A Chance Until the Festival Ends
The place the Crown Prince had taken Hayes was the very top of the castle. The strong wind whipped her red hair about fiercely, like a flag caught atop the tower.
"This is called the Black Falcon Dormitory."
"...Wasn't Your Highness the Crown Prince scheduled to stay at Stone Lion tonight?"
"I was. But with my uncle serving as the supervising professor, it felt awkward to go anywhere else. Besides, Bayul is here."
"Then why here, of all places...?"
At her question, Crown Prince Lindemann, who had been gazing down at the academy's nightscape, turned to her with a smile.
"The breeze is pleasant up here, isn't it?"
"Yes, it blows quite hard, being the very top."
"I remembered something my uncle once said, so I brought you here. You looked hot."
"Oh, goodness—I beg your pardon!"
Only then did Hayes realize that far from wearing her uniform, she hadn't even bothered to button her shirt. She'd done it to make her brief rest a little more comfortable, but regret came flooding in all the same. She hurriedly fastened the buttons and pulled her uniform back on.
"I'd like to tell you there's no need, but I suspect you wouldn't listen anyway."
"I have committed an impropriety before the Crown Prince. I apologize."
"It isn't Sir Hayes's working hours right now."
"Even so..."
"And I, too, am not here as the Crown Prince."
The prince's eyes grew serious. Just as they had that day, on the day of the Emperor's wedding.
"I sent Duke Randert a secret letter for the first time in my life. I asked him to make certain you were included among the Full Moon Knights being called up this time. To be honest, I never expected the Duke to grant my request. I was simply leaving it to chance."
There could be no reply to a secret letter. The hours spent waiting for the Full Moon Knights had passed achingly slowly, and when at last he spotted Hayes arriving at the imperial palace at the head of the order, the joy Crown Prince Lindemann felt was truly beyond words.
The first person to come to mind the moment he opened his eyes each morning.
At some point, Hayes had become that person to him.
"The choice was mine."
"...Does that mean you volunteered for the escort?"
"You could interpret it that way, but to be precise, Duke Randert told me the decision was mine to make, so I simply made it."
"Is this your answer to the question I asked before?"
For a brief moment, hope flickered across Crown Prince Lindemann's face. His heart pounded at the possibility that he might finally hear the words he longed for so desperately.
"No, it isn't."
"...I see."
The prince's voice deflated at once. Whether she noticed or not, Hayes added an explanation.
"I thought the Duke might find himself in a difficult position if I didn't come."
"...Am I to understand that if Sir Hayes had not come here, I would have been tormenting Duke Randert?"
"I know Your Highness would never do such a thing."
"And yet?"
"I simply did not wish to create an uncomfortable situation."
Why was it that even the sight of her answering so boldly, without a trace of hesitation, struck him as so impossibly splendid?
I didn't come because I wanted to see you.
I just didn't want to complicate things.
So don't get the wrong idea.
Distilled to its essence, that was exactly what Hayes had said—three short sentences. And yet the prince felt no anger.
It had begun the moment she held her blade to the neck of the Jaggar chapter master. That was the first time he had ever looked at a woman and thought, how magnificent.
That day, with her frail frame, she had shattered her opponent's sword and wrung a surrender from him. It was an unforgettable scene, one that refused to fade. Ever since, it had been difficult to stop thinking about her.
And so, uncharacteristically, he had marshaled every advantage he possessed to summon her here. If she was disappointed in him, so be it. Bearing that, too, was his burden to carry.
"I will accept any disappointment you hold toward me gladly. It was simply your way of expressing that you wished to see me, and calling you here was the only means I had of meeting you."
"......"
Nothing had changed. The prince who had blurted out his confession out of nowhere and thrown her into disarray remained exactly as he had always been.
"Do I make you so uncomfortable?"
"...No."
"You seemed very much at ease with Sir Ian a moment ago."
"You mean Senior Ian?"
"The two of you were facing each other and laughing the whole time."
"Ah, that—we haven't seen each other in so long, and he was my senior mentor, so..."
"How old is he?"
"You're asking Senior Ian's age?"
Hayes's eyes went round at the out-of-the-blue question.
"That expression..."
"......?"
"It's adorable."
He had always thought of her only as magnificent, so this unexpected side of her came as a surprise. There was no denying it now—he had fallen for her, properly and completely.
"Senior Ian is thirty this year."
Being called adorable to her face was mortifying. Lowering her head slightly to hide her flushed cheeks, Hayes managed to answer.
