By now, Leopold knew that answering I cannot stand by as a prince and watch a student of this Academy suffer would immediately draw a frown from Terren Meyer.
And I treated you with nothing more than obligation for years, but now I find myself genuinely worried about you — even hearing those words come out of his own mouth was repulsive enough to be unbearable.
Terren spoke.
“Hand out your punishments starting with Your Highness’s dearest friend first.”
“…Lloyd?”
“Yes. I receive insults from him without missing a single day, so if that particular person were to disappear, I would be happier than I could say.”
“…Right. I’ll see to it.”
Leopold answered with a subdued air, and Terren paused. He felt a gaze fixed on him.
Wondering if there was something more to be said, he met Leopold’s eyes — and Terren let out a sigh.
“No — don’t do anything unnecessary. Leave it alone. Use that energy to treat that hero complex of yours instead.”
“Hero complex — that’s rather harsh.”
“Whatever sudden impulse has come over you, I can only describe it as absurd. Stop playing at righteousness and do what you’re supposed to do.”
“Righteousness. Right… righteousness.”
There was a bitter taste in his mouth. At sixteen, Leopold couldn’t even keep a single Academy in order. He’d been carrying on about how he’d live a different life from his father, and yet he was no better than the very people he found contemptible. When would he stop being a fool.
“I suppose you’re right.”
Leopold smiled faintly.
“You’re right, Terren.”
Edmund Lafel, Theo Brante — suspended. Milo Bilrn — school community service.
The Student President Leopold Delua’s shocking punishments spread in an instant through every year, from first to fifth, at the Academy.
The stated reason: mutual insult between students.
The real reason: insulting royalty.
And the other reason, plain for all to see: insulting Terren Meyer.
The students were not foolish enough to miss it.
Leopold Delua had gone to every length to hand down a severe punishment — all because of that repulsive Terren!
A single act of picking a fight with Terren Meyer had made them a laughingstock among the nobility in an instant!
The rumor spread at a furious pace.
At first, everyone expressed bewilderment.
Picking on Terren had always been the most natural, ordinary thing in the world.
How had they ended up disciplined when they’d done nothing wrong?
Was it really true that all of this came down to insulting Terren Meyer?
But Leopold went after students who spoke ill of Terren with genuine feeling rather than obligation — regardless of year, regardless of rank.
The stated reason in every case was insulting royalty, but there was no hiding the sky with one’s hand.
After that, a total of ten more students across the Academy received suspensions, the social circles were thrown into an uproar, and the noble houses and the royal family engaged in a prolonged bout of posturing — once everyone had witnessed all of that, every person in the Royal Academy understood.
Terren was no longer the vile, filthy parasite of the Academy. He was a boy under the firm protection of the First Prince.
Only then did some of the students begin to perceive Terren Meyer as a person. Where the Academy had once been full of people who wanted nothing to do with him or treated him as a target to vent frustration on, a new kind had emerged.
And throughout the semester, Terren continued his swordsmanship practice with Leopold.
By now, it was Terren giving Leopold the orders.
No matter how hard he thought on it, the legend describing the Sword Master could only be explained as magic.
White Magic like Dark Magic. Was such a thing even possible to say.
White Magic was something that could only be produced by calculating formulas and drawing magic circles. Mana could not be moved freely outside the body through White Magic. And yet — why?
Terren dove straight into experimentation. With Leopold as his subject. At first he had Leopold try to feel his Mana, and when Leopold couldn’t grasp it at all, Terren also taught him the method of overlaying magic circles onto a sword.
There was no progress — but Terren didn’t give up, and day after day he struggled to make Leopold aware of the Mana that would be residing within his body. Leopold didn’t quite understand the reason for any of this, but he followed Terren’s requests with a surprising degree of compliance. That was fortunate.
As autumn passed and the end of the year crept closer, one day after all their classes had ended, they were doing something rather unusual in the training grounds, wooden practice swords in hand.
