Chapter 51
Ten years ago, at Manus Academy.
“Congratulations on graduating as valedictorian, Estelle!”
“I congratulate you as well. May the muscles be with you!”
“How long are you planning to keep making that weird greeting?”
“Of course, until this body can serve no more!”
A boy and a girl in pristine magic-knight uniforms approached Estelle and spoke.
Estelle, who had been silently stroking the pommel of her magic sword, turned toward them and smiled faintly.
“Yeah, thanks. Pascal, Roshe.”
Pascal Logis and Roshe Andil. For the past two years, these two had been Estelle's classmates in Practical Class A.
“Congratulations on graduating, you two.”
“Thanks!”
“My head is starting to ring. Could you lower your voices?”
Pascal Logis was the burly boy who looked as if muscles had been given human form. The pink-haired girl, who looked utterly ordinary by comparison, was Roshe Andil.
“What are you planning to do after graduation?”
“That's right. Congratulations on being selected as a candidate for the lowest seat of the Rounds!”
“I'm only a candidate. It's just that a seat happened to be vacant in my generation, and even then, I still have to compete with my seniors.”
Roshe smiled broadly and defended Estelle, who shook her head.
“It's okay, Estelle. You can do it!”
“Indeed. Aren't you the valedictorian graduating with the highest marks in the past seven years?”
Pascal nodded and said,
“It's all thanks to you two. On my own, my field of vision narrows, and my judgment is far inferior to Pascal's.”
“Conversely, that means you have no flaws besides that. As a knight, I don't think there's anyone superior to you, apart from, as they say, the upper seats of the Rounds.”
“…Yeah, thanks.”
Pascal said with his arms folded.
Estelle smiled bitterly, then suddenly looked around and said,
“By the way, where's Jakma?”
“Who knows.”
“Who's that?”
“Papino Jakma. He's a freshman who enrolled last year, and he and Estelle….”
“Senior!”
A male student came running while calling Estelle. He had a much younger-looking, boyish face and disheveled, dark seaweed-colored hair; he looked considerably younger than Estelle, who was nineteen that year.
“C-congratulations on graduating…!”
Jakma said, panting heavily, as he looked up at Estelle.
“Thank you so much for spending the past year helping me train and prepare for my exams…!”
“Are you really grateful?”
“Y-yes? Of course….”
“Then let's make a promise.”
Estelle smiled and extended her pinky toward the seaweed-haired boy.
“Once you graduate and become a magic knight, come to the front lines and find me.”
“F-find you, senior…?”
“Yeah.”
Estelle nodded and said,
“I'm going to become a Round and serve at the border.”
“A Round…!”
Hearing Estelle's words, Jakma opened and closed his mouth, stammering.
“C-congratulations!”
“It isn't decided yet. I'm only a candidate.”
Estelle smiled bitterly.
“So if I'm not at the front lines, you can take it as me having failed.”
“N-no!”
Jakma shook his head.
“I'll definitely go there after I graduate!”
“…Really?”
“Y-yes! I believe in you, Senior. If it's you, you'll definitely become a Round…!”
Speaking awkwardly, Jakma shouted almost at the top of his lungs, his face reddening.
Estelle looked at him silently for a moment, then grinned and answered.
“All right, it's a promise, then? You promise you'll come serve under me after graduating?”
“…N-no!”
But the boy shook his head. Facing the flustered Estelle, he shouted.
“I-I will! Someday I'll grow, grow even stronger…! I'll surpass you, Senior!”
The boy's face turned bright red after shouting. Estelle looked at him, then grinned and vigorously mussed his hair.
“All right, all right! That's the kind of ambition a real man needs!”
“U-uh….”
“…Good. I'll be looking forward to it.”
Estelle extended her pinky toward the boy, who had lowered his head.
“It's a promise. You have to become stronger than me.”
“…Yes.”
The boy's face reddened faintly as he hooked his pinky around Estelle's.
And exactly one month after the graduation ceremony for Estelle's class,
the Seven Years' War broke out.
=
Back to the present.
One night on the way back to the royal capital, with a caged wagon containing the bound Jakma trailing behind them.
While everyone else slept, only Estelle and Haru were awake.
It was Haru's turn to stand watch.
….”
-Rustle.
Estelle silently rose from where she lay, slightly opened the tent flap, and stepped outside.
Then she approached Haru, who was quietly tending the campfire.
“Is something the matter?”
Without turning around, Haru asked calmly.
“…Do you have a moment?”
Estelle said.
“What is it?”
“I want to talk to Jakma.”
“To Jakma?”
Haru asked in return while poking at the campfire with a poker.
“Would that be a problem?”
“Well, I don't mind.”
Haru tapped the poker against the ground to knock off the ash and said,
“But I'll be able to hear you, you know?”
