Arden Feltner (2)
When we stepped out of Aslet Hall in the early morning, warm sunlight was there to greet us.
Only last week the lingering winter chill had still been throwing its weight around, but now it was unmistakably spring — barely a trace of cold remained in the air.
By rights, a day like this was made for sprawloing back into bed and sleeping in.
I could only feel a swell of pride in myself for suppressing that most primal of urges and leading Arden out of the dorm instead.
"Let's just run to the Training Grounds. Kill two birds with one stone — warm up on the way."
Having come down the stairs and turned onto the path toward the main building, I bobbed my head and offered the suggestion.
I had no intention of strolling leisurely side by side with another guy at the crack of dawn, listening to nothing but birdsong. If I was going to do warm-up exercises once we arrived, might as well get them done now.
"It's pretty far, though. You sure?"
Arden shot me a remark laced with concern.
And not without reason — the Training Grounds really were quite a distance from here.
Even the walk from the dormitory to the main building was long, and the Training Grounds sat past the western edge of that building, requiring several more minutes on foot.
Still, it was nothing worth fretting over, so I shrugged carelessly.
"Far or not, we're not sprinting at full speed. What's the harm?"
"Fair point, actually."
We'd be jogging at a reasonable pace anyway, so it made no difference. Arden seemed to accept my reasoning at once, nodded, and we set off running together in earnest.
Jogging along the conifer grove we walked every day on the way to class, breathing in the scent of fresh grass — refreshing my foot. Honestly, all I could think was, why am I doing this again?
By the time we passed the main building and drew near our destination, I stole a glance at Arden, who had been matching my pace at my side.
Not even winded.
Aside from a light sheen of sweat on his forehead dampening the blue fringe of his hair — exactly as I'd expected — there wasn't the slightest sign of strain. His breathing was as even as it had been at the start.
Fitting for the original novel's protagonist, I supposed. His stamina and physique were clearly well maintained.
Feeling oddly satisfied, I led Arden up to the entrance of the Training Grounds, where a wide-open glass door stood waiting to welcome us.
Nice that they don't lock this place up.
Most of the Academy's buildings remained open to students even on weekends. There were a few exceptions, though — most notably the workshops used by the alchemists and the materials storage facilities.
From what I knew, this place had once been open year-round as well, until students working alone caused one accident after another, and weekend access was revoked.
"Let's head in."
"Yeah."
Waving Arden along, I walked up to the glass door — and a large notice that hadn't been there before caught my eye, its message written in bold letters.
Only training weapons may be used on weekends.
Training weapons.
In plain terms, weapons without an edge — wooden swords and the like.
Presumably because the supervisors who managed safety at the Training Grounds needed their weekends off too, students had no choice but to spar among themselves, and with that came a high risk of injury. This notice seemed to be a final safeguard bolted on for exactly that reason.
"Oh, so you were right."
I pointed at the notice and let out a low whistle, giving Arden a second look.
Before we'd left the dormitory, I had casually asked whether it was all right for him to leave his beloved sword behind — and he'd said bringing it would be pointless today, which had puzzled me at the time.
Who'd have guessed this was the reason.
Even I hadn't known that little detail.
"I happened to see it when I stopped by last weekend."
Apparently my admiring reaction struck him as ridiculous, because Arden suppressed a wry smile as he explained. I was a little curious why he'd visited the Training Grounds last weekend, but I had no intention of prying into anyone's private life, so we walked straight in together.
Under normal circumstances, the supervisor seated in the corridor outside the sparring halls would have come over to greet us, but today, nothing of the sort happened.
After stopping by the equipment room to pick out the wooden swords we'd each use, we were about to enter Sparring Hall 1 when—
Arden's voice came suddenly from behind me.
"Vel, what about mana use?"
"Mana use?"
It was such an out-of-nowhere question that I blinked blankly.
Look, I'd heard of sparring with mana banned for safety's sake, but if that's all it was, how would it be any different from children playing house?
Besides, in the original novel, whenever he sparred against others, he'd hide his strength without so much as asking — so why bring it up now? It's not like using a bit of mana would give away his true abilities.
"It's allowed. As long as nobody gets badly hurt, it's fine, isn't it?"
I answered without a single second's deliberation — and I could see worry settle onto Arden's face.
But that wasn't mine to carry. If anything, I'd be delighted for him to go all out, so long as it led to his true nature coming to light.
"Stop worrying about nothing and pick up your sword. Like I said — if I get even a whiff of you going easy on me, I won't let it slide."
Gripping my wooden sword and squaring my stance, I glared at him and laid down the warning. And this time, unlike the awkward laugh he'd brushed me off with before, a thread of suspicion took root in Arden's eyes.
"You've been saying that over and over. It almost sounds like you think I could go easy on you."
"I do."
"…You do?"
If I felt Arden's shoulders flinch at that moment, it was no trick of the eye.
This game of reading each other's expressions was only going to grow more suffocating the longer it dragged on. And waiting forever for him to volunteer the truth himself wasn't my style either — so I'd decided to use this opportunity to start dropping hints of my own.
"I know you don't belong in Class E. So…"
I raised my wooden sword and leveled it at Arden, then added the rest.
"Don't hold back. Come at me for real."
It was the third time I'd said it, and every time, his reaction had been different.
The first, he'd played dumb. The second, whether stung himself or simply testing my intentions, he'd thrown the question right back at me.
And now, the third—
"……."
He only pressed his lips into a tight line and stared at me in silence.
