Chapter 31

Chapter : 31

I meant to find Ian before he and Agares could clash again.

I searched here and there for him, only to discover that the bastard was being absurdly peaceful about it all. He was lying on the bed in his dorm room with his eyes closed, meditating.

Or perhaps sleeping.

“Is this really the time for that?”

He really has some nerve.

At my reproach, he opened the eyes he had closed and said,

“If we fight, I win.”

“Hey. He doesn’t die. Even if you kill him, he comes back.”

“That doesn’t matter. He wouldn’t be the first thing that couldn’t die. There are several ways to subdue something like that. Sealing, or Transference. Don’t worry.”

“Can’t you just not fight him?”

I explained to Ian what had happened when I fought Agares.

I told him we hadn’t really been trying to kill each other, that it had merely been a spar. Perhaps because of that, Ian scratched his head awkwardly.

“Hm. That makes this rather unfortunate.”

“So just leave the Academy for a while.”

Ian tilted his head.

“Why? Isn’t this something that can be resolved with an apology?”

“He says he won’t accept one. He says he doesn’t forgive people.”

Ian answered in that flat, toneless voice of his.

“How narrow-minded. Petty, really. Actually, I was already planning to leave the Academy for a while anyway.”

“Why?”

“You said I’d die if I fought Dimagen. Not anymore. It doesn’t matter how strong he is or how much he’s prepared.”

“Because you’re stronger now?”

“Yes. Agares, was it? After crossing hands with him once, I realized something. This is enough. With this, I feel as though I could beat anyone.”

That much was true.

Once Ian gained that trait—whether one called it Berserk, Frenzy, Rage, or whatever else—he entered the ranks of the true powerhouses in the setting.

Originally, it wasn’t a strength he was supposed to gain this early. A device created for the sake of advancing the plot, something like Dimagen, would be easy for him to crush now.

“Well, that’s good. Go, then. Come back when you’re done.”

“I’ll go and return. See you next time.”

“Next time?”

Our transaction had already ended.

I would help Ian kill Dimagen.

In return, he had taught me magic, and though it had also been for his own sake, he had granted my request.

That was the period at the end of the sentence.

It was over.

There was no longer any reason for us to keep meeting.

Ian tapped my chest once with his fist.

“We’re friends.”

Heh.

A hollow laugh slipped out of me at the absurdity of it.

Was he really my friend?

I wasn’t sure.

Back in middle school and high school, if you were in the same class or the same year, people called you friends.

During my military days, if you were from the same enlistment batch, you were friends.

At university, if you still met after class ended, you were friends.

In truth, setting all of that aside, if you kept meeting someone even when you had no need to, maybe that was enough to call them a friend.

Then was he really my friend?

There was no reason to cling to a single word like that.

It was just that hearing it made me realize how harshly I had been living until now.

Because there hadn’t really been anyone I felt I had dealt with as one human being to another.

Even though I knew they felt emotions and were people just like me, I had treated them like devices and tools.

Because I wanted to live.

“Yeah. Let’s meet again in good health.”

I punched Ian lightly in the chest as well.

Ian left that evening, and I trained as usual.

A great many things had worn me down mentally, but my body still had plenty of stamina left, and my mana was still lively, so I couldn’t go straight to bed.

I went down to the training grounds, tore up every muscle in my body, and only then returned to my room.

When I arrived at the door, something caught my eye.

The mailbox was full.

Koromang was the only person likely to send me letters, so I wondered just how many she could possibly have sent and opened the box.

There was a single book inside.

As I opened the front door to the dormitory, I flipped open the book, which had a blank cover. It was about magic. In order, it explained how to handle mana, how to use mana to cast magic, and how to apply that magic.

It was a book one could study from without a teacher.

It seemed Ian had prepared it in advance for the day we might part ways.

---

Operation Charm the Crown Prince.

Crown-Charm, for short.

Navier and I gathered in a café near the Academy to put our heads together and devise a successful Crown-Charm strategy, but we made no progress at all. We just spent the time sipping our drinks.

The whole thing was so frustrating that I said,

“Why don’t you just slap him across the face?”

At my serious suggestion, Navier burst into peals of laughter.

Normally, she was careful not to show her teeth when she laughed, so the fact that even her gums were showing suggested she found it genuinely hilarious.

“So now you’re making jokes.”

“Yeah. That was a slip of the tongue.”

It had been a stupid suggestion.

The heroine slapping the male lead across the face was a dead cliché.

Using some outdated tactic that might have worked ten years ago and ruining everything in the process would have been idiotic.

Trying to come up with some other angle, I carefully sifted back through the contents of the Original Work.

When had Bishot and the Crown Prince met?

The first time the Crown Prince saw Bishot had been at the ball, but that meeting had been one-sided. Bishot had been too busy reading her book there to even see the Crown Prince’s face.

Amusingly enough, the two of them truly met outside the Academy.

At the time, the Crown Prince disguised his identity and went sightseeing in the market, only to shake off his bodyguards because he found them bothersome.

His guards were elite knights, but because their charge was who he was, even though they acted with the utmost caution, they still lost him.

That was when the Crown Prince met Bishot.

He appeared before her in somewhat cheap clothing, his face partially hidden, intending to slip past his guards.

Through one thing and another, he and Bishot ended up meeting and walking together, and he lied that he was a commoner.

Because of that, Bishot pitied what she assumed must have been the hard life of a commoner studying at the Academy and felt a sense of kinship with him, treating him almost like a friend.

The Crown Prince, by virtue of his position, could only have a wide circle.