“…I don't mind.”
Estelle shook her head.
“It won't be a long conversation. If you want… you can eavesdrop.”
“Well… all right.”
Haru calmly nodded.
“Still, you're not going to let him out or anything, are you?”
=
“…Jakma.”
Estelle plopped down in front of the wagon surrounded on all sides by bars and spoke.
“I know you're listening.”
“….”
“I don't have much to say. I'll just ask you one thing.”
Estelle asked toward the inside of the cage, tapping her fingers up and down on her knees.
“You said something about how you had no way to repay ‘you bastards,’ didn't you?”
“…But.”
“What did you mean by that?”
Estelle asked calmly, and he answered in a hoarse voice.
Her fingers, which had been nervously tapping her knees, came to an abrupt stop.
“…Th-that money wasn't something I borrowed.”
From inside the cage, a hoarse voice anxiously emerged.
“I-I gave everything I had to protect this country. I had to stay alive so I could keep protecting it, didn't I? Those bastards at the top started talking about expelling me just because I ran away once. That's why. If I hadn't fought for them on the battlefield, the front line would've been breached, and they'd have been torn apart and killed by the beastfolk. I only collected the proper price for the life I saved from the person I protected….”
A harsh grinding of teeth came from inside the cage.
Estelle listened silently, then muttered bitterly.
“…You've changed. Completely.”
There was no longer the boy she had once known inside that cage.
The innocence that had pursued pure strength and followed the senior he admired had long since disappeared.
All that remained was an adult battered by the hardships of the world, with his heart broken and spirit crushed by the horrors of the battlefield.
“Do you remember the promise we made?”
Though she already knew he must have forgotten, Estelle muttered as she stroked the leg wrapped tightly in bandages.
It was the leg pierced by Jakma's killer plant.
“Somehow, I ended up losing.”
“….”
“Congratulations. You've become stronger than me.”
The conversation ended there.
Estelle rose from where she sat and limped back to the tent.
=
-Clang.
“…What do you think you're doing, Sir Schwelbach?”
“As you can see.”
In a cracked, hollow voice, Estelle said,
“I… am resigning from the Rounds.”
At Estelle's feet lay the golden epaulet symbolizing the Rounds, carelessly tossed aside.
Her parched eyes no longer shed a single tear.
The junior she had trusted had deserted the army and been expelled.
The comrade who had been with her at the academy had become a cold corpse on the northern front.
Estelle had nothing left.
Estelle thought.
‘It's because I was weak.’
Her crushing defeat in battle, and Jakma's desertion.
Roshe losing her life because, while Estelle was making no headway on the Western Front, troops had been concentrated in the north.
It was all her fault.
Estelle, lost in self-loathing, soon reached one conclusion.
That someone like her was unworthy of the name of the Rounds.
Graduating as valedictorian from the academy ahead of all those outstanding classmates.
Being selected as the Ninth Seat of the Rounds after just one month, ahead of five other candidates.
Estelle thought that it had all merely been good luck….
“Do you take the name of the Rounds for a joke?”
The man sitting opposite Estelle said.
“The name of the Rounds, this golden epaulet, this symbol of the heroes who protect Atlas! Do you think these are things you can just throw away and pick up again whenever you feel like it?”
Her superior, a magic knight, was famous for rarely losing his temper.
He was a man who commanded the respect of all his subordinate knights through outstanding skill and excellent character.
Yet he was angry, which was rare.
“Pick up the epaulet. Don't act like a child, Schwelbach.”
“…This isn't some choice I made on a whim.”
Estelle slowly shook her head.
“And I certainly don't hold the name of the Rounds in contempt. Quite the opposite.”
“….”
“I've realized that I'm still woefully inexperienced—still far from worthy of bearing the name of the Rounds.”
“So you're quitting?”
“No.”
Estelle shook her head again.
Then she knelt before him as he stared intently at her with a stern expression.
“I have a request to make of you, Sir Rex, the White-Flame Knight and hero of the Western Front.”
-Bang!!
Estelle's forehead slammed against the hard wooden floor with a thud.
“Please take me on as your attendant knight.”
“…What on earth are you doing?”
Looking down at her, Rex said in a low voice.
“Have you lost your mind? An attendant knight—the sort of position taken by knights at the very bottom of the training corps. You, the academy valedictorian and Ninth Seat of the Rounds, want to do that?”
“Yes.”
“You do understand what that means, don't you?”
Rex asked. Estelle, still kneeling on the floor, nodded.
Rex, who had been silent, rose from his seat without a word.
“Sir Rex…!”
“Follow me.”
With his trusty magic sword clenched firmly in one hand, Rex looked back at her and said,
“I'm going to hammer some sense of responsibility into that soft head of yours.”