‘Huh? This—’ Before his classmate could even react, the tip of Rowen’s wooden sword came to an abrupt halt right in front of his nape. It was an incredibly precise distance control, not even touching a single strand of hair.
“……!”
Why was it so scary even though he’d given warning? The classmate slowly composed his momentarily stiffened body and opened his mouth.
“Oh, you succeeded.”
Rowen spoke plainly and withdrew his wooden sword. Then he lightly patted the still slightly frozen classmate’s shoulder and smiled.
“Thanks for letting the tardy student live. I would’ve struggled quite a bit if I hadn’t seen you doing it.”
“…Uh, yeah. Right.”
“We have some time left, want to try again?”
At Rowen’s suggestion, the classmate shook his head with a slightly dazed expression. He felt that if he slipped up here one more time, his embarrassing skill level would be revealed and disappoint both Rowen and the professor.
“No thanks. I need to review the textbook again. My posture still feels really awkward….”
As the classmate trailed off and walked toward the corner where the textbooks were piled up, Rowen, who couldn’t understand his classmate’s complicated feelings, roughly scratched the back of his head once. Then he swung the wooden sword he’d borrowed from the professor and practiced the new swordsmanship technique he’d learned today.
As expected, it was nice not having to think about anything while wielding a sword. Nigel’s disappearance, his whereabouts, and the meaningless sentences he’d heard from Professor Silvanus earlier were constantly tormenting him. Even without him being fully aware of it.
The professor, who had been watching the students swinging their swords or reviewing their textbooks with his arms crossed, let out a sharp whistle. It was the ending sound signaling that class was over.
The students who had been swinging their swords in a tense state began chattering and organizing the sparring wooden swords. Among them, Rowen walked up to the professor faster than anyone else, returned the borrowed wooden sword, and picked up his own sword that he’d left standing in the corner.
Then he slipped out into the corridor.
“Thank you for your hard work!”
Passing underclassmen greeted him, and
“When’s your next class?”
“What are you doing tonight?”
He could hear sounds of people talking to each other or discussing their plans for the weekend. Normally, Rowen Ashfield would have been chatting with more friends than anyone else in the corridor.
However, Rowen lightly nodded in greeting as if he were busy and moved along. He needed to wash off the sweat he’d worked up, but before that, he thought he should let the frog in his pocket rest on a table and give it some water to drink.
‘Come to think of it, what do frogs eat?’
As Rowen was thinking this and turned toward the sparsely populated annex passage, it happened.
“Senior Rowen Ashfield.”
That’s a somewhat familiar voice.
“…….”
Rowen’s footsteps came to an abrupt halt. Rowen didn’t answer the other person right away.
Nigel poked his face out of the pocket and stuck his head out through a gap in the cloak. As expected, the owner of the voice was Eden Lake. Eden’s face had become gaunt and sharp in just two days.
‘…Right, since I suddenly disappeared, Eden Lake must have been quite shocked too.’
Nigel, who had been so busy trying to find a way to survive that he’d forgotten about Eden for a while, felt a very slight pang of pity upon seeing Eden’s face. But he soon shook his head side to side.
Because in this situation, the person in the most pitiful position was Nigel himself.
With his sunken eyes making his expression more gloomy than usual, Eden Lake muttered.
“…That morning, I should have actively searched after hearing your words, Senior. Not immediately organizing a search party was a foolish decision.”
‘That morning? What did those two talk about the day I turned into a frog?’
Nigel in the pocket listened to Rowen and Eden’s conversation, roughly guessing at it. No one could have predicted that the Nigel the two men were desperately searching for was the frog in Rowen’s shirt pocket.
Though he didn’t particularly like Eden Lake, Rowen, whose nature wasn’t bad, offered lukewarm comfort to his visibly distressed underclassman.
“……It would have been futile anyway.”
Hearing those words, Eden Lake gave a bitter smile and spoke quietly.
“By any chance… is there anywhere you can think of?”
“No.”
It was a cold answer, but Eden nodded slightly as if he’d expected it.
“I see….”
Then he let out a slight sigh and swept back his disheveled bangs. The usual neat and polite appearance of his underclassman was nowhere to be seen, replaced by a face clearly showing anxiety.
Nigel, hearing that voice from inside the pocket, was slightly touched. He’d thought Eden followed him well even normally, but he hadn’t known his loyalty ran this deep.
“……To disappear like this without a word.”
