A Powerful Dropkick Aimed at a Friend
I already knew that Werner Alton had been popular for a long time. The girls from the nearby village, the apprentice mages studying at the Magic Tower, the noble young ladies, and even the imperial princesses high up in the hierarchy—all of them harbored crushes on him.
Some of them even worked up the courage to confess, offering handmade chocolates or personally embroidered handkerchiefs. But Werner was the kind of guy who had never learned how to politely turn down a confession.
Just counting the women he had made cry with those harsh words, there were over seventy. Of course, those were only the ones I had witnessed. In reality, there were probably far more.
One day, I had arranged to meet Werner for lunch after taking care of some business at the imperial palace. By chance, I saw him receiving a confession from an imperial princess.
The princess, overflowing with grace and beauty, confessed her feelings in elegant, archaic language. After listening to her nearly five-minute-long confession, Werner replied like this:
Leaving behind the stunned attendants and the youngest princess who had burst into tears, Werner walked over to me and grabbed my hand.
"Werner..."
"Aren't you worried about treating the princess like that?"
At the time, I felt the same way about him, so I was terrified of him finding out. I was scared of hearing those same cruel words from Werner's mouth directed at me. I wanted to be satisfied with our relationship as friends, facing each other and talking warmly. I wanted to keep watching him eat with sauce smeared all over his face.
"What are you looking at? Is there something on my face?"
"Yeah, there is, you idiot."
I pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the corners of his mouth. His face, which had been so soft and plump back then, didn't reject my touch.
"You're really something. Don't the girls who like you mind that you eat like that, getting food all over your face?"
"Then why do you eat like a beast that's been starving for a week in front of me?"
A seed of anxiety sprouted—maybe he saw me as a man, not a woman. He could be that clueless sometimes. He might actually be under that kind of misunderstanding.
"What about the other heroes?"
"I'm... the only one?"
Back then, that relationship felt so good. If I had confessed to him...
I might have heard something like that. I just wanted to keep things as they were, seeing each other as friends, never marrying, and growing old together until we died.
But against all odds, the day after we fought, Werner called me out to a valley. He handed me a rose and said this:
"Yeah, they're so beautiful that all my random thoughts disappear when I look at them."
At those embarrassing words, I unconsciously blasted him away with magic and ran. I wondered if one of the heroes had given him weird advice, but that was clearly a confession.
For a moment, I imagined building a family with him and living happily ever after. Getting married, having children, holding hands as we grew old together. I prayed that those images wouldn't stay just fantasies but would become reality.
But just like the day my mother passed away, God thoroughly trampled on my prayers.
I was worrying about how to accept his confession, what words I should say that would remain in our memories forever.
Then, out of nowhere, he contacted me saying the daughter of one of the heroes had disappeared and asked for help. He headed alone to the hideout of a suspicious organization called the Black Round Table.
I wanted to follow him no matter what he said. I should have ignored him and gone anyway. But I was the only legitimate successor to the Magic Tower. There were far too many restrictions on my actions.
After waiting like that, when he finally returned, he was bleeding heavily from his side and carrying a demonic sword that looked dangerous at a glance. He asked me to investigate the sword, then disappeared without another word.
The sword's identity was shocking. It was the mage-slaying demonic sword Barisada. A legendary anti-mage weapon said to shatter the mana circuits of any mage it stabbed, killing most of them on the spot.
I went to find him and told him the whole truth. And in my own way, I accepted his confession. I told him to stay by my side forever, that I would take care of him for the rest of his life.
But he looked at me with eyes full of rage. With the gaze I never wanted to see and in a tone I never wanted to hear, he said:
I had never once thought it would be good if Werner was beneath me. I wanted us to stand side by side, facing each other forever.
Because of that family, I couldn't go help you. Do you know how heavy those shackles are?
So the feelings you had for me weren't love after all. I was the only one misunderstanding again, twisting the meaning of your words however I wanted and getting excited all by myself.
Was I really your one and only friend?
I had to turn my back. I didn't want to show him my face, ruined from crying. I had to run. I didn't want him to hear me sobbing.
My first love from when I was thirteen ended just like that.
"My lady, Lord Werner has arrived in front of the Magic Tower."
"Yekaterina, is there anything strange about my clothes or hair?"
"As always, you are beautiful. Have you forgotten who coordinated you?"
But when compared to Yekaterina, I felt like I was lacking in many ways. Especially in the chest department... No, that's just fat. Werner isn't some perverted trash who judges people by something like chest fat.
Besides, I was confident that my face more than made up for any difference in chest size. After all, how many young mages had courted me?
But to my eyes, which truly understood what a real mage was, they didn't measure up. Yet that guy rejected me like that and now walks around with three women? I couldn't forgive him.
I was deep in thought about what kind of attitude I should take when the door opened.
Werner entered with a tense expression, blood dripping from his neck. It looked like he had been lightly cut somewhere. It must have been from a protruding nail or something. If that was a sword wound, the person who did it would have to be at the level of a master.
The memory of him returning with blood pouring from his side flashed through my mind, and my mood instantly soured. That was the day everything between us had shattered.
"...You've come, Werner Alton."
He was still hesitating, not saying a word, just staring at my face. I had so many things I wanted to say, yet he cruelly declared that he had nothing he wanted to say to me.
All the resentment I had endured, the happy memories I had suppressed, and the screams from that day that still pierced my heart—all of it burst out at once.
I ran toward Werner and executed the kick that Yekaterina had taught me.