Terren Meyer had temporarily set aside his work on the large-scale magic circle and was pouring all his effort into realizing a highly effective illusion magic. This was because his skill level made actually sparring against Leopold out of the question.
He would cast illusion magic on Leopold, then continuously manipulate it to generate phantom opponents for him to fight.
Leopold would battle those phantoms while working to draw the Mana out from within his body.
As expected, no effect. But the illusion magic gave Leopold — who had no longer had any sparring partners able to match him — an enormous amount of satisfaction.
He wiped away his sweat and shook his head. His expression was bright.
“Honestly, I still don’t really understand what you’re telling me. I focused on my core the whole time I was swinging the sword, trying to get the Mana to come outside my body. It still doesn’t work.”
“…I see.”
Terren was sitting on the training ground floor. He shut the book he’d been reading with a snap and gave a small nod.
“The Young Lord is coming.”
“Leo, what have you been doing all this time? Let’s go!”
It was evening. Leopold nodded to Lloyd, who had come over, then turned to the dark-haired boy.
“Want to come with us?”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“Have you lost your mind?”
Two replies came at once. The two roommates — between whom all conversation had broken down — looked at each other in the same moment.
Lloyd spoke in a tone of clear displeasure.
“Who do you think you are, speaking with that attitude? Show some courtesy to His Highness, as befits a commoner.”
“Young Lord, if you’d rather not sit across from me at a meal, shut your mouth right now and get out of my sight.”
“You really are hopeless. Just because Leopold babies you, you think the world belongs to you?”
The First Prince moved to intervene, but Terren’s retort came first.
“Stop whining at me like a child who’s had his friend taken away.”
“What did you just say? A lowborn commoner piece of filth, opening your mouth without any sense of what you should and shouldn’t—”
“Aren’t you embarrassed, Young Lord, getting red in the face over a single commoner? If it were me, I’d be too ashamed to show my face.”
“You — you damned—!”
Leopold simply grabbed Lloyd and dragged him out of the training grounds.
Terren lay back on the ground with a satisfied air.
The one thing grating on him most in these otherwise peaceful days was sharing a room with Lloyd van Acker.
Lloyd van Acker hadn’t always been like this. At least not as far as Terren knew.
In his past life, Lloyd had been a cold, methodical man of principle. He hadn’t spoken this harshly, and he hadn’t been this volatile.
Around this same time in his past life, Terren Meyer had been thoroughly cowed. He had lived taking every blow without striking back. That was probably why he hadn’t known.
Lloyd was deeply immature. Leopold had already surprised Terren by turning out to be far more of a boy than expected — but Lloyd was worse. It was a daily occurrence for him to lose control of his emotions and erupt in anger at a single word from Terren.
And unfortunately, thanks to the First Prince, the two of them were crossing paths frequently these days.
Leopold, in any situation without exception, took Terren’s side —
And Lloyd’s unraveling was only a matter of time.
They were even roommates, on top of everything.
Every time Leopold got angry on Terren’s behalf. Every time Terren and Leopold were seen together. Every time Terren Meyer showed his face in the dormitory room. Slowly and steadily, the relationship between Lloyd and Leopold deteriorated.
On mornings when Terren accidentally woke at the same time as Lloyd, both of them wordlessly avoided each other before the other could make a move. Sometimes low muttered curses could be heard from Lloyd’s side.
If that had been the end of it, it would have been one thing. But whenever Terren happened to be with Leopold, Lloyd would bite down on his back teeth and drop his gaze.
He was so furious that Terren could almost imagine that neatly combed brown hair going red.
“Get out of my sight right now, Terren Meyer.”
It was the voice Terren heard a few days later, the moment he opened the dormitory room door after class to retrieve a book.
Lloyd had his face buried in his pillow, muttering.
“Don’t show me that disgusting face — just get out.”
Terren gathered his books without a word and left.
Lloyd had been in this state since summer break ended — more precisely, since Leopold had truly begun what Lloyd saw as his performance of righteousness and his embarrassing fixation.
