Damage Control

Within the Imperial military, Dame Noelle’s position could fairly be called absolute.

Whether that meant no one at all disliked her was another matter. Few as they were, there certainly were people who had turned against her, each for reasons of their own. Envy, jealousy, or else humans from a rival faction inside the military who had been pushed out of the running…

It was a story every human in this room would probably agree with, to the last one.

“…I understand the point you are trying to make, but.”

Levant, the Knight otherwise known as ‘the Head Wolf’, opened the conversation sourly.

On sound alone it was a passable nickname, but anyone who used it in front of Levant had better be ready to have the bridge of their nose broken. The name was open mockery, plainly meaning the head of the humans ‘beneath’ the Lionhearted.

That fact alone explained, with great economy, why Levant disliked the Lionhearted, but what Levant thought of the job they had now been ‘commissioned’ to do was a different matter altogether.

“Are you openly telling us to harm someone in the Lionhearted’s circle?”
“Strictly speaking, she is not someone in her circle.”

The man answered readily, in a voice like woven silk: dignified, well-bred, call it whatever you liked. He had the face of a highborn young gentleman, though what came out of his mouth was vicious in the extreme and did not suit that face at all.

“I am talking about striking the consort’s escort. Something on that scale will cause no great problem even if you are traced afterward.”

…Frankly, not a human Levant could like.

Levant had a strong feeling that this pretty, shining face was itself a mask, worn to hide a nature like a venomous snake’s. But this was not a man in front of whom Levant could let any of that show, and that was the painful part.

Rad Ilja Barfon. The Empire’s Administrative Minister, a great noble ranked somewhere fourth or fifth in the Imperial Palace’s order of precedence. That standing alone was intimidating enough, but one further fact buried even that, and it was the greater problem.

The Second Prince’s closest confidant…

Recalling that piece of information, Levant smoothed a hand over the corner of their mouth. The very fact that anyone would make an incitement this brazen probably said all that needed saying about what that side wanted.

“There is no need to agonize over it, is there? Surely you all know whose orders brought me here.”

“…”

“If you handle this one piece of business well, give some thought to whose protection you will enjoy from here on. And give some thought to who the legitimate heir to the imperial throne is just now.”
“…It is an attractive offer, I will grant you.”

Levant looked at him, the frown still in place. Frankly, his intent was impossible to read. Had he come to order up something that would land a blow on the Lionhearted herself, that would be one thing, but this?

Rather than the Lionhearted…

Wasn’t this a commission that plainly seemed to bear malice toward the Lionhearted’s ‘consort’?

“I cannot begin to guess what gain there is in striking at him.”
“I am told the Lionhearted and that adjutant came to blows at the training ground yesterday. Have you heard?”

“…?”

As Levant cocked their head at the sudden turn, Rad went on in a voice touched with laughter.

“They fought fiercely enough to wound each other. And the adjutant, they say, ‘regenerated’ the wounds she took, cleanly. Without one sign of pain.”
“…And what does that mean…?”
“It is not a widely known fact, but inside the Holy Kingdom there is a ‘royal’ who holds exactly that same ability.”

“…”

Once the words had gone that far, Levant’s expression grew serious.

“If he is keeping a royal as his adjutant… well now. That in itself is blasphemy as far as the Holy Kingdom is concerned. And if she were to take an injury through an ‘unforeseen accident’, the affair would grow twice as large.”

In short, success or failure, if that princess got tangled up in something ugly, that alone would be a fairly enormous incident, and the Lionhearted’s consort would be checkmated outright.

“…But in that case, would we not be the greater problem, for having murdered a royal? Something so unthinkable—”
“You will come to no harm, so do not worry.”
“Sorry?”
“What interests the Holy Kingdom in her is the station of ‘royal’ she was born into; they will not greatly concern themselves with revenge for the individual. It can be smoothed over well enough, one way or another.”
“…The murder of a royal can be glossed over that carelessly?”
“If it is that princess, then yes — that is what I am telling you.”

Rad met the question with a hollow laugh.

Not that she was a human who would die just because someone tried to murder her in the first place. More than that, she was a very particular sort, one without a single person ‘on her side’. To put it another way:

“That woman is a loner, you see.”

