Chapter 68
“I’m sorry. I thought it was a trash can.”
Rinoa dumped the food over the head of the girl who had been badmouthing someone behind their back.
The cafeteria, which had been noisy with the students’ chatter, fell silent in an instant.
So you finally caused trouble.
Leon sighed with his eyes tightly shut.
The girl shot to her feet as if springing upward.
“Young Lady! What do you think you’re doing?”
“I mistook you for a trash can.”
“Do you really think I’d fall for such an obvious lie? You’re just getting back at me because I made a joke!”
“…A joke?”
At the girl’s protest, Rinoa narrowed the eyes fixed on her.
“A joke, huh. I couldn’t quite hear what joke you were telling, so could you say it again? Loudly.”
“Th, that…”
The girl looked around nervously, gauging the room. Everyone in the dining hall was looking this way.
In a moment of momentum, she realized she’d crossed the line.
She didn’t have the courage to say it again in front of everyone.
“Why aren’t you saying anything? Don’t tell me you’re embarrassed to repeat it now?”
“……”
“If it’s something you can’t say in front of others, then your family clearly never taught you not to say it behind their backs.”
The girl avoided Rinoa’s gaze.
I thought she’d be a hothouse flower just because she was a duke’s daughter, but I never imagined she’d be such a lunatic.
I really picked the wrong person to mess with.
Since the other party was a princess, the best move was to apologize appropriately and back off.
But she was still the daughter of a viscount house.
If she bowed her head in front of people, especially commoners, her honor would obviously take a hit.
If she held out to the end, the other side would get tired and give up first. With that thought, the girl kept silent.
But what she had overlooked was that Rinoa’s temper was unlike that of an ordinary young lady.
“You. Which house are you from?”
“…And what do you need that for?”
“I thought it would be good to know. We might even end up on good terms with the ducal house.”
A lie.
She was clearly using this quarrel as an excuse to bully a high-ranking noble.
“I’d rather not say.”
“Is that so?”
Rinoa’s gaze shifted to the girl standing beside her, the one who had been chattering along. The girl met those cold green eyes and flinched.
“You. You know.”
“I, I…”
“I’ll give you a choice. Tell me, and I’ll forgive you. But if you refuse, neither you nor your family will be safe.”
Not nearly as bold as the first girl, she kept glancing between her friend and Rinoa.
“Don’t say anything.”
“I’m not forcing you. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. But.”
Rinoa, standing in front of the girl, looked down at her with a frosty stare.
“Don’t think that just because you won’t say it, I won’t find out. I’m only giving you a chance.”
“Hng…!”
The girl swallowed back her tears.
“I told you not to say anything. Go on, say it if you dare.”
“Which is more important to you, that girl or your family and house?”
Under the onslaught of pressure, the girl kept glancing around, her lips moving soundlessly for a long while.
“B, Bernan Viscount House…! It’s Bernan Viscount House…! So please, just spare our family….”
Before Rinoa’s killing intent and the ducal house’s power, the flimsy friendship collapsed like a sandcastle.
“Y-you’ve lost your mind?”
The food-smeared girl shouted in disbelief, but her friend was already hanging her head, face crumpled with tears.
“Bernan.”
Rinoa softly mouthed the name.
“If I recall correctly, it’s a house managing a tiny territory in the provinces, but the viscount’s daughter’s mouth is quite big for the size of the domain.”
“Y-Young Lady! This was entirely my mistake alone. My father has nothing to do with it…!”
“Nothing to do with it?”
Rinoa cut her off sharply.
“The knight you so lightly insulted is a proper knight of Edelheid, knighted by the duke himself. To belittle him and spread gossip about him is no different from insulting His Grace’s judgment and the entire house.”
“……!”
“A mere viscount house dared spit in the face of the ducal house. I can hardly wait to see how your father plans to take responsibility.”
The lady’s face went ashen; her legs trembled. Her formerly upright bearing had long since crumbled away.
Rinoa didn’t stop there.
“Lady Bernan. Your friend is selling you out and trying to slip away on her own. Don’t you feel wronged?”
