The Female Knight Who Became Unable To Live Without Me Was Just Too Cute

There was a notice posted on the bulletin board in the knights’ station on the first floor of the royal palace.

When I saw what was written there, I thought,

(So it finally came… the time has come—)

I muttered to myself.

【Newly Enlisted Knights: Cross-Unit Training Assignments and Host Units】

Cross-unit training.

It was a training system for knights who had been enlisted for less than a year, temporarily transferring them from their current units to different ones for about a month so they could experience the duties handled by other units.

Just like employees in ordinary companies, we knights were often transferred to regional postings or reassigned to different units through personnel rotations, so by conducting this training regularly, the idea was to help us adapt quickly to new environments if we were actually transferred someday—in other words, it was meant to get us accustomed to change.

It was an unavoidable rite of passage for anyone working as a knight, so there was nothing I could do about that—but.

Given my current circumstances, I also thought that, in a way, the timing might actually be perfect.

“…Captain, I’m back.”

After checking the notice, I immediately returned to the Black Hawk captain’s office, where Karen-san was waiting, so I could report my destination and find out which knight would be coming from that unit in my place.

“O-Oh, you’re back, Haru. So, where are you being sent?”

“White Cross. Apparently, I’ll be switching places with Mulberry.”

“I see, so that girl is coming here… In that case, I can’t push her too hard.”

Since cross-unit training could sometimes bring in knights you had never met before, having someone Karen-san already knew, even if only casually, would probably make scheduling easier for her. And since Mulberry was another woman, Karen-san might not have to be overly considerate around her either.

“Haru… um, do your best over there too. If you screw something up there, it’ll hurt our reputation here as well… you know.”

“Yes, um, of course I’ll do my best. Yes.”

Karen-san and I exchanged those words in an extremely awkward atmosphere.

That’s right. Ever since the kissing incident, Karen-san and I had become overly conscious of each other, and even after some time had passed, we still ended up creating this strange atmosphere whenever we were together.

Normally, I would have liked to talk to Karen-san like usual and crack a joke or two, but every time I tried, I couldn’t help remembering the sensation and warmth of her lips from that moment—

So for me, since I had started feeling that it might be best to put a little distance between Karen-san and myself, I thought this cross-unit training might serve as good medicine.

“Haru, whatever you do, don’t be rude to White Cross’s… Commander. Also, give him this as a gift. They’re tea sweets I picked up during an expedition.”

“Understood, Captain. But for you to be this considerate—um, what kind of person is White Cross’s commander?”

As I accepted the bag containing a box of expensive-looking tea sweets and asked that question, Karen-san looked at me awkwardly and said,

“Well—the Commander of White Cross is actually—”

White Cross’s knight station was located inside the royal palace, right next to the audience chamber.

The First Knight Squad of the Royal Capital Guard—it was the main force of the knight order and boasted the largest number of personnel, with members whose abilities stood apart from the rest. Basically, they were what you would call an elite unit.

“Excuse me. My name is Haru, a rookie knight dispatched from the Fourth Knight Squad for cross-unit training. I look forward to working with you starting today.”

“How polite. I’m Sakumika, the deputy commander. It’ll only be for a short while, but I hope we get along. If there’s anything you don’t understand, feel free to ask me.”

The black-haired, black-eyed woman who responded in such a gentle tone was Sakumika-san.

Unlike Black Hawk, which was composed entirely of frontline knights, White Cross included members from a variety of professions, including healers, mages, and knights.

A deputy commander was essentially the leader of each profession, with two captain-class officers above them, and then the Commander at the top, forming a pyramid-shaped organization. Unlike us, where the management structure was basically, “Karen-san is the captain! Everyone else is just a regular member!”

Sakumika-san was the deputy commander in charge of the healers.

I had been worried about what I would do if she turned out to be domineering, so it was a huge relief that she seemed kind.

“By the way, Haru-san, has my sis—ah, no, Captain Karen been doing well?”

“? Yes, of course…”

There had been various things going on in her private life, and she had been sighing a lot lately. But as far as work was concerned, she was the same as always.

“I see, that’s good. Ahh… Karen-sama, my beloved prince of my dreams—one day, I’ll become like you, and someday stand shoulder to shoulder with you—no, rather than merely standing beside you, someday I’ll put that against this and press them together, guh, gufufufufufufu.”

“Um—Deputy Commander Sakumika?”

“O-Oh my, I’m sorry. I lost myself for a moment. Back when we were students, Captain Karen was the object of admiration for every female student, so whenever I remember how cool she looked back then, I just…”

It wasn’t hard to imagine that the younger Karen-san had been incredibly strong and gallant, so I could understand someone like Sakumika-san admiring her like a prince.

