Chapter 18
I’d spent a year at the Northern Wall, rolling in the dirt, swallowing every curse and insult like it was daily bread just to stay alive. Compared to that, Karin’s prickly wariness and her cute little drunken tantrum barely even stung.
“Mmm… Your Grace…”
“My lady… I will protect you… zzz…”
The Grand Duchess Rebecca had her cheek pressed to the table, fast asleep, while Karin was slumped against the back of her chair with her neck bent at a ridiculous angle, completely out cold.
“…Sigh.”
Inside the drawing room, only the crackle of the fireplace and the two women’s steady breathing remained. I downed the last of the wine in my glass in one gulp and let out a deep sigh.
I’d survived the Northern Wall by drinking cheap, poisonously strong liquor full of impurities like it was water. My liver was already forged in garbage booze; a few glasses of fancy wine weren’t going to touch me.
‘Figures. Being the only sober one at a drinking party is always the worst job…’
I’d somehow ended up as the sole responsible adult with two drunkards on my hands.
‘What can I do? If I leave them like this, they’ll both wake up with killer back pain tomorrow.’
I stood up and approached the Grand Duchess Rebecca first, who was still face-down on the table.
“My lady, Lady Rebecca. I’ll escort you to your bedchamber.”
The moment I carefully wrapped an arm around her shoulder to help her up—
Grab!
“Whoa?”
Suddenly, someone behind me seized my forearm with terrifying strength. I turned my head to find Karin—the same woman who had been passed out with her neck bent—glaring at me with bloodshot eyes.
“You… you bastard… Sir Bale…!”
Her tongue was completely twisted.
“What… what do you think you’re doing to Her Ladyship…! Take those filthy hands off her right now…!”
Even while drunk, a knight’s instincts never slept. It seemed Karin had completely misunderstood my attempt to help the Grand Duchess as some kind of indecent advance.
“No, I’m not doing anything! I’m just trying to take her to bed!”
I protested, feeling deeply wronged, but logic had no chance of reaching a drunk person’s ears.
“I… I will escort her… I won’t let a man’s hands touch her… hup!”
Karin stubbornly staggered to her feet, shoved me aside, and tried to hoist Rebecca onto her own shoulder.
“Ugh… My lady, lean on me… I’ll keep you safe… whoa?”
Her enthusiasm was admirable, but her legs were shaking so badly she could barely hold herself up. Once Rebecca’s weight was added, Karin’s whole body lurched dangerously. The two of them were a second away from crashing to the floor together.
“I told you not to push it! You’re both going to get hurt!”
When I rushed over to catch them, Karin hissed at me again.
“S-stay back…! Don’t touch Her Ladyship…!”
“Then what the hell do you want me to do?! You’re both about to collapse!”
Karin kept stubbornly clinging to her pathetic sense of chivalry, grunting and straining, until she finally realized she couldn’t keep her balance. She froze, breathing hard, then bit her lip in clear humiliation and looked at me.
“…Then hold my waist.”
It was the most absurd order I’d ever heard.
“…Excuse me?”
I stared at her with wide eyes, wondering if I’d misheard.
“Don’t touch Her Ladyship… Just grab my waist tightly from behind… so I don’t sway…”
Karin’s logic was simple. She would carry the Grand Duchess, and I was to act as a support pillar by holding her steady from behind.
‘Are you kidding me? This is ridiculous…’
But the two of them really were about to topple over and crack their skulls, so…
With no other choice, I moved behind Karin and wrapped both hands firmly around her waist. The tight line of her everyday clothes transmitted the shape of her body directly into my palms. I could feel the firm abs and flexible muscle beneath. Yet I felt absolutely nothing lewd about it.
Because the whole situation was just too ridiculous.
“…Oh.”
Surprisingly, the moment I locked her waist in place from behind, Karin’s lower body—which had been swaying like a reed—miraculously stabilized.
“M-moving out… Forward…”
With a comically solemn voice for someone so drunk, Karin began taking one shaky step after another, carrying Rebecca. I had no choice but to keep my hands firmly on her waist and shuffle along right behind her like a pathetic shadow.
‘Wow, this actually works? It’s weirdly impressive…’
The entire time we shuffled out of the fourth-floor drawing room and climbed the stairs to the fifth floor, my face burned with pure shame.
