I Start with a Bad Hand!

With a look of incomprehension, I stared at the prince as he carefully twisted open the cap of the bottle he was holding. He then tried to hand the bottle to me, my hand awkwardly outstretched and frozen, but hesitated and instead placed it on the desk.

“Drink this.”

He spoke in a subdued voice. Observing him with a suspicious expression, the second prince muttered under his breath, then added, “It’s medicine.”

“Why would I… Is this from you?” My words implied the question.

The prince, looking slightly embarrassed, touched the back of his head and turned to look out the window. The sun was setting outside.

“I’m not heartless enough to abandon a dying person.”

With those words, he picked up the neglected bag and set it down on the floor. I cautiously took the bottle, which felt warm.

“Do you still not need any support?” 

The prince asked without looking at me. Relieved that he did not take my earlier words as an insult to the royal family, I replied.

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“If I feel better after taking the medicine, I’ll go back on my own,” I said as I sipped the lukewarm medicine.

The prince continued to look out at the sunset, sitting beside me as if he would not get up until I did. The dying light of the sunset tinged Icarus’s hair red, and suddenly, it seemed to suit him quite well. In the quiet classroom, only the sound of me drinking the medicine could be heard.

***

After the chaos in the library, I became even more devoted to practicing archery. I wanted to improve my physical strength so I could be better prepared for similar incidents in the future. Besides, the number of people I wanted to shoot was growing.

Perhaps that was why my archery skills were improving day by day.

“Did you really not have any family members who practiced archery at home?” Agatha asked casually.

Indeed, it seemed Dietrich was naturally good at archery. Chopping firewood in Heylem must have helped, as I had no trouble pulling and holding the bowstring.

I thought it was good to have at least this hobby, otherwise, I might have gone crazy from the stifling atmosphere of the academy.

Leaving the archery range, I headed back to the academy. The training ground was bustling with students practicing swordplay, a stark contrast to the quiet archery range. The second prince stood tall among the students, who were sweating and shouting as they trained.

He was watching the other students’ training with serious eyes. Even someone like me, who knew little about swordsmanship, could see that the second prince was parrying incoming swords with a well-poised stance better than anyone else in the training ground.

‘He must have real combat experience…’

As I watched Icarus, engrossed, it came back to me that he had been wielding a sword since he was very young. Even before entering the academy, he had participated in expeditions to subdue monsters and in small-scale wars. He was called out to life-and-death situations at an age too young to even be considered a cadet soldier.

‘Of course, being a prince, the knights around him wouldn’t have let him die…’

Still, the thought that he had been in places where people could die from such a young age made me feel a bit sorry for him. It also made sense why his personality could be so infuriating. With these thoughts, I hurried my steps. I didn’t want to awkwardly catch his eye and reveal that I had been watching him.

In fact, after that day, the second prince and I had been strangely awkward. Not that we were close before, but after the incident in the classroom, we became acutely conscious of each other. He seemed to notice the changed atmosphere and did not talk to me or sit next to me as he used to…

‘Thinking about the glances we inadvertently exchange in the lecture hall… Ugh, I should stop.’

The thought gave me goosebumps. I quickened my pace again.

***

After officially starting my duties in the student council, Irene invited me to her dormitory. She thought it would be easier to hand over responsibilities outside the busy student council office.

It seemed she was also somewhat concerned that I hadn’t quite blended in with the others, despite her efforts to include me in the student council to prevent me from being ostracized.

‘She’s really a nice person.’

Thinking this, I reached for the snacks laid out in front of me. Irene hadn’t returned yet due to a class, so the maid from the Ducal House had escorted me to the parlor to prepare tea and refreshments. A reception room in a dormitory, let alone having the household’s maid manage things even at the dormitory! It made me reflect anew on my own living situation.

I had been surprised by the spacious and clean single room that seemed unlike a typical student dormitory when I first entered, but the place where Irene stayed didn’t even seem like a dormitory at all. If a duchess’s dormitory was this luxurious, I couldn’t even imagine what the accommodations for Roxanne or the emperor might be like. I was deep in thought when suddenly:

“Uh?”

