The Mesugaki Can't Rest (3)
"And why exactly is that not allowed?"
When Joy frowned and made no effort whatsoever to hide her displeasure, the priest blocking the doorway broke into a cold sweat.
To Lucy and Arthur, Joy was little more than an easy target for teasing—the ditzy noble girl they loved to pick on. To everyone else, however, she was something else entirely.
Cold eyes. An imperious voice. Gestures overflowing with grace and dignity.
On the surface, she was the very model of a highborn lady, and treating such a person with any degree of comfort was a profoundly difficult task.
Above all, she was the daughter of the great Ducal House of Patran.
Whispers circulated that a single word from her could bring an entire household crashing down. What lowly priest in his right mind would dare stand firm before the precious daughter of such a family?
Every time Joy's expression darkened, the priest felt the air squeezed from his lungs—yet still, his feet did not move.
Behind the door he guarded, the Saintess was resting.
No matter how illustrious the daughter of House Patran might be, disturbing the Saintess's recovery after the ordeal she had so recently endured was simply not to be permitted.
"My apologies, Lady Patran. Please return tomorrow."
"I beg your pardon. Do you not understand what I am saying?"
Her words carried the simple meaning that she was so worried about her dear friend Phoebe that she could not bear to wait—but to the priest, they sounded nothing of the sort.
From where he stood, what he heard was: How dare you defy me? Do you wish to lose your head? A threat, plain and simple.
"It's quite all right."
Just as sweat was trickling freely down the priest's brow, a soft, clear voice drifted through from beyond the door.
"Please let her in, Father."
"But, Saintess—"
"I truly am fine."
When Phoebe repeated herself, the priest gave a slow, reluctant nod and opened the way into the room.
Stepping inside, Joy found Phoebe sitting on the edge of the bed.
"Joy. Welcome."
Phoebe's face wore its usual warm smile, exactly as it always did. But one crucial detail was different.
Her eyes were puffy and swollen. Those were, without question, the traces of tears.
What in the world had happened?
Phoebe was the person with the strongest will Joy had ever known.
This was a girl who, by virtue of her title, traveled through harsh and wretched lands year after year—and never once lost her smile. And she had been crying?
"Are you all right?"
"As you can see, perfectly fine."
"Truly?"
"Of course, Joy."
Questions threatened to burst from Joy like water from a cracked dam, but instead of voicing a single one, she simply let out a long breath. Then, with the ease of long habit, she pulled a chair over from the corner of the room and sat down at Phoebe's side.
"I've been so worried about you."
Every word of it was Joy's honest feeling, without the smallest embellishment.
Even after Lucy had left, Joy had kept up her training alongside Frey, and it was there—mid-workout—that a breathless noble girl had come sprinting into the training grounds with news about Phoebe.
That she had been attacked by an unknown assailant and knocked unconscious. That she had been carried to the church.
The moment Joy heard it, she bolted for the church without a second thought.
Her disheveled state from training, her less-than-elegant attire—none of it registered. The only thing carved into her mind was the danger to her friend, and nothing else.
"I heard Lady Alrn was the one who saved you?"
By the time Joy reached the church, the whole affair was already over.
One of the priests had told her the story—that scarcely any time had passed after Phoebe collapsed before Lucy arrived and came to her rescue.
Only after hearing that did Joy finally understand why Lucy had left the training grounds so abruptly.
Lucy had sensed another person's crisis.
Just as she had back in that academy alley, when Joy herself had been ambushed.
Joy had no idea how Lucy had detected him, but once again she had noticed something wrong—and had run herself ragged to help someone else.
...If only she had said something, I would have helped in any way I could. Honestly, that girl...
"Yes. If she hadn't stepped in, it could have been very serious."
"Then I really must thank Lady Alrn."
"Yes."
After Phoebe's answer, an awkward silence settled over the room.
Even now, Joy had an endless list of things she wanted to say.
What happened? Why had she been crying? Was she really all right?
Something had happened to Phoebe—one of the precious few friends Joy could call a true friend. How could a timid soul like hers possibly stay calm?
The only reason she maintained her composed facade despite the chaos in her head was a single, simple one: she didn't want to burden Phoebe.
Looking at her, one would assume Joy could say whatever she pleased without caring what anyone thought—but beneath it all, she was a soft-hearted girl who spent her days minding the feelings of the people she loved.
"Joy, I know there's a lot you want to hear. I'll tell you everything, slowly."
Phoebe, who had known Joy for years, understood this about her better than anyone.
And so, faced with the sight of a sharp-toothed lioness tiptoeing around her feelings, she burst out laughing before finding her voice again.
"Thank you."
"But before that, there's something I'd like to ask you."
"What is it?"
"What does Lady Alrn like?"
"Ah—for a gift to accompany your thanks."
Joy grasped Phoebe's intent in an instant and, raising the fan she'd drawn from her sleeve to hide her mouth, began racking her brain.
Something Lady Alrn would like.
If the question were about the Lucy of the past, Joy could have answered without a moment's hesitation.
She had loved all things extravagant.
Expensive dresses. Flashy jewelry. Enormous gemstones. Before entering the Academy, Lucy had been a girl who expressed herself through luxury and vanity.
But the Lucy of recent days was not that girl at all.
She seemed to have lost nearly all interest in adorning herself. She barely wore makeup. She hardly ever put on rings or necklaces or hairbands anymore.
