Chapter 30
Chapter 30
No thanks. Getting involved with someone who's already engaged is hell.
I drew a firm line.
Unless I lost my mind, there was no way I'd get involved with this woman.
I've only got one neck.
To be exact, I'd already used one.
...Don't tell me there are three?
Nah, impossible.
I'm not some crazy bastard who'd bet my neck on an unknown possibility.
"Hell... that's a rather extreme way to put it."
"I'm being realistic. If His Highness the Crown Prince sees this, he'll misunderstand, and how am I supposed to clean up the mess?"
"Then where is heaven for you?"
Elysia asked out of the blue.
I planted the shovel in the ground and looked up at the sky for a moment.
Beyond the greenhouse roof, I could see the blue sky.
"Heaven, huh."
There was one place that came to mind without hesitation.
"My hometown. The Farne estate."
"Not the capital?"
"Yes. There, if you want to sleep, you sleep. If you want to eat, you eat. If you're bored, you farm or fish. You can live like a young master and not worry about a thing."
A smile spread across my face before I knew it.
"It was my heaven until I came to the capital. Until my father sent me into exile here, that is."
"Exile? I'm sure you mean studying abroad."
"For me, it's no different from exile. It's around potato-blossom season..."
I was wistfully going on about potatoes when—
Trudge, trudge.
I sensed someone approaching our row of furrows.
It was the hipster in a leather apron, Viscountess Müller.
With her arms crossed, she grinned, looking back and forth between me and Elysia.
"How very youthful."
"Please don't say dangerous things, Professor. This lady is engaged."
As I answered with a straight face, Viscountess Müller replied with a sly grin.
"My, why are you so sensitive? I was merely commenting on the sacred labor of sweating over a field, wasn't I?"
"..."
"What exactly were you imagining to make you jump like that? Perhaps you've got a guilty conscience?"
"No. Not at all."
That sly smile of Viscountess Müller's.
'Damn it, seriously.'
That married woman... I might even go suck on her toes.
Huh?
Seriously, just do it?!
Just go and suck 'em?!
What am I even saying.
Behave yourself, Cassian.
Right.
Stop with the married-woman jokes!
* * *
Elysia watched the scene before her, lightly covering her mouth with her fan.
At the end of her gaze was Cassian's broad back as he silently dug into the earth and turned it over.
Thump, swish. Rustle.
The plow sank into the ground at a steady rhythm, followed by the sound of soft earth turning over.
The regular rhythm, and the scent of rain-soaked earth drifting through her nose, strangely soothed her mind.
The surroundings were the complete opposite.
"Eek!"
"Oh no! My dress!"
The other young ladies were too busy wiping sweat from their partners' foreheads, brushing dirt off their clothes, and even brandishing shovels themselves.
The young ladies' elegance and dignity had long since been buried under the dirt.
Only she.
In this mess, she alone sat with lofty composure, maintaining elegance against the backdrop of the most perfectly tilled field.
Elysia felt the gazes coming at her from every direction.
She was so used to reading people's expressions and moods that she could practically tell what lines they were swallowing inside.
Broadly speaking, envy, jealousy, and admiration.
And if she were to spell out the lines more specifically.
'So enviable...'
'The young lady doesn't have to lift a finger.'
'That barbarian—no, that person—sure knows how to farm.'
Something like that, more or less.
The corners of Elysia's mouth slowly rose.
'...Feels good.'
Lately, every look directed at her had been tainted with something impure.
It had started when rumors of discord with Crown Prince Louis began to spread.
Mockery that she was a woman not loved by her fiancé, and the condescending pity of those who dared to feel sorry for her.
She hated those slimy gazes to death.
But now it was different.
Gazes made entirely of such clean, untainted admiration!
It was almost as if she'd gone back to the days when everyone simply looked up to and worshiped her as Rosenberg's treasured jewel.
And the one who had created that peace was.
"Phew."
The man in front of her was wiping sweat from his brow and, far from looking strained, was genuinely enjoying himself as he worked the field.
He asked nothing of her.
Not encouragement, not a handkerchief, not even the slightest hint that he wanted credit for his hard work.
He simply moved because he liked the soil, because he liked sweating.
Elysia rested her chin on her hand and stared quietly at Cassian.
'He doesn't even seem to be having a hard time... he's genuinely enjoying it.'
A man who let her relax in comfort and, as a bonus, gifted her envy-filled gazes.
Beyond that, his plain, unburdening simplicity.
Just a few days ago, that man who looked like a natural-born farmer had been officially recognized as a genius by the professors of the Department of Magic.
It was unbelievable.
It wasn't that his appearance was unremarkable.
It was that his behavior made no sense.
'With talent that incredible, why had he lived on, ignored and dismissed as a barbarian?'
Didn't he want to brag about it?
If it were me, I'd have been running around shouting it from the rooftops.
Even as that thought crossed her mind.
Watching his back as he silently conversed with the soil, she felt as if she understood.
'...He just wasn't interested in that sort of thing.'
Other people's opinions meant no more to him than a passing breeze.
He didn't show off, didn't brag, didn't decorate himself.