Though I couldn’t shake the feeling that this particular admiration had bent rather dramatically in a different direction. Actually, Karen-san’s chastity might be in danger.

“Ahem. Enough standing around chatting. I’ll take you to the captain’s office now. The Commander is waiting there as well.”

Led by Sakumika-san, I left the room containing White Cross’s station and stood before the captain’s office immediately next door.

As expected of the office belonging to the commanders of an elite unit, even the door itself had been constructed extravagantly. (Of course, complicated magical formulas had also been woven into it so it couldn’t be breached easily.) White Cross must have received quite a large budget from the kingdom if they could afford to spend money on things like this.

It was completely different from us, where we were constantly scraping by on next to nothing.

“Excuse me, Commander. I’ve brought Haru-kun.”

“Sakumika—good work. I’m going to speak with him alone now, so return to your post. Once we’re finished talking, I’ll take the boy there myself.”

Without saying a word, Sakumika-san bowed deeply in response to the Commander’s order, then left the room, leaving me behind.

The only ones remaining in the spacious room were me and the Commander, the man who stood at the very top of White Cross, still facing away from me.

“Commander, this isn’t much, but… it’s from Captain Karen. She also asked me to deliver a message.”

After placing the gift for the Commander on his desk, I repeated the exact words Karen-san had told me beforehand without getting a single syllable wrong.

“‘I’m not getting married yet, Father’… she said.”

“Hmm… I suppose it was a mistake to pressure that girl for an answer so suddenly. She’s as stubborn as ever—my daughter, Karen. Don’t you think so too, Haru-kun?”

The Commander finally turned toward me with a wry smile, and our eyes met.

Gares-san, Commander of White Cross.

He was Karen-san’s sword master—and also Karen-san’s father.

About a week had passed since the cross-unit training began.

After being assigned to White Cross, I was currently in the middle of carrying out a mission with a unit under the Commander’s direct leadership.

White Cross’s duties basically consisted of forming squads of around a dozen people and handling missions such as fighting enormous monsters that a single person couldn’t deal with, or investigating newly discovered, unexplored natural labyrinths.

It was glamorous work even by knight standards, completely unlike Black Hawk’s missions, where you could casually be sent alone to some remote backwater.

And the unit I had been assigned to this time had been ordered to drive away a dragon that had settled inside a gemstone mine in the kingdom’s territory, and we had just finished doing exactly that.

“Good work, Haru. This mission would have been a little too much for us alone, but thanks to you, we completed it without much difficulty.”

While we were traveling back toward the royal capital, the Commander, who was sitting beside me in the same carriage, spoke to me.

It had been a fairly intense battle with blasts of fire and ice breath flying everywhere, yet his pure white armor didn’t have a single scratch on it.

Even with support from everyone else, someone capable of dealing the finishing blow to a dragon without taking a single wound—aren’t you actually the monster here? I wanted to ask.

“Karen occasionally told me about how you performed at work. She said she’d finally gotten an excellent subordinate for the first time in ages. She sounded unusually happy and quite talkative about it.”

“Oh… really?”

Karen-san never praised me directly when it came to work, so hearing her assessment of me secondhand like this made me extremely happy.

Well, I did make sure to handle my daily duties properly precisely so she would think that way, so I suppose it was only natural.

“That’s—I’m nothing more than a slightly small guy who’s a little smart. Every day, it’s all I can do just to keep up with everyone in Black Hawk.”

“There’s no need to be modest, Haru-kun. I’m one of the few people who knows that you’re not merely someone who graduated at the top of the academy, but an extraordinarily talented man.”

“Urk…”

I had thought I had done a pretty good job keeping it hidden, but apparently the Commander knew every last detail about my abilities at the time of graduation.

“So you really did know.”

“Of course I did. Magic, healing arts, martial arts, swordsmanship, and everything else—you scored perfect marks on every aptitude test, and mastered every specialized professional skill as well. The 【monster unlike any since the Knight Academy was founded】—that is who you truly are, Haru. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have assigned a rookie who hasn’t even been in the knight order for a full year to the main force of a dragon-slaying unit.”

Apparently, even within the Knight Academy’s records, this was considered top secret, but just as the Commander said, I seemed to be the first knight in the kingdom’s history to possess 【aptitude for everything】.

Normally, people possessed talent in only one area. If someone could use healing arts, they were hopeless at everything else, and no matter how much someone with knight aptitude studied magic, they couldn’t even produce a tiny fireball.