And outside of class, she didn't wear anything but her uniform.
These days, if given a spare hour, wouldn't today's Lady Alrn rather swing her mace one more time than spend it on her appearance?
So, setting aside the flashy things—what did the current Lady Alrn like? Hmm...
"Joy?"
"...One moment, please."
Joy had been spending enormous amounts of time with Lucy lately—but nearly all of it had been an unbroken cycle of training.
Running until they collapsed face-first into the dirt.
Then sparring, drilling movements into their bodies.
Occasionally venturing into dungeons and grinding until they dropped.
At night, training their mana.
Under those circumstances, Joy knew almost nothing about what Lucy actually enjoyed. There had never been time to even ask.
If there was a spare moment, the rule of their lives was that it went toward one more step forward.
Joy puzzled over it until her brow furrowed—and then, at last, fished a single memory out of the distant past.
The time they had visited Tierra Masa, and Lucy had worn the happiest smile over a plate of delicious food.
"Lady Alrn loves good food."
"Good food. Hmm. That's not really my area of expertise."
"Shall I help you?"
"Yes. Please do."
It was only the next morning that I finally clawed my way out of Practice Mode. I sat up in bed, stared blankly at the wall for a while, and let out a long sigh.
Something felt wrong.
Thanks to an unusually long and deep sleep, my body felt fantastic—so why was my mind drowning in exhaustion?
I pressed my face into the pillow, hoping sleep might reclaim me, but it refused to come.
Uuuughh. This is straight-up torture.
"Hm. If this is how it shall be, then from now on you may simply train by day and practice wielding divinity in the spirit world by night."
'Grandfather. Do you enjoy watching me go insane?'
"Ah, how soothing it is to hear such courteous speech. If only it had always been thus."
Grandpa. Why is it that you only refuse to answer whenever you're at a disadvantage, huh?
You don't step onto a battlefield you're going to lose. That's just basic strategy!
Keep it up and I'll start talking like a brat even inside my own head, I swear!
When I threatened to drag him into the middle of a war of words, Grandpa let out a hollow laugh.
"It would be unfair to lay the blame at thy feet alone. Was it not thine own doing that drove the training to such excess?"
Ghk! Attacking me with facts, how cowardly!
But he was right.
My overtraining in Practice Mode was, admittedly, at least partly my own fault.
At first, hitting the goal Grandpa had set hadn't been all that difficult.
Astonishingly, this world's Practice Mode actually leveled up skill proficiency!
I'd been skeptical at first, but with every punch I threw, I could feel myself growing more attuned to handling divinity—and the doubt melted into certainty.
Having Grandpa, the very fountainhead of Holy Fist Arts, standing beside me helped too.
I'd known this for a long time, but Grandpa was a gifted teacher.
When it came to the art he himself had created and spread to others, no one could possibly be more of an authority.
And so my Holy Fist Arts proficiency climbed at a blistering pace, and by around eleven at night, I had succeeded in blasting a training dummy's head clean off.
Up to that point, everything was fine.
After endless toil and suffering, I had reached my goal, and I was overjoyed. Grandpa even praised me, saying I had real talent.
But here's the thing. When a person finally achieves what they've suffered for, the dopamine hits their brain like a flood, you know?
You start thinking you can do anything, completely ignorant of your own limits.
At least, that's how I was. Giddy over the demolished dummy's head, I responded to Grandpa's suggestion that we call it a night like this:
'Grandfather! I can still keep going!'
The fact I'd overlooked back then was this: even words spoken with pure, earnest enthusiasm can be twisted into something with an entirely different meaning.
Especially when the twisting is done by my Mesugaki skill.
'That's it? Wasn't that way too easy? Holy Fist Arts are nothing special after all. Well, I guess it figures they'd be pathetic, coming from some fossilized old man's technique.'
Grandpa knew perfectly well that my words had been mangled by the Mesugaki skill—but even so, apparently hearing his life's masterwork insulted was more than he could stomach.
Veins bulging at his temple, Grandpa declared that a mountain of progress still lay ahead of me, and proceeded to drill me through the entire night.
How many times did I end up sprawled across the bricks under the pretext of "sparring"?
Honestly speaking, I can't claim it was all his fault either.
Rolling around on the floor got me so worked up that I ended up provoking Grandpa myself.
Which made him angrier, and he drilled me harder. Which made me angrier from all the rolling, so I provoked him again.
And so, spinning this spiral of ascetic suffering round and round, morning arrived before I knew it.
Is this really going to be my daily routine from now on? Brutal.
"Besides," Grandpa went on, "all this rolling about now is no great difference from the rolling about thou didst at thy family's estate, is it not?"
...Huh. Is that true?
At Grandpa's words, I found myself recalling daily life at House Alrn from a few months back.
And then I had to concede the point.
There really wasn't much difference, was there?
If anything, now was the easier arrangement. At least my body wasn't being worked to the bone around the clock.
Academy classes guaranteed me rest breaks, too.
Wait. Just how brutally had I been living back at House Alrn?
"Now then. Instead of wasting time on idle fretting, let us to the training grounds. Thine body ought to move in the waking world as well, ought it not?"
'Yes, sir.'
Naturally persuaded by Grandpa's logic, I stretched and climbed out of bed.
Right. Time to try Holy Fist Arts in the real world.
After all, I needed to properly confirm whether the results of my training in Practice Mode would actually carry over into reality.