Afternoon Class (1)
Classes at the Sacred Academy were generally split into two kinds.
Morning classes, built around theory.
Afternoon classes, built around practical training.
And if anyone asked me which of the two I preferred, I would have chosen the former without a shred of hesitation.
The reason was extremely simple.
"······This is boring."
Given the nature of practical classes—which mostly revolved around sparring with a partner—there was no one willing to face the scoundrel of Sacred, no matter how hard you scrubbed your eyes looking for them.
So I sat alone on a lonely bench, watching the other students spar.
That was my routine every time outdoor classes began, and one of the reasons I had skipped yesterday's afternoon session.
A dull theory lecture was better than this.
If a class was boring, I could just let my mind wander. Here, my isolation was on full display for everyone to see.
Even the professor running the class paid me no attention, so the weight of the name Rian Tryce pressed down on me more keenly than ever.
I wondered what it had been like at first.
Before I transmigrated.
In other words, during the first semester of first year, before Rian Tryce earned the title of scoundrel.
Surely there had been people willing to spar with him back then.
No one would have known yet.
No one would have known that Rian Tryce was the greatest scoundrel in the world.
Of course, there were unique cases like Elena, who had watched Rian up close since childhood under the name of fiancée, or Elice, who had already gathered every scrap of information on Academy enrollees.
But not every student was like that.
Not every first-year freshman had walked in already knowing Rian's true nature.
In short, the current situation was the karma that bastard Rian Tryce had created.
In a setting where nearly every freshman was a stranger to everyone else, Rian had completely shattered his own image.
And I was the one stuck carrying that karma.
The one who actually deserved it had vanished who-knows-where.
It was hard to imagine a more unfair deal.
······No. Actually, my situation is even worse.
If I had to dig a little deeper, I was more isolated now than the original Rian had ever been.
"You can't even block something that basic? That's why everyone calls you a useless piece of trash."
"What the hell did you just say? Say it again with that filthy mouth of yours."
Those idiots over there, cursing each other out as they fought.
The problem children who had been in the same club as Rian before I transmigrated.
At least Rian had them.
"I called you trash. Got a problem with that?"
"Yeah. A pretty big one, actually."
······Maybe it's better that I don't have them.
Whether having guys like that around would actually be a good thing was something I'd have to think about carefully.
Either way, it meant my situation was more isolated than Rian's had been.
Clang—
"······I lost."
"Well done, Elice Axstra."
And on the opposite side from those idiots, Elice had just had her sword knocked from her hand by Princess Laila.
"Haa, I suppose I'm still not skilled enough to stand as an equal against Your Highness."
"No. You have more than enough potential to grow stronger, Elice Axstra. If you continue training here, the day will come when you can cross blades with me as an equal."
"······Is that so?"
"Strive harder from now on."
"······I am grateful for the words, at least, Your Highness."
The distance between us was considerable, yet I could almost hear Elice grinding her teeth from here.
In the original, Elice had always felt inferior to Elena and Laila.
The gap in rank. The gap in talent.
In those two areas, no one in the original story could match Elena and Laila.
Elice herself knew that better than anyone.
That was why the original Elice had thrown herself even harder into the one thing only she could do.
Becoming the queen of the underworld under the name of the Axstra Marquisate.
Something the Imperial Princess Laila and the righteous Elena would never even attempt—original Elice Axstra had pulled it off with ease.
······She was the only heroine who could support the protagonist from that direction.
Only from that position, using methods the other heroines could never touch, she had backed the protagonist from the side.
There was a reason she had officially ranked second in the author's popularity poll.
And a reason her fans had constantly brawled with Elena's fans—who had the exact opposite personality—in the original novel's comment sections day after day.
Yeah.
Just thinking about those comment wars made my head spin all over again.
There had even been readers who refused to open the comments because of that insane girl-war, so it was easy enough to guess how vicious the fighting had gotten.
I was right in the middle of dredging up those original-story memories when—
"What are you doing here all alone?"
"······."
"Uwaah, I'm exhausted."
Before I knew it, a sweat-drenched Elice had walked right up and plopped down beside me with a bizarre little sound.
