The Road to the Capital (2)
Roy carefully posed his first question.
"Which are you better at—magic or swordsmanship?"
"Hmm. Neither, really."
Roy's blood pressure ticked up a notch.
"If you don't feel like getting to know me, why don't you just go back to your room?"
"I can't. Too many eyes in the castle."
"Your father didn't seem like such a terrifying man."
"...Well, maybe not from the outside."
Chloe let out a long, heavy sigh. Whatever was weighing on her was clearly frustrating her to no end. Roy, however, wasn't particularly curious about what it was.
"Then I'll leave first. If your father says anything, just tell him I was the one who walked away."
"What? Wait!"
"Why?"
"You don't want to talk to me?"
"It's not about wanting to or not. From where I stand, if you want a conversation, I have to stay and talk. If you don't, wouldn't it be better for you if I quietly left?"
Chloe's brow furrowed hard as she glared at him. Roy would far rather have been checking on Marek and Misha than wasting time like this—whether they had eaten well, whether the rooms they had been given were satisfactory, and so on.
"Sit down. Now. You have to talk with me."
Roy exhaled lightly and sat back down. At this point, he had no choice but to ask, whether he wanted to or not—what was wrong with this girl?
"So what's bothering you?"
"...Do I look like something's bothering me?"
"Yeah. Doesn't seem to be about me, though. More like you've got some other complaint and you're trying to work it out through me."
For the briefest moment, a flicker of light crossed the girl's eyes. So his read had been accurate after all.
"You have siblings too, right?"
"I do."
"At the Knight Academy?"
"The one at the Knight Academy is my sister, a year older. She enrolled last year. I have other siblings too, but they've either already graduated or they're still little."
"I have some too. Two of them, even. Both boys—and we don't get along."
From that single remark alone, Roy had already pieced together the rough shape of her situation. Two older brothers who attended the Knight Academy and with whom she had a terrible relationship. Once Chloe enrolled, she would have to live with them again. No matter how close Bacon County was to the capital, she could hardly commute from the territory every day. Naturally there would be a separate residence near the academy, and she would have to share it with those brothers—just as Roy himself would be living with Anna in the Greenhilt house in the capital once he arrived.
"You're upset because you have to go to the capital and live with the brothers you don't get along with. That's it, isn't it?"
"Yes! Exactly. How did you know?"
"Anyone would, listening to you. You don't even call them 'brother,' and your whole face soured the entire time you were talking about them."
"What about you? Your relationship with that sister of yours."
"Hmm. She's a bit of a handful, but not bad. Cute, even. She listens well."
"You're the younger one and she listens to you?"
"Yeah. Because I'm stronger."
"What!?"
"Among nobles—especially the children of lords—sibling relationships are survival of the fittest, aren't they? The weak get weeded out, fall behind, or get used. The strong take everything. I don't know what your brothers are like, but if you're unhappy about it, just get stronger yourself. You're the same bloodline either way."
"But... I..."
"Because you're young? Or because you're a girl? Those are just excuses. All right—maybe when you were little. But at this age, your mana is mostly settled. From here on it's a contest of skill. Sure, you might be short on build or raw strength, but if you've got technique that surpasses that, you're fine. Assuming equal mana, skill is what decides the fight."
Among those who held comparable mana, Roy considered himself the best—in his past life and in this one. Falling short on raw mana capacity was one thing, but this he would never yield. Lose to someone of equal mana? He would rather die. That was his pride.
"Or you can spend your whole life grumbling about it."
"Don't make it sound so easy. You have no idea how strong those two are."
"Well, stronger than me, I'm sure. Them and you both. I'm baron-lineage; you aren't."
"...I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way."
Roy put on a dejected expression and snuck a glance at Chloe's face. She looked genuinely apologetic.
Unexpected. She actually apologized first. Maybe she isn't such a bad sort after all.
It was a little surprising. They were both children of landed lords, yet the gap between count and baron was real—and she had bowed her head first without a second thought. Looking at her now, she didn't even seem particularly wounded in her pride.
"No. I wasn't being sarcastic. I was stating the reality. Noble houses are survival of the fittest the same way siblings are. By the standards of the capital's Knight Academy, a high noble like you is a lion. I'm just a rabbit."
The Knight Academy in the capital was a place you could not even enter unless you were the child of a provincial lord or a central official. In other words, families without titles and collateral nobles were not allowed anywhere near it. Naturally, as a baron's son, Roy would stand at the very bottom of the hierarchy there.
"I'm sorry. I really didn't mean it like that."
"I already said I wasn't hurt by your words."