“……!”
“I’ll give you a chance too. Which house is that traitor of a girl from? If you tell the truth, I might be able to shift half of the responsibility Bernan House has to bear over to them.”
It was a proposal like the whisper of a devil.
Lady Bernan’s eyes shook wildly.
She glared at her friend with a look full of bitter resentment. It didn’t take long for her mouth to open.
“Lainus. It’s House Lainus. She was the one who insulted the ducal house first!”
“You, you bitch! When did I ever do that? You were the one who said the knight looked like a male prostitute first!”
“What? I just agreed with you!”
In an instant, a muddy brawl broke out.
The noble ladies who had been trying to act refined a moment ago were nowhere to be seen.
They were too busy tearing into each other, acting as if they were ready to grab each other by the hair.
“Bernan and Lainus. I heard that loud and clear. As for whose offense is graver, the heads of the houses can sort that out themselves.”
Rinoa turned on her heel and returned to her seat. Her eyes met Leon’s, who had been staring blankly at the spectacle.
“How long are you going to keep eating? If you’re done, let’s go.”
“Ah, yes.”
“My apologies, Aither.”
“Oh, sure.”
After Rinoa, who politely greeted Aither, left, Leon hurried after her.
The three left behind in the wake of the storm stared at one another blankly.
Elodie trembled.
“Y-Young Lady, she was incredibly scary…. This had nothing to do with me, but I feel like I got scared myself.”
“She was already scary before, but she’s gotten even scarier since I last saw her.”
Helena, who had once faced Rinoa’s emotionless, murderous stare head-on, felt traumatized.
The sudden chill that ran down her spine made her wrap her arms around herself and shiver.
Meanwhile, the hallway outside the cafeteria was fairly quiet.
Rinoa’s strides as she led the way were much faster and rougher than usual.
The unusually sharp sound of her heels echoed through the corridor.
Leon quickened his pace and caught up.
“Young Lady.”
“What.”
“Wasn’t that a little too much?”
“What about it.”
“You humiliated those young ladies in front of everyone. There will be people who won’t look kindly on it.”
That was why Leon hadn’t stepped in earlier. If he charged in on his own, it could end up harming his master, Rinoa.
But Rinoa had escalated the situation herself. People who already disliked her for hanging around the prince would no doubt have something to say.
But Rinoa didn’t care.
“They got what was coming to them for running their mouths.”
“Even so, the onlookers probably won’t care about the cause and effect. They’ll definitely chew it over like gossip.”
“I don’t care. Edelheid’s name isn’t so light that it’ll be shaken by something like that.”
“Even so…”
Rinoa stopped and snapped her head around.
“Stop worrying about pointless things. And you too, don’t just sit there and listen like an idiot. To belittle you is the same as belittling me.”
“Um…”
That figures.
He thought she had stepped in for his sake, but as expected, it was for Rinoa’s own sake.
Otherwise there was no way that Rinoa would take the risk and interfere in the affairs of a mere slave.
“If something like this happens again, just smack them across the face or grab their hair and shake them so they can’t keep running their mouths.”
“Wouldn’t that be a huge problem anyway?”
If a slave grabbed a noble’s hair, there would absolutely be an uproar.
“More than that, I know a very easy solution.”
“What is it?”
“What else? Setting you free. Then you wouldn’t have to be looked down on as a slave at all.”
Leon would be free, so that would be good.
Rinoa would have no one picking fights with her, so that would be good too.
“……I don’t want that.”
But Rinoa rejected it in a timid voice.
“No, why not? It’s a win-win for both of us. I’m telling you, even if I let you go, you won’t run.”
“I don’t trust you. And you suit being a slave just fine. You were born to be a slave.”
“How is that any different from what those young ladies said earlier?”
“Shut up. Don’t talk back.”
As if she no longer wanted to talk, Rinoa cut him off decisively and started walking again.
Leon watched her back.
Honestly, there’s no telling what she’s thinking.
***
“Ah, it works…!”
