The Grand Duchess Can't Take It
As I forced my unwilling body upright, regret came flooding in.
What on earth had I been thinking two hours ago, using sword training as an excuse for not visiting the ducal residence?
If I were ever given the chance to return to the past, I would have sewn my own mouth shut just to keep myself from spouting such a miserable excuse.
"You've heard the rules, haven't you?"
"...You mean the rule that if my sword so much as grazes you, I win."
"Yes. You know it well."
Rebecca emphasized the rules as if to leave me not even the tiniest gap to slip through this time. She seemed to still be holding a grudge not only over the cheek-kiss incident, but also over the staring contest from the very first day we met.
"...Is this a wish bet as well?"
"Yes, of course it is."
I asked just in case. It was exactly as I'd expected.
"You're the one who said every bet we make from now on should be a wish bet."
An unshakable determination to make me grant her wish, no matter what, was radiating from the Grand Duchess's eyes. And since I had already said those words, just as Rebecca pointed out, I couldn't bring myself to object.
"···."
"You're not thinking of going back on your word now, are you?"
"..........Fine. Understood."
"Good. Let's begin right away."
Whish—
The moment Rebecca's words declared the start, one of the duchy's knights tossed a wooden sword my way, and I gripped it so tightly it seemed as though it might snap, as if it were my lifeline.
...It really was a lifeline. If I lost it, who knew what humiliation awaited me.
One way or another, somehow or other.
The duel of the century(?) over our wish tickets—between Rebecca and me—had begun.
Crack—! Thud!
Until now, the training ground had echoed only with the sound of one-sided beatings, but now the clash of wooden sword against wooden sword began to ring out.
"Young Lord Albert's eyes have completely changed, haven't they?"
"What are they even betting on..."
For the record, the knights watching our duel knew that this was a bet, but not exactly what was being wagered. I didn't particularly feel like announcing that it was wish tickets on the line.
"What does that matter? What matters is that the young lord, who was only getting pummeled a moment ago, is holding his own now."
"So you think Albert might actually graze the young lady, then?"
"...No. That's not happening."
The knights were right.
I was certainly showing a different side of myself than before. But that was all. My sword still couldn't touch Rebecca at all.
Still, that much was enough.
After all, the purpose of this bet wasn't for me to defeat Rebecca—it was for my sword to touch the Grand Duchess.
"...I suppose that training wasn't entirely meaningless after all?"
"You think so?"
Rebecca, too, seemed somewhat surprised by my changed demeanor. It was only natural that she would be.
In our previous duel, I had swung my wooden sword wildly, desperate to land even a single counterattack on the Grand Duchess.
This time, my very mindset was different.
Instead of swinging blindly, I thought about which direction, which path to swing through—then swung. One could dismiss it as merely a difference of thought and mindset, but when it came to the sword, that difference mattered a great deal.
It was the greatest lesson I'd learned from three years of training with the blade.
Thud—!
"...Is the young lord actually going to win this?"
"Oh, come on. No way. She's still Rebecca, after all."
As proof of that lesson, I had managed to parry a fair portion of Rebecca's strikes.
However.
"You're far too slow."
Wham—!
It was, indeed, only "a fair portion."
"...The Grand Duchess is simply fast."
"Am I? I hadn't noticed."
Even carrying the penalty of being forbidden to let my sword touch her even once, Rebecca was relentless. Swords that came along a trajectory she could dodge with movement, she evaded with a light shift of her body; swords whose trajectories made evasion impossible, she blocked with her own blade.
"You're leaving yourself wide open."
The moment I made any large movement to attack, the Grand Duchess's keen-edged wooden sword would strike my body without fail.
It was exactly what you'd expect from the strongest munchkin heroine of The Crown Prince Holds the Sword.
At this point, a question occurred to me.
'...How on earth did she lose to Mikhail?'
How could someone have possibly beaten Mikhail, the protagonist of this novel? After watching Rebecca for three years, I often wondered whether a more perfect person could even exist.
Of course, she always lost to me—but that was because I resorted to cowardly methods too shameful to put into words. Given this novel's protagonist's righteous nature, Mikhail wouldn't have used any such underhanded tricks.
'What... did she lose at, exactly?'
I couldn't even remember which category the Grand Duchess had been defeated in. I was quite sure I'd reread that part at least three times, yet for some reason, my memory of it was perfectly blank.
"...Stop daydreaming."
WHAM—!
