Chapter 57
Chapter 57
Brisa shrugged at the direct question.
"I do."
"You really, truly, personally know him?"
"Don't be so excessively formal. It sounds strange. They're actually around your age."
Leopold frowned.
He had never imagined that Brisa and the author of that paper might know each other.
And that the author was around their age.......
Now that he thought about it, Brisa, whom he had met outside the academy, had a surprising amount of knowledge.
'I really never imagined it.......'
In truth, in the past he had let Baron Forman's praise go in one ear and out the other.
Brisa, who always carried herself with aloof, perfect etiquette, had not seemed to suit "making a living" at all.
'Now that I think about it, there's no reason she wouldn't suit it.'
The anecdote in the tomato field was one thing, and Baron Forman's admiration had apparently not been empty words.
"We'll eat the corn ourselves, and we'll feed clover to the cows. I do know enough not to feed corn to cows."
Right....... She clearly had expertise with livestock as well. He had heard it himself.
Then the likelihood that she had interacted with this person called El was high. Their interests aligned, after all.
Brisa had even just said this.
"When your interests align, it's easy to become close."
A child of the same age with matching interests.
Sylvia, too, had quickly grown close with peers who shared her interest in romantic relationships.
Then Brisa would be the same.
"I......."
Strangely, his voice cracked. He had wanted to casually ask something like, "Are you close with El?"
"I thought...... you were only close with Harrison during your academy days."
"Harrison? It was more that he was easy to be around than that we were close."
Brisa shrugged.
"As you know, Harrison was popular with girls even when he just sat still. But I had a fiancé, so he said I was easy to be around. And since I was three years younger, there was no risk of getting dragged into the older girls' romantic drama. Since he treated me that way, I was comfortable too. That's all."
That was true.
The best-looking person at the academy was undoubtedly Leopold.
But the person most popular with women was Harrison.
Even at that age, Harrison had a strangely decadent quality that bewitched people.
"Our interests were different too...... and there was a limit to how close we could get. No matter how often we spent time together."
"Then this person called El—no, this kid called El—are you close?"
"......We're close. More or less."
How could this be. He had never imagined that Brisa would have someone she described as "close."
'Who is it?'
Were they from the central region?
'El' was a pseudonym, and there was a high probability that he was a boy.
Because the paper had clearly contained the phrase "the species-preservation instincts of a male I know well."
At the time, reading that, he had thought, 'Is he a married adult man? How vulgar.'
'But he was our age?'
And yet he used such lowbrow language in a paper....... He was definitely a perverted bastard.
He had broken off the engagement so that she could marry a better man and live a normal family life.
And yet she had grown close to a bastard like that.
Sending the notice ending the engagement had been a considerable blow to Leopold as well.
Because while everyone took it for granted, they also reacted with things like, "Still, to break off the engagement right after her father's funeral. How cold......."
But it didn't matter.
It was better for the arrows of criticism to be aimed at himself.
That was better than having Brisa cursed as someone who had "presumptuously coveted Nozen" because of the broken engagement.
It had been that way ever since the engagement ceremony, when he saw the little girl who couldn't even cry and was gasping for breath.
The child who had boldly insisted that seven years wasn't that young—he had only ever wished for her to be as childish as others her age.
He only wanted her confidence to be about harmless things like that. That was all.
And yet the person she had been growing close to was nothing but a pervert.
From the perspective of the person who had ended the engagement so she could find someone better, didn't he have a right to feel a little aggrieved?
Leopold's gaze turned petulant.
"You, from the look of it, seem to have read every paper that person wrote."
"More or less?"
Brisa answered slowly.
Apparently Brisa had something weighing on her mind too—something about this person called 'El' that she couldn't simply tell him outright.
She hesitated, then asked cautiously.
"Leopold, you've read some of it too, right? What do you think of 'El'?"
And she quickly added.
"It's just the two of us, so don't use Western-Style Speech. It's late at night, and we're tired."
Leopold answered promptly.
"He's a rather uncultured pervert."
Brisa's lips tightened slightly.
"His writing isn't very good either."
Brisa let out a soft sigh.
