
Leon could view himself with reasonable objectivity. From the sparring matches the day before, he knew exactly what kind of impression he’d left on people.
Any woman with a normal mindset wouldn’t welcome him this eagerly. That had been proven more than once in his previous life.
So either this woman wasn’t right in the head…
Or, if she was normal, she was approaching him with a specific purpose—and considerable acting skill to go with it.
In short: problem if she wasn’t normal, problem if she was.
But Leon’s instincts pointed to the latter. The sense of wrongness that had been prickling in his chest since earlier wouldn’t let him ignore it.
So he decided to test that instinct.
“…Ah, yes.”
Answering Shardia’s chatter halfheartedly, he raised the density of his sensory field to its absolute limit.
A vast rush of awareness unfurled. His opened senses drank in every scrap of information from the surrounding area without missing a corner.
Almost at once, Leon perceived a gaze boring down from the second floor of the ballroom. Not a casual glance—something that lingered, watching, observing.
He snapped his head in that direction.
“….”
A human silhouette stood there.
But the face was unreadable. Even the build and gender were impossible to confirm. Only a blurred outline remained, as if someone had slapped a mosaic filter over the figure.
That bastard…
It was unmistakably an artifact designed to block others’ gazes and conceal the wearer’s identity. No wonder he hadn’t noticed the stare until now.
“Um, Young Master?”
When Leon fixed a hard stare on the second floor, Shardia called to him, sounding flustered.
Leon pointed toward the silhouette and asked her,
“Do you know that person?”
Shardia’s eyes followed his finger. The moment she confirmed the location, the muscles in her neck locked for an instant.
“…Pardon? Who do you mean…?”
A voice that rose a fraction too high, and pupils that gave a tiny, involuntary flicker.
Leon watched her faintly panicked reaction and felt his certainty settle into place.
In the meantime, the silhouette rose and quietly slipped away from its seat.
“….”
Leon watched with cold eyes as the figure vanished from sight.
Time passed. The Emperor made a brief appearance and left. The sun went down. The atmosphere in the ballroom deepened and ripened.
The orchestra began to play in earnest. The center of the floor filled with men and women taking their places for the dance.
And there, in the middle of it all—
“Young Master?”
“….”
Leon looked sourly at the hand Shardia held out to him.
What that hand meant needed no explanation. It was a request to dance.
Attention gathered. Envious stares from other men poured in.
A woman asking a man. And naming him as her first partner, no less. The significance of that was large and unmistakable.
“Leon…”
Another woman’s voice came from beside him.
Violet eyes sent him a plaintive look. Her lower lip was caught lightly between her teeth.
“….”
Leon reached out without a moment’s pause.
The choice had already been decided. There was no hesitation.