The Female Knight Who Got Jealous Of Someone She Thought Was Her Age But Was Actually Younger Was Way Too Cute

“Hmm… I did decide to leave things to the three of them for now, but… is this really going to be okay…?”

After parting ways with the three of them, I secretly watched Noka from behind cover.

She had looked small even up close, but compared to the other girls, she looked even tinier.

And on top of that, she was trembling and fidgeting nervously—so, frankly, I was worried.

It made me feel like a parent or older brother watching a child go on her first errand.

According to Ena, just as her physique suggested, Noka was apparently the weakest among all the girls whose powers had manifested.

And because of that, she was apparently bullied fairly often as well.

So why had Ena chosen her as our messenger instead of warriors like herself or Zena, who normally took charge of the others?—Honestly, I did not really understand the reason myself.

I had asked Ena why, but all she would say was, “Just watch.”

Apparently, they were going to support her if necessary, but… Ena was currently with Lilia, while Zena had said she had something to take care of and was not here either.

That meant I was the only one who could step in right now, but the two of them had firmly told me, “We want Noka to do this alone, so you’re not allowed to help.”

And so, I had hidden behind a tree thick enough to conceal my body and was watching over her from the shadows.

A man secretly watching a tiny girl from behind cover—when you put it into words like that, it sounded incredibly criminal.

“Right, this isn’t the time to be thinking about stupid things like that…”

I lightly shook my head, pulled my thoughts back to reality, and once again fixed an intense gaze on Noka’s tiny back.

“…??”

“—Whoa.”

Perhaps she had sensed my intense gaze, because Noka suddenly began looking around warily, turning her head like a squirrel. I had even used the stealth technique I had cultivated while observing Karen-san so that I would not be spotted easily, but—apparently her animal-like instincts were quite sharp.

Apparently deciding it had only been her imagination, Noka tilted her head and once again slowly approached a group of several girls.

There were around a hundred girls in total, but they were further divided into smaller groups, and Noka apparently decided to start by telling the girls she usually spent time with.

“Do your best…”

Trusting the girl as she resolutely stepped into the circle, I stared fixedly at her back.

The story went back slightly, to when we entrusted Noka with the role of messenger.

“Pieh… I-is that really true? Something like… that…”

When we filled her in on the details she had failed to overhear, Noka went pale with disbelief.

“We weren’t originally planning to tell you. But now that things have come to this, Noka, you’re going to tell everyone about it. Got it?”

“Ena-neesama, that’s… Someone weak like me, who everyone makes fun of, can’t possibly handle such an important role—and even if I tell them, I don’t know whether they’ll believe me…”

“…But if we or the Commander start moving around, we’ll stand out, and she’ll notice. That’s why, Noka… you have to do it. You’re the least noticeable.”

To keep Nevan from realizing what we were doing, we had to act as normally as possible around her. We had to pretend to be incompetent fools who remained unaware of the Empire’s scheme, continued worrying about Lilia as usual, and kept wasting our time on pointless things.

To ignite a fire and let it spread, you needed to introduce the spark from somewhere as inconspicuous as possible—in that sense, perhaps it had actually been fortunate that Noka happened to be here this time.

“Noka, this isn’t just about protecting ourselves. It’s necessary to protect this country too, and to bring Lilia-sama back to our side.”

“For Lilia… chan…”

At the mention of Lilia’s name, Noka’s expression, which had been frightened until then, tightened with determination.

I was also curious about the quiet “Lilia-chan” she had murmured—apparently there was some connection between them that I still did not know about.

“I’m asking you too, Noka. I don’t want anyone in this country to get hurt—I want to save them. And to do that, I need your help.”

“…………”

She hesitated for just a moment at my request, but soon looked straight into my eyes and answered.

“Commander-sama… I understand. If you and the neesama say so, then… I’m scared, but… I’ll do my best.”

Noka swallowed hard, nodded firmly, and then continued.

“Lilia-chan is… my one and only… ‘friend.’”

According to what Ena told me later, since they were close in age, Lilia and Noka had often played together when they were little.

Lilia would always tease Noka, and Noka would bawl her eyes out whenever she did—from an outsider’s perspective, they looked almost like a bully and her victim, but apparently the two of them were always together.

Their relationship had apparently grown distant after Lilia inherited the position of representative of the country, but it seemed Noka had never abandoned the feelings she had held since childhood.

“…!…!!”

Because I was watching from far away, I could not tell exactly what words she was using to appeal to the other girls.

But one thing was certain: she was no longer the timid, frightened girl she had been before, but a warrior who, despite her small size, bravely faced them head-on.

When she first opened her mouth, most of the girls burst out laughing as though she had told some kind of joke. Two or three of them even surrounded Noka and started shoving her around.

“It’s for Lilia-chan… for my friend…!!”

But Noka, who probably would have backed down at that point under normal circumstances, desperately stood her ground and shouted loudly enough for even me to hear.

Right now, I could not accurately judge what feelings Noka had held toward Lilia all this time.

But I felt as though I could at least understand just how precious Lilia was to her.

“Keep going…!”

I sent her a silent cheer.

Even if you were pushed away, even if you were nearly rejected, if you kept trying again and again and desperately refused to give up, one day those feelings would reach the other person—just as they had with Karen-san and me.

At first, the girls had mocked her. But after watching Noka bow her head over and over again, their expressions gradually became serious.

This was too strange—could it really be true?—maybe we should casually ask the Commander about it—such words began flying back and forth through the group.

When I witnessed the moment Noka’s efforts finally bore fruit, I felt as happy as if it had happened to me.

“—See? I told you she’d be fine.”

