Unwanted Protagonist Gathering - 3
For roughly two days, every faculty member at the Academy had been tossing around a live bomb, praying it would not detonate in their own hands. I collected it and set it off myself.
"I'm Karl Crassius, your advisor. Familiar faces, all of you. Looking forward to working together."
I looked over the Baking Club members who, under the title of advisor, I could now legally keep an eye on. There was Luise, smiling with pure, unclouded brightness; Erich, unable to stop his pupils from trembling; and Ainter, wearing that same perpetual smile of his. Just imagining three more people joining this lineup made my chest swell with a strange, involuntary grandeur.
"We'll be seeing a lot of each other, so I plan to speak casually. Anyone here who'd rather take it slow and get friendly over time?"
In other words: I was going to use casual speech from here on out, and did anyone object? The remark was aimed squarely at Ainter, but he simply smiled and gave a light shake of his head. Fine by him, apparently. That gave me a clean excuse to drop the formalities with the three newcomers as well. Satisfying.
"Advisor or not, you don't need to walk on eggshells around me. If you need something or something happens, call me. Treat me easy."
I wrapped up the introduction with something appropriately bland. Having never been a club member myself, I hadn't really known what an advisor was supposed to do; the vice principal had explained that it mostly meant putting your name on the roster and checking now and then that nothing had gone wrong.
Exactly the level of involvement I wanted. The other faculty would lose their minds over having to watch a prince; I, on the other hand, had nearly lost my mind from the lack of any legitimate reason to watch him. It was almost pitiful, wondering who in the original story—before I existed—had been stuck managing this den of monsters.
But there was no need to waste pity or curiosity on things that never happened. I was the one in charge of the den now. When I glanced at its founder, Luise, she was gazing with pure bliss at the mountain of baking tools and ingredients piled high. Her eyes sparkled so brightly that the faculty member who had scrambled to buy all that gear would have been delighted if he could have seen her.
Erich, who had been watching Luise with warm eyes, met my gaze and awkwardly looked away. Come to think of it, now that I was at the Academy I had wanted to see more of Erich anyway—and here we were, advisor and member. This would go a long way toward smoothing out the awkwardness between us. Erich would be glad about that, too.
The moment Erich's eyes met Karl's, he looked away. His head knew there was no need for it, but his body reacted first, and what could he do about that? Erich had spent his entire life crushed under the gaze of the family head. Karl, who carried that same glint in his eyes, was someone Erich's instincts could not help but shrink from.
I shouldn't be like this.
When they were young, Karl and Erich had never been especially close brothers—but they had never turned their backs on each other either. Erich had no other siblings. The two of them could not keep this distance forever.
And on top of that, he had finally managed to join the same club as Luise.
A chance to stay by Luise's side even during club hours.
Or, with club business as the excuse, to run into her naturally outside of them as well.
Even with that strange impurity called a prince mixed in, he could not throw this opportunity away. When Erich first heard that Karl would be the advisor, his insides had nearly given out—but that was exactly why he could steel himself now. If he could not conquer his fear and avoidance of Karl, a life with Luise would be impossible!
And so a man blinded by love found the courage to face the trauma that had tormented him for years.
Around the time Erich was resolving to step out of the darkness into the light, Ainter's feelings were not particularly at ease either. The reason sat right in front of him: Karl, watching with open curiosity as Luise declared she would make cookies and began spreading out her ingredients.
I heard he was coming, but...
He had never imagined they would meet under a relationship like this. The smile never left Ainter's face, yet the light in his eyes dimmed a fraction.
Putting his name on Luise's club roster had been something of a reckless move. Imperial family members had enrolled at the Academy often enough, but none had ever joined a club. The public justification was consideration—sparing other students and the faculty advisor from the burden.
The real reason was the succession struggle among the princes. If a particular prince entered a club and made contact with its noble members, people he could never have approached in ordinary times might become part of his faction. Conversely, those same nobles would suddenly find themselves labeled as that prince's faction by the other princes, forced into a shared destiny they never asked for.
So the princes, to reduce variables their rivals might grow, and the nobles, to avoid a bolt from the blue, had silently agreed that the imperial family did not join clubs. Then two years ago, the imperial succession crisis had ended with the fierce confrontation between the First and Second Princes, culminating in the First Prince's investiture as Crown Prince.
And now the Third Prince, Ainter—who had been holding his breath all this time—was breaking that unspoken rule and joining a club? The Crown Prince must have been seized by the urge to hang him from a rope on the spot. To the Crown Prince, son of the Empress Dowager, Ainter—son of the Empress, just like the Second Prince—remained the last lingering source of anxiety.
In fact, not long after the Crown Prince's investiture sealed the fall of the Second Prince and the Empress, the Audit Department's blade—already carving through the Second Prince's faction—turned toward the Third Prince as well. Backed by the Emperor's tacit approval and the Crown Prince's orders, that blade could not be stopped by the title of Third Prince alone.
