The study of the Eisengard estate.
Scratch, scratch.
In the silence, only the sound of a quill brushing across paper rang out.
Large beads of sweat had formed on my forehead.
The pen in my hand looked so precarious it might crumble at any moment.
But my fingers had been tempered by a week of Count Eisen’s nagging.
The ink flowing from the tip of the nib filled the paper in astonishingly elegant curves.
「Barg von Wintersword」
The moment I drew the final stroke.
“......Hoo.”
I let out a long breath and set down the pen.
On the desk lay a heap of broken quill remains, proof of the fierce battle I had fought over the past week.
Count Eisen, who had been watching beside me with his arms crossed, adjusted his glasses and nodded.
“Good work. With this, all of your basic pre-enrollment liberal education lessons are complete.”
A declaration that I had passed.
I rose from my seat, tapping my stiff shoulders.
“Hoo... It’s finally over. This was honestly harder than the tribal wars.”
“I imagine so. Suppressing strength is more difficult than exerting it.”
“But Count, is that all? You called this the basics, so I thought there would be applied or advanced courses too.”
I asked, half nervous and half expectant.
Surely we weren’t moving on to social dancing with Kara before the count became my partner, were we?
But Count Eisen set down his teacup and smiled meaningfully.
“Any further education would be meaningless. No, it might even become poison.”
“Poison?”
“Most of the young ladies and young lords the two of you will face at the Academy are flowers raised in a greenhouse.”
He gazed out at the peaceful garden beyond the window and continued calmly.
“They see the world through prejudice and fixed notions rather than experience. To them, the 「Revered Peoples」 must be ignorant, rough, and savage. Because that is the order of the world they believe in.”
“......”
“But what if you, Barg, were to display flawless noble etiquette from head to toe right from the start? That would go beyond feeling out of place and provoke rejection. It would stimulate unnecessary inferiority and invite unnecessary jealousy.”
Eisen’s words made sense.
Even in the original work, when nobles saw commoners or foreigners superior to themselves, they were busy tearing them down rather than acknowledging them.
Kara, in particular, had been the greatest victim.
At the beginning of the original, Kyron, her lord in name, should have protected her, but even Kyron had been busy showing his inferiority complex.
“Then are you telling me to be sloppy? Should I act clumsy?”
“No.”
Count Eisen’s eyes flashed.
“I am telling you to use the gap.”
“The gap?”
“Ordinarily, show them the image of a rough and unrestrained barbarian, a member of the Revered Peoples. It does not matter if you laugh loudly or speak coarsely. Show them the kind of Revered People they expect to see.”
Then he smiled and looked me straight in the eyes.
“And then, at the decisive moment. The moment everyone tries to look down on you, show them the bare minimum—yet flawless—refinement.”
“......Ah.”
“That reversal will break their prejudice and become the most powerful weapon with which to overwhelm them. A single reversal that betrays expectations is far more striking than predictable perfection.”
I was impressed.
As expected of the Empire’s greatest administrator and strategist.
He had taught us not merely how to imitate nobles, but how to turn our identity into a weapon.
But one question remained.
“I understand what you mean, but... then why did you teach me cursive so harshly? You practically made me into a calligrapher.”
If the reversal was what mattered, shouldn’t it be fine for my handwriting to be a little rough?
At my question, Count Eisen answered with an infuriating smoothness.
“That is the very peak of the gap.”
“Pardon?”
“A hulking barbarian holding a pen and writing in a childish scrawl? Is that not far too obvious? It is an image anyone could predict.”
He pointed to my signature on the desk.
“But if those huge, blunt hands dash off delicate and elegant penmanship? With that alone, even if you fail to understand the content of a lecture, you can prove an air of intellect. You make them misunderstand, thinking, ‘Ah, just by looking at his handwriting, I can tell that man has depth.’”
“......”
“That is why I forced it into your hands. Dignity that comes from the tip of a pen is not created overnight.”
It was perfectly logical.
I couldn’t refute it.
But there was only one thought in my head.
‘...He’s just a perfectionist who can’t stand ugly handwriting, but he sure knows how to dress it up.’
In any case, it was true that the hellish penmanship lessons were over.
I stretched, my joints cracking.
“Good. Since I’ve secured a solid weapon as you advised, I suppose I can spend the remaining time taking it easy with Kara. As for the waltz... well, we can do that slowly.”
“I wonder....”
Count Eisen adjusted his glasses with a strange expression.
“I am not sure whether you will be able to rest.”
“Yes? What do you mean by—”
Clink.
At that moment, Kara, who had been quietly drinking tea at the side table, set down her teacup.
The sound rang out unusually loud.
I turned my head on reflex.
Kara’s expression was unusual.
A pale face.
Faintly trembling lips.
And strangely unfocused eyes.
“......Barg.”
A powerless voice.
Startled, I rushed over to her.
“What’s wrong? Are you sick? Is your stomach pulling?”
“No... it’s not that....”
Kara looked up at me with tearful eyes.
Gone was the spirit of a goddess of war; she wore the most pitiful expression in the world.
“...There’s something I want to eat.”
Ah.
It had come.
Four to five weeks pregnant.
The opening act of 「morning sickness」.
A chill ran down my spine.
Scenes from novels and dramas I had read and watched in my childhood in my previous life flashed through my mind.
A wife suddenly sitting up in the middle of the night and saying, “Honey, I want peaches.”
And the husbands’ desperate struggle to cross mountains and rivers in the dead of winter to procure those peaches.
It was a kind of 「survival quest」 that proved a husband’s love and ability.
Of course, the reward might simply return as yet another quest.
I asked solemnly.