"Even so..."
Roy sighed as if he had no choice.
"Fine. I accept your apology."
From what Roy could see, Chloe was still a girl who retained her innocence. When she believed she had done wrong, she apologized first, rank be damned. That kind of bearing did not appear unless it was already woven into a person's nature. Of course, there was no telling when the environment of a count's house might turn the girl into a monster.
"Let's drop this. Back to the beginning—I'll ask again. What's your specialty? Magic? Spear? Sword?"
"If I had to pick... magic?"
"Magic means physical conditions aren't an issue, then. You're not especially short on mana, and your brothers aren't freakishly gifted mutants or anything, right?"
Chloe shook her head. Her long, shimmering white hair swayed with the motion.
"Then you just have to study magic hard and catch up."
"But... there are two of them. Do you have any idea how much they used to torment me?"
"Those two get along well, I take it? Usually boys fight among themselves, but teaming up to pick on their little sister—that's a rare case..."
"I'm telling you, it's true!"
Chloe had only just begun to open up to Roy. But the conversation could go no further—the door suddenly burst open.
The figure who appeared was Marek.
"Marek...?"
"Y-Young Master. You need to come out for a moment."
"Why, what's wrong? Don't tell me—the carriage!?"
"Ah, no. Not the carriage. It's Misha..."
Listening as Marek explained what had happened, Roy hurried out. Chloe followed close behind them.
While Roy was at dinner, Misha had been shown to her lodging by the maids of Castle Bacon. They were maids, yes—but all of them carried noble blood, and to a commoner like Misha the atmosphere was so tense she could barely bring herself to speak. She was deeply grateful Marek was with her. Without him, it would not have been strange if nerves alone had driven her into some terrible blunder.
"The gentleman may stay here."
Marek and the coachman would share a room.
"As for the lady... we will set aside a spare room in the servants' quarters for you."
"Y-Yes. Thank you very much."
Misha bowed deeply. When Roy had first proposed the journey to the capital, fear had seized her at once—precisely because of situations like this. Serving the Greenhilts at the manor was hard enough, but for a maid there was no one more difficult to face than unfamiliar nobles.
Misha, you idiot. Blinded by money... Hnnngh... I hope I didn't make a mistake coming along...
Every time something like this happened, she blamed herself. Why on earth had she made that choice back then? But the sum Roy had offered had been impossible to refuse—an amount so vast she could earn ten years of wages in a single year. Her younger siblings had already come of age; they no longer needed her hovering at their side to take care of them. A few hard years and she could earn money she would never accumulate in a lifetime of ordinary work. She had also held a vague longing for the capital. And the fact that the master she would be serving was Roy had weighed heavily in her decision as well. Whenever these thoughts rose, she shook her head and reminded herself of the resolve she had made at the start: she would never regret this choice.
Young Master Roy...
"Misha. Young Master says he has something to discuss after dinner, so wait outside his room. Don't be late."
"Yes, Master Marek. I'll be there on time."
Misha left only her light luggage in the room the maids had shown her and went to eat. Dining among strangers in a count's castle, she could scarcely tell whether the food was going into her mouth or her nose. Still, the meal was neither meager nor tasteless. After discreetly helping with the washing up and asking leave, she set out for the room where Roy was to stay.
Or rather—she tried to.
"Huh? Where am I?"
She was lost. Of course this was her first time here, and Castle Bacon's layout was fiendishly complex. The Greenhilt manor had a simple structure of long corridors and rooms lined along one side; this place was like a maze. Even the shapes of the walls and the styles of the doors were so similar that she could not tell whether she was standing somewhere she had already passed or somewhere entirely new.
That much would still have been fine. The real problem was this:
"Kyaa!"
Turning a corner, she collided with someone. And that someone happened to be Count Bacon's eldest son.
"I-I-I'm so sorry. Please excuse me."
The eldest son was the one who had not even appeared at the welcome dinner for Roy that evening. Misha did not know it, but the man she had run into was the problem child every noble house seemed to possess at least one of—the eldest son already cast out of the line of succession, the wastrel of House Bacon. He was exactly the sort of man the servants in this castle most dreaded encountering, and his history sounded uncomfortably familiar.
"You crazy bitch. Don't you know your place?"
"I-I'm truly... so—"
He was especially merciless toward those beneath him. He struck Misha across the cheek at once—and without the slightest restraint. The real trouble began there. The moment the eldest son's hand touched Misha's slender frame—
Kiiiiing!
Misha's earring blazed with brilliant light. It was the earring Roy had given her only a short while ago.