And yet somehow, that wordless act felt like an answer in itself.
'How could you possibly know that?'
In response, I curled one corner of my mouth upward and adjusted my stance — answering in kind, with action instead of words.
'Then find out for yourself.'
The duel that began after that long standoff was fierce enough that anyone would have believed the swords in their hands were live steel.
Battle aura surging in every direction, blade strikes crossing three times within a single breath — if a swordsmanship instructor had been present, they would never have believed either of these two belonged to Class E.
"Hah… hah…"
Arden drew in ragged breaths and pulled back to open the distance.
On the surface it looked like an evenly matched fight, but the reality was nothing of the sort. Vel was the one driving forward relentlessly, and on Arden's end, the rhythm kept breaking as he scrambled to keep pace.
To be clear, Arden still wasn't fighting at full power.
Not to deceive Vel, and not because he had the gall to ignore a friend's warning, either. It was simply that the duty buried deep in his chest kept tearing at his body every time it tried to give its all.
'If I reveal my strength now, I'll only meet the same end as Father.'
Gritting his teeth, Arden suppressed the mana slowly welling up and straining to escape his body.
Eight years. That was how long it had been since Arden lost his father.
Back then, rumors had begun to circulate that the Followers were once again lifting their heads from the shadows, and the group that launched its own investigation into them had included Arden's father, Dillard.
Following Dillard's trail, they broke into his home, butchered him before his child's eyes — and in the end, they came for Arden too.
By sheer fortune, a comrade from the organization Dillard belonged to learned of it too late, gave chase, and succeeded in stopping them. But Dillard's life could not be saved, and not even vengeance was taken in return.
Since then, Arden had lived with his identity concealed as much as possible.
Unfortunately, mastering the rare sword art his father left behind in full proved impossible. Even so, he trained alone, over and over, building his strength — until he judged that it would never be enough for revenge on this path, and applied for admission to the Academy.
He'd decided that Class E — the Academy's designated dumping ground, home to its most hopeless rejects — was the perfect place to disappear into. So he deliberately throttled his strength during the entrance exam, and that was how he'd come to be where he was now.
In other words, Arden had his own reasons for being unable to answer his friend's hopes.
'But is that really enough?'
Even so, a deep doubt gnawed at him over whether what he was doing was truly right.
If his opponent had been just another student from a different class who'd come to size him up — like Phorion had not long ago — Arden would simply have humored them and let it go.
But Vel, standing before him now, had — however he'd come to know it — spoken in a tone that made it clear he'd sensed Arden was hiding his strength.
At first, Arden had taken it as mere probing. But through those three successive warnings, he'd come to understand that Vel was certain.
And when he asked himself whether playing blind man's bluff with his strength was truly the right thing to do in a situation like this, the answer that came back was far from affirmative.
'Maybe he even knows my secret.'
Arden's gaze drifted to the ring on the index finger of his right hand.
Some part of him thought it impossible — and yet another part whispered, what if? Staring into that man's calm eyes, which seemed to say I know everything, it was hard not to feel this way.
In the end, a choice had to be made.
Keep up this invisible battle of wills — or, as he demanded, go all out and bring the truth into the open.
Just as he was frowning, unable to settle on a decision in that crossroads of a moment, a voice reached him — a soft tone from Vel that Arden had never once heard before.
"Arden."
"Wh-what?"
Vel, who had carried on every conversation in that clipped, throwaway tone of his, spoke the name gently for the first time — and a tremor ran through Arden's eyes.
"Well, I don't know what circumstances you might have, but…"
Swallowing the rest of his sentence, Vel scratched his cheek and averted his gaze, almost embarrassed.
To Arden, it was at the very least a side of him he'd never seen, and the question of what on earth Vel was about to say only deepened.
Vel's lips moved as though searching for the right words in the silence — and then his eyes turned back to Arden. Only after a sheepish smile tugged at the corners of his mouth did those tightly sealed lips finally part again.
"Friend or not? However this looks, we're friends. So trust me a little."
"Ah…"
A low sound of awe slipped from Arden's lips.
Those were words the Vel he knew would never, ever have said. And yet the fact that he'd said them now was, in its own way, a vow — a pledge that he would take this secret to the grave and never use it to shake his friend.
The moment that realization landed, Arden was flooded with conflicting emotions as he squared his stance anew.
At the same instant, clear, crystalline mana burst outward in every direction, and his presence transformed completely from what it had been moments before.
As if to say, this is my answer — the full strength he had hidden until now came pouring out, unmistakable and unreserved.
Seeing it, the corner of Vel's mouth climbed so high it nearly touched his ear, and he too settled into his stance once more.
"Finally feel like putting your heart into it?"
"…Yeah. Sorry."
"No need to apologize."
Vel shrugged off Arden's earnest apology with a airy wave of his shoulder.
'God, I wanted to die of cringe just now.'
In truth, his insides hadn't been entirely at ease.
No matter how he looked at it, Arden didn't seem like he'd ever show his full strength — so Vel had borrowed the very words Rone used in the original novel when she first cracked open Arden's heart. Thankfully, it seemed to have worked.
He felt like a squid shriveling over an open flame, but if it drew out Arden's true feelings, he figured the embarrassment was a price well paid.
"Can I come at you this time?"
"Do as you like."
Staring down an Arden whose gaze had utterly transformed from moments before, Vel beckoned him on with a flick of his hand — come, then.
Thinking that at last, this opponent was finally going to be worth his while.