The Unexpected Tutor
Pelens quickly slapped a hand over his mouth. Only then did it seem to dawn on him that he had never once apologized for what happened back then.
"Ponya. I'm sorry. At that time, I was just so—"
"I didn't say that to get an apology from you, Brother."
Lefonya cut him off gently. After all, she was actively deceiving the Craitan family herself, clinging desperately to any means necessary to avoid being thrown out. Her own hands were far too dirty to be demanding apologies from anyone else.
"I only meant that when you first met me, there was a time you wanted to throw me out of the estate, too. But you don't think I'm a fraud anymore, and you aren't trying to kick me out now. Right?"
"Right. Exactly. I don't think you're a fraud, and I have zero intention of kicking you out. I'm your escort knight—where on earth would I banish you to? If you go, you're taking me with you, Fluffball."
Pelens nodded vigorously in agreement.
"Big Broth... no, Teacher is probably the same way. He returned after being away for so long, only to find me suddenly living here. It makes sense that he'd be startled and taken aback."
"Ponya."
The Duke of Craitan, who had been quietly listening to their conversation, stepped in.
"Even so, there is no reason for you to shoulder any blame. You have done nothing wrong."
"Mm-hmm. I know."
Conceding with a nod, Lefonya slipped off her seat, walked over to the wooden rocking horse resting in the corner, and climbed aboard.
"I don't think I did anything wrong this time either. After all, the adoption was your idea in the first place, Duke."
She took hold of the dual handles and gave them a nudge, sending the little horse trundling slowly forward—putt, putt, putt...
"Still, it was your mistake, Duke, not discussing my adoption with Teacher and Brother Pelens beforehand."
"Pardon?"
"And after failing to do so, expecting them to blindly understand without offering a proper explanation... isn't that just a bit too dictatorial?"
Leaving behind those parting words, Lefonya rode her little wooden horse, trundling adorably away—clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop...
The Duke of Craitan and Pelens stared after her small retreating figure, their hearts aching with worry that she might have been hurt by the confrontation.
Yet, contrary to their fears...
'That man named Habelian... he treated me properly as a daughter of the ducal house, not just as a fragile child.'
Lefonya's cheeks were flushed pink as she steered the toy horse along the corridor.
While it was hardly something to jump for joy about, it certainly hadn't offended her either.
Because she was so young, and because she was an adoptee, the Duke and Pelens had coddled her to an extreme degree. They were so fiercely protective that both men had found it excruciatingly difficult even to mention the real daughter in her presence.
Habelian, however, had done none of that. He had demanded her thoughts directly, and he had laid bare the family's internal affairs right in the very room where she sat.
'If he truly believed I was a swindler... he never would have revealed the intelligence he gathered while investigating whether the real daughter was dead or alive right in front of me.'
A seasoned knight who had spent years fighting across brutal battlefields would never make such a careless, amateur mistake.
'In fact, he might be an indispensable person for this family.'
Lefonya nodded to herself, quietly placing a high evaluation on Habelian despite his blunt hostility.
Several days had passed since Habelian's arrival at the estate.
'It's surprisingly quiet.'
Given how overtly hostile he had been from the start, she had braced herself for an endless string of headaches. Even if he didn't shadow her every move to keep watch like Pelens, she had worried he might pick a fight at every turn, or rally the vassals lingering at the mansion to drum up support for kicking her out.
Yet, remarkably, Habelian did nothing of the sort. In fact, he unfailingly showed up for every single family meal.
The first time she stumbled upon him sitting in the dining hall with his nose in a book, her heart had practically leaped into her throat. Stripped of his formal military attire, he wore simple indoor loungewear, and the neatly pomaded hair he usually slicked back was swept down softly over his forehead, giving him a strikingly different presence.
Testing the waters, Lefonya had offered a timid greeting in a tiny voice, but he naturally ignored her. That, however, was the extent of it. He merely kept reading in absolute silence until the Duke and Pelens arrived and the dishes were served.
Once the food was set before him, he closed his book, pushed it to the side, and ate his meal quietly.
What stunned her even more was how the Duke and Pelens treated his aloof behavior as entirely normal, letting him be as though this were the most natural routine in the world.
'...Is he a ghost only I can see?'
Even when the Duke and Pelens made their usual fuss over feeding Lefonya, hovering over her with endless chatter, Habelian never spared them a single glance. He didn't even utter a word of complaint.
The moment the meal concluded, he would quietly vanish, heading off to read in the glass greenhouse or the grand library. More than once, while running through the garden at Pelens's persistent badgering, Lefonya had caught sight of Habelian engrossed in a book through the greenhouse panes.
This identical pattern had repeated itself for days on end. Eventually, Lefonya found herself naturally paying little attention to his presence.
'Come to think of it, I wonder how Rudeum is doing.'