Ena, who had come later to check on things, said that beside me.

Things had apparently gone exactly as she had intended, and she wore an extremely obvious look of satisfaction.

“Ena… did you put her in charge of spreading the word because you expected this to happen from the start?”

“No. I picked her because I figured the other girls would naturally think, ‘If the weakest one can screw up her courage, it’d be pathetic if those of us stronger than her got scared.’”

“What kind of stupid bully logic is that…?”

I wanted to criticize Ena’s “strategy,” which sounded thoughtful at first but actually involved almost no thought at all—but in any case, this time things had gone well thanks to Noka working even harder than expected.

From here, even if we did nothing, the story should spread through Noka’s group like a fire catching and spreading. It should be safe to leave the rest to them.

Which meant that from this point on, it was our turn—but—

“Oh my~? What are the two of you doing, hiding back here~? Could it be that I’ve once again… in-ter-rupt-ed something~?”

“—!”

The moment we watched Noka finish her task and were about to leave, the voice of someone who should not have been there rang out.

“Nevan… Why are you here?”

“No particular reason? I just wanted to have a little chat with that boy from the Royal Capital. I have such a weakness for cute young boys.”

Unlike yesterday, when she had covered her entire body with clothing, today she wore a dress that boldly exposed her thighs, shoulders, and back. Her face was still plastered white with makeup, and the leech-like tongue that slid wetly between lips painted with crimson rouge was more than enough to cover my entire body in goosebumps.

“What? Planning to put the moves on the Commander? Too bad, but this guy already has a lover, so you’re wasting your time.”

Ena stepped in front of me protectively and stood directly before Nevan with a glare. Apparently, she had at least accepted that Karen-san and I were together.

“A lover? Oh, you mean that woman in the tacky black armor who was standing beside you yesterday? You sure have strange tastes, boy. She doesn’t look bad, I’ll give her that, but as a ‘woman,’ she’s completely hopeless. You could practically say she’s thrown away her femininity~”

“Huh?”

I reacted immediately to Nevan’s words. Huh? Karen-san? Thrown away her femininity? Karen-san, who showered me with so much pure maidenly affection?

What the hell was this old hag—no, this self-proclaimed female slave merchant talking about?

“That’s not true at all. Sure, Karen-san is twenty-nine and still single, all of her classmates got married before her, she sulks at bars because of it, she gets a vein popping out on her forehead when younger girls call her an old lady and gets so angry she ends up in actual fistfights, so she’s pretty hopeless in that sense, but her room is overflowing with handmade stuffed toys she sewed as a hobby and shelves packed with nauseatingly sweet romance novels, so she’s actually an incredibly innocent maiden. She has absolutely no resistance to anything sexual either, so she immediately turns bright red and gets embarrassed and shows the cutest reactions. And whenever it involves me, she forgets that she’s my superior and completely mixes her personal feelings into work without any restraint, which is also really great—and—”

“Hey, Commander, I can’t tell whether you’re defending her or insulting her…”

What are you talking about? I’m defending her as hard as I possibly can.

I was explaining all the ways Karen-san was way too cute. Was there a problem with that?

I had rattled all of that off at incredible speed, so I thought even Nevan might have been put off, but—

“Wait, seriously…? That woman is twenty-nine…? Looking like that? She wasn’t even wearing makeup yesterday, right…? No, no way. Seriously, no way…”

Apparently, she was shocked by something else entirely—Karen-san’s age of “twenty-nine.”

Perhaps it was the result of her daily training, but Karen-san was indeed more beautiful than any other woman of her age I had ever seen. If she properly put on makeup and dressed femininely, she retained enough youthful freshness that people could easily mistake her for around twenty.

“Anyway, even if you’re around the same age, there’s that much difference between you and Karen-san—like heaven and earth. So there’s absolutely no chance I’d ever be interested in someone like you—”

“HUH!?? Hey, brat! What the hell did you just say to me?!”

At that moment, Nevan’s face twisted hideously as she instantly reacted to a certain word I had said.

“I said there’s far too much of a difference between you and Karen-san—”

“NOT THAT! BEFORE THAT, YOU LITTLE SHIT!!”

“You mean… the part about your age—”

“I’M TWENTY YEARS OLD, YOU DUMBASS!!?”

Huh?… Huh?

At Nevan’s scream from the depths of her soul, both Ena and I stared at her in shock, completely speechless.

“Don’t look that genuinely shocked! Ahh, damn it, ever since they stuck me with this job, it’s been sucking the life out of me more and more—but that’s not what I came here to talk about!”

Abandoning the artificially mature manner of speaking she had used until now, Nevan grinned at the two of us with her crooked teeth.

“Royal Capital brat—I didn’t come to see you because I wanted to put the moves on you—”

After repeatedly taking deep breaths and somehow regaining her composure, Nevan raised one arm high into the air and snapped her fingers—

At the same time, explosions erupted at several places across the island.

“It’s a declaration of war, brats—we already know what you’re up to… thanks to a traitor—our collaborator.”

Then, when two girls appeared behind Nevan, Ena and I felt as though the entire world had turned upside down.

“…You… don’t tell me…”

“Whether this is a joke or a dream, it’s way too unfunny…!”

Almost simultaneously, Ena and I called out the name of one of the girls—the female warrior carrying an unconscious Lilia in her arms.

“ZENA, YOU BETRAYED US!!?”

At those words, Zena, now wearing the Empire’s insignia at the side of her neck, spoke in a cold, detached tone.

“Betrayed you…? No. I was never one of ‘your people’ to begin with… That’s all.”

And thus, the battle between the Empire and the Royal Capital, with the Republic caught in the middle, suddenly began.