Homecoming
When I opened my eyes, I was staring at an unfamiliar ceiling.
No—more precisely, it wasn’t just unfamiliar. It was a strange room crammed full of lavish decorations, the sort of place that had probably never once crossed paths with a man like me in either life or death.
For a moment, I wondered why on earth I’d been lying in a room like this, and then I remembered.
Right. I’d gone and gotten myself badly hurt while trying to save Princess Arieta.
If I remembered correctly, my body had been riddled with pretty little holes all over, and my right hand had been twisted out of shape while I bled out far more than I should have.
Thanks to that, I must have rambled to Princess Arieta and Cartesia while half-delirious from blood loss… and that meant I couldn’t help worrying that I might have said something strange to the two of them.
As I let out a sigh and tried to sit up, someone came hurrying toward me from somewhere and threw their arms around me.
“Ah! You’re finally awake!”
It was Princess Arieta.
“Y-Your Highness? What’s this all of a sudden—”
Startled, I began to stammer without meaning to, and Princess Arieta looked at my face before breaking into a bright, teasing smile.
“Come to think of it, this is the exact opposite of last time, isn’t it?”
“...Last time?”
“You know. Back when you saved me. That time, you gave me a lap pillow, remember?”
“...Ah.”
Now that she’d said it, something dimly stirred in my memory.
But I’d lost so much blood that nothing came through clearly, so I just scratched my head.
“...Sorry. I don’t really remember what happened then.”
“It’s fine. If you don’t remember, then there’s nothing to be done. You don’t have to force yourself to think about it.”
Princess Arieta said that with a remarkably cool air.
“Because even if you don’t remember, I remember everything from that day for you. What matters isn’t who remembers what, but the memories the two of us made together, isn’t that right?”
As she spoke, Princess Arieta quietly and stealthily burrowed herself into my arms.
Watching her, I couldn’t help thinking she looked oddly like a dog. No—like a puppy.
“Maybe I should set aside some time and tell you, one by one, about everything you did that day, and all the promises you made to me. Since you said you don’t remember anything, I suppose it wouldn’t matter if I added a little embellishment here and there, would it?”
Muttering to herself and giggling as if she were enjoying some secret joke all on her own, Princess Arieta looked so pleased with herself that I finally couldn’t hold back my curiosity and asked her a question.
“Um… but why are you using such polite speech with me, Your Highness?”
“Pardon?”
For a second, Princess Arieta blinked at me as if she had no idea what I was talking about.
“Well… this is a little awkward to say myself, but I’m really nothing more than an ordinary commoner. So I don’t think there’s any need for Your Highness to speak so formally to me…”
“No!”
Then she suddenly raised her voice, as though desperately trying to refute me.
“That’s not true! You saved my life. I remember clearly how you saved me without caring what happened to your own body, how you kept going even while you were covered in nothing but wounds! Do you mean to turn me into some shameless ingrate who doesn’t know her own debt?”
As she spoke, Princess Arieta began to well up with tears, just like she had that day.
And watching her like that, I started to feel a guilty weight pressing down on me, as though I’d committed some terrible sin.
“That’s not what I meant. It’s just… lately, the word ‘brother’ has started to feel a little awkward. Being called that by someone else makes me feel a bit weird, I guess.”
More accurately, every time Princess Arieta called me “brother,” my own sisters kept springing into my head automatically, and I simply couldn’t stand it.
For me now, the idea of a younger sister was nothing more than something unpleasant, hanging somewhere between hatred and a twisted, bitter affection.
“Ah… did you hate being called brother? Then what should I call you? Older brother?”
“...Can’t you just speak casually to me?”
At my suggestion, Princess Arieta smiled and said, “No. Absolutely not.”
“.....”
That was a firm refusal, the sort of tone that said there was nothing in the world she would ever yield on this.
“You were perfectly happy speaking casually to me back when you saved me, so why are you suddenly speaking so formally now? Did you already have your fill of me, and now there’s no sweetness left to suck out?”
So I sparred with Arieta for a while, but defeating her in an argument was never going to happen, and in the end I had to wave the white flag.
“...Fine. Sorry. I guess I was the one in the wrong.”
“And yet you talk casually with your sister just fine.”
“That’s because she’s a fellow student. I use formal speech when other people are around.”
“Then you can treat me the same way you treat your sister, can’t you?”
“.....”
In the end, we reached a dramatic compromise: in exchange for me speaking casually to Princess Arieta, she would call me “older brother.”
