Getting dressed and putting on makeup for Miss Temple was not something that could be done all day long.
After taking off her dress and removing her makeup, Ellen took a shower.
Liana didn’t just help her with her dress and makeup, she also made her practice her facial expressions. She told Ellen to be prepared.
It didn’t seem like she had done much, but it’s all new and unfamiliar, so she was exhausted now. Both physically and mentally.
But that didn’t mean she didn’t like it.
She felt like she was discovering a completely different version of herself that she hadn’t even realized she had, so she had looked in the mirror and wondered, ‘Is this me?’ dozens of times today.
Ellen dried her hair and laid down on her bed.
Tomorrow was the start of the Miss Temple pageant.
-Crumble
Ellen narrowed her eyes at the rumbling in her stomach.
Normally, it was time for a late-night snack with Reinhardt, but Ellen remembered Liana’s firm caution.
‘You, don’t eat anything tonight.’
‘…Why?’
‘I know you don’t gain any weight, but what if you eat something the night before and your face gets puffy the next day?’
‘…I don’t know.’
‘Anyway, I told you not to eat, so don’t eat. If it were any other day, it might be different, but you have to endure today.’
‘…Yes.’
It’s not like she was told to starve. She was just forbidden from snacking on this night only. She could endure it for a night.
But routines were scary.
-Sigh.
“….”
It’s a situation where the body was sending signals that it should eat at a time when it always used to eat something.
Even worse, there was also the fact that the more someone told you not to, the more you wanted it.
She had gone to bed without a midnight snack quite a few times, but now she’s even more hungry because she thinks she shouldn’t eat today.
Normally, Ellen had a strong sense of self-control. But even when she does eat a lot, she doesn’t gain much weight because of her physical activity and constitution, and on top of that, there was always plenty of food in the Royal Class dormitory. She even spent time with Reinhardt, who would cook anything for her.
Ellen realized that she’s rarely been able to resist eating lately.
Still, she must do better tomorrow. Is she really so weak that she can’t handle this level of hunger?
She tried to force herself to sleep, but it’s hard.
Maybe it’s the moonlight streaming through the window. Ellen got out of bed to draw the curtains.
And then.
As she reached for the curtains, she could see the street outside her dorm.
In the dark, under the moonlight.
She recognized two familiar faces.
Reinhard and Harriet de Saint-Owan.
They were walking, hand in hand.
“….”
Ellen stood still, watching the scene from inside her room.
Harriet was walking beside Reinhard with her head down in embarrassment, and Reinhard walked beside her, holding her hand slightly.
Ellen watched the scene, frozen still.
The two were holding hands.
What was so special about that gesture?
She had held hands many times, and she had hugged many times.
She had done it many times herself. Even with Reinhardt as a friend, she has always done it.
So, holding hands was something that she understood friends could do.
It was perfectly acceptable to do so.
But.
Ellen couldn’t take her eyes off their clasped hands.
Had she….
Had she already lost her place?
No.
Maybe it didn’t exist in the first place.
An illusion that there was a place only she could reach.
‘It’s been a while since we last met!’
Actually, maybe it was already….
Maybe it had been, for a while now….
Is that what happened?
Was that why those two were….
No.
It was a hand that she could hold.
A hand she’d held many times.
She had thought that the privilege of holding Reinhardt’s hands belonged solely to her, so when she saw him and Harriet holding hands….
Why did her heart feel like this?
It felt so fragile, like it was going to break.
‘I, you know, I… I really, really… Sometimes.’
‘I think you’re really, really unfair….’
Harriet’s words echoed in Ellen’s head.
Ellen suddenly realized that Harriet had always felt this way.
Being only able to watch as they made memories and created stories in places she didn’t know.
Forging bonds she couldn’t possibly make.
All she could do was watch and she couldn’t do anything about it.
It felt like this.
It felt like betrayal, and she felt helpless, frustrated, sorrowful and mistreated.
Harriet described this feeling with one word: unfair.
She didn’t think that was a good way to describe it.
Ellen silently watched them walk back to the dorm.
Maybe it was already too late.
Harriet was doing what she had to do. There’s no reason to hate her. If Ellen had the right to hate her for something like that, Harriet would have already loathed her long ago.
Ellen tried to convince herself that she didn’t have to hate Harriet because she was only doing what she had to do.
That’s why, she also had to do what she had to.
She just had to look her best tomorrow. Maybe Reinhardt will be a little bit different from before, after seeing her tomorrow.
They’ll talk about this and that, and maybe things will be slightly different between them.
That’s all that matters.
Today is today, and tomorrow is tomorrow.
Ellen squeezed her eyes shut, trying to erase the lingering images of those two from her mind.
That night.
I swung my sword in the training room.
There were no signs of Cliffman nor Ellen. I beat up a scarecrow for the first time in a long while. I could have asked Saviolin Turner to teach me, but it was getting late, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get to bed on time if she did, because our training would have been intense.
So, I just continued swinging my training sword at the scarecrow.
-Puck!
“…Damn it!”
The training sword broke.
I must have swung it while blanking out. I haven’t been so distracted during training for some time now.
I was preoccupied and restless.
I had lost track of time.
It was already well past my usual bedtime. Even if I had been taught by Saviolin Turner, it would have been over long ago.
My whole body was drenched in sweat.
I gathered up the remains of my shattered training sword and tossed it into the trash can, then opened the training room window.
