“A gloomy young-lady maid? Why, despite receiving the education of a ducal house, have I failed to arrive at such a combination until now?”
If she were someone capable of thinking that way, it would have been truly chilling.
Senior Aila let out a sigh, her expression saying she had keenly realized her own limits.
Then, without delay, she seized both of Soraya’s hands.
“Perhaps it was the prank of fate, all so I could meet Cadet Soraya?”
“N-no.”
“I don’t think that’s it.”
“That definitely isn’t it.”
Even though all three of us refuted her at once, Senior Aila did not let go of Soraya’s hands.
Soraya trembled all over and shook her head wildly from side to side.
“N-no, aaah, n-no! I, um, th-that, th-th-therefore.”
I didn’t think we should leave that as it was.
I looked at Ran, meaning for her to help, but Ran shook her head.
Well, if Ran stepped in, she might end up being made to wear a maid outfit instead.
But if I left it to Ian, I was afraid Senior Aila’s skull might crack.
There wasn’t a single person in this world I could trust.
I strode forward.
After grabbing both Senior Aila’s and Soraya’s wrists at the same time, I pulled them apart by force.
“S-Senior Aila. She’s troubled.”
I knew very well that for a gloomy loner like that, nothing was more troubling than being asked to do something.
You want to refuse, but you can’t; yet you can’t say you like it either, so your head feels like it’ll burst.
“Hm?”
Senior Aila widened her eyes.
“Rather than me, she seems more afraid of Cadet Deep.”
“Huh?”
The wrist of Soraya’s that I was holding suddenly began to tremble.
The instant I turned my head in surprise, Soraya bit down hard on her lower lip.
“A-a man, a man’s hand, hand, it’s, u-ugh, uuuugh!”
Then her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed limply to the floor.
As I stared in disbelief, Ian shook his head.
“I take it back. When I first saw you, even you weren’t that bad.”
Ugh.
What a headache.
***
“Th-thank, th-thank you.”
Soraya held the teacup in her trembling hands.
According to Senior Aila, there were young ladies who disliked teatime, but no young lady disliked tea.
I wondered if she might spill it at that rate, but the moment she held the teacup, her trembling stopped in an instant.
The sight from earlier had been so shocking that I had forgotten for a moment, but it seemed she was indeed a young lady after all.
After drinking the tea, Soraya’s expression softened a little.
Then she looked at me and immediately tensed up again.
Maybe because I was maintaining what counted as personal space, she did not faint like before.
“A-about earlier, I was r-running away, so th-that’s, that was why.”
“I know.”
“Y-you h-heard everything?”
There was no way I couldn’t have.
Professor Alfred’s voice was already on the loud side, and when a professor was scolding a cadet in the middle of the road, it was impossible for it not to stand out.
When I did not bother answering, Soraya set down her teacup and let out a deep breath.
“I-I really should hurry and get ex-expelled….”
My body flinched.
That would be a problem.
Every department selected two hundred students to match its quota, and a total of two hundred teams were formed.
If Soraya were expelled, it would take at least a month for a new student to be selected and enter the Operator Department.
It was already a set future that that bastard Joshua would perform even more like trash.
The moment I flinched, Ran hurriedly sat down beside Soraya.
“Um, do you perhaps remember me?”
Soraya widened her eyes, then moved a handspan away from Ran.
“N-no.”
“We had a meeting together just a little while ago.”
“We h-had a m-meeting?”
This was severe.
“I-I-I’m sorry. I, I d-didn’t want to enter the A-Academy, but my parents, um, so.”
Soraya mumbled without finishing her sentence, but it was enough to understand her situation.
Umbra was a baronial house.
In other words, it meant they were a family that had become nobles by earning merit in war.
In an empire at war, the fastest way to gain wealth and honor was none other than war itself.
Naturally, if the head of House Umbra had become a noble through war, he would want his own child to do the same.
That had not been Soraya’s wish.
She did not know how to reject a life she did not want, and this was probably the method of rebellion she had chosen after entering the Academy.
“I-I’m scared of p-people, and I h-hate being looked at, so.”
“I know what you mean.”
“The p-pilot also ig-ignores me….”
On top of that, if she was being ignored by her own teammate at an Academy she had been forced to enter, she would have wanted to rebel all the more.
Just as I had been ignored by countless pilots.
“I’ve had that happen too.”
“Huh?”
The words slipped out before I knew it.
I wondered if I should shut my mouth, but I could not.
Because this was the first time Soraya had lifted her head first at someone else’s words and met their eyes.
“I’m s-scared of people looking at me too.”
Soraya’s eyes widened.
“D-Deep, I k-know you. You’re f-famous on the A-Academy commu-community.”
“I’m s-scared of my name being mentioned, so I deliberately don’t go there.”
“I-I write posts as an a-anonymous user too, but if someone recognizes me, it’s k-kind of…”
So you’re a troll.
I held that back for now, afraid the conversation might end if I said it.
“And I st-stutter too.”
“R-right, right, right! Y-you do!”
My smartwatch vibrated soundlessly, buzzing against my wrist.
When I lightly covered the smartwatch with my palm, Ailey quickly went quiet.
I don’t want to have conversations based on sympathy like this either.
I’m only doing it because of the exam.
