A Shared Carriage, A Shared Room
“Then you take care on the way back too, Selian. See you when the term starts.”
Selian had shown no intention of leaving until I myself departed the capital, so I decided to go first. Returning to the academy meant spending my own money on a cheap hired carriage, but on the off chance it might work I put in a request with the imperial household. They arranged a carriage for me. As luck would have it, the very day I asked there happened to be one already bound for Felches; through the palace’s good offices I was allowed to share the ride.
The carriage was already waiting, so I gave one last wave to Selian, who had come to see me off, then hurried to open the door and climb inside. The moment I was seated it set off at once—clearly it had been waiting quite a while. I thrust my hand out the window and waved, but the coach was already so far away that Selian had vanished from sight.
“Sorry for the delay. Thank you for letting me ride with you.”
I bowed my head repeatedly in apology and gratitude toward the passenger who had already been aboard and who had agreed to share the carriage. The figure, face hidden deep inside a hooded robe, turned at my greeting and pushed the hood back, revealing her features.
“Boss?”
“I was wondering when you’d finally head back.”
Freesia’s appearance was completely unexpected—at least to me. She, on the other hand, spoke in a perfectly casual tone, as if nothing could be more natural.
“You’ve already finished your business? You said His Majesty summoned you as well, didn’t you?”
“Mm. Finished a few days ago. I’ve been waiting so we could go back together.”
If there’s a boss out there who thinks of her employees this much, I’d like to see them! Our boss is the best.
“But I’m sleepy…”
Come to think of it, Freesia had always been a night owl. She must have forced herself to stay awake in the middle of the day to meet the emperor, but a few days were nowhere near enough to overturn habits built over years. She rubbed her eyes with those dainty little hands, fighting the drowsiness. Yet the sleep pressing in was too strong; half-lidded eyes looked up at me.
I rose from my seat and moved to sit beside her. This was exactly the moment to put what I had learned to use.
“Up we go.”
Freesia glanced at me with a faintly suspicious look as I suddenly settled next to her. I slipped both hands under her arms, lifted her lightly, and gently shifted her to the center of the carriage seat. Then, resting a hand on the shoulder of the girl whose head was already nodding, I slowly drew her toward me. Supporting her carefully so she wouldn’t jolt, I laid the back of her head across my thighs.
Freesia now lay fully stretched out on the carriage seat, using my lap as a pillow, blinking up at me. I looked down at her in turn.
“Elicia…?”
Here came the finishing move. I rested my hand on her black hair and began to stroke it slowly, with the same careful gentleness one might use when petting a cat. The eyes that had been watching me in half-awake confusion only moments before gradually drifted shut.
“Eli…cia…”
Even just those four syllables of my name grew weaker with every letter. After I had stroked her hair a few more times, Freesia’s breathing evened into soft, steady little snores. She was asleep.
Looking down at her like this, I finally understood why Selian had given me a lap pillow. Watching someone trust me enough to use my thighs as a pillow and fall asleep—just that alone felt healing. If the chance ever came, I wanted to do the same for Selian, for Yuli, for Anne.
Freesia had already set off for dreamland, yet I kept gently running my fingers through her hair, savoring the soft feel of it.
“See you later, then.”
We arrived at the academy just as the sky was turning the color of sunset and parted ways toward our respective rooms—I toward the dormitory wing, Freesia toward the Magic Building. “See you later,” she had said… Well, night was almost here, so I would be heading to bed while the nocturnal Freesia would be wide awake. That must have been why.
After seeing her off I returned to my room and unpacked. First I carefully sorted the clothes Yuli and Selian had given me into the wardrobe so nothing would get mixed up. Once the clothes were put away came the underthings. Before leaving I had washed everything except what I was wearing, so the six sets of lingerie went straight into the drawer. The rest of the odds and ends didn’t amount to much. When every bag was empty, the room looked exactly as it had before I left—except that the wardrobe was now full.
The bedcovers, however, were a little rumpled. On a hunch I reached under the bed. Feeling my way across the floor into the dark far corner, I found the bag I had stashed there. A light layer of dust had settled on it; at least no one had touched it during the month I was gone. The scrap of paper I had deliberately wedged into the seam to check whether it had been opened was still in place. Just to be sure I entered the password only I knew into the lock. Inside was the most dangerous and most important thing I owned in more ways than one: my assassin’s garb. Only after confirming it was safe thrice over did I finally relax.