‘This is seriously the most pathetic thing I’ve ever done…’
At the front: the unconscious Grand Duchess Rebecca. In the middle: the staggering, completely hammered female knight Karin carrying her. And bringing up the rear: me, clutching Karin’s waist with both hands and waddling along like an idiot.
Calling it something only kindergarteners would do would be too generous. Since we were all adults, the word “train wreck” felt far more appropriate.
It was even more humiliating than yesterday’s march to the banquet hall, when Veronica had dragged me along while I hid my face behind a rabbit doll.
‘Ugh… Thank god this is the fifth-floor private area. What a relief.’
If the servants on the first or second floor had seen this, I might have actually packed my bags and fled straight back to the Northern Wall.
I kept my head down, barely even breathing in case someone saw us, and hurried along while desperately clutching Karin’s waist.
Creak—
We were halfway down the fifth-floor corridor in our little human-train formation when the door to Veronica’s bedroom at the far end cracked open ever so slightly.
“Mmm… Since Daddy isn’t here tonight… I should go sleep with Mommy…”
Veronica had woken up from the shuffling sounds outside. The child rubbed her sleepy eyes, clutching her rabbit doll, and poked her head into the corridor.
And then.
The absurd scene of the adults entered her vision in full, horrifying clarity.
“……?”
Her beloved, cool sword instructor was carrying her unconscious mother over one shoulder and staggering like a drunkard. And right behind her… the scary, scarred man she was so wary of and jealous of had both hands wrapped tightly around her instructor’s waist, pressed up against her back in the most blatant way possible.
To make matters worse, the scarred man had his head bowed so low he looked exactly like a criminal doing something incredibly perverted and shameful.
“……”
Veronica’s large purple eyes blinked slowly, completely blank.
A ten-year-old child’s pure brain had absolutely no way to process the bizarre spectacle unfolding before her. She simply stood there with her mouth half-open, frozen, until the ridiculous and grotesque procession passed right in front of her door and disappeared down the corridor.
“……”
A moment later.
Click.
Veronica quietly—very, very quietly—closed her bedroom door.
“…What was that?”
The child hopped back into bed and pulled the blanket all the way over her head.
“Was it still a dream?”
The little princess neatly categorized what she had just witnessed as a nightmare and closed her eyes.
“Hng! There.”
I managed to lay the staggering Rebecca safely onto the soft bed in the middle of her bedchamber. Completely unaware that Veronica had witnessed our bizarre human-train formation on the fifth floor, I simply felt relieved that we had completed the mission without incident.
“Mmm…”
The moment her back touched the bed, Rebecca wriggled around like a contented cat. She seemed to like the feel of the blankets. A little too much, apparently.
“Aww… It’s hot…”
Whether from the alcohol or rising body heat, she began to whine. With her eyes still closed, she reached for the top button of her nightgown and yanked.
Pop. Snap.
“…?!”
Two buttons came undone without resistance.
‘Holy—!’
I panicked, slapping both hands over my eyes and spinning around immediately.
“K-Karin! Her Ladyship is trying to take her clothes off! Quick, cover her with the blanket—!”
I was in the middle of desperately handing the cleanup duty to Karin when—
“Huuu… Yeah… It’s hot…”
The slurred voice coming from behind me sounded extremely ominous.
“I’m… hot too…”
Karin, whose judgment was completely drowned in alcohol, didn’t even try to stop Rebecca. Instead—
“So stuffy…”
—she grabbed the hem of her own tight tunic with both hands and started to pull it up over her head.
“Hey, you idiot! This isn’t your bedroom!!”
I lunged forward and wrapped my arms around Karin’s waist just as she was about to strip. Without giving her a chance to resist, I hoisted her entire body over my broad shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
In my panic, I even dropped the polite speech. I’d heard somewhere that in emergency rooms, nurses spoke casually to drunk patients and elderly people because they actually understood it better than formal speech. I didn’t stop to think about how convenient that excuse sounded and just did it.
“Wha—?!”
“Stay still! Don’t cause an accident on your very first day!”
I held the squirming Karin tightly over my shoulder with one arm while using my free hand to yank the blanket over Rebecca. Then, without looking back, I fled the Grand Duchess’s bedchamber.
Bang!
The door slammed shut. Only after stepping into the fifth-floor corridor did my pounding heart finally begin to calm down.
“P-put me down…!”
However, Karin, who was now hanging upside down over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes, clearly found the situation extremely displeasing. She began pounding my back with her fists in protest.