Rad said it smoothly.

“The kind with not one person to grieve, whatever happens to her.”

Smoothly, yes, but that was beside the point. The words had been honed to an edge sharp enough to let the malice through.

…He knew that perfectly well without being reminded of it.

Since that disaster at the training ground, Katya, who had sat still no matter what anyone said to her, had vanished somewhere without a word, and as of today she had been gone exactly one day. Dame Noelle, too, had shut herself up in her private room and would not come out, and between the two of them the headquarters was full of nothing but gloom.

Surely…

The Sub Quest had told him to resolve this situation ‘peacefully’, which was probably another way of saying he should mediate amicably between those two.

I have to start by finding out where she’s gone in the first place.

How was he supposed to resolve anything peacefully, or get a word in at all, when he did not even know where she was? That would be where it started, at any rate.

The thread of a solution came flying in from somewhere he had not expected.

“Her Highness is up on the roof.”

The moment they ran into each other in the corridor, Dame Stella said it in a tired voice.

“I have contained yesterday’s commotion at my own level, so that it does not grow any larger. But soothing the parties themselves looks to be beyond me.”
“…Thank you for all your work.”
“She is in a state where one wrong approach looks likely to set off an explosion, so I have told everyone to keep away from her. It will be dangerous, but if you could somehow soothe Her Highness a litt—”
“I’ll try soothing her.”

“…”

Stella narrowed her eyes at Aiden.

“Will you be able to?”
“Yes.”

Her look asked whether he ought to talk so lightly about a bomb that could go off in any direction, but Aiden met it evenly.

“…Aiden.”

Dame Stella held his eyes for a good while, then let out a puff of a sigh and spoke.

“It has been a long time since I saw Dame Noelle so emotional. I do not believe I have seen it once since the Coalition War.”

“…”

“You really are, I must say, a remarkable figure if ever there was one. People of that standing swinging back and forth this badly on your account.”
“Thank you… for the compliment?”

His thanks came out strange because her words had not sounded remotely like a compliment, and what she said next made that clear enough.

“I am asking you as a favor — take care not to turn into a philanderer.”

“…”

“If something should happen later that makes Dame Noelle grieve, well now.”
“—You will have to conduct yourself accordingly.”

Aiden watched Dame Stella vanish on that terrifying warning and scratched the back of his head.

…I’m sorry, but.

Honestly, he could not promise that. Having taken on the karma of saving the world, he had to do every single thing he could, and that was the very reason he was actively trying to patch things up with Katya in the first place.

Human relationships, by their nature, are bound to go one way or the other, toward growth or decay, when the emotional highs and lows run large. And purely in terms of building a ‘bond’ with Katya, there could be no more fitting moment than this one.

“…”

…It did prick his conscience. Yet the act also felt like a clear distillation of the road he had to walk from here on.

He had no intention of deliberately toying with anyone’s heart, but he had come into an ability called Weaver of Fate, and when it came to winning favor, he would simply have to keep doing whatever it took.

The form the favor the System spoke of was taking still left him plenty to think over, and whether it would grow into ‘affection’ between a man and a woman, not even Aiden could say for sure.

But even so, one thing was certain.

This person looks safe enough, though.

Watching Katya perched on the roof’s railing with her legs stretched right out, Aiden muttered the thought to himself. Whatever might be true of other people, he had a curious conviction that Katya was not yet even the sort of partner with whom one could discuss affection between a man and a woman, or anything of the kind.

How to put it? She was the sort who made him wonder whether she even understood what a feeling like that was to begin with.

“Your Highness.”

At a single call, Katya whipped around to look at him, and her expression crumpled in an instant before she snapped back to face the front again. She was, for lack of a better word, like a sulking child.

“…”

Aiden gave a wry smile. Even in that state she was not running off at the sight of him, which made it a good chance to start a conversation. That much was clear from the way she said nothing at all, right up until he came over and perched on the railing beside her.

“Why are you in such a foul mood?”
“…Go away.”
“Are you bothered about what Dame Noelle said?”