"······What's with you since lunch? Didn't you say you wouldn't even acknowledge me in front of other people because of weird rumors?"
Having clearly heard her earlier statement, I found the whole situation absurd.
Of course, Elice paid my reaction no mind and spoke with perfect nonchalance.
"My, did I really say something like that?"
"Yeah. I heard you loud and clear."
"How petty of you. Men who cling to a woman's words usually aren't very popular, you know?"
"······."
"I'm joking. I remember perfectly well. I remember saying those words. Remembering what you've said is an important habit, after all."
I was genuinely relieved.
If that last sentence hadn't reached my ears, I might not have been able to hold back.
Whether she read my expression or not, Elice curved her lips into a small smile.
"Lighten up a little. I told you it was a joke."
"······I'm glad it really was a joke. That one was hard to take."
"I'm just feeling a bit unsettled right now. You saw it all from here, didn't you? Me getting thoroughly crushed by the Princess."
The distance was far, but I definitely felt your gaze, she added in a small voice.
Was it my imagination?
That faint note of melancholy in her voice.
No—it probably wasn't imagination.
The Elice sitting beside me right now was saying things she would never have said in her usual, composed state.
The original Elice Axstra had been more calculating and cold than anyone.
But the woman next to me was pouring out her raw feelings more emotionally than anyone.
Was this a fragile side of Elice that the original never showed?
Or had the changed "Rian Tryce" somehow influenced the character "Elice Axstra" from the novel?
I didn't know which was true.
"I don't know. I think if you fought her properly again, you might win."
"······What?"
Maybe because of those thoughts, words of comfort I would never normally say started slipping out of my mouth.
"A longsword isn't even your main weapon, right?"
"······."
"Someone who's spent her whole life training only in dagger assassination trying to beat a sword genius of a princess with a longsword she barely uses—that's just shameless."
"Ha. And how exactly do you know my main weapon is a dagger?"
"······Ah."
"You know me far better than I expected, don't you?"
Ah, right.
I shouldn't have said that much.
In the original, almost no one except the protagonist knew that Elice's main weapon was a dagger.
Whatever focused expression she had worn while listening to me vanished, replaced by a smile so chilling it made my skin crawl just looking at it.
Something completely out of character for me.
To be precise, I had forced myself into uncharacteristic comfort and then slipped up.
An utterly unfair situation.
I had tried to do one good deed and ended up in deep trouble.
I endured the terrible silence for a while, waiting for her next words, when—
Unexpected laughter spilled from Elice's lips.
"······Pfft. It's fine. Don't tense up."
"······."
"You've already found out a much bigger secret. You think I'd kill you just for knowing something this small? I'm not that strange a person, you know?"
······Looking at you right now, you seem plenty strange.
I muttered it only in my head, terrified of future retaliation, but it was the most sincere sentence I had ever formed.
Someone who had been so depressed she looked ready to die, suddenly lifting her mood just because a scoundrel offered a single word of comfort—from the outside, that looked plenty strange.
"······What is that? That unpleasant expression? It looks like you're thinking I really am a strange person."
And that strange person was even sharp-eyed.
How did she know?
I had only twitched my lips for a second.
As expected, the woman in front of me was no ordinary woman······.
"Thank you. For comforting me."
"······Huh?"
"I meant that. Maybe all this time I just wanted someone to comfort me."
"······."
"No one around me has ever spoken to me the way you just did."
Elice wore an expression as if she were looking back on the past.
I knew Elice Axstra's past well.
Academy's Sword was a novel that revealed its heroines' backstories better than almost any other.
That was why I simply stayed seated on the bench.
Because I knew better than anyone how important it was to have someone who would just quietly listen.
I quietly guessed that, in this regard at least, Elice might have shared a similar experience with the transmigrated me.
"Well, well. If it isn't our traitor, Rian Tryce."
"······."
"Rian Tryce? You mean that despicable bastard who abandoned his comrades and ran off alone like a weasel?"
"Yeah, that guy. The one who had more fun than anyone when we were all enjoying ourselves, only to cowardly run away by himself in the end."
The peaceful feeling I had finally tasted after so long was shattered in an instant by the arrival of those interrupters.