Stolen Glances
Sunlight filtered down through the leaves across the academy garden.
Linea Judith hid behind a wall, stealing glances at a bench in the distance.
Ian sat there quietly, eyes closed.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Her heart was racing—whether from the memories of him that had just surged up again, or for some other reason entirely, she couldn't tell.
Perhaps it was simply the fact that she had been of help to him. Maybe that alone was enough to make her happy.
The memories keep coming back.
Ever since she had met Ian face to face.
Whenever she shared the same space with him, or watched over him, memories she had forgotten—or had been forced to forget—would bloom to the surface.
Some memories were warm as sunlight; others were sharp as blades.
And among them, though not many, were fragments that clearly came from another timeline—one different from the life she had lived until now.
Facing those memories made her wonder.
How many timelines had she shared with Ian? How many experiences had they been through together?
And he… had he truly, cleanly forgotten every last one of those memories?
…Probably.
Linea bit her lip.
The way Ian treated her went beyond indifference—it was closer to not knowing her at all.
The casual ease of someone dealing with a nameless passerby he'd happened to meet on the street.
An empty gaze that held no special emotion, not even the slightest curiosity.
Perhaps he had simply grown tired of her.
In the endlessly repeating time, she—the same face, the same voice, the same actions over and over—might no longer stir any new feeling in him.
Or perhaps, exhausted by the countless pains and losses and betrayals he had suffered because of her, he had decided it was better not to know her at all, and had sealed his heart shut tight.
If that's the case, I'd rather he had forgotten.
Rather than entertain such painful possibilities, Linea desperately wished that he had truly forgotten her completely.
She had to. Only then could she stay by his side like a shadow, offering even the smallest help, the way she was now. Without wounding him any further—quietly, steadfastly paying back the debt of time until that distant someday when he might need her again.
Linea hid herself a little deeper behind the wall and stole another glance at Ian on the bench.
He sat utterly still, as if lost in deep thought.
He had charged head-on through the massive storm of the expulsion committee, and through the unexpected ally that was Roella Amelia, he had even moved the academy newspaper to swing campus opinion in his favor. No doubt he was meticulously planning his next move, his next battle.
The figure he cut was unmistakably the Ian she had seen countless times in her memories. With cold strategic brilliance, sometimes with consideration, sometimes with tremendous leadership, Ian had led heroes.
"........"
Linea covered her face with her hands.
Her cheeks had suddenly flushed hot for no reason, burning far too much.
She didn't know why she'd been like this lately.
But Linea made a vow.
Whatever deep worry occupied Ian's mind, she would help him as much as he had once helped her.
I sat on the bench, deep in serious contemplation.
What am I actually going to eat for dinner tonight?
The emergency rations I'd brought from Seorigol amounted to nothing more than a few dried potatoes and some hard biscuit crumbs.
Eating something that bland after all the hard work I'd put in lately just didn't feel right. I wanted to give myself a little reward.
But my wallet couldn't handle anything too expensive. And somehow the people of Seorigol kept coming to mind.
"Right. Potatoes it is. Potatoes."
Who was I to be thinking about a feast?
While I was engaged in this profound meditation on the meaning of life and the purpose of existence, a flash of pink caught my eye in the distance.
That direction was where the academy buildings clustered, so it couldn't be a flower.
Linea Judith?
Narrowing my eyes, I spotted Linea walking with a rather peculiar gait.
"...Hmm."
Come to think of it, I'd pushed Linea out of my mind for a while.
She was, quite literally, a pie in the sky.
Honestly, as I was now, there was a high chance I was nothing more than a problem bastard son stuck in a corner of the academy—someone who couldn't even catch her eye. If anything, with all the nasty rumors about me circulating through the academy, her opinion of me might already have hit rock bottom.
Of course, my reputation had reversed somewhat starting with the expulsion committee, but to her—a genius of the Blue Magic Tower and a noble young lady of the Judith family—that would be nothing more than trivial gossip that barely registered.
Even if, by some stroke of heaven-sent luck, I somehow managed to persuade and coax her into joining Seorigol as a hero, would that even benefit Seorigol? Her very presence could draw larger, more dangerous enemies, and more importantly, Seorigol as it stood had neither the economic nor military capacity to properly accommodate a presence as massive as hers.
For any number of practical reasons, I had already concluded that maintaining a suitable distance from her was the wise course.
But still…
I should at least thank her properly. That's the decent thing to do.
