Chapter 20
The study in the Eisengard mansion.
Scratch, scratch.
The only sound echoing through the silence was the scratch of a quill against paper.
Beads of sweat gathered on my forehead.
The pen in my hand looked as though it might crumble at any moment.
But my fingers had been trained by a week of Count Eisen's nagging.
The ink flowing from the nib traced astonishingly elegant curves across the paper.
「Varg von Wintersword」
The moment I drew the final stroke.
“......Phew.”
I let out a long breath and set down the pen.
The desk was piled high with the remains of broken quills, proof of the weeklong battle I had fought.
Count Eisen, who had been watching with his arms folded beside me, adjusted his glasses and nodded.
“Well done. With this, we have completed all your basic pre-academy etiquette lessons.”
A declaration of passing.
I rose from my seat, patting my stiff shoulders.
“Phew... It's finally over. This was honestly harder than the war between the tribes.”
“I'm sure it was. Suppressing your strength is harder than using it.”
“But, Count, is this really all? You called it basic, so I thought there would be an advanced or intensive course.”
I asked, half nervous and half hopeful.
Surely he wasn't about to move on to social dancing with Kara before becoming my partner himself?
But Count Eisen set down his teacup with a meaningful smile.
“Any further education would be meaningless. No, it might even do more harm than good.”
“Do harm?”
“Most of the young ladies and gentlemen you will encounter at the academy are hothouse flowers.”
He gazed out at the peaceful garden beyond the window and continued calmly.
“They see the world through prejudice and preconceptions rather than experience. To them, the 「barbarian peoples」 must be ignorant, rough, and savage. That is the order of the world they believe in.”
“......”
“But if Mr. Varg were to display perfect aristocratic etiquette from head to toe right from the beginning, it would go beyond unfamiliarity and provoke rejection. It would stir up needless inferiority and jealousy.”
There was sense in what Eisen said.
Even in the original story, the nobles were busy belittling commoners and other races who surpassed them rather than acknowledging them.
Kara had been the greatest victim of that.
At the beginning of the original story, Kairon should have protected her as her liege lord, but he had been too busy displaying his inferiority complex.
“So you're telling me to do it halfheartedly? Should I pretend to be clumsy?”
“No.”
A sharp glint flashed in Count Eisen's eyes.
“I'm telling you to use the contrast.”
“The contrast?”
“Normally, present yourself as the rough, unrestrained barbarian they expect—a member of the barbarian peoples. Laugh loudly, speak gruffly, whatever you like. Show them what they expect the barbarian peoples to be.”
He smiled gently and looked straight into my eyes.
“Then, at the decisive moment, when everyone is about to disregard you, display the minimum necessary—but perfect—etiquette.”
“......Ah.”
“That reversal will shatter their prejudice and overwhelm them. One reversal that betrays their expectations is more striking than perfection that becomes predictable.”
I was impressed.
It was exactly the sort of idea one would expect from the Empire's greatest administrator and strategist.
He wasn't merely teaching us to imitate nobles; he was teaching us how to turn our identity into a weapon.
But one question occurred to me.
“I understand what you're saying, but... why did you teach me penmanship so harshly? You practically turned me into a calligrapher.”
If the contrast was what mattered, couldn't my handwriting have remained a little rough?
Count Eisen answered my question with irritating smoothness.
“Because that is the pinnacle of contrast.”
“Huh?”
“A giant barbarian picks up a pen and scribbles like a child? Isn't that too obvious? Anyone could predict that scene.”
He pointed to my signature on the desk.
“But if those huge, clumsy hands dash off delicate, elegant calligraphy? That single act can prove your intellectual refinement even if they don't understand a word of the lecture. It makes them think, ‘Ah, just from his handwriting, I can tell he has real depth.’”
“......”
“That is why I forced you to make it second nature. The grace that flows from the tip of a pen cannot be created overnight.”
It was perfectly logical.
I couldn't refute him.
But there was only one thought in my mind.
‘...He just can't stand ugly handwriting because he's a perfectionist, but he sure knows how to justify it.’
In any case, the hellish penmanship lessons were truly over.
I stretched, joints popping.
“Good. Since I've acquired a reliable weapon, as you said, I can spend the remaining time relaxing with Kara. As for the waltz... well, we'll take it slowly.”
“Well....”
Count Eisen adjusted his glasses with a strange look.
“I'm not sure you'll be able to relax.”
“What? What do you mean....”
Clatter.
Just then, Kara, who had been quietly drinking tea at the adjacent table, set down her teacup.
The sound seemed unusually loud.
I turned my head reflexively.
Kara's expression was alarming.
Her face was pale.
Her lips trembled faintly.
And her eyes looked strangely glazed.
“......Varg.”
Her voice was weak.
I started and hurried over to her.
“What's wrong? Are you hurting anywhere? Are you having cramps?”
“No... It's not that....”
Kara looked up at me with a tearful expression.
The spirit of the goddess of the battlefield was gone, replaced by the most miserable expression in the world.
“...There's something I want to eat.”
Ah.
It had come.
She was four or five weeks into her pregnancy.
The opening act of 「morning sickness」.
A chill ran down my spine.
Scenes from novels and dramas I had read and watched as a child in my past life flashed through my mind.
A wife suddenly waking her husband in the middle of the night and saying, “Honey, I want a peach.”
And the husband's desperate struggle to cross mountains and rivers through the bitter cold to find that peach.
It was a kind of 「survival quest」 meant to prove a husband's love and ability.
Of course, the reward might only lead to another quest.
