Broken Wings (6)
“...”
Today was supposed to be a day with other plans.
A day to laugh and chatter with girls her own age, stroll into the greenhouse, and swap stories about the last Snowflower Festival over a warm cup of cocoa.
But Flora was walking along a path, fully dressed for an outing she had no intention of keeping.
It was the fourth day of Karsein's induction period.
Because she kept replaying the scene she'd secretly witnessed near the water station that day.
—So this is confiscated, then? I'll turn a blind eye to your cheating, so hand it over.
Recalling Bruce's voice, Flora stopped in her tracks.
“No matter how I look at it, that was something he got from Arina... no, something that was taken from him, wasn't it?”
So why didn't he say a word?
It was his own belongings being taken. Why didn't he get angry at all?
“I don't get it. Why? What Sir Theo told me doesn't...”
Flora sank back into confusion.
Then, when someone sauntered openly through the entrance of the training grounds, she hurriedly hid herself.
“Move it over there carefully, one piece at a time. If so much as one thing breaks, I'll break you instead!”
She peeked her head out again and saw Claire, fist raised in warning as she supervised the porters.
Right. Today was the day my second sister visits.
Tomorrow would presumably be her own turn.
She hadn't needed to come here tangled up in such complicated feelings. Tomorrow, she would be able to see it with her own eyes.
And yet... strangely, watching her second sister, Flora felt a tight, suffocating pressure squeeze at one side of her chest.
Why?
Every time she saw someone bring Karsein something, anger used to flare first.
Because she hated it. She used to manufacture things for Karsein to suffer through, time after time.
And every time he ended up the loser, she'd felt a delicious rush of satisfaction.
But now, instead of worrying about things being taken from her, unease and suffocation came creeping in.
It wasn't that she was worried about her little sister trying to give Karsein something.
It didn't stem from the anxiety of having her family stolen away.
It was a feeling so hard to describe, somehow.
She couldn't explain it in detail.
Only one thing was certain: watching that scene made a question surface inside her.
Why. Why on earth?
Theo had told her directly that her own actions hadn't been wrong—so why did she feel this way?
Once again, she was back at square one.
She didn't know. She had no idea what this emotion was.
Something felt wrong, and she felt as if she herself had done something wrong.
Unable to crush the unstable emotion that insisted she go find Karsein again today, Flora slipped past, avoiding her second sister's eyes, and made her way around to the training grounds.
And so the morning of the fifth day dawned.
Having finished every last preparation, Claire stood at the training grounds with her arms crossed, scrutinizing the knights on their morning run with particular care.
“Ugh—wh-what the—?!”
“Lady Claire...? Why are you casting Grease Magic on my fellow trainee...”
“You little weasel, don't you dare play innocent. You think I didn't see it? You rammed into Karsein on purpose just now!”
She'd caught one.
Her threat to bury him alive had not been a joke.
“How dare you lay a hand on my brother. Hey. Get up.”
“Wh-what—! Lady Claire!”
Seizing the knight by the collar, Claire looked fully prepared to drag the man straight out of his unit and have him expelled on the spot.
“Probationary Knight Theo Ramstair, at your service. Might I be permitted a word with you, Lady Claire?”
At that, a seemingly respectable figure slithered out of the crowd.
“What is it.”
“When running drills are held within the training grounds, incidents like this happen with regularity. Collisions during overtaking are quite frequent, you see.”
“Ha. And so? Are you seriously going to stand there and tell me this bastard didn't ram Karsein on purpose?”
Flinch.
Theo's body trembled for an instant under Claire's forceful presence.
“Listen. Yesterday, my sister told me all about it—how Karsein apparently committed some grave insubordination.”
“Y-yes... that was...”
“I know. It was nitpicking, a trumped-up charge. But what this bastard did just now—ramming Karsein on purpose—that's actual insubordination, isn't it? A mere knight's whelp deliberately charging into the young lord of a ducal house?”
Blindsided by the sudden predicament, Theo swallowed hard.
“My lady. Within the training grounds, the rules of the training grounds take precedence, and Lord Karsein is currently present here as a trainee.”
“So?”
“What you witnessed is a small initiation rite for the newcomers. It isn't violence—simply a customary practice to help them adjust during their induction period.”
Once Claire seemed to be listening in earnest, persuasive-sounding lies began pouring smoothly out of Theo's mouth.
“Even setting that aside, the young lord, being a trainee, naturally has less stamina than we do, so falling behind is unavoidable. He ends up blocking the path of the other knights as they pass. And yet if we were to exclude him entirely, that would hardly be fair either, would it?”
