Broken Wings (1)
[ Time Limit : 30 minutes ]
A timer had snapped to life in an instant.
The moment I saw it, I knew. The time had come.
"It's a bit earlier than expected... though honestly, it wouldn't have been strange at any point."
At the training grounds, Karsein was met with hostile stares as a matter of course. That was the baseline. After all, there was the matter of what the original owner of this body had done in the past.
Taking their feelings into account, one could easily mistake the appearance of this system message for a perfectly natural turn of events.
But on closer reflection, a question surfaces right away.
Why hadn't this message appeared from the very beginning?
If they truly despised Karsein, it should have triggered the moment he stepped onto the training grounds.
At that time, Mark's affinity had even been showing gray slashes, sitting at -25%. Other knights were worse if anything, certainly no better.
I remembered noticing this discrepancy when I first played the game, and it drew a dry laugh out of me now.
"A dead flag spawns whenever you cross paths with him — that's what the message meant."
One could argue the warning was pointless, since they'd hate him regardless of what he did. But wasn't it odd?
Strange, too, that a zone whose danger status had been lifted would suddenly regain one.
Reality was no different.
It wasn't a perfect replica of the game, but this part remained exactly the same.
Yes. All of this was a hint.
A hint pointing to the real threat within the episode — the one that had yet to make its appearance.
If I paid close attention to it and recalled how I'd acted today, the answer would reveal itself.
"The one holding a grudge is Bruce, obviously. And with his superior getting chewed out alongside him, his blood must be boiling by now."
During today's hazing session, when the bastard had tried to snatch the towel Arina had given me, I'd dredged up his dirty past and put him flat on his back.
After that, he'd been disciplined for laying hands on Arina's belongings, and thanks to my testimony, his reputation among the other apprentice knights had plummeted into the gutter.
Did I really need to explain further?
By now, that bastard was surely consumed with nothing but thoughts of revenge against me.
Overlooking this was a one-way ticket straight to a bad ending.
I counted off on my fingers, slowly, the precautions to take while that particular person's anger was smoldering.
"Laundry ends here. Avoid the dinner window between five-thirty and six-thirty. And beyond that, I can't allow myself to be caught alone with him..."
The plan was taking shape, piece by piece.
Since I already had them figured out, I would act so as to avoid trouble altogether whenever possible.
If there was one problem, it was that the timing had come a little early.
The warning normally appeared on the night of the fifth day — since it had surfaced now, there was one thing I needed to do.
"...Then I'd better go see Radiel now."
Ordinarily I would have waited until the night of the fifth day, but with the warning arriving this early, I couldn't rule out the possibility that the news had already reached Radiel's ears.
This sub-episode had to be cleared now.
In a main episode, a single small action could drastically alter events, backdrops, environments — everything. Within that process, the purpose of a sub-episode could be understood as a repository of information, or a breakthrough point, for clearing the main episode.
But this much had to be remembered.
In this game, even sub-episodes could not be undertaken unless specific conditions were met, and falling short didn't just fail to help — it could turn into poison.
They offered assistance: hints toward the correct choices, warnings of danger ahead. But if the conditions weren't satisfied, they would mercilessly impose penalties, or in some cases punish the player just as a main episode would.
The Mark and Radiel episode I'd received was exactly that kind.
It could only be undertaken after raising Mark's affinity out of the negatives, and the moment I began it, his affinity had been frozen in place.
The notification had said no penalty would be applied on failure...
In reality, however, a Dead Trigger would activate. Because of Radiel, left to waste away on her own.
It's a laughable design. Not even a main episode — failing to clear a mere sub-episode changes the main episode's content, and it comes back around as a choice packed with a dead flag.
But what could I do? The developer bastard had built it that way.
I had no choice but to move — to somehow carry out that episode.
"Ahh, well, I've eaten my fill. Guess I'll take a quick stroll through the market district."
"You dog. Why not just admit you've got a date to get to?"
"Wh-what the hell are you talking about, you bastard?"
"Drop the act. Everyone knows you're seeing one of the duchy's maids."
"Wha— huh?!"
The toothpick the knight had been picking at his teeth suddenly dropped from his mouth in a clatter.
Watching him, the comrade beside him snickered.
And then.
I approached them and dropped a single remark.
"If it's that maid of yours, you'd be better off visiting her a little later."
"What's that supposed to— who even are... hm?"
"Young master?"
"Hey."
The knight who'd said young master took an elbow to the ribs from his comrade.
"Come on, training's over for the day — it's fine, isn't it?"
"Doesn't matter. Someone might overhear."
Right. Not young master here.
Here, I was Karsein the trainee.
"By the way, Trainee Karsein. What was that about? Visit her a little later, you said?"
I answered with an easy grin.
"She's rushing around trying to get ready, that girl."
"Rushing to get ready? What do you mean?"
"She's a maid of the duchy, isn't she? She always sets your meeting time for when her work wraps up, so she's always scrambling. She complains to me that when you show up too early, she barely has any time to make herself presentable."
"Oh... that does check out, actually. She always seemed sweaty and out of breath whenever she came to see me."
"Ahh, so if he goes a little later, she'll have time to get ready properly?"
"That's right."
I'd seen and heard it with my own eyes and ears, so I was certain.