A large mana sphere floated above Elodie’s hand. The sphere, as large as a watermelon, sparkled with vivid colors.
This was the mana control lesson with Iscalon, continuing from last time. At last, she had succeeded in creating a complete sphere.
“I did it too.”
Aither’s sphere was much smaller than Elodie’s, but it was clearly still a sphere.
[Ho. To achieve this much in only four days…. You children are truly exceptional.]
Iscalon was quietly impressed. Even for a mage with some talent, this was a difficult task that would easily take a week.
Not only Elodie, but Aither, a member of the royal family, also had talent far beyond the ordinary.
“Am I really that exceptional? Leon did it from the first day.”
But Aither couldn’t take Iscalon’s praise at face value.
After all, there was Leon as a point of comparison.
Already from the very first day, Leon had produced results beyond what Iscalon had taught.
Because he was advancing entirely on his own, he had spent the past few days waiting for the other three.
It had bruised his pride quite a bit that he, a knight and not even a mage, had fallen behind.
[That guy is off the charts, so there’s no need to worry about him. He’s the strange one.]
Leon let out a snort of laughter.
“I’m not the strange one, you all are. What do you think magic is, a joke? If you’re going to do it that half-heartedly, then just give up and go farm.”
“…Want to fight?”
“I’ll help too. Young Lady, you too….”
Elodie started to say something, then abruptly stopped.
Being able to bicker over trivial nonsense was a privilege only those with at least the bare minimum qualification could enjoy.
While everyone else was achieving results of their own, Rinoa couldn’t even make a small sphere.
She couldn’t even properly compress the mana, let alone maintain its shape.
As a result, the ones who had been talking all fell silent, gauging Rinoa’s mood.
Rinoa frowned and glared at the mana, which wavered in fits and starts, but nothing changed.
Once again, the form collapsed and scattered helplessly.
“Huff, huff….”
Rinoa’s face, as she poured in every ounce of concentration, was soaked with sweat.
[Hmm, odd. Given your talent, you should have been able to finish a sphere long ago.]
“……”
[You don’t need to rush. With your talent, you’ll manage it soon enough.]
That was the end of the lesson. Leon and the others left the classroom.
“Young Lady, please don’t take it to heart. You’re far more amazing than someone like me, so you’ll get it soon enough.”
“Yeah. You’re an Edelheid, after all. You’re just conserving your strength.”
Elodie and Aither energetically cheered Rinoa up from beside her, telling her not to lose heart.
By contrast, Rinoa gave half-hearted responses, as if listening with one ear and letting it out the other. Her unfocused gaze seemed to drift blankly. Every so often, she rubbed at her eyes with her hand.
“Are you tired?”
“……”
Leon tried speaking to her, but got no response. The failed sphere seemed to have shocked her badly.
Because of that, Leon grew uneasy as well.
It was magic, something that could be called the core of Rinoa’s being, and yet she was the only one lagging behind. He was deeply worried she might throw a tantrum.
The group passed through the hallway and reached the stairs. They were on their way down to the first floor.
Rinoa, who had been walking blankly, suddenly missed the step with her toe.
“Y-Young Lady!”
Before Elodie could cry out and reach out her hand—
Leon swiftly caught Rinoa as she toppled helplessly down the stairs.
Holding her firmly in his arms, he spun through the air and landed lightly at the bottom of the stairs.
In that heart-stopping instant when she might have been badly injured, Leon let out a short sigh.
“What on earth are you spacing out about? When you’re going down stairs, watch your feet.”
“……”
No answer came from Rinoa’s lips.
In Leon’s arms, she was trembling slightly. More than anything, what was strange was her eyes.
The two green eyes couldn’t stay still for even a moment, darting around the air restlessly.
“Young Lady?”
Reaching out blindly with trembling hands, Rinoa grabbed at Leon’s lapel.
She was looking at Leon, but her gaze was oddly unfocused.
“Le, Leon.”
“Yes, I’m listening.”
“I….”
From between her bloodless, white lips came a shaky voice.
“I can’t see… I can’t see ahead.”