Katya’s mouth shut with an audible snap. Silence was as good as a yes.

Aiden’s wry smile deepened, and he settled himself down beside her without a word.

He had not known this princess for long, but from what he had seen of her behavior so far, one impression stood out unmistakably.

She’s like a kid.

From first to last she tried to bend everything to suit herself, and the moment it did not go her way, the first thing she did was get angry. That she could sometimes read other people’s feelings with needle-sharp precision yet could not control her own at all came from the same place.

“…”

He did not need to think very hard about why she had turned out that way.

Come to think of it, it’s strange.

She had entered the Empire alone, as she pleased, without a single attendant, and she was staying on here just as she pleased, yet the Holy Kingdom had not made so much as one normal demand, whether to send her back or to take better care of her, as though it did not care in the slightest whether she was there or not. That was how the Holy Kingdom treated Katya.

Going by the background setting alone, hadn’t there been a footnote saying that until the main scenario took her in, Katya had no one worth calling an acquaintance, let alone a proper friend?

An oddity. A monster. A foreign body. A thing to be loathed. An object of terror.

To put it another way, a loner.

Clever as she was, she had clearly never once in her life built a proper ‘human relationship’, which meant she had never even had the chance to mature as a person.

And the first person that human had ever wanted to look good in front of was Aiden himself.

It made sense, too, that the form of her favor marked on the status window was obsession. Apart from him, there was likely no one in the world she wanted to be close to at all.

“…Why did you come?”

The gloom in her voice probably sprang from fear that she had made that very person dislike her.

Aiden stroked his chin and answered.

“I came to see how you were. You looked so unwell.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re sure?”

“…”

“Then I’ll be off?”

When he said it with a broad grin, Katya shot him a sulky glare.

“…Me.”

After that one word she held silent for a good while, then went on with difficulty.

“To you — was I nothing but someone in the way?”
“No.”

Putting it that way would be too harsh. Whatever Aiden had asked of her on the spot, she had granted every bit of it without a word of complaint so far.

“…Then that woman was talking nonsense?”
“No. You’re a nuisance, you know?”

When Aiden agreed straight off, as though it went without saying, Katya’s expression went blank. He let out another snort of laughter at that face and went on.

“Then let me ask you the other way round. By any common sense, isn’t that a nuisance?”

Aiden let his sentences fall on the blank-faced Katya one after another, tap, tap, tap, without a shred of hesitation. Every inconvenience he had suffered in daily life since she declared she would take the post of his adjutant came pattering down.

“Asking me at all hours to kill you just the once, because you want to feel something.”

“…”

“Trailing after me everywhere, so there’s no sign I’ll be granted one scrap of privacy.”

“…”

“It got to where I couldn’t sleep properly, couldn’t eat properly, couldn’t even use the toilet properly?”

“…”

While Katya’s expression grew steadily stranger, Aiden yawned without a care and tacked on one extra item after another.

If there were no malice in it, that would be one thing. But being a nuisance when you know better and can think it all through is worse; please spare a thought for the people around you; even inside headquarters the staff complain about you all over the place…

“…Then.”

That usual willful air had drained right out of her whole body. Katya, who had gone on taking a verbal beating for a good while until she was thoroughly crumpled, mumbled with her face screwed right up.

It was a sight no one would have imagined from her usual self, but a little moisture had risen at the corners of her eyes, as though the facts Aiden had laid out one after another had genuinely wounded her…

“So what you’re saying is, you don’t need m—”
“So from now on, don’t do it.”

Katya’s eyes went round.

She looked like someone who had just heard the unimaginable, and Aiden sighed inwardly. From that air alone, of someone who had never even pictured being ‘forgiven’, he could roughly guess what kind of life this human had lived in the Holy Kingdom.

“…”

Come to think of it, Scene 2 of the main scenario, ‘Blasphemy’, was also an incident touched off by that very trait of Katya’s, her being a loner.

So, here and now, he would plant the seed that would twist that whole incident out of shape.

“Friends can be a bit of a nuisance to each other. As long as you don’t do it from now on, that’s that.”

