[Episode 14]
When I looked at him with eyes that said I couldn’t understand what he was doing, the prince carefully twisted open the cap of the bottle in his hand. Then, as he tried to press the bottle into my hand, which was stuck out awkwardly and frozen stiff, he hesitated and set it down on the desk instead.
“Drink.”
He spoke in a low, calm voice. When I looked at him with an expression that said I found this highly suspicious, the Second Prince muttered something under his breath, then opened his mouth again and added, “It’s medicine.”
“Why this….”
At my words, which implied the question *Are you giving this to me?*, the prince scratched the back of his head awkwardly and looked out the window for no reason. Before I knew it, the sun was setting outside the window.
“I’m not heartless enough to abandon someone dying and walk away.”
Saying so, he picked up the bag that had been tossed aside and placed it on the floor. I carefully picked up the bottle. It was warm, as if heated.
“Do you still not need help walking?”
The prince asked without looking my way. Thinking it fortunate that he wasn’t taking my earlier words as an insult to the imperial family, I answered.
“Yes, I’m fine.”
I’ll go back alone once I take the medicine and feel better. Saying so, I sipped the medicine. It had been warmed to lukewarm as well.
The prince sat beside me still, gazing at the sunset outside the window. He looked as though he wouldn’t get up until I did.
Icarus’s hair was dyed red by the slowly setting sun. It suddenly occurred to me that the sunset light suited him quite well. In the quiet classroom, only the sound of me sipping medicine could be heard.
***
After the commotion at the library, I threw myself even more into archery practice. I wanted to build up my stamina so I could be better prepared if something like this happened again. More than anything, the number of people I wanted to shoot dead was gradually increasing too.
Perhaps that was why my archery skills were improving with each passing day.
“Did you really not have an elder in your family who shot a bow?”
It had reached the point where Agatha, my teacher, called me over and asked slyly.
Dietrich certainly seemed to have been born with the physical constitution to shoot a bow quite well. Perhaps thanks to chopping firewood in Heilem, I didn’t have much difficulty drawing and holding the bowstring.
Thinking it fortunate to have at least this much of a hobby—otherwise this academy might have been so suffocating I would have lost my mind—I packed up my gear.
On the way back to the academy from the archery range, there was a training ground filled with students honing their swordsmanship. Unlike the quiet archery range, the training ground was noisy with students shouting at the top of their lungs. Amidst the students training while dripping with sweat, the Second Prince stood tall.
He was watching the other students’ training with serious eyes. Even to me, who didn’t know much about swordsmanship, the Second Prince was deflecting incoming swords with a more disciplined posture than anyone else in the training ground.
*After all, he’s experienced actual combat….*
Watching Icarus as if spellbound, I recalled the fact that he had held a sword since he was very young. Even before entering the academy, he had participated in monster subjugation expeditions and small-scale wars. He had been called to places where life and death hung in the balance at an age too young to even be called a student soldier.
*Of course, since he’s a prince, the knights around him wouldn’t have let him die, but….*
Still, thinking that he had wandered through places where people could die since he was a child, I felt a little sorry for him. I felt like I could understand how he’d ended up with such a twisted personality too. Thinking that, I hurriedly moved my feet. I didn’t want to create an awkward situation where our eyes met for no reason and he caught me looking at him.
Honestly, since that day, things had been strangely awkward between the Second Prince and me. Well, we hadn’t been close to begin with. Since the incident in the classroom, I had been subtly conscious of him. Perhaps sensing the awkward atmosphere, the Second Prince no longer acted as he used to, like talking to me for no reason or sitting in the seat next to me, but….
*If I think about the way our eyes subtly meet in the lecture hall… Ugh, I need to stop thinking about this.*
It gave me goosebumps. I picked up my pace again.
***
After I started working properly for the student council, Irene called me to her dormitory. The reason was that it would be easier to hand over duties separately outside than in the crowded student council room.
Of course, along with that, she seemed somewhat bothered that I, whom she had personally brought into the student council despite my repeated refusals, wasn’t fitting in well. I could see her helping me so I wouldn’t be picked on by the other students.
*She’s a good person.*
Thinking so, I reached for the refreshments laid out before me. Saying that Irene hadn’t returned yet because she had class, the Count’s maid led me to the parlor and prepared tea and refreshments. A parlor in a dormitory? No, more than that, the family’s maid had followed her to the dormitory to take care of her! I looked back at my own dormitory anew.
