Noble Lady (4)
The discussion about recruiting Faye had already been settled. There was no way he’d bring it up again now. I waited for him to continue.
Theo pulled over a chair and sat down. “You said you had time, so I’ll explain slowly.”
“Hey, hold on.”
This guy wasn’t even ready for a proper conversation. Shouldn’t he have brought a chair for me too? It wasn’t about some nonsense like “a man should be considerate toward a woman.” I didn’t want to be treated like a woman in the first place. But if you’re the one who starts talking to someone, basic courtesy says you should at least offer them a seat. That’s just human decency, regardless of gender.
The words were right at the tip of my tongue, but I decided to let it slide this once. He was usually a good kid. The atmosphere felt serious right now, so maybe he was just distracted and made a small mistake. I, being the generous and understanding person I am, would overlook it.
I fetched my own chair.
“……”
“What? Theo, what’s with that face? You look like the mood you worked so hard to build just got shattered and you’re the one who messed up, so now you can’t say anything.”
“If you already know… Haah. Never mind. Sorry. That was my bad.”
Theo let out a sigh and scratched the back of his head. When he looked up again, the tension had eased a little. The mood was still serious, but that gloomy, uncomfortable feeling had completely vanished.
“Let me start over. How did it feel exploring the dungeon with Faye today?”
“How did it feel? Well, it was comfortable.”
“Right? I felt the same. Since no monsters were sneaking up from behind, I could focus entirely on my magic.”
“Claire and I could relax more too, knowing we might miss one or two without it being a big deal.”
“And it wasn’t just comfortable—it let us push our progress way ahead. We’d been stuck on the early floors of the fifth level for a whole week.”
“Yeah. At this rate, I was starting to wonder if we’d be trapped there for a month.”
It really had been that bad. When the problem was sheer numbers, the only solution was to get stronger ourselves. If you can’t beat a hundred people alone, you just train until you can take on a hundred by yourself. It’s a crude method, but effective. Once you’re strong enough to one-shot an orc, a slight difference in numbers stops being an issue. The problem is, there’s no telling how long that’ll take. We’re the protagonist party, so it probably won’t take forever—but without a status window, there’s still no guarantee.
If Claire hadn’t slipped up after today’s dungeon practical, and if Faye hadn’t taken an interest in our party because of it, we would’ve been stuck on those early fifth-floor rooms for much longer. In a way, Claire’s mistake had turned into good luck. I should buy her something tasty later.
Theo kept going. “After exploring the dungeon together today, I realized something. We can’t just let Faye go.”
“Can’t let her go.” The weight behind those words felt different from simply saying “I want to recruit her.”
“What do you mean by ‘can’t let her go’? Be more specific.”
“I’m going to bring her into our party. No matter what it takes. That’s what I decided.”
“Hmm…”
It was good that Theo was motivated. I’d been planning to connect him with the heroines from the start, so his enthusiasm was welcome. Still, something about it felt off.
“Why the rush? You weren’t this impatient before.”
I knew Theo’s reason for clearing the dungeon: to break the Goddess’s seal and strike a blow against the black mages. Whether he planned to stop there or finish them off completely, I didn’t know. Revenge. It was a simple, painfully straightforward motive. But that was still far in the future, closer to the final goal. With his current strength, charging at the black mages would only let him take out a few small fries before it was over. That’s why he’d enrolled in the academy instead of rushing into revenge right away.
Theo paused at my question, then sighed again. He’d been sighing a lot today.
“Yeah… You’re right, Luna. I got ahead of myself.”
“What are you even saying? So what are you going to do? Explain properly.”
“I said ‘that’s what I decided.’ Up until I started talking to you, I really was thinking of bringing her into the party by any means necessary.”
“And now you’re not?”
“Yeah. Not anymore. Our progress suddenly shot forward after being stuck for so long, so I guess I lost my head for a bit.”
