In Search of the Star Girl
"Ah... pardon...?"
"I asked if you were really a man. Answer me."
"That's..."
Luke's body had gone rigid, locked as if it had turned to stone. Those starlit eyes wavered, unable to find their footing. I looked down at the figure standing frozen before me, a question hanging unanswered between us.
If Luke were a man, there is no way the reaction would look like this. Which means... she's actually a girl.
A low sound escaped me as my thoughts tangled over themselves. The Luke standing frozen in front of me had been male in the original novel. There had never been a scene of anyone undressed, never a direct description of anything anatomical — but the setting had said man, so I had taken it as given.
And yet. Of all things. She was a girl.
While I stood there staring, blank as a post, Cheonryeo's voice rang through my mind, insufferably triumphant.
Hold on. That's your entire basis for deciding Luke is a girl?
...Fine. You're right.
I offered a quiet concession to the innocent masochistic pervert who had never, in her life, heard of camaraderie.
That still left the problem of what to do about it. If Luke — the original protagonist — was a girl, would that throw the plans ahead off course? For that matter, was Luke even her real name?
Thoughts of that sort crowded in and tangled together. Inside the hushed training ground, neither of us seemed to know what came next — until Luke found a voice first.
"Um... I am a man. I don't know what led Your Grace to believe I was a woman, but I think there has been a misunderstanding."
"Hmm. You're really a man?"
"Yes."
"And that is the answer you arrived at after all that deliberation."
"...It is."
"!"
Luke flinched as if the word itself had struck her. Those faintly glittering, starlit eyes went wide and round. Moisture gathered at the corners as though she might burst into tears at any second, and her lips kept parting and closing, hunting for something to say.
Look at that reaction.
Perhaps it was because I had taken the time to teach her, because we had grown somewhat close. She seemed to hold a fair amount of respect for me, enough that a single word of disappointment had shaken her this badly.
How had I never noticed until now? Most of our meetings had been spent crossing blades, true enough — but once the thought that she was a girl had taken root, her bare, unpainted face and all those shy little mannerisms looked painfully, unmistakably feminine.
Wait. Then is she wearing a chest binder right now?
A compression wrap around the chest was, after all, required equipment for any girl passing herself off as a boy. The thought arrived as naturally as water finding its course, and my gaze drifted down — to the modest, faintly rounded rise of Luke's chest.
Hmm. Dainty. If that was the unbound version, it was a little disappointing.
What are you talking about. I had something to think through. Be quiet.
Shut up.
I silenced the smirking presence in my head. This one was bound to me so tightly that she seemed to know what I was doing before I did. I was going to have to work out some way of protecting my privacy, and soon.
"Um, so..."
"Hm?"
"Hic... I'm sorry!"
And then Luke, who had been fidgeting in place, bolted from the training ground.
So she had chosen to run. Fair enough. With a secret she had kept so tightly now laid bare, facing me could not have been easy. Still, I would be starting lectures at the Knight Faculty soon enough. We would cross paths again before long. Whatever reason she had for attending the Imperial Academy as a boy, I could learn it then.
The image of the star girl in her fluster lingered as I turned and started, unhurried, back toward the residence.
After I returned to the residence, in the pale hours of a summer dawn, with a river of stars still burning across the night sky, I dreamed.
In the dream I lay in bed, sunk in deep sleep. The bedroom was quiet. Liliana sat beside me, stroking my hair with a touch so gentle it barely seemed real.
"Lord Behirith. Are you still asleep...?"
In the dream her voice was a faint whisper, as soft as the ASMR I used to put on before I ever woke up in this body. A warm, enveloping comfort settled over me. Perhaps it was that slender, lovely voice of hers — it was so pleasant to listen to that a shiver of well-being ran through me of its own accord.
And then I understood.
Ah... this isn't a dream.
No wonder it had felt too real. Once I grasped that I was awake, a new question took the dream's place: why had Liliana come to my room at this hour? What was she planning? Surely she wasn't about to try anything strange.
No. Of course not.
The thought crossed my mind, but I made no move to pretend I had woken. Honestly, it was comfortable. It felt good.
I let her go on stroking my hair a little longer. Then the woman gazing down at me so tenderly from the edge of the bed leaned in, slowly, and pressed a light kiss to my forehead.
A soft peck.
"..."
"I forgot to tell you. Thank you for looking after me so I could graduate from the Academy."
"..."
"I think about it often — that the person I spoke my Soul Name to was you, Lord Behirith. That is truly fortunate. I hope you have happy dreams today as well. Good night."
