LDTOTSDML Chapter 4

Finding Del was easy. Alone in the dormitory's front garden—someone shining.

The boy stood there with a set expression, sweeping a hand through gold hair thoroughly soaked in morning sunlight, and the moment he saw Arphina he came running.

Then, the moment he saw her face, he stopped short.

"……Have you been crying?"

He looked hollowed out.

Purple eyes, glassy with tears that seemed ready to spill at any moment, pressed down on the boy's heart like a blade.

"Is it because you're angry at me?"

"……"

Arphina gave no answer at all.

She wasn't especially angry. She simply didn't believe Del's confession. But if she had to name whose fault it was that she felt like crying right now, the cause was, in fact, Del.

The actual culprit, though, was her own timid nature and old wounds.

With no intention of explaining that and no confidence to say it aloud, Arphina just pressed her mouth shut.

Watching her say nothing, Del deflated further.

"I—yesterday, I was too happy and got carried away, and I was rude. I'm really sorry."

At the formal apology, Arphina nearly answered without meaning to—that it wasn't something he needed to be that sorry about.

But Sonia, standing beside her, quickly grabbed her hand and shook her head as if to say don't.

"You're not supposed to confess like that in front of everyone. On top of that, senior doesn't even remember you……"

Yesterday it had been "senior"—tossed off easy, like they'd known each other for years. Just now, it had come out "senior," stiff with formality, every syllable buttoned up.

"I'm sorry for embarrassing you because of me."

Apologizing once more, Del glanced carefully at Arphina's reaction.

"But—what I said, that I like you, senior. That was sincere."

"……Why?"

Arphina found herself tilting her head without meaning to.

She truly couldn't understand it.

"Why do you like me?"

'What part of me?'

Is there even anything to like?

Instead of asking where they might have met before, Arphina asked where, exactly, he'd looked and been so taken.

"Hm?"

At that, this time it was Del who tilted his head.

"How could I point to just one thing? I couldn't."

At his endlessly earnest answer, Arphina grew even more baffled.

"From the crown of your head to your toes, there isn't a single place that isn't lovely. How could I not like you? Is that even possible?"

"My—my crown?"

Arphina found herself wrapping her curly hair with both hands and hiding it without meaning to.

Del held his earnest posture without wavering.

"Senior, you're just like a small animal. A puppy, a rabbit, a baby lamb, a chick……"

Reciting, in a reverent voice, the baby animals Arphina resembled, Del suddenly spoke with rising feeling.

"You don't know how anxious and on-edge my childhood was, senior!"

A boy of a mere fifteen years huffed and puffed.

His parents, who had raised him with love, would have been aghast to hear it.

But what mattered to Del right now was conveying his deep affection to his lady without a single misunderstanding.

"I prayed every day. That senior wouldn't get another sweetheart besides me, that senior would hold conservative beliefs about romance leading straight to marriage and be careful about dating!"

Ah, there's the lunatic.

Sonia understood Del's mental state at once.

"But……"

Del went dark in an instant.

"…even if senior did get a sweetheart, I prayed they'd be someone I could somehow deal with. No—actually, I prayed senior would never, ever be confessed to by anyone but me!"

That's not a prayer. That's a curse.

At this point Sonia was starting to think she should swing the monkey wrench in her hand in the name of justice.

'The kid turned out fine, but……'

Why is he so crazy like this?

Wasn't it normal to just wish for the happiness of someone you liked?

So this handsome boy, who had cursed Arphina against dating since childhood, was clearly a lunatic.

She suddenly found herself curious about the faces of the parents who'd raised this one. What kind of home education had he received, exactly? Had they molded his face so well and just left his character alone?

Sonia quietly checked on Arphina.

Sure enough.

"……"

Startled by a confession horrifying enough to make the listener gasp, Arphina wore a blank, dazed expression.

Sonia was relieved she'd confiscated the monkey wrench when she had the chance.

"……By any chance."

Arphina, who'd said nothing this whole time, finally opened her mouth—shut tight until now.

"Have we met somewhere before?"

"……!"

At the question, Del's eyes went round, and he answered with a smile brimming with joy.

"Yes."

Then he gave an infuriatingly composed, knowing little smile with his eyes.

"Senior. We've met before."

"Where?"

