Someone Who Troubles Me
— Um, Mother asked… whether you had any interest in becoming engaged to Edwin….
At Lady Ariella’s words, my thoughts ground to a halt.
Engaged?
Who, with whom?
Me and Lady Ariella.
In any ordinary situation, this would have been the kind of news that called for throwing both arms skyward and cheering.
The second son of a modest knightly house on the frontier wasn’t exactly a prize. At best, you leveraged the family arts to the fullest and landed a post as a knight under some higher house — that was the realistic future a lesser noble’s younger son could aim for.
And now, out of nowhere, there was talk of marriage to a noble young lady who might one day become the lord of a count’s domain, if fortune smiled?
“A chance at social advancement, then….”
“That’s not wrong, but, um… well… ugh.”
Lady Ariella’s face scrunched up in a look that said her mood had taken a hit for reasons she couldn’t quite name. She was the sort who couldn’t bring herself to say anything unkind, so displeasure always showed straight on her face.
“Ah — so that’s what this is about?”
“Have you figured something out?”
“Haven’t the knight trainees been unusually lively lately?”
Lady Ariella thought for a moment, then nodded as understanding dawned.
“Dungeons are supposed to be terribly dangerous, exhausting places, right? But lately the trainees all look so… full of life.”
That was thanks to the shortcut I’d taught them. And the countess bringing up an engagement was almost certainly thanks to that same shortcut.
This just got annoying.
As a marriage partner, Lady Ariella was extremely appealing. For me right now, though, the situation was nothing but a headache. With the catastrophe five years out, I couldn’t afford to get tied down here.
And I have no grounds to refuse….
If House Remington had sneered, How dare a country second son!, that would have been one thing — but from our side, there was simply no justification for rejecting the engagement. I was going to have to sit down with the countess before long and talk this through.
Right. I’ll dump it on my brother.
Tedious work for the eldest son; the good stuff for the second. Heh heh heh.
I shoved the bothersome thoughts cleanly aside.
“Let’s leave the tedious talk there.”
“T-tedious talk… isn’t that a little harsh…?”
“Anyway — have you made any progress?”
Lady Ariella pouted, lips pushed out in a sulky little jut of complaint — then broke into a bashful smile, her eyes shining.
No, not a figure of speech. They truly glittered as if light lived inside them.
Fairy Eyes, after all.
Her gaze was reading a flow of nature ordinary people could never see.
“When I watch the garden like this, there are moments when I suddenly think, Oh — this is going to happen next, and then it does.”
She lifted a finger.
“A droplet is about to fall from that leaf. And the ant underneath is going to get hit and panic.”
I followed her finger. Sure enough, a bead of water clinging to the leaf let go and dropped — and, as if on cue, an ant flailed about in startled confusion.
“You can see the future now?”
“Ah, I don’t think it’s quite that. Hmm… how do I put it? When the sky clouds over, rain falls; when the earth grows damp, withered leaves revive — it’s like I can see that kind of flow.”
— Grain futures, let’s goooo!!!
…If this had been my past life, I might have picked Spirit Mage without a second thought.
“But sometimes things don’t go the way I expect. It’s more like a feeling of, Ah — there’s something there. Not a natural phenomenon, but a will, or a breath, that I can sense.”
Rain falls from the sky. Left alone, it would soak into the earth. But something artificial twists that natural course. In other words, she had begun to perceive the presence of spirits invisible to ordinary eyes.
She’s almost there.
Truly, any day now. Within a week or so, she would be catching sight of spirits with her own eyes.
It can’t have been easy.
This was someone who used to scream at the sight of bugs. Now she didn’t even burn fragrant herbs. She had melted completely into nature.
She must have been desperate.
This secret art didn’t require frantic activity. It was a training method of sitting in an earthen hollow, gazing at the landscape, and giving yourself over to quiet contemplation. Thoughts would naturally multiply — and family would have been the first thing to surface. With her family in hardship, she had to try harder. I could picture her enduring it alone, grinding her teeth through the loneliness.
“You’ve worked hard, Lady Ariella.”
I said it almost offhandedly and stared blankly out at the garden.
“Thank you… truly, Edwin….”
It was a simple thing to say. But the weight inside it was something no amount of ornamental noble rhetoric could ever carry. And so I couldn’t find a reply.
I held something out.
“Is this… a seed?”
“Something that will help you one day, Lady Ariella.”
From the monsters that emerged from the Abyssal Spawning Pool on the fifth underground floor of Dungeon: Dry Paradise’s Abyss. Defeat the Decayed Spirit Tree among them, and there was a chance to obtain the item Hope’s Seed — the trigger for meeting the hidden boss of Dungeon: Aria’s Forgotten Paradise.
“Plant it in a pot and raise it carefully. It will certainly be of use later.”
“It has such a mysterious aura. Are you sure it’s all right to give me something this precious…?”
“If you’re grateful….”
I deliberately let the sentence trail off.
One second. Two. Three. Four….
“I-if I’m grateful…?”
I heard her swallow dryly. Had she decided I was about to name some unthinkable price?
I gazed quietly at Lady Ariella as she carefully looked up at me.
Five. Six. Seven. Eight….
“Edwin?”
They say there are two ways to make a person angry. The first is to stop mid-sentence, and the second—
Countess Linia let out a sigh and sank her weight into the back of her chair.
Hosting a knights’ tournament and launching Ariella’s social debut at the same time — either event alone would have been enough to scramble anyone’s mind. Only by carving her sleep down to the absolute limit had she managed to lay a foundation that would at least survive nitpicking. The letters she had prepared would all have arrived by now, so the countess could do nothing but heave a truly long breath and go limp in her seat.
