Chapter 40
If you were to hold a popularity poll for the characters appearing in <Academy's Gritty Mage>,
‘Celestina Belhart’ would probably rank in the top three at the very least.
Her looks alone were enough to make even that dull Kyle, who knew nothing but magical training, stare blankly at her for a moment.
The real value of the Third Princess lay in her personality.
She was polite and friendly, speaking respectfully to everyone despite being royalty.
The reason she turned out that way probably had a lot to do with her family (?) circumstances.
She had five older brothers and two older sisters above her, and one younger brother and one younger sister below her.
She was awkwardly too young to step forward and claim the throne.
At the same time, she was awkwardly too old to play the baby of the family and monopolize everyone's affection.
It was a truly suffocatingly awkward position.
If she acted haughtily like the other royals, she would just get buried without leaving any presence at all, so she chose a different path.
She was considerate and respectful toward others, able to think through their true feelings and listen carefully to every word.
In a word, she was an ‘ideal’ ruler.
...or at least, she was supposed to be.
But the Princess Celestina before me looked nothing like the version I'd seen in print.
No, I didn't even need to draw a line between dimensions.
She was different from even the version I'd seen a few months ago in the interview waiting room.
Her tightly clasped hands were trembling with nervousness.
Her violet eyes, lowered toward the floor, trembled pitifully.
Her cheeks were deathly pale, and the hand gripping her teacup had veins standing out white.
That friendly, composed demeanor that kept appearing over and over in the original was nowhere to be seen.
Instead, a girl who looked so fragile she seemed ready to shatter at any moment sat before me.
*
An awkward silence hung heavily in the room.
The only sound was the clink of the princess's teacup as she nervously fussed with it.
What on earth was she trying to say?
She'd stopped me first, but had she forgotten what she wanted to say?
I flicked my eyes sideways and stole a glance at the princess.
The princess was staring blankly at the cold black tea in her cup.
Unable to stand it any longer, I sank deep into the sofa and tilted my head back.
Mmm, this softness feels so nice...
It wasn't as good as that bed from earlier, but this had its own appeal.
Is this what they call a drug cushion or something...
At this rate, am I really going to fall asleep?
Killing time like this wasn't so bad, either. After all, if I went back, I'd only get harassed by Ms. Odette anyway.
But this suffocating silence was... mentally exhausting.
In the end, I couldn't take it anymore and spoke first.
"Um, Princess."
"Y-Yes?!"
Princess Celestina jolted in place, still holding her teacup.
Maybe because she'd been tense and frozen solid this whole time, a hiccup slipped out too.
"Since you went out of your way to stop me, it seems like you have something you want to say to me."
If I beat around the bush, it would only drag things out, so I asked directly.
"Ah! W-Well... um... so... how is life in the Department of Magical Engineering?"
...Huh?
"I-Is it... bearable?"
"Yeah, I guess. It's comfortable."
"Ah, it's comfortable... Th-that outfit... how is the maid work? Isn't it very... difficult?"
"This is a bit hard. I feel like I'm going to die a little."
"Y-Yes... th-that's right... it must be, must be hard..."
And once again, silence.
I had no idea why this conversation kept dying so miserably.
...Maybe I should go soon.
I'd probably skipped out enough by now, and it was about time Ms. Odette came looking for me.
Maybe the princess had just wandered into the room on a whim, found me there, and decided to stop me to ease the awkwardness.
"If you have nothing else to say, then I'll be going..."
"H-Hold on!"
At her urgent voice, I froze halfway to standing.
The princess took a deep breath, then asked in a trembling voice.
"Are you... deliberately avoiding me?"
"...Huh?"
Avoiding her? Me?
Her expression was so serious and desperate that I blanked for a moment and missed my chance to answer.
Had she taken my silence as an answer of ‘yes’?
"So that was it, after all."
The princess started to break down.
The tears gathering at the corners of her eyes made it clear she was certain of it.
