The Crybaby of House Edfolk (5)
At dawn the next day, the apprentice knights quartered beside the training grounds had no choice but to open their eyes, faces twisted, at the relentless sound of running outside.
"Who the hell is out there running during lights-out?"
"I'll go and see, sir!"
The moment the rebuke cracked down, Ethan, the youngest of them, hurried outside. What met him there was a sight he could not have believed even with his eyes wide open.
"Hah— hah—"
His young mistress, Yulia—her hair, for some reason, cut short—was circling the training ground, gasping for breath. Sweat soaked her from head to toe. Her plump cheeks had flushed a furious red, as if they might burst, and her legs kept giving out beneath her, so that she stumbled over her own feet again and again.
She looked so precarious that Ethan forgot all about reporting to his seniors and ran straight toward her.
"My lady, what is this?"
"Hah... just leave me alone!"
Yulia shook him off in a voice thick with venom, and Ethan stood where he was, struck dumb. This was the girl who used to watch them, worn out from training, with pity in her eyes, and run to her mother, Karen, pleading that the knights ought to be allowed at least a little rest. When that plea failed, she would pick flowers in the garden and press one into each of their hands to cheer them on...
He felt it then, with a hollow certainty: that gentle Yulia was gone, without a trace.
Ethan was still staring in a daze at her staggering run, unable to believe it, when his senior knights came storming out of the quarters, swearing they would tear whoever it was a new one. They froze where they stood.
And so Yulia began each day by running at dawn until she was spent. Of all the things she had overheard in the annex, the words she looks dull had left a wound far too deep in her heart.
Once the run was finished and she had set the day's tasks in order, she sat down to breakfast. Where something sweet had always waited on her plate, there was now nothing but a single slab of meat seasoned with salt alone, one potato, and a few onions. Yulia herself had ordered the mansion's cooks to serve her nothing but a restricted meal from then on.
"My lady, the cake that arrived yesterday as a gift from House Mertios..."
Once, Marchen had held out a strawberry cake to her. Yulia glared and cut her off, her tone unyielding.
"Give it to my younger siblings. If they don't want it, divide it among the maids."
"But it is the strawberry cake you love so dearly, my lady..."
"Marchen, this isn't consideration. You're tormenting me. Don't even mention it to me next time. Do you understand?"
"Yes, my lady."
Watching Yulia refuse even the desserts she had once been unable to get enough of—and keep Marchen at a distance besides—Duchamp felt his insides char black. With that, mealtimes at House Edfolk, once bright with laughter, grew cold enough to drip with chill.
After breakfast she took a carriage and arrived at school earlier than anyone. The Noble School had wanted her to drop a year so she could match the curriculum, but Yulia insisted and insisted until she was seated in the third-year classes alongside Julbert, Rachel, Yelich, and the others her own age.
And so it went.
"Yulia, you don't have even the basics of magic."
"I'm sorry."
"Haah... at this rate, the class..."
"I'll keep up. Somehow. No matter what."
The gap between her and the other students, who had studied magic long before they ever set foot in school, was beyond comparison. Even when the troubled teacher spoke around the problem, the Yulia of those days paid it no mind at all. More accurately, she tried not to.
Every time she heard words like those, she ran to the washroom, tears falling one after another, and blamed herself.
...If only I'd started a little sooner. Just a little. Even so—I still have to. If I don't, if I don't catch up somehow...
I'll never catch Rachel, or Julbert, or Yelich. I'll spend my whole life being looked down on.
That was why she cried. She had no time to store her feelings, no time to turn them over, and no time to let them go.
Once she had vomited the feeling out and returned to the classroom, she always sat at the very front, not blinking once, straining to commit every word of the lesson to memory. She didn't rest during breaks either. She organized her notes, then chased after the teacher and kept asking questions until she understood. When class ended she dozed in the carriage all the way home, then took private lessons from two mages on top of everything else. And when night came, she spent what remained of it reviewing everything she had learned that day.
She set herself a quota harsh enough to be unreasonable, and studied by filling it. Furious at herself for nodding off, she ordered Marchen to strike her across the shoulder blades with a switch every time her head so much as dipped.
About a month of that, and Marchen—thinned by the stress—spoke as if pleading.
"My lady, there is something I must say."