“Vienna, is Ariella busy at the moment?”
“At this hour, my lady, she should be lost in contemplation in the garden.”
“The garden….”
Countess Linia took in the view beyond the study window.
He used to love the garden so much, too….
Blood told true, after all, didn’t it?
She’s been going to the garden so often lately. Could it be…?
Countess Linia summoned Ariella to the study.
“Come here, my darling.”
She drew Ariella into a gentle embrace. Ordinarily a soft, clarifying fragrance would have risen from her daughter —
Sniff, sniff.
Instead, for some reason, she smelled as if she had been playing in the dirt. It was the smell she remembered from when the first and second sons were still small children.
And her clothes are a mess….
Was she not contemplating so much as running wild through the garden?
Countess Linia got that far and then simply sighed. She had been so busy that she had paid too little attention to what her only daughter was actually doing with her days.
“Well then, Ariella. Have you given it some thought?”
“Ah, about that….”
No matter how packed her schedule, news from within the castle always trickled up to the study through the servants. And at the center of most of the talk stood Edwin.
At first he had simply seemed a curious young man — someone who had uncovered the secret arts of the Guardian, a class no one else had understood, and opened a path no one else had imagined. That was all. But he had proven to be a storm that shook House Remington itself.
What had impressed her most was the way he shared those secret arts. For a discovery like that, demanding a fortune would not have been strange. Yet he had freely offered the method to the count’s house. A young man unmoved by petty gain — already, at that age, possessed of the dignity of both noble and knight.
A youth like this….
A second son, not an heir. No duty to carry on his own house. If Ariella were to inherit the domain, it would be hard to find a more suitable son-in-law.
Countess Linia smiled faintly without quite meaning to.
He really is a fine young man.
“Th-that, ah, ahaha….”
Ariella averted her eyes with a strained little laugh, looking thoroughly put on the spot.
Hmm?
Ariella had always been a spoiled darling — the beloved youngest, raised among older brothers with a gap in years, monopolizing the whole family’s affection. But circumstances had changed. She had grown up far too early, and the old soft, clinging ways had vanished. Even marriage, a woman’s once-in-a-lifetime event, she treated as something she would accept from anyone so long as it helped the family. That very readiness had wounded her parents more deeply than she, still young, could understand.
And then her attitude had shifted.
Before, she would have said anyone would do….
It was a positive change.
Too early to call it love. Interest, perhaps?
Ariella was a single flower coming into beautiful bloom. Natural smiles came more readily than before; the fragile look in her step had given way to confidence. And if the cause of that lovely change was one particular young man, a parent couldn’t help wanting to step in and do something.
Relations with Viscount Revan’s house were tangled and complicated; some would point fingers and claim the engagement had been proposed merely to paper over the situation. But for her daughter’s sake, that was a price she could bear. That was a parent’s heart.
Engaged to Edwin…? He’s a good person, certainly, but… but…!
Ariella’s brow knotted at her mother’s question, a rush of heat rising in her chest.
— If you’re grateful….
He had built the atmosphere as if something momentous were coming, then fixed her with those deep eyes that somehow pulled a person in. She had tensed without meaning to and swallowed dryly. Embarrassment had sent heat flooding into her face.
And then, in that exact moment—
— They say there are two ways to make a person angry, Lady Ariella.
That utterly out-of-nowhere remark.
— The first is to stop mid-sentence, and the second….
Having said that much, Edwin had walked off without another word.
What on earth was that supposed to mean?
After fretting over it for a long while, Ariella finally understood. And then she got angry.
That— that—!
Being with him somehow put her at ease, then made her furious, then set her heart fluttering; the moment she felt conflicted, gratitude would well up instead…. Whenever she thought of Edwin her head tangled itself into knots, and a realistic future like an engagement simply refused to take shape in her mind.
Somehow she felt that if they married, even the polite distance of formal address would disappear — and then he would spend the whole day teasing and tormenting her. When she got upset he would smooth it over as if nothing had happened, give her a gift, and then her mood would lift again, and then….
He was hard to put into words, but—
Anyway, he’s a weird person!
And so she couldn’t answer easily.
“There’s no rush, so take your time thinking it over. Still — what would you think of him as a partner for your social debut?”
Outwardly, he was the perfect match. It would also send the message that the friction with Viscount Revan’s house had been smoothly resolved.
“…Yes, Mother. I understand.”
Ariella’s expression was more complicated than her mother realized.
“Is it because of the tournament champion? Don’t worry, dear. Ordinarily the winner of the knights’ tournament does the escorting, but since there’s already talk of an engagement—”
Contrary to Countess Linia’s assumptions, Ariella was certain Edwin would not lose the knights’ tournament. Sharing secrets as they did, he had casually shown her the back of his right hand, as if showing off. Level twenty-five. A growth rate so ferocious it outstripped people already two years into their blessing. Victory in the tournament was a foregone conclusion.
The problem was—
Please! Please don’t do anything weird…!
The Breath of Great Nature. Slash-and-Burn Farming. Drinking poison. He was the kind of person who would stop at nothing to reach a goal.
He’ll win, I’m sure of it. And that’s exactly the problem…!
She had not the faintest faith that he would win by any normal method. The image of him triumphing through some grotesque stunt, then strutting up to escort her with a smug look on his face—
Uuuugh…!
That, more than anything, was what Ariella wanted to avoid.