In short, he’d gotten drunk on the Faye buff. Honestly, it did feel good to have that long-blocked path suddenly open up just by adding one person. Still, that uneasy feeling I’d had when Theo first approached me wasn’t something I could just brush off as simple excitement. It felt like there was something else he wasn’t saying… but that probably wasn’t my place to dig into. Even if we’d somehow stuck together, fought back-to-back, and trusted each other with our lives, we’d only known each other for a month. There were things you couldn’t share without enough time and connection. I had plenty of secrets from Theo too, so I could understand it that way. It still didn’t feel great, though.
I continued the conversation. “So what about recruiting Faye? Are you giving up? That can’t be it, right?”
“Of course not. What I’m giving up on is the ‘by any means necessary’ part. I’ll get close to her normally first, then invite her to the party.”
“That’s the standard approach.”
“And the clean one.”
“But it won’t be easy, you know? She already has a party.”
And not just some casual friend group either—it was a noble young ladies’ party tied together by their families. Of course, since none of the members had fallen yet, they wouldn’t go so far as to drag her back by force using their houses. Still, suddenly leaving a party like that wouldn’t be simple.
“That’s the problem, Luna. Do you have any good ideas?”
Good ideas… It wasn’t like nothing came to mind. But—
“Whatever method we use, getting close to her comes first. Are you close with Faye?”
“Huh? Aren’t we?”
“…Are you serious?”
“No, what’s wrong? We talked a lot today, and she’s approached me several times too. Isn’t that enough to count as close?”
“Oh boy.”
My head hurt. Without thinking, I pressed a hand to my forehead. Well, technically, Theo wasn’t entirely wrong. For someone who didn’t enjoy socializing—like me before the possession—that level of interaction would count as being close. From what I’d seen so far, Theo was the same type. He didn’t dislike dealing with people, but he wasn’t the one to approach first. So if he was the one initiating conversation, that probably did mean they were close, in his book.
But Faye was different. She loved being around people. She might consider Theo a friend, but the word didn’t carry much weight for her. I explained all this to him. It wasn’t like knowing this made me some kind of genius, and Theo could figure it out himself if he just thought about it calmly. No need to act smug about it.
“…So yeah, we’re still way short. Got it?”
“I got it. I got it, so stop already…”
Theo muttered with a strangely haggard expression. Had my explanation really been that hard to follow? I was about to start over when he desperately shook his head. Good. I didn’t like repeating myself either.
“Then how do I get closer to Faye… or get even closer?”
“That’s simple. What do you think Faye likes?”
“What Faye likes? Well…”
Theo stared into space for a moment, searching his memory. The answer came quickly.
“Fighting, obviously. She likes training and practice too, but it feels more like she enjoys them because they help her fight better.”
“You know her well. So what should you do?”
“Invite her to spar? Like last time.”
“Right. But that alone won’t be enough.”
“Not enough?”
Losing to Faye in a spar would lower her favorability. It wasn’t like she’d look at you with cold eyes and say “I’m not interested in weaklings,” though—you’d just become one of her many, many friends. If you just wanted to be ordinary friends, that would be fine. But what we were aiming for wasn’t ordinary friendship.
“Faye likes a challenge. If you keep beating her, you’ll get close to her fast.”
“I have to beat Faye… Hmm. That doesn’t sound easy. Alright. Let’s talk about that later. Is there another way?”
Theo was already asking for a second strategy after hearing just one. Did he think I was some kind of answer sheet that would spit out solutions whenever he asked? Maybe I’d told him too much. I glanced at him nervously, wondering if he’d start questioning where I got all this knowledge from.
Fortunately, he didn’t look suspicious. He just seemed to think that, as another girl, I’d understand Faye’s feelings better. Being expected to play the “girl” role like this was a bit troublesome, though. It wasn’t like my mind had actually become female. Of course, I did know how to win Faye over. There was one more method, actually. And that was—
“Another way? It’s this. This right here.”
I repeated the hand gesture I’d made before. Shuk shuk.