"Wait... that's not..."
I tried to explain, flustered, but...
Suddenly, a few memories flashed through my mind.
Come to think of it, this was the first time I'd seen the princess since we met once in the interview waiting room.
I'd even completely forgotten despite Deputy Head Albert's earnest plea to 'please keep an eye on the princess.'
...Yeah, I can see why the princess would misunderstand.
No, at this point it wasn't even a misunderstanding—it was just certainty.
Cold sweat ran down the back of my neck.
I felt like I should say something, but my mouth wouldn't open.
My lips went dry, and the words stuck in my throat.
"Honestly... I do understand."
The princess tried to lift her teacup as if to act like nothing was wrong... then set it back down.
Her trembling hand looked so pitiful.
"You've already gone under another royal's wing, so you probably thought I'd get clingy and burden you."
I scratched my head for no reason.
This misunderstanding had piled up way too much.
"Um... I haven't gone under anyone's wing, you know. And I wasn't exactly trying to avoid you either..."
At my belated excuse, tears began to gather in her violet eyes.
"...What do you mean you're not?!"
Soon, her pent-up emotions burst out.
I never imagined the princess would raise her voice.
"It's already been over two months since the semester started."
Her voice began to waver, then turned into a trembling sob.
"We're in the same year, and even though our departments are different, we have classes together! How could we not run into each other even once by coincidence? Do you seriously think that makes sense unless you were deliberately avoiding me??"
"..."
"Of course...! Of course I couldn't bring myself to approach you first either. But... still, isn't this too much?!"
"...Princess. Please calm down first..."
"How am I supposed to calm down right now? My head's already full enough with everything I have to worry about...!"
My words seemed to snap the princess's last thread of reason.
"At the imperial palace, my brothers and sisters are always threatening me and pressuring me...! I was so scared that I thought if I ran away to the academy, I might finally be able to breathe a little!"
As if a dam had burst, tears and a voice choked with resentment gushed out all at once.
"Why does everyone expect so much from me? If you take away my status as a princess, I can't do anything at all! Why is magic so hard? Senior Miriel is on my case every other day, and what exactly did I even do wrong...!"
Listening quietly, I got the feeling she'd been bottling up a lot for a long time.
I do feel bad for her, but... why is she venting to me about this...
"And on top of that, Rinea Hall blows up once a month! The training building collapses too! The guards and maids are so overprotective it's suffocating! And that magical golem from the other day? What on earth was that? We almost died!"
...Ah. I can't exactly say I bear no responsibility for that one.
"And... and also... above all..."
The princess's hand groped at the air.
Listening to the hiss as she paused to catch her breath between words, I could tell her throat had gone hoarse.
"It's too... too lonely..."
Even so, her complaints didn't stop.
"Everyone either admires me, keeps me in check, or tries to use me... It's frustrating because I can't pour my heart out to anyone..."
The ends of her words kept collapsing.
Her trembling voice soon turned into sobs.
"And then if you go and shake me up like this too...!"
I could only stare blankly at her.
Maybe this was the first time I'd truly faced her properly.
Not as a princess, not as a heroine.
Just a first-year academy student, terrified and trembling, crying in front of me.
I let out a quiet sigh and gently patted her slender shoulders.
"Um... let's take one deep breath first. You'll choke if you keep crying like that."
I wasn't used to comforting people. So I just did it the best I could. Clumsily, at least.
"Mm... this may sound irresponsible, but... maybe you shouldn't feel too burdened..."
"Hic... uuu... sob..."
"Besides, this is the academy, not the imperial palace."
It's such a waste not to be able to relax in peace when you have such a nice bed in your room.
"Couldn't you let go of a little of it?"
"I... I can't. You don't know how vicious they are... Even after I ran away from the imperial palace, they still..."
"Don't worry. At least at the academy, I'll protect you."
At once, her crying stopped.
The princess looked up at me with a tear-streaked face, hiccupping softly.
