Not Easy
Lumiang stood by the window of Ariel's guest parlor, gazing out into the night. She had introduced herself simply as an academy classmate.
She had already removed her hood for identification. Her snow-mountain white hair and sea-blue eyes were fully exposed.
In a few days she would unmask herself at the formal presentation anyway, and once the marriage tournament ended she would take the victor's hand, step out into the city, and receive the grand celebration of the northern people — not as the red-haired Erincia Bellock, but as the white-haired Lumiang Winterfell, standing openly before the world.
There was no need to refuse the guards' search, no reason to hide a thing. For now, after all, she was still only Erincia Bellock — the humble daughter of a minor baronial house from some backwater fief.
…The aide has delivered the message properly, hasn't he?
Tomorrow would be the final evaluation match before the formal presentation. Before that, she had deployed her most carefully prepared measures of encouragement and persuasion to secure Elden's will to compete.
Gelwood had carried the encouragement to Elden; she herself had brought the persuasion to Ariel. First the irresistible sweet temptation of encouragement, then the persuasive wind to fan its flames.
And the encouragement she had chosen as her trump card was no longer the subtle, unspoken favoritism she had shown until now.
I fell in love at first sight.
It had been unmistakable preference — a confession made as a woman. The fury that had driven her into a verbal clash over the news of his withdrawal, the rejection she had declared at the end of it, the way she had given not a glance to the other candidates — all of it, she had said, was because of love.
Of course it had been a false confession, one that never lived in her heart. Still — she had poured that powerful force, strong enough to mix even water and oil, into the one who had withdrawn, and she had even passed along intelligence about tomorrow's evaluation. Refusing would not be easy.
She had placed directly into his hands a golden chance to revive a declining house, the chance to become one of the great grand-ducal family and seize all-powerful authority. Who would willingly let that go?
She had encouraged the man who claimed to leave for lack of qualification with her full support and love. His resolve to withdraw was surely wavering by now — unless, of course, he had fallen deeply in love with Lady Ariel Elrond.
Unless he had been captivated by that formidable power said to cloud even rational judgment, crush even intellectual consideration, and erase the very distinction of high birth and low.
It was to confirm that possibility — to secure the credibility of her newly formed hypothesis — that Lumiang had come.
If, just if, he truly had been conducting a secret affair with Ariel, that alone would be enough to begin the reformation and guidance of the villain called Elden. Violating the rules of the marriage tournament was to slight the grand-ducal house, no different from deceiving the entire northern territory.
If an affair with Ariel was not the reason for his withdrawal, then her trump card would land as an effective blow. If it was the reason, she could use it as leverage to force him back into the competition. Receiving the penalty for breaking the sacred rules of the marriage tournament would cost far more than simply reflecting on past mistakes and repenting.
Yes.
Love.
If only she could confirm the credibility of this hypothesis, everything that had gone awry would return to its proper state.
I've never experienced it myself, but they say people in love come to resemble each other. That must be why a scoundrel like Elden has taken to reading books — the very things he once despised so thoroughly. The effort to become like the one you love. The effort to win their favor. If it isn't that, there's no reason a man who never read a day in his life, who looked down on readers as pathetic, would start copying that pathetic habit himself.
No. It has to be love. Only then can I solve this nightmare of a problem — the hardest one yet.
Thinking so, Lumiang waited for Ariel. After a brief wait, a voice reached her ears.
"Elden?"
The voice of Lady Ariel Elrond, daughter of the count, lent considerable weight to the leading hypothesis for solving this nightmare problem — love.
"Hoho. It's been a while, hasn't it, Lady Ariel?"
With a bright smile, the humble baron's daughter from a remote fief — Erincia Bellock — offered her greeting.
"I never thought we'd meet again like this. It's good to see you, Erincia."
"Hoho. I never expected to see you again either. Have you been well?"
"I've been fine. You?"
"I've been well myself."
A few formal greetings passed back and forth. That was the end of it. There was only so much one could say when sitting across from someone you had never even properly faced before, someone you had never in a million years expected to reunite with.
She knew too little to ask after recent news. They were far too awkward a pair for any warm conversation. After a handful of pleasantries, the extreme silence that claimed the room was only natural.
Fortunately, Ariel managed to dredge up a single question.