“Hmm. Is that so?”
Claire released the collar of the knight she'd been holding.
Sweeping her hair back over her shoulder, her gaze shifted into something intriguingly dangerous, and she turned her pressure onto a new target: Theo himself.
“Then what you're telling me is to stand by and watch Karsein keep getting knocked around like that. Because of some pathetic little 'initiation rite.' Is that it?”
“What?! N-no, my lady!”
“That's exactly what you're saying. By the rules of the training grounds, Karsein is a trainee, and since he's so slow, getting knocked down while being overtaken is simply how things should be. That's your argument, isn't it? Am I wrong?”
Trying to claim legitimacy by invoking the training grounds' own jurisdiction, Theo found Claire's icy glare boring into him, brimming with a killing intent like frost-blue light.
Thoroughly cowed, Theo had no choice but to yield ground.
“That man is my own junior. So... I will personally warn him myself. Please accept that in lieu of punishment, and let this pass. I beg you, my lady.”
Only then did Theo lower his tail and bow his head.
Claire studied him for a long, silent moment before clicking her tongue.
But a mere warning wasn't nearly enough.
“Fine, then. Transfer that bastard to a different unit. Today.”
“Y-yes?”
“You said it happened during overtaking. Well, overtaking's going to happen again and again, won't it? So the obvious solution is to transfer him comfortably off to a neighboring unit.”
“My lady, transferring someone to another unit isn't such a simple matter...”
“It's his fault for doing something so easily misunderstood, isn't it? Or, if you prefer, I couldn't care less if you expel him from our knight order altogether. There's a surplus of knights begging for a position. Besides, wretched little customs like that ought to be rooted out one by one, shouldn't they? Don't you agree?”
Out of sight entirely, if at all possible.
Nothing short of banishing the man to another unit like an exile would satisfy Claire.
“Shall we have him sent to the 2nd Unit for the three days remaining of the young lord's induction period?”
“Yeah. Do that.”
Theo squeezed his eyes shut as he looked at the subordinate he'd been so fond of—but short of obediently shipping him off to another unit, there was no other way.
Little vermin. You should have been behaving like this from the start.
Thanks to that, the morning run passed very peacefully.
No—peaceful didn't cover it. It was dead silent.
With the second daughter of House Bagrand glaring daggers at the whole field, no one dared so much as step forward.
When the morning run ended.
Once again today, Karsein was sprawled on the ground, gasping for breath.
Claire walked over to her brother and crouched down beside him.
“You run like this every day?”
“Yeah.”
“So every single day, those bastards pick a fight with you like that?”
At that, Karsein let out a long sigh and took a swig of water.
“Didn't Arina tell you? If you stick your nose in, I just get harassed in some other way instead.”
“So I didn't stick my nose in, did I?”
“What?”
“I heard these knight bastards cling to all sorts of wretched customs. I'm simply tearing those customs out by the roots. I never once took your side.”
Claire feigned perfect innocence.
Karsein gave a hollow laugh at the sheer audacity of it—but it was, in fact, true.
She had only stepped in to check the knights after hearing about their wretched customs; she hadn't granted Karsein a single special privilege.
Even if someone tried to make an issue of it, cheating aside, all she'd have to say was that the head of the ducal house had come to put a stop to the corrupt practices of the knights who served her.
“And—put these on already. How can you be so hopelessly inflexible?”
“What now?”
“When a member of the family joins a knight order, buying them a training uniform is simply the culture of the empire.”
“Didn't Arina already tell you—”
“These were legitimately designed at my boutique, so there's no problem whatsoever?”
Karsein decided nothing would get through to her and spoke with blunt directness instead.
“That pointless meddling of yours is a hindrance to me. So I'm telling you—stop doing this kind of thing entirely.”
It was, perhaps, a rather blunt thing to say.
He could have left it at telling her that such behavior was unnecessary, as it had been with Arina. But the second sister he knew—like Claire—was not one to listen after a single warning.
So he made it absolute: you are a hindrance.
You were the one getting in the way.
That was how bluntly he needed to answer.
Though, of course, part of it was because someone was watching.
“...”
Claire's hand rose slowly into the air.
Their difference in height wasn't great, so he could see the whole arc of it coming—but he didn't dodge.
He'd struck a sore nerve, so a blow was to be expected.
And yet.
Contrary to expectation, no heat welled up in his cheek the way it had before.
“This brat is calling his sister's gift 'pointless meddling.' If anyone else has something to say about it, they can come say it to my face themselves. Not that it'll matter—I already spoke to the vice-captain, so it'll get cut off at that level anyway.”
