149 - Side Story: Leonardo's Perspective, My Little Sister 8
I feel lightly fatigued by the mountain of gifts and envelopes occupying a corner of my desk. Socializing, and especially when the other party is a woman, requires care even for a single reply, and I am simply not good at it. Around this time last year I was in Waiyakku Valley, and there were no children delivering gifts to the Black Knights of the fortress to begin with, so I had no such troublesome affairs.
...I never imagined Tina would be used in this way.
I thought she might at most help carry gifts within the residence, but I never anticipated she would accept gifts in the city and deliver them around the fortress and residence. Tina does want to go see the festival, but she is usually more interested in the limited items at the Three Crows Tavern. She was never all that eager to participate in the festival itself.
...About half and half between thank-you letters and love letters?
I quickly scan the contents and sort them by type. Thank-you letters with words of appreciation for the Black Knights' work I can simply accept, but the obvious love letters filled with invitations to romance require a letter of refusal. Unbelievably, there are people in this world who interpret a lack of rejection as consent. When refusing, I must do so clearly.
...Last time I let it slide and ended up in a terrible situation.
I do not know where she first set her eyes on me, but I was once entangled by a girl with a frighteningly positive way of interpreting things. At first it was an invitation to a date. While I was busy and delayed my reply, the date passed, and the girl came charging into the Silver-White Knights station, demanding to know why I had not shown up on the promised day.
If only it had ended there. But the girl's capacity for action, with a thought process that interpreted silence as consent, was astonishing. She went around crushing every marriage proposal that came my way, which at the time I found bothersome, and for that I am grateful, but by the time I noticed, she had made those around her acknowledge her existence as my fiancee, even though such a fact had never existed anywhere.
There was no helping it. I had caught the eye of a strange girl. It seemed escaping would require tremendous effort, so instead I steeled my resolve. Once I decided that, I needed to make proper preparations. The other party was of noble birth, so I earned merits in battle to obtain a suitable position, and when I returned from the front, the girl, who I had not touched even a finger, said she was pregnant and had changed her feelings. Even I can now laugh about being swept around by a girl like a typhoon, but at the time it was an event so bewildering it made it hard to trust anyone.
...I would like to think there are not many girls like that whirlwind.
Having failed once from being pursued, I cannot rest easy without writing a clear letter of refusal for these kinds of letters.
Now then, what to do, I wonder, as I consider a neutral letter of refusal, when I hear a faint knock and then Tina's voice. Tina must have returned from the Spring Flower Festival. A moment later, I hear a knock from a low position on the door.
"I'm home."
Tina pops her face in through the doorway to report her return. I want to stop her and be soothed, but I can see fatigue on her face, having just come back from outside. Rather than holding her back, it would be better to let her rest in her room. Though reluctant, I watch her small back retreat to her room.
Come dinnertime, Alf comes to the residence. Alf's visit itself was not unusual, but Alf had likely escaped here too. After dinner he shows no sign of leaving, and plays Reversi with Tina until she starts drowsily nodding off. I leave the half-asleep Tina to Kalisa, and then, since Alf still shows no sign of leaving, I deliberately ask him. Aren't you going home, I say.
"...I don't want to go home."
"Give up and go. It's a path you have to walk someday."
There is a reason Alf does not want to return to his own residence today. The Spring Flower Festival is a celebration of spring's arrival with family and a time to give thanks to those who look after you throughout the year, but many now consider it a festival for blooming romance. That is not entirely wrong, but if it is a festival of love, there is no way Alfred, who openly declares his love for Alf, would stay quiet.
"I have a bad feeling. Tina said she met Ethelbert-sama in the city, right?"
"I feel like Alfred is at the residence," Alf says, holding his head. Since coming to Grenore, Alfred only sent letters occasionally, but in autumn he came to the city under the pretext of escorting Saint Yuuta Hiraga's research materials. He must have held back because of the distance from the capital, but having come once, Alfred would likely find the distance nothing at all. I had vaguely sensed he would come to visit at every opportunity.
"Maybe it's just gifts again this year."
I urge him to go home, knowing it is just a comfort. But Alf has known Alfred longer than I have, and such words offer no consolation at all.