"What is it?"
"I cannot bring myself to lay a hand upon you. I am truly sorry. It is too much for my heart."
The bright, tender Yulia was still vivid before Marchen's eyes. Some people said the cropped hair suited the new slimness of her jaw, that with the excess gone from her body she finally looked like a young lady of a great house. But the Yulia in her memory was a kind, thoughtful girl. The Yulia of now drove herself as if she might die tomorrow, and simply watching her was more than Marchen could bear. To be asked to wake that exhausted, nodding girl with a switch—it felt as though the pain were her own.
"Even if I want you to?"
"Yes."
Yulia stared at her for a long moment, then turned her face back to her book.
"Leave. I can always replace the maid."
"My lady."
"Get out."
At those cold words, which refused to acknowledge her heart at all, Marchen shed bitter tears, packed her things, and made to go. By then Duchamp, whose hair had begun to silver, came out himself and seized her arm with a trembling hand.
"Marchen."
"Yes, my lord."
"I must ask something of you."
"What manner of..."
"Stay at Yulia's side. Keep attending her."
"The young lady herself told me to leave..."
"Yulia has been crying a great deal... Even when she acts like that, she is depending on you."
"......"
"Since that day, she hasn't spoken with me, nor with her siblings, has she?"
"I was aware of that as well."
"In this house, you are the only place left where Yulia can breathe. And so I am asking you."
When the master of the house went so far, Marchen swallowed her tears and had no choice but to set her luggage down.
"I will do as you command."
"In time, I will be sure to repay you in kind."
"Even should you be unable to, I will still obey."
That night, Marchen—her resolve hardened to match her lady's—entered Yulia's room once more with the switch in hand. Yulia looked at her, pressed hard at her eyes, and then gave her a small nod.
Three months after Yulia entered the Noble School, her homeroom teacher called her aside. Faced with his troubled expression, as if he didn't know where to begin, Yulia spoke first.
"Teacher. If this is about elemental magic, I'm already working hard at the mansion with my tutors..."
He watched her rattle on with nothing but sadness in his face, let out a thin sigh, and spoke gently.
"Yulia, that isn't why I called you."
"Ah. Then may I ask why you did?"
"I hear you don't talk to the other children."
"......"
"Magic and studying can come later, I think. But a school is a place where, with the other children—"
"They all find me uncomfortable anyway."
"Even so, if you speak to them first and work through it one thing at a time—"
After that he slowly explained the things a child her age ought to feel. Yulia found it nothing but tedious, and she glared at him without bothering to hide her discomfort.
Calling me out for something this trivial—do you have any idea how busy I am?
Thinking that, she cut him off mid-sentence.
"I'm sorry, Teacher. I'm truly grateful for your concern."
With that, she left his pitying face behind and went back to the classroom.
Yulia knew better than anyone that she was alone. Her personality was part of it, but the aftermath of Karen summoning the rising nobles to the garden had been more serious than anyone expected. No one knew where the sparks might fly, so most of the children wanted nothing to do with her. As with any group of peers, once most of them found Yulia uncomfortable, even Julbert and Rachel—the only ones who might have stood shoulder to shoulder with her—grew awkward about speaking to her.
On top of that, even halfway through the semester, Yulia still couldn't properly form the magic circles the other children summoned with ease. Each time, unable to swallow her frustration, she stood where she was and let the tears fall. It often delayed the lesson, and once—shoved forward by a crowd of classmates—Rachel had come at her alongside Julbert to say something about it.
"Hey, Yulia! Class is a mess because of you!"
"And?"
"And? You're a nuisance. Everyone's walking on eggshells around you right now. Even the teachers...!"
"Then keep watching."
"What?"
Rachel had spoken as gently as she knew how, and Yulia's sharp reply left her staring, at a loss for words.
"I said keep walking on eggshells. I won't be minding any of you either."
"I was being nice, and this is what I get? Hey! You think words are all it takes?"
"Why? Does it bother you that much that I'm trying?"
"You little bi—"
Rachel's temper blew. She grabbed Yulia by the collar, and every boy in the class, Julbert among them, rushed her at once.
"Rachel, that's enough. She won't listen. Don't waste your strength. Do you mean to set the Imperial Capital buzzing all over again?"
"Rachel! Hold it in."