And yet, depending on the situation, I would use healing magic to treat injured squad members, or if we simply didn’t have enough mages on a mission, I would move to the rear and launch enormous flames in their place. Of course, I also fought normally on the front lines as a knight.

In Black Hawk, I was made to do all of that as though it were completely ordinary, but apparently, from the perspective of other units, it was truly unbelievable.

Personally, I didn’t like showing off my abilities unnecessarily and attracting attention, so if possible, I had intended to spend my time in White Cross taking things easy while keeping my true strength hidden.

“Still, Commander—I think saying, ‘I’m absolutely not letting you return to Black Hawk until you show us your full strength,’ was playing dirty.”

But such a shallow idea didn’t work against the Commander, who even had influence over personnel assignments, and in the end, I was forced to reveal my 【full strength】 to the members of White Cross—something I hadn’t even shown Karen-san yet.

I had only ever planned to use it if Karen-san’s life, or perhaps her chastity, was in danger, but if I had been placed in a unit composition where everyone might have been wiped out unless I worked hard, then naturally I had no choice.

“I was certain that someone as kindhearted as you would do it. So I deliberately created a situation where you had no choice but to use your strength. I apologize.”

I had thought the group seemed far too small for dragon subjugation… so he really had done it deliberately.

Since he was Karen-san’s father, I had no intention whatsoever of complaining, considering the future—but if I were being truthful, I didn’t particularly like the way he had gone about it.

After that, there wasn’t much conversation, and White Cross and I slowly rode the carriage back toward the royal capital.

“—Ah, you’re finally back… Haru! Haru! Could I speak with you for a moment?”

The instant we passed through the gate, a blond female knight who looked vaguely familiar rushed toward me.

Um… right, Mulberry. Since she was currently assigned to Black Hawk in exchange for me during this training period, I had properly remembered that much. If it weren’t for that, I probably would have forgotten her again.

“…More importantly, what’s wrong? You look really alarmed.”

“No, um… actually, it’s about Captain Karen.”

“The Captain?”

Since Mulberry had gone so far as to wait for my return to the capital, for a moment I wondered whether something truly serious had happened—but it didn’t seem to be that sort of thing.

Then what was it?

“Um, well—”

Looking down apologetically, Mulberry muttered to me.

“The Captain… Captain Karen has become completely useless.”

“—What?”

After getting permission from the Commander to go check the situation, I immediately returned to Black Hawk with Mulberry for the first time in several days.

“Bleeeehhhhh～～～～～……………………”

Karen-san greeted the two of us rookie knights while sprawled like a zombie over the center of a desk piled high with documents.

“She returns to normal whenever she’s out on a mission—but whenever she has continuous paperwork like this, she immediately ends up like that…”

Her eyelids drooped sloppily, her eyes were completely unfocused, and from her half-open mouth came a groan that sounded like some mixture of “ah” and “eh”—

Yeah, just as Mulberry said, this was serious.

“Mulberry, when did the Captain start acting like this?”

“It only became this severe two or three days ago. At first, there didn’t seem to be any particular problem…”

Day One.

“Good morning, Captain Karen-sama! I’m Mulberry, sent here from White Cross for cross-unit training. It will only be for the short period of one month, but I look forward to working under you!”

“Ah, welcome, Mulberry. Black Hawk has almost no female members besides me, so I’m very happy to have you here. Let’s work hard together and make sure we don’t lose to the men around here.”

“Yes, Captain!”

And so their first day began with the two exchanging a firm handshake.

“Hmm, at first she seems completely normal. There aren’t any particular warning signs.”

“At the time, I was also full of excitement at the prospect of working with Captain Karen, whom I admired, but…”

Apparently, the problem began on the second day.

Day Two.

“—Ah! Captain, are you all right? Were you burned?”

During the lunch break, when Karen-san reached out to accept the tea Mulberry had poured for her, the cup slipped from her hand and spilled its contents spectacularly across the documents on her desk.

“Sorry, Mulberry. I must have been spacing out a little. Ahh, all the materials I worked so hard on are ruined… I’ll have to redo them.”

With a wry smile, Karen-san busily wiped the desk clean using the cloth Mulberry handed her.

“So even you have a clumsy side like this, Captain. Whenever you were with Haru, you always seemed so composed, so I’m surprised.”

“Even I make mistakes sometimes. Normally Haru is around, so I consciously make sure to stay sharp, but when I’m with you, Mulberry, I suppose I relax too much because we’re both women. —All right, I’ll have to be more careful from now on.”

Karen-san slapped both her cheeks with her hands as though bracing herself, and apparently Mulberry had thought, “So Captain Karen has sides of herself she doesn’t often show other people as well”—but.

Then came the third day.