"Um……"

After thinking it over for a moment, Del shook his head.

"I'd like senior to be the one to remember this. I'm just a little bit sulking right now. Just a tiny bit. About as much as the dirt under a fingernail diluted in water."

Arphina grew even more baffled.

Why was this boy looking at her with that expression? As if she were the most precious person in the world.

'Why is he doing this to me?'

Arphina no longer felt the hurt or suspicion she had yesterday.

At this point, she could tell whether she liked it or not. Del's confession wasn't a lie. The boy in front of her genuinely liked her. And this was a feeling Arphina had never once received before.

"So Senior, please just stay right there," Del said. "From now on, it's my turn to put in the work."

"Wh—what kind of work?"

"Conveying my feelings for you until my sincerity reaches you, senior, and until you can trust and believe in me completely!"

Having boldly sworn this in front of everyone, Del grinned.

"I like you, senior!"

The second confession.

"……No."

But Arphina refused again, this time.

"I don't date. I won't marry, either."

I'll live alone and die alone.

Refusing him, Arphina was far more resolute than she had been at the first confession.

The rumor that a wildly handsome, pretty new commoner student had publicly confessed to a third-year in the Technical Department spread through the Academy fast.

"Blond hair, blue eyes? That's him, right?"

"The one who enrolled alongside the young lord?"

"Between the two of them, who's better-looking?"

"Still, you can't really compare a noble and a commoner……"

"So who's the third-year who got confessed to?"

The new student who'd confessed had been famous for his looks since the day he enrolled, so everyone had a rough idea who he was.

"Are you the new kid?"

"Bold. Gotta say, I like the nerve on you."

"Did you come here to study or to fall in love?"

"But you got dumped, right? The whole thing's out already."

A few rotten-natured upperclassmen made a point of it—cornering Del, riding him hard, just because he was a commoner.

"……"

Already in a poor state from being rejected twice, Del shot up from his seat and glared sullenly at the upperclassmen.

"My lord!"

Then he hurried straight over to the young lord in his class, and—

"Those people are teasing me!"

—tattled.

The young lord fixed the troublemaking upperclassmen with a menacing glare.

The upperclassmen smiled sweetly and fled.

Meanwhile.

"Who's the third-year, again?"

"Is she pretty?"

"You know, that incident two years ago—the Bloodbath. The West Garden Bloodbath."

"The one who caused that, apparently?"

"What?! You mean that crazy woman?"

"……So, is she pretty?"

Every time Arphina moved between classrooms, the glances of people sneaking looks at her and the murmuring voices made her shoulders draw in on their own.

"Oh, wh—what do I do……!"

In the end, the moment she got back to the dorm, Arphina picked up the monkey wrench she kept under her bed.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!"

"She's got the monkey wrench again!"

"Oh no, Arphina!"

The Technical Department students crowded around Arphina, who was gripping the wrench tight, busy calming her down with soothing noises.

Concluding that this couldn't go on as it was, the Technical Department students convened an emergency countermeasures meeting.

Even the fifth-years, swamped with graduation projects, carved time out of their busy schedules to attend in person.

The meeting was held in the dormitory dining hall.

"The West Garden Bloodbath can't happen again."

A fifth-year senior, looking utterly wrecked from having pulled an all-nighter just the previous day, stood as their representative and spoke.

"You all remember, right?"

At that, pained expressions surfaced on the students' faces.

How could they forget?

The West Garden Bloodbath.

The incident that had, for the first time in the Academy's history, nearly brought it to the brink of closure—and the one that had put Arphina at the very top of the Technical Department's list of hazardous individuals.

The incident had started with a visitor to the Academy causing a disturbance.

A noble who'd come to see their child attending the Academy had secretly brought in liquor, drunk it until they blacked out, and then gone rampaging through the Academy.

They'd picked fights with and harassed every student they laid eyes on.

Eventually, they'd wandered into the West Garden, where the Technical Department students' workshop was located.

Of all times, that was exactly when Arphina, a new student at the time, happened to be tending to her tools in the garden beside the workshop.

"What's a pretty little thing doing out here all alone? Why don't you come over here with this uncle……"

"Wh—why are you doing this……"

"This uncle's not some weirdooo. You know who I am? I'm the one an' only……!"

"Eek!"

The man, reaching out a hand along with an introduction