“Let me down… you rude bastard…!”
“Just stay still. I’ll carry you down to the third floor.”
When I answered firmly and started walking, Karin stopped struggling on my back and muttered in a deeply wronged voice.
“I’m… not drunk…”
“……”
“Sir Bale, you… aren’t drunk… so there’s no way… a swordsmanship instructor like me… would be drunk…”
Even though her pronunciation was completely slurred, she stubbornly insisted she wasn’t drunk until the very end. That shameless, classic line every drunk person in history has uttered instantly filled me with irritation.
‘Ugh… I’m going to lose my mind.’
I sighed and looked up at the ceiling. The sacred illusion of the original Karin that I had cherished deep in my heart shattered into pieces.
In the original novel The Rose That Blooms to be Broken, Karin was depicted as a lonely, one-armed wandering knight possessing the greatest martial prowess in the empire. A cool, silent character who stood wordlessly in front of the villainess Veronica. I had been so hyped by that overwhelming charisma…
And yet.
The person currently dangling over my shoulder, reeking of alcohol and yelling—
“I’m not drunk…!”
—was this pathetic drunkard. This was Karin?
‘Right… It’s before she went through ten years of hardship. Right now she’s just an early-twenty-something hot-blooded young woman who can’t hold her liquor.’
I desperately tried to accept reality and prepared to bury my fantasy of her.
“Yes, yes. Even if you’re not drunk, I’ll escort you safely. Hold on tight.”
Deciding it wasn’t worth arguing with a drunk, I firmly supported Karin’s legs and stopped in front of the narrow, enclosed staircase leading from the fourth floor to the third.
“…You can put me down now.”
Standing in front of the stairs, Karin’s voice had softened a little.
“You… live on the fifth floor… I’m on the third…”
“It’s fine. Just stay still.”
“From here… I can walk by myself…”
Karin kept stubbornly wriggling, clinging to her pride. I glanced down the stairs.
“You’re going to walk down like that?”
“…I can do it.”
“And if you miss a step, tumble down, and crack your skull? What then? If the sword instructor invited for the young lady gets injured by falling down the stairs on her very first day, you’ll end up just like me—an idle freeloader who only eats and does nothing.”
“……”
My merciless refusal made Karin stop squirming at once. Even through her drunken haze, the thought of getting hurt and being unable to teach Veronica swordsmanship must have stung.
After a long silence on my shoulder, she finally mumbled in a tiny, defeated voice.
“…I understand.”
And then, in an even smaller mosquito-like whisper, she added,
“…And… I’m sorry.”
“…Pardon?”
I paused mid-step on the stairs.
“You’re sorry?”
What was she apologizing for? For acting like a drunk mess? Or for glaring at me like I was a monster, snapping at me, and acting wary the moment she arrived at the Grand Duke’s residence?
‘As if something like that would bother me.’
I laughed bitterly inside. From my very first day of possession, I had endured a full year at the edge of the Northern Wall, listening to rough soldiers who outranked me call me “Hey, you son of a bitch, you crazy bastard” every single day.
‘I already heard every insult under the sun back then…’
To someone who had rolled around the battlefield, swallowing every curse and contempt like daily meals just to survive, Karin’s sharp wariness and cute drunken antics didn’t sting at all.
What I truly wanted an apology for was something else entirely.
‘What I’m really upset about is that the cool, badass thirty-year-old Karin from the original story has turned into this twenty-something drunk who looks like she’s about to puke on my shoulder.’
Apologize for the character collapse! Apologize for that!
But that was my own fault for having expectations based on the original novel. It wasn’t Karin’s sin. The way she was honest with her emotions, felt jealousy, and made mistakes while drunk—this was probably what the real, human Karin had been like ten years ago.
I swallowed the bitterness and answered calmly.
“There’s nothing to apologize for.”
“……”
“It just proves how loyal you are to our Lady Veronica and Lady Rebecca from your very first day.”
At my sincere words, I felt Karin’s body, which had been limp on my back, stiffen slightly. She muttered again, almost to herself.
“…Why.”
“Pardon?”
“…Why aren’t you… lacking in any way…”
A complicated murmur mixed with unknown emotions flowed out.
‘I’m the one who’s lacking.’
“I can’t even read.”
“Ha… Something like that, I…”
But I pretended not to notice the strange murmur and quietly continued down the stairs.