“Tell me anything! Meat? Or those greens from last time? Or some high-class Imperial dessert? There’s nothing the chefs here can’t make.”
The chefs of this Eisengard estate were skilled, so they should be able to make most dishes.
But the words that came from Kara’s mouth went completely against my expectations.
“...「Frost Strawberries」.”
“......Huh?”
“And they have to be... the kind with a little ice caught in them, so they crunch when you bite them. I want those....”
For a moment, silence fell over the study.
Count Eisen and I both froze at the same time.
「Frost Strawberries」.
A rare fruit that grew only in the deep forests of Norheim, and even then only in shaded places where the snow did not melt.
Their sweet and sour flavor was exquisite, and when I had gone into the forest with Kara, we had often picked and eaten them for fun, but...
That was not the problem.
First of all, it was spring right now.
And this was the inland Empire.
Norheim was a full two days away.
On top of that, winter had passed, so frost strawberry season was already at its tail end.
“Ha... Frost Strawberries, of all things.”
Even Count Eisen was flustered, unable to close his mouth.
Flinch.
His shoulders jerked reflexively.
He, too, was a married man.
It seemed the trauma he had experienced during his wife’s morning sickness had instinctively resurfaced.
Had he once woken up at three in the morning and run around trying to buy fruit?
And given his personality, which disliked making servants work outside official hours, the count himself must have gone.
His eyes were trembling.
More than they had a few days ago when he met my father, Gorgon.
“Lady Kara, at the moment, the markets here only have ordinary strawberries....”
“Those taste bad... They’re mushy, and they’re not cold either....”
Kara lowered her head.
Tears as big as chicken droppings fell from her eyes.
“Sniff... Our baby... says it won’t eat anything else....”
It was an emergency.
A pregnant woman’s morning sickness was not an area that could be explained through logic.
The stress of being unable to eat what she wanted was fatal to both the fetus and the mother.
‘No.’
Whatever else, I could not let her feel miserable over food.
I had never experienced it myself, but the fear I had learned through media tightened around my heart.
If I couldn’t get it for her now, it would last a lifetime.
I’d be nagged for the rest of my life.
No, more importantly, Kara was crying!
My eyes blazing, I shouted.
“Cancel the dance and everything else! We have to go get strawberries!”
“C-Calm down, Barg! Even if you go all the way to Norheim and back, there are procedures to cross the border...!”
“Then what am I supposed to do? Kara wants to eat them! I’ll run there if I have to—”
“Pardon?”
I paced anxiously back and forth through the study.
Then Count Eisen snapped his fingers as if something had occurred to him.
“Wait. There is an icehouse within the estate. When we sorted the goods the Winterclaw tribe members gave you two as gifts last time....”
“Are there Frost Strawberries in there?”
“I cannot be certain, but... there may be some frozen for making jam or syrup. Even if they are not fresh, if they are frozen....”
“That’ll do! She said she wants ones with ice in them that crunch!”
Hope appeared.
As if we had planned it, we shouted at the same time.
“Ronas!!!”
Ronas, who had been suffering through his work in the next room, jumped in shock and rushed out.
“Yes, yes?! What is it? Has an enemy invaded? Did you break another pen?”
With dark circles hanging all the way down to his chin, Ronas was horrified by the murderous expressions on both our faces.
“Bring the key to the icehouse at once! And contact the merchant guild to put out a search for every strawberry coming in from the north!”
At Count Eisen’s urgent order, Ronas blinked, having no idea what was going on.
“Str-strawberries? Why all of a sudden....”
“Stop talking and run! Your niece or nephew wants to eat them!”
“......Pardon?”
Niece or nephew?
Since when did Barg’s child become your niece or nephew?
But overwhelmed by his father’s force, Ronas shouted, “U-Understood!” and dashed outside.
Count Eisen grabbed his coat and spoke to me solemnly.
“I will go as well. My pride will not allow a guest in my territory, and a pregnant woman at that, to be unable to eat what she craves.”
Elegant liberal education lessons?
There was no such thing anymore.
From this moment on, there was only the desperate struggle of an expectant father and a perfectionist administrator to satisfy a wife’s cravings.
“Wait for me, Kara! I’ll bring them back even if I have to strip an entire strawberry field bare!”
Leaving Kara behind as she wiped her tears, I charged out of the study with the momentum of a man ready to carry a strawberry basket instead of an axe.
* * *
After that uproar had passed.
Through the crack of the now-quiet study door, a small head peeked in.
It was Eisen’s late-born daughter, seven-year-old Alina.
The girl looked around the room with curious eyes.
Normally, her father would be buried in piles of documents, frowning as he sternly asked, “Alina, have you finished your studies?”
But the Count Eisen left in the study now was entirely different.
“My wallet... Where did I put my wallet? No, more importantly, is the carriage ready? Why is that Ronas so slow!”
He was pacing anxiously back and forth through the study.
To think he was flustered over a single strawberry.
Because he had hurriedly put on his coat, the sleeves were crooked, and even his always-neatly arranged hair was slightly disheveled.
The disordered appearance of her father, who had always seemed perfect, cold, and enormous.
But to Alina, that sight was not unfamiliar.
‘Pfft.’
The girl covered her mouth and giggled.
A very faint memory.
When she had been lying in her cradle, the face of her foolishly warm father looking down at her and smiling vacantly, as though he had the whole world in his hands.
The daddy from that memory, one that had faded with the passage of time, now seemed to overlap before her eyes.
‘Daddy is cute.’
Alina smiled brightly as she watched her father, his face flushed red, snorting as he prepared to leave.
The winter of Eisengard, which had been frozen stiff, was melting away.
Along with a spring that smelled of strawberries.