Chapter 148
***
Freyja had been a righteous girl from a young age.
Even in a dark fantasy overflowing with every kind of scheme and stratagem, she was a girl who upheld a lofty justice, solitary as a star.
She was a girl who chose to walk the right path rather than the easy one.
She was a girl who admired her father's position as a magistrate and held noble ideals in her heart.
If the original work had been a romance fantasy, the protagonist would probably have been her, nine times out of ten.
That girl was bowing her head to me.
“Older Brother. I'm sorry. I never meant it that way……”
She kept apologizing to me.
“I mean…… it just came out wrong……”
“No. You don't have to apologize.”
I waved my hand as I spoke.
“I didn't mean that you were wrong. If anything, I was the one making excuses.”
Although that meant I had contradicted her,
I had no intention of saying that Freyja was wrong.
Rather, even I thought Freyja was the one who was right.
From the perspective of a hero who must pursue good, Freyja was correct.
Even if I were a healer with one foot in religion, I would have said Freyja's way was right.
But I was a doctor.
Medical ethics mattered more to me than religious ethics.
In other words, the people who could still be saved mattered more than those who were already dead.
That was the point.
“Freyja. I'm not saying you're wrong. I want to tell you that we're different.”
The ideals that she and I pursued were different.
That was why, even though I found Freyja's justice dazzling, I would not chase after its light.
In other words,
“I know this is hypocrisy, but I have no intention of changing my way.”
I would have no choice but to continue prioritizing those who could still be saved.
If Freyja was as clever as I knew her to be, she would understand the meaning of that short sentence without twisting it.
Before long, a small voice came from beneath her deeply bowed head.
“Then what should I do?”
“I want you to uphold your way to the end. Even if you and I clash in the process, I want you to keep moving forward.”
“I don't want to fight you, Older Brother.”
“This isn't fighting. It's the process of exploring a better way.”
Society was a place where countless ethical principles and ideas of justice were entangled in contradiction.
Just as the ethics of police officers and doctors differed.
Just as the ethics of soldiers and lawyers differed.
Society was a place where such contradictions collided in complex ways while each person upheld their own methods.
I wanted Freyja to understand that complexity.
But it seemed Freyja was not yet ready for that.
“But what if I'm wrong?”
“Why are you worrying about that?”
“Because you've always been better than me since we were little……”
“You don't need to worry about that.”
I understood her fear.
She was afraid that she might be wrong without realizing it.
I had often been afraid of making the wrong choice too.
“I'm no different. That's why we have conversations. I want you to tell me whenever something like this happens. That way, I can check once more whether my choice was wrong.”
Freyja remained silent for a while.
Then a voice emerged from beneath her bowed head.
“I understand. Then…… I'll visit Count Barlot tomorrow and talk it over with you.”
“Thank you, Freyja.”
That was how our dinner ended.
For Freyja, it was a time to sort through her confusion,
and for me, it was a time to examine my methods once again.
***
The morning after Yulian and I had had a deep conversation.
Freyja went to Count Barlot's estate first.
She had a noble's duty to learn secret magic, but more importantly, she wanted to organize her thoughts before having another ‘conversation’ with Yulian.
‘That person Older Brother defended……’
Was this person truly worth it?
To confirm that fact, she decided to meet the count herself.
‘Is this the Barlot estate?’
The first thing to greet Freyja when she arrived at the estate was the Barlot family's poorly tended garden.
As she crossed the garden on her way to the mansion, a question naturally arose in her mind.
‘Can the garden of a man who was once a marquis really be this poorly kept?’
A garden was the face of a family.
It was the first place guests saw when they visited the mansion.
That was why tending the garden was also included among the duties of the lady of the house.
There was a reason the ladies of noble houses strolled through their gardens day after day.
Because the garden had to be maintained in a way that offered a glimpse into the family's customs and values, there were always demanding methods of upkeep passed down through the generations.
Freyja, who would inherit both the headship and the secret magic, had not been taught those methods by her mother.
That was the responsibility of the lady of the house, not the head of the family.
But even in her eyes, it was difficult to call this garden well maintained, even as an empty compliment.
