Prejudice
"What the hell?"
Was this a double trap? Act all sweet on the surface, then slip poison into the chocolate when no one's looking?
The thought surfaced and died in the same breath.
Come on. A ten-year-old kid lacing chocolate with poison? This wasn't some morning soap opera.
I tore open the wrapping and picked up one of the chocolates.
Mary hadn't been lying about making them by hand — they were spectacularly ugly. She'd clearly been going for cute little teddy bears, but what she'd produced looked more like bears that had crawled out of some twisted underworld. A few had cracks from rough handling. Amateur work, every last one of them.
Still. She'd made them for me. And with those tiny hands of hers, this was honestly pretty good.
I popped one straight into my mouth.
Crunch. The moment I bit down, a wave of sweetness flooded my mouth. Thankfully, the taste hadn't inherited any of that hideous appearance. A chocolate true to its essence, at least.
I polished off the first one and was reaching for another when —
"!"
My eyes locked with someone peeking out from behind the corner of the wall.
Mary. Just her face, poking out, spying on me.
So she was watching to see if I'd actually eat them.
The second our eyes met, Mary's went wide as saucers — mouth hanging open, the whole works. That expression was working so hard to scream I was so startled! that I half-expected an actual exclamation mark to pop up over her head.
The shock lasted only a second. Then she scrambled back behind the wall with a shashashak, vanishing like a stray cat that had just seen a human for the first time.
...This is too much pressure. I can't even eat.
Half of Mary's face reappeared, sneaking glances at me. And just like before — eye contact, panic, hide. Get caught again, run. By the fourth round of this routine, I was too exhausted to care anymore.
— Heehee!
Every time I ate one, a little giggle floated over from Mary's direction.
I caught her out of the corner of my eye. Just a silhouette and half a face, but those eyes curved into crescent moons came through crystal clear.
Did I judge her too hard just because she's a noble's daughter? Looking at that pure little face, she's exactly what a kid her age should be.
Only after I tossed the last chocolate into my mouth did Mary finally step out into the open. She shuffled over, hesitant and fidgety, until she was standing right in front of me.
"O-Oppa."
The way her mouth was working, I almost thought she was still chewing chocolate. She kept her head bowed and mumbled:
"W-Was it good...?"
If I hadn't been listening hard, I would have missed it entirely. Her voice was that small, that full of stutters.
Yeah. Something about this moment made my chest go all soft and warm.
Anyway — she'd prepared a gift for me. The least I could do was say thank you.
I scratched the back of my ear, a little awkward.
"Yeah. Tasted great. You could sell these."
"R-Right?! I worked super hard on them! And I made the shapes thinking of you, Oppa! So you better never forget this favor!"
Those twisted underworld bears were supposed to be me?
I was now one hundred percent certain this kid should never, ever set foot in the arts.
"H-Hey, Oppa."
Had she read my mind? The girl who'd been chattering away so excitedly suddenly went all timid. After a long, careful pause, Mary opened her mouth again.
"I-If you stay at our house, you can eat these every day...."
"...."
"I'll make cookies every day toooo.... S-So can't you just stay here...?"
I still couldn't figure it out.
Looking at a kid this innocent — what part of her had the original Evan found so demonic and terrifying?
Or was I the idiot here? Thinking about it carefully... yeah. The original Evan had happily trailed after those worthless women, and I'd been the fool for taking that guy's judgment as gospel.
"Oppa...?"
When my answer took too long, Mary started blinking like she was about to cry. She even sniffled — give it a few more seconds and she'd be full-on wailing.
I had zero confidence I could handle that catastrophe, so I opened my mouth fast.
"Alright. I'll stay here for a while."
"H-How long....?"
"Pretty long, probably. Not like I've got anywhere else to go anyway."
Mary's tearful face lit up in an instant. She threw her arms out and bounced up and down — pure, unfiltered kid emotion.
Seeing her this happy just makes me feel worse. Honestly, I have no intention of sticking around that long.
"Oppa's not a goldfish! I'll specially upgrade you to a koi!"
Had the goldfish comment hit her that hard? I hadn't said a word, and here she was correcting the record on her own.
Though... goldfish or koi, they're both just fish, right? Same difference.
"Oh! Mom wanted to see you too, Oppa! So I told her you were here! She looked so, so happy!"
"...Really?"
"Uh-huh! Mom's having tea right now — let's go together!"
Mary grabbed my hand and took the lead. I let myself be pulled along, limp as a rag doll.
Not his birth mother, surely.
As far as I knew, Evan's real mother was dead. So the "Mom" Mary was talking about — that would be Evan's stepmother.
And the wickedness of stepmothers had already been thoroughly proven by Cinderella. Hard to take this as good news.
Probably not on good terms.
Apparently the person Evan hated most after his father was his new mother. And she almost certainly didn't think much of him either.
Of course she wouldn't. He wasn't a child she'd carried and birthed, and on top of that he was a traitor who'd abandoned the family and run off. What was there to love?
Based on Evan's track record alone, "dislike" was putting it mildly. She probably despised him.
"Ah! Mom!"
A woman sat drinking tea in the courtyard outside the annex. Young for someone with a child Mary's age, but the black hair and cynical eyes were pure Mary.
"I brought Oppa! You'll believe me now, right?!"
The fingers reaching for her teacup froze. Slowly, she turned her head toward us.