“Aeh… mornin’, Mulberry… nice weather today toooo… faaah…”

“She changed way too much all at once!?? What in the world happened to Karen-san between the second and third days!?”

“I have no idea either… Anyway, around the third day she suddenly became completely useless, and now she can barely get any work done—”

Even while we were talking beside her like this, Karen-san was following a moth fluttering around the lamp flame with her eyes while saying, “Ahh, butterflyyy~”

“…Anyway, first we need to get the Captain back to normal. I mean… I can more or less guess the cause.”

Regardless of how severe the symptoms were, I was probably the reason Karen-san had ended up this completely relaxed.

Normally, because I, a man, was always beside her, Karen-san probably maintained a healthy level of tension while working because she thought, “I can’t let him see me looking uncool at work.” But now that I had been replaced by Mulberry, a girl she was unusually close to within the knight order, the tension she’d maintained all this time had probably suddenly snapped.

So—

“Hey, Mulberry. Could you leave me alone with Captain Karen for a little while?”

“? Of course I don’t mind… but what exactly are you planning to do?”

“Well, that’s… you know. Anyway, leave this one to me.”

Giving Mulberry a vague nod in response, I urged the suspicious-looking girl to step outside the captain’s office.

“—All right, then.”

After confirming that Mulberry had left the captain’s office, I turned back toward Karen-san—

“Karen-san, it’s punishment time.”

To inject some fighting spirit back into my useless captain, I stood directly in front of Karen-san’s face.

And thirty minutes later.

To call back Mulberry, who had been left waiting the entire time, Karen-san and I went to the dining hall on the first floor of the royal palace.

“Captain Karen! Um, are you all right? Has anything changed with your health?”

The instant she saw Karen-san, Mulberry hurried over to us, and the person responsible for making her worry lowered her head apologetically.

“…Sorry, Mulberry. I caused you all sorts of trouble this time.”

“No, not at all! As long as nothing happened to you, Captain Karen, that’s enough for me.”

Even though she had been the one inconvenienced, Mulberry smiled in relief and forgave everything. I had thought this ever since the wedding before, but she really was a very good girl. I felt bad that I’d always forgotten her name until now.

“By the way, Haru, you’re amazing too. You solved in mere minutes something even I couldn’t do anything about. What sort of trick did you use?”

“!!”

At Mulberry’s words, Karen-san visibly stiffened with a jolt. She began whistling as though to say, “Huh? What are you talking about?? I don’t know anything☆,” pretending nothing had happened, but she was far too obvious. Also, Karen-san was unbelievably bad at whistling.

“Well, actually, getting the Captain back to her senses only took a few minutes. The reason it took a bit longer was because afterward, I gave Karen-san a little punishm—mmph!”

“Wow, seriously, I wonder why it took so long. What a mysteryyy~”

Karen-san moved swiftly to cover my mouth, and a thin layer of sweat appeared on her forehead. She was absurdly shaken.

“? Punishment? Haru, what exactly did you do to Captain Karen?”

“Well, first, right in front of Karen-san, who had completely lost her senses, I drew my prized sword—”

“UWAAAAAAAAH!!! DON’T SAY IT!! DON’T SAY ANYTHING MORE THAN THAAAAT!!!??”

“Your prized sword? Rookie knights shouldn’t have been issued personalized equipment yet…”

“Ah, when I say sword, I mean not exactly as a weapon, but—”

“Mulberry too! Stop reacting to every single thing Haru says!! If you feed him attention, he just gets more excited!”

She was probably remembering what had happened during those past dozen or so minutes—Karen-san was desperately trying to stop any further investigation in a complete panic.

Ahh, yes. This was how Karen-san was supposed to be.

“Hey, Captain?”

In front of the still-innocent Mulberry, who continued failing to understand the meaning behind my words, I placed my hand on Karen-san’s shoulder and told her,

“—You’ve become unable to live without me now, haven’t you?”

“————!?”

Karen-san’s bright-red face finally reached its limit, as though steam were about to burst out of her head,

“UWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!! N-No! That’s not what it means! It’s nothing like thaaaaaat!!??”

she screamed before sprinting away like a frightened rabbit.

“Ah, Captain Karen!… Haru, is she really all right? Somehow, I feel like her condition has gotten worse in a completely different way.”

“She’ll be fine. Once she gets back to work, I’m sure she’ll return to being the same cool captain as always.”

“??”

I looked away from the still-confused Mulberry and watched Karen-san trip over again in the distance with a fond, exasperated gaze.

Incidentally, for the sake of Karen-san’s own honor, I decided I would take the exact method I had used to restore her to normal with me to the grave.