Her appearance at the expulsion committee had been nothing short of a divine move. If she hadn't burst onto the scene like a savior and delivered that clear, logical defense of me, I never would have slipped Lionel's clever trap so effectively.
Bolstered by her support, my somewhat absurd counterattack had gained credibility and flipped the committee's atmosphere in an instant—that much was certain, and it had mattered enormously.
I stood up and caught up to Linea.
"Lady Linea?"
When I called her name gently, she startled like a spy whose secret mission had just been blown, shrinking into herself. Then she turned to me with an awkward smile.
"Ah, Ian? Ah—I mean, Lord Ian!"
Gone was her usual cool, intellectual demeanor. She stammered a bow at me, her face a portrait of pure fluster.
Why was her reaction this exaggerated? I tilted my head inwardly and spoke with the most polite, sincere expression I could manage.
"I received tremendous help from you at the expulsion committee. I never imagined you would actually step in for me. Thank you, truly."
Had my thanks come out wrong somehow?
Linea grew even more flustered, her face flushing apple-red.
Then, head bowed deep, she stammered out a reply in a voice that sounded almost on the verge of tears.
"N-No! I-I simply… did what I ought to have done… Y-You, Mr. Ian… are truly… truly amazing… W-Well then, I should be going! Y-Yes, goodbye!"
Leaving behind that incoherent string of words, she fled like a herbivore pursued by a predator, vanishing toward the far side of the garden.
I stared blankly in the direction she'd disappeared for a moment, then nodded with a bitter smile.
…Right. I guess that's about the level my image is at. She probably just helped me once out of a sense of justice or pity, because I looked pathetic.
It wasn't that she'd even rejected my greeting. This was just… a little incident.
That's how the world works.
Take it easy. Take it easy. Nothing happened. Rationalizing it to myself, I was about to head back toward the bench when—
Thud.
Absurdly, my foot caught on the tiniest gap in an otherwise perfectly flat paving stone, and I pitched forward.
If I'd been a game character I would have pulled off some dodge roll, but real-world me had no choice but to obey the laws of gravity.
"…Ugh!"
I threw my arms out reflexively as I fell and caught myself on the ground, but the impact was considerable. And yet something was strange. The sensation in my palms and knees was distinctly different from usual. It felt as though something extremely thin yet extraordinarily hard had wrapped around my skin for an instant—and then vanished. That hardness melted away like snow in a heartbeat.
"…What was that just now?"
I got up, brushing the dirt from my clothes, and muttered.
A strong sense of déjà vu hit me. My mental state, which had begun showing an unnatural immunity to the mental contamination of Aberrations.
And the feeling that some new ability had appeared the moment a major survival-critical event—expulsion from the academy—had been resolved.
Maybe the game system is applying itself to this real world in some form, even if I can't see a status window?
If so, that strange sensation I'd felt for the briefest moment when I fell…
"[Tumble!] Or is it [Hardening]?"
In the game of Tales of Legend, [Tumble!] was a skill that rounded and hardened your body on cast, letting you roll quickly to effectively shed enemy attacks. The appearance might look somewhat ridiculous and undignified, but its survivability and mobility were unmatched—earning it the reputation among players as the "King of Survival" skill. And [Hardening] was…
"The ability to harden a specific body part—or the entire body—to steel-like hardness at will."
An unfortunate skill that never received particularly high marks among players. But I knew how to use this [Hardening].
"Whatever it is, it's not bad. No—it's actually good."
It wasn't just a matter of traits.
If the game system was truly applying itself to this reality in some way…
"This is a chance for the fief to change in a big way."
Once the most basic conditions were met—reaching a population of one hundred, securing a stable food supply, and providing minimal housing—Seorigol could promote from a one-star fief to a two-star fief.
From two-star onward, the path to real development opened up.
Construction of various special facilities unlocked, and among them were strategically vital structures that could recruit heroes to dramatically boost the fief's combat power, or apply powerful buffs across the entire territory. It was the period when fief management finally gained momentum, when you could dream of prosperity beyond mere survival.
"Housing… the refugees have already set up temporary shelters themselves, so the immediate crisis is handled."
It wasn't perfect, but at least they had minimal space to keep out the wind and rain and get some sleep. What remained was solving the food problem and filling the population up to one hundred.
As it happened.
I'd already given Anya the methods for both.
And I'd told her that if she did well, I'd feed her something delicious.
"I'm counting on you, Anya."
Looks like instead of dinner, I should go buy dessert.