An Idiotic Prank
I was left speechless, but for the moment I simply followed where she led.
Veronica dragged me back to that deserted corner where we had just been talking. Once she had hauled me there, I watched her in silence, staring with cold eyes for a stretch of time.
Without warning she screeched at me.
“Louis Wallenstein, what the hell are you thinking!”
She was yelling at me, demanding to know what was going through my head. What was that even about?
“Why did you have to blow everything up like this! You could have just apologized to me half-heartedly and been done with it!”
“…What? I blew everything up?”
I asked her back, unable to believe my ears. Veronica flinched for a second, then raised her voice again.
“Yes! If you hadn’t been so needlessly proud, none of this would have gotten so big!”
My teeth ground together. Had I actually done something wrong to her without realizing it? Just to be sure, I asked.
“Fine. Let’s hear it. What exactly did I do that requires me to apologize to you?”
“……”
For a moment she couldn’t open her mouth.
“…Y-you went after the gargoyles without even talking it over with us! The assignment was clearly just to investigate the nest!”
As if she had finally seized on something, she pressed the attack.
“Because of you we wasted time for nothing and nearly got into real danger—”
“You’re a real piece of trash.”
I cut her off. I couldn’t stand to listen any longer. I started shouting right back at her.
“Yeah. I was in a hurry, so I attacked the gargoyles without explaining first. The explanation I gave right after probably sounded like pure guesswork to the rest of you.”
At the sound of my raised voice Veronica’s face filled with fear. I had never once been this genuinely furious with her before.
“So the part where you cursed me out back then—I can swallow that, even if it pisses me off! But!”
I glared at her as if I meant to kill her.
“People died because of those gargoyles! We failed to take them down and people died for it, and you can still say crap like that?”
At the time we had already run a long distance, cleared every monster that showed up, and finished the nest survey. So yes—she could have been annoyed when I suddenly charged the gargoyles that appeared. Everyone was exhausted, they were hard for student-level fighters to handle, and it hadn’t even been part of the assignment. So cursing me out then might have made sense.
But the gargoyle swarm really did attack Ansberg Territory. Knowing full well that countless people had died, how could she still say something like that?
“Hey.”
Even when she mocked me, sneered at me, compared me to that bastard Leo, I had never gotten this angry. That was just her personality; I had told myself the constant bickering was her own twisted way of showing closeness. But the day she expelled me from the party without a second’s hesitation, I realized that had been a delusion. And today her words left me more disappointed than I had ever been.
“You don’t think you bear any responsibility for those deaths? What—your head hurts if you use too much mana?”
I let out a hollow laugh.
“Then what the hell am I supposed to be, the one who got torn to shreds trying to stop them?”
The Veronica in front of me looked uncharacteristically terrified, but I didn’t care.
“Yeah. If you’d just fired off one of those high-level spells you always bragged about and aimed it at the wounds, a little headache for you and every one of those people could have lived! You worthless bitch!”
Even when she constantly called people lowly trash, I had thought it was only a speech habit. When I first heard what had happened to House Ansberg, the feeling that hit me was a twinge of guilt. Because I was angry at Felice I had briefly considered not warning them about the gargoyle attack, and I felt guilty for that. If I hadn’t warned them, even more people would have died—that thought had stayed with me. But the mage standing in front of me truly had never cared about any of it.
Shock, then pure, blazing rage. Remembering how she acted in the original game, I had assumed she just talked that way. Apparently not. She really was trash.
While I closed my mouth for a moment to sort out my thoughts, she forced out another shout in a squeezed, desperate voice.
“Th-that’s not my fault! Everyone else just stood there too!”
True enough. Felice had at least blocked a few of the gargoyles’ strikes, though she hadn’t fought seriously either. Aine had seemed to want to do something, but there was nothing a girl that weak could have managed. Still, Veronica’s tone now was pure self-pity. It was almost funny.
“Hey. Don’t tell me you’re actually feeling wronged—‘everyone else stood still, so why am I the only one getting blamed?’”
