A Blade Is the Best Medicine for a Mad Dog (3)
The Hero, Gehmajoshigi-gwat, who had followed Ethan outside, was the first to witness the sight of two severed wrists flying into the air.
Shffk—!
“Gyaah! Aaaaagh!!”
When Ethan had abruptly cut their conversation short and bolted out the door, Gehmajoshigi-gwat had scrambled after him in a hurry — only to arrive just after Ethan had already drawn the main blade from his hip and swept it through a single stroke. Opposite him, some nameless noble clutched his severed wrists, shrieking in agony.
Having caught that scene with his own two eyes, the Hero immediately began speculating that Ethan might have rediscovered his original in-game nature.
He still has his nature as Ethan intact... so is this not possession, but regression?
Perhaps even in his second life, the man had never managed to shed his true self. Could Ethan have some purpose similar to his own — or had that just been his own wishful thinking?
As he mulled this over while observing the scene, Ethan's murderous voice reached his ears, and it became the material upon which the Hero would base his next judgment.
“Say those words one more time. Exactly as you said them. This time, my blade will come out the back of your skull.”
It was a voice drenched in killing intent, barely believable as belonging to the man who had been speaking calmly with him mere moments ago. Hidden as it was beneath that overwhelming menace, it didn't show on the surface — but the Hero could tell that Ethan was worked up into a state of intense emotion right now.
He came to his own conclusion: for the moment, it would be best to simply watch how things unfolded.
“Hii, hiiik...! W-we need to get him treated, right away...!”
“...Serista, hold on a second.”
“Y-yes, Hero...?”
“...Just for now, don't get between them. Let's watch how this plays out.”
“......What?”
“It's necessary.”
“Y-yes...”
Having held Serista back just as she'd been about to step in and manage the situation, Gehmajoshigi-gwat quietly continued observing Ethan's next move as well. After all, if he watched this situation through to the end, he figured he might get at least some measure of just how much the Ethan of the game had changed from the Ethan standing before him now.
“Aaaagh! My arms! My aaarms!!”
The man of House Leidenhardt, both of his wrists severed clean off, screamed without end, his cries a mixture of agony and raw terror. And under the blood-chilled atmosphere, the expressions of the other new students who had come outside to watch the duel began to harden, little by little.
Even I hadn't anticipated this turn of events — Ethan abruptly crashing our duel and slicing off Leidenhardt's wrists on the spot. The boy had collapsed to the ground at the sight of his own two hands lying detached before him, and now Ethan's blade hovered at the nape of his neck.
The pale-blue killing intent seeping against his nape froze Leidenhardt's entire body rigid where he knelt.
“What was it you just said to Lilith?”
“Hii, hiyugh...!”
“Choose your words carefully. Unless you'd like to watch your parents wailing over your head and hands come tomorrow morning.”
“...Hik... ...kuheugh!”
Somehow, whether he'd finally sensed the mortal danger that had crept right up on him, the boy prostrated himself flat against the ground and bowed his head — and began spitting out words of apology he would never have let loose mere minutes ago, stammering through every syllable.
“I-I was wrong...”
“...Wrong about what.”
“I-I didn't know my place, and I c-committed a w-w-washable— a, an unforgivable discourtesy toward the woman of Y-young Master Blackwood.... P-please, I beg your forgiveness...”
“...If you understand it so well, then surely you also understand that I am not the one you should be apologizing to.”
“I-I'm sorry, my lady.... P-please forgive the d-discourtesy I just c-committed...”
“......”
Even after Leidenhardt finished his apology, Ethan did not lower his blade, simply watching me in silence. Wondering what on earth he was waiting for, I met his gaze quietly — and slowly, Ethan's lips parted.
“...What do you want to do?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Lilith. Do you really think the insult you just suffered is settled by one shallow apology?”
“N-no, my lord! I am s-sincerely...! I sincerely apologize! P-please, show mercy...!!”
“...That's quite enough, Young Master Ethan.”
“......”
“This much, I think, is sufficient.”
It wasn't as though I'd said it out of any particular pity for that Leidenhardt bastard. It was simply that if Ethan went so far as to commit murder on top of drawing blood with his sword on his very first day at the Academy, everything about his academy life from that point forward seemed bound to tangle itself into a mess.
He'd grown up healthy and whole against all odds — there was no reason for him to become a disgraced killer young master over something like this, of all things. And frankly, I had no desire to be branded, from day one, as the exclusive maid of the young master who murdered a count's son. It would sully Ethan's reputation for the blood of such a worthless piece of trash, and everything he had worked for until now was far too precious for that.
After all, I had watched from beside him those several years as he carved flesh from bone in his training. All the more reason.
“...Truly? It's enough, just this much?”
“There is no need for you to spill any more blood over such trash, Young Master Ethan. Please, put your sword away.”
“...No. No, I can't. Thinking of what he said to you just now, Lilith, at the very least this bastard deserves to have his own limbs and tongue cut off, exactly the—”
“Young Master Ethan.”
“......”
“Please. That is quite enough.”
His eyes wavered with obvious conflict at my final ultimatum — but in the end, Ethan listened, and quietly nodded his head. Then, turning his gaze back to Leidenhardt, he addressed him in a voice of ice.
