I Like You, Lady Dolores
1.
The mysterious chess master.
No, wait — I won the actual chess game, so.
The mysterious, decent-enough chess master, Lionel.
Inside Isabella's head, Lionel's identity had been narrowed down to roughly one of three possibilities.
First: the scion of some noble house.
Second: a child being raised by some knightly order.
Third: a young prospect being cultivated by one of the newly risen powers — a climbing party or a fledgling guild.
The idea that he might have anything to do with Dolores had never even crossed her mind.
There was no chance Dolores would ever marry a man and bear a child, and when Isabella had visited this estate a year ago, the only child around had been Ruby.
"He's my child."
"Huh…?"
Isabella's brain went roughly blank.
What is this?
And then —
On Dolores's face, Isabella caught an interesting shift.
A subtle contortion…
A faint flush rising in her cheeks.
A look of oh no layered over the top.
The face of someone who had just realized she'd misspoken.
…Oho.
Now this was new.
And with that, Isabella's interest in Lionel only surged higher.
A clear misstep on Dolores's part — committed in a momentary excess of feeling.
Lionel, who on earth are you, to make Dolores act like this?
And in that instant, Isabella's peculiar brand of accelerated thinking kicked in.
— Zzzt…
Inside her head, information began to rearrange itself.
[Why is she freaking out this hard?]
The scale of this reaction is not something you show over just one little boy.
[The "boy" part is weird to begin with.]
You would never take a man in. Even if he were a child.
[Where did those gloves even come from?]
The usual you would have dangled the gloves as bait and tried to bleed me dry.
[Lionel's right hand… was swollen.]
And that kid turned me down, saying he had no interest in magic.
Observing the situation in the third person even as her thoughts accelerated — Isabella's heart skipped a beat faster.
— Zzzt.
The noise cleared, and the information began converging on a single conclusion.
Lionel is connected to those Rank 20 gloves.
Isabella's head went clear with the realization.
At last — she had found the weakness of this cold, sharp, occasionally almost kind but mostly insufferable Dolores.
"…Heh heh."
She gave a delighted little nod, smiling.
"I've figured it out, Dolores. The core of your rage…"
But then —
"Huh?"
— Hmmm…
Without her even noticing, a blue magic circle had been quietly etching itself beneath Isabella's feet.
Her gaze dropped.
A transfer spell — the kind used to forcibly evacuate an endangered ally from the battlefield.
Because there had been no hostile intent, Isabella's autonomous defense system never triggered. And Dolores, without so much as glancing at her, had a hand pressed to her forehead.
Looking genuinely exhausted.
"Elysia, just a sec—"
— Fwoom!
Isabella's body vanished in an instant.
"Haa…"
Dolores let out a sigh, questioning her own turbulent emotions.
2.
No joke.
After listening to someone talk for three straight hours, I was starting to hear auditory hallucinations even in the bath.
It's been a while since I dealt with someone this exhausting.
I headed for the study where Ruby was, wet hair and all, without even drying it.
"You abandoned me."
Ruby, this is not okay.
I knocked on the study door.
"Ruby-chan~"
Without waiting for an answer, I shoved it open.
"Y… you're back?"
Ruby answered without even looking at me, her face buried in a book.
"Hey."
I walked over slowly and gently lowered the book.
Ruby had her lips clamped tight and her cheeks puffed out like a squirrel, looking like she was one second from losing it and bursting into laughter.
Look at this. Look at this.
You knew the whole time.
"Did you have fun?"
Ruby asked, the corner of her mouth tugging upward.
I'd been planning to sentence her to the toe-tickling punishment at first, but…
"Heh heh. Yeah."
It was the first time I'd ever seen Ruby smile this brightly, this happily — so I just ruffled her hair and flopped down onto the beanbag beside her.
Honestly, Isabella didn't seem like a bad person. The overflowing-passion type — hard to push away, and I hadn't really felt like pushing her away anyway.
— Fwoomp.
My half-exhausted body sank in.
I'm wiped. I could probably just fall asleep like this.
Starting tomorrow I have to make Dolores's socks… and I'm curious what she and Isabella will even talk about. She seemed to have come here because of her curiosity about my gloves, after all.
And then —
I felt a gaze from beside me.
When I turned my head a little, Ruby was studying my forearm intently.
"……?"
"It got a little thicker. Feels… firmer."
Even in an elementary-schooler's body, a few hours of being put through the wringer would leave some temporary pump. Ruby seemed fascinated by it.
"So it actually does something."
"Like I'd do it if you weren't around."
Sharp eyes. Guess that's a mage for you.
Ruby quietly watched my arm like that for several minutes.
I rested whether she looked or not.
And after however much time had passed —
— Knock knock.
