Does He Need a Reason? #4
“Rie! Rie Arche von Haniel!!”
The voice of some man outside the infirmary called Rie’s name the instant it reached her.
I too startled and froze, not knowing what to do.
Right up to a moment ago, we had been about to do something, but now that didn’t matter at all.
The real problem was that the situation here in the academy infirmary—two people of the opposite sex trying to do something improper—had just been laid completely bare!
“Lucian, Lu-Lucian! H-Hurry!”
“First put on your underwear, underwear!”
“We don’t have time! Just give me a shirt! Hurry!”
“Hey hey! You weren’t wearing anything underneath! Under, under!”
While we panicked, the footsteps coming from this direction grew steadily louder.
In a mad rush I locked every button, dressed, and lay back in the bed as if nothing had happened.
But… now that I thought about it, why was Rie lying right next to me?
“……”
“Eh…?”
“What are you doing?! Your seat is over there!”
“A-Ahahah!! S-Sorry!!”
The moment Rie shot upright and slammed her backside into the chair beside the bed in a panic.
Suddenly the door burst open with a bang, and a man strode in with a face full of displeasure.
Being half-unconscious, I opened my eyes only a slit and took in my opponent with a careful glance.
He was wearing the same academy uniform as me and Rie, but the name tag was definitely not for a first-year.
On his chest, the blue name tag clearly marked him as a second-year student of Minerva Academy.
“Rie!”
“Please be quiet, senior. This is the infirmary. Are you really that unfamiliar with proper manners?”
“Er….”
“You didn’t just yell—you even opened the door without permission. I’m very disappointed.”
…That wasn’t exactly the kind of line someone who had been about to do something indecent in this infirmary a moment ago should have said, was it?
The words were right there on the tip of my tongue, but I forced them down.
Right now I was the pitiful patient who had been hit on the head and knocked unconscious.
“Hmph. Sorry about that. But when you suddenly headed toward the infirmary, I was so worried something might have happened to you that I couldn’t stop myself.”
I wished you had understood my feelings too.
The thought crossed my mind that this crazy man had ruined what we were doing, but I kept it to myself.
This crazy man was now openly flirting with Rie.
My heart was anything but happy about it, but I wished he would disappear right now and never come back.
If things had been normal, I wouldn’t have cared at all whether he flirted or not.
All I would have worried about was how much damage he would suffer when Rie got her hands on him later.
But that wasn’t the case now—I was the ultimate villain who had just interfered right before the grand deed we had been planning!
I thought that if I couldn’t kill him, at least I should keep his face in view for a while.
“Senior Forbes. Please leave. I need to examine Lucian’s condition.”
“You’re done here. An accident during sparring, right? Judging by the look of it, you’re not seriously injured, so why are you so worried? You even skipped lectures because of that brat, and your attendance score took a hit.”
“I’ll say it one more time. Please leave.”
“Rie. As a senior I’m giving you advice. As the representative of the first-year class you must carry responsibility. A great commander doesn’t abandon the stragglers. But sometimes a single straggler can drag the whole army into danger. There are moments when you have to leave the fallen behind.”
What kind of nonsense is this? Stragglers? The ones falling behind?
Is that fool talking about me right now? Or did he close his eyes and not realize who I was?
I had lived quietly, but when it mattered I had never hidden anything.
I had published papers, developed formulas for magic, and worked in several other fields.
So anyone who had influence in any single area already knew exactly who I was.
Yet he called me a straggler, a loser.
Maybe he meant it sarcastically because I couldn’t use swordsmanship or magic, but it only made me furious.
This wasn’t just any fool—it was the spoiled young master of the Crescent Viscount family talking this way.
It was as if he had read some novel where a ne’er-do-well was the main character and got the wrong idea.
In those novels, though, the ne’er-do-wells actually possessed talent and ability.
But this guy was a ne’er-do-well through and through, with nothing to his name except the prestige of his family.
His ambitions were even more ridiculous than his status.
He was the same man who had been giving Rie filthy looks during lunch earlier.
From the Crescent Marquis family, the next head, Forbes Eel von Crescent.
I had definitely seen his name on the list of suspicious individuals before I entered the academy.
As I narrowed my eyes to watch the man flirting with Rie, everything became crystal clear.
He openly flirted with anyone regardless of whether they were a senior or a classmate, all because he trusted the prestige of the Crescent Marquis family.
The problem was that the third princess, whom the king was completely obsessed with, was from the Crescent family.
With the royal family backing the family’s power, the Crescent Marquis family had become arrogant.
And right at the forefront was that same idiot who was being touted as the next head.
“Senior Forbes, your words are very harsh. You don’t know who Lucian is?”
“I do. Of course I do. The theory genius of the first-year class, a young man of the kingdom who was already famous in various fields even before adulthood. I know as much as anyone.”
That wasn’t all, you idiot.
“But that’s just the viewpoint of armchair theorists. In our eyes, as Martial Division students, he’s someone who plays around on his desk. A guy who looks down on us. The kind who runs the moment he has to fight for the country!”
Ah, is that so? Anyone listening would think Rie was the successor to a sword genius.
I knew he had failed the swordsmanship exam repeatedly and only scraped through at the last moment.
In addition, in other lectures he was nothing more than a bottom-tier failure.
It was infuriating to have to rely on nothing but the name of the Crescent Marquis family.
Crunch.
Rie, unable to hold back any longer, began clenching her fists.
I secretly worried that she might actually punch him.
