No, Not That!
“Not that!”
I shouted as I dragged myself back to reality.
“I’ve been calling you big brother a total idiot, but even I’m secretly an idiot too, so it’s fine!”
“Here we are.” Finally, we reached the door to the room on the third floor that Karin had been assigned.
I opened it and tried to lower her onto the bed when suddenly—
“Uwooooh......”
“......?!”
Karin suddenly clung to my shoulder and clamped both hands over her mouth.
It was the exact second before she would have hurled the entire bottle of wine she’d been drinking.
‘If I just let her puke right here on my shoulder, this is gonna be a disaster!’ I scooped her up and kicked the door to the attached bathroom open with my foot.
“Uuuuuuuh......!” I set Karin down in front of the toilet.
‘Why the hell is this a modern toilet... I’m grateful, but...’
Anyway, I dropped to one knee right in front of it and shoved her head inside just in time.
“Uweeeek—!!”
Barely a second in. Karin gripped the rim of the toilet and started vomiting everything she’d drunk that night with a thunderous noise.
“Ugh...... kuhk-kuhk! Ueeek.......”
“Haa.......”
I wiped the sweat from my forehead and silently squatted there, patting Karin’s back.
“Just let it all out. If you leave anything inside you’ll throw up again in your sleep.” The familiar hand of someone who’d patted the backs of his drunk comrades on the battlefield countless times, I kept watching the back of Karin’s head for a long time.
How much time had passed? Her loud retching finally slowed until only the sound of her breathing filled the bathroom.
But even after she was done, she wouldn’t lift her head from the rim, too ashamed to face me.
“......Are you done?”
I asked quietly. Karin gave a tiny shake of her bowed head and opened her mouth.
“S-Seth.......”
“......?”
Her speech was slurred and ruined by stomach acid. I had to double-check my ears.
“S-S-Seth.......”
‘What? Sex?! What drunk nonsense is this?!’
I nearly fell over backward.
“Are you sane right now?! What the hell are you saying out of the blue......!” I yelled in panic. Karin finally lifted her head, eyes still buried in the toilet.
Her face was a mess of red and utter embarrassment as she forced out,
“S-S-Sex!! I-I’m going to wash my face and leave!! I-I can’t show my face to you...... so g-get out!!” “......Ah.”
Face wash. She was going to wash her face and leave. I let out a huge sigh of relief.
‘......Haa, my brain must have rotted completely even at the edge of the wall.’
The drunk girl had filtered such filthy words through her own filter. I felt deep self-loathing for my own impurity and kept clearing my throat.
“Hrmph! Y-Yeah. Face wash. Go wash your face then.” As I awkwardly stood up to leave the bathroom, Karin turned the faucet on and muttered behind me.
“I feel a little better now that I’ve thrown up...... I think I’m coming back to my senses.......”
Pooah! She splashed cold water on her face and continued in a wet voice,
“I have something to say...... don’t go. Wait in the room for me.......” Karin, who had finally found her sanity and wanted a serious conversation.
Was this just a continuation of the strange feeling I’d felt on the stairs? Or maybe it was about the training plan I had in mind for Veronica?
“Okay. I’ll wait.”
I had my hand on the door handle when I added one last teasing remark.
“But don’t come back and stick your face in the toilet again by yourself after washing.”
“Shut up.......” Ignoring her grumpy reply, I walked out of Karin’s room with a lighter heart.
The room was spotlessly clean and orderly, as befitting the guest quarters of a third-floor noble. It felt as if she hadn’t brought much luggage with her.
“Hmm?”
My eyes drifted to a single book resting alone on the desk by the window.
A thick, brown leather-bound volume with no title on the cover.
‘A diary? Or maybe a swordsmanship manual that Karin brought with her?’
It was the protagonist who was supposed to become the strongest swordsman in the empire.
My curiosity sparked at the thought that this nameless book in her room must be some kind of forbidden training journal or martial arts secret manual.
‘It’s probably fine if I just peek at the content for a moment.’
I carefully approached and picked up the brown leather book. Then, without thinking, I flipped the middle page.
Swish— “......Motherfucker, I almost had a heart attack!!”
The instant I opened the book, I slammed it shut on the desk with a loud crack, screaming. My heart was pounding and my fingertips were trembling.
The image burned into my eyes was a muscular, built man and a slender woman intertwined in a posture that looked anatomically impossible.
There was text next to the illustration, but since I was still illiterate, I couldn’t understand what it said.
“Crazy.......”
I sat down on the spot, pressing my hand to my forehead.
‘Hey!!!!! Karin, are you trying to destroy my imagination to the very end?! Why the hell do you have this in your room!!’
My lonely, cool one-armed knight fantasy that had barely been holding on shattered and evaporated. Now the Karin in front of me was— Drunk and sulking. Growling at me like a guard dog. Jealous.
And even in an empty room, the ultimate plain, energetic twenty-something woman who probably enjoyed erotic novels.
“Hahaha...... hahahahaha!”
Unable to hold back my laughter in the collapsing world, I gripped the desk and laughed until I was out of breath.
