The Fifth Prince's Birthday Banquet (1)
About two weeks had passed since the start of the second year at the Academy.
Almost half of the second semester at Luminor Academy had already slipped by before anyone noticed.
I had worried that all the trouble at the end of last year might have torn a serious rift in the storyline, but the second semester had, in fact, proceeded far more smoothly than I'd expected.
The Hero's party, which had cracked apart for a moment there, had brought Nathalie and Thomas back into the fold, and it seemed they were slowly working to patch up the awkwardness that had settled over their relationships.
And Agnes told me herself that she had begun interacting with the Hero, Gehwa-joses-gigwat, again.
"...I only need to work with him because of the succession. If it weren't him, it'd be the Fourth or the Fifth Prince, and honestly, the Hero is better than either of them."
"Good thinking, Lady Agnes. Especially since Prince McHart will soon be part—"
"Part of what?"
"...You know how he'll soon be famous for throwing parties constantly? Parties to which he invites only female nobles, mind you. Frankly speaking, he doesn't leave the best impression."
...I'd almost blurted out that he would soon be headed for ruin without thinking. I needed to be careful. The fact that McHart had colluded with the demons and was involved in the death of the First Prince had not yet come to light.
The words had nearly slipped out because I didn't want to watch Agnes get entangled with some creep and go down with him, but if that caused me to get dragged into some ugly business of imperial slander, it would only defeat the purpose.
"I don't really care about parties or whatever. But McHart is gross. I hate him. I've only seen Antonio once, and I have no idea what goes on in that head of his."
"Is that so?"
...Was there an episode where Agnes met Prince Antonio? I couldn't recall clearly, but apparently something had happened.
After all, Agnes hadn't been a heroine I particularly pursued in my past life, so there were probably dozens of episodes involving her that I knew nothing about.
Judging by the fact that Antonio's name came out of her mouth at all, they must have at least exchanged words. As for what actually happened between them somewhere out of my sight, I had no way of knowing.
"Compared to that, Gehwa-jos—... ah, I forgot it again."
"The Hero, Gehwa-joses-gigwat Volt?"
"Yeah, the guy with the weird name. At least with him, I can see exactly what he's thinking. And he gets along with Seraphine. In that respect, he's the better option."
If Agnes wasn't feeling competitive toward Seraphine at this point, then she clearly wasn't headed down a heroine route.
Personally, I felt pretty good about that. For all that Agnes was a foul-tempered little brat, I couldn't exactly hand her over to become another member of that guy's harem without a fight.
Beyond that, I mostly just picked up gossip about the Hero and the people around him through Agnes, keeping track of the broad strokes of how the story was flowing.
First, there were no plans to approach Liria and Kael, the first-year newcomers. On this front, that was only to be expected.
In Liria's case, the party already had Thomas, so there was no real need to recruit an additional spear-user.
At her core, Liria had only ever been one piece of my 'all-female party' puzzle, carrying no value beyond that.
Being a woman who could wield a spear was the entirety of her character identity—and even that performance was noticeably inferior to Thomas, who occupied the same position.
The same went for Kael; there was no pressing need to recruit him. A brawler slot was, after all, the position that got trained quite openly at Seraphine's hands.
He might have been usable in episodes where Seraphine was absent, but his stats were decidedly lacking to carry all the way to the final battle.
Seraphine, by contrast, was a mandatory companion and the main heroine, with excellent stats and beauty to boot—she had no real competition.
Let's see... counting the party members the Hero has gathered so far...
As of now, the number of companions the Hero had definitively recruited stood at five.
Serista, Silena, Nathalie, Thomas, and Agnes—those five were presumably the companion characters he'd carry through to the ending.
On top of that, Seraphine, as a mandatory companion, was guaranteed to join, and recruiting her brought synergy with Luke, who would come along with her.
Add the Hero himself, and that made eight in total.
As I'd mentioned before, the maximum party size for the Demon King subjugation was eight.
So at a glance, one might assume all eight slots were already filled...
...but I'd say there were still one or two seats left to fill.
Under the Church of Aurelia's teaching that the Hero and the Saintess were two halves of one body, Serista was counted as a single person merged with the Hero.
And while Seraphine was a mandatory companion who absolutely had to come, Luke hadn't been confirmed for the final party yet—which left anywhere from one to two seats open.
I just pray they don't get on my case trying to drag Lilith along too.
Objectively speaking, of course, recruiting Lilith would be the correct choice. But that route, above all others, was the one I would stop by any means necessary.
The canonical storyline—where they kill Ethan and 'save' Lilith to take her along—was obviously out of the question.
And a future where they tried to recruit me normally, without involving Ethan at all, wasn't something I wanted either.
Spending years after graduation wandering the world as a drifter was something I'd endured enough of within the game itself.
Please, if you're going to recruit a mage, recruit Orion instead of me. He's good at magic too. He can even use support spells.
Knowing Seraphine and the other girls, they'd probably welcome Orion with open arms. From where they stood, it would mean one fewer heroine fighting over the Hero.
I was mulling over my future course of action with these thoughts in my head when—perhaps because we'd just been talking about Prince Antonio—Agnes's story drifted naturally back in that direction.
"...Speaking of Antonio, that reminds me."
"Yes? Of what?"