In truth, for someone like Aiden to tell a royal he would be her friend was lèse-majesté in itself. Even so, he finished the sentence in a firm tone.

He did mean to raise her favor and haul a skill out of it, but in more senses than one, she seemed to need a relationship like that even more.

Katya’s face, at those words, turned stranger still.

“…Friends?”

She pronounced the word ‘friend’ the way one might on hearing a proposal to roast and eat the heel of a shoe, with the air of someone hearing and saying such a word for the first time in her life.

“Friends.”
“…You, and me? Friends?”
“Friends.”

Having driven the word home like a wedge by repeating it, Aiden pulled something out from inside his coat: a small hip flask he used now and then. It was no real gift, but saying a thing like this empty-handed felt wrong too, so he simply handed it over.

“Call it a token.”

“…”

Katya took it reluctantly, her expression still baffled.

“Katya.”
“Mm.”
“Since we’re friends, make me one promise.”

“…”

“Don’t go around picking fights with people for no reason. And if you can help it, don’t do anything that hurts anyone either.”

“…”

“And for picking a fight with Dame Noelle like that, apologize to her later.”

“…”

“Can you promise me?”
“…All right.”

Katya curled up and hugged the hip flask tight, the picture of a mother bird brooding over an egg.

“I’ll keep it.”

…Well, it was a relief, at least, that she seemed to be listening properly.

“I’ll trust you.”

Aiden said it with a stretch, and Katya nodded. Unlike her as it was, she looked as meek as could be.

“…”

One at a time. One at a time.

He had no idea so many of these would come pouring out just because he had come away with one promise of friendship. But the one that stood out most was something else entirely.

…A Unique Trait?

Aiden cocked his head and opened the skill window. As he remembered it, a Unique Trait had certainly been a powerful ability of a different order from ordinary skills.

…An individual quest, was it.

Going by the system message, one seemed to open when he caused a great change in someone’s state of mind and a possibility of ‘future alteration’ arose. Opening one more of them, then, must unlock the skill.

Omnipotence, which had opened by mixing several supernatural powers together, was a trait that handed out an extra bonus when he did that kind of thing, so judging this one by its unlocking condition…

…Is it the kind of ability that hits other people with influence of some sort?

That was probably the sound way to think about it, though he would only know for sure once he got there.

More to the point…

And so one side seemed to be settled, somehow or other.

“…”

Aiden glared at the window, his brow slightly furrowed. Why was it only half done?

…I’m to comfort Dame Noelle as well?

Katya had always been a bit immature, so he had figured she needed soothing. That Noelle needed it too came as another surprise. Just what sort of state was she in?

“…Story of my life.”

He let out a sigh and set off once more at a steady tramp. Unlike with Katya, he already knew where Noelle was, and when he arrived in front of her private room, he knocked on the door.

“Dame Noelle, it’s Aiden. May I come in?”

…He waited a good while, but no answer came.

Puzzled, Aiden eased the door open.

The instant he did, the sharp reek of alcohol stabbed up into his nose, so thick it felt as though it had swallowed his whole face, and his expression screwed up hard.

He was fond enough of a can or two of beer after work himself, but drinking until the smell hung thick in a room struck him as vulgar, past any question of liking or disliking it, so he tended to avoid it. That made this situation enormously out of place, all the more so when he considered whose room it was.

“…Dame Noelle…?”

Once he had stepped carefully into the room, his jaw dropped at the sight spread out in front of him.

Empty cans. Bottles drained clean to the bottom. Gathered together, they would have been enough, say what you liked, to build a small pyramid. Even amid all that, the empty containers had been squared off into neat rows and columns, which laid Noelle’s temperament bare.

Aiden stood there blankly for a moment in sheer disbelief, then picked up the nearest bottle. Its label proudly declared it fifty percent. Worse, a look around turned up at least five more empty bottles bearing the same label.

“…”

As he stood looking at it, lost for words, someone squirmed upright on the bed.

“Oh.”

Noelle, her face flushed,

“Heh—”

said, in a tongue-tangled slur.

“I-It’s Aiden—”

A loose, sloppy smile hung on her face.

“…”

…What on earth was this.