The study inside the mansion of Count Eizen’s estate, “Eizengard.”
One month remained until the entrance ceremony.
During that time, Kara and I were staying here, receiving lessons in imperial etiquette and basic education.
Warm afternoon sunlight seeped in through the window.
This place was a grand duchy at the northernmost edge of the empire.
But since it was inland, it was different from Norheim’s knife-edged winds or the bleakness of the northern borderlands.
The sunlight was doing its job.
Instead of cold that bit into the flesh, there was warmth that gently wrapped around the skin.
At a table by the window, heated by that warmth, Kara sat elegantly holding a teacup.
Kara had already perfectly mastered everything from dining etiquette to the theory of ballroom dancing.
“Mmm, the aroma is nice.”
The sight of her savoring black tea with her pinky slightly extended made her look exactly like an imperial noblewoman.
On the other hand.
“Grrk... ughh....”
I was crouched in front of the desk, engaged in mortal combat with a feather pen the size of my finger.
Beads of sweat had formed on my forehead, and the muscles of my back were drawn taut.
It was a solemn intensity, as if I were locked in a contest of strength with a bear.
But what I held in my hand was nothing more than a single ink-stained pen.
“Relax your grip, Varg.”
Count Eizen, who had been watching beside me with his arms crossed, clicked his tongue.
“A pen is not an axe. Do not grip it as though you are strangling its neck. Leave some distance, as if you were holding cold ice....”
“Distance... distance....”
I muttered the word like an incantation and tried to loosen the strength in my fingers.
Cursive practice.
The goal was to write these wriggly, earthworm-like letters elegantly without splattering ink everywhere.
Suddenly, a very old memory flashed through my mind.
When I was about eight, lying on my stomach with Kara in Old Baba’s tent as we learned the imperial language.
『These are the letters those imperial bastards use. All curled up, like earthworms crawling around, aren’t they?』
Back then, even as the old woman taught us the imperial language, she had been full of spite.
Saying they were the words used by imperial bastards, she gave us pens made from thick deer shinbones instead of quills, and made us press them hard into leather instead of parchment.
『Imperial bastards’ handwriting has no strength! Like this, hard! You have to write as if you’re carving it into bone for it to be real writing!』
The old woman had projected her resentment toward the empire into our penmanship.
Crude, rough straight lines instead of elegant curves.
Pen pressure that seemed ready to pierce through leather instead of soft strokes.
That mistaken early education had now come back as a painful poison.
‘Old woman... you could’ve taught us a little more gently back then....’
For twenty years, my hands had grown accustomed to the grip of a bone pen and the pressure needed to pierce leather.
There was no way the empire’s flimsy feather pens and paper could withstand the strength of my grip.
‘Good. This time, it feels right.’
I held my breath and brought the nib to the paper.
And the moment I applied just the slightest bit of force to draw a stroke.
Snap!
With a crisp cracking sound, the quill’s body broke in two.
The nib lodged itself in the paper and vomited ink, while only the broken feather remained in my hand.
“Ah....”
I stared down at the broken pen in dejection.
“Why did it break again? Aren’t imperial pens too weak? They should make them out of bone or something.”
“That is already the twelfth one.”
Count Eizen adjusted his glasses and sighed.
“Rather than a problem of grip, I would say your hand strength is outside the bounds of common sense, Varg. If you clutch it as tightly as an axe handle, of course it cannot endure.”
“I held it as gently as I could....”
I felt wronged.
For a barbarian body to learn the concept of “gently” was no different from making an elephant thread a needle.
At that moment, Kara, who had been drinking tea by the window, approached.
“Oh my, my husband. Look at you sweating.”
She took out a handkerchief, wiped the sweat from my forehead, and giggled.
“You look like you’re having a harder time than when you hunted a snow bear.”
“Don’t tease me. This is seriously advanced.”
When I grumbled, Kara placed a hand on my shoulder and whispered.
“So do your best. If you don’t want to step on my feet, you’ll have to practice a lot.”
