A sharp female voice rang through the classroom. And at that same moment, Narumiya’s fist stopped. I turned toward the voice, and there stood Akabana—her face twisted in anger, which I’d never seen before.
“Oh, Akane. I was just exterminating the pests for you.”
“Who asked you to do that? And stop calling me by my first name so casually… I’ve told you this before!”
It seemed Akabana and Narumiya had some history, but the air between them felt heavy and oppressive—definitely not the kind of relationship between mere friends.
“Still the same as always. For the sake of the future we’ll spend together, it seems I’ll need to correct that attitude of yours somewhere down the line.”
“…!”
“Don’t glare at me like that. I’ll back down this time. Just choose your companions more carefully. If your value decreases, it reflects badly on my standing as well.”
With just that much said, Narumiya left the classroom, taking Yagawa and another male student with him. That left the classroom with only an unconscious Touji, Akabana biting her lip, and me standing around clueless.
After Akabana and I carried Touji to the infirmary and gave him basic first aid, we laid him down on a bed. Now, with Touji still unconscious and sleeping, Akabana and I stood on opposite sides of his bed.
“…So, we’ve gotten pretty tangled up in this, but you’re not going to tell me anything?”
I asked Akabana, who stood on the opposite side of the bed. Akabana only responded with a painful expression.
“Well, I won’t force you or anything…”
But still, getting wrapped up in this nonsense again, being pushed around without knowing anything—it’s not exactly pleasant. If I at least understood the reason behind this hostility, I’d know how to deal with it.
As I was thinking that, Akabana, keeping her expression unchanged, slowly opened her mouth.
“Fine. I’ll tell you everything. You can share what I’m about to tell you with him when he wakes up too.”
“…Are you sure? I mean, I was the one putting pressure on you…”
“It’s not like it’s a secret. Eventually, some classmate would tell you anyway. It’s already become quite the rumor. It’s better for you to hear it correctly from me than to have it reach you all distorted.”
…Well, to be honest, we don’t really have any classmates close enough to casually ask about this kind of thing. And now that I think about it, none of them seem particularly interested in other people’s relationships. You can tell just by looking at how they treat us outsiders.
“About Narumiya—to put it plainly, he’s my fiancé.”
“…F-fiancé?”
“Yes. It hasn’t been officially announced yet, but the negotiations between the families are almost complete. You could say it’s a done deal.”
So a fiancé, huh? That’s another word you only hear in fiction. The fact that such a custom still exists in modern Japan is… well, I’m sorry, Akabana, for being sincere, but this is making me feel a bit awkward.
“Even though our clan has lost some of its former glory, the Akabana family—one of the Five Great Houses that once served the ancient gods—still carries significant name value. The Narumiya family set their sights on that. They’re part of what you’d call the Demon King’s lineage, a new-age clan. By bringing Akabana blood into their family, they’re trying to add prestige to their name.”
…Whoa, a bunch of unfamiliar terms just hit me all at once. I can follow the general flow of the conversation, but I should probably ask for more details.
“Um, Akabana-san…”
“Yeah, I know. I don’t need to explain—you already know this, right?”
“No, that’s not—”
“As the world was concerned, there were people who opposed both families being united while the [Servant’s Oath] still existed. But that opposition was silenced by the Narumiya family’s introduction of the [Demon-Sealing Spear]. This treasure artifact—”
“Akabana-san, wait a minu—”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Right, there’s no need to explain the effects of a treasure artifact—you naturally already know that, don’t you?”
“No, that’s not—”
“—And by doing so, the plan is to strike on the day when the contract temporarily becomes invalid. That’s what both families are aiming for—”
She’s not even listening. I don’t know the first thing about how the supernatural world works. Did she forget we’re outsiders here?
Well, worst case, I’ll just go with the flow and pretend I understand. What I—no, what we—really need to ask is just one thing.
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“As the mist of sacred beauty settles upon the hollow of Alhain, so too does the pact of Gazalheim follow the same system—”
I seriously have no idea what she’s talking about anymore. Is this even relevant? Sorry, but this is dragging on—I’m cutting in.
“Within Doncham Catcham’s body—”
“Hey, Akabana, can I ask you something?”
“…What?”
“What do you think about this engagement that both families decided on?”
“………..”
In response to my question, Akabana hung her head silently. That silence stretched on for several dozen seconds. I didn’t try to say anything more—I just waited for Akabana to speak.
“…I hate it.”
The words spilled out as if she’d been holding them in. I was certain I’d hit on the right thing to ask, so I looked directly at the downturned Akabana and spoke to her.
“Tell me, Akabana-san.”
I spoke quietly, gently, almost in a whisper, and my words apparently reached her correctly.
With tears pooling in her eyes, Akabana—so different from how she’d been before, keeping her emotions in check—shouted, driven by passionate feelings.
“Of course I hate it!”
It was an outpouring of pent-up emotions. Frustrations she’d clearly been holding back poured out endlessly, like a scene where something had finally broken free.
Looking back on it now, even her reckless pig-headedness during the recreational assignment might have been a way to vent emotions with nowhere else to go.
“Since I was born into the Akabana family, I never expected I’d get to marry for love. Marriage is about connecting families. For the family name, for bloodline purity, for gifted supernatural powers, for the ancient gods—I understand all that. But that doesn’t mean I’ll accept marrying someone like him!”
“Have you tried telling your parents how you feel?”
“I did! But both my father and mother just thought I was being shy about the engagement, and they won’t listen to me seriously!”
Stubborn parents and all that.
“Even on the day of the entrance ceremony, no matter how much I tried to state my opinion, they just dodged the issue. Only I got heated up—!”
Ah, so that’s why she was late on the entrance ceremony day. The teacher mentioned something about family circumstances too.
“…I’m sorry. For shouting suddenly like that.”
Having calmed down a bit from shouting, Akabana lowered her voice and wiped her tears while standing up from the chair.
“I’ve told you everything that needed to be said. You should understand now how much trouble this situation is. So stop involving yourselves in this matter between my family and the Narumiya family.”
“But they’re the ones who picked a fight with us…”
“If something like that happens again, you can use my name. And take this as a warning. If you get on the bad side of both the Akabana and Narumiya families, you won’t be able to survive in this society of special powers.”
Saying it almost like a threat, Akabana left the infirmary. And so only Touji and I remained in the room.
“…So, what do we do?”
I spoke to Touji, who was lying on the bed with his eyes wide open and an angry expression on his face.
“…To be honest, I couldn’t understand even a third of what Akabana said.”
Same here.
“So like… I’m confused, man. It’s not like we can charge into the Narumiya family headquarters and break off the engagement like in a manga or drama, right…?”
“Well, obviously not. If a third party who’s barely involved just barges in and ignores the family circumstances, it becomes a huge problem. I mean, storming the wedding and abducting the bride only works in fiction.”
Actually doing something like that would probably result in more than just expulsion from the academy.
“Yeah, exactly. …But hey, Yukiharu, even without understanding much of anything, there’s one thing I’m certain about.”
One thing—though those were such vague words, I didn’t need to ask what he meant. Because whatever Touji was thinking was probably the same as what I was thinking.
“At the very least, it’s wrong for Akabana-san to have that kind of sad, almost-crying expression on her face—right, Touji?”
“Yeah, exactly. An engagement is supposed to be something happy. Everyone around her is celebrating, and yet the person at the center is crying—that’s absolutely wrong.”
Touji and I confirmed that our opinions aligned on the matter of Akabana.
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