Settling the Broken Engagement ②
The Edwin Baronate occupies a far corner of the kingdom, a region given over chiefly to simple farming. Even so, it boasts neither any remarkable specialty nor particularly vast fields—just an ordinary fief of the sort that, more or less, manages to feed itself.
Then there was the compensation owed for unilaterally dissolving an aristocratic betrothal—one that had been maintained for more than a decade. Liliana herself had sworn she would bear every last scrap of the responsibility, and the sum involved was anything but small.
...Frankly, there was no arithmetic by which House Edwin could possibly pay it. They would have to live pinched and scraping for a decade or more merely to gather the money.
In the original novel, the broken engagement had been blamed on the other party's violence and verbal abuse toward Liliana, and so House Ventus had been made to shoulder all the blame. This time, however, it was Liliana who had broken the engagement of her own accord.
With the story unfolding so differently from the original, a grave crisis was now descending upon House Edwin.
A few days later, at the Edwin Baronate.
A document arrived for Walter Edwin—Liliana's father and head of House Edwin—like a bolt from a clear sky.
"This... this is truly the truth?!"
Walter Edwin held the paper aloft in trembling hands. The envelope that had contained it bore the crest of House Ventus, the family with whom they had been bound by betrothal.
"We have dispatched a messenger to Lady Liliana to confirm the facts. Given House Ventus's bearing, however, I suspect it is genuine."
"That stupid girl! To do this without so much as consulting her father!!"
Walter Edwin clutched his head. If what was written in that document was true, the responsibility fell one hundred percent on House Edwin.
To think his own daughter—Liliana, of all people—had fallen for another man and unilaterally broken her engagement! For a noblewoman already betrothed, it was conduct of the most shameful kind. And she had gone and proposed the break without a word of discussion with him?
The girl hadn't merely gone mad. She had gone spectacularly mad.
Had he spoiled her too much, this daughter born to him late in life, simply because she had a talent for magic? Walter Edwin felt a headache blooming behind his eyes.
"Darling! Is it really true?!"
Baroness Adriana Edwin burst through the door of the lord's study. Her face had gone deathly pale.
"Tell me it isn't true that Liliana did something so stupid!"
"I'm confirming it now. But House Ventus would never send a document like this without verifying the facts first. I believe it is true."
"Ah..."
The baroness staggered as if she might faint, and one of the maids rushed forward to support her. Walter Edwin looked at his wife's face.
"Now that things have come to this, we will have to take responsibility. But how in the world are we supposed to pay compensation of this magnitude..."
"Liliana... what on earth was she thinking..."
Walter Edwin could only clutch his aching head.
Several days passed.
Liliana being with Allen had become an ordinary fact of life, and at some point I had stopped paying her any mind.
Was it really possible to put more than ten years to rest this quickly?
To be honest, I could hardly claim it was no problem at all. It was closer to lying to myself—trying to look as if nothing were wrong, trying to be that way.
And at the same time, there was her.
Riel Ignis. This world's main heroine, and my friend. Whenever she stayed by my side, I felt the pain knotted in my chest being pared away.
Today I had come with her to a small shop on the outskirts of the capital.
"There aren't many people, and the tea is really good!"
Riel lifted the milk tea she had ordered. It was, indeed, a quiet, atmospheric little place, and the tea was quite good as well.
"I'm impressed you found a shop like this."
"I stumbled on it while I was running all over the place at the start of term!"
...I didn't bother asking who she had been running from.
Riel was still ignoring Allen and fleeing from him. Allen, for his part, kept trying to approach her, but after his earlier argument with me he couldn't be too aggressive anywhere there were witnesses.
"Ugh, how long am I going to have to sit in front of that guy... Seat changes are next week..."
"Haha..."
In the time we had been at the academy, seats had been reassigned three times. They were decided by lottery, and with an almost eerie consistency, Riel's seat had always ended up next to Allen's—in front of him, behind him, or right beside him.
I had worried it might happen again, but this time Riel looked thoroughly confident that it wouldn't.
"I've got a plan!"
Or so she declared.
"By the way, Miss Liliana didn't come to class today, did she?"
"Yeah, that's right."
Liliana hadn't attended today. According to the homeroom teacher, she apparently had some important business.
"She was probably summoned back to the barony."
"Is it about the broken engagement?"
"Yeah. House Ventus has finished its investigation, so they should have billed the barony for the compensation by now."
After I sent the letter to the count's house, everything that followed had unfolded with remarkable speed. The count who received my letter—my father, that is—had immediately sent people to the academy and confirmed the facts with both Liliana and me.