Well, of course. It wasn’t even time to clear the room yet; who would break into an occupied dorm room? Getting caught would mean more than demerits—expulsion was on the table. The rumpled covers were probably just me, distracted while packing and forgetting to straighten them.
I sat at the table sipping a cup of warm milk and finally felt as though I had truly come home. Strictly speaking it was only a dorm room, not a house of my own, yet it was the first space I had ever furnished exactly to my taste, and I was attached to it.
Worry and regret soon rose to the surface, though. I had worked hard, but my first-semester grades had not reached the level I wanted. The results were already out, and I had checked every scholarship I might possibly claim—twice, three times, more. The three things I had to worry about most were meal costs, tuition, and dorm fees. All three were in an awkward state.
Meals I could cover more than adequately with the part-time pay I received from Freesia; there was even enough left over for living expenses. Next was tuition. I had lost the full-ride scholarship to Selian, but at least I had managed a partial grant. Honestly I had hoped for half-tuition, yet the absences in the middle of the term had clearly cost me. Still, as they say, there’s always a way out: the compensation money from the demon invasion earlier meant I could scrape together the rest of the tuition. Everyone knows Griffin Academy’s fees are brutal, though. Once I paid them, the money left in my pocket would shrink dramatically. It was still a decent amount for living expenses, but if I thought of it as an emergency fund for situations like this one, it was nowhere near comfortable. So I would have to keep living frugally.
That left the dormitory, and that was where I found myself thinking hardest. I had managed to secure some dorm support. The problem was that the free option was a four-person room. Compared with that, a double was already quite expensive, and a single was so costly it felt almost rude to compare. It wasn’t simply twice or four times the price. In the end only two real choices remained: double or quadruple. Dip into the emergency fund a little and take a double, or leave the fund untouched and go for a four-person room. The fewer people I lived with, the easier it would be to hide my secrets—especially the Master-Servant Imprint still on my body and the assassin’s gear stashed in that dark corner. Registration for the second semester still had some time left, so I would have to think it over carefully for a while.
After Elicia left first, I too returned to my family home. Once upon a time this room of mine would have felt comfortable, yet the simple fact that Elicia was not beside me made it feel terribly bleak. I wanted nothing more than to rush straight back to the dormitory and stay with her, but a noble’s duties and responsibilities—and a daughter’s proper place—held me back. Of course, if it were for Elicia I could cast all of that aside in a heartbeat; yet when I considered that these things might one day prove useful to her, I could not simply ignore them.
So for the remainder of the vacation I decided not to stay in my own room. Instead I would stay in the room Elicia had used while she was at the mansion. The bed in the academy dormitory she had slept in for months no longer carried her scent, which was a little disappointing, but this much I could just barely endure.
I sat in the chair she had sat in, drank tea from the cup her lips had touched, and lay on the bed she had lain on with my eyes closed. That was when someone knocked.
With a small pang of regret I rose and opened the door. It was the butler who handled my miscellaneous affairs.
“My lady, we shall submit your second-semester registration just as we did for the first.”
He had come about academy registration for the new term. Thanks to the top-scholarship exemptions I would not need to pay anything; I only had to register. Even that, under normal circumstances, I would not have needed to handle myself. If I simply stayed quiet, others would take care of every detail in the best possible way—just as they had when I first enrolled.
“One moment.”
But if I let them, everything I had carefully arranged throughout the first semester would lose its meaning. So I stopped the butler as he turned to leave.
“Please make the dormitory a double room.”
I had deliberately kept myself from receiving the full scholarship by taking the top rank,
“Are you certain, my lady? Sharing living quarters with another student can be far more inconvenient than one expects.”
I had wanted to teach her the joy of delicious food, yet I had deliberately sought out only the most expensive menu items so that her budget would stay razor-thin,
“It’s fine. I’ll be living with a friend, after all.”
and after the accident brought her a generous compensation payment I had, while studying together, deliberately given her slightly wrong answers to the questions that would appear on the exams—just enough to reduce the partial scholarship she might still receive.
“Understood. As you wish, my lady, we shall apply for a double room.”
I could not allow all of that effort to go to waste.
“If you require anything further, please call for me.”
Once I confirmed the butler had gone, I lay back down on the bed and tightly hugged the pillow Elicia had used.
“Elicia…”
From the second semester onward… we would be together the whole time…