Is This a Dream? (3)
“Look, from the start—”
I fixed Aaron and Elena with a flat stare.
“Did you really think nobody would notice you two glued together on a campus date?”
“Th-that’s—”
Elena faltered, and Aaron spoke up quietly.
“We were not glued together.”
“What?”
“We went to the same places, but we sat in different seats.”
“And that counts as a date?”
“Simply sitting apart would not make it a date, no. But we shared nonverbal communion.”
“Nonverbal what?”
Aaron explained with a face of utmost seriousness.
“We exchanged glances when no one was looking. We compared the food we’d ordered, or the books we’d chosen. By sharing that secret connection without anyone else knowing, we deepened our bond even further—”
“Ron! Shut up!”
Elena drove a fist into Aaron’s face and silenced him on the spot. Then she glared at me with tear-bright eyes.
“W-what is it you want from us?”
“First of all, I’m not here just to mess with you. Your boyfriend looks pretty rough, though. Is he okay?”
“Ron actually likes this sort of thing, so he’s fine.”
“He likes it…?”
I looked at Aaron, who was twitching on the floor where he’d gone down. That’s the eldest son of Viscount Karim’s house? No—he was just twitching because he was in pain, right?
“Anyway, so what’s your business?”
“How about we move somewhere else first?”
Even if the library was a den of vice, making a scene out in the open was still a bad idea. Elena nodded and hauled Aaron to his feet.
We found an empty classroom and relocated. Elena had her arms wrapped around Ron’s, stuck to him like glue.
“Ugh. If you’re going to do that, why not just cling to each other all the time?”
“You don’t understand a thing, Young Master Katram. Human emotion wears out fast if you run it at full throttle all day. Pacing is everything.”
“Is that so?”
“And more than that, I don’t particularly want to hear that from someone who’s always stuck to someone else.”
“That’s a misunderstanding. I’m not stuck to her because I enjoy it.”
“But you don’t push Her Highness away, either, do you?”
“Elena, you’re wrong about that.”
“Excuse me?”
“Young Master Katram is right, Eli.”
Aaron spoke to Elena in a gentle voice.
“Everyone knows how stubborn Her Highness can be. Now imagine Young Master Katram trying to force her off.”
“Ahh—so there’d be a backlash.”
“Exactly. Young Master Katram may not look it, but he’s the top student in the magic division. He’s handling the situation wisely.”
“What do you mean, ‘may not look it’?”
“I mean he looks like a scrap of straw being tossed about by Her Highness’s every whim.”
“And you two think you’d fare any better if Irene got her hands on you?”
Both of them avoided my eyes. Right. There wasn’t a soul alive who wouldn’t get jerked around the way I did once Irene latched on. If anything, it was only because it was me that things had stopped at this level.
“If it had been you two instead of me, you’d already be crawling on the ground.”
“Mmm…”
“I can’t exactly deny that. So, what is it you actually wanted?”
“Mind if I ask my questions in order?”
“Go ahead.”
“All right—first. Which one of you confessed?”
“Simple enough. It was Ron.”
“It was Eli.”
“Huh?”
“Eh?”
The two of them looked at each other. Uh. Was I supposed to look at both of them at once?
They stared at each other for a beat, and then Elena was the first to cry out.
“Ron, what are you talking about? You came up to me first! You said you couldn’t just leave me there looking so sad!”
Aaron fired right back, not to be outdone.
“Eli was the one who said she wanted to keep being with me. So I was the one who received the confession.”
“I only said that because I already thought we were together!”
“And I only decided to start dating after I heard you say that.”
“We weren’t already dating at that point?”
Oh no.
Had I just started a war?
Aaron shook his head hard.
“I only approached you because you looked like you were struggling.”
“You said a line like that and you’re calling it simple pity? Think back to that night!”
And so Elena’s story began.
It was only a few days after she had entered the Academy.
Elena felt the pressure crushing down on her. Ever since enrollment, nothing had gone right.
Back home in Rotnil, she had been an elite. As the Margrave’s daughter she possessed talent that put others to shame, and even her older sisters fell far short of her.
Aside from her elder brother, who held the right of succession, Elena had been the greatest prodigy of them all. But there was a problem.
“Elena. It’s time you chose a fiancé.”
“A fiancé?”
Her father, the Margrave of Rotnil, wanted her married off as quickly as possible. Elena pushed back.
“My sisters aren’t even married yet. Why do I have to be first?”
“Because you have the best prospects of anyone.”
“The best prospects? I don’t even want to get married yet!”
“The sooner one marries, the better. Young masters from other territories have been lining up with proposals after seeing what you’re capable of.”
“I—I want to stay here! I want to help Brother Altron and make our territory strong!”
“Haa, Elena.”
The Margrave’s voice turned cold.
“I’m sorry, but none of my children except Altron have the ability to be of any real use to this territory. When I say you have good prospects, I mean by the standards of other lands—not ours.”
“……!”
Elena reeled. In her entire life she had never heard anything so brutal from him. And she refused to believe it.
“No ability? That’s not true! I’ll prove myself!”
That was why Elena had enrolled at the Academy. There was no way a girl once called a genius could be useless at running a territory. She would earn outstanding marks and prove her father wrong.
Reality, however, was merciless. The girl who had been a prodigy in her hometown was, at the Academy, nothing more and nothing less than ordinary.
The damn place was crawling with geniuses. The princess who had appeared out of nowhere demonstrated Unvoiced Casting on the day of the entrance ceremony. The collateral son of the Katram Ducal House possessed magic so absurd he outstripped even her.