"I get it, so let go! Before I kill every last one of you!"
At the blaze in her voice, they had no choice but to release her. Silence settled among them. Rachel stared at Yulia for a moment, ground her teeth, and spun away.
"Fine. Do whatever you want. And the rest of you—don't come to me about her again. I'll kill you."
With those words the corridor went solemn. Now and then a child swallowed dryly. Yulia, as if nothing had happened, smoothed her crumpled shirt and turned her eyes back to her notes.
Month after month passed in that atmosphere, and before anyone noticed it was the first semester of fourth year. Once everyone grew used to Yulia clinging to every lesson as if her life depended on it, a few children began testing her in voices just loud enough to hear.
"Ugh. Class used to be so much better, before a certain someone."
"All she ever does is cry. What, does crying grow your mana?"
"Doesn't matter how hard she tries. She'll never catch so much as Yelich's heel."
Then one day Yulia rose from her seat at the front, walked over, and stood looking down at them where they sat. Remembering what Karen had once done, the children watching felt a chill run down their spines. But what came out of her mouth was nothing like what they had expected.
"Why are you scared? You've already said everything you wanted to say."
"W-what?"
"Don't worry. I won't tell Mother. Or Father."
"What are you..."
"I don't have time to waste on it, so gossip all you like. That's all I came to say."
"......"
As she watched a classmate stare blankly at her face, a thin, cold smile touched Yulia's lips.
"Ugh..."
She left those words behind and returned to her seat. From then on Yulia became something like a ghost in the class—present, and yet not there at all.
But it neither saddened her nor wore her down, because by then she had put distance between herself and everyone. When she had let the cookie fall from her limp hand at the banquet and cried like a fool, part of it had been the sting and the sorrow of being slighted. The rest had been a certain expectation she had held of those children: that she might belong among them, that she might become their friend. She had thrown that expectation in the trash long ago. Whatever they said about her, she had decided she would neither be hurt nor care.
Her father, Duchamp, had told her to reach out to everyone first. Paradoxically, it was only by doing the opposite of what he said that she finally found any peace.
And as for Yulia and Duchamp...
"Yulia, won't you travel south with your father this winter? The bullfighting in Cypress is quite—"
"I have to take magic lessons in the winter. I need to catch up, even a single day sooner."
"All right. Nothing happening at school?"
"No, nothing. More than that, I want to take management classes. The others say they're all taking them."
Only this sort of businesslike talk ever passed between them. As those days piled up, a father and daughter who had once been closer than anyone grew awkward and distant. But the more that happened, the brighter her achievements became.
A year and a half after Yulia entered the school, she at last reached about the class average, and the days of her crying through lessons gradually came to an end. Once she had caught them, the children she had overtaken could no longer call her a crybaby.
And another year. Rachel, whose training had always centered on the sword but who had a fair talent for magic as well, lost to Yulia in a duel during magic class. Every child who watched had no choice but to doubt their own eyes and let their mouths fall open. Rachel, certain she would win until her mana was stripped clean, could only look up at Yulia in disbelief.
"She caught me?"
"......"
"Vicious bitch. Fine. I admit it. I admit it."
"Suit yourself."
And the following semester—exactly four years after her world had been shattered.
"I request a duel with Lady Yelich."
Hearing those words, Yelich let out an incredulous little laugh and looked up at her.
"Well, well. Our Lady Yulia beat Lady Rachel in a magic duel, and now she's gotten arrogant, has she?"
"Why? Can't you?"
"Can't? Please. Who knows what would happen if I dueled a lady like you?"
Yelich said it with her whole face twisted, and Jessie, the ash-gray-haired girl beside her, glanced over and sneered. Yulia didn't so much as blink. She nodded, smiled, and twisted the knife without mercy.
"I see. If you're already frightened, there's nothing to be done."
"What did you say?"
"Surely you don't think I'd harm you over something that happened in a duel? Oh—have you forgotten?"
Yulia leaned in until her mouth was at Yelich's ear and whispered.
"......"
"There do seem to be a few children who forget that now and then! Hmm... but to think even Lady Yelich would have forgotten..."
Yelich shot up from her seat and glared at her as if she meant to kill her.
"Fine. Let's duel..."
And Yulia lifted the corner of her mouth.