Unwanted Attention, an Unexpected Turn (3)
One day later. It was the day of the first practical class for the first-year students.
Riding to Bern Academy with Lia, I went to my seat and stopped dead in surprise.
Because the top of my desk was covered with a pile of neatly folded envelopes, each one addressed to Cain Reinhardt.
Even a rough count put them in the dozens, and naturally, they weren’t sweet-and-bitter love letters.
No, these were dueling challenges from second- and third-year students, most of them scribbled in such haste that the handwriting was a mess and the formatting was barely present.
As proof, once I peeled back an envelope, every salutation inside was standardized to the same word: Dueling Challenge. The content was basically identical too—something like, “Cain Reinhardt. I’ll defeat you in a duel and take the student council position from you.”
“……Still, if they’re nobles, they really do follow etiquette well.”
Under Imperial etiquette, it was considered uncouth for nobles to stand face-to-face and argue over whether or not they’d duel. So they must have sent these challenges through indirect channels, using all the elegance they could muster in their own minds.
Of course, there were exceptions, like the second-year boy who’d picked a fight with me in the student cafeteria yesterday—but that guy was the odd one out. If a noble wanted a duel, the proper way was to first declare their identity openly, then reach an agreement with the other party before actually throwing down.
Anyway. I slowly scanned the names of the senders piled up like a mountain in front of me.
I was checking to see whether any of them were names I recognized—characters from the original novel, or students I suspected might be followers of the cult. But none of them stood out.
“Hmm.”
I felt a little disappointed that there was no fish on the hook, but this was still within expectations. From the beginning, I hadn’t been naive enough to think I could flush out cultists with one cheap provocation.
If I wanted to reel in the cult’s hidden followers, I needed something bigger. After all, they wouldn’t move unless the fire reached their own feet and made them panic, would they?
And since I’d already made a covert deal with Student Council President Edwin, I would show them that my so-called exhaustive tax audit wasn’t just empty talk. I already had my target in mind.
First, something that wasn’t under the student council, and was just large enough that if I shook it hard enough, dust would come pouring out—
“Excuse me.”
At that moment, someone behind me reached for my shoulder. I twisted quickly and, on pure reflex, slapped away the stranger’s hand.
Thinking it might be a surprise attack, I took up a stance that would let me counter at any time and looked straight ahead. There was a blond man there, and the moment our eyes met, he flinched in alarm. Then, looking flustered, he raised both hands.
“Whoa, hold on! I surrender, I surrender!”
I’d been ready to subdue him if things went south, so what was this sudden surrender? Sensing something odd, I narrowed my eyes at him.
The blond man—probably a classmate, judging by the color of his tie—kept his hands raised and spoke in a tone that made it clear he had no intention of fighting.
“You’re Cain Reinhardt, right? You had your back turned, so I just wanted to talk to you. I didn’t have any other ideas, seriously.”
“You mean that.”
“Yeah, I mean it. I swear on my family’s honor.”
He had a pretty face and looked every inch the noble, and if he was willing to swear on his family’s honor, he probably meant it. Nobles were the sort of people who prized their reputation above everything else, after all.
I let go of my sword hilt and eased out of my stance. Only then did the blond man look relieved, exhaling like he’d just survived a great ordeal.
“Whew. That’s cold. I only wanted to say hello and almost got sent to the grave for it.”
“Enough small talk. What do you want?”
At my cool question, the blond man looked me over from head to toe and grinned.
“Before that, let me introduce myself. I’m Bern von Ed. The second son of a viscount family way down at the bottom end of the continent.”
“Bern von Ed?”
“Yep. Bern von Ed. But you can just call me Bern if you want. I prefer that too, honestly. It’s the same as the name of the founding hero who established the Empire, isn’t it?”
Hearing Bern smile as he extended his right hand as if to shake mine, I was suddenly struck by a strange sense of déjà vu.
“Isn’t it the name of the hero who established the Empire?” That little line. I’d seen that memorable line somewhere before.
After a moment’s thought, I remembered immediately.
That line had been spoken by Bern von Ed, the original novel’s second male lead, when he first met the heroine Stella. He’d muttered it airily and with his usual ease.
And Bern von Ed—no, Bern von Edward—was the Empire’s Second Prince, who had secretly enrolled in Bern Academy under a false identity, hiding his true status.
……Then did that mean I had just slapped away the wrist of none other than the Empire’s Second Prince?
“…….”
Imperial disrespect, execution, the guillotine.
Once I realized the situation, my stomach lurched, but I had to say something, anything, in my defense. So I reached for the Second Prince’s hand at once, ready to beg forgiveness—
“……Cain!”
Lia, who must have been watching me for a while, hurried over from a distance and grabbed my sleeve.
“Cain, what were you talking about?”
She tugged at my sleeve again and again, looking completely in the dark as she asked me that. I wanted to whisper to her that the Empire’s Second Prince was standing right in front of us, so she needed to be careful with her behavior.