Soraya moved about a handspan closer to me.
“B-but how do you l-live so h-hard like that?”
So hard, she said.
Did it look that way to someone else?
I wasn’t living hard. I was living desperately.
From the very beginning, I had been living a life with no choices.
As if someone had toyed with me, I had suddenly come to live in a world like this.
“Because I had no choice.”
Soraya’s face flinched.
Ah, should I have avoided saying that?
But I could not stop the words once they had begun to spill out.
It couldn’t be helped. Even when I realized I had suddenly slammed the accelerator, I could never stop myself.
“Because I had nowhere to run.”
I couldn’t run away to a garbage dump and greet the cockroaches every morning.
“Because I had no parents.”
Were my parents in my original world doing well?
“Because I had no money.”
Belatedly, all sorts of snacks that had been popular in my old world came to mind.
There was even something called Durian Chewy Cushion that had been trending, but I had never bought anything like that even once.
Because I wasn’t earning any money.
If anything, now that I was proving myself with my ability and receiving sponsorship, I was more diligent and more human.
Ah.
By the time I realized it, I had already met Soraya’s eyes.
I did not know what expression I was making.
They were only words from an otaku lowborn like me, so there was no way they would reach her ears anyway.
“So I’m jealous.”
“Huh?”
“Even if you get expelled, you have somewhere to go, don’t you, Lady Soraya?”
Diligently.
Desperately.
With all your might.
A life where you could run away because you could do what you wanted even without any of that.
Being able to enter the Academy that everyone longed for meant you had the skill to match.
I was jealous of a life where you could possess such skill and talent and still waste them.
I was jealous of a life you could squander without fighting someone with your life on the line.
I was jealous of that life where, even without any effort at all, at least the bare minimum was provided.
Because that pathetic life had originally been my own.
“I have nowhere to go.”
Soraya’s pupils trembled.
Then she immediately rose from her seat.
“I-I, um, th-that.”
I must have screwed up.
Soraya panicked, gathered the few belongings she had, and ran outside.
Ian and Ran, who had been staring blankly after Soraya as she left, looked at each other.
“For Deep, you spoke pretty well.”
“If hearing something like that doesn’t spur her on, she’s no noble.”
I felt like I had done nothing but make mistakes.
“Wh-what did I do?”
“You did look like someone who wasn’t a noble.”
“I thought so too.”
They weren’t giving me an answer.
Before I knew it, Soraya, who had gone out the door, had completely disappeared from view.
At that running speed, I could still catch up even if I left now, but I didn’t particularly want to.
***
Where was I going, running like this?
I didn’t know.
Because I had never once decided on a destination, set a goal, and thought about it.
I simply went wherever my feet took me, and if I had to jump to get over something, I did not cross it.
“Ugh, uugh, u-haa, ugh.”
I braced myself against the wall and breathed deeply.
Had I run for about a minute?
That was a lot.
Now I should sit down and rest.
It did not matter at all that this was the roadside. I could sit right here and rest.
After all, whether I stayed here quietly or ran away, the future would not change.
Because I had a house, a family, that I could return to at any time.
“Huu.”
I started running again.
I did not know where to go. I just ran for now.
If I did not at least run, I felt I would be too pathetic to keep living.
“Ugh!”
The moment I tried to pass through an alley, I collided with someone who suddenly appeared.
“What the hell are you? Watch where you’re—”
The moment our eyes met, both the person before me and I froze at the same time.
“Soraya?”
“L-Lord Joshua Otto.”
Joshua stared at me with his eyes wide.
“Where the hell are you going? No matter how hard you run, you’re still way slower than other—”
“I-I, I know too!”
Before I knew it, my voice had grown loud.
“I know too!”
I felt the gazes around us turn this way.
Goosebumps rose all over my body.
“Th-th-then, I-I’ll be going!”
After bowing to Joshua, I ran again.
***
Joshua looked back with a dumbfounded expression, then let out a deep breath.
“What the hell was that?”
Could you call someone a noble when they bumped into you and ran off without even apologizing?
Nobles outside the Academy and nobles inside it were all the same.
The only difference was that the Academy had far fewer smoking areas than outside.
“Fuck, there are cameras in every damn alley.”
The one fortunate thing was that Joshua at least knew an alley nearby without a camera.
If he followed the deserted paths, heading wherever there were as few people as possible, then naturally—
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
Was it just not his day?
Joshua’s face twisted sharply.
In an alley where there was usually not a single person, there were as many as two.
Smoking in an unauthorized place was a violation of school rules.
If they realized he was smoking over here and reported him, things might get troublesome.
No, was that meaningless now?
Should he just smoke anyway?
The moment Joshua put the cigarette in his mouth, he heard a somewhat familiar voice.
He turned his head and looked again toward the mouth of the alley.
In the dark, faint field of view, the features of the two people belatedly came into sight.
Both were faces he knew.
One was Rob, a commoner who had ended up on his team for this team battle.
And the other was Jude, rank seventy-two, who belonged to Icarus’s team this time.
He could not clearly hear what they were whispering about, but he could clearly see their two smartwatches crossing.
Joshua turned his head back, leaned against the wall, and lit his cigarette.
Whatever was going on, it was none of Joshua’s business.