He was simply an honest, unpretentious man who found happiness in quietly doing what he loved and sweating for it.
And yet he was more outstanding than anyone else.
To her, exhausted by the pretenses and empty formalities of noble society, Cassian's raw, unvarnished self was always, every time she met him,
a fresh shock and a comfort.
Elysia's cheeks turned just a little red.
She found herself thinking of it again.
'...He might actually be kind of cool.'
The thought she'd had in the carriage on the way home last week.
* * *
Two days later.
Thursday.
During B-Class Introduction to Herbal Studies.
Viscountess Müller, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and with her arms crossed, was once again keenly observing the students in class.
The difference from usual was that she was observing just one of them with particular sharpness.
At the end of her gaze was a small girl crouched in a corner of the greenhouse.
Lily, with her pink hair tied back tightly, was carefully digging into the soil with a hoe in her dirt-covered hands.
"...Indeed."
Viscountess Müller murmured under her breath.
Last class, her view had been blocked by the huge, bizarre typhoon that was Cassian, but now she could finally see properly.
Lily's attitude toward the soil in front of her was different from Cassian's, but she was certainly worth recommending.
'Reverent.'
She never made a single careless hoe stroke.
Scratch, scratch.
Such a careful touch, as though she were digging mandrakes out of the soil.
When she encountered a hard clump of earth, she didn't force it open; instead, she picked it apart by hand and gently smoothed it.
That attitude of not even regarding dirt-covered hands as dirty, of accepting them naturally.
Pretty, pretty. Grow well...
Even though she hadn't even sown anything yet, maybe that girl was treating the soil with exactly that feeling.
'So that's why she's a saintess.'
A mindset that devoted itself wholeheartedly even to mere dirt.
It was fair to say she was showing respect for the earth that would nurture life.
'Definitely worth recommending.'
Viscountess Müller wore a satisfied smile.
Lily pleased her enough to ease the regret from missing Cassian last week just a little.
'Pass.'
*
*
*
Plod, plod.
The greenhouse after class, once all the lessons were over.
The students were shaking the dirt off their clothes one by one as they left the greenhouse.
Amid the crowd streaming out like an ant swarm, a tiny pink back of the head stood out.
Viscountess Müller pointed out the little girl who had just been about to turn around after gathering her things.
"Lily, stay behind for a moment."
Jolt!
Lily's shoulders shot up like popcorn.
She shuffled toward Müller, her frightened-deer eyes darting nervously.
"M-me...?"
"Yes, you."
Viscountess Müller lifted the brim of her hat slightly and flashed her signature bright smile.
* * *
After all the other students had left.
Once the two of them were alone, Viscountess Müller got straight to the point.
"I'll be blunt. Would you like to become my direct disciple?"
"...Huh?"
If she'd made such a proposal to an ordinary student, an invitation to dinner would already have been sent from that student's family.
But Lily's reaction was outside every expectation.
"Whaaat?!"
Lily stumbled back in surprise.
Her face was filled not with delight or joy, but with deep suspicion and wariness.
'Why? Why me? What did I do?'
It was because of the trauma from before her regression.
Ever since she'd been put through so much in her first life, she'd instinctively rejected any favor with no reason behind it.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Unconditional kindness is just bait.
That was the bitter lesson she had learned in the life before her regression.
Of course, the one making the offer had absolutely no idea about that.
Viscountess Müller stroked her chin.
'Hmm... this is more troublesome than I expected.'
For whatever reason, she didn't seem like the type who could be tempted by money or status.
Seeing those eyes full of naked survival instinct, it looked like she'd have to change tactics.
Then what should I use to tempt her?
Saying "I liked your attitude toward the soil!" would only make her think, "Liar!" and deepen her suspicion, obviously.
Just then, while she was thinking it over, Lily mustered her courage and asked in a trembling voice.
"W-why are you making me such a generous offer...? What's the real reason?"
She gripped the strap of her bag tightly.
"I haven't shown you anything at all... perhaps you have some other motive..."
'Hmm.'
Her pride wouldn't let her ask a disciple to come to her first a second time.
And she felt the answer might lie in an unexpectedly simple place.
'She told me to keep it secret.'
Cassian Del Farne. That brazen, charming freshman.
He had indeed begged her, time and again, to keep the recommendation an 'absolute secret.'
But.
'I never promised I'd keep the secret. I only said I couldn't give you a definite answer.'
The viscountess's calculations were cold.
From the start, she'd deliberately phrased things ambiguously, with the intention of teasing him.
For an efficient deal, a little flexibility—the sort people in the world call betrayal—was necessary.
"Cassian Del Farne. You know him, right?"
"!"
The moment that name was mentioned, Lily's eyes widened to the size of green apples.
"Huh? Professor, how do you know about Cassian...?"
"That student recommended you. That's also why I suddenly took an interest in you, so there's no need to doubt or worry."
"Ah..."
The effect was immediate.
The hedgehog that had bristled just moments ago was gone, and color rushed back into Lily's face in an instant.
Her pastel green eyes sparkled like stars.
"Cassian... recommended me?"