Someone knocked on the door.
"Yes."
The door opened with the answer, and there stood Dolores.
Looking considerably dejected, at that.
3.
Lionel? I prepared the ore, and I oiled it too.
She seemed to have spent extra time outside preparing gifts for Ruby and me.
There was nothing left on today's schedule.
Time passed, and the three of us got ready for bed.
— Zzz…
Ruby was already asleep.
Moonlight spilled in through the window onto the bed.
The hard training and Isabella's conversational hellpit had left my body thoroughly exhausted — but my mind was still wide awake.
"……."
I turned my head and looked at Dolores.
Eyes closed, she seemed to be settling in for a peaceful sleep.
Honestly, with how little time I'd spent observing her, it was hard to say for certain, but —
She looks drained.
That was the thought that came to me.
Something's felt a little different ever since Isabella showed up.
But I wasn't the type to sit on my curiosity, and I wasn't delicate enough to carefully parse every shade of someone's feelings either.
"Lady Dolores."
I called to her quietly.
"……."
At my call she slowly opened her eyes, turned her head, and smiled softly.
I cut straight to the point.
"Did something happen today?"
"……Sometimes, Lionel."
"Yes."
"You really don't seem like a child."
"……."
Direct hit, out of nowhere.
Instead of answering, Dolores gave me a warm smile and rose from where she lay.
Then, just like yesterday, she came around the bed to my side.
— Rustle.
The blanket lifted a little, and she settled down beside me.
"I just felt a little bad for you, Lionel."
"For me?"
What would she have to feel bad about toward me?
"It was a bit chaotic today, wasn't it?"
"It wasn't bad."
She seemed to be talking about Isabella.
It hadn't been a particularly awful feeling, honestly.
"……."
But maybe that wasn't the answer she'd wanted?
Dolores squeezed her eyes shut… and barely managed to open her mouth.
"If… if you'd like to take magic lessons from Isabella… just say the word, anytime."
"Pardon?"
"I could send you to her by carriage."
What kind of nonsense is this?
Absolutely, absolutely not.
I'd grant that she wasn't actually a bad person, sure.
But I did not want to sit face-to-face with her like that again.
Not a second time. Nope. Dame.
"……."
I carefully studied the expression of the Dolores who had just dropped that bombshell on me.
She couldn't actually want me to leave.
Wait a second.
Eyes closed, a face braced for something.
Only after seeing that expression did the situation finally click.
……No way.
This woman.
Did she think I'd taken a liking to Isabella?
From Dolores's point of view, it might have looked like I'd had a pretty good time with her.
So out of fear that I might actually want Isabella's magic lessons — even if she didn't like it — she had steeled herself to allow it.
"Um, Lady Dolores."
"Mm."
"I like you, Lady Dolores."
Dolores's eyes slowly opened.
What do you think I've been working this hard for?
"I don't want magic. I don't want anything else."
I held her gaze and kept going.
"And I have no intention of going anywhere."
I said it lightly, like a joke.
"I like you, Lady Dolores."
This life is yours, Dolores.
If a thirty-year-old said something like this, people would point and call him a cringey lunatic — but I was Lionel, age thirteen.
This much secondhand embarrassment was something I could live with.
"I see… Lionel…"
Dolores closed her eyes and nodded.
And then —
Her feet caught my eye.
They were bare.
I'd told her to go without, and she really was going without.
And the feet of a woman who had removed the equipment that halted her curse…
They're frozen.
Blue with cold, enough to tell at a glance.
She must have spent the whole morning walking around barefoot in nothing but shoes.
This person was planning to stay like this until the shoes I made for her were ready.
And she wants me to go somewhere?
Absolute nonsense.
My chest tightened uncomfortably.
Once my heart latches onto something, I have a tendency not to see anything else around me.
— Grab.
"Eek?!"
I caught hold of Dolores's feet.
"Lionel, let go! They're cold…"
Cold. Genuinely, terribly cold.
Living like this is just too sad.
I didn't care anymore. Screw it.
"I'll be right back."
I sat bolt upright.
My sleeping privileges had already been revoked anyway. And my hands — maybe the medicine had started working — had mostly healed over the course of the afternoon.
I snatched her socks from the nightstand — Tmir's Ice Insoles — and waved them in my fist.
— Whoosh whoosh.
As I swung her socks back and forth, color rose in Dolores's cheeks.
"I'm taking these."
Late at night.
Work was best done when your mind was sharp and clear, anyway.
Same went for studying. Same went for games.
"Please go to sleep first."
Dolores started to say something, then closed her mouth again.
[Nobody's stopping him. Yup, yup.]
It was the face of someone who already knew that trying to stop me was useless.