COARV Chapter 9

He grabbed my hand in a panic, flustered. It had already swollen an angry red. They say when you're angry enough, you don't even feel the pain right away—and that was exactly the state I was in.

"Kallis."

My hand throbbed, slowly, gradually.

"If I were you, Kallis Haneton."

I glared at Kallis and kept talking.

"I'd have broken the engagement with me long ago and proposed to the Saint."

"What?"

Kallis froze, his face struck with shock.

"That… what are you talking about? The woman I love is you."

"In front of the woman he loves, pitifully clutching the hand of the woman he doesn't—who's supposed to understand a man like that?"

"Seria!"

Maybe, like Kallis said, I understood less than I should. Lina was simply ill—of course Kallis helping her was the right thing to do.

So why was I so angry about it? Because I knew Lina would never love him back?

Since being transported into Seria, I'd spent a full year reading the room, struggling just to survive. Which meant the original novel held that much power over me.

Which meant it changed nothing that Kallis, too, was still the sub-male-lead. Devoted to the female lead, never chosen by her, and dying by his own hand.

I liked Kallis. At first, healing his arm had only been to survive—but I couldn't bring myself to dislike Kallis, who'd slowly let his guard down around me, started smiling, even started teasing me a little.

At first it had been a sense of obligation, purely for survival. But little by little, it had grown harder to hold down the pull I felt toward him. If a happy ending was already prepared for the leads, wasn't it all right if a supporting character got a little happiness too? I'd rationalized it that way, and hadn't suppressed my feelings for him at all.

And so, one day, my fiancé had dropped to one knee and proposed to me.

"Seria, if we have to have an arranged marriage regardless, aren't I the best possible option?"

"…What are you talking about? You're the one in a hurry for an arranged marriage, not me."

"Still a knife with your words, aren't you. Either way, Seria, I'm not so bad, am I?"

Before meeting Lina, Kallis had been racked with headaches over vassals pushing him toward an arranged marriage. He was fairly romantic at heart and hadn't wanted a marriage locked into a mold.

Seria, by contrast, was relatively free from that pressure. Still, I'd thought marrying Kallis wasn't a bad idea. He, the sub-male-lead, and I, the villainess—we were both, in the original, headed toward wretched ends regardless.

If a way for both of us to reach a peaceful ending stood right in front of us, I'd thought, there was nothing wrong with reaching out and taking a little greed for ourselves.

The priests did try to dissuade me, asking whether I truly meant to marry. Once I swore I wouldn't forget my duties as a Stern even so—worried, I imagine, that a Stern would end up belonging to a single house rather than the Temple—the marriage to Kallis was finally allowed to proceed.

It wasn't the desperate, all-consuming love of a romance novel's leads, but I truly had liked Kallis.

And Kallis knew none of it. Every time I looked at him, it felt like watching a foolish, tragic moth throwing itself into a fire it knew nothing about.

That thought hurt so much that—

My vision blurred. I covered my face with both hands and turned away from him entirely.

"…Seria?"

Kallis's voice, which had been angry this whole time somewhere underneath, went weak in an instant. He stood facing me and pulled my hands away from my face. He murmured, his voice tangled.

"I never thought I'd be the one to make you cry… I'm truly… I'm sorry. Seria, don't cry. I was wrong."

Kallis pulled me into an embrace and wiped my tears away.

"The moment we're married, let's go straight to Haneton territory. It's a beautiful place. Once this treatment is finished, I won't see the Saint again. Don't cry."

It took a few minutes before I calmed down at all. Once I had, it was mortifying. Seria was, by nature, fiercely proud, so crying in front of someone else in this body brought a wave of endless embarrassment.

Still, Kallis, true to being my fiancé, understood this tendency of mine well. He walked with me and spoke, and by then the mood had lightened enough that Kallis even offered up something like a joke.

"And there's no breaking the engagement now, Seria."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm going to marry you, no matter what. Marrying a precious Stern means putting up with at least this much."

"Hmph… Just don't be late to the wedding."

"I understand. I'll never be late."

"Hard to believe."

"Why?"

"What woman would easily trust a fiancé who tried to change the wedding dress on the Saint's word alone?"

"…Ah. You've been holding on to that, then?"

Kallis's expression turned awkward.

"That… I have nothing to say for it. Was I wrong?"

"I did think about breaking the engagement, over it."

"What? That far?"

Kallis's voice held genuine surprise.

"But Seria, I was angry, hearing what the Saint said."

"Kallis, how would you feel if I tried to change your wedding suit because of His Highness?"

"Why does His Highness suddenly come up in our conversation?"

"How would it feel."

"……."

Kallis glared off into empty space for a moment, then sighed.

"I'm sorry."

He walked me all the way to the stables. Once I'd mounted my horse, I glanced back over my shoulder. Kallis was, in the meantime, listening to something the healing priests had come to tell him.

