Low Point Buy-In (2)
Faye wore an expression like she was deep in serious thought. “Oh! Luna!” The moment she spotted me, her face transformed in an instant. From deep contemplation to delight, and then from delight straight into sulkiness. The contemplation and delight I could understand. Faye was an adult too, so of course she had her own worries. The delight was probably just because she saw me. But the sulkiness… Hmm… I really couldn’t figure that one out. Was it because I hadn’t sparred with her lately? Or because I slipped out of the party yesterday without saying anything? And then what I ended up doing with Theo… that? There were way too many possibilities. As I broke into a cold sweat on the inside, Faye grumbled and gave me the answer herself.
“You’re so mean. I don’t care about the rest, but you should’ve helped me clean up afterward! Do you know how hard it was yesterday?!”
Ah. So that was it. Thankfully, it was one of the lighter problems among the ones I’d imagined.
“Sorry. Next time we throw a party, I’ll handle all the cleanup myself!” I apologized without hesitation. After all, it really was my fault with no room for excuses.
“B-but… you didn’t hear anything, did you?” Like the sounds Claire mentioned she’d overheard—the kind of thing I couldn’t bring myself to say out loud.
“Hear anything? No, I didn’t hear anything in particular. Oh, Claire did say she heard something and went into the building for a bit. But she told me it was nothing and that I shouldn’t go in!”
Claire! Thank you! Seriously, thank you so much! Claire! I’ll definitely repay you later! I still need to figure out how, though!
“I was really looking forward to the party since it had been so long, but I felt super left out. Talking with Claire and that… lady was fun, though.” Faye spent a good while expressing her disappointment with her whole body before finally forgiving me in the end. Alright, that issue was settled. I asked about the thing that had been bugging me.
“So what were you worrying about so hard?”
“Huh? How did you know?”
“When you’re making a face that deep in thought, it’s obvious. Did someone bully you or something?”
“Bully me? Hehe, that’s a funny joke. Who would bully me?”
I didn’t sense any lies in Faye’s words. So the noble young ladies’ party hadn’t suddenly accelerated into some kind of power-tripping corruption. Good.
“Then what is it?”
“It’s nothing serious. Theo asked me for a favor a little while ago.”
“Theo did? What kind of favor? Oh, if it’s a secret you don’t have to tell me.”
“Mmm. No, it’s not. He didn’t say to keep it a secret or anything. He just asked me to help with his training a bit.”
“Training? If it’s just the usual morning workout, I’ve already been doing that with him… Ah.” Right. I’d decided not to face Theo for a while. So no morning workouts for about a week. And I hadn’t gone out to exercise this morning either… He must’ve asked Faye instead.
“That’s why I was worrying about it. I’ve never taught anyone before.”
“Hmm.” She could’ve just said no if she wasn’t sure. She really is a good kid.
“How about you just show him the training routine you usually do?”
“Mine? But what I do is knight training?”
“Just try it once. If it doesn’t seem right, you can stop. Is it some secret technique of your family or something?”
“Mmm. The only thing I can’t leak is our swordsmanship. Basic training methods aren’t really any different from other families anyway.”
Like I’d said before, Faye’s family was a very weak baronial house. Faye was just unusually talented; there weren’t any hidden family secrets or anything like that. Even their so-called secret sword art probably wasn’t all that special. Sadly.
Faye thought for a moment, then nodded in agreement.
“Luna, that’s a good idea! Let’s test it out right now!”
“Right now?” It was almost dinner time, wasn’t it? By the clock it was around 5 PM. Dinner was usually at 6, so starting any kind of activity felt like awkward timing. Or maybe not? If we trained before eating and then had dinner, would that be fine?
“We can’t go meet Theo at this hour. You remember what happened in class last time, right?”
“Last time? Oh, right.” She meant the incident right before midterms. When Theo was late for our morning meeting and I pulled a small, cute little prank on him.
“Theo got in so much trouble back then. If I go find him and he ends up suffering again, I’d feel bad.”
“Come on, we can’t just avoid doing what we need to do because we’re worried about what other people think. They’ll get used to it if it keeps happening, won’t they?”
We still had to build a harem in the future. If we paid attention to every little thing like that, we wouldn’t get anything done. Besides, Theo was the one who’d be suffering, right? Honestly, if he got a beautiful-girl harem, he could handle a little hardship.
“You think…? That makes sense too. There are couples in our class, and they don’t seem to suffer that much.”
“See? Told you.”
“Still, I want to do it with you today, Luna! You haven’t been hanging out with me lately!”