Had his wound reopened? Was he still struggling under the threat of assassins like before?
Perched on a garden bench, Lefonya sank deep into thought.
'I need to meet him again to ask more questions.'
She had to figure out just how much Rudeum actually knew. Only then could she formulate her next course of action.
Lefonya let her mind drift back to the boy.
Was it because they were roughly the same age? Despite the glaring mountain of suspicions surrounding him, she strangely couldn't bring herself to feel any real animosity toward him. Perhaps it was because he had been the very first person to tell her she needed to survive. Or perhaps it was because she still owed him her life from the succession celebration banquet.
Suddenly, his parting words echoed in her mind—his suggestion that they become allies rather than enemies.
"...What kind of allies can't even see each other after that day?" she muttered under her breath.
Gathering news about him on her own was nearly impossible, and sneaking a message past the watchful eyes of the Duke and Pelens was completely out of the question.
'A way to keep Rudeum close so we can meet regularly...'
No matter how much she racked her brain, no viable solution came to mind.
'He said he would wait for me to call him.'
He claimed he would come if she called, but how on earth was she supposed to do that? He had instructed her to hold the Green Gem and speak his name, which was why she carried the communication jewel tucked inside her bodice at all times.
'Is he really waiting?'
Frustrated, Lefonya tapped the innocent dirt with the toe of her shoe.
Wait. Rudeum was capable of summoning spirits. Could it be that he could hear even the faintest whisper and appear out of thin air?
Lefonya swallowed hard. Glancing around, she spotted Pelens a short distance away, vigorously swinging his training sword through the air.
All right. If there was ever a time to try, it was now...
"...Rudeum."
Clutching the smooth green stone hidden beneath her fabric, Lefonya whispered the name in a breath so faint it was barely audible.
A sudden gust of wind swept across the grass.
Lefonya's eyes darted around in nervous anticipation. Her heart hammered against her ribs, fluttering like a young child eagerly awaiting the arrival of a fairy from a picture book. Strands of her soft hair danced in the swirling breeze.
'Should I have called him when I was completely alone?'
If Rudeum materialized right here and now, she would have no way to explain his sudden appearance to Pelens or the Duke. Even so, she couldn't help hoping that he would show up, just as he had promised.
Lefonya pressed a hand over her pounding chest and waited with bated breath.
The wind abruptly subsided.
At that exact moment, the distinct sound of approaching footsteps crunched over the gravel.
"...!"
Startled, Lefonya snapped her head toward the sound.
"......Huh?"
The person who answered her call wasn't the boy she had summoned at all. Why on earth was...
"You."
Lefonya blinked in utter bewilderment. The person standing tall before her was not Rudeum.
It was Habelian.
Having apparently finished the thick tome he had been reading yesterday, he stood before her with an entirely new book tucked under his arm. His brow was furrowed into a tight, displeased scowl.
She had known the past few days were far too peaceful. He was finally making his move.
Carefully slipping her hand away from the Green Gem inside her dress, Lefonya swallowed nervously, her small frame tensing up. Perhaps he had spent the last several days running a background check on her, or maybe he had been searching for the most effective way to inflict pain and drive her out.
'Not that it matters what he tries. I'm not leaving this estate no matter what.'
Habelian looked down at the tiny girl perched on the garden bench, his expression flat and dry, before parting his lips.
"You. You play entirely too much."
The words that tumbled from his mouth caught her completely off guard.
"...What?"
"I have observed you over the past few days. When on earth do you ever dedicate time to study?"
"......"
"Do you even know how to write? What about reading?"
Ah. If she were an ordinary five-year-old noble child, this would indeed be the exact age when one first learned how to read and write the alphabet. For commoners, literacy was an elusive luxury, but Lefonya had learned all of it while growing up in the Holy Temple under the Pope.
'Now that I think about it, why didn't the Duke or Pelens ever ask me about that?'
Back when Lefonya had casually scanned the Adoption Document presented by the Duke, and even when she had picked up books in the library right in front of Pelens, neither of them had shown the slightest surprise. Well, in Pelens's case, he had constantly dragged her outside to play whenever she so much as stepped near the library, so he likely hadn't given it a second thought.
As for the Duke of Craitan...
'The Duke probably conducted a thorough background check on me before bringing me in, so he already knew.'
While Lefonya sat with her lips pressed tight, turning the matter over in her mind, Habelian suddenly dropped onto the wooden bench beside her with an unceremonious thud.
Without a word of preamble, he flipped open the book in his hands.
"Look here."
"......"
"Pelens calls you a fluffball, does he not? These letters spell out the word 'fluffball.' Fluff. Ball."
Unlike the dense philosophical treatises he had carried yesterday, the book resting across Habelian's lap was, shockingly, an illustrated primer for absolute beginners.
...A reader tailored with excruciating precision to the intellectual capacity of a five-year-old.