"His birthday banquet. Two weeks from now."
"Ah, right, it's that time of year already."
"...That time of year?"
"...No, nothing. Never mind, Lady Agnes."
Antonio's birthday banquet was an episode I'd been through many times in my past life, so I was quite familiar with it—and that habitual, seen-it-all-before tone had slipped right out of me.
After the incident at Seraphine's masked birthday ball a few years back, there had been a long stretch with no gatherings of nobles at the imperial palace—but with Antonio's birthday banquet as the turning point, the palace events had resumed.
For someone who'd played Luminor Academy twenty-five times over, it was an event I could never possibly forget.
"You know the Fifth Prince's birthday, so I take it you're attending, Lady Agnes?"
"...Aren't you going, Lilith?"
"I'm merely the daughter of a baronet of House Rosewood. I'm infinitely too lowly to receive an invitation to a prince's birthday banquet."
"Too lowly...? I'm just a viscount's daughter, and I'm only going because my family told me to. My standing's about the same as yours, so don't worry about it."
"...I'm sorry? Oh. I see."
Well, fair enough. The idea of Agnes deliberately setting aside time for a high-society event had never made sense to begin with.
Knowing her personality, she'd most likely spend the whole evening awkwardly glued to a corner, same as at Seraphine's ball, before heading home.
On top of that, she'd caught an earful from the family elders for hiding her identity with disguise magic at Seraphine's birthday banquet, so this time she wouldn't even be able to hide the same way.
Hearing that I wouldn't be attending, Agnes murmured with a slightly disappointed look on her face.
"...I thought you'd be coming too, Lilith."
"My standing doesn't allow it, I'm afraid. No invitation ever arrived for me in the first place."
"...Well, can't be helped, then."
"Since it's a banquet hosted by the imperial family, I'd imagine Princess Seraphine will be there. I understand the two of you are personally acquainted."
"...Seraphine's busy, though. She can't spend the whole banquet with just me."
...Who on earth is so unbusy that you expect them to stay glued to your side the entire time?
Though, when I actually pictured myself attending such an event... I supposed I really wouldn't be all that busy.
The only circumstances under which I'd attend something like that were ones where I was accompanying Ethan—and Ethan wasn't the type to dash around busily working the room and meeting people.
"Still, something feels off. Are you really not attending? An invitation would have come for your fiancé at the very least."
"Naturally, a letter of invitation did arrive for Master Ethan."
"...Then don't tell me House Blackwood is skipping it? A prince's birthday banquet?"
"No? Master Ethan will probably attend. Independently of me, that is."
"......What?"
Agnes stared at me with an increasingly strange look in her eyes at my answer.
I had a fair idea what misconception she'd been carrying about me, so I added an explanation to keep her from developing any further useless misunderstandings.
"Since it's you, Lady Agnes, I'll spell it out: Master Ethan and I are not, in fact, engaged."
"......Seriously?"
"Everyone assumes we're engaged, and we simply don't bother correcting them. In reality, Master Ethan and I are nothing more than an exclusive maid and her employer."
"Then why do you share a room in the fiancés' dormitory—"
"Personal circumstances. It was the only practical option if I wanted to attend the Academy while also serving as Master Ethan's exclusive maid."
My words must have come as something of a shock, because Agnes just stared at me with a dazed expression.
Then she muttered under her breath, as if something about it all struck her as absurd.
"...Last time, anyone who looked at you two would have sworn you were lovers. That was all an act too?"
"No, we are lovers."
"...Are you teasing me again?"
"Why? Being lovers doesn't necessarily mean being engaged. Don't tell me, Lady Agnes—you're not one of those people who believes holding hands obligates you to marry, are you?"
"Th-that's not... I mean, no, but..."
We were only temporary lovers, granted—but a lovers' relationship between Ethan and me was the truth all the same.
Apparently my answer was still hard to wrap her head around, because Agnes, wearing a slightly bewildered expression, put one last question to me.
"You share a room, you're even dating—and you're telling me you're not engaged? Doesn't something about that strike you as strange?"
"Love and marriage have always been two different things, Lady Agnes. Besides, Master Ethan ought to be looking for a better match than me. How could the only son of a ducal house marry the daughter of a baronet's cadet branch?"
"...And you're satisfied with that? If it were me, I think it'd feel awfully hollow."
"House Elizabeth is special—a family where one can be entered into the main house if one's ability merits it. That's simply how the relationship between main branches and cadet branches works."
"......"
Truthfully, if we were being pedantic, my official status was that of a commoner, so I wasn't even a member of the cadet branch.
But Agnes was wearing the expression of someone who realized she'd asked a question she shouldn't have, and I was glad, in a small way, to have lifted some of the weight from her heart.
"Besides, Master Ethan and I aren't even involved to that extent, you know. We've never once shared even the ordinary intimacy between lovers that you'd find anywhere."
"—Kff, khh—kehek! Wh-why are you telling ME that?!"
"Well, in a normal engagement, relations between a man and woman are simply the standard. I only wanted to explain that Master Ethan and I have never crossed the line between engagement and courtship in the first place..."
"I don't need to know...! I never wanted to know in the first place...!"
However young she might look, she had to be an adult by age.
Agnes's reaction was far more innocent than I'd expected, and a laugh escaped me despite myself.