Free Web Novel“In any case, the decision’s already been made, so let’s stop dwelling on it and talk about something else...”
Perhaps she had decided there was no point clinging to her worries. Rather than continuing to seek reassurance, Helga suggested changing the subject.
Yet instead of introducing a new topic, she simply stared fixedly at her childhood friend.
Naturally, the person on the receiving end looked puzzled.
“Why are you looking at me like that? Is there something you want to say?”
“Ray... do you like Senior Lissy? Since when?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t dodge the question. Just answer me.”
“I’m not... I only asked because I genuinely had no idea what you meant. I wasn’t changing the subject.”
One look at Reisir’s bewildered expression was enough to tell how completely dumbfounded he was.
Unfortunately, Helga had already sunk too deep into her misunderstanding.
In fact, she only sank deeper.
“So you made a move on her even though you don’t like her?!”
“Made a move? Me? On Senior Lissy?”
Reisir’s voice climbed another octave.
He looked utterly incapable of understanding why those words were coming out of Helga’s mouth.
“In the seminar room. You told Senior Lissy you’d been noticing her for a long time, that you finally worked up the courage to speak because she looked so distressed and miserable. Then you even said the two of you should get to know each other from now on. And now you’re trying to deny it?”
“...Has your memory become a little distorted?”
“Maybe those weren’t your exact words, but that’s basically what you meant, isn’t it?”
“No!!”
Reisir cried out in utter injustice.
Watching him, I couldn’t help feeling a strange sense of satisfaction.
He was always misunderstanding people and putting me through embarrassing situations.
Serves him right.
“Then what did you mean?”
“I only realized Senior Lissy was treating me like a complete stranger, so I explained that we’d actually met before. Since we’ll be training together and entering the Demon Realm together, I only meant she should at least remember my face!”
“So you shared your personal circumstances and gently comforted a senior whose name you didn’t even know because you were worried about her...? There’s such a thing as being too meddlesome.”
“Ah! That part wasn’t my idea. It was Karvaldr’s.”
As I listened with growing interest, Reisir abruptly dragged the possessed body into it.
If I stayed silent, it might sound as though I had secretly instructed him to flirt with Lissy.
I immediately spoke up.
“I simply judged that senior’s attitude was disrupting the class atmosphere and that her neglect of training would likely become a liability once we entered the Demon Realm together. I merely intended to prevent that in advance.”
“Enough with the tsundere excuse. Explain why you made Ray do it instead of stepping in yourself.”
I wanted to protest that it wasn’t a tsundere excuse at all.
But she clearly had no intention of listening.
Rather than waste both my breath and the novel’s page count, I swallowed my grievance and answered instead.
“...If I, as a member of a ducal family, had openly said that the creation of the Special Class for Awakened wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, it would have looked as though I were speaking on behalf of the Imperial Family. That would only have increased their resentment. I simply concluded that Reisir was in a better position to approach her.”
“That actually makes sense. We know the Tsundere Young Master was shocked by the establishment of the Special Class for Awakened himself, but that senior wouldn’t know that.”
Helga nodded matter-of-factly, completely ignoring my complaint.
...Well.
At least she believed that explanation without misunderstanding it.
I decided to count it as a moral victory.
“So in other words, Ray, you wanted to carry out the Young Master’s request perfectly for once, so you treated Senior Lissy as gently as possible?”
“Exactly! That’s exactly what happened! Flirting with her? What an outrageous misunderstanding!”
Reisir looked genuinely relieved.
Apparently, he believed he had finally cleared everything up—
“Senior Lissy is pitiful.”
“Huh? Why Senior Lissy?”
“Because she’ll think you were confessing to her and end up agonizing over whether she should accept your feelings.”
—as this exchange immediately proved.
Reisir still had one final mountain to climb.
“Come on, there’s no way, right? Just because you misunderstood doesn’t mean everyone else did.”
“No? It was Vigdís Unnie who first said you were making a move on her.”
“......Huh?”
The seriousness of the situation finally dawned on him.
Reisir froze like a stone statue.
A misunderstanding from an uninvolved observer could easily be cleared up with a simple explanation.
But when the misunderstanding belonged to the person involved...
Whether you should explain it or leave it alone became painfully awkward.
It was quite the dilemma.
“H-Haha... even so, there’s no guarantee Senior Lissy misunderstood too... right?”
“Then why do you think she was blushing while she talked to you?”
“Because she felt embarrassed for not remembering someone she’d seen so often in the library?”
“No! Ray, people in this world don’t blush over every little thing the way the Tsundere Young Master does!”
Helga sighed, looking at Reisir with an expression that had progressed beyond pity into outright despair.
I completely understood how she felt, but...
“Could the two of you please stop using me as the standard of comparison?”
“Tsundere Young Master, who do you think is truly responsible for this?”
She was obviously expecting me to answer, Me, for asking Reisir to comfort Lissy.
As if.
“Either Reisir, for unintentionally toying with someone’s feelings through his confusing words... or the Imperial Family, for creating the Special Class for Awakened in the first place.”