At the sound of someone entering, I looked up to see a male student with tan skin and dark, short hair stepping into Irene’s dormitory. He had a somewhat naive appearance, and his school uniform sleeves revealed well-toned muscles underneath. Somehow, he reminded me of the potatoes I had eaten to exhaustion in Heylem. He looked like a freshly dug, well-scrubbed potato, oddly reminiscent of a rural farm boy.

The boy, who seemed a curious mix of naive and robust, appeared slightly taken aback to see an unfamiliar face sitting in Irene’s parlor. However, his confusion quickly turned to realization, and his expression brightened.

“Dietrich, right? My sister mentioned that a student council junior was coming over today.”

With a cheerful voice, he introduced himself as Klaus Horatius, extending his hand to me. The way he referred to her as ‘sister’ confirmed he was Irene’s younger brother. Underneath his tan skin, I noticed his eyes sparkling green, the same as Irene’s, the only feature he seemed to share with her. As I hesitated on how to address him, he quickly put me at ease.

“I’m also a freshman! Don’t be formal.”

Saying so, Klaus sat down next to me.

“Wow, my sister actually brought someone else to her dorm. That’s rare.”

Klaus chuckled. Observing him, I was struck by how his personality seemed as unlike Irene’s as could be, yet also impressed by Irene’s discerning nature for not just casually involving her brother in the student council.

Klaus had a bit of a naive air about him, but there was something about his different demeanor that was quite charming. As Klaus exaggeratedly spoke about how harsh Irene could be, Irene herself entered the room looking slightly weary. Klaus stopped his chatter and walked over to start a new conversation with her.

Irene listened quietly with an impassive face. Seeing them together was like watching the city mouse and the country mouse side by side. Irene glanced at me, mentioned she would go freshen up, and disappeared beyond the parlor. Noticing my gaze, Klaus grinned mischievously.

“We really don’t look alike, do we? People often don’t realize we’re siblings at first.”

“Ah, is that so? But you both have very similar eyes…”

Feeling a bit embarrassed that my private thought had been noticed, I tried to respond as casually as possible. Klaus, though appearing a bit slow at times, was as perceptive as Irene in some ways. He laughed in response.

“Yeah, just the eyes. Just the eyes. We each took after one of our parents.”

“I see…”

I watched Klaus hurried away by Irene who had returned unnoticed and quickly ushered him out. Once Klaus had left, Irene took a seat opposite me and added briefly, “I take after our father.”

Looking back, Klaus didn’t really resemble a potato. Rather, he was like a beautifully polished pebble, round and pleasant. Watching the back of Klaus’s head, I found myself internally offering a tearful apology to the Baroness.

On my way out of Irene’s dormitory, I gazed out at the clock tower through the window. Every time I saw it, an uneasy feeling lurked within me. There were many peculiar aspects surrounding Dietrich’s death.

Dietrich had died at the academy. Yet, there was a gap between the moment Dietrich threatened Roxanne and attempted harm, and the time he fell to his death at the academy.

To elaborate, it wasn’t immediately after his failed attempt on Roxanne that he threw himself off. Although not detailed in the books, I distinctly remember a scene where Dietrich, screaming as if in a fit, was subdued and taken away by the academy’s guard. That would imply he was at least detained.

‘How could someone detained manage to escape and make it to the academy’s clock tower?’

He might have escaped on his own, but how could an ordinary student breach such strict security?

At that time, Dietrich had no family or anything else. Even Cedric, whom he had briefly encountered after enrolling, would rush at Dietrich with murderous intent, especially after threatening Roxanne, it’s unlikely anyone would willingly release him.

Moreover, Dietrich was not the only casualty from that day’s events. There was also the maid, Yuri, from the Elexion Ducal House, who had been imprisoned under the pretense of helping him gain access to the dormitory.

‘Escaping with his impaired leg, delivering poison to Yuri, then breaching the heavy security again to deliberately return to the academy to commit suicide…’

None of these events made sense. An unsettling, unexplained feeling drove me to one conclusion.

Someone had assisted Dietrich in escaping from prison. This meant… someone was involved in Dietrich’s death. Whether as an accomplice or a mastermind behind the scenes.