“State your name and your house.”
“C-Cassius... Theodora, L-Leidenhardt. Th-third son of the Leidenhardt earldom. I-I have two elder brothers and one elder sister...”
“...Cassius Theodora Leidenhardt.”
“Y-yes...”
“...I will remember it.”
“......Pardon?”
“Make certain there is never a next time — never another occasion for me to make use of that memory.”
With those words, Ethan withdrew the blade he had been pressing against Leidenhardt's nape. He wiped the boy's blood from the blade with his handkerchief and slid the sword back into its scabbard.
“The Aurelia Church stands behind the magic department building.”
“Y-yes...?”
“...I'm telling you to gather your hands and limbs and get out of my sight. Now.”
“Th-thank you!!”
He scrambled to pick up the fallen pieces of his own body with his two armless stumps, desperate to have the wounds healed at the church. It was a pitiful sight, pathetic enough to stir anyone's sympathy — but I felt no urge whatsoever to help him.
“Hnn, hnngh...! Hnnhnngh...!!”
Unable to properly grip anything through the pain, the boy whimpered and snuffled at the ground until he finally rose to his feet with both his own hands clamped in his mouth, then began desperately sprinting toward the church, desperate to put as much distance between himself and Ethan as possible. ...Leaving behind, on the ground, the longsword he'd dropped during the confrontation.
The sword was one thing, but a scene scattered with bloodstains from one end to the other was an eyesore in every possible way, so I swept the whole mess clean with a single pass of cleaning magic. The floor where Leidenhardt's blood had pooled — and, just the same, Ethan's academy uniform, spattered all over with the boy's blood.
“Thank you, Lilith.”
“...Did you truly intend to kill him, Young Master Ethan?”
“If you had wanted me to.”
“...Next time, I think it would be best to stop at the threat. If you truly commit something beyond taking back, then it will be your neck in danger, Young Master Ethan.”
“...Right. I'll be careful from now on.”
Ethan dipped his head slightly, his voice a touch deflated by my warning. Seeing him look so glum after standing up for me stirred something oddly complicated in my chest — but this was still a point I needed to correct and move past.
It was absolutely true that I'd received a rather chilling threat from that bastard, but for Ethan to leap straight to trying to kill the man over that much was dangerously close to crossing a line. If he kept drawing his sword over every trivial incident like this, he really would end up talking himself into an early grave.
And if nothing else, there was that Hero — who at some point had slipped into the crowd and was now fixing Ethan with a meaningful stare.
“......Hmm.”
The protagonist himself, for some reason, had been fixing his gaze on me and Ethan since earlier, wearing an odd expression on his face. For someone like me, whose goal was to make him understand that Ethan was no villain, this situation was not something I could simply welcome with open arms.
The killing intent Ethan had already revealed in that last exchange wasn't something I could easily paper over, but going forward, I would need to do everything I could to sell the Hero on the fact that Ethan had grown into a good man. Thinking of the future, it seemed best for us to leave this place for now — on balance, it was the wiser choice in every respect.
“Shall we get something to eat first, Young Master Ethan? You've had two full hours of every eye in the hall fixed on you from the dais — you must be exhausted.”
“Right, Lilith. And if any more bastards like that start circling around you, tell me anytime. Any of them at all — I'll deal with every last one, leaving not a single—”
“I am quite all right, so there is really no need for you to trouble yourself over it, Young Master Ethan.”
“...I understand, Lilith.”
...There's no need to deflate that much just because I told you not to worry about it. It's not that I'm ungrateful for what you did just now, either. I know perfectly well that earning the grudge of House Leidenhardt as a mere baronet's daughter would make my life extremely inconvenient afterward.
But if I came right out and said thank you here, Ethan would get all worked up over it — and then that Hero would go on seeing him as a blood-crazed psychopath. Even if Ethan's looks had undergone a rebirth-level transformation beyond any mere metamorphosis, there was no guarantee the story wouldn't flow roughly as it had in the game. A Hero unhinged enough to name his own character Gehmajoshigi-gwat might, at some point, decide to kill Ethan and drag me into his own party.
So I deliberately put some distance between ourselves and the scene, walking until neither the Hero nor his companions were anywhere in sight. Only after confirming I could sense neither him nor anyone else nearby did I quietly murmur my thanks into his ear.
“Thank you for what happened earlier, Young Master Ethan.”
“...Li—Lilith?”
“I know it is improper for me to say this as your exclusive maid... ...but still, you were rather cool just now.”
“W-wait a moment! What did you just say at the end?! You said it too quietly, I couldn't hear it!”
“...I only said that I was grateful.”
“No, that was clearly something else!”
No idea. How am I supposed to spit out something this mortifying a second time? Besides, a man is allowed to find another man a little cool sometimes. There's nothing wrong with that.
But no matter what, I had absolutely no confidence in saying the same words again, so whatever Ethan pressed at my side, I feigned ignorance and answered with perfect composure. He seemed determined to hear that compliment from me again by any means necessary, and his obsession carried on clear into that evening.
...Next time, I really should watch what compliments come out of my mouth.