With that waspish remark, all Claire did was give his forehead a light little tap.
What the—what's with her?
He had deliberately provoked her temper, bracing himself to take a hit.
Her fiery temperament was barely different from the second sister he remembered, so with this approach, even if his own feelings took a bruise, he could be certain of sending the damage straight back.
That was why he'd needled her on purpose.
But far from striking him, Claire didn't even put a single harsh word in her mouth.
“If I'm such a hindrance, I'll go. But... the place Arina hit you—does it still hurt?”
“...That was ages ago. You think it'd still hurt by now?”
“Well, back then, unlike me, Arina packed mana into her strikes when she hit you. She was so furious she didn't bother controlling her strength at all.”
When he showed no reaction at all, as if he'd never heard of such a thing, Claire scratched her cheek.
“Th-that is, when I hit you, I at least held back. No matter how angry I got, I knew that putting mana into it would have really hurt.”
“...”
“Wha—hey, what's with that look? You don't believe me, do you?!”
Would you believe you, if you were me?
He wanted to say it more than anything, but he swallowed the words and let it go.
Whereupon Claire, looking dissatisfied, grabbed his cheek and stretched it out long.
“What do you think you're doing.”
“Ugh, enough! You don't need to know anything about that anyway! Just wear the clothes I gave you properly.”
Since there was still training to come, Claire declared she'd be watching with her own two eyes to see whether he put them on or not.
And then, with a pouty expression, she retreated back to her original spot.
“...What on earth was that?”
She had clearly come to drive him out somehow... He had never expected her to back off so quietly, on her own two feet.
Staring blankly at the training uniform—made, even at a glance, from expensive material—he found he couldn't shake his dazed feeling for a long while.
[ Claire Bagrand ]
[ Affinity : 32% ]
By the time he looked up, Claire's affinity had crossed the thirty percent mark.
Good. That's not the problem, though.
[ Flora Bagrand ]
[ Affinity : 7% ]
The one that truly mattered was this.
Watching the little imp secretly spying on him from afar, he felt the preparations were complete.
[ 1. Yes. ]
[ 2. No. ]
I placed the item in my pouch without hesitation.
Then, I tossed it carelessly somewhere it would be easy to find.
This restless, queasy feeling was without a doubt Karsein's doing.
Having slipped unnoticed down the back path to the training grounds, Flora poked only her head out and fixed her gaze on Karsein running among the knights.
But... had she been mistaken?
Nothing in particular stirred in her. Even watching Karsein directly, that suffocating feeling didn't fade in the slightest.
However.
—Thud!
Huh...?
The moment she saw a knight's arm jab into Karsein's side right before her eyes, that suffocating feeling deepened.
After that came her second sister toppling a knight with magic, then the exchange of words with Theo. The knight who had struck Karsein's side narrowly escaped expulsion and was merely booted out of his unit...
And Karsein pushed Claire's kindness away, openly and to her face.
The pressure in her chest tightened until it felt ready to burst.
Unable to bear the suffocation any longer, Flora clutched at her chest and drew her peeking head back in.
“Hah, hah...”
Hands pressed against her aching chest, Flora sank down into a crouch.
And in that moment, she felt a strange sense of déjà vu.
It was no different from the ducal estate.
Different place, but every single cause and effect was identical.
Swap the maids for knights.
Swap the abuse for petty provocations and harassment, and it was exactly the same as at the estate.
To Flora, who had tormented Karsein time and time again, the situation felt hardly different at all.
Don't tell me... even here...?
No. No! It's not that!!
Flora shook her head hard, rejecting the very thought.
I—I never ordered anything like this. That was the ducal estate. Whatever happens here isn't my fault!
The instant she turned away like that.
—Rrrrip. Rrrip!
The sound of something being torn came from nearby.
Judging by the sound, it had to be one of the pouches the knights carried.
But why would that sound be coming from around here?
“Whew. Fucking hell. Why should I have to deal with this crap because of one lowborn bastard.”
Before long, the tearing sounds stopped, a muttering voice drifted over—and then footsteps trudged away toward the back of the training grounds.
Holding her breath, Flora crept forward on tiptoe—and there.
“...”
A pouch, torn apart without mercy, lay exposed in plain view.
She didn't even need to check whose it was.
Because inside that pouch, untouched and exactly as they'd been, sat the two salves she herself had given him just days ago.
The discomfort lodged in one side of Flora's chest swelled up like a balloon.
—Ding!