It was time for the person who had shattered my fantasy to come out sober from the bathroom. What deep conversation had she wanted to have with me?
This serious tone now overlapped with the erotic illustration and felt like a comedy to me. A comedy you have to watch from afar.
Life in this duchy was really shaking my mental health daily.
Creak— The bathroom door opened cautiously. Karin stepped out, face washed with cold water and a towel.
“.......”
I stood near the desk, keeping my face as calm as possible as if nothing had happened, while carefully avoiding the brown leather book on the table.
My mind still floated with the acrobatic male-female illustration, but I desperately held on to my poker face trained on the battlefield.
“......Huu.”
Karin set the towel down and let out a deep sigh. Whether from the cold water or the vomiting, the earlier tantrum had been largely washed away.
But the alcohol wasn’t completely gone, so her eyes were strangely clear yet still cold. That ambiguous half-drunk look.
‘Huh......?’
Half-lidded, lazy eyelids. Deeply sunken, cold eyes.
The profound emptiness and exhaustion that had seen every storm of the world.
The look of a once-charismatic swordsman from the original novel “The Rose That Refused to Wilt,” now completely broken after wandering the empire and suffering everything.
It matched exactly. The atmosphere that had jumped out of the novel and into reality was finally in my eyes.
If it had been normal times, I would have silently screamed inside.
I had experienced the charisma that was only in the printed words right in front of me. But.
“.......”
My heart was unnaturally quiet. Too quiet.
No excitement, no thrill. The only reason was simple.
‘What’s the point of stiffening my eyes? When I’m alone in the room, she’s just a normal twenty-something girl who watches erotic novels and pants.’
My fantasy had already crossed a river that could never be turned back.
Since I had seen the passionate desire hidden behind that deep, lonely knight’s eyes, the cool wandering knight Karin from the original story was gone from me now....
Now the woman in front of me looked only like a slightly embarrassed neighbor aunt who had sulked from drinking, held onto the toilet bowl and vomited, washed her face, and come out to calm the atmosphere.
Karin, who had no idea of my tragic inner thoughts, slowly walked over and suddenly bent her waist deeply.
“......I said it earlier while drunk.”
Her pronunciation was much clearer than “Seth” this time.
“Now that I’m sober, I’ll say it again. I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry for having glared at you without reason and behaving rudely toward you all day today.”
Karin continued with her head bowed.
“I tried to justify my jealousy by saying you were mocking the young lady. I thought you had taken advantage of the Grand Duke’s favor of giving you the room on the fifth floor, and I looked down on you as a commoner who shamelessly took what wasn’t yours.”
She laid bare her own shame.
“But you didn’t scold me, and instead you called my rudeness a loyalty for a higher cause. You even supported me when I was drunk and unconscious, and covered up my embarrassing appearance. I, as a knight and as a human being, have done something deeply shameful to you.” Looking down at the bowed top of Karin’s head, I blinked slowly with tired eyes.
‘Ah...... Yeah, yeah, got it. Since I’ve accepted the apology, let’s move on. Today was really long.’
Honestly, my mental state was falling apart. Alcohol-fueled drinking games and the erotic illustration that had just shattered my fantasy.
The emotional rollercoaster of the day was so intense that all I wanted to do was collapse on the soft bed and pass out. I looked at the bowed shoulders of Karin and waved my hand vaguely.
“What’s the point of that? As I said earlier, I’m really fine. Don’t worry about it.”
I forced a yawn back and turned to leave.
“If all you have to say is an apology, then I’ll go up and sleep. I’ve received the apology and the misunderstanding is cleared. I’ll see you at the training ground tomorrow, Lady Karin.”
I had recovered my dignity. I didn’t want to continue this exhausting conversation anymore. I needed to go back to my room, repair my shattered mental state, and plan my eye-catching life in the duchy starting tomorrow.
Just as I was about to turn the doorknob casually.
Thud—!
“......?!”
Suddenly, Karin grabbed my left forearm tightly from behind.
Startled, I turned around to see Karin staring at me with her head raised, eyes wide with urgency.
“Please let go, Lady Karin. My arm will break.”
“......Don’t make me an unworthy person who only knows how to apologize with words.”
Karin’s voice trembled. She squeezed my arm even tighter and continued spitting each word.
“You say you’re fine and turn away, but the rudeness I committed is not something that can be washed away with a few words. I am a knight. I swear my knight’s honor, and the wounds I inflicted and the debt I owe must be repaid with action.”
“No, I really didn’t get hurt! And I didn’t owe you anything.”
I laughed in disbelief.
“I’m really fine. Compared to the swearing I heard from the wall, Lady Karin’s glare is at the level of a child’s teasing. Just forget about it, okay?”
But Karin ignored my objections.
“You didn’t ...... have any shortcomings compared to me......”
‘Not that! I’ve been calling you big brother a total idiot, but even I’m secretly an idiot too, so it’s fine!!!’
Karin bit her lip hard.