A stinging cold breeze brushed my cheeks and sweaty clothes.
Right now, I’m….
I felt uneasy for some reason.
I wondered about what I should do.
I couldn’t figure it out.
It was well past my bedtime, and I was sure I’d break a training sword again if I tried to swing it while in this state, so I decided to get cleaned up and get some sleep.
I thought about cooking something, but without Ellen, I didn’t feel like cooking anything by myself.
“Ugh.”
I walked down the hallway and bumped into someone. He looked at me and cocked his head.
It wasn’t just anyone, it was Bertus.
Wasn’t he busy managing the mana train? What was he doing in the dormitory at this hour?
“Why are you still up at this kind of time?”
Bertus asked the question before I could.
“I was in the training room.”
“…Training so late, even on a festival. That’s impressive.”
Bertus smirked.
“What about you?”
“Oh… I had some work, but now I’m going back to rest.”
The festivities weren’t over yet, but was the work on managing the mana train finished?
Bertus had dark circles under his eyes, whether from the extended hours of managing the guard in the field or maybe having too much deskwork. You shouldn’t be praising me for training during the festival, aren’t you actually more uptight than usual?
“Oh, I heard you won the tournament, congratulations.”
“Uh… Yeah.”
Bertus patted me on the shoulder and walked toward his room. If even I could see his fatigue through his peerless facade, he’d probably have had a rough few days.
He turned to go inside, then looked back at me as if he’d suddenly remembered something.
“Oh… Wait a minute.”
“Uh… What is it?”
A cold sweat broke out all over my body.
I had made it through all the others
But was this it?
This is the first time he’s seen me since he last saw me crossdressing.
Bertus narrowed his eyes as he stared at me.
Was this the end?
He doesn’t recognize me, does he? I mean, we’ve met face-to-face, but that was just for a short while, right?
“Hmmm….”
Bertus stared at me with a frown, then shook his head.
“No, I think I’m just tired.”
Bertus made a spine-chilling remark and then went back into his room.
Once he was inside his dorm room, Bertus dragged his heavy body into the water, bathed, and then flopped onto his bed.
Managing the operation of the mana train during the festival.
He didn’t think it was a big deal. The mana train was the most important means of transportation in the capital, and there were many passengers even on normal days, but during this period, passengers from all over the continent flock to it.
And yet.
Some people had never seen or heard of a mana train in their entire lives.
Children cried because they thought a monster was coming, and even adults ran away in a panic.
Well, it was mostly nobles that were involved.
Even in a village in the far corner of the continent, there was such a thing as status.
If you were willing to travel all the way to the capital for the Temple festival, you had enough money to pay the warp gate fee.
As such, it was usually people who had high status in their own region who came to the Capital City.
There were plenty of people who complained loudly about the lack of noble-only carriages on the mana trains. They asked how commoners could possibly share the same carriage as nobility and complained loudly.
While it may not have been particularly amusing to watch those ants establish their hierarchy, Bertus still had to do this job well.
Trying to resolve all incidents as smoothly and safely as possible ended up causing him an overwhelming amount of stress.
Therefore, unable to rest properly in the office, he eventually realized that he had to sleep in his own bed today and thus returned to the dormitory.
Bertus was at the point where he felt that his head was about to explode.
However, there was something that suddenly came to his mind upon seeing Reinhardt.
Although he was too occupied with his work to think about anything else, he had always kept the girl at the back of his mind.
At the moment he saw Reinhard, the girl with the silver hair immediately came to the forefront.
He couldn’t forget her.
After committing an unforgivable offense of spitting tea all over the face of a woman he had just met, Bertus could never forget that person’s face for the rest of his life.
‘They have a resemblance. Definitely.’
It might have been a mistake due to exhaustion, but upon careful consideration, she definitely looked like Reinhardt.
Of course, one needed to put them side by side to see it properly.
He was certain that the girl with silver hair and Reinhardt resembled each other a lot.
However, Bertus’s thinking unfolded in a rather strange way.
Anyway.
Bertus was too busy to know about the events that happened during the festival. At best, he only knew that Reinhardt had won the first year tournament.
Therefore, he doesn’t even know who the silver haired girl was, nor does he know that she participated in the Temple cross-dressing contest.
Therefore, to Bertus, the silver haired girl was actually a girl.
Reinhardt and that girl were completely different from each other.
But somehow they still resembled each other.
Even the way they talked was similar.
When he asked her about her hair, she said it was dyed which was pretty interesting.
If he recalled correctly, Reinhardt was from the streets.
‘Does Reinhardt have a younger sibling?’
It’s entirely possible that Reinhardt didn’t know that he had any blood relatives, as some children from the streets were abandoned at birth.
He could just ask Reinhardt.
‘Do you have any siblings?’
Of course, the answer would either be yes or no, but Reinhardt would wonder why he was asking.
“No, it’s probably nothing.” he muttered to himself.
There were people that looked alike by sheer coincidence.
If he told Reinhardt that he met someone that could probably be his sibling, he’d probably be disappointed if it turned out to be wrong.
‘I’ll just look into it myself….’
He didn’t even have to tell Reinhard.
If it’s true, Reinhardt might be able to find his lost family.
If not, he’d just get his handkerchief back.
Thinking of it as a frivolous matter, Bertus slowly slipped into slumber.
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