It had been that way in the game, too — and she was a maid who'd received a reward from me in person.
"You bastard. You were moving so hastily that you threw the girl into a frenzy, huh?"
"Oh, come on. How was I supposed to know that?"
"You should've paid attention. Hm? If you've got feelings for her and can't even notice that much, what exactly are you playing at?"
"...Mocking me for having a bit of dating experience, are we."
The two knights traded a few more jabs, and by the time their gazes swung back to me—
The size of the affinity box that had been showing gray slashes had shrunk a little.
"Ahem. Thanks... no — thank you. Young master. Though I have to wonder why you'd tell me something like this..."
"Hey."
"Oh, come on, young master is the proper way to address him. Common sense says a trainee's still someone we're meant to learn from — don't you think it's a bit much to disrespect him?"
"...Well, fair enough. I suppose I think so too."
The knight who'd been giddy at the thought of meeting the maid expressed his gratitude.
Calling me young master and even using honorifics — both of their wariness toward me had loosened somewhat. Which meant now was the moment to gather information.
"Who's in the dining hall right now? I was thinking of grabbing a meal myself."
"Right now? Only a few."
Names of knights started coming out — names unfamiliar to me, though presumably second nature to them.
Still, I managed to glean one useful piece of information: Bruce was not among them.
Then, all of a sudden, the two of them fixed me with an oddly pitying stare.
"Young master. Back when I was a trainee, it was eating alone every meal for me too — this guy excepted. Stay strong."
"...What?"
"Set number two is actually good today, you know? Even without a classmate to eat with, a good meal helps a little."
What kind of nonsense was this?
These bastards thought I was pitiable — a trainee from a cursed class, without a single peer to call a comrade.
-Tsk.
"Good luck out there!"
No.
It's nothing like that, you idiots.
The dining hall was the place that could reveal Radiel's whereabouts — the one that suddenly vanished the moment the sub-episode was set in motion.
The knights' names, written out in sequence on a board-sized sheet of paper, caught my eye.
One of those names sat beside an empty space.
So she hasn't come to the dining hall yet.
Captain or not, she was still a knight like any other.
What did it mean that someone who trained every single day had yet to take a single meal?
The answer came to me easily enough.
I turned on my heel at once and went searching for Radiel.
Thwack! Thwack!
The harsh crack of wooden sword striking wooden dummy echoed through the empty, hollow space.
"Kgh...!"
The woman swinging the sword bit down hard on her lip.
The sound her blade had made was not the clean ring of a true strike, but the dull thud of a glancing blow.
One arm refused to obey, and the strength fell short.
The balance refused to settle, and no proper strike could be carved into the dummy.
Her body remembered.
This is wrong.
Radiel soon let the sword slip from her grasp and hurled her curse — at her own arm, the one that had refused to obey her properly since that day.
"If this goes on... if this goes on, then the young master...!"
The poor young master, branded with false accusations, had surrendered to despair.
Since that day, he had never returned to the training grounds. He had never come to see her.
Not a single word had been sent her way.
After the silence began, all she heard, through whispers here and there, was that he had shut himself away in his room.
Becoming the troublemaker of the training grounds.
Becoming a stain and a disgrace upon House Bagrand.
Shouldering every sin alone, and becoming the enemy of every knight at the training grounds.
And yet somehow, the ban had been lifted — and hadn't he come back?
Even though this place must have been seared into him as the worst of all places, hadn't he returned here all the same?
It was the last chance.
She knew she couldn't prove his innocence. But at the very least, she had to drag the true culprits before him and deliver judgment upon them.
And yet...
Not with this arm.
With this ruined body, she couldn't even pass judgment on the true criminals.
"Why? Why won't you just obey me! All it did was get cut. It wasn't even severed!"
Collapsed on the ground, Radiel thumped her own arm again and again with her other hand, resenting it, and resenting it once more. Why would you rob me even of my vengeance for the young master?
And right at that moment.
A single shadow fell over her slumped figure.
Radiel hurriedly wiped her tears.
"What is it, Mark? You said you'd be back late."
She did her best to erase every trace of having cried.
She had assumed the shadow was naturally Mark — the Mark who had refused to believe her, no matter how she insisted the young master was innocent. The Mark she couldn't help but resent.
He would no doubt lecture her, as always.
Would scold her for swinging a wooden sword on an empty stomach yet again, in a body that wouldn't even listen to her properly.
Would tell her it was time to stop. Would sigh and sigh, urging her to admit he'd been right all along and set down the captaincy, resigned to the inevitable.
But alas, the person standing before her was not Mark.
"Sorry to disappoint you, if you were waiting for Mark."
"...!"
For an instant, she doubted her own ears.
Whose voice was that just now?
This voice... don't tell me.
She had thought it impossible.
She'd heard he had come to the 1st Knight Order's training grounds since that day — but surely not to lay eyes on her.
Because of her, he'd been saddled with an even heavier false accusation. Naturally so.
But when she lifted her head.
When she saw how brightly that shadow fell through the lights above, and realized that the face glimpsed between them overlapped with the boy of the past—
Only then did Radiel finally understand.
"Young... master...?"
That the person standing before her was Karsein — the very one who must resent her more than anyone.