It was not completely neglected.
Its aesthetics and theme simply failed to harmonize.
She could not glimpse even a hint of the Barlot family's traditions in the garden.
‘Is the lady of the house simply poor at maintaining it? Or does she not take walks very often?’
With that slightly rude thought and question in mind, she headed inside.
But the question did not remain unanswered for long.
“Hello, Countess Barlot. I am Freyja Nikhirit. As I mentioned, I have come to receive instruction.”
“You've come, my lady. You're early. My husband is in the backyard right now, but he'll be here soon. Would you mind waiting a moment?”
“Thank you, Countess.”
The reason became clear as soon as she saw Countess Barlot barely managing to walk with the aid of a brace.
‘The countess has been ill. I'm sorry.’
In that condition, she naturally couldn't help it.
To maintain a garden, one had to walk through it personally; if she could barely walk even with a brace, strolling through it would be difficult.
Rather, the count was the impressive one for managing the family while also taking charge of the garden in his wife's place.
After confirming the truth, Freyja offered the countess an apology no one could hear.
Unaware of Freyja's inner thoughts, the countess was unfailingly warm toward her.
“You're Professor Yulian's younger sister, aren't you? If you wait in the drawing room, a servant will escort my husband here.”
“Countess, you don't have to push yourself so hard……”
“It's all right. Mr. Shun Isa treats me from time to time, and he says I need to keep walking like this for rehabilitation.”
As she said that, the countess served the tea herself.
It was not that there were no servants available to serve it.
“Professor Yulian is always so busy that I never have a chance to host him myself. So I wanted to offer at least his younger sister, Lady Freyja, this hospitality.”
She had simply wanted to serve the tea herself.
Freyja found the countess's kindness burdensome.
Normally, a lady of the house personally served tea only when someone of higher rank or the parents of either family came as guests.
Or when showing respect to a benefactor of equivalent standing.
Either way, it was not an attitude the countess of a noble house would ordinarily show toward the daughter of an ordinary viscount.
“I hope the tea suits your taste, my lady.”
“It's really delicious. Thank you, Countess.”
“I'm glad.”
The kindly woman clasped her hands and smiled happily.
All the while, Freyja's gaze could hardly leave the countess's limping leg.
“……”
“Lady Nikhirit. Are you perhaps curious about my leg?”
“……Yes.”
“It seems Professor Yulian didn't tell you.”
“My brother doesn't disclose information about patients or clients even to his family.”
“Heehee, that is just like the professor.”
The countess let out a small laugh, covering her mouth.
There was elegance in every one of her movements.
“I had surgery. I'm not sure I understood it correctly, but apparently a blood vessel and a kidney became blocked, and I nearly had to have my leg amputated. Fortunately, they managed to save my leg, but I had been bedridden for so long that all my muscles had wasted away.”
“Would holy magic be useless?”
“Holy magic doesn't build muscle, does it?”
Was that so?
Freyja suddenly recalled Shun Isa's muscular paladin.
She had heard that he wrapped holy power around his body, trusted in its regenerative power, and deliberately tore his muscles to make them grow.
— “Sir Otto! One more set!!”
— “Grrrgh……”
She recalled a sight she had happened to witness while passing by the Mercure merchant guild.
The sight of Otto, Shun Isa's driver, suffering at the hands of the muscular paladin.
However, she could not imagine the countess following that method, so Freyja merely nodded.
As she chatted with the countess, the count eventually entered the drawing room from the backyard.
“Sorry. I needed to check whether the tulips I transplanted yesterday had taken root.”
At those words, Freyja understood.
Real flowers, unlike artificial ones, were extremely expensive.
Rare varieties, in particular, could be worth astronomical sums.
They were not valuable enough for a noble to panic over, but they were valuable enough that seeing them wither would hurt.
That made the count's reason for checking the tulips early in the morning perfectly understandable.
“Those are the tulips Professor Yulian gave me a few days ago. I hear the Nikhirit family's garden is overflowing with real flowers?”
“Yes. People around us send us so many gifts that, thankfully, we have plenty.”
