The Madwoman of This Banquet Hall Is Me (2)
With twice the people, the commotion became twice as loud.
No — it should only have been twice as loud.
Instead, it was a riot of dozens of times more shouting and clamor, all because nobody wanted to watch the appalling drinking habits of that orange-maned filly.
"Lord Ethan! Of the twenty-one bouts we have fought, I have suffered eighteen defeats! Not once have I forgotten a single one of them!"
"…Natalie, your drinking habits leave something to be desired. I'd be happy to oblige you in a sparring match, but this gathering was arranged by Princess Seraphin, so I'd advise some restraint…"
"What are you saying! I am not drunk! I am not drunk, therefore no such thing as 'drinking habits' can possibly exist for me! I have shared many a drink with Thomas, my dear childhood friend from home, and he has sworn he has never once seen me in a drunken state!"
…Well, of course Thomas would say that.
It would take considerable courage to tell the woman you love, straight to her face, about her own appalling drunken behavior.
Worse still, unlike Agnes, this one blacked out completely whenever she drank — she remembered nothing of what she did — which, frankly, made her that much more incorrigible.
My resentful gaze had nowhere to go but toward the architect of this whole mess, Gehmajoshigi-gwat.
'Son of a bitch. Why is that Hero bastard just standing there watching Natalie drink herself stupid?'
Didn't he know the walkthrough? He'd protected Serista, brought Silena along, even recruited Thomas into the party — all that veteran, min-maxed play — and yet he failed to block the single most amateur mistake in the book: letting Natalie drink?
Granted, if you asked whether Gehmajoshigi-gwat had done nothing at that drinking party, that obviously wasn't the case either.
He seemed to know a thing or two about the heroines' interactions with alcohol in his own right, and he had tried to restrain the ones who became dangerous when they drank.
…The problem was that the person he'd chosen to restrain was Agnes, not Natalie.
'Miss Agnes, isn't it a little early for you to be drinking?'
'What? Are you mocking me, calling me a child?'
'Miss Blaze, I think something other than this Blue Curaçao cocktail would suit you better. Here you are.'
'And who even are you? The Spirit Communication lectures ended ages ago. The semester's over too — did you honestly think I'd meekly listen to you?'
'Come now, Miss Agnes. Whether alcohol sits well with you depends on your constitution, you know…'
…He'd lunged in to stop Agnes's drinking just like I had, and I'd ended up tagging along by accident, but the more I thought about it, the more staggeringly irresponsible his behavior was.
I agreed a hundred percent that Agnes, like Natalie, was a character who should never be allowed near alcohol.
But if you could only stop one of the two, obviously you stop Natalie.
Enduring a few hours of whining was infinitely preferable to letting that filly run wild until she finally demanded a sparring match and turned the whole hall into this circus. I simply could not understand his reasoning.
…And I also couldn't understand why Natalie was pointing her finger at Ethan and throwing a tantrum instead of the protagonist.
Watching Natalie's orange ponytail whip about like a truly wild horse, Ethan answered with an expression of pure bafflement.
"If you're that desperate for a bout, go fight that Hero of yours. I fail to see why you insist on jabbing that finger at me."
"Eighteen defeats out of twenty-one! Eighteen! While those eighteen defeats piled up, you claimed a mere three victories! And that's counting one draw besides!"
"So what? Are you saying it's my fault your sword can't break through my guard?"
"No! All I desire is to strike you down, Lord Ethan, and reclaim my honor from days past! An honor stained by eighteen defeats! Eighteen! Eighteen!"
…The way she kept hammering on those eighteen losses the instant her focus locked onto Ethan — why did it sound so much like a curse? Probably just my imagination.
It seemed Natalie's 'sparring maniac' habit targeted whoever at the gathering had the lowest head-to-head win rate against her.
Gehmajoshigi-gwat, Ethan, Natalie.
Counting Karaham, who wasn't even present, there were four students at the very top of the first-year swordsmanship class, and even among those four, their individual win rates formed a strangely interlocking food chain. Within that web, Natalie's estoc showed a particular weakness to Ethan.
Natalie's specialty was striking through an opponent's openings and exploiting their weak points — which made Ethan's twin swords, shifting freely between offense and defense, an especially miserable matchup for her.
She even held roughly a thirty percent win rate against the Hero, Gehmajoshigi-gwat, yet against Ethan she couldn't scrape together even twenty percent. That must be why her drunken sparring obsession had latched onto him.
In the original game, no one had ever gotten her drunk in front of anyone other than the protagonist, so this had simply never been discovered.
'This is seriously, royally fucked….'
If only she were throwing her tantrum at the protagonist, we could have ignored her or slipped out with Ethan alone under cover of the commotion.
The problem was that the orange filly's focus had landed squarely on Ethan.
Refuse the match properly, and she would no doubt repeat this lunacy for hours — until she collapsed from sheer exhaustion, or until the alcohol swimming through her body dragged her down.
With Serista on hand, we could prevent any actual injuries mid-bout, but setting all that aside, I had zero desire to politely indulge a lunatic's rambling.
Ideally, I wanted to put her to sleep without any sparring at all. Wasn't there some way to get her to lie down quietly…?
"Accept the challenge, Lord Ethan! If you are a true swordsman, you must be prepared to meet a blade that comes at you fair and square!"