“If you leave like this...... every time I see you for the rest of my life, I’ll have to bow my head while remembering today’s rudeness. Please don’t let me live with the heart of a person who is inferior and inferior to you every moment compared to Veil-nim. Please, let me repay the debt.”
‘Oh, even a rigid knight snapped out of it.’
I sighed inside.
That’s why conversations with knights from medieval fantasy settings are so tiring.
Their way of thinking, which stakes their lives on invisible values like honor and debt, was impossible for my head to understand.
But looking at the brutish grip and eyes holding onto my arm, if I didn’t demand some kind of compensation here, she would probably keep my arm until morning.
“Haa...... Alright. Since you’re saying it like that, you must want to receive something to feel satisfied.”
I sighed as if I had resigned myself and loosened my arm to face her.
“Yes. So what reward are you willing to give me, Lady Karin? Money? Or are you going to be my escort when I need one?”
I asked sideways. Karin let go of my arm and stepped back one pace quietly.
Then she began to tell her story in a much calmer and more bitter voice than before.
“I...... became a knight in Libertry, but I still couldn’t live as a true knight.”
“......What?”
I frowned at the sudden confession of the past. Karin’s gaze was on me, but her focus drifted into the air, searching for painful memories of the past.
“I won the swordsmanship tournament as a commoner and received the Count’s sword. People cheered, and I believed that I had finally surpassed the wall of my status and become a knight serving a great lord.”
A self-deprecating smile appeared on her lips.
“But reality was different. To them, I was nothing more than a strange toy that only came out occasionally to brag about. Noble knights with noble blood did not recognize me as a comrade. In the banquet hall, I had to endure contemptuous stares from the corner, and in meetings, I wasn’t even given the right to speak. No matter how skilled my swordsmanship was, to their eyes I was simply a commoner with lowly blood—treated worse than livestock.”
I had vaguely guessed while reading the original novel what kind of treatment a commoner knight would receive in noble society.
But the vivid sense of contempt and isolation heard directly from the person’s mouth overlapped strangely with my own situation of being called “you” and “hey” from the wall. Karin looked straight at me again.
“Veil-nim. You have a high chance of the same thing.”
“......What do you mean?”
“Of course, the Grand Duke here in Arteta is far superior and more enlightened than the Count’s domain in Libertry. His Highness calls you brother, and Her Grace the Duchess also treasures you sincerely. No one in the duchy can easily disregard you.”
Karin stepped closer to me and warned.
“But...... the moment you leave the walls of the duchy, the story changes. Even the nobles of the capital, knights from other territories, and even people from the imperial family will belittle you as just a lucky commoner soldier who stabbed the Grand Duke’s back. They will envy you for standing under the Grand Duke’s halo and try to cut you down by dredging up your origins.”
Karin was telling me that I might have to endure the same stares I faced in Libertry for the rest of my life. I stayed silent at Karin’s words.
I couldn’t deny it. It was a realistic observation. Inside the northern duchy, I could suck honey thanks to the Grand Duke’s shield, but if I went to the capital or the high society, which was the main stage of the world of the novel, I would become nothing more than a tasty bite.
“What exactly happened to you in Libertry that you’re saying this?”
I asked subtly. Karin bit her lip for a moment, then shook her head bitterly.
“You don’t need to know...... No, I can’t even say. I was nothing more than a loser who couldn’t draw my sword properly there and fled to the north as if I hadn’t done anything at all.”
Disgust mixed with her voice mocking the past.
Self-disgust.
The sincerity that she wanted to make me, like her, a commoner, confront reality by digging into her own wounds. I straightened my slanted posture and looked at Karin with serious eyes.
“Alright. I understand the situation clearly. So, how should I do to avoid being looked down on? What is this so-called reward that Lady Karin can give me?”
A spark of light flashed in Karin’s eyes at my question.
“Anyway...... the swordsmanship tournament held in Libertry’s Count’s domain will be held again next year. And after that, there will be no more swordsmanship tournaments in the capital.”
Karin clenched her fist. While holding onto my arm.
‘Ouch, you idiot!’
“There, Veil-nim, you must win.”
“......What?”
“If you defeat all the noble knights with your skill and win the tournament, no one will be able to dare look down on you even outside the duchy. The only way for a commoner to receive complete recognition in this empire is to break the limit of bloodline with skill.”
Karin stepped even closer and looked straight into my eyes.
“I will teach you so that you can win that victory. I will hone you into the empire’s strongest swordsmanship. That is the only...... only apology I can give to Veil-nim. Please accept this proposal of mine.”
Even the solemnity was in Karin’s voice. She would pour all her sword knowledge and know-how into me.
She would make me the empire’s greatest knight. An ordinary novel protagonist would have knelt and accepted with both hands this huge opportunity.
But.
“.......”
I fell into deep thought after hearing Karin’s solemn words.
The Imperial Unified Swordsmanship Tournament?
The Emperor’s Judgment Swordsmanship Tournament where I would fight noble knights in the capital until I bled?
To do that, I would have to endure Karin’s hellish sword training for several months, or several years?
‘Are you crazy? Why the hell am I doing this?’ The easygoing mindset inside me was shaken.