But such questions vanished quickly, chased away by Rebecca's wooden sword the moment she realized I was entertaining strange thoughts.
"When we're sparring, you focus on me and nothing else."
If that sentence hadn't contained the word "sparring"—or if the person saying it hadn't been beating someone with a wooden sword while delivering it—it would have been the most romantic sentence in the world. I couldn't help but mourn that...
...Wait just a moment. A romantic sentence?
Barely a heartbeat after that thought of regret, something flashed through my mind.
And I immediately discovered a monumental loophole in the rules of this bet.
"Grand Duchess."
"Why are you calling me all of a sudden?"
"Did you want me to focus on you and only you?"
"...I'm sorry, what?"
There was no rule in this duel saying I couldn't talk.
"...What are you talking about?"
Rebecca reacted as though she couldn't make sense of my words. I suppose anyone would be thrown off if their sparring partner suddenly stopped mid-duel and asked something so out of nowhere.
But exploiting that bewilderment was my entire strategy.
"You just said it, didn't you? That you wanted me to focus on you, and you alone."
"...What's that supposed to mean."
The Grand Duchess still didn't seem to grasp what I was getting at.
But it took hardly any time at all for that frozen expression to crumble into embarrassment.
"Have you been thinking such things all along? That you wished I would look only at you?"
"...What did you just say?"
My words must have been that shocking, because Rebecca stopped mid-swing, her wooden sword frozen in the air as she stared at me.
Of course, her sword stopping didn't mean my mouth did.
"We're not even married yet, and you're already jealous? I fear for what the future holds."
"What... what are you saying right now!"
Jealousy.
A single word, made of just two syllables, had drawn out that wonderfully lively reaction from the Grand Duchess.
"You have no need to be jealous. Just as you wish, I will always be by your side."
"When did I ever say I was jealous..."
"People call what you just said 'jealousy.'"
"How is that in any way jealousy—"
"You said it with your own two lips, Grand Duchess. That you wanted me to focus on you and you alone."
Some afterwords crept in and a phrase or two got dropped along the way, but the broad strokes—that I was focused on Rebecca—remained perfectly intact.
"That's... what on earth..."
By now, Rebecca's face was completely scarlet. That deep, blazing red called to mind the strawberry ice cream I'd fed her earlier.
"...Did I just hear that right? I thought I heard someone say the young lady got jealous."
"No, you heard it correctly. I heard it loud and clear too."
The knights who'd been watching our duel had apparently overheard the whole conversation, because they began to murmur among themselves.
Rebecca wore the expression of someone genuinely about to die of embarrassment.
And as I had repeated many times by now, attacks were only effective when chained together.
"You were angry earlier because it had been so long since my last visit—but really, it was because you were jealous, worried I might be playing around with other women."
"···."
"As I said just a moment ago, there's no need to worry. I am, after all, entirely your fiancé."
Ooooh—!
Cheers of admiration rose from the onlookers—formerly knights of House Valencia.
"Isn't that a confession?"
"It is, so shut up and watch. This is an important moment."
"...Weren't the two of them supposed to be sparring? Why is there a love confession all of a sudden—"
"Is that what's important right now? No wonder you don't have a girlfriend."
"What did you say, you bastard?"
The spectators were on the verge of breaking into an actual fight, their admiration tipping over into fisticuffs—but Rebecca and I saw none of it.
The Grand Duchess couldn't see it, her head bowed under the weight of her embarrassment.
Neither could I. After all, would I not be ashamed to be saying such things? I was doing my best not to show it, but I, too, wanted to crawl into a mousehole.
A drink or two might have made it bearable, but spouting such honeyed nonsense stone-cold sober—and in front of an audience, no less—was truly beyond what any decent human being should do.
And yet I had been able to stand firm and keep talking.
Because this shame I felt right now was a hundred times preferable to losing the duel to Rebecca and suffering the humiliation that would follow. Considering everything I'd put the Grand Duchess through whenever she lost to me, what she'd do to me upon winning was beyond even my imagination.
So, swallowing my shame, I finished what I had to say.
"Your guard is down."
"······!"
I swung my wooden sword at the off-guard Grand Duchess without hesitation.
Even a munchkin like Rebecca, Grand Duchess of Valencia, could not dodge a sword flying at her at full speed while her head was buried in her hands over sheer embarrassment.
Tap—
With a sound that was almost cute, my wooden sword found its mark on the Grand Duchess's right arm.
"...I believe I've won."
"···."
The duel for the wish ticket was my victory.