"Your Highness. His Highness the Crown Prince is most satisfied with Your Highness's silence."
And the man who had led the Audit Department into the Third Prince's palace that day was Karl Crassius—the prodigy who, at nineteen, had become the youngest department chief in history and shaken the imperial political world. That prodigy sat across from Ainter in the reception room and spoke calmly.
"That Your Highness kept silent to the end and did not stand with the Second Prince. A wise choice."
At Karl's faint smile, Ainter had smiled bitterly. His own mother, the Empress, had screamed at him asking whose child he even was. His full-blood brother, the Second Prince, had glared at him with pure rage. Still Ainter had kept silent. And so, even after the Second Prince met a suspicious death and the Empress was effectively confined, Ainter had survived.
"His Highness the Crown Prince desires no further disturbance in the imperial family."
"Though my mother differs from His Highness the Crown Prince's, we share the same father. How could my will differ from his?"
"Truly wise."
A warning: keep your mouth shut if you don't want to die. A brief acknowledgment: understood. With that exchange finished, Karl rose without lingering attachment, a mask-like smile still on his face.
"I apologize for the disturbance caused in Your Highness's palace. Our investigation found no issues whatsoever. It seems those jealous of Your Highness's reputation attempted a false accusation. We will punish them severely and offer our apologies in their place."
"These things happen. I understand."
From that day on, Ainter had lived exactly as the Crown Prince's warning—delivered through Karl—demanded: holding his breath. Even when the Audit Department, backed by Emperor and Crown Prince, utterly crushed the Second Prince's faction, and even when the purge finally swept through Ainter's maternal house, the Marquisate of Aeshilon, he kept silent. Thanks to that, Ainter was still alive, and he had intended to keep living that way.
Then he met one girl, and his life changed. While walking the Academy grounds with his "followers"—watchers in all but name—trailing after him, a girl with striking pink hair caught his eye. It had been pure whim. He had meant to keep holding his breath at the Academy, just as the Crown Prince intended. Yet he spoke to her.
"I-I'm Luise Naiad!"
The girl, Luise, answered trembling under the question of a prince who held no real power but was still a prince. Ainter met her again after that. Little by little she relaxed and began treating him more comfortably. In her, Ainter felt a warmth he had never received from anyone.
It had begun as a whim and lasted only a short while, yet the depth of that bond was genuine. Ainter was certain of it. So when he heard Luise was looking for club members, he wrote his name without hesitation. The Crown Prince might move against him again because of this. The Karl sitting right in front of him might transform into the Crown Prince's blade and dispose of him.
Even so, Ainter stepped forward. This time, he did not want to keep silent. As he looked at Luise with flour on her face and at Karl beside her, a firm resolve filled Ainter's eyes.
Is she doing this right...?
Watching Luise diligently fuss over her work, the question rose on its own. I would have needed to bake something myself at some point to know whether she was doing well or not. All I could do was watch and assume. Still, she was working with confidence, so I decided to believe she was doing fine. There were plenty of tools, so it should be all right.
I glanced sideways at the small oven. This being a fantasy world, every kind of tool wandered around brazenly under the name of magic. I had nearly lost my mind seeing wiretaps, location trackers, and surveillance cameras sitting in the Audit Department warehouse. In a world like that, the absence of an oven would have been the real disappointment.
I stared blankly at the oven for a moment, then shifted my gaze—and met Ainter's eyes. He was still smiling, his true thoughts unreadable. This was the first time I had seen him since that day in the Third Prince's palace two years ago.
I was too hard on the kid.
In this world the age of majority was a generous seventeen. But when I first met Ainter he had been fifteen, not even inside that generous range. Even if it had been the Crown Prince's order, the thought that I might have pressed a fifteen-year-old too hard still sat in a corner of my mind.
Two years ago, after the Northern campaign ended and the Crown Prince won the succession struggle, the imperial administration had been so starved for personnel that simply being alive—and remaining in public service—was reason enough for promotion.
Those who survived and proved their ability were promoted with absurd speed, and the victims of that included both me and the Minister. That was probably when the Minister started getting angrier more often.
...No, that man had already been a carrier of the rage virus even before becoming Minister. I almost whitewashed him for a second there.
Anyway, after everything that happened in the North, I had been shoved into the post of Audit Department Chief—something that had never been in my destiny—and my temper and mental state had both been thoroughly warped. Because of that, emotion sometimes bled into how I handled my work, and I had pressed Ainter harder than necessary. The Crown Prince had seemed satisfied, though. Perverted bastard.
Erich, Ainter... somehow this club was full of kids I owed apologies to. In that heavy mood I looked around at the members, and my gaze landed on Luise. Sensing my eyes, she tilted her head and looked back at me as if to ask what was wrong.
At least with you, I'm glad I don't have anything to apologize for. If anything, you should be the one apologizing to me.
If you hadn't been a capybara... I never would have ended up here...