Then she smirked and wrapped her arms around my waist.
“Besides, in three weeks, you have to learn ballroom dancing with the Count, don’t you?”
“......Huh?”
My expression froze.
I looked at Count Eizen.
The Count was adjusting his tie with an expression that said, I am prepared.
“Just because Miss Kara cannot dance does not mean you have any reason to rest, Varg. I will take the role of your partner.”
“......”
“I shall take the woman’s role, so hold my waist and try to lead me. I will teach you very strictly.”
I imagined it.
Myself, wrapping my arms around this fussy middle-aged man’s waist, exchanging deep gazes with him as we took our steps.
“Urk....”
My stomach suddenly churned.
I felt like my insides were in worse shape than Kara’s, and she was the one with morning sickness.
“Puhahaha!”
Kara burst out laughing, clutching her stomach.
“That’s great! My husband’s going to get special training from the Count, huh? Good luck!”
“You... look like you’re really enjoying this.”
“Of course. It’s funny just imagining it.”
Kara teased me, even tearing up from laughter.
With a despairing expression, I picked up the thirteenth pen.
Cursive practice, something difficult to overcome even with the power of love.
But in order to avoid the dreadful future of waltzing with a middle-aged man, I absolutely had to overcome this trial...
Snap!
It broke again.
No, there was no avoiding it!
“Count... please, isn’t there anything other than dancing? I’d rather perform a sword dance.”
“No. The flower of high society is the waltz.”
I sighed and lowered my head.
That was when it happened.
Bang!
The door to the office attached to the study was flung open violently.
“Fath—no, Count!”
The son of Count Eizen and heir to the family, “Ronas von Eizen.”
But his appearance was far from that of a noble young lord.
Hollow eyes.
Dark circles hanging down to his jaw.
Hair so disheveled it looked as if a bird had built a nest in it.
Since he had taken charge of managing the estate in his father’s stead, his soul was already halfway out of his body.
“Can’t you please conduct your lessons more quietly? Snap! Snap! I can hear the pens breaking all the way in the next room!”
Ronas shouted irritably, clutching at his hair.
“I can’t concentrate, and I almost tore up the approval documents! I’m already so on edge I could die!”
Even at his son’s cry of anguish, Count Eizen remained calm.
He leisurely lifted his teacup and said,
“Oh dear, you lack concentration, Ronas. If you are to become the head of the family, you must maintain composure amid any noise. In my day, I approved documents in the middle of a battlefield.”
“And who do you think made the work pile up like a mountain?!”
Ronas’s eyes were bloodshot.
He shook the bundle of receipts in his hand.
“I didn’t sleep a wink last night because I was sorting out the receipts you ran up in the borderlands! Fine, let’s say Lord Kairon paid for the clothes, but the food? The carriage rental fees? And on top of that, the lodging costs!”
Ronas shouted, nearly in tears.
“Father... no, Count, ever since you retired, you’ve been spending money like an unbridled colt. The very pillars of the family are shaking!”
“Hoho, Varg’s strength is so extraordinary that it could not be helped. And since he keeps breaking pens, we will need to allocate a more generous budget for supplies. I leave it to you, my son.”
“Budget? Did you just say budget again?”
Ronas grabbed the back of his neck.
Staggering, he took hold of the office door again.
“Ugh... I must have been insane. Why did I take over the work already...? Being competent is a sin. A sin....”
Bang!
The door closed, and silence returned.
Feeling apologetic, I cleared my throat.
“Your son... looks like he’s going to collapse soon.”
It did not feel like someone else’s problem.
It overlapped with the sight of my past life, tormented by overtime work, enough that I felt pity.
But Count Eizen merely smiled.
“They say hardship in youth is worth buying, do they not? Do your best, my son. I need some rest.”
‘......What a cruel man.’
This peaceful yet noisy scene.
It had been like this ever since we first arrived at Eizengard.
* * *
A few days earlier.
It was when the procession of three carriages we rode in passed through the front gate of the Eizengard mansion.
