Previously
Cecilia attempts to orchestrate a 'damsel in distress' moment to boost Cain's evaluation scores, but the plan goes awry when she actually falls and loses her magical hood, revealing her imperial silver hair to the trainees.
“Hic… oh… uuugh…”
It had been a very long time since I last visited this room in my dreams.
Not once had it happened since the day I sneaked out in disguise and ran into young Rosivius.
After that encounter, I stopped dreaming of him entirely, which made me wonder if there was some connection.
Had those dreams merely been meant to help me recognize him that day…?
‘Then again, since he’s appearing now, maybe that wasn’t it.’
In the original story, Rosivius was never a particularly special character to me. So the moment I realized the boy in my dreams was Rosivius, my sympathy toward him waned somewhat.
‘Because I know what he’ll do later, no matter how miserable he looks right now…’
Yet when I saw him curled up beneath the moonlight, sobbing as though choked by grief…
‘I got curious about how he was living.’
The compassion I thought had faded came rushing back the moment he lifted his head.
When I last saw him, he was about my size, but he seemed to have grown a little taller than me now.
His hair, once merely an unkempt mess, had grown past his shoulders with ragged, haphazard ends, suggesting it had received little care since it was last cut.
‘Three years have passed since I saw him.’
I crouched down beside him.
Rosivius huddled in the moonlight trickling through the small window, crying without pause.
Behind his spectacles, his eyes shone with the brown hue I remembered from the text. Those glasses were clearly a magical artifact that masked his eye color.
“…Hic, hhh…”
Even when I met him in person, he was never the sort to cry out loud…
So what could be hurting him this deeply?
Throughout my repeated visits in these dreams, I had never seen him shed a single tear since coming to this house.
Even with the cruelty of the Alvinus family and the servants… what could have made him this heartbroken?
Tears streamed ceaselessly down his face, pressed against the floor, catching the moonlight with pitiful brilliance.
“Why are you crying?”
I asked, knowing full well my voice would never reach him.
Just then, young Rosivius wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, as though he hadn’t rubbed them already, and finally took off his glasses.
His crimson eyes appeared, fragmented like a sunset drowning into the sea.
“Oh… ugh… hic…”
Yet there was no sign his tears would stop.
I let out a soft sigh and looked around.
The living quarters had always been sparse, but today they seemed emptier than ever, as though whoever lived here had already departed…
‘Wait, could it be…?’
Sure enough, a bag lay near the door.
It was far too small for moving to a new home, but given the plainness of the room, it made sense.
If he had packed his things…
‘This must be the day he was rejected by the Magic Tower…’
One of the incidents cited as the turning point that forged him into a villain was his rejection from the Magic Tower.
Despite possessing magic on par with the strongest beings in the world, the tower turned him away on flimsy pretexts.
They claimed his magical composition was impure or some such nonsense.
‘A cowardly excuse from people who simply lacked the ability to teach him.’
Marquis Alvinus, unwilling to abandon his half-sister’s son purely to save face, had eagerly sent him to the Magic Tower the moment the boy manifested his powers.
And to Rosivius, who had tried to run away time and again in the past, it must have been a ray of hope.
‘A safe, legitimate chance to leave the Marquis’s estate—how thrilled he must have been.’
Yet the bag that once carried that excitement now lay abandoned by the door.
It must have been mocked mercilessly by the servants when he returned.
“…Hic… ghkk…”
Even so, Rosivius’s weeping did not cease.
He seemed to be trying to stifle it, but the strangled sound in his throat only dragged on longer.
On an autumn afternoon beneath a clear sky and biting sun, at the Narcissus Palace training grounds.
“Yaaay! Your Highness, you’re here?”
The moment Leoport and I stepped onto the training grounds, a cheerful voice rang out from among the trainees.
It was Rena, who had been training diligently in my Direct Squad.
“It seems Rena is truly fond of Your Highness.”
“It’s… a little embarrassing.”
I gave a bashful laugh.
Though Leoport had initially been wary when I brought in companions his age, he now called the members of my squad “senior” and treated them with familiarity.
The idea that they would serve together in the Temple Knights later seemed to have won him over.
“I’ve been excited since yesterday about sparring with the seniors again.”
Leoport’s green eyes shone with a competitive spark.
After turning thirteen and entering the Academy, he couldn’t visit the palace as often as before. But whenever he came, he always spent time with my squad.
Yes, my Direct Squad.
That was the name I had given to the trainees I handpicked three years ago, hoping they would become my personal knights in the future.
‘Though there’s still a long road ahead before they’re officially knighted, I’m the only one who calls them that.’
Thanks to the outstanding performance of the first ten I picked in that first year, I continued adding five more each year until their numbers reached twenty.
‘Hah, what an imperial scale. Twenty people reserved just for me.’
Among them, the first ten I had known from the beginning were now preparing for their knight qualification exams after coming of age.
Under the tutelage of Lancel, Roselia’s right hand, and with the most gifted commoner youths selected, their success was practically guaranteed.
‘So, by the time I reach adulthood, I’ll have twenty personal knights of my own.’
I chuckled softly, hiding my excitement, and asked Leoport,
“Isn’t there anyone worth sparring with at the Academy? You mentioned you have swordsmanship lessons.”
“Well… everyone has something they can teach you in their own way.”
He said it with a mild smile, though his true answer inside was clearly “no one.”
‘The male lead buff… how annoying.’
Well, it made complete sense.
As the male lead, Leoport was destined for rapid growth, and on top of his remarkable talent, he trained relentlessly with my encouragement.
