The Variable (1)
The cold night air brushed across my head, and what flooded into my mind behind it was a chill so bone-deep it bordered on horror.
Because the moment I replayed the conversation I'd just had with Ethan inside the banquet hall, my heart plunged straight through the floor.
'Why on earth didn't you dodge until that young lady's lips were practically touching Edan's face?'
'Do you really think you'd prefer breasts like hers, a nice sensible size, over this obscenely massive pair of mine?'
What on earth had possessed me to spew that garbage right in front of Ethan? Especially the second line — at that point I wasn't playing a suspicious fiancée doubting her fiancé's wandering eye anymore. I was just a raving lunatic whining, why don't you love me?
'God. So humiliating. Where did that even come from all of a sudden?'
Now that the cold and the time alone had cooled my head, my face was the thing burning up. Not because it was a summer night — simply from the sheer embarrassment of what I'd just said.
"Haaah, kill me now…."
I should have just stuck to the original plan and played the venomous, hysterical young lady like I was supposed to. Whether or not Ethan had actually intended to dodge that girl's kiss — why did that even matter?
Okay, no, if I was really being honest with myself, it did matter. If Ethan's lips had actually met that woman's back there, then every single time I kissed Ethan from now on, that vintage-wine bitch's face would flash into my head and it would be unbearably awkward.
Considering that, blocking it was obviously the right call, and in that sense Ethan's actions were a little… strange, maybe….
'No, no, no, no, no.'
Why was I once again so matter-of-factly assuming that there'd be a next kiss with Ethan?
The pointlessly increased frequency of mouth-to-mouth contact with Ethan lately had apparently loosened up my entire way of thinking along with it.
At some point I'd started registering kissing as more or less acceptable skinship. Except, strictly speaking, there's no such thing as "acceptable skinship" between a man and a woman in our situation.
This line of thinking must not become normal. If it did, I had a terrible feeling I'd eventually reach some deranged conclusion like, as long as it's not the chastity-related stuff, anything goes.
'…Well, whatever. At least it worked out in the end, so that's something.'
Convincing McHart that things between me and Ethan had gone sour had somehow been a success.
Ethan had clearly been flustered at first too, but he'd quickly collected himself and played along with my act — so by every measure, it was a win. Thanks to that, I'd even managed to create the atmosphere of a rift between me and Ethan far more naturally than I'd originally planned.
Now, once McHart came slinking after me, left alone, all I had to do was summon the rest of the team at once and take him down in one stroke. No matter what power of the Demonkin he held, there was no surviving a group beatdown.
'I already swapped out the signal beacon. Preparation: perfect.'
Good things cost good money — it was a one-use, one-way pager, nothing more, but it wasn't bad. Granted, "one-use" didn't exactly make it cheap, but it was still far less expensive than my life was worth.
The moment McHart moved to pounce on me, I'd funnel my mana into the beacon, and everyone else in the banquet hall would come running. Ethan, the Hero, Agnes, Serista. With manpower like that, one McHart — who hadn't even fully demonized — would be deleted in a heartbeat.
And at the very end, I'd use the saintess's authority I carried to prove, before everyone's eyes, that McHart had received the Demonkin's power — then disguise it so it looked like Serista was the one who'd granted it. Operation complete. I'd spent a month building toward this, so once this plan was done, everything afterward was supposed to flow smoothly.
'It'll work. It has to work.'
And if it didn't, well — I'd just swallow my pride and throw in with the Hero's party.
No matter that I'd played Luminor Academy for over 2,000 hours in my past life and had every subsequent development memorized — that wasn't knowledge I'd earned through any particular brilliance of my own.
If a plan drawn up at my level didn't pan out, my only option was to switch to the guaranteed-reliable method of killing McHart via the Hero's party. And the couple of years of running around after graduation that process would entail would just be the karmic price of getting pointlessly tangled up with McHart in the first place.
I was quietly waiting for McHart to appear with those thoughts in my head when, unbidden, the conversation from the banquet hall surfaced again.
The small, stinging truth Ethan had said to me near the end of our staged argument.
'You're a mere baronet's daughter engaged to a ducal house — did you really think that made you somebody? Without being my fiancée, Lily, you're nothing but a low-ranking noble girl with no backing whatsoever.'
…Well. He wasn't wrong, technically.
It was a fact I'd briefly forgotten lately, too wrapped up in academy life. Ethan was the young master of the Blackwood Ducal House, one of the most powerful among the duchies, while I was just the daughter of its cadet branch, House Rosewood — and not even that, really, just a commoner wearing a forged identity.