I had been surprised when I first entered by the spacious, clean private room unbefitting a student dormitory, but the place where Irene stayed was large enough that the whole view of the dormitory didn’t come into sight at a glance. If a count’s daughter’s dormitory was this grand, I couldn’t even imagine what the lodging of Roxanne or the Emperor would be like. When various thoughts were chasing one after another—
“Huh?”
At the sound of someone approaching, I looked up to see a male student with dark skin, short hair of a deep color, and an innocent image entering Irene’s dormitory. He had bold, well-defined features, and firm muscles could be seen beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his uniform. Perhaps that was why, somehow he reminded me of the potatoes I had eaten until I was sick of them in Heilem. He gave the impression of a country potato lad, strangely like a potato freshly dug from the earth and polished until shiny.
The male student, who seemed like a mix of a simpleton and a potato, seemed a bit flustered to see me, a stranger, sitting in Irene’s parlor. But soon, as if remembering something, he said “Ah” and made a bright expression.
“You’re Dietrich, right? My sister said a junior from the student council was coming today.”
He introduced himself in a cheerful voice as Klaus Horatius and extended his hand to me. The way he said *noona* suggested he was Irene’s younger brother. Looking closely, beneath his dark skin, green eyes like Irene’s were sparkling. It was the only part that resembled Irene.
As I took Klaus’s outstretched hand and was worrying about what to call him.
“I’m a freshman too! Speak casually.”
Saying so, Klaus came and sat next to me.
“Wow, my sister really brought someone else to her dormitory. That’s unusual.”
Klaus laughed with a hee hee. Watching that, I admired how his personality was as unlike Irene as his appearance, while also being newly impressed by Irene’s steely personality for absolutely not nominating him as a student council member despite having a younger brother.
Klaus had a somewhat innocent feel, but he had something that drew people in with an atmosphere different from Irene’s. While Klaus was exaggerating how cold-hearted Irene was, she entered looking a bit tired. Klaus stopped chattering to me and approached Irene, starting to talk to her about something else.
Irene listened to his story silently with an expressionless face. Seeing the two of them together felt like a city mouse and a country mouse standing side by side. Irene looked at me, said she would wash up briefly, and disappeared beyond the parlor. Perhaps noticing my gaze watching the two of them, Klaus smiled mischievously and said.
“We really don’t look alike. No one can tell we’re siblings at first.”
“Ah, really? But your eyes look very similar….”
Embarrassed that my secret thought had been caught, I answered as nonchalantly as possible to hide my embarrassment. Even though Klaus looked a bit simple, he seemed quick-witted like Irene. Klaus laughed and answered. Only the eyes, only the eyes. Sister and I each take after one parent exactly.
“I….”
“I take after Mother.” Irene, who had returned before I knew it, cut off Klaus and hurried him to leave. Soon after chasing Klaus out, she sat in the chair before me.
“I take after Father.”
Irene added shortly.
Looking again, Klaus didn’t look like a potato. He was like a pretty pebble, well-washed and smooth. As I watched Klaus’s round, pretty back of the head, I couldn’t help but offer a tearful apology in my heart to the Countess.
On the way back from Irene’s dormitory, I looked at the clock tower beyond the window. Every time I saw the clock tower, I couldn’t hide a strange sense of unease. There were many strange aspects to Dietrich’s death.
Dietrich died at the academy. However, between the moment Dietrich threatened and tried to harm Roxanne and the time Dietrich fell to his death at the academy, there was a gap. In other words, Dietrich had not thrown himself immediately after failing to harm Roxanne. Although it wasn’t explained in detail in the book, I clearly remembered the description of the academy’s security knights subduing and taking away Dietrich, who was screaming as if having a fit. If so, he was at least detained….
*How could someone who was detained escape and get to the academy’s clock tower?*
He might have escaped on his own. But by what means could an ordinary student attending the academy break through such tight security? At that time, Dietrich had no family or anything. Even Cedric, whom I had briefly encountered after enrollment, would fly at Dietrich as if to kill him; if Dietrich had even threatened Roxanne, they would have been determined not to let him go.
Moreover, Dietrich wasn’t the only one who died because of that day’s events. There was also Yuri, the Duke Erexion’s maid, who had been imprisoned together under the pretext of having helped him get into the Duke Erexion’s dormitory.
*Escaping with a lame leg, delivering poison to Yuri, breaking through tight security again, and going all the way to the academy to throw himself off….*
The series of events didn’t make sense. An unexplained, uneasy feeling led me to one conclusion.
There was someone who helped Dietrich escape from prison.
In other words… someone was involved in Dietrich’s death.
Whether as an accomplice, or as the mastermind.