So, to wrap up the current situation, I decided to open my eyes a little.
“Guh!”
“……Looks like he’s awake.”
“A-Ah! Lucian! Are you okay?”
I used the usual groan from situations like this.
It worked well enough—Forbes stopped staring at me, pulled his hand away from the one Rie had been clenching, and started responding to my acting.
“H-Here… where…?”
“The infirmary. I brought you here. Are you all right?”
“My head hurts so much… it feels like it’s cracking…”
“No blood at all, yet you’re acting all dramatic. Tsk… this is why dealing with Literary Division types…”
“Senior Forbes, please leave. I still need to check Lucian’s condition a bit longer. Hurry.”
Despite Rie’s insistence, Forbes finally had no choice but to turn away.
Of course, as he left he shot me a very unpleasant glare without forgetting.
…That guy keeps crossing lines. I’ve been thinking about how to handle it for a long time.
“I’m sorry.”
The moment Forbes’s presence disappeared, Rie gave me an apologetic look with a stiff face.
I knew exactly why she was suddenly apologizing to me.
As a fellow Martial Division student, she was apologizing on my behalf for having mocked the Literary Division students.
At the same time, she knew that the reason I was lying here was because of her, and because of that mockery, she couldn’t help but feel sorry.
“Why are you apologizing? It was that Crescent Marquis family’s idiot who was wrong.”
“Still, we’re both Martial Division students. The law is that swords and pens must unite to lead the country, and pointing the tip at each other is never a good thing.”
“What can I do? The atmosphere is exactly like that right now.”
Wherever you went in the world, it was the same—powerful forces biting and tearing at each other.
This place was no different. The Martial Division and Literary Division were snarling at each other while checking each other’s power.
Moderate rivalry kept the political structure healthy, but excessive rivalry was harmful.
The current rivalry structure had already reached that excessive level.
And that rivalry had spread even to the academy, creating an odd atmosphere between the Martial and Literary Divisions.
“Forbes, that idiot, why does he always come after you?”
“Me?”
“Yes. At lunch the other day he was staring openly. Didn’t you notice?”
“Everyone else was looking at me, so I ignored them on purpose.”
“That’s why you didn’t notice. It’s better that way. The look he gave me was extremely disgusting.”
I secretly touched the small lump the size of a fist that was forming.
Ugh, it’s hot. It’ll probably take at least a day to calm down.
When I get back to the room I’ll have to do an ice compress or something, I was thinking.
“……Actually, the engagement talk happened at the Crescent Marquis family too.”
“What?”
“Forbes Eel von Crescent. The second-year Martial Division student you just saw. The one you called an incompetent ne’er-do-well with nothing to his name. He could become my fiancé.”
My first thought was, “Why him of all people?”
The Haniel Marquis family wasn’t some hollow noble house with high prestige across generations. It was a noble family worthy of being called the kingdom’s pride, the very definition of noble obligation.
So why had the Haniel Marquis family chosen the Crescent Marquis family for an engagement?
Even from my perspective, I couldn’t figure it out no matter how I thought.
“I don’t know the exact details either. But His Majesty called my father one day and spoke to him, and since then people from the Crescent family have been coming regularly to discuss the engagement.”
From the context it was clear, but the details remained uncertain.
I would probably need to use my connections to figure out how things were actually progressing.
“Anyway… we were lucky.”
“Yes. We were lucky…”
After Forbes left and our conversation ended, Rie and I could finally remember what we had been about to do to each other.
Both of us had been completely drunk on the moment, throwing reason far away and trying to mix emotionally.
Just five minutes ago, the memory of that situation made our faces burn.
Rie looked the same way.
Her face was flushed red as if it might explode at any second, and she kept glancing around nervously as if afraid our eyes would meet.
The two hands she was tightly gripping had to be the same ones that had grabbed me earlier.
Where had that woman with such an alluring and captivating atmosphere gone?
“Hey, Rie.”
“Y-Yes… Lucian. What is it?”
“What I mean is… first, I don’t hate you.”
“The phrase ‘I don’t hate’… does that really mean you don’t hate me?”
“Honestly, it was too sudden. You have to admit it, right? We’ve been rivals and all that, and you always made me flustered, but today you jumped straight to confessing. It was an impossible situation where I could say ‘Huh, I like you’ here.”
“Not impossible at all.”
At my words, Rie bit her lip and admitted it straightforwardly.
She had been too hasty and her true feelings had spilled out without her noticing.
If I had been flustered or burdened, I was truly sorry.
Rie muttered with a dejected face.
“I listened to every word you said.”
“Eh?”
“From today on I’ll try to like you too. I won’t deny that I’ve had feelings for you. I’ve even imagined scenes where you and I get along well together.”
“R-Really? Those vague, endless waiting all by myself…”
“It wasn’t that at all. There aren’t many guys in the world who can’t stand an angel like you.”
At that, Rie let out an “Aah!” and suddenly pulled me into a tight embrace.
It felt a little like the positions were reversed, but I didn’t mind.
I was being held in the arms of an angel—why should the gender of the man and woman matter?
Regarding the engagement between the Haniel Marquis family and the Crescent Marquis family.
His Majesty has requested investigation into the suitability of the match.
Relevant parties are to provide all necessary documents.
Anyway, I need to investigate the connections between the Haniel family, the Crescent family, and the royal family.
Though I rarely dig into others’ affairs, when my own life was involved like this, the situation changed completely.