"But what happened to your hair? I'm pretty sure it used to be red."
"Ah — I actually changed the color with mana dye. A lot of people think northerners are… barbaric, you know?"
"That's true enough. So the North is your hometown, then? The white suits you better, though. You're so pretty, Erincia."
"Hoho. Lady Ariel is sooo lovely herself."
More formal exchanges. The compliments, at least, were genuine. Whether it was Lumiang with her white hair and blue eyes or Ariel with her golden ringlets and reddish-brown ones, both were beautiful enough that ranking them would have been nearly impossible.
Still, praise alone could not clear the awkward air that kept flooding the room. Rather than waste precious time on someone she barely knew and had never so much as socialized with, Ariel decided she would rather spend it on a nourishing bout of late-night reading — and so she cut to the point.
"…So what brings you here?"
Lumiang had no desire to drag things out either. She had come solely to establish the credibility of her newly formed hypothesis.
Love.
She simply wanted to know whether that futile, illusory emotion was the thing unraveling her plans. If it was, she would have to draft a new strategy to match.
There was no unsolvable problem — and Lumiang was the kind of relentless researcher who would chase a solution to the ends of the continent if she had to. With that same tenacity, she had never yet met a problem she could not prove or solve.
She took a sip of winter-flower tea, a specialty of the North, and began.
"Actually, I've come with a message for you."
"A message?"
"Yes. I was told to bring back an answer."
"From… whom…?"
The late hour. A night thick with darkness on every side. A chill that wound itself around the body. A nighttime visitor who had cut through that darkness and cold. The message from "someone" that this visitor meant to deliver.
Everything carried a vague sense of foreboding, and Ariel waited for the answer in a slightly cowed hush. Then, when the subject of that message was named, her reddish-brown eyes flew wide.
"From Her Grace the Third Northern Grand Duchess."
"……!"
Her mouth fell open in shock. An academy classmate she had never imagined reuniting with in this strange and distant land — and from that classmate's lips, a name she had never once imagined hearing.
"…Th-the Third Northern Grand Duchess?"
Ears pricking at the name, eyes widening at the lips that had spoken it, mouth frozen open when it should have formed a reply — all of it was the natural reaction.
And a moment later—
"That's— amazing—!"
Sweeping every trace of foreboding away in an instant and lighting up the darkness with pure delight was the natural reaction of a devoted reader who had once cried her eyes out over The Lady of the Secret Snowfield, a novel starring the veiled Third Northern Grand Duchess.
"…Pardon?"
"Th-then you — you work under Her Grace the Third Northern Grand Duchess?!"
Ariel shot to her feet, planting both hands on the table and leaning in close, eyes sparkling like starlight. Lumiang had no choice but to draw her upper body back in response.
"Yes… in a manner of speaking…?"
"Then you must know all about Her Grace?!"
"Well… I suppose you could say that."
Lumiang had spent her entire life with books at her side, but those books had always been research texts and works of knowledge. She had no way of knowing that a novel modeled on herself even existed. Moreover, that novel was not the kind of romance her maid Marien enjoyed — it was pure literature, the story of a heroine who uncovered secrets and set out on an adventure to find the meaning of her own existence.
So of course the pure researcher Lumiang could not understand the glittering eyes of the pure-literature bookworm Ariel Elrond — and of course Ariel, who had been so moved by The Lady of the Secret Snowfield that she had read it cover to cover five times, unleashed a barrage of questions.
"What kind of person is Her Grace?"
"…?"
"Is she really veiled because of some kind of curse?"
"…"
"Kyaa— I want to meet her so badly—!"
"…"
"The rumors say the Grand Duke hides her because her beauty surpasses even a princess's! Is that true?"
"No…"
"In the book she has overwhelming martial skill that could fell even a battle-hardened veteran — is that true?"
"Please, if you would just…"
"Kyaa— do you have to leave right away? Or can you tell me more about Her Grace?"
"…"
After the purple knightess, the bookworm had now heard the name of yet another novel's protagonist. It took a great deal of time for that excitement to settle.
"Heh… s-sorry. I just read a novel starring the Third Northern Grand Duchess and it moved me so, so much."
"……Pardon? There's… a novel like that?"
"Yep!"
Reeling from the news of a completely fabricated autobiography, Lumiang also needed a great deal of time to gather her wits.