I looked up at my friend, who still had about nine years before becoming that dashing nobleman from The Violet of the Duchy, and felt a swell of pride.
He had grown even taller, to the point where the gap between us was now half a hand-span. How infuriating.
‘This and that… everyone is shooting up except for me. It’s downright vexing.’
Just then, the trainees who had wrapped up their workout strode toward us.
Among them, reddish-blonde Rena bounded to the front.
With an exaggerated flourish, she gave a knight’s salute and dropped to one knee before us.
She was trying to meet my eye level… but I wasn’t that short anymore, thank you very much.
“Your Highness, you look more breathtaking than ever today.”
“Haha, Rena, you always…”
“I’m not teasing. Bathed in the autumn sun, your aura looks even more mysterious.”
She said it with a wink.
‘Could the one most swayed by Cecil’s face… be Rena?’
Ever since our first meeting, Rena had always had a weak spot for handsome faces.
“Young master, did you come to get beaten again today?”
Yet it seemed that didn’t apply to Leoport, whose features had grown considerably more mature…
“Wait, what kind of talk is that?”
“Did you come to lose to me?”
“You really—that mouth of yours, watch that mouth!”
Cain, who had tailed her out of fear she might cause trouble, smacked her mouth with the towel he had been using to wipe his face.
“Oof!”
Rena scowled and pushed herself up.
Rena, who had no intention of fixing her blunt manners, and the strictly disciplined Cain bickered every single time they crossed paths.
Fortunately, there was no real malice between them.
“Eileen, say something to them too.”
“…Your Highness, could we split the training into two shifts? When they’re together, the racket is intolerable.”
“Haha, what did I even expect.”
Cain offered a defeated smile, though behind it lingered a trace of stifled irritation.
“What a lively, fun atmosphere again today!”
Meanwhile, my friend Leoport, our flower-garden male lead, saw only the smile and interpreted it with absolute innocence.
The earnest Cain struggled with the vast difference between himself and the detached Eileen.
Even if she was said to have cleared the fitness exam back then, that had purely been the proctors’ assessment.
‘Fortunately, Cain has the qualities of a commander. Keeping him close as my right hand will make it easier to help Emily later, too.’
Soon, Eileen and Cain would receive their formal knighthood, and it would be time to put my squad to work in earnest.
I would appoint Cain as squad leader and begin putting my prepared plans into action.
Even though Eileen was a year older than Cain and the eldest among them…
“Eileen, Rena seems to listen to you.”
“If you spoke as infrequently as I do, she’d listen to you too.”
She was simply indifferent to other people’s business by nature.
As if not expecting any reply from me, she turned on her heel and headed into the barracks. Additional training was not a concept in her vocabulary.
Even so, she absorbed Lancel’s grueling regimens at terrifying speed, demonstrating truly astonishing talent.
“Ah, looks like I won’t get to spar with Eileen today either.”
“Maybe it’s time to give up.”
“If you can’t beat me, Eileen won’t fight you.”
Rena chimed in, approaching with a mischievous grin.
For my part, I doubted Eileen would care about Leoport whether he beat Rena or not…
“Maybe in five years, once Leo is fully grown.”
Someone like Eileen, who refused to do extra training, wasn’t about to waste her time on pointless amusements.
Still, I was deeply grateful to Rena.
“Unless you rely on dirty tricks, I wouldn’t be so sure of today’s outcome.”
“They aren’t dirty tricks, young master, that’s real combat. So, Your Highness?”
“Go on, duel. And don’t go easy on him.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“…Your Highness!”
When I gave a casual wave of my hand, Leoport wore a crestfallen look.
He seemed to be protesting that his constant losses to Rena weren’t purely down to skill.
I smiled as I watched their backs while they jogged toward the training grounds.
“I’m thankful Rena plays so well with Leo.”
“Plays well? I’m just grateful the young master of House Ornbach doesn’t lose his temper.”
Cain muttered with a shake of his head.
The youths in my squad, all of them commoners, had been intensely wary of Leoport at first.
I was a princess and their master, but other nobles were another matter entirely.
Some had faced discrimination in previous knight orders simply for being commoners, which planted a deep resentment toward the nobility.
A few had even joined out of vengeance, yearning to enter an imperial palace that stood far above those who looked down on them.
‘They never let it show in front of me, but I saw right through it.’
Rena was the prime example.
Rumor had it she had served in a unit under Count Fremlin’s household, where she was discriminated against for being a commoner, for being a girl, and even for acting boyish.
Because of that, she gave everything she had to enter the Sixth Squad and put on that abrasive persona.
‘Though Rena was taken with Leoport’s face from the very start…’
Even so, to those carrying such a past, watching a young aristocrat show off his swordsmanship must have looked absurd.
Even if they never voiced it aloud.
Yet Leoport was beloved wherever he went; he was the hero of this world. Who could genuinely hate him?
‘Except someone like Rosivius… who will end up his enemy because of Emily later on…’
Right then, Cain groaned beside me.
“Ugh, that girl again…”
“Haha.”
After trading a few blows, Rena swept Leoport’s legs out from under him, sending him tumbling to the ground.
Even from afar, his ears were visibly burning red.
“Looks like the young master of Ornbach is embarrassed in front of Your Highness.”
“Mmm, even if he says he has no feelings for me.”
“…You always say that.”
Cain chuckled softly, as if convinced I was completely clueless—even though he was only nineteen himself.
‘Now that Leoport has started making friends at the Academy, this attachment will fade soon enough.’
After all, a ducal heir with angelic looks like his would have no shortage of people lining up to get close to him.
Speaking of which… the Academy…