Chapter Chapter 93: 11. Not a myth, but a legend (6) (2/2)

“What kind of retarded…”

“Understandable.”

I tried to deny the cause of this nonsensical stupidity, but I heard a voice beside me actually accept that excuse.

“Siir?”

Siir whose character had been slowly changing lately, and in a very bad direction as well, was looking at me with a serious expression.

“Lady Aris, no, Aris.”

“Mm?”

Even when I’d kept telling her to speak casually with me as friends, she’d kept using polite language again and again, and yet here she was speaking casually to me.

“It couldn’t be helped. No, on the contrary, the people who got I the way of the Pres’s love affairs yesterday were brave enough that they could be called heroes.”

“Siir? Just what on earth are you saying?”

I had no clue just why interfering with the Pres’s love life was worth calling people a hero for, but Siir was serious.

“Think about it, Aris. Have you… ever had a boyfriend?”

“N, no, I haven’t?”

I hesitated slightly at the unexpected question.

There was no talk about an arranged marriage as of yet, and it wasn’t like there was a boy I liked, either.

“Indeed, not even Lady Aris, daughter of the Letia marquisate had a lover, and yet just Pres dares to…”

“Siir? I don’t think that’s a proper reason…”

Siir really was being ruined.

Lately I’d heard that the vice-pres Risen had been making contact with Siir, and something finally blew up.

Siir had always maintained a demure and elegant appearance as you’d expect of someone from a Count household, and yet her eyes were darkened as she emitted an incredible aura of rage.

“And yet he’s flirting so openly in public, and moreover turning traitor for Yugrasia’s enemies…”

“Siir, you’re weird right now. Really weird! You weren’t this type of character!”

“Characters and whatnot are irrelevant right now, Aris! As a solo, I… am burning with anger!”

“That’s it, that’s the attitude! That sort of attitude is perfect for my successor!”

Off to the side, I saw the vice-president nodding his head in satisfaction.

So it was that human who ruined Siir after all.

“Just what the hell have you been bullshitting to our Siir, you damn vice-president?!”

And successor? That human’s successor?

It wouldn’t have been weird if Siir had cut ties with me after she followed me to Yugrasia to experience the silver devil.

And if she became that weird vice-president’s successor, then I would be facing the resentment of the Reia family for the rest of my days.

Anything but that!

“You’re popular, Siir! If you want you can take anyone you want as your lover!”

Siir is actually very popular.

As the eldest daughter of a high-ranking noble, unlike me, she was quiet and elegant, the perfect ideal of men!

“…Aris. Is that claim one confirmed by the boys?”

“N, no, but…”

The problem was that all these conclusions were things that I’d heard from other noble ladies in the same faction… None of us had much to do with male nobles after all.

“Yes, that’s it Aris. We were simply comforting each other… Have any of us ever been confessed to since we enrolled into Yugrasia?”

“No, but…”

Despite starting academy life where it was countless confessions were said to be exchanged, neither of us had been confessed to.

“But wasn’t that because of the night study?”

Even if there was none of the love letters in shoeboxes or desks, or boys waiting for you after school that we’d only ever heard about from high society gatherings!

But we had the night study.

We trained and strategized purely for the sake of surviving against the silver devil, none of us even had the space of mind to confess to anyone!

“But what about Pres? Even while Pres was doing the night study… he had a lover?”

“Th, that’s…”

But Siir’s counterattack shut my mouth up once again.

“Aris, don’t try to make excuses for him. Even in that chaos… Pres had a lover. No matter how much he couldn’t leave the academy, even if he couldn’t so much as get a glimpse of her face during the holidays. Pres still had a lover!”

“Kghhh…”

“How do you feel right now, Aris? Annoyed? Do you feel something burning raw from deep within? Yes, that is what you should be feeling. We did our best purely for the academy, yet in that time the man we called out student council president wasted time on a relationship, and moreover betrayed us at this crucial moment where our night study is on the line.”

“He did…”

I could slowly feel something burning deep within me.

“Now, think about it. Right now, Pres betrayed us under the excuse of his lover. He fooled you, Aris, he fooled us… he fooled the academy and he chose his lover.”

“Yes, Pres had fooled us all…”

I nodded to Siir’s words.

It was true. Whatever the cause, the fact that Pres had betrayed us hadn’t changed.

“Now, think about it, Aris. What is it that you have to do? Is it admonishing our allies that gave Pres an excuse to betray us, or execute the traitor that abandoned our trust, became the slave of a girl from a different academy and raised his blade against us?”

Well of course, it was.

“Execute the traitor!”

“Yes, yes, that’s it, Aris!”

Siir’s expression brightened as she embraced me, and whispered into my ear.

“The only person that can punish the Pres that betrayed us… the only one that can punish our student council president, the Elemental Army, is you, our swordsmaster, Aris.”

“Yes… Something only I can do…”

“We need to end the night study, right? We’ve got our second year, third year, fourth year ahead of us, right? You don’t want to keep doing the night study, do you?”

“No. I don’t want to get hit anymore. I don’t wanna fight the silver devil anymore…”

I hated it. I wanted to just quit this academy and transfer to a different school but Father wasn’t letting me.

That meant I would have to attend Yugrasia until I graduated… and I had to keep doing the night study the entire time?

“Yes, end it. With your own hands, Aris. The night study… and the life of the traitor.”

“Mm. I’ll end it. I will… the night study… and the Pres’s life!”

I realised afterwards that something had gone wrong, but that was only something that happened ‘afterwards.’

And much later on, when the imperial festival had ended, when I looked back at this particular scene through the recordings of the magic video tools…

To be precise, when I saw Siir, exchanging thumbs up with the vice-president Risen with an evil grin on her face, even while she was embracing me, I realised.

I… had been playing perfectly into Siir’s hands the entire time!