Chapter 18
The study in the mansion of Count Eisen’s estate, 「Eisengard」.
One month remained until the entrance ceremony.
Meanwhile, Kara and I were staying here, studying Imperial etiquette and receiving a basic education.
Warm afternoon sunlight streamed in through the window.
This was the Grand Duchy at the Empire’s northernmost tip.
But since it lay inland, it was different from Norhaim’s biting winds and the bleakness of the northern borderlands.
The sunlight was doing its job.
Instead of skin-biting cold, there was a warmth that gently wrapped around the skin.
At the window-side table warmed by that heat, Kara sat elegantly holding a teacup.
Kara had already perfectly mastered everything from table manners to social-dance theory.
“Mmm, the aroma is nice.”
With her pinky slightly extended as she savored her black tea, she looked every inch an Imperial lady.
On the other hand.
“Grr... ngh....”
I was crouched in front of the desk, locked in a life-or-death struggle with a quill the size of my finger.
Beads of sweat had formed on my forehead, and my back muscles were taut with tension.
I looked as solemn as though I were wrestling a bear.
Yet all I held was a mere ink-stained pen.
“Relax your grip, Mr. Varg.”
Count Eisen, who had been watching with his arms folded beside me, clicked his tongue.
“A pen is not an axe. Don’t grip it as though you’re strangling it; leave some space, as if you were holding a piece of cold ice....”
“A gap.... A gap....”
I chanted the words, trying to relax my fingers.
Cursive handwriting practice.
The goal was to write this squiggly, wormlike script elegantly without splattering ink.
Suddenly, a very old memory flashed through my mind.
When I was about eight, Kara and I used to lie on our stomachs in Granny Baba’s tent and learn the Imperial language.
『These are the letters those Imperial bastards use. They’re all squiggly, like a worm crawling along, aren’t they?』
Even while teaching us the Imperial language, Granny Baba had been seething with irritation.
Calling it the language of the Imperial bastards, she gave us thick pens made from deer shinbones instead of quills and made us press hard as we wrote on leather instead of parchment.
『Those Imperial bastards’ writing has no strength! Like this—press hard! To make it real writing, you have to write as if carving it into bone!』
Granny Baba had projected her hostility toward the Empire onto her handwriting.
Clumsy, rough straight lines instead of elegant curves.
Pressure hard enough to pierce the leather instead of smooth strokes.
The faulty early education I had received back then had come back to haunt me as a painful poison.
‘Granny... You could have taught us a little more gently....’
For twenty years, my hand had been accustomed to the grip of a bone pen and the pressure needed to pierce leather.
There was no way the Empire’s frail quills and paper could withstand the strength of my grip.
‘All right, this time feels good.’
I held my breath and brought the nib to the paper.
And the moment I applied the slightest pressure to draw a stroke.
Crack!
With a crisp snap, the quill’s shaft broke cleanly in two.
The nib stuck into the paper and spewed ink, leaving only a broken feather in my hand.
“Ah....”
I stared blankly down at the broken pen.
“Why does this keep breaking? Aren’t Imperial pens a little too weak? They ought to make them out of bone or something.”
“That makes twelve already.”
Count Eisen sighed as he adjusted his glasses.
“It’s not really a matter of grip. Mr. Varg’s hand strength is simply beyond reason. You squeeze it as tightly as you would an axe handle, so it can’t withstand you.”
“But I was holding it as gently as possible....”
It was unfair.
Learning the concept of ‘gently’ with a barbarian’s body was no different from asking an elephant to thread a needle.
Just then, Kara, who had been drinking tea by the window, approached.
“Oh my, look at my husband sweating.”
She took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from my forehead, giggling.
“You look like you’re having a harder time than when you were hunting snow bears.”
“Don’t tease me. This is seriously difficult.”
As I grumbled, Kara placed a hand on my shoulder and whispered.
“So keep at it. If you don’t want to step on my feet, you’d better practice a lot.”
Then she snickered and wrapped an arm around my waist.
