LIGHT NOVEL
LIGHT NOVEL
— Mia’s perspective —
(Alde and Miss Tisli… they look so close…)
Watching the two of them bicker, I let out a sigh without meaning to.
But whether because Alde and Miss Tisli had eyes only for each other, neither noticed my sigh at all.
What I’d gathered at this get-together was that Miss Tisli opens up—or lets her guard down—only with Alde, that sort of thing.
At a glance I could tell she was a person of real inner strength, but precisely because of that, I’d never have thought she’d get so casual like that.
A commoner like us, yes, but the daughter of a political merchant, so a person of entirely different standing from us—and yet only with Alde did she seem to interact as her unguarded self.
Incidentally, with us she’s courteous. Not a shred of the arrogance of a noble, and she even makes sure we don’t get too intimidated.
In other words, Miss Tisli is incredibly considerate.
And yet with Alde she shows her true self… so although Miss Tisli would normally be flawless, because she’s always with Alde, we catch glimpses of that true self too.
Even their bickering looks like quarreling at a glance, but… somehow they seem to be enjoying it. Both of them.
(Could this be… her being affectionate with Alde?)
Judging from little Yuinas’s reaction too, there’s no doubt those two are close as a matter of course…
If so, then that attitude is the result of her being affectionate with Alde. Though I do think she could be a bit more graceful about it.
And so I kept bringing the blended liquor to my lips, over and over. I knew my pace today was fast, but I just couldn’t stop drinking.
(Haa… how did it come to this…)
Before I knew it, I was looking back on my school days.
* * *
When we advanced to the middle division of the commoners’ school, Alde was suddenly on the verge of being held back…
After the first-term closing ceremony, in the classroom everyone had gone home from, I looked at Alde’s grades and… was dumbstruck.
“H-hold on, Alde… apart from P.E., your grades are nothing but 2s and 1s…!”
School grades are on a five-point scale. Five is the highest, one the lowest. And by year’s end, if you don’t have a 3 or above in every subject, you get held back, at that.
Alde scratched his cheek with a face utterly devoid of any sense of crisis.
“Ahh… it just suddenly got hard, so…”
“Why didn’t you come to me about it?”
“No, even if I had, it’s not like my head’d get any better.”
“I’d at least teach you, you know.”
“Eh… nah, it’s fine. Study time’s a waste, and I can work even if I’m dumb.”
“What are you saying. If you’re held back, you have to do the same year of study all over again, you know? You’d end up in a different class from me, and if you can’t graduate, your work stays part-time too.”
“I’ll just skip school, right?”
“If you can’t even graduate the commoners’ school, you’ll run out of work eventually!”
Alde’s parents are frail and can’t farm. They get by on piecework, supposedly, but compared to farming the income’s surely far less.
So since he was little, Alde had helped with all sorts of jobs to earn a little money. His physical ability put grown men to shame, so besides farming, he did hunting, foraging, even capturing bounties—there were times it was more than just nerve-wracking, though.
But our proper role is being students, so from eight in the morning to three in the afternoon we have to study.
And in the nine years of commoners’ school, there’s no dropping out. At schools for higher education there is, apparently, but for the commoners’ school, the policy was to patiently keep you learning until you could do it.
So until he graduated, Alde couldn’t work full-time.
This system having started with our generation, Alde was discontent with the system itself, but… that Alde said, grimacing,
“The commoners’ school was the princess’s idea, right? The princess sure made an unnecessary system for us. Until a little while ago, even kids worked full-time as a matter of course.”
“Thanks to that very princess, this country’s developing rapidly, they say, so going forward all sorts of study will become necessary.”
“All sorts of study… where am I ever going to need the area of a triangle?”
“Th-that’s… I don’t know, but… but at the very least you have to master the primary-division reading, writing, and arithmetic.”
“I can manage that by counting on my fingers, right?”
“Listen… your family doesn’t own farmland, Alde, so you’ll have to go out and work, you know? Meaning you work for wages.”
“It’s been that way until now, and there was no problem, right?”
“That’s because you’re still a child and only worked within the village. As you grow up you’ll deal with all kinds of people, and if you can’t even read, write, and do sums, you might get shortchanged on your wages, you know?”
“Ngh… th-that… would be bad, sure…”
“Right? So if you understand—”
“Then I’ll just work within the village forever, right?”
“Well… that may be true, but… this village has almost nothing but farming.”
“Then would your family hire me, Mia?”
“……………Huh?”
Told that out of nowhere, I felt my heart give a leap without meaning to.
But Alde, not even noticing my state, pressed ahead on his own.
“Come on, you said your family’s farm is short on hands. Since your dad’s the village chief on top of it. And I’ve helped out in the busy season all this time anyway. So just hire me. I’d been thinking taking up farming in earnest might be nice, too.”
Huh? Huh? Huh…?
Wh-what does that mean…?
T-true, our farmland is short on hands, so we paid the villagers a fee and had them help with all sorts of tasks, but…
Alde was among them, but…
B-b-but…
Wanting to farm in earnest at my family’s place…
Th-that’s…
That’s… practically…
Isn’t that practically the same as marrying into my family?!
“Heey, Mia? What’s up? Going quiet all of a sudden.”
“Eh?! Ah, yes!”
When I came to myself, Alde was looking at me with a blank expression.
Of course, I know.
That Alde, far too much of an oblivious blockhead, hadn’t given a single thought to marrying into my family.
B-but…
Once we graduated, even in the same village, we wouldn’t get to see each other every day…
But if Alde took a job at my family’s farm, I’d see his face nearly every day…
Th-this is… could it be…
A chance, maybe?
N-no!
Hold on?!
Calm down, me!
To begin with, taking a job with us and Alde’s studies are unrelated, aren’t they…?!