"Thirty? He looks remarkably young."
"That's why he's famous among us for his boyish looks."
"Does he have a sweetheart?"
"...I couldn't say, even to you."
"You served under him, and you don't even know that?"
"Am I strictly required to know such a thing?"
As the prince's incomprehensible questions kept coming, Hayes answered while secretly dumbfounded. She had never imagined the Crown Prince took such an interest in Senior Ian. She even wondered whether she ought to ask Ian privately later and report back on the existence of a sweetheart.
"Haha, there's no need for that. It comes through clearly that yours is a proper senior-junior relationship."
He had pressed her relentlessly about whether Ian had a lover, and now suddenly declared it a proper senior-junior relationship. It was impossible not to find the conclusion baffling.
"I'll take my answer to my question another time. It seems I was rather hasty today."
"No. I'll answer now."
As Hayes turned to face Crown Prince Lindemann squarely, her hair drifted across her small face. He had a bad feeling about this.
"...Must it be right now?"
He was a prince who had spent his entire life attended and indulged in the palace. Rejection was something he had never once had to grow accustomed to.
"Making Your Highness wait long would also be a form of disrespect, I believe."
"If that's the extent of your disrespect, you're welcome to it as often as you like..."
Perhaps from nerves, her throat went dry all at once. Even with the wind against her, sweat beaded along the back of her neck.
"I imagine you have a fairly good idea already."
"The festival hasn't even begun. Aren't you being a little unfair?"
"My feelings will not have changed after the festival, either."
She had clearly eaten a stubborn pumpkin before coming. Looking at him without a single waver, laying out her convictions, Hayes meant every word.
The problem was that Crown Prince Lindemann himself found even this side of her magnificent. The fever of first love, arrived at eighteen, looked fated to burn for quite a long while.
"May I make a proposal?"
Retreating having accomplished nothing was not his style. The prince played his last card.
"I already told you it would be no use."
"How much do you know about me?"
"Pardon?"
"That I'm the Crown Prince who will inherit the throne next. If you know anything else, tell me just one thing."
"Well, that, everything else, I also..."
"You don't, do you?"
It was hardly Hayes alone. Unless one was among his inner circle, most people—even those serving within the palace, let alone beyond it—knew nothing of him. To begin with, he was not someone just anyone could meet.
"Then let us do this."
Crown Prince Lindemann strode one step closer to Hayes.
Perhaps it was the nearness between them.
Ba-dump, ba-dump.
For one instant, Hayes's heart pounded wildly. To feel such a thing for the Crown Prince—five whole years her junior, no less—was, by her reckoning, a truly absurd situation.
"Give me a chance until the festival ends."
"...A chance?"
"A chance to let you know me. I will work hard to show you what kind of man I am, and with what heart I confessed to you."
"...Pleading so won't make Your Highness stop being the Crown Prince."
"So my status is the greatest obstacle after all."
He had known it from the very start, and yet the sting of it was not so easily borne.
"Couldn't you decide later whether or not to climb over that obstacle? For a little while, set your prejudice aside and focus only on the man I am. Afterward, I will give you up cleanly."
"...Do you swear it, as a man?"
"Of course."
From the troubled look on Hayes's face, he could tell he had already won her halfway over.
"And I, too, wish to know."
"Wish to know? Know what, exactly?"
"Tell me about yourself as well. I find I know very little about you—nothing, in fact, beyond the fact that you belong to the Full Moon Knights."
Until the sparring match at the imperial party, not a soul had known her name, the prince included. Now she was a knight made famous by a string of incidents—but that was the whole of it.
"Then what else am I supposed to tell you...?"
"Then I'll ask. What kind of place is Hamilton?"
"...Hamilton?"
"Yes—the place you were born and raised. All I know is that it rains a great deal there these days. Ah, and that it's Duke Randert's territory. That seems a fine place to start."
The place Hayes had been born and had lived her whole life. That was what Crown Prince Lindemann wanted to know.
To enter her life, he first had to understand her. And in doing so, he might just find a way to turn her heart. That was the prince's gambit.
"Hamilton is a barren land. It was Duke Randert who raised a land thick with withered grass and stone into the great city it is today. I was born in a small mountain village there."
A promise was a promise. Hayes opened up about her homeland of Hamilton.
Until her story came to an end, Crown Prince Lindemann did not stir so much as a finger. As if determined to take in every last thing about her with his eyes and his ears alike.