It was the kind of letter he could understand at a glance. The kind that seemed full of long, drawn-out emotions. One of those painfully common letters.
“I did think, do I really have to go this far? But still, I just couldn’t let it go.”
“You have been acting strange lately.”
“The truth is, people’s feelings aren’t something they can control, are they?”
Ruite stroked his chin gravely and nodded. Chester examined the letter impassively. So he was forcing himself to try not to give in all this time? It might have been admirable, except judging by the fact that he was handing this over after barely lasting at all, it seemed he had given up.
“So this is all you managed to come up with?”
“When you’re desperate, you want to try anything.”
He was that desperate? Chester slowly shook his head.
“But I hate things like this. It’s pathetic.”
Silence swept over the rear of the main building. Without even considering reading it, without so much as glancing at it, Chester held the letter back out in front of Ruite to return it. Ruite merely blinked his large eyes slowly at the letter extended before him.
“Hey, even so, isn’t that going too far?”
“What is?”
“Calling someone’s feelings pathetic. Then what does that make Lea, when she said she wanted to apologize to you?”
Chester, who had been about to say something, moved his lips soundlessly. It was because a third person’s name had suddenly popped out. And Lea? It was definitely a familiar name.
“Lea agonized a lot over whether to give this letter to you or not. She said she wanted to apologize because she felt like she’d caused you trouble by confessing in public. And she said she doesn’t want things to become awkward with you either.”
Ruite recalled the offer he had made to Lea in the dorm lounge a few days ago. If Lea was all right with it, he would deliver the letter for her. It would be difficult for Lea to hand Chester a letter without attracting attention, but because Ruite had the advantage of being in the same class, he would have plenty of chances to deliver it.
Surprisingly, Lea had readily accepted, and while asking him, she added that she hoped he would deliver it as inconspicuously as possible. That was why he had deliberately brought Chester all the way behind the main building.
“Wait.”
Just then, Chester’s face crumpled sharply as he pointed at the letter Ruite was holding.
“That. Who wrote it?”
“Third-year Department of Swordsmanship student Lea Zerphin. You know, the girl who publicly confessed to you on the opening ceremony day this spring term.”
“Then what are you?”
Chester’s finger, which had been pointing at the letter, naturally turned toward Ruite.
“Me?”
Ruite pointed at himself and tilted his head.
“I’m delivering the letter.”
Chester said nothing. Ruite had no idea why he was spacing out to that extent, but for now, he had to complete Lea’s request.
Honestly, at first, he had suggested it with the hope that, although the possibility was close to nonexistent, Chester might get along well with someone else and Ruite could be smoothly subjected to annulment. But now, he simply wanted to help Lea. The more he talked with her, the more he felt that she did not like Chester with some half-hearted feeling.
“Anyway, the letter is yours.”
Ruite strode closer and carefully tucked the letter into Chester’s jacket pocket.
“Whether you reply or not is up to you, but don’t throw it away. Read it properly.”
Ruite tilted his head slightly and leaned to the side to check whether the letter had gone into the pocket properly. When his silver hair, shining as it reflected the sunlight, lightly touched Chester’s shoulder, Chester flinched.
“……So?”
“Huh?”
Chester, who had been quiet all along, suddenly asked in a low voice.
“Why are you delivering this letter to me? Are you hoping something will happen between me and her?”
“Well, rather than hoping for anything in particular, there’s no harm in delivering it.”
“…….”
Just then, a bell rang loudly once inside the academy. It was a kind of warning bell announcing that half of lunch break had passed. Hearing it, Ruite muttered, “Ah, my lunch,” then flusteredly patted Chester’s shoulder a couple of times and vanished like an arrow.
At the very end, he did not forget to emphasize that Chester had to read the letter. Left alone like that, Chester felt a gust of wind sweep past behind him. As his black hair scattered in the wind, Chester pulled the letter from his pocket and tore it open.
The contents, written in neat handwriting and introducing the sender as Lea, were mostly an apology for publicly confessing to him, just as Ruite had said. After reading the letter, which ended by saying she did not mean anything else and only wanted to remain good friends, Chester quietly folded it again and put it back into the envelope.
“Haah…….”
Chester let out a long sigh and covered his face with one hand, rubbing it dry. Beneath the sunlight that felt especially intense today, Chester’s earlobes were slightly flushed with embarrassment.
***
Today, for some reason, the day felt refreshing. Ruite got out of bed and even hummed as he straightened his bedding. It was because he had a faint hope. The hope that, by some chance, Chester and Lea’s relationship might flow in a positive direction.