"...If it were just things, my servants wouldn't have brought a message urging me to return to the fortress."
"Well..."
The residence assigned to the vice-commander where Alf lives is staffed by capable servants not unlike the Brownies at the Fortress Lord's Residence. In addition, Alf has familiar servants he brought from the capital. Both sets of servants are guaranteed to be excellent, so for them to specifically urge him home means there must be something.
"...At least he hasn't come charging into the fortress, right?"
"This year, anyway."
Who knows what will happen from next year onward. This year Tina brought the mountain of gifts she accepted in the city to the fortress. If this story reaches Alfred's ears, he might discard even the slightest shred of restraint and come charging into the fortress next year. I could easily picture Alfred galloping on horseback, arms full of presents and flowers, loudly shouting his love for Alf.
"Speaking of which, I heard something from Tina..."
I quickly give up on cheering up the sinking Alf and change the subject to refresh his mood. When I bring up what I heard from Tina during the day, about the Grenore Fortress Black Knights having few opportunities for romance, Alf looks at me with an exasperated expression, as if asking whether I just now noticed.
"The marriage rate at the other three fortresses you oversee, excluding Grenore, is about the same as other knight orders. The low marriage rate is only at Grenore Fortress."
The rest is almost the same as what Tina heard. Because I, as the commander, take the lead in working, the other Black Knights find it hard to take time off, and as a result, the workplace has extremely low opportunities for meeting the opposite sex.
"Maybe I should reduce your workload a bit."
"Even though I've left almost all the work at the other three fortresses to the vice-commanders and do practically nothing..."
Since I am not stationed at the other three fortresses, leaving them to the vice-commanders may be unavoidable, but I am at Grenore Fortress. As the one in charge of the fortress, I do not want to deliberately distribute work elsewhere.
"The very idea of entrusting four remote fortresses to one man was absurd from the start."
"The one who approved making you lord of four fortresses is the one at fault," Alf curses the King, who is not present here. The Black Knights are meritocratic, but that said, there was no precedent for a single knight becoming lord of multiple fortresses. I knew it was unreasonable from the start, but since the King approved it, I now basically stay in Grenore city and visit the other fortresses when necessary. Thinking of the other fortresses I have left almost entirely to their vice-commanders, there is no way I can slack off in Grenore.
"You're the knight commander, so just do the commander's work. Leave the other work to me or the Black Knights. You could let someone else handle patrolling the city, couldn't you?"
"No, I want to see the faces of the city's residents."
I became a knight because I wanted to be like Saromon, who saved children sold into slavery. As a knight, I want to always keep an eye on the faces and expressions of the people I must protect, so that I can notice any anomaly immediately.
"...You really are suited to the nobility."
Those words seem to come from Alf's true feelings, but being called a noble brings that girl's face to mind. The Merit Peerage I earned through meritorious deeds, in order to take that girl as my wife. While I can still move, I want to swing my sword as a knight for my country and people, so I try not to look at the title, but someday I will have to stand in that position. When I retire as a knight, I am to receive a territory and title and become a noble.
"Tina is the same, but you both have qualities that royalty seeks. Tina has the strongest guardian, Aurelia, who will respect it if she truly says no, but you have no such person. It's not as if there isn't talk of marrying you to a princess and putting you on the throne."
Learn to relax a little, Alf says. If you sacrifice yourself too much for the public good, you will be placed in a position from which you cannot escape, as those who would exploit it see their chance.
...The throne, huh.
Of course, I do not desire such a thing. I am prepared to gladly offer myself for work supporting the King, but I have never once thought of becoming the King myself.
...If Tina were to become a prince's bride, returning to the Silver-White Knights would not be bad.
That way, I could watch over Tina even after she marries. As a Silver-White Knight charged with protecting the royal family, I should be able to openly protect Tina and her children.
Thinking such things, I realize one thing.
...I feel like I could make it anywhere, as long as Tina is with me.
The thought that pops into my heart leaves me with nothing but a wry smile, even to myself.
If Tina is desired to stand by the king's side, then naturally Leonardo would also be desired, is what this story is about. Well, both of them want to run away with all their might from marrying into royalty.
Typos and errors for another day. I found and fixed some typos and errors.