But whether she understood what I was thinking or not, Lia turned sharply and spoke to Bern instead.
“Excuse me, do you have some business with our Cain?”
“Our Cain……?”
The Empire’s Second Prince, Bern, looked back and forth between Lia and me. Then, as if he’d figured something out, he nodded with an understanding expression.
“Ah, right. The two of you are very close, aren’t you? Yes, that’s right. I think I saw you together at the entrance ceremony too.”
Muttering to himself, Bern then held out his hand again.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Lia von Elleves. I’m Bern von Ed, and as for this Cain Reinhardt here—”
Bern paused for effect, then asked gently,
“He’s not quite a friend yet, so shall I just call him a classmate for now, Cain?”
“Ah, uh. That is…….”
“……Cain, what are you doing? Hurry up and shake his hand, and tell him you’ll be friends!”
Just as I was about to agree by instinct with Bern’s words, Lia, pressed close to my side, whispered to me.
And so, before I even knew what I was doing, I seized Bern’s hand and, following Lia’s instruction, said it out loud.
“N-no. A friend, yes, a friend. Once we’ve started talking, doesn’t that make us friends from then on?”
The Empire’s Second Prince. Bern looked down at our joined hands for a moment, then gave me a smile that looked eerily like someone I’d seen face-to-face yesterday. Then he shook my hand lightly.
“Oh, friends are great. All right, then if Miss Lia doesn’t mind, shall we all be friends starting today? The kind of friends who eat tasty food together and share meaningless chatter. Friends?”
“Yes, of course, I’d love that. It means our Cain finally gets a friend too. Cain, you’re happy about that too, right?”
“Uh, yeah. Sure, happy, yes. Right, let’s be friends. Friends.”
I thought about laughing—haha, maybe—but it would have looked too awkward, so I stopped myself. My way of speaking was already awkward enough on its own.
Fortunately or unfortunately, Bern didn’t seem to notice my discomfort. Whether it was because, as the Second Prince, he’d never had the chance to make friends with someone his own age before, I couldn’t tell, but he looked absolutely delighted just shaking our hands so vigorously.
“Ah, right! Look at me, I nearly forgot. Cain, weren’t we supposed to stop by the student council room?”
“Huh? The student council room?”
“Didn’t the student council president say to come by briefly this morning? Don’t you remember?”
Lia blinked one eye shut playfully, then tugged on my sleeve again. I quickly nodded and echoed her words.
“Hmm, right. He said he had something to discuss about student council work and told us to come no matter what, didn’t he?”
“Yep, exactly. He said to come no matter what. So, Bern, we’re going to stop by the student council room for a bit. It’s the president’s order, so if we ignore it, we’ll be in big trouble.”
“Ah… I see. If it’s the president’s word, then there’s nothing to be done. Go on, then. Cain, Miss Lia.”
In noble society, the only women a man could address without honorifics were his family, or women close enough to count as family.
For that reason, we left Bern behind after I’d casually, and Lia had politely, sent him off. Then we slipped out of the classroom.
Coming down the spiral staircase, Lia and I stood on the first-floor landing and let out deep, heavy sighs at the same time.
“……Wow.”
No, seriously, that had been dangerously close to turning into a disaster. To treat the Empire’s Second Prince like that? If this had happened in the imperial palace, I’d have been executed on the spot. Imperial disrespect was that serious of a crime.
I was glad we were inside Bern Academy, where everyone was equal regardless of status.
Of course the school rules were mostly symbolic, but at least they served as a bare minimum safety net. At the very least, they couldn’t execute me on the basis of imperial disrespect committed within the academy, right?
Even though I knew from the original story that Bern wasn’t the sort of man to do something like that, a cold sweat still ran down the back of my neck.
I wiped the sweat away with my handkerchief and looked at Lia. She seemed just as tense as I was, because she’d been clutching my sleeve and wouldn’t let go since a moment ago.
“Haa…. What a relief, seriously. Good thing the Second Prince didn’t notice….”
“……Pardon?”
At Lia’s murmured words, spoken as she caught her breath, my eyes flew wide open. The Second Prince? Had Lia noticed it too?
When I asked with my eyes alone, Lia nodded calmly.
“Mm-hmm. I knew. That’s why I went over to talk to him.”
“Ah… I see. Thank you, Lady Lia.”
So that was why her timing had been so perfect. She’d been watching from afar, then.
But as I was thanking her, a question suddenly came to mind.
According to the original narrative, the fact that Bern was the Second Prince was classified information.
So it only became common knowledge around the time we became second-years. How had Lia known that in advance?
“By the way, how did you know Bern was the Second Prince?”
“Huh? Well, I saw him, so I knew?”
“You saw him?”
I repeated it before I could stop myself.
She saw him? What exactly had she seen?
“Saw what, exactly?”
As far as I knew, there shouldn’t be any clue anywhere that Bern was the Empire’s Second Prince.
I looked quietly at Lia.
“…….”
Lia’s face turned white as a sheet.