'…Wait. Fair and square?'
That offhand remark from Natalie was the moment a way out of this situation dawned on me.
Just before a genuine bout between Natalie and Ethan could materialize, I wedged myself between the two of them and scrambled to manage the crisis.
"I always took you for nothing more than a sweet-natured commoner girl. To think you harbored such hatred for me all this time."
"I merely wish to rise above my defeats and press forward as a swordsman! And the first mountain I must climb to reach that leap is you, Lord Ethan…"
"M-Miss Natalie? Would you calm yourself for a moment? However many bouts you may have behind you, your opponent is the young lord of House Blackwood. I cannot cover for any further disturbance…"
"Hold it right there, Miss Natalie!"
"…Lilith?"
"…Miss Lilith?"
At my abrupt appearance barring Natalie's path, Ethan's and Seraphin's eyes shifted to me.
Even Natalie, flushed and rampaging on a single cocktail, turned her gaze my way.
"You are Lord Ethan's fiancée, are you not? Could it be that you intend to interfere in this sacred contest out of concern for your betrothed…?"
"That's not particularly important, so let's discuss it later. More to the point — just now, you clearly said 'fair and square,' in Miss Natalie's own name, didn't you?"
"I did! I, Natalie Sharp! Though I was born a commoner with nothing to my name but the knack for swinging a sword, I have lived my life beneath this sky without a shred of shame!"
"And you also said you have never once been drunk, Miss Natalie."
"I have! Not a single time have I been drunk, so for you to claim I challenged Lord Ethan to a bout out of drunken habit is a clear slander…"
"Then tell me, Miss Natalie — is it 'fair and square' for a sober person to brandish a sword at a drunken one and demand a duel?"
"……Huh?"
The mouth that had been bellowing its challenge only moments before snapped shut.
With logic like that, even a sparring-maniac Natalie had no choice but to respond.
Honesty and fair play — values Natalie guarded in-game with a devotion that bordered on laying down her life, the very emblem of her character.
Even a Natalie running on nothing but the subconscious current of her drunken habit seemed to regain consciousness at those words.
"Th-that is… not a fair and square act…"
"Precisely. Furthermore, Lord Ethan was seated at this gathering long before you arrived, Miss Natalie. Naturally, he has consumed a great deal of alcohol and is quite drunk."
"Ah… ah…"
"Do you understand now, Miss Natalie? You requested a duel under unfair conditions, attempting to seize a coward's victory over Lord Ethan."
"Ah, wh-what have I done…"
Only then did Natalie stop pointing at Ethan and bring both hands to her own head.
She seemed so stricken by her own 'unfairness' that she clutched her skull on either side.
-Thud.
"I-I beg your pardon, Lord Ethan! I have committed a graceless act unbefitting a swordsman and insulted you!"
"It's fine. People make mistakes in the course of living. …In your case, you came rather close to crossing a line, but still."
"H-how am I ever to atone for this shameful error…"
-Bang! Bang!
"M-Miss Natalie?!"
She flung herself flat against the floor and began pounding her head against it in despair.
Her rock-hard skull — every bit the match for Karaham's — thundered through the banquet hall, and I genuinely began to wonder whether the floor or Natalie's head would crack first.
I hurriedly seized her shoulders and proposed a different 'method of atonement.'
"M-Miss Natalie!"
"That's enough. I never asked for an apology, so there's no need to abuse yourself quite so thoroughly."
"Natalie, stop it! Lord Ethan says he's fine!"
"N-no… I-I am a shameful swordsman, unfit and unfair… I must at-aton…"
"It's quite all right, Miss Natalie. There is a surer way for you to atone than this brutish display."
"…Pardon? I-is that truly so, Lady Lilith?!"
"Yes, yes…"
At the mention of a surefire atonement, Natalie seized my shoulders and began shaking me back and forth.
I decided to let the sudden demotion — from "Miss Lilith" to "Lady Lilith" — slide. Come tomorrow, she'd have forgotten it all anyway.
"You have committed exactly one mistake, Miss Natalie. Sober Natalie challenged a drunken Lord Ethan to a duel."
"Indeed… how shameless of me, to prey upon a weakened opponent…"
"Then the solution is simple: you need only drink yourself to the very same level as Lord Ethan, Miss Natalie."
"……Pardon?"
"A duel proposed between two equally drunk parties is nothing more than a joke. Isn't that so?"
"Th-that's true!"
…As if that made any sense. If getting drunk afterward could erase the punishment for a rampage already committed, what would be the point of laws — or knights, rather — at all?
But nothing about the current situation called for an irrefutable, airtight argument. It only had to be convincing enough that one flushed drunkard wouldn't find it strange.
Since I hardly wanted to watch the poor gullible Natalie start rampaging all over again, presumably no one else would bother refuting my logic either.
"Now then, one more drink, Miss Natalie. Down the hatch, nice and slow…"
And so I disguised the strongest alcohol the hall had to offer as an ordinary cocktail and fed her three glasses of it.
-Thump.
"Snrrk… fwoo…. Snrrk… fwoo…"
The wild orange mare sank straight into sleep, breathing out long, contented snores.
…Honestly, the cleanup is such a pain in the ass.