"But the content itself is trustworthy. And useful."
A brief silence passed.
In the end, Leopold couldn't suppress his curiosity and asked.
"Well, he doesn't seem like he'd suit you all that well...... but how did you end up getting close?"
Brisa narrowed her eyes. Her face looked as though she was mulling something over.
After a long pause, she sprang to her feet as if she had made up her mind and said:
"That's because I'm 'El,' Leopold."
Hearing those words, Leopold smiled softly.
"I see. That's an interesting fact."
A brief silence passed.
Only after that did Leopold also spring up as if leaping to his feet.
"What?"
His eyes widened as if they would pop out.
Brisa said sulkily.
"I'll have all the papers on livestock organized by next week. You said you're going somewhere starting tomorrow."
"What? You're 'El'? How is that possible?"
"Well then, I'll be going."
"Wait, wait. Wait, Brisa. We're in the middle of a conversation—where are you going?"
"To study refinement and composition."
She answered haughtily.
"If I'm going to match your level, I can't keep going on like this."
She promptly turned around and went back the way she had come.
Leopold hurriedly ran and caught up to her.
"I, I! I thought 'El' was an adult man!"
"Well, that's gratifying. That's the whole point of using a pseudonym."
"You clearly wrote in the paper on livestock and monsters about 'the instincts of a male I know well'!"
He felt wronged.
"You wrote as if you knew all about males who do trashy things for the sake of species preservation!"
"Of course I know well. My father was like that."
Brisa answered with a shrug.
"He already had a firmly designated heir, but he still had me in case the line might die out. Well, there was probably lust involved too. Isn't that the instinct of a male?"
Leopold was at a loss for words.
In the meantime, Brisa disappeared into the Tulip Hall.
* * *
Around the time I was at the academy, I wrote a lot of papers.
I wanted to gather together the knowledge scattered throughout various books.
Since neither agriculture nor livestock raising was properly recognized as a field of study, I had to do it in secret.
People who looked for such books were rare among the nobility, and there was not a single child who took an interest in them.
But if I was looking for books on agriculture and livestock raising.......
Wouldn't people think I was some kind of weird kid?
During my academy days, that was what I feared most.
Other people seeing me as strange.
And then...... hearing people say, "Isn't she out of her mind?"
"A noble looking at books about livestock?"
"She's a bit...... unusual. They say she likes studying crops. I've never seen anyone around me who's interested in that kind of thing."
"Couldn't it be related to her mother? She's definitely not normal."
In the end, once those rumors started circulating, everyone would think of my mother, and that news would obviously reach Leopold.
I hated that so much. It was probably because he was the first "outsider" to have discovered my mother's symptoms.
Therefore, I absolutely never opened such books in front of others.
When night came and all the students had disappeared, that was when I began reading related books in a corner. I read and studied until dawn.
After that, I always wanted to organize what I'd learned so I could look it up easily later.
So I began writing what are called review papers.
At the Magic Tower, anything submitted in the proper paper format was automatically accepted as a record. The review was handled by a magic circle, so no human reviewer was involved.
'It was a service perfectly suited to me.'
I didn't want to keep notes related to it in my dormitory room.
I wrote freely because I assumed no one would ever read it. I gathered various facts and even proposed hypotheses.
I spent so many nights doing that that I practically lived in the library.
Naturally, I slept in my dormitory room in the afternoon after classes ended.
It was only natural that I never beat Leopold academically at the academy. My attention was always elsewhere.
'But he calls me a perverted bastard with terrible writing skills? Honestly.'
Thinking about Leopold's assessment, I was dumbfounded.
Still, it was true that I had been careful to make sure nothing in those papers sounded like "Brisa Sears."
I had tried so hard to hide myself, but now it didn't seem to matter much anymore.
'Because I really am crazy.'
From the moment I accepted the original novel and began acting on the future I had learned from it, I was no longer in my right mind. So if people whispered that I was a little strange, it wasn't exactly a misunderstanding.
Now I wasn't even resentful.
'Leopold is interested in livestock too, after all. Well, he won't think it's strange.'