If that happened, then perhaps there was not absolutely no possibility that Chester might mention annulment before graduation. If so, his fate of becoming a villain and his ending of being gruesomely killed would vanish completely.
“What’s with you? Why are you grinning like that from the morning? It’s creepy.”
Ruite was eating in the cafeteria when, as expected, Dylan came over and sat across from him again today. Tireless as ever, he took the juice from Ruite’s tray.
“Sure, you eat plenty.”
Ruite, who usually threw a hand first while asking why he kept taking it every time this happened, nodded with a gentle smile. Then the juice Dylan was holding dropped with a thud.
“Ruite, are you sick somewhere? They say people die when they suddenly change…….”
“You’re making a fuss just because I’m in a good mood.”
“That was all? Oh, right. Lea told me to tell you thanks. For delivering the letter for her.”
Dylan emptied Ruite’s juice in one refreshing gulp.
“She said thanks to you, she was able to get completely rejected and remain a genuinely good classmate?”
“Why would she go that far…… Wait, what? What did you just say?”
Dylan tilted his head with an “Hm?” and relayed exactly what he had heard from Lea. From what Ruite heard, after receiving the letter, Chester had gone to find Lea and they had a short conversation. Apparently, he told her his feelings were no different from before, and that she did not need to feel sorry for confessing, and things seemed to have ended well.
“Really?”
Ruite nodded, feeling unsettled. It was not that he had not expected it, but he could not help feeling disappointed that the hope he had entertained, just in case, had disappeared.
Well, Chester is probably in a state where he’s practically resigned himself to the political marriage arranged by his family for now. That must be why, every time he received countless confessions at seasonal events, he answered in a way that could be interpreted as saying his marriage partner was already decided.
Then I really have no choice but to wait for graduation day according to the flow of the original story.
After giving Dylan, who had stolen his juice, one flick to the forehead, Ruite went up to the classroom. As he headed for his seat, he saw Colin and Chester looking at a textbook and exchanging conversation.
It was a very beautiful sight befitting the top student and second-ranked student of the Department of Magic. If Harold saw that, he might die of satisfaction.
“Rui, good morning.”
“Yeah, you too, Colin.”
“You seem down.”
“Dylan stole my juice.”
At that, Colin burst into laughter, saying Dylan did that every time without ever getting tired of it. While Ruite sat down in his chair, Chester did not spare him a single glance or greeting.
Perhaps newly noticing that current, Colin turned his whole body around to face backward.
“By the way, there’s something I’m curious about with you two.”
Ruite’s hand, which had been organizing his textbooks, paused. Not something he was curious about with Ruite, but with “you two.”
“Are you two not very close?”
“Why ask that all of a sudden?”
“It just seems that way. But haven’t House Callaway and House Everhart had ties for quite a long time?”
When Colin even brought up their families, Chester, who had seemed uninterested, lifted his head. Colin probably was not asking about the political marriage that had been exchanged between the two families. That was still a fact that had not been announced publicly.
He was likely asking out of pure curiosity because the two families had been connected often in business and in various other ways.
It seemed Colin found it strange that the children of two families with ties to each other, and the same age at that, did not appear to have much contact.
Looking at Colin’s eyes sparkling with curiosity, Ruite remembered what he had confidently declared to Chester on the first day of term.
“We’re not particularly close.”
When Ruite said it calmly, Chester’s gaze naturally turned to him as well.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Like I said, the ties were between the adults of our families. There’s no particular reason we have to become close too. Right, Chester?”
Ruite looked at Chester. His eyes met Chester’s exactly, as though Chester had been looking at him from the beginning.
At the look in Ruite’s eyes, which said that Chester surely did not want to get involved with him at all, so he should hurry and vaguely agree, Chester stayed silent, unlike what Ruite expected.
Colin also stared at Chester as if curious, but Chester merely looked at Ruite with an expression that showed something displeased him.
“That’s right.”
Just as the atmosphere was becoming awkward, Chester opened his mouth. At the same time, Ruite felt relieved.
“I tend to form relationships with people on my level.”
At the crookedly added words, Ruite narrowed his eyes. Colin must have taken Chester’s words as a joke, because he laughed as if amused and did not ask any more.
“But did you really need to add that last part?”
As soon as Colin faced forward, Ruite leaned toward Chester and whispered softly. Not on his level? Of course, it was exactly the kind of thing Chester, who had grown into an irritating personality because he was good at everything, would say, but still, it was something he did not have to say.
“……Don’t lean toward me.”
At the brusque attitude that appeared as expected, Ruite shook his head. It seemed Chester truly hated him a great deal.