“U-um… I don’t mind you taking a job with us, but…”
“Really?!”
“Yeah, probably. I’ll have to ask my father, though…”
“Yes! In that case—”
“Bu-t. A job and studies are two completely separate matters.”
“Ngh… th-that’s…”
“No, if anything, our hiring requirement is graduation from the commoners’ school, isn’t it~?”
“You just made up that requirement, didn’t you?!”
“Even so, as a national system, you have to graduate the commoners’ school.”
“It’s not like you get arrested for not graduating.”
“Even so. If you’re to be formally hired, the graduation qualification matters. And that’s not just us—it’s the same anywhere doing proper work.”
“Haa… the princess really did make an unnecessary system…”
“What are you saying. A generation ago, they wouldn’t even let us commoners study, you know? Because of that, we got cheated by the nobles no end, supposedly. You can’t thank Her Highness enough.”
“That may be, but…”
To Alde, who slumped his shoulders, I said further, to cheer him up,
“To begin with, the school lessons aren’t that hard, are they?”
“You can only say that because it’s you.”
“Once you graduate you can get steady work, so just give it your best, right?”
“Even though I could work right now? If anything, it feels like I’m being made to sit and wait.”
“Honestly… you’ve got good natural smarts, Alde. If you try, you’ll manage somehow.”
“That’s saying I’m dumb at the moment, isn’t it?”
“Isn’t it the truth?”
“Nggh…”
To Alde, who still wasn’t enthusiastic, I… could only manage a faint voice, but… said anyway,
“S-so… I’ll look after your studies… so let’s try hard together?”
My heart was pounding fit to burst, and yet Alde… wore an extremely dissatisfied face.
“You really… will hire me once I graduate, right?”
“Y-yeah… I’ll ask my father today, but it should be fine, probably.”
“Haaah… then, teach me, I guess…”
“Honestly? Is that how you ask someone for a favor?”
“Ngh…”
My knees were practically trembling, and yet Alde didn’t notice in the slightest, so… I felt like being a little mean.
So when I turned my face away, Alde bowed his head vigorously.
“Please and thank you! Teacher Mia!!”
“Heh, very good. Then, right away, starting now—”
Bang!
Just as I was about to suggest an after-school lesson, the classroom door was flung open.
“Hey, you two?! In an empty afternoon classroom after school, just what are you doing?!”
Reciting an oddly precise description of the scene for some reason, little Yuinas came bursting in.
Seeing her, Alde said blankly,
“What is it, Yuinas? All out of breath like that.”
“You didn’t come home, big brother, so I came looking!”
“Huh? You went home once and came all the way back?”
“That’s right! And then you ended up alone with this vixen—”
“You—enough already, stop treating your senior like a vixen.”
“She’s gone and gotten alone with you like this, big brother, so vixen suits her just fine!”
“Every time, spouting nonsense…”
Little Yuinas loves her big brother far too much, so I’ve always been treated as an enemy, but… lately I’ve given up on it, so all I could do was give a wry smile.
And Alde’s terribly dense too—so he blithely went and said the very thing I wanted to keep hidden.
“I just made a promise to have Mia teach me my studies… well, starting tomorrow?”
Before I could say anything to Alde, who’d casually pushed it back, little Yuinas spoke.
“Have this woman teach you?! What are you saying, big brother!”
“You’re the one talking nonsense, aren’t you?”
“If you let that woman teach you, if you did… there’s no telling what might happen?!”
“Well, I mean… if you asked whether that’d raise my grades, I’m not too confident, but…”
“That’s not what I’m talking about! Ah, I know! Then I’ll teach you your studies, big brother!”
“Huh? You’re a different year.”
“I’m smarter than you, big brother!!”
Leaving aside, for now, Alde—who’d gone teary-eyed at the flat assertion (it being true, too)—I said to little Yuinas,
“Then why don’t you join the study session too, little Yuinas?”
At that, little Yuinas shot me a sharp glare.
“Why do I have to do a study session with you?!”
“But… even you, little Yuinas, would still find the middle-division work hard, right? And we can’t let Alde get held back like this. And if you join the study session, little Yuinas… you can rest easy, right?”
At what I said, little Yuinas thought quietly for a moment, then eventually nodded.
“Fine… that works. But if you try to get the jump on me, I won’t forgive you?!”
“It’s fine, I won’t do anything like that.”
And so, once again, all I could do was give a wry smile in return.
* * *
“Looking back, that time was… the last…”
Looking back on my school days, I muttered without meaning to, even though regret does no good.
I might be… drunker than I’d thought. So I took a sip of water.
And then I looked anew at Alde, Miss Tisli, and little Yuinas, seated across from me.
(They suit each other… I suppose…)
The thought came to me unbidden.
In this village, I’d been with Alde all along—but in the end, I couldn’t close that distance. And yet Miss Tisli, in the span of a mere few months, looks completely natural beside Alde, without the slightest awkwardness.
Back then—if I’d managed to close the distance with Alde over the three years of the middle division, would it have been me beside Alde now, I wonder…
But in the end I was no good at all…
Even the talk of him taking a job with us, my father balked at, saying, “As labor it’d be welcome, but…” and I reached graduation without being able to fully persuade him. It seems he disliked the idea of Alde and me becoming romantically involved.
And Alde, before I knew it, had decided to become a Royal Guard, so I helped him study for the exam too, but even there I couldn’t say anything…
And in the end, we ended up apart.
Because I never told him anything.
And so Alde set off for the royal capital. Leaving me behind.
(Is it… too late now…)
Wanting to do something about the pricking ache in my chest, even though I’d had too much to drink, I had no choice left but to reach for another drink.
(To be continued—)
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