“...The Young Master has quite the shameless side, doesn’t he? I never realized it because you blush so easily.”
“Hmph.”
Even while Helga and I continued bickering...
Reisir remained trapped in serious contemplation, desperately trying to avoid reality.
“Ríolíkin, what do you think? Did it really look like I was flirting with Senior Lissy?”
“Uh... I didn’t misunderstand it like that.”
“See? It didn’t look that way, did it?”
“Y-Yeah... because, Reisir... you always... talk in a way that’s... kind of embarrassingly intense.”
“......Huh?”
“Helga already knew that. I don’t know... why she misunderstood this time.”
“......”
Sadly for Reisir, his attempt at escapism ended in complete failure.
That final remark landed as the decisive finishing blow.
“Yes... you’re right... Ríolíkin’s absolutely right. From now on, I shouldn’t read too much into anything Ray says. You should be careful too, Unnie.”
“I will.”
“I should tell Senior Lissy too. That Ray says things that sound like flirting without realizing it, so she shouldn’t misunderstand.”
“That would probably be best.”
Watching Helga and Vigdís reach that conclusion, it seemed Reisir himself would no longer need to clear up Lissy’s misunderstanding.
Instead...
The romance route difficulty for another novel’s protagonist had quietly increased.
Not my problem.
I decided not to concern myself with it.
“Um... Karvaldr? Do you think I talk strangely?”
“If it were only your words, that would be one thing. Your actions are just as bad.”
“......”
Reisir looked as though his soul had left his body.
Realizing he had apparently been throwing around declarations that sounded like love confessions this entire time must have been quite the shock.
“Well... doesn’t that just mean people can genuinely tell you’re concerned about them, rather than pretending to be? There’s certainly room for misunderstanding, but once they get to know the kind of person you are, that misunderstanding should naturally disappear.”
“...Do you really think so?”
“Yes. Besides, the only women you’ve really spent time with until now have been Helga and Vigdís. So other than Senior Lissy, there shouldn’t be any additional victims.”
“Karvaldr... what about you?”
“......?”
Why had the possessed body suddenly become part of this conversation?
As I tilted my head in confusion, the protagonist of someone else’s novel elaborated.
“Well... after we met Her Royal Highness the First Princess during the vacation, when we were heading toward the Gate Facility... I held your hand and said a lot of things that might have sounded... burdensome. Then, when we met again at the award ceremony, you kept avoiding me. Was that because...”
He trailed off while cautiously watching my expression.
The sheer absurdity of the question made a hollow laugh escape me.
If the male protagonist of a fantasy novel started falling for another man, the genre itself would collapse.
Knowing that, there was no way I could misunderstand him the way Lissy apparently had.
“You’re worrying over absolutely nothing. I already knew that was simply the way you talk... and more importantly, we’re both men. There was never any possibility of that kind of misunderstanding.”
“Oh... right...? Then can I keep acting the same way around you, Karvaldr?”
“The fact that I won’t misunderstand you doesn’t mean your behavior isn’t burdensome. So don’t repeat what you did last time.”
“I’ll try. But honestly... I was already holding back back then.”
“......”
What exactly was I supposed to do with that information?
Was he asking me to get used to it because he intended to keep acting that way?
As I stared at the protagonist of someone else’s novel with a distinctly sour expression, thoroughly bewildered, another conversation drifted into my ears.
“What on earth did Reisir say to Kar for them to be having a conversation like that?”
“I wonder...? According to Ray, he was simply overjoyed that there was finally hope of recovering his territory. He kept thanking the Tsundere Young Master for helping him and rambled endlessly about how grateful he was.”
“Eh...? It... wasn’t just that, ma’am...! He was... stroking his hand. He even pressed his forehead against the back of Kar’s hand. Then he started saying things like... he absolutely couldn’t let him go... that his heart was racing... he said all sorts of things like that.”
When Helga gave Vigdís a rather incomplete explanation, Ríolíkin—who had been in the carriage with us that day—filled in what he had actually witnessed.
Vigdís’s eyes widened in astonishment.
Helga’s face immediately stiffened.
Then she turned to me and bowed her head.
“I’m sorry, Young Master. I thought perhaps your father looked down on Reisir and had hinted that you shouldn’t associate with him. I suppose I was carrying around a bit of an inferiority complex. In reality... it was simply our family's fool who behaved so discourteously toward you.”
“It was a reasonable suspicion. Besides, I wasn’t harmed by it, so there’s no need to apologize so profusely.”
“I’m grateful you see it that way, Young Master, but... looking at you now, you seem surprisingly broad-minded.”
“You too? Dealing with Reisir alone is already exhausting enough.”
“All right. Then please continue looking after Ray and keep getting along with him.”
“......”
I had already reached the conclusion that trying to distance myself from Reisir was pointless.
Even so...
I couldn’t bring myself to immediately agree with Helga’s request.
So instead of answering, I simply avoided everyone’s eyes and quietly sipped the lemongrass tea I had ordered in place of an Americano, mindful of Reisir’s concern for my health.