"Do you know why I came to the academy, even though I have no reason to learn magic or anything like that?"
I scratched the back of my neck, feeling awkward.
"About half of it was because of you, Princess."
"...What?!"
"Deputy Head Albert told me so. If anything happens at the academy, he said I'm supposed to clean up the mess myself."
In other words, he meant I should make sure you were well protected, Princess.
Before I'd even finished speaking, tears welled up again in her violet eyes.
Those were probably tears of relief.
Or maybe tears of hurt feelings.
"Then... then why did you avoid me...?"
"No, I mean... I told you, I wasn't avoiding you."
"Lies. You didn't even come into the Department of Magic..."
"That was because Liliana, the department head, lured me with a magic tool, so I had no choice..."
"I even sent you an invitation... why didn't you accept that?"
"Uh... when did you send it?"
Could it be that one of the letters I'd thrown away was from the princess?
No, if that were the case, Ms. Odette would probably have set it aside separately, wouldn't she?
...No way, was the thing I told her to clear away in my sleep that letter?
As I blinked, still looking dazed,
"...That's too much."
The princess's two hands clutched the collar of my clothes tightly.
"You're really, really too much..."
Then she weakly thumped—tap, tap—against my flat chest.
For quite a long while after that, the princess buried her face against my chest and kept crying.
Fortunately, unlike someone I know, she didn't commit the atrocity of blowing her nose on my clothes.
*
How much time had passed?
After stopping her tears and pulling away from me, the princess suddenly covered her face with both hands and hung her head.
Steam went pshhh— rising from her sparkling blond hair.
Looks like our princess was seriously embarrassed.
"Hey, Lunaris."
Her mumbling voice was muffled by her fingers.
"That just now was... it was only a momentary mistake, okay?!"
It was the kind of thing that would be easy to misunderstand if you heard it without knowing the context.
"So you absolutely, absolutely mustn't tell anyone about today! Got it?"
"Of course. If you want, I'll wipe it from my memory clean."
"No, don't do that! Then you'd forget that you promised to protect me too!"
The princess's two cheeks were still red-hot and showed no sign of cooling down.
The princess's expression as she looked down was a mix of relief and embarrassment.
I glanced out the window.
Darkness had already spread thickly across the sky, now that the sun had set.
Come to think of it, I'd stayed in this room for a long time.
"I really should go back now."
I stood up from the sofa, stretching my arms wide.
"If I stay any later, Ms. Odette might really get angry."
Just as I was about to take a step toward the door.
"...Princess?"
A small hand hurriedly grabbed my sleeve.
"Um... Lunaris. This might sound strange if I say it, but..."
The princess hesitated, then finally gathered her courage and went on.
"Could you... not go today?"
"...Huh?"
"W-Well! Lunaris, you're my bodyguard, so...!"
Her stammering voice desperately scrambled for an excuse.
"You... should be protecting me... right?"
"Strictly speaking, I'm more like an academy guard than your personal bodyguard, Princess."
I quietly sighed and continued.
"Even if I were your bodyguard, bodyguards don't usually sleep in the same bed as the person they're guarding."
"Ugh..."
"Or perhaps, Princess, do you sleep with your bodyguards?"
"N-No, I don't! Of course I don't!"
Her violet eyes started to dart around.
This princess was actually kind of fun to tease, come to think of it.
"T-Then... right, the maid work! Didn't you say it was hard?"
"It is, yes. Though I can't avoid it because it's a punishment."
"I'll talk to the head maid and ask her to cut you some slack!"
My eyes widened a little before I knew it.
That actually sounded like a pretty good offer...
"And you know what? My bed is really soft. I'm sure you'll sleep really well!"
Ah, I know that bed's power all too well.
It's a magical bed that can wipe away all your fatigue just from lying down for a moment.
I looked back and forth between the maid uniform I was wearing and the bed behind the princess.
Then I let out a long, resigned sigh.
"...Then just for today."