When the household members and servants who had come out to greet us saw the married couple stepping down from the carriage, they could not close their mouths.
A huge man and a tall beauty standing beside him.
Even though we wore matching black leather uniforms, our appearance was truly that of giants of the snowy plains.
“My goodness... what the Count said was true.”
A maid covered her mouth and whispered.
“Look at that height. Won’t he hit the front door?”
“So it was not an exaggeration. He called them legends of the snowy plains... and they truly are overwhelming.”
The old butler, too, adjusted his glasses and marveled.
Apparently, whenever Count Eizen told his stories about the Norheim delegation from over twenty years ago, the servants had thought, “Oh, he’s gotten old, so now he exaggerates too much.”
But after seeing us in person, they realized the Count’s descriptions had in fact been modest.
There was none of the fear of barbarians I had been worried about.
Rather, it was the opposite.
As soon as Count Eizen finished introducing us, the household members’ curiosity exploded in place of wariness, and they surrounded us.
Even people of the borderlands, who were relatively less wary of other ethnic groups, had let their caution show from the first word, often along with discriminatory language.
But perhaps because these people had only heard positive stories from Eizen, they showed no aversion toward foreign peoples.
“Oh my, madam! How is your skin so lovely?”
The head maid took Kara’s hand, her eyes sparkling.
“I heard the winds of the snowy plains make one’s skin rough, so what is your secret? Do you use some kind of mask made from northern medicinal herbs?”
“Ah, well... I just wash with cold water....”
When Kara flusteredly mumbled, the maids burst into tinkling laughter and gathered around her.
It was the same for me.
“Um... if it would not be rude, may I touch those muscles?”
The gardener put down his pruning shears and asked carefully.
“In all my life, I have never seen such physical beauty... If you were a tree, I would feel the solidity of a thousand-year-old ancient tree.”
“Haha, touch all you want. It’s not as if they’ll wear down.”
When I flexed my arm, the gardener and the male servants exclaimed, “Oooh!” again and again in admiration.
Amid all that.
There was a little young lady hiding behind her older brother Ronas’s legs, peeking out.
Eizen’s youngest daughter, born late in life, Alina.
Given our size, I thought she was frightened, but when I looked closely, her eyes were sparkling with curiosity.
“Brother....”
Alina tugged on Ronas’s trouser leg and whispered.
“That lady... she looks like a knight from a fairy tale. She’s so cool....”
In the girl’s eyes, Kara was not a frightening barbarian, but a silver-haired lady knight who had stepped out of a fairy tale.
Until then, Ronas’s expression had been bright.
“Alina, don’t hide like that. It’s impolite. Come out and greet them. They are honored guests of our family.”
He had smiled genteelly and welcomed us.
Of course, that was only until his father handed him the “bundle of borderland receipts” immediately afterward.
Back to the present.
Amid the peaceful teatime and calligraphy lesson, only one person was suffering.
From the next room, another scream rang out.
“Aaaagh! What is this ‘premium cushion add-on’ under the carriage rental fee?! Were you gold-plating your backside?! Father!!”
Thwack!
There was even the sound of a bundle of documents being thrown.
I put down my pen and asked worriedly,
“Count... your son is going to cry, isn’t he?”
“What if he collapses like that? Should I bring him some restorative herbs I brought from my homeland?”
Kara, too, looked toward the next room with a sympathetic expression.
But Count Eizen sipped his black tea and answered with the most relaxed face in the world.
“It is fine. That Ronas boy has a good voice. He is perfectly fit to be the head of the family.”
“......”
“It is a trait of House Eizen. When we are under stress, our work gets done faster. Working while cursing is the most efficient method.”
He grinned and set down his empty teacup.
“Now, break time is over. Varg, take out the fourteenth pen. This time, we will copy ‘The Founding Ideals of the Empire.’”
“...Please spare me.”
A peaceful afternoon, with Ronas’s screams echoing from the next room and my groans resounding through the study.
Our adjustment period at Eizengard continued on in just such a noisy fashion.