Unusual flowers blooming in a backyard could also symbolize an alliance between families.
For example, if black roses bloomed in the garden of a count's family, it meant that the duke's family with the black-rose garden was close to that count's family.
Conversely, if they were raising black roses despite having no close relationship, they might earn a scolding from the duke's family. That was the way aristocratic society worked.
For reference, there were more than a dozen varieties of unusual flowers in the backyard of the Nikhirit family.
They had been sent by families indebted to Yulian.
“Hah. It must be quite a lot of trouble for Lady Nikhirit to maintain so many.”
“Mother even told me to stop accepting so many from my brother.”
“Admirable. One flower is enough to make my back ache.”
The count let out a hearty laugh and patted his lower back.
Freyja returned an awkward smile.
She could not bring herself to smile sincerely for the count's sake.
‘……I know he’s a good person.’
Whenever she looked at the count, she kept remembering the graduates who went back and forth to the Maier Clinic.
People who had suffered lifelong injuries and pain because of him, even if he had not directly harmed them.
Thinking of them made it impossible for Freyja to see the count as nothing but a good-natured man.
“Well then, as promised, I shall teach you secret magic, my lady.”
Without any idea how Freyja felt, the count immediately announced the beginning of the lesson.
The uncomfortable lesson was just about to begin.
“……Huh?”
They were on their way to the training room for learning secret magic.
Freyja encountered an unexpected person in the hallway.
“Senior?”
“Hmm? You know me—wait, friend?”
“Yes. You're Lady Isolde!”
It was Isolde, a senior who had graduated from the Department of Heroics.
Her right leg had been replaced with a prosthetic, and she scratched her cheek awkwardly as she spoke.
“Umm……. You must be my junior, but I'm sorry. I'm not very good at remembering people. Have we met before?”
“No. I only know the graduating seniors; you don't know me.”
“Did you get a yearbook somewhere and look through it?”
“No? I just want to become an excellent hero like you seniors someday, so whenever your exploits appeared in the newspapers, I clipped them and kept them.”
“……What?”
This was Freyja's hobby.
It was what one might call hero fandom.
She loved justice, and she also loved collecting the exploits of heroes who embodied it.
Her room was filled with books of newspaper clippings about various heroes, shelved like grimoires.
Of course, the book that occupied an entire section by itself was the one about Yulian (Shun Isa).
Isolde was briefly flustered after unintentionally learning about Freyja's hobby.
“Uh…… what a diligent junior…… But what brings you to the count's estate?”
Count Barlot, who had been accompanying Freyja, answered in her place.
“She's Professor Yulian's younger sister. I'm personally acquainted with the professor, so I plan to help her train over the summer vacation.”
“Another one has been added?”
“Haha…… Something like that.”
Another one?
While Freyja wondered about that, Isolde waved at her.
“Well then, junior. Learn lots from the count. I learned a lot too. I'll be going now.”
With that, Isolde left down the hallway, walking so naturally that it was hard to believe she had a prosthetic leg.
After Isolde disappeared,
Freyja asked the count a question.
“What did you mean by ‘another one’? Are there other seniors learning secret magic like me?”
“Something like that.”
The count spoke with a bitter smile.
“Though Mr. Shun Isa treated them, I have committed so many sins, you see. So I have been teaching martial arts to the graduates.”
“What!?”
Freyja was stunned.
“All those people? Do you even have time to rest?”
“What time does a sinner have to rest? Even a lifetime of atonement would not be enough.”
The count smiled bitterly.
“Of course, I know this cannot make up for what I did to them. Even so, I must do it. I did not begin this atonement to seek forgiveness, either.”
His bitter smile had become self-deprecating.
“The imperial family did not order me to do this, but as those youngsters' guardian, I intend to support them personally.”
“Do you intend to support all of them?”
“I was once the marquis of the Academy territory, after all. I have enough means to support at least one knight order.”
Freyja stared blankly at the count.
A dull ache stirred in one corner of her heart.
“We’ve spent too long on preliminaries. Let’s go. I have to apologize to Professor Yulian for imposing on him.”