I asked solemnly.
“Tell me anything! Meat? Or those greens from last time? Or some fancy Imperial dessert? There isn't anything the chefs here can't make.”
The chefs in Eisengard were highly skilled, so they should have been able to prepare almost any dish.
But Kara's answer defied my expectations.
“...Frost Strawberries.”
“......Huh?”
“And they have to have a little ice in them... so they crunch when I bite into them. That's what I want....”
Silence fell over the study.
Count Eisen and I froze at the same time.
「Frost Strawberries」.
A rare fruit that grew in the deep forests of Norhaim, specifically in shaded places where the snow never melted.
They had a wonderful sweet-and-tart flavor, and Kara and I sometimes picked and ate them for fun when we went into the forest...
But that wasn't the problem.
It was spring right now.
And this was the Imperial interior.
Norhaim was a full two days away.
To make matters worse, winter had passed, and Frost Strawberry season was already nearly over.
“Huh... Frost Strawberries.”
Even Count Eisen was flustered enough to gape.
He flinched.
His shoulders jerked reflexively.
He was a married man too.
It seemed the trauma he'd endured when his wife had been pregnant had instinctively resurfaced.
Perhaps he remembered getting up at three in the morning to run out and buy fruit.
And since he was the sort who hated asking servants to work outside their hours, he must have gone himself.
His eyes were shaking.
More violently than they had when he met my father, Gorgon, a few days ago.
“Miss Kara, the market here only has ordinary strawberries....”
“Those taste bad... They're all mushy, and they aren't even cold....”
Kara lowered her head.
A fat tear rolled from her eye.
“Sob... Our baby says it won't eat anything else....”
This was an emergency.
Morning sickness in pregnant women was not something that could be explained with logic.
The stress of not being able to eat what she craved could be harmful to both the fetus and the mother.
‘No.’
Whatever else happened, I couldn't make her suffer over food.
I had never experienced it myself, but the fear I'd absorbed from the media tightened around my heart.
If I failed to get them now, it would follow me for the rest of my life.
I'd be berated for it forever.
No, more importantly, Kara was crying!
I shouted with fire in my eyes.
“The dancing can wait! Forget everything else—we have to get those strawberries!”
“P-please calm down, Mr. Varg! Even if we went all the way to Norhaim, there would be procedures to cross the border...!”
“Then what are we supposed to do? Kara wants them! I'll run there if I have to—”
“Pardon?”
I paced restlessly back and forth across the study.
Just then, Count Eisen snapped his fingers as though he had thought of something.
“Wait. There is an icehouse on the estate. I was sorting the supplies the Winterfang Tribe gave you two as a gift last time....”
“Does it have Snowfield Strawberries?”
“I can't be certain, but there may be some frozen for making jam or preserves. They won't be fresh, but if they're still frozen....”
“That'll do! She said they only need to be crunchy with ice in them!”
Hope appeared.
We shouted at the same time, as though we'd planned it.
“Lonas!!!”
Lonas, who had been suffering over his work in the next room, came rushing out in surprise.
“Y-yes?! What's going on? Have we been invaded? Did you break another pen?”
With dark circles nearly reaching his chin, Lonas was horrified by the murderous expressions on our faces.
“Bring the icehouse key at once! And contact the merchant guild and have them search every shipment of strawberries coming from the north!”
At Count Eisen's urgent command, Lonas blinked in confusion.
“S-strawberries? Why all of a sudden....”
“Stop asking questions and run! Your niece says she wants them!”
“......What?”
Niece.
Since when had Varg's child become his niece?
But intimidated by his father's forceful presence, Lonas shouted, “O-okay, understood!” and ran outside.
Count Eisen grabbed his coat and spoke to me solemnly.
“I'm coming too. My pride won't allow a guest in my domain—especially a pregnant woman—not to have what she wants to eat.”
Elegant etiquette lessons?
They no longer existed.
From this moment on, the desperate struggle of an expectant father and a perfectionist administrator to satisfy a pregnant wife's craving had begun.
“Wait, Kara! I'll bring them back even if I have to strip an entire strawberry field bare!”
Leaving Kara wiping away her tears behind me, I dashed out of the study looking ready to wield a basket of strawberries instead of an axe.
* * *
After the commotion had finally passed.
A small head cautiously peeked through the crack in the door of the now-quiet study.
It was the Eisens' late-born daughter, seven-year-old Alina.
The girl surveyed the room with curious eyes.
Under normal circumstances, her father would have been buried beneath piles of documents, frowning and sternly asking, "Alina, have you finished studying?"
But Count Eisen, who remained in the study now, looked entirely different.
“My wallet... Where did I put my wallet? No, more importantly, have they readied the carriage? Why is that Lonas taking so long!”
He paced restlessly around the study.
Who would have thought he could get so flustered over a single strawberry?
He had thrown on his coat in such a hurry that one sleeve was crooked, and even his normally neat hair was slightly mussed.
The father who had always seemed perfect, cold, and imposing now looked utterly disheveled.
But Alina found the sight strangely familiar.
‘Pfft.’
The girl covered her mouth and giggled.
A very faint memory surfaced.
The almost foolishly warm face of her father, who had peered down at her in her cradle and smiled as though he possessed the whole world.
The father in that time-blurred memory now overlapped with the man before her eyes.
‘Daddy, you're cute.’
Alina smiled brightly as she watched her father, his face flushed, huff and bustle as he prepared to leave.
The frozen winter of Eisengard was melting away.
Along with a strawberry-scented spring.