Eden bit his lip as if blaming himself and muttered in a very low voice.
“And all the medicine is with me….”
“Medicine?”
Rowen leaned his back slightly against the wall next to the corridor where the two were standing, then interjected into Eden’s murmur.
“What medicine are you talking about? Nigel’s headache medicine?”
As if Eden hadn’t expected Rowen to ask about his murmur, he maintained silence for a moment before answering.
“…Yes. He usually asks for it once a day, but he hasn’t been able to take it for several days now, so it must be difficult for him.”
He’d been so out of it that he hadn’t even been conscious of whether he had a headache. Nigel, who pressed his frog hand to his forehead with a plop, listened carefully to the two men’s conversation.
“Forget it. Don’t feel guilty over mere headache medicine. If you have time for useless self-blame, use it to search for Nigel.”
“…….”
Eden Lake’s mouth clamped shut at Rowen’s extremely realistic point.
“…You’re not wrong.”
Eden, who opened his mouth after a long while, nodded obediently. However, contrary to his compliant answer, he didn’t take his eyes off Rowen.
In that state, Eden Lake added meaningfully.
“I must find him.”
“…….”
“His Highness absolutely needs me.”
It was unnecessary overprotectiveness for Nigel. And an impudent remark at that. Rowen’s eyebrows twitched.
With those words, Eden Lake bowed his head politely once and turned around.
Left alone in the corridor—no, left with Nigel in his pocket—Rowen watched Eden Lake’s retreating figure and clicked his tongue briefly.
“…Unpleasant guy.”
He felt uneasy.
Eden Lake was an underclassman who always followed behind Nigel, dutifully carrying out his words as if worshipping them. From the moment Rowen first saw him, Eden Lake, who served Nigel as if worshipping him, had rubbed him the wrong way.
Nigel was destined to become the emperor of this empire. This academy life was precious time for him to form ordinary human relationships and learn to stand on his own for the first time in his life, outside the Imperial Palace.
But Eden Lake continued to treat Nigel not as an ordinary student but as the Crown Prince of the empire. Honestly, that kind of behavior was closer to playing with dolls than loyalty.
‘Why does Nigel keep a guy like that by his side.’
Rowen shook his head from side to side and pulled his back away from the marble wall.
Of course, Nigel in the pocket had no idea of Rowen’s deep-seated complaints and merely thought, ‘Rowen never liked Eden in the first place.’
* * *
Though Nigel had disappeared overnight, strangely enough, time passed as it always did. Rowen looked at the Kaiserion Academy student cafeteria where people were eating in their respective close-knit groups and felt as if he alone was detached from it all.
“…….”
For other students who hadn’t spent much time with Nigel, they wouldn’t be able to understand how strange this matter was to Rowen Ashfield. He wasn’t even hungry enough to want lunch.
Rowen planned to feed the frog in his pocket something and then search through various parts of the academy building again.
He felt that doing at least this much would give him something to tell the search party that the Imperial Palace would soon dispatch when they entered the academy.
The aroma of roast chicken flavored with various herbs, freshly baked bread, and rich cream stew filled the cafeteria. Just by entering the cafeteria entrance and smelling it, one could deduce what the lunch menu that the Kaiserion student cafeteria prided itself on was.
Grumble—
A sound rang out.
‘Hm?’
At that sound, Rowen slightly lifted his cloak and looked inside his shirt. It was a sound coming from the frog’s stomach in his pocket, not from his own belly. Right, it must be hungry since it hadn’t eaten anything since two days ago.
Just then.
“Rowen! This is your seat. I saved it for you.”
He could see Mallory vigorously waving both arms side to side while seated at a table. She was a friend who’d become close after enrolling in the academy and had entered the Swordsmanship Department together. Besides her, the spacious table was filled with Rowen’s friends.
In fact, most of the second-years were Rowen’s friends, and even if they weren’t friends with him, everyone in the student cafeteria knew Rowen Ashfield, the youngest of the Ashfield family and the long-time friend of Crown Prince Nigel.
Anyway.
Rowen pressed one arm against the back of Hubert’s chair, who was characterized by freckles around his nose, and said.
“Hubert, I’m just going to eat quickly today. You guys take your time eating and come out.”
It was a decision made thinking of the frog under his cloak. To avoid startling his friends, it would probably be better to eat on a garden bench at the academy or inside his dormitory room.
Or even an empty corner seat would do.
