Chapter 23: The Brightest Star
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 23: The Brightest Star
How do I feel?
Not great, obviously.
My reason and my emotions are currently at each other’s throats.
Reason screams that I should understand the bank manager’s behavior—that it was merely a preview of how the Royal Palace itself will eventually act.
But my emotions are spitting fire, demanding to know why he had to show it in such a damn disrespectful way.
And both reason and emotion are venting their fury over one thing: why did the Victory Commemoration Ceremony have to be held in Lukart, of all places?
I don’t actually care about not receiving the war veteran compensation or the pension.
With the subsidies I’m getting now, I can pay off my loans and survive just fine as long as I tighten my belt.
What made me so angry was that this is how they treat someone who risked their life for the country and humanity.
They were determined to use us as propaganda tools until the very end.
It’s not that I’m begging for material rewards.
I just want them to acknowledge the value of our sacrifice—the price of the peace we achieved.
A cold, bitter resentment felt like it was shattering and piling up deep within my chest.
I tucked the 2.5 million Dalk into my coat and left the bank, but the weight of the money didn’t feel as reassuring as it had when I first received it.
I never thought 2.5 million Dalk could look so small.
Even in Lukart, I had never held such a large sum of my own money, excluding funds meant for public use.
“Tch.”
I was thinking about Lukart again.
I wonder how those guys are doing.
I hope they’re doing terribly.
But they probably aren’t—not yet.
My 2 million Dalk in national subsidies should still be in the party’s operating funds; that’s enough to last them until the end of the month.
Or they could have taken on quests and started saving up money by now.
The problem is that they’ll spend it all on men, but they said they’d just go find the men they wanted and form new parties once I was gone, so that’ll be resolved soon enough.
I’m jealous.
By leaving the party, I solved all of Mirei’s party’s problems.
Meanwhile, even after coming all the way to Hus, the way people look at my appearance hasn’t fundamentally changed, and new problems just keep cropping up one by one.
“Sigh…”
When I left Lukart, I was bursting with new hope.
The immense fluttering in my heart I felt on the road outside the castle walls, riding in Arasen’s carriage after escaping that place that felt like a shackle—it was long gone.
The treatment was the same. People looked down on me as if I were pathetic, only to scramble in a panic the moment I revealed I was a National Merit Recipient. I was already getting sick of it.
A grumble escaped between my frequent sighs.
“Maybe I should just go to another country.”
“No.”
“Why? It’s the same everywhere.”
“It’s not the same.”
“What’s different? No matter where I go, I never get a single kind look.”
“I won’t be there if you go somewhere else.”
Wait, who am I talking to?
Startled, I looked to my side. Lady Airune was glaring at me with eyes full of discontent.
“My Lady?!”
“You know,” she began.
We were standing in front of the fountain. The very place she had asked to meet yesterday.
“I was really looking forward to today, you know?”
The Lady didn’t look at me; she stared straight ahead.
“Because I finally have a party member.”
She sat on the edge of the fountain, swinging her crossed legs back and forth, but she didn’t look excited at all.
“A party member to go on adventures with, to plan things with—no matter how big or small—and to just… be with.”
Her profile looked as if she were lost in deep thought.
“You seemed kind and easygoing, so I was expecting us to have fun adventures even when things got tough.”
Suddenly, her swinging legs stopped.
“But you’re already thinking about leaving for somewhere else.”
“No, My Lady, that’s not…”
“Is it because you didn’t like how we became comrades? I thought it was fate. We were both honest with each other.”
The Lady stood up from the fountain and started walking away.
I hurried after her, afraid I’d lose her.
“My Lady!”
“Adventuring alone is free and convenient, but it’s quite lonely. At first, I just loved the freedom of escaping that suffocating castle, but that feeling didn’t last long.”
People around us watched with curiosity as a man followed a woman. But in this situation, their stares were nothing but a nuisance.
“Completing quests alone after wandering around gave me a great sense of accomplishment, but I often thought: wouldn’t it be better if there were two of us? Couldn’t we share this joy, or talk through the hardships together?”
The Lady’s pace was neither fast nor slow. I didn’t have to run; I could stay close to her just by using my natural stride.
“I tried to find comrades, but my mother was against it. She said if I let just anyone in, they’d obviously try to bring men into the party. She said it had to be someone like Narupa. Ah! Narupa is my friend. A magitech engineer here in Hus. You’ve heard the name, right, Alto?”