And beyond them, brilliant young masters and young ladies were everywhere. Only then did Elena understand that she had been a frog in a well.
“But I still can’t give up.”
Elena wanted to prove herself. She refused to be used as a tool for a political marriage. She had to demonstrate her worth.
She worked day and night. She read magic texts, drilled her incantations, and threw herself into every lecture with everything she had.
It still wasn’t enough.
“Did you hear? Young Master Katram cast magic right through a Mana Blockage Circuit.”
“Princess Irene found an error in one of the professor’s papers.”
“Young Master Raufen is developing full-scale automated equipment, apparently.”
No matter how hard she tried, the gap between her and her peers only widened. Elena could not accept it.
“No! That’s not true! It’s not!”
Bang! Ba-bang!
Elena’s magic slammed into the training dummies. But she couldn’t destroy them. Other people wrecked them with a single gesture. Some did it with a single word.
“Why am I…?”
She crumpled to the ground.
“Hic… hhik…”
At last the tears came. If things went on like this, she would be dragged home and forced into a political marriage without any hope of escape.
“Why am I so lacking…?”
She thought of the list of fiancé candidates her father, the Margrave of Rotnil, had laid out. Every last one of them was someone she would rather die than marry.
“I hate this… Someone, please…”
“Young Lady Rotnil?”
“……!”
The sudden voice made Elena flinch and lift her head. Someone stood at the entrance to the training grounds, lit only by the faint wash of moonlight.
“What are you doing out here…? Are you crying?”
“Wh-who are you?!”
“Please calm down. It’s me. Aaron Karim.”
“Y-Young Master Karim? What are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t sleep, so I came to practice magic. Why are you crying out here, Young Lady?”
“……Mind your own business. It’s personal.”
“Hmm. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
“What?”
Aaron walked over to her. Then, as naturally as breathing, he bent down and wiped the tears from her face.
“I’m not cold-blooded enough to leave a lady in distress alone.”
“Wh-what?!”
“The ground is filthy. Let’s get you up first.”
He didn’t wait for her permission. Elena found herself pulled to her feet by his hand and could only stare at him, dumbfounded.
Aaron took her hand and led her out of the training grounds. Curious despite herself about what he was up to, Elena followed in silence.
Central nobles who lived near the Academy could commute from home, but they were a tiny minority. Most of the student body came from territories far from the capital, which made the dormitories essential.
Aaron brought Elena to the dorms.
What, he put on that whole show just to walk me back to my room?
She was about to pull her hand free when Aaron spoke.
“Have you ever been up on the dormitory roof?”
“The roof? Why would anyone do that?”
“You’ll understand when you see it.”
Elena was startled. Aaron guided her down a passage she had never even noticed before.
“It’s a maintenance route for cleaning the roof. I saw the janitors coming and going through it one day.”
She was still marveling that such a passage existed along a path she walked every day when Aaron opened the hatch at the end of the corridor.
“Careful coming up.”
“O-okay.”
Holding his hand, Elena climbed through and emerged onto the roof—and found herself looking at a sight she had never seen in her life. Beside her, Aaron smiled.
“Well?”
“This is… beautiful.”
Countless lights spread out before her eyes. Not the stars overhead, but the innumerable lights illuminating the streets of the imperial capital.
“Unlike the countryside, a great many people in the Empire work or stay awake late into the night. So unless it’s the dead of early morning, the streets stay brightly lit.”
“I see. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s as if the stars came down to earth.”
“You called it beautiful just now, didn’t you?”
“I did. Why?”
“Every one of those lights that Young Lady Rotnil just called beautiful is something utterly insignificant.”
“What?”
“Think about it. Do you imagine the nobility keeps their lamps burning this late to work? Of course not. They’re exhausted from the day’s business and already asleep. What’s lighting those streets are the cheap mana-lamps of commoners who have to work late just to eat.”
“Ah…”
Once he said it, she could see it. Almost none of those countless lights were large or grand. They were scattered, each one a household or a workplace of its own.
“And yet without every single one of those little lights, a view like this would never exist.”
“What’s your point?”
“Don’t belittle the light you carry.”
Aaron looked her straight in the eye.
“I’ve watched you pushing yourself these past few days. I don’t know the full story, but it was clear you were overdoing it. And the reason you were crying in the training grounds is that even so, you still felt you weren’t enough—am I right?”
“Ugh.”
Elena let out a small sound, shaken by how easily he had read her heart.
“Young Lady Rotnil. No matter how small a light is, a light is still a light. A flame that doesn’t go out has value, however tiny it may be. So I hope you won’t be disappointed in the light you have.”
“Why, though?”
“Pardon?”
Elena bit her lip.
“You helped me in lecture a few days ago, too. And now you’re comforting me again. What’s the real reason? Are you trying to seduce me? Because if you think you’ll gain something by charming the Margrave’s daughter—”
“I simply didn’t want to watch.”
Aaron looked at her with clear eyes.
“I just didn’t want to see you looking so sad. There’s no other reason.”
“……It was like that! And after that, whenever I was in trouble, you always showed up first to help me! And you’re telling me that wasn’t a confession?!”
“How is that a confession?! All I said was that I didn’t want to see you sad!”
“A man keeps helping a woman because he can’t stand to see her suffer, and if that isn’t a confession, then what is it?!”
“I refuse to accept that—because Eli was the one who confessed!”
And so Aaron’s story began.
……Hold on a second.
Let me bake a fantasy cookie real quick. I’m going to need something to snack on while I listen to this.