Only one of my sisters called me “older brother” instead of “brother,” and that was Sepia, so I figured I could probably endure that much.
“But isn’t Ricardo—no, the Crown Prince—also your older brother? If I call you like this too, won’t it get confusing?”
“I don’t think so, honestly.”
Arieta answered in a flat, utterly unconcerned tone.
“I don’t think of that man as my brother, and he doesn’t think of me as his sister, either. So to me, the only older brother I have is Sian, older brother. There’s no chance I’ll get confused, so don’t worry.”
“No, I was asking because I thought I might get confused.”
“If that’s the case, how about calling me something other than older brother? ‘Darling’ works too, and if not that, then ‘my husband’ is fi—”
“You’re really something, aren’t you? Tiny thing, and already so shameless.”
Bang!
And then it happened. Cartesia, who had appeared behind Arieta without warning, knocked her on the head.
“Ow! S-sister!”
“I warned you, didn’t I? Don’t go throwing yourself at Sian so casually.”
Cartesia shouted with fire in her eyes, and Arieta snorted right back at her.
“Older brother saved my life. What’s wrong with showing a little gratitude to my benefactor?”
“Because it annoys me.”
“You and older brother are supposedly just friends, right? Then why are you getting this worked up over something so small? Isn’t that weirder?”
“And why do you keep calling Sian older brother? It’s irritating!”
“I can call older brother whatever I want. Why does that bother you?”
For reasons I didn’t understand, the moment the two sisters saw each other, they started yelling at the top of their lungs, and just watching them made my head throb.
“Sorry, but could you both keep it down a little? I’m still a patient, you know.”
“If she hadn’t started it, I’d have stayed quiet.”
“You hit me in the head first!”
If I left them alone any longer, it looked like Round Two of the sisters’ battle would break out, so I hurriedly changed the subject.
“Anyway, Cartesia, why did you come here? You didn’t have something to tell me?”
“...Do I need a reason to come here? I heard you’d woken up, so I came to congratulate you, and while I was at it, I thought I’d visit.”
As if her feelings had been hurt, Cartesia pouted her lips.
But only for a moment. She quickly composed herself, and then greeted me with breathtaking elegance.
“I would like to express my gratitude to you, Sian. I swear, in the name of the Imperial family, that I will one day repay this debt you took upon yourself, even at the risk of your own safety, when you saved my younger sister’s life. I thank you sincerely.”
“...Huh? Ah. Yeah.”
I blinked, at a loss, because Cartesia looked so different from usual.
To be honest, I’d only ever seen her speaking to me comfortably, so seeing her suddenly act so proper felt strangely unfamiliar.
Cartesia must have noticed my expression, because a faint smile touched her lips.
“Well then, that’s enough formality. Let’s talk about your reward for saving Arieta.”
“...Reward?”
“Didn’t you ever read fairy tales? A hero who saves the princess always gets a reward for it.”
Cartesia shrugged and handed me a plaque made of gold, engraved with a lion.
“That plaque proves you hold authority equivalent to that of the royal family. His Majesty said to tell you that, with this, the charge of assaulting royalty that was hanging over you has been declared not guilty.”
“...Not guilty?”
Only then did I realize that the whole reason I’d come to the Imperial Palace to treat Arieta had been to nullify that damned charge of assaulting the royal family.
“And also… His Majesty promised that from now on, whatever happens in the Academy, he’ll limit it to matters between students. With this, you won’t be able to pull a stunt like this again, older brother. Ah, and there’s one more reward, too—His Majesty said he’d give me as a gift—”
Cartesia cut herself off halfway through her sentence and suddenly fell silent.
“...Give you as a gift, what?”
“...Nothing. Forget it.”
Inwardly, I thought, Yeah, right, nothing. But I didn’t say it out loud.
“Anyway… now that you’ve escaped the danger of being expelled from Lutra, I want to hear what you plan to do next.”
“My plans?”
“From the start, you didn’t do anything wrong. It was those damned women who spread the rumor, and then everything snowballed from there. If you’re going back to Lutra now, I think I’m entitled to know how you intend to act.”
So, in plain terms, she wanted to hear what I planned to do from here on out.
That wasn’t difficult to answer at all.
Because although she wasn’t showing it, Cartesia had to have guessed part of what I was after already.
“...Revenge.”
I answered as casually as I could, and yet with a chill I couldn’t fully conceal.
“I’m going to make my younger sisters pay for what they did.”
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