“And in three weeks, you’ll have to learn social dancing with the count, too.”
“......Huh?”
My expression stiffened.
I looked at Count Eisen.
The count was smoothing his tie with an expression that said, ‘I’m ready.’
“There’s no reason for Mr. Varg to rest just because Miss Kara can’t dance. I’ll take the role of his partner.”
“......”
“I’ll take the woman’s role, so hold my waist and lead me. I’ll teach you very strictly.”
I imagined it.
Myself wrapping my arms around this fussy middle-aged man’s waist, exchanging sultry gazes, and stepping through a dance.
“Ugh....”
My stomach suddenly churned.
I felt even sicker than Kara, who was suffering from morning sickness.
“Puhahaha!”
Kara clutched her stomach and burst out laughing.
“That’s great! My husband’s going to get special training from the count? You can do it!”
“You... look like you’re really enjoying this?”
“Of course. It’s hilarious just imagining it.”
Kara teased me with tears even welling in her eyes.
With a despairing expression, I picked up the thirteenth pen this time.
Cursive handwriting—something even the power of love could scarcely help me overcome.
But even if only to avoid the horrifying future of waltzing with a middle-aged man, I absolutely had to overcome this hurdle...
Crack!
It broke again.
No, there’s no way to avoid it!
“Count... please, isn’t there something else besides dancing? I’d rather do a sword dance.”
“No. The flower of high society is the waltz.”
I sighed and lowered my head.
It was then.
Bang!
The door to the office adjoining the study was flung open.
“Father... no, Count!”
Count Eisen’s son and the heir to the family, 「Lonas von Eisen」.
But his appearance was far from that of a noble young gentleman.
Hollow eyes.
Dark circles reaching his jaw.
Hair tousled as though a bird had built a nest in it.
He was half out of his mind from handling the estate’s affairs in his father’s stead.
“Could you please conduct the lesson a little more quietly? Crack! Crack! I can hear the sound of pens breaking all the way in the next room!”
Lonas shouted as he frantically clawed at his hair.
“I nearly tore up an approval document because I couldn’t concentrate! I’m already on edge enough to die!”
Despite his son’s outcry, Count Eisen remained unruffled.
He calmly lifted his teacup and said.
“Oh dear, Lonas, you lack concentration. To become head of the family, you must maintain your composure amid any noise. In my day, I approved documents in the middle of a battlefield.”
“Do you have any idea who piled up all this work?!”
Lonas’s eyes became bloodshot.
He shook the bundle of receipts in his hand.
“I didn’t sleep a wink last night sorting through the receipts you racked up in the borderlands! Even if we write off the clothes as something Lord Kairon paid for, what about the meals? The carriage rental? And the lodging costs on top of that!”
Lonas cried out tearfully.
“Father... no, Count, ever since you retired, you’ve been spending money like a foal with its reins cut. You’re making the very foundations of the family shake!”
“Hoho, Mr. Varg’s strength is so extraordinary that it can’t be helped. His pens keep breaking too, so we’ll need to set a more generous supplies budget. I’m counting on you, my son.”
“Budget? Did you say ‘budget’ again?”
Lonas clutched the back of his neck.
He staggered back to the office door and grabbed it.
“Ugh... I must be crazy. Why did I take over the work so soon...? Being competent is a sin, a sin....”
Bang!
The door closed, and silence returned.
I cleared my throat awkwardly, feeling sorry for him.
“Your son looks like he’s about to collapse....”
I could relate.
I could almost see my past-life self, worn down by overtime, in him, and I felt genuine sympathy.
But Count Eisen smiled serenely.
“They say hardships in one’s youth are worth seeking out. Keep at it, my son. I need to get some rest.”
‘......What a cruel man.’
This peaceful yet noisy scene.
It had been like this ever since we first arrived in Eisengard.
* * *
A few days earlier.
It was when the convoy of three carriages carrying us passed through the main gate of the Eisengard estate.