Liliana had admitted everything honestly, and that had been the end of it. In the end, House Ventus had laid her attitude and statements before the magistrate as proof that the fault was hers, and the magistrate had acknowledged it and approved the dissolution of the engagement.
Given that Liliana had maintained that stance throughout, it was all but impossible now for House Edwin to reverse the break.
...I had snuck a look at the compensation figure the accompanying magistrate had assessed. It was not a sum House Edwin could pay on the spot. I figured they had summoned her home to interrogate her over the matter.
For the time being, House Edwin would be in serious trouble. Having spent so many years betrothed to Liliana, I had built considerable rapport with the people of the barony, so of course I felt sorry for them. But now that things had come to this, there was nothing to be done. In a pact between noble houses, one's personal feelings were rightly set aside.
Liliana Edwin had received a letter from the barony the day before and had hurried down to the baronial territory.
A quiet fief far from the capital. A modest barony of ordinary size, the kind that earned what it harvested that year and lived on it that year. It had been only a few months since she last saw her hometown, and yet to Liliana it felt strangely unfamiliar.
"Lady Liliana!"
The moment she stepped out of the station, an elderly man called her name and approached. It was Gordon, the butler who had served House Edwin since Baron Edwin's youth.
"His Lordship wishes to see you at once, my lady."
Here it comes.
Liliana already had a fair idea why she had been summoned. She had steeled herself to a degree, but now that it was actually upon her, her heart felt terribly heavy.
"Let's go, then."
Slap!
Walter Edwin's palm cracked across Liliana's face. He had struck her so hard that she staggered backward and went down. Tears welled in her eyes.
"Do you... do you even understand what you've done!?"
The face of the father who had never once raised a hand to her, who had always been so kind, was twisted like a demon's. Her mother, Adriana, only looked at her with a face full of sorrow.
"Do you understand how important an engagement between noble houses is!!"
"..."
Liliana could say nothing.
She had known. She had known how important the engagement was, and what would happen if she broke it unilaterally. But at the time, she had been certain this was the right thing to do.
There had been the unease she had felt in her heart after meeting Allen in the capital and spending time with him. The things she had experienced in their several encounters, and a single piece of advice he had given her.
Hearing his words, she had felt her heart ease. Doing what she wanted, liking what she liked—something that had been knotted inside her had begun to come undone. Spending time with him, leaning on him, talking with him, she had been drawn to him little by little.
And so she had wanted to break free of the last chain still binding her, to be truly free, to stand honestly at his side.
If asked whether her years with Kyou Ventus had been painful, they had not. But once she had begun to want Allen, the warm cloth of Kyou Ventus that had wrapped around her had come to feel like nothing more than a cold chain.
So she had shattered that chain. Unilaterally. Thoroughly.
And now the price was arriving—not for her alone, but for her family as well.
Once the heat had left him, Baron Edwin caught his breath and went on.
"Now that the matter has grown this large, withdrawing the broken engagement is probably impossible."
"...Yes."
The situation had already ballooned, but Liliana had never intended to take the break back in the first place.
"The compensation must follow the amount set by the kingdom, without exception. We'll have to find the money somehow..."
Saying so, Baron Edwin looked twenty years older.
"And Liliana—from today, you will leave the academy."
"What!?"
Liliana was stunned. Leave the academy? She could accept anything else, but she could not agree to leaving the academy. Above all, if she left the academy, being with Allen would become impossible.
"Why so surprised? Did you actually think you would continue attending?"
"Th-that's... but the tuition has already been paid in full!"
Baron Edwin stared at her as if she had said something absurd. At that moment, someone entered the room—a handsome young man with blue hair, the same as Liliana's.
"What a foolish thing to say, Liliana."
"B-Brother..."
It was Valencia Edwin, Liliana's elder brother and the man who would inherit the barony. The eyes with which her brother, whom she had not seen in so long, regarded her were terribly cold.
"Have you forgotten that your tuition was paid by House Ventus?"
"Of course, your tuition was provided by House Ventus independently of the engagement, and they have made no request for it to be returned."
"Th-then..."
Valencia narrowed his eyes and looked down at her.
"If you have any conscience at all, could you continue attending the academy on tuition House Ventus paid?"
"......"
Liliana had nothing to say. Baron Edwin let out a heavy sigh.
"If you insist on continuing, then go yourself—to Count Ventus or to young Kyou, I don't care which—and beg their forgiveness and obtain their permission."
"......"
"House Ventus may not have asked for the tuition back, but you at least need to apologize from the bottom of your heart, do you not?"
"...Yes, Father. I understand."
Liliana's heart grew heavier still.