This woman is even worse than Mary.
Those eyes looked ready to kill someone. An already fierce face, now with a furrowed brow on top of it — she looked like a predator.
"...Evan?"
It wouldn't have been strange at all if she'd charged over and slapped me across the face right then. I braced myself for the stream of curses that had to be coming next.
"Ah...."
But then a tear rolled down from those fierce eyes.
What? Soft tears from a face like that? I was thrown completely off. And the strangeness didn't stop there.
"Hic... huuh... It really is you, Evan...."
The woman I'd expected to spit cheap insults was speaking in careful, polite language.
"Waaaah...! Evan! Thank goodness you came back safe...! Your mother is so happy.... Hic!"
Before I knew it she was in front of me, pulling me into her arms and sobbing her heart out.
I stared at her for a moment, baffled, then thought:
...Evan, you absolute idiot.
I needed to reflect on this too.
Never again would I judge someone by their appearance alone.
The knightly House of Yllain.
The bloodline that had flowed down from the previous head, Wilhelm Yllain, continued unbroken to the present day. And as that bloodline promised, every child of the Yllain family was born with extraordinary talent.
But there is always an exception. The eldest son, Evan Yllain, was that exception.
Members of House Yllain were expected to awaken their mana by the age of ten, and to be able to apply it by twelve at the latest. That was the family's unwritten law. Evan, however, only managed to awaken his mana at fourteen.
And that wasn't even the worst of it.
His very nature was as far from a knight's as you could get. What knight hesitates to swing a sword? Evan's gentleness — the kind that couldn't even kill a bug — was worse than useless on a battlefield.
A temperament no one would ever associate with a knightly house. Naturally, Evan Yllain was treated as the family's sore spot.
But that frail personality wasn't the whole of Evan's problems.
The real headache was something else entirely.
"...Evan's back?"
"Yes, my lord."
"So he's finally grown bored of that childish little game of house. Pathetic."
The eldest son of a knightly house, led around by the nose by commoner women. How far did it have to go before a man would turn his back on his own family and choose those women instead?
It was an act that dragged the family's name through the mud and humiliated every knight who served under it. A true knight was supposed to carry his house's name on his back and protect the nation. To throw away the Yllain blade because he'd gone blind for a few worthless skirts — anyone connected to the family would feel their blood boil.
And no one burned hotter than the head of the house, Zait Yllain.
"If he dragged those wenches back with him, throw them out immediately. I don't even want to look at them."
Zait had not the slightest intention of welcoming Evan home. If anything, he wished the boy would just disappear again.
He let the thought of Evan linger for a moment, then drove it out by swinging his sword. With the head of the house declaring open hostility, no one else could afford to show interest. The surrounding knights swung their blades in silence, and Evan's name was left to be spoken by entirely different mouths.
"Evan? Who was Evan again?"
"You know — the idiot who got beaten up by Rebecca and wet himself."
"Aaaah~ Hahaha. I remember. That guy's back?"
The children of House Lorentz, eavesdropping from a distance. Damian, the second son, now seventeen, and his younger sister Erica. Both of them wore thick, mocking smiles as they dredged up old memories.
"Should've just kept playing servant for those country girls. Why'd he even come back?"
"Mary must be thrilled. Her precious idiot big brother she kept singing I miss you, I miss you about finally came home. Two idiots reunited — isn't it touching, Brother?"
"Not even a little. Crawling back home because things got hard just looks pathetic. Anyway, why did he come back? Planning to play at being a noble now?"
House Yllain and House Lorentz had long maintained close ties — close enough that each regarded the other as a rival, and expressed that wariness in rather cruel ways. The competition among children who hadn't yet grown up was even worse.
Evan's little sister Mary had a sharp edge to her, inherited from her father. But Evan? Evan was a born sucker who just grinned and took the abuse. And so the Lorentz children never left him alone — physical violence, psychological violence that stripped his pride bare. They treated him like a toy for killing boredom, exactly as they pleased.
"There's stupid, and then there's that level of stupid. And of all times, he crawls back when Sister Rebecca is here? Does he want to get beaten and wet himself all over again?"
"Pffft. Maybe this time he'll crap blood too? Sister Rebecca's gotten way scarier."
The person who held the biggest share of that bullying was Rebecca Lorentz. She tormented Evan constantly, and had once used a sparring match as an excuse to beat him half to death. That had been a mere five years ago — two days before the fifteen-year-old Evan vanished.
That incident had almost certainly played a major role in his decision to leave the family.
But Rebecca, the one responsible, felt not a shred of guilt. Five years on, she didn't even remember it had happened.
"Sister! Sister! Are you listening to us?"
Erica called out, still giggling, toward one side of the training grounds. Rebecca was there, drenched in sweat, deep in sword practice. She was so focused she showed no reaction to the noise around her at all. Erica pouted, sulking.
"Tch. Ignoring us again."
"Leave her. Don't go bothering her and get yourself yelled at. Anyway — so Evan really came home?"
Training had been getting dull anyway. Perfect timing. Damian stood up, a sly grin curling the corner of his mouth — the smile of a child who'd just been handed a brand-new toy.
"Guess I should go say hello. Wonder if he's still the same."
"You're going? Then I'm coming too!"
Damian set down the sword he'd been holding and headed off somewhere. Erica, wearing the same bright, innocent smile, bounced after him with matching light footsteps.