The household retainers and servants who came out to greet us stared open-mouthed as we, husband and wife, got down from the carriage.
A huge man and a tall, beautiful woman standing beside him.
Even dressed in matching black leather uniforms, we looked exactly like giants of the snowfield.
“Good heavens... What the count said was true.”
A maid whispered behind her hand.
“Look at his height. Is he going to hit the front door?”
“He wasn’t exaggerating. They called him a legend of the snowfield... He’s overwhelming.”
Even the old butler adjusted his glasses in admiration.
Apparently, whenever Count Eisen spun tales about the Norhaim delegation from over twenty years ago, the servants had thought, ‘Oh, come on. He’s exaggerating way too much now that he’s old.’
But after seeing us in person, they realized that the count’s description had actually been modest.
There was none of the fear of barbarians they had worried about.
If anything, the opposite was true.
The moment Count Eisen finished introducing us, the household retainers, their wariness replaced by overflowing curiosity, crowded around us.
Even the people of the borderlands, who were relatively less wary of other peoples, had still let discriminatory language and suspicion surface in their first words.
But perhaps because they had heard only positive stories from Eisen, these people felt no aversion toward those from beyond the Empire’s borders.
“Oh my, madam! How is your skin so lovely?”
The head maid took Kara’s hand, her eyes sparkling.
“They say the snowfield wind makes your skin rough. What’s your secret? Do you use some sort of pack made from northern herbs?”
“Ah, well... I just wash with cold water....”
When Kara fumbled awkwardly, the maids surrounded her, giggling.
I was no different.
“Um... if you don’t mind, may I touch those muscles?”
The gardener carefully asked as he set down his pruning shears.
“I’ve never seen such a magnificent physique in my life... If you were a tree, you’d be as solid as a thousand-year-old one.”
“Haha, go ahead and touch them. It’s not as if they’ll wear out.”
When I tensed my arm, the gardener and the male servants kept exclaiming, “Ooh!”
In the midst of all that.
There was a little girl peeking her head out from behind the legs of her older brother, Lonas.
She was Alina, the Eisen family’s youngest daughter, born long after her siblings.
I assumed she was frightened by my size, but on closer inspection, her eyes were sparkling with curiosity.
“Brother....”
Alina tugged at the waistband of Lonas’s trousers and whispered.
“That lady... She looks like a knight from a fairy-tale book. She’s so cool....”
In the girl’s eyes, Kara was not a frightening barbarian but a silver-haired lady knight straight out of a fairy tale.
Until then, Lonas’s expression had been bright.
“Alina, don’t hide like that; it’s rude. Come out and say hello. They’re precious guests of our family.”
He had welcomed us with a gentlemanly smile.
Of course, that was only until his father handed him the 「Bundle of Borderland Receipts」 immediately afterward.
Back to the present.
Amid peaceful tea time and calligraphy practice, only one person was suffering.
A scream rang out from the next room again.
“Aaaagh! What’s this 「Premium Cushion Add-on」 on the carriage rental fee?! Did you gold-plate your butt?! Father!!”
Thwack!
There was even the sound of a bundle of documents being thrown.
I set down my pen and asked worriedly.
“Count... your son’s going to cry....”
“What if he collapses? Should I bring him some of the restorative herbs we brought from home?”
Kara, too, gazed toward the next room with a sympathetic expression.
But Count Eisen answered with the most comfortable expression in the world as he sipped his black tea.
“He’ll be fine. That Lonas has quite a set of lungs. He’s perfectly suited to be head of the family.”
“......”
“It’s a tradition in House Eisen: when we’re stressed, we work faster. Cursing while working is the most efficient way to get things done.”
He grinned and set down his empty teacup.
“Now, break time is over. Mr. Varg, take out the fourteenth pen. This time, you’ll copy the 「Founding Principles of the Empire」.”
“...Please spare me.”
It was a peaceful afternoon, with Lonas’s screams echoing from the next room and my groans from the study.
That was how my adjustment period in Eisengard passed: noisily.