The name was familiar. I think I heard it from Arasen.
“Even the day before yesterday, I was scouring the swamplands outside the city alone to find someone’s pet toad, and I felt so lonely. I kept thinking, ‘What am I even doing here?’”
Isn’t that a quest for Bronze-rank adventurers?
You need to be at least Silver-rank to take on dungeon quests.
“My Lady, by any chance, what is your adventurer rank…?”
“Is that what’s important right now?”
“No!”
She stopped for a split second and glanced back; I felt like I could have been killed by that gaze alone. It was a high-spirited look that reminded me of Marquis Dakuren or Janks.
“Anyway, the process wasn’t exactly transparent, but the Count and my mother recommended you as a party member. And after looking at real estate together yesterday, I felt you were different from other men. You’re polite, and you don’t treat women carelessly. Ah, well, you do treat the Count a bit roughly, but I figured that’s just because you’re close.”
I had made a slip of the tongue and was now being dragged along helplessly. The Lady’s anger didn’t seem to be subsiding, so I kept walking on eggshells.
Eventually, she stopped walking.
But she still didn’t look at me.
“So, I came out this morning expecting to go to the Adventurer Guild with you, but you were talking about leaving for another place after just one day?”
“My Lady, that was a slip of the tongue.”
“You say people treat you the same everywhere? At least I, the Count, and my mother haven’t mistreated you. I guess you didn’t think so?”
“That’s not it. The three of you have been very kind to me.”
Especially the Lady—she had even gotten angry at the real estate agent on my behalf yesterday. It was my fault for forgetting that.
“Is it that other people make things harder for you than we make them better?”
“The kindness of the three of you is incredibly precious. It’s just…”
It’s just that the distance people keep, and the disappointed expressions they wear every time they realize I’m the man they were expecting—that daily life that continues every minute, every second, is exhausting.
“It’s just?”
“It’s like the night sky.”
“The night sky?”
“Yes, the night sky.”
I decided to try this metaphor.
“Imagine there are only three stars in a pitch-black sky. The stars are shining very brightly, but only the area around the stars is lit.”
In a world like that, there is nothing but darkness outside of that starlight.
That’s how it is for me.
The Lady turned around.
She gazed at me quietly with calm eyes.
Her amber eyes were so beautiful I felt like I could be sucked into them.
They were eyes I wanted to keep looking at.
“Then the solution is simple, isn’t it?”
“Pardon?”
I was taken aback by her casual tone, as if it were no big deal. My problem had a simple solution?
“If the world is a dark night sky, there are two ways.”
“There are two?”
“Yes. A hard way and an easy way.”
The Lady smiled confidently, holding up two fingers.
“The hard way is traveling through the darkness to find new stars. You don’t know how long it will take, and there’s no guarantee you’ll find any. Plus, you don’t know how bright the stars you finally find will be.”
She was right.
And that logic directly contradicted my thought of leaving Hus.
“The easy way is to stay by the stars you’ve already found and help their light grow—or become a star yourself!”
Her amber starlight was twinkling.
It was so clear and dazzling that I had to look down slightly.
“There are three stars here already. And right in front of you, Alto, is the brightest star of all, isn’t there?”
“The brightest star?”
The Lady pointed to herself with total confidence.
What incredible self-assurance.
“I’m the youngest, I’m an adventurer, and… I’m pretty, aren’t I?”
“That is true.”
“Right?”
How could I deny it?
The Lady’s beauty was on another level. That was exactly why I couldn’t look her straight in the eye.
“We’ll become an even greater light for you. So, stay in Hus, Alto. You can at least give us a chance, can’t you?”
Stay in Hus.
Mirei had only ever told me to go somewhere and take care of something; she had never asked me to stay by her side.
Perhaps that was why.
The strange resonance of her words made me nod my head.
“Good! Then shall we head in?”
The Lady beckoned me to follow.
I looked to see where we were, and realized we were standing right in front of the Adventurer Guild.
I felt like I’d been played, but I wasn’t upset.
With a slight smile, I asked her.
“What did you mean by ‘becoming a star together’?”
“That depends on how you view yourself, doesn’t it?”
The Lady smiled softly.
“Everyone is a star. You only start to shine once you realize that you are one.”
Blood really is thicker than water.
In that moment, I saw glimpses of Marquis Dakuren and Janks in the Lady’s confident smile.