Student Council (4)
Liliana recalled that moment.
And once more she posed to herself the question that had taken root so deep in her heart.
To whom, exactly…
The boy's promise had surely taken a form like this.
If that was so, then to whom had that boy sworn such a vow?
Several questions remained, but it would be proper to unravel them one by one, in order. The girl first summoned to mind those who would have wanted her protected.
Her father. Her mother. The knights who had not been able to follow her here. Even the men who secretly pined for her despite her publicly announced engagement.
Her mother had to be struck from the list. The boy had clearly referred to a he.
Anyone she could still meet had to be struck as well. Otherwise there would have been no reason for the boy to speak of "his share as well."
And with that, every option she had considered vanished. All but one.
A man who had wanted to protect her enough to lay down his life.
A man.
And a name the living she would never see again.
"Finn…"
The one to whom the boy named Veri had sworn his vow would be Finn.
She predicted as much, and that prediction was, in a sense, the correct answer.
And so the girl reviewed her reasoning once more, confirmed there was no flaw in it—and that certainty handed her the next proposition.
Why had Veri agreed to that request?
The answer was nothing more than her imagination, yet she could find no hypothesis nearly as persuasive.
First she noted that Veri, like Finn, was a commoner.
A commoner who had nonetheless become the Academy's valedictorian, whose entire bearing had shifted overnight, who possessed the skill to slay that monster alone.
And Finn had been the same.
There was Finn's report, which had deduced the location of the Elixir from information no one even knew how he had obtained—information that had eluded even the Empire's most renowned physicians.
Finn had known the conclusion in advance and reverse-engineered the report to fit. But from the perspective of anyone who did not know that, it was only natural to conclude he possessed a genius for inference and deduction that bordered on the miraculous.
That, then, was their common ground.
Unbelievable talent, despite being commoners.
Her hypothesis followed from there.
Just as Finn had delivered the Elixir to her, he must have given Veri some secret technique or medicinal reagent that could make him stronger.
Swordsmen, as a breed, were creatures who forever pursued greater strength. Veri, a commoner, would have been all the more grateful for that grace.
And before leaving the Empire, would Finn not have asked a favor of such a Veri?
If you become a great swordsman someday, please serve the Princess in my place as well.
Princess.
Only then did the girl understand why Veri alone called her the way Finn had.
What else would a servant who had cherished and loved her so dearly talk about upon meeting someone else?
For a girl who had betrayed that grace, it was an utterly shameless, mortifying thought—yet she could easily guess that she herself had been the subject of those conversations.
And it was not entirely wrong, so she nodded, swallowing a bitter taste.
He must have heard what she liked and what she disliked. Even the fact that she preferred being called Princess rather than Your Highness.
But he could not have revealed that.
Finn had chosen to vanish bearing every sin himself.
And Veri, having received those stories from Finn, had to grow close to her without ever bringing Finn up. To protect her as Finn had asked, that would have been the easiest path—and Veri would have wanted, desperately, to keep that promise.
The girl had heard that swordsmen lived and died by some notion of romance, so Veri staking his life to keep that vow was not entirely beyond her understanding.
And the last question.
Why… did he say he was glad he could protect me this time?
Had she ever even once been in mortal danger?
The girl shook her head in silence.
Was there some other reason Veri would lament having failed to protect her?
She shook her head at that as well.
After worrying at it for a long while, she judged that this particular question, at least, could not be answered. Even so, she concluded it would not matter.
Whatever the answer turned out to be, it would not change the attitude or the policy with which she would treat Veri going forward.
Veri was the remnant of the grace Finn had left behind.
Like the hairpin that had become her engagement ring. Like the mana the Elixir had bestowed—the very force that had allowed her to enter the Academy as valedictorian.
In truth, Veri had laid down his life to fulfill that promise, and by doing so he had proven himself a man worthy of trust.
And so the girl admitted that she could not treat Veri with the same icy manner she reserved for other men.
That he was Finn's remnant had already troubled her privately. That Veri had actually staked his life drove a nail through the matter for good.
The problem, however, was that the person in question held an overtly romantic interest in her.
The atmosphere of it, the quality of it, was quite different from that of other men. Even so, goodwill was goodwill. It did not spring from loyalty, and such interest from any man other than Finn was something the girl simply could not accept.
Whether he had fallen at first sight upon seeing her face, or whether he had heard Finn's exaggerated accounts of his own profound affection and come to feel the same—the reason did not matter.
What mattered was the conclusion that he harbored such feelings.
And so the girl realized she had been placed in a dilemma: she could neither cast Veri out nor take him in.
There was only one way to resolve it.
A means of erasing the romantic interest Veri held for her as a woman.
If she succeeded, Veri would change his mind and wear only the sense of mission to fulfill his promise. And if that happened, there would be nothing stopping her from appointing Veri as her knight.
A knight who held the title of Academy valedictorian. Who would dare question his qualifications?
The girl thought, and she worried. Pure goodwill was not something whose quality one could even debate as poor, so she had no choice but to take the matter seriously.
The conclusion she reached was this.
She herself would mention him even more blatantly than she already did, and she would reminisce about him.
In front of Veri. While concealing that the person in question was Finn.
One reason was that she did not know whether Veri knew Finn was dead. Another was that she did not know how Veri would react to the fact that she was still remembering someone who had already died.
And she would pair Veri with a suitable match.
Veri was a commoner, but having enrolled in the Academy, he had become someone it was no longer easy to introduce as merely a commoner. It would not be that difficult. What's more, Veri was the Academy's valedictorian. Of the Knight Department, no less.
He was far too well suited to fulfilling the romance noble young ladies dreamed of at least once—the classic love of a noble daughter, held and protected in the arms of an excellent knight, carrying on a tender affection.
Rumors were already rampant that he had felled that enormous monster. If Veri wished it, most noble young ladies would gladly choose to be with him.
His looks were decent enough, after all.
And so, when Veri chose Grace as his next party member, the girl smiled, eyes going round, having found the perfect catch.
I can pair him with her! She's a devout girl, so she won't be promiscuous, and as valedictorian of the Divinity Department they're a perfect match.
The girl looked at Grace and all but licked her chops.
Grace, who had not the faintest idea why the valedictorian of the Magic Department was gazing at her with such a sly smile, could only tremble in her shoulders.
The girl, having already finished every deliberation, moved quickly—and blatantly.
In the middle of a four-person meeting over a meal at the student cafeteria, she suddenly reached over and stroked the hair of Grace, who sat beside her, and asked Veri just that.
"Kya—kyaaah…! Y-Your Highness?!"
"…Look at this hair. It's silk itself, honestly. Don't you think so, Veri?"
"…Pardon?"
Why on earth was she doing this?
Veri… Finn. In the span of a few days, as if turning over a palm—no. From the conference room until now. In a matter of mere minutes her attitude toward him had shifted yet again, and he had reached the point of worrying for his Princess's well-being.
The girl's actions made sense, if one thought in general terms. Boys that age fell in love in an instant and gave up on love just as fast.
But reality was entirely different, and so her subsequent actions would prove a disastrous blunder. For Finn, who had looked at no one but the girl for so long, it could not have been anything but bitterly galling.
Yet the boy's anger had nowhere to go.
He still did not know who the true love in the girl's heart was.
And Grace, who had unintentionally remained near the boy as he swallowed that homeless anger inside himself, found herself caught between the two of them—an unasked-for third party, suffering an awkwardness she had never wanted.