I asked her coldly. I was crushing my anger down hard; a little caution with her words would have been nice. Apparently that was too much to ask of Veronica.
“Y-yes! Why are you only like this with me!”
She didn’t stop there.
“You’re the one who kept clinging to your pride the whole time! When we went after the gargoyles, and when you got kicked out of the party!”
She kept yelling at me.
“If you’d just lowered your head and begged like you usually do, I was planning to listen—kyaa!”
Crunch. My fist buried itself in her stomach. She had still been talking, but I hadn’t heard a single word. The instant she finally pinned the blame on me, my reason snapped.
She let out a thin scream and crumpled to the floor, struggling to breathe.
“Guh… guh…”
Watching her tremble, a flood of thoughts hit me. I had never once imagined I would hit her—not even on the day she threw me out of the party. Yet here we were. Strangely, I felt no regret. Only a clean, hollow relief.
“Uuuuh…”
To the girl still moaning on the ground I left my final words.
“You know what? Every time you cursed me out, I thought it was just a joke. A little too rough, sure, but still a joke.”
Veronica stayed curled up, clutching her stomach and writhing.
“You’re arrogant by nature. Always calling everyone else lowly this and that. So I figured the way you treated me was just the same harsh joke that matched your usual personality…”
The rage that had been boiling a second ago drained away, replaced by a sudden, heavy gloom.
“But that wasn’t it. You sincerely believed every word.”
Mocking me. Laughing at me. Sneering. Comparing me to Leo. All of it had been real.
“U-uh… n-no…”
She mumbled. What exactly was she denying? That someone like me had dared to hit her?
“I was an idiot for only realizing it after you kicked me out of the party. How ridiculous must I have looked standing next to you all that time?”
I asked her in complete sincerity. She only kept repeating “no” in a dazed loop. Suddenly everything about this scene disgusted me. If I stayed any longer I really might kick her, so I turned my back.
As I walked away, Veronica forced words out behind me with painful effort.
“W-wait… guh…”
I glanced over my shoulder. She was trying to push herself up, arms shaking. Getting hit by me must have hurt more than I thought. I didn’t bother apologizing.
“Try to understand.”
I kept walking and spoke to the girl still behind me.
“Every time you cursed me, I let it slide. I laughed. I took it as a joke. I got mad in a joking way. I snapped back in a joking way. That was how I answered you—like it was all a game.”
I had accepted every bit of it as the rough affection she showed people she was close to, and I had let it go.
“It hurt me a lot too.”
Leaving her still groaning on the floor, I quietly walked away.
“Hic… huek…”
In the spot Louis Wallenstein had left behind, the sound of crying soon rose.
“Hic! Gulp… hueu…”
Veronica Eltwin sat huddled on the floor, sobbing. It wasn’t from the pain. This was the first time in her life anyone had ever hit her. Even her master had never raised a hand against her. Yet she wasn’t crying from the pain, nor from the humiliation of being struck.
She was crying because the person who had hit her was Louis Wallenstein.
She had never imagined it. Never imagined he would hit her. Never imagined he would walk away from her.
No matter how viciously she cursed him, he had never gotten truly angry. He laughed. He took it as a joke. Whenever he snapped back at her, Veronica would glare and shout on the outside while secretly enjoying it inside. She herself had never once been genuinely angry even when he insulted her in return. So she had assumed Louis felt the same. She had believed he would keep treating it as a joke forever.
She had been wrong.
From the beginning she had never wanted to agree to something as stupid as Louis’s expulsion. She had never meant to plan that kind of idiotic prank. Even if everyone else looked at her strangely, even if it was mortifying—she should have ignored all of it and protected Louis to the very end.
Because of her own idiotic mistake, Louis had left. And now Louis was truly, sincerely furious with her.
Wh-what do I do…
Her body shook. She curled up tighter in fear and bit down on her nails. Veronica began replaying everything from the very start.