From childhood, he had many teachers and associated with the children of many different houses. But among them, had there ever truly been someone he could call a friend?

Outwardly, people acted as though they treated him casually, but inwardly, they feared him. Even when he was young, everyone around him watched his mood.

To someone like that, Bishot had been new.

She treated him exactly the way she might any ordinary friend her own age.

The Crown Prince found that fascinating, and so he kept his identity hidden until the moment they parted. That was what started the comedy.

He kept telling himself that he ought to reveal it eventually, yet delayed the day little by little until the misunderstanding deepened beyond repair.

The whole point of the scene was that the Crown Prince, who feared nothing in the world, ended up flustered and helpless.

I lifted my eyes and glanced at Navier.

She tilted her head, as if to ask what I was staring at.

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing.”

I had no idea how to apply that scenario to her, so there was no point in proposing it to this girl.

The circumstances were too different. There was nothing to do but discard it.

What had come next?

Right. The lunchbox episode.

Thinking that the Crown Prince, disguised as a commoner, would go hungry, Bishot personally made him a lunchbox and brought it to him, only for the quality to resemble a mass-produced product.

The Crown Prince, who had always eaten well, found it troublesome and gave it away to someone nearby, only to regret it bitterly once he learned the circumstances.

Hmm.

I was considering whether that might work when Navier snapped at me.

“Why do you keep looking at me like that? If you’ve got something to say, then say it.”

“No. Sorry.”

People always said one shouldn’t judge by appearances, but Navier looked like someone who had never let so much as a drop of water touch her hands.

Still, because there was always the smallest chance, I asked just in case.

“Can you cook at all?”

“I’ve never done it before. I might have some talent for it, but I don’t think I’d be any good.”

“Right. Of course.”

That one was out too.

Then what else had there been?

Yes.

Bishot almost never smiled at people.

A person smiled not only when something was funny or joyful. People smiled out of politeness too. When dealing with others, they often lifted the corners of their mouths even by force.

But that wasn’t true for Bishot.

The only times she smiled were when she was immersed in alchemy.

Once the Crown Prince realized that, there was even an episode where he grew jealous of alchemy itself rather than another human being.

“Why do you keep staring?”

“Hey. Why do you keep smiling?”

“What? Me?”

Navier raised a hand to touch the corner of her mouth, then cried out in outrage,

“This is just how I look. Are you seriously criticizing the way my face is shaped now?”

“No. Sorry. Let’s move on.”

Tap. Tap.

I drummed my fingertips lightly on the table.

It was meant as a signal that I was about to say something important and that she should focus, but Navier tapped the table back in exactly the same rhythm I had used.

“Pfft.”

“You kept tapping, so I wondered whether it was supposed to be amusing.”

“Right. Anyway, don’t you have anything? Any kind of method or plan?”

“There’s nothing I can think of that would set me apart from other young ladies. I could do the same things they do, only better, perhaps, but I have no idea how to use an approach that’s different from everyone else.”

“Then let’s make not smiling your thing.”

“What?”

I took each corner of my mouth in hand and pulled them down.

Ignoring Navier’s grin as she watched, I continued,

“According to you, you look as though you’re smiling even when you’re doing nothing. Then let’s make it your concept that in front of His Highness the Crown Prince, you always keep a perfectly straight face.”

“That does sound as though it might work, but first I would have to actually speak to His Highness the Crown Prince. Let’s decide that once we’re at least on speaking terms.”

“No. I don’t want that. Stop saying things like that and come up with some kind of plan yourself. It can be ridiculous if it has to be.”

“This is the first time I’ve said that something can’t be done.”

“Anyway.”

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Navier tapped the table in order with her index finger, middle finger, and ring finger.

Seeing her eyes lift toward the ceiling, it looked as though she was trying to come up with something.

Then she let out a small cry of realization, her eyes brightening. Leaning forward, she said,

“A little while ago, you told me I ought to slap His Highness the Crown Prince, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Isn’t the act of slapping someone a little strange?”

“What? Why?”

Navier clasped her hands together and nodded to herself as though she had reached some private understanding.

“Well, if you think about it, if your goal is really to cause pain, then punching someone is much more efficient, so why slap them?”

“It’s not always about hurting them. A slap is something more symbolic than that.”

“Yes, of course I know that. I’ve seen plenty of it. The point is to wound the other person emotionally, isn’t it? But even that seems suboptimal. People have tongues, after all. If your aim is to wound someone’s heart, then the tongue is best.”

The more I thought about it, the more reasonable that sounded.

But did we really need to be having this conversation right now?

I had thought she was finally about to come up with some clever strategy for succeeding in Operation Charm the Crown Prince, and instead this was what I got.

I was about to say something cutting when Navier continued,

“Then what about this? Someone slaps me.”

“Who?”

“We hire someone appropriate.”

I couldn’t imagine anyone volunteering for that.

How exactly were they supposed to deal with the consequences after slapping Navier across the face? Even if Navier herself didn’t retaliate, her followers certainly would.

Still, curious where she was going with it, I asked,

“And then?”

“Then I retaliate with a punch and tear into them with words. Wouldn’t that be impressive? Fresh, too.”

“Your sensibilities are not exactly ordinary.”

It was becoming clear that I really shouldn’t expect any help from this girl.

And just as I was lamenting that fact, a stir rippled through the café.

No one said anything outright, but people were murmuring among themselves, letting out small gasps.

I looked around to see what the matter was.

Our target had appeared.

The Crown Prince, Kartea.

He walked straight toward us and said to me,

“To whom did you give the flower you bought at the auction?”