I knew all of that, which is why I normally made a point of leaning hard into the "exclusive personal maid" role, addressing Ethan with the utmost honorifics. But with everything that had happened recently, my relationship with him had gotten looser than it ever should have.
Probably because the people around me were, on average, far too high-ranking. The next Crimson Tower Master, the Hero, a Saintess — I'd gotten chummy with genuinely exalted people.
'He didn't mean that "mere baronet's daughter" stuff seriously… probably. Hmm….'
Still, the fact that the words just a baronet's daughter had leapt out of him in that moment — didn't that mean he'd been carrying that thought around in his head all along? That it came out so naturally because it was already there? However hard I tried, that question kept churning through my skull.
Being alone made my thoughts drift inevitably toward the negative. If only I could just finish this quickly and toss this headache of a worry away along with everything else.
So there I was in the garden outside the rear gate of the royal annex, performing my role as "the young lady abandoned by her fiancé," when today's headliner finally showed his face.
…Honestly, half of me had hoped we'd never meet. But having come this far, it was an inevitability I couldn't escape.
"My, what a lonely back you present, my lady."
"……"
Accompanied by the sound of approaching footsteps, the one who appeared — spewing revolting lines from the very first second — was none other than today's quarry, Prince McHart.
He must have tailed me from the moment I left the banquet hall. Otherwise there'd have been no way to find me this quickly.
While everyone else inside was busy hunting for whoever they'd be pounding or pounded by tonight, there I was alone in the back garden, moping over my tragic fate.
And that cursed McHart had been sending me his repulsive obsession for nearly two months now — there was no way he wouldn't take the bait of this trap.
'First things first: buy time.'
I channeled mana into the beacon tucked in my pocket, summoning the rest of the team from the banquet hall to the annex's rear gate.
From the moment mana flowed into it to the moment the signal was delivered: roughly twenty seconds. Factor in the time it would take the other raid members to slip out of the banquet hall unseen and get here — call it one to two minutes, give or take.
If they came barging in dragging attention with them, we'd end up with a crime scene: a crowd of people ganging up on a perfectly healthy prince. So each of them would need to layer concealment magic or a blessing of stealth before arriving, and that would take time.
And until then, my job was simple: make absolutely sure I didn't end up "alone together" with McHart.
"Well, whatever my back looks like, it's not as if you contribute anything to it, I suppose."
"Perhaps not. I've contributed nothing, true — but I can make that lonely back of yours considerably less lonely, starting right now."
"Cut the crap, you son of a—. I'd just about managed to forget you existed, and here you are again…."
Doing my best to calm the heart hammering in my chest, I somehow kept the performance going, cool and unbothered.
No jumping at shadows. No letting him sniff out that a plan was in motion. Just behave exactly as I always had toward this creep.
If I responded even slightly off-pattern, he'd notice and bolt. Until he was firmly inside the fish trap, all I could do was wait.
"So. Have you been well, Lilith?"
"Don't say my name. It makes me want to gag."
"Then shall I use a pet name instead? Lily?"
"You absolute piece of—!"
The moment the word "Lily" spilled out of that bastard McHart's mouth, my control over my emotions snapped for an instant.
Calm down. Breathe. Do not get played into his rhythm.
"I've been so terribly lonely, you know. Usually, once a woman catches my interest, dragging her to my bed within the week is the only thing that satisfies me — but your guard detail is simply impenetrable."
"Oh. Is that so."
"Protected around the clock, like clockwork — by that young master you serve, and by the Blaze family's young lady."
"……"
"The power I hold isn't really suited for handling multiple opponents at once, you see…. The Demonkin's power is such a pain to work with in every way."
McHart spoke openly, right in front of me, about wielding the Demonkin's power — as if he'd given up on hiding it entirely.
He figured that since I'd already caught him, there was no further need for pretense. Which meant that brazen attitude rested on his confidence that my mouth could be permanently shut.
After all, the number of people willing to lend an ear to a mere baronet's daughter could be counted on one hand. That was precisely why I was still alive and kicking, nearly two months after the night McHart attacked me.
In the end, my only path was to gather the people who would believe me and settle this somehow. By now, everyone should have received my mana signal — which meant that from this point on, I had to stall for my comrades and buy every second I could.
"By the way — all that protection, and yet here you are alone. At this point, am I allowed to start flattering myself that your heart is opening up to me?"
"…Do whatever you like. Fantasy is free."
— Shiiing.
"Though thanks to that blockhead of a skull of yours, this is probably the very last day you'll be able to entertain such ludicrous delusions."
The dagger bearing the Blackwood crest, drawn from beneath my dress, gleamed with a cold light.
The slightly premature Act Four boss fight — the subjugation of McHart — had begun.