Ah. She had a point. Lately I’d handed over all the sparring partner duties to Theo. Because winning the spars raised her favorability. Favorability grinding was essential. Though looking at the recent win-loss record, I was starting to wonder if handing it over had been the right call. Theo’s win rate was around 75 percent—three wins and one loss out of four fights. But Faye’s favorability only went up when he won and dropped sharply when he lost, so a 75 percent win rate was barely enough to stay in place. Of course, since this was reality, it probably wasn’t applied that strictly.
“Alright. I’ll just change and meet you there.”
“Okay! I’ll wait in the underground gym!”
The moment I accepted Faye’s suggestion to train together, she beamed and dashed off to her room. She was probably going to change clothes too. As expected, Faye’s smiling face was the cutest. Thinking that the smile might have turned icy cold if she’d heard what happened on the night of the party made my heart sink. Thank goodness. It really was.
Feeling the insane performance of my Luck in small… no, important moments, I headed to my own room.
🏛 Type: Training Facility
⚔ Difficulty: Low (Casual Use)
📍 Note: Adjacent to the bathhouse. Limited equipment compared to the main training hall.
The female dormitory had a bathhouse built in the basement. Putting a gym next to it was no big deal. For an academy that valued skill and effort, it was only natural. Still, compared to the real training hall that took up an entire building, the facilities and equipment here were pretty lacking. Students who wanted to train seriously usually went there instead. Most people who used this underground gym were either just warming up, had awkward schedules like us, or had some other reason. Thanks to that, even though it was small, it didn’t feel cramped. Not many people around.
“Luna! Over here!” The moment I entered the gym, Faye waved enthusiastically. Didn’t girls usually take longer to change? She was faster than me.
“You got here quick, Faye. Did you wait long?”
“Nope. I just got here too. Hehe.”
It sounded exactly like the kind of conversation you’d see in a romance novel. Faye didn’t seem to think anything of it, though.
“We don’t have enough time to go through the whole process slowly right now, so I’ll skip the parts that are pretty standard everywhere else. That okay?”
“Yeah. Like running and stuff? Got it.”
“Alright then. This is the main training method used by the knights of our family. Ta-da!”
Faye hopped sideways and stepped back. That revealed the box that had been behind her. It was a fairly large box, about 50 centimeters on each side.
“What’s that? Did you bring workout equipment in there?”
“No! It’s just a heavy box!”
Curious, I opened it. With a creak, all I saw inside were cold, inorganic lumps of iron. The notable feature was that instead of one big weight, it was packed full of small scrap pieces.
“Like this… hnngh!” Faye lifted the entire box. Without magical reinforcement, it must have been heavy for her. Her arms and legs trembled as they struggled to support the weight. She gritted her teeth and walked from one end of the underground gym to the other. Her face turned bright red, but she somehow managed to go back and forth before setting the box down in its original spot.
Thud.
A heavy sound echoed from the floor. Good thing we were in the basement—if this had been upstairs, someone from the floor below probably would’ve come up to complain.
“…Hoo. That’s how you do the exercise! The key point is to make sure your back doesn’t bend!”
“Uh, yeah…” I knew this kind of exercise existed. But because it was a box, it somehow gave off the vibe of a delivery or manual labor job…
“Now it’s your turn, Luna!”
“…Okay.”
Whatever it looked like on the surface, it was a real workout. I remembered seeing something similar on a video site before. I lifted the box once like Faye had, then set it back down.
“It’s pretty light.”
The weight that was perfect for Faye felt light to me. I’d need to increase it. Since this was a gym, there were plenty of plates around. I wandered around for a bit, picking up plates.
Ah. There they are.
When I’d gathered about 20 kilograms, the gym suddenly got noisy. It was usually empty and everyone quietly did their own thing, so even a small increase in people stood out immediately. And the new arrivals made it even more obvious. It was the noble young ladies’ party—everyone except Faye. Why were they coming to the gym? Well, they were academy students too, so it wasn’t strange for them to train. In fact, they really should. But judging by their outfits, they hadn’t come here to exercise. The three of them walked straight toward Faye. Since I’d been off collecting plates separately, they apparently hadn’t noticed I was here yet.
“Hey girls! What’s up?” Faye looked puzzled by their sudden appearance but still greeted them warmly. The leader of the party—the count’s daughter—spoke to her.
“Faye. You’re free tomorrow, right?”
“Huh? Tomorrow…”
“We’re training together starting tomorrow. From morning onward. Got it?”
And just like that, she unilaterally announced the schedule. Wait, what the hell were these bitches doing?