I’ll Use a Reverse-Edged Sword

“Eden! Eden! Open your eyes, Eden! Please… please open your eyes, Eden… How can you die so meaninglessly… sob… sob sob”
The warm sunlight piercing through the window was hitting my face, making it too bright to easily lift my eyelids.
“Amy… who’s dying… I just woke up from sleep”
“E-Eden! You’re alive, Eden!”
“Are you speaking informally?”
“Ah…! Heheh… I thought the young master had died, so I was too shocked and accidentally…”
“Nonsense, you just wanted to speak informally and are acting out a scenario, thinking I wouldn’t know?”
“No, young master! I really thought something had happened to you! Otherwise, how could you not move an inch even after I shook you and called out for so long? Right?”
I lowered the blanket and raised my upper body to sit on the edge of the bed.
Tap tap tap tap
Amy busily moves her feet to pour water from the table across the room and bring it to me.
Amy, who entered our household at a young age and has been taking care of me every day without fail from the first day until now.
Now knowing all my routines, she catches what I want faster and more accurately than anyone else, without any instructions or requests.
Sometimes I suspect she might even be reading my mind,
She was a capable maid who catered to my every need from A to Z.
After drinking all the water Amy brought, I finally get up from the bed and move towards the window where the sunlight is pouring in.
“How can our young master sleep so soundly without even snoring, as if dead?”
“I was already awake from the moment you drew the curtains. How could I not wake up with the sunlight so harsh?”
“Whaaaat?? Oh my, I had no idea at all. No matter how much I shook you and called out, you didn’t wake up, so I really thought something had happened.”
“What do you mean shaking and calling out, why were you stroking my sleeping face? And that whispering didn’t sound like someone who really intended to wake me up, you know?”
“Heheh, I have no idea what the young master is talking about~”
As Amy smiles mischievously and feigns innocence, I also stop pressing her and turn my eyes to the knights’ training visible outside the window.

Amy
Although she usually shows a silly appearance, today it’s more extreme than usual.
Of course… I wasn’t unaware of why she was overacting so much today.
She must have heard the gossip about me being humiliated again in front of Alice last evening.
This damn household is so ridiculously large, yet why do rumors spread so fast…
Also, the knights and servants… no, even our family members,
Weren’t they supposed to have no interest in me?
Why are they all so enthusiastic about spreading my bad rumors, as if they’ve united for this purpose…

“You heard, didn’t you?”
“Huh? Heard what?”
Amy pretends to know nothing, but I couldn’t miss the small signs of her avoiding my gaze.
Just as she knows me well, I had no choice but to know her well too.
In this vast castle, there weren’t many who would converse intimately with me…

“You’re really not talented at lying, Amy.”
“Ha… haha…”
She shows an awkward expression, but soon, as if changing tactics, she presses me with a nonchalant tone.
“You mean the story about how the young master ‘again’ went to see Lady Adela Alice? Our young master is such a consistent lover… I wonder where I can find a man like the young master”
Because of her nonchalant acting tone, I couldn’t help but smile slightly.

“Is that all? Haven’t you heard the story of how I was beaten up by her bodyguard right in front of her?”
“Ahem… hem…”

This time, Amy is genuinely flustered and starts to look away, pretending to be distracted.
Although she’s usually silly and sometimes even rough, when she’s truly embarrassed like this, she shows an expression of not knowing what to do, like girls her age would.

“Do you know how pathetic I looked? They say I was forcefully trying to see her face rudely and got beaten up badly. In fact, I was hit with the scabbard, not even the sword? Oh! Of course, I drew my sword and charged at him. So that’s really the peak of patheticness, but against me who drew a real sword, that bodyguard guy-”

Thump

Amy had somehow approached right in front of me and punched my chest.
Thanks to that, I couldn’t finish my sentence, but she seemed to see that moment as an opportunity and started to shoot out words frantically.

“So!! Young master, you should just stop going after a woman who doesn’t want you! Why do you keep foolishly going after a woman who won’t even meet you? And! Also… why do you deprecate yourself like that? What’s good about it? Why don’t you cherish yourself? Why on earth! Why… sob… sob sob…”

Drip
Drip drip

Earlier when she was acting to wake me up, no tears fell…
This time, it seems she’s crying out of genuine sadness

As I grabbed her two hands that were continuously hitting my chest, I put on a playful smile.