The door whispered open, then eased shut. Liliana vanished from the bedroom on a voice so small it barely qualified as sound. Her careful footsteps receded down the hall, and I was left alone. I sat up slowly.
"Hah. You're supposed to say that to my face."
A thank-you whispered to someone who was supposedly dead asleep. Romantic, I would give her that — but if I had actually been sleeping, I would have missed every one of those lovely lines, and that would have been a genuine waste.
"Around here, was it."
I smoothed the rumpled coverlet and set my hand on the place where she had been sitting. A quiet warmth climbed into my palm. Every so often, feeling Lucy's warmth or Liliana's like this was a kind of comfort — a wordless encouragement, almost — against the press of days that never seemed to slow down.
Which made me wonder how Lucy was doing. She had needed to stay behind in the capital to handle affairs, I knew that, but leaving her there still sat poorly with me.
This is the first time I haven't seen Lucy in over a month.
When I got back to the capital, I was going to have to spoil her rotten.
Thinking of her while I watched the washed-out dawn beyond the window, though, put sleep thoroughly out of reach. I had become a morning person against my will. I closed my eyes and lay there a little longer, then gave up on sleep entirely, threw off the thin summer blanket, and stood.
"That's enough. Let's sort through the plans."
I sat in the chair by the window and rubbed my chin. There was really only one problem that needed thinking through right now.
Luke's gender. She was a girl. She had not admitted it in so many words, but her reaction had been as good as a confession. The matter deserved at least one serious pass.
Would her being a girl affect my plans? Would it get in the way of helping the heroines and carving out a peaceful life?
"..."
Honestly, there was nothing that looked like a real problem. Maybe because I had taken such care with her instruction, Luke's rate of growth did not even seem slower than it had been in the original. The one thing I could not afford was for this to sour what stood between us.
"Let's see. She'll head for the training ground first thing. I'll go find her later and talk it through."
My relationship with Luke — the original protagonist — mattered a great deal. This was a moment that called for an adult's generosity. I would be the one to take the first step.
I sat by the window and let the dawn burn down through one thought after another. By the time the sky finally paled, I told Liliana I would be stepping out for a while and left the house.
My footsteps carried me through the garden in front of the residence and on toward the training ground. A breeze lifted, and the lukewarm air of a summer morning brushed my cheek.
At this hour most students would still be asleep, or just sitting down to an early breakfast. For a hard worker like Luke, though, it was simply the usual hour to train. She would be at the training ground. She had to be.
A prodigy blessed by the stars, and yet a harder worker than anyone alive. That was Luke Stareil.
I stepped through the entrance with that thought still in mind — and found Elda alone in the sunlit space, swinging a sword.
Hm?
Something was off. I swept the training ground once, then again. Luke was nowhere to be seen. The absence of someone I had been certain would be here sent a thin thread of unease through me.
Had yesterday's incident kept her away? Or had she come even earlier and already gone...
I swallowed the question and walked in. Elda felt my presence and turned.
"Hah. Hah. Hm? Hubby?"
"You're hard at it this early, Elda."
"This is nothing special. Did you come to train?"
She asked it while wiping the sweat from her throat. Instead of the black leather armor she usually wore, she had on light training clothes — a white sleeveless top that made the soft flesh of her underarms and the generous curve of her chest impossible to ignore. The sheen of sweat only added a healthy, faintly sensual edge to the picture.
This was not the time. I tore my gaze from that indecently inviting figure with some difficulty and found my voice.
"I did. Thought I'd move a little before breakfast. You're alone?"
"Yes. Looking for someone?"
"Nothing important. I just needed a word with Luke Stareil."
"Luke? She went back to her family a little while ago."
"...What?"
"I ran into her while I was out jogging this morning. She said something had come up and she needed to go home. She had an awful lot of luggage loaded on the carriage, though—"
"Thanks for telling me! I'll go on ahead!"
"Ah. Leaving already?"
Elda's voice caught me in the back of the head. I turned just long enough to lift a hand to her, then strode straight out of the training ground.
Both legs pumping, I ran hard for the Academy gates.
Damn it. What the hell are you thinking, Luke...!
Even granting that a secret that mattered to her had been exposed, to suddenly pack up and go home — and if she was taking that much luggage, she clearly meant to stay a long time. In the worst case, she might not come back at all.
Was there something else going on, something I did not know?
This is not unfolding the way it should.
Every instinct I had built up over the years was speaking with a sharp, unforgiving edge. I could not leave this alone. I had to find her. Now.
Luke Stareil. The original protagonist. A person I could not afford to lose from the plans ahead. And now, no longer the boy of the stars — someone I would have to call the girl of the stars.
I moved faster, hurrying to meet her.