Probably about Lina.

I remembered what Kallis had said just before we'd reached the stables.

'Once the Saint's treatment is done today, I won't see her again after that. Seria, I swear I'll be nothing but a faithful husband to you.'

He was the head of House Haneton. He'd been named Lina's guardian. This much, at least, couldn't be helped, he'd said. I nodded slowly.

Crossing through the main gate, I glanced back once more—Kallis was still standing there, a small dot in the distance.

Lina, pale and haggard, brightened the moment she saw Kallis.

"Kallis! I…!"

"Lina."

Kallis came closer and let out a sigh.

"Today will be the last time we call each other by name."

Lina's eyes went wide. She might cry, streaming tears. He'd been certain she would.

"…All right, Kallis."

But against Kallis's expectation, Lina accepted it with surprising calm. If anything, it was Kallis who had to ask again.

"You're not going to ask why?"

"Baron Aison already… scolded me for it. Seria's priestess had a few words for me too."

To the Temple, Lina the Saint was an irreplaceable treasure beyond price. That didn't mean there was any reason to mistreat Seria the Stern. It was purely on account of Seria's cold, after all, that they'd dispatched a high-ranking priest all the way out to Berke territory.

"Then starting tomorrow, we call each other Saint and Marquess Haneton?"

"Yes. After the wedding, it'll be hard for us to even meet."

"You're my precious friend, though…"

Tears shone, clear, in Lina's eyes.

"I wish we'd met a little sooner."

"……."

Kallis said nothing. Around his wrist was a bracelet set with a hexagonal demon crystal.

She hadn't seen it before, and it didn't seem like Kallis's taste. More than that, it looked small on his wrist. Lina understood at once.

That his fiancée, Seria, had given it to him as a gift.

Lina, wrapped in a gloomy mood, suddenly spoke.

"I want to be friends with Seria."

"…You're calling her by name? When did the two of you get close?"

"Well, that's not it, but."

"If you're not close, using her given name is against etiquette, Lina."

"Etiquette, etiquette, that's all you ever say!"

Lina finally broke into the tears she'd been holding back, hard.

"Can't you see I'm holding it in? It's already terrifying enough being sent back to the Grand Temple, and I'm holding in losing a precious friend like you, too…!"

Tears dropped from her eyes, one after another. Kallis, flustered, reached to wipe them away as he always did, then caught himself and stopped, his hand curling into a fist.

The hand that didn't reach to wipe them, as gently as it always had, felt heartless. Lina cried, sobbing, and shouted.

"Do you know how many times my world has changed now? You said you were my guardian. You said you'd protect me forever! Was all of that a lie? I was happy enough just hearing those words, so why…!"

Lina buried her face in both hands and cried. The backs of her hands were mottled with yellow and blue-purple bruises. Kallis's resolve weakened.

'She must be frightened.'

When the body hurts, the heart weakens too, that's just how it is. He patted her back, gently. How long had it been? The trembling of her shoulders finally settled, some time later. Lina wiped her wet cheeks with Kallis's handkerchief and said:

"…Kallis. I want to go visit the glacier."

"The glacier? Why, all of a sudden?"

"I said I wanted to be friends with Seria. I'm a Stern too, so if I go to the glacier, I can lighten her load, and that'll help us get close faster, won't it?"

"Lina, I understand how you feel, but your body isn't in any condition for that right now."

Lina, her face still tear-streaked, broke into a bright smile.

"Are you worried I'll steal your fiancée's reputation? Don't worry, that's not it. Though, well—I am a little jealous, that everyone showers your fiancée with praise…"

She said it playfully, but Kallis's set expression didn't ease in the slightest. Lina bit down hard on her pale lips and said:

"You won't even let me have this? Then I'll go by myself."

"Lina!"

In the end, Kallis let out a sigh, looking at Lina. He already understood her personality well enough. If he told her no, Lina was exactly the type to climb out a window alone at night and go anyway. For now, she was still the Saint under House Haneton's protection.

He couldn't afford to let anything happen to her. And more than that—today truly was the last day.

"All right. But only if it's a quick visit and back."

Lina lit up and sprang to her feet at once.

"Let's sneak off together, just the two of us."

"Sneak off?"

"It'll be fun! Like a movie."

"What's a movie?"

"Um, well—like a novel? Or a play."

"That's a word from your world, isn't it."

"Yeah!"

Lina's eyes sparkled. She had a smile that was, in its way, genuinely rare. Someone from a whole other world, she'd said… Kallis liked listening to Lina's stories.

"Tell me more about that."

"About what?"

"About the place you came from."

"Oh, well then…"

Still, just in case, Kallis left word with one of his knights that he'd be slipping off to the glacier quietly with Lina, and then he left.