“Sorry, it’s a joke, just a joke. I sometimes find it too fun to make you cry. No one in this house sincerely rejoices or grieves over my affairs…”

“Tch”

“More importantly, your punch is too spicy? Even though you’re a maid and I’m supposed to be the young master, is it okay to mess up the young master’s body like this?”

After lowering her hands, I loosened the front of my pajamas to reveal my chest.

“Th-this… uh… Young master! Uh… why… why…”

My chest was in a terrible state with blue bruises here and there.
For someone who has been wielding a sword for over ten years, it was embarrassingly smooth without a single scar, but perhaps because of that, the mottled bruises stood out even more clearly.

“These are injuries from getting hit by a maid’s fiery fists”

“H-how can this be… I… I did this to the young master… uh…”

Amy had long lost her senses, her pupils dilated like someone in a daze.
She probably didn’t even realize that she was eagerly feeling my body.
While shedding tears endlessly, she carefully placed both hands on my chest.

“Wh-what should I do… what should I do about this… I… H-how much pain are you in, young master-”

“Pfft!”

In the end,
Unable to hold it in, I burst out laughing,
but she still hadn’t come to her senses and couldn’t take her eyes off the bruises on my chest.

“I got beaten up by that bodyguard guy yesterday. No matter how fiery your fists are, could you really make bruises like this right away? Sometimes you’re really like a fool-”

Even after hearing my explanation, tears didn’t stop flowing from Amy’s eyes.
Did I… take the joke too far?

Feeling somewhat sorry, I lowered my posture to meet her eyes with a playful expression while closing my front.

“Sorry, sorry, I’ll really stop joking now. I was feeling a bit depressed, and also a bit bored-”

“Young master is a fool! I won’t serve the young master anymore!”

Amy shouted like that, then turned her back and strode out the door.
Oh no, that shouldn’t happen…
How many people in this castle can I open up to, you can’t leave too…

For a moment, I stood there regretting my foolish joke and wondering if I should follow Amy.
But,
The door she went out of opens quietly in less than a few seconds.
And then, peek
Her face comes in.

“F-for now, change your clothes and go to the dining room quickly! The Baron said all family members should gather, and if you’re late… you’ll get scolded again!”

Is she worried I might get scolded even though she’s angry?
It’s because you’re so foolish that it’s hard not to tease you, you know?

I started changing into clothes for breakfast as Amy said.

“Tch, how unlucky, do we have to eat breakfast while looking at that from the morning?”

Here, ‘that’ was probably referring to me.
The voice of Castillo family’s second son, my older brother Andrew, hit my ears as I opened the dining room door and entered.

I pretended not to hear his clearly audible disparagement and moved towards my seat located at the end of the table.

“If you’re not hungry, why don’t you eat separately later?”

This was the voice of the eldest son Adrian, more composed than Andrew, or rather colder and harsher in fact.

This time, it was impossible to pretend to ignore it like Andrew’s words, as it was targeting me accurately and even demanding an answer.

“I understand that father ordered all family members to be present.”

Bang
Clang
Clang

Dishes and utensils fell to the floor with a loud noise as Andrew struck the table.

What part of my answer was so unpleasant…
Ah, father…
Andrew always flares up like that whenever I call father ‘father’.

It was his anger at not being able to accept the fact that I, a child of a different mother, shared the same father as him.

The fallen utensils and broken dishes were quickly cleaned up and replaced with new ones by the swift movements of the servants.

“Do you know that we received an insulting gift from Baron Eckart? I fear that father’s already unpleasant mood will worsen upon seeing your face. I’ll handle it well, so you should-”

Before Adrian could finish speaking, the dining room door opened quite roughly
and father entered.

Baron David Castillo
The eyes of the head of the Castillo family, the Marquis of the border, were filled with anger that was hard to fully comprehend,
and in his left hand, he held a long box with elegant patterns engraved on it.

It looked like the kind of box usually used to store famous swords.
The box was stamped with both our Castillo family crest and the Eckart family crest.

But, for some reason
From the moment father entered holding the box containing the sword, all the hair on my body stood on end and I started to feel an intense sense of déjà vu.

Although I had no way of knowing what kind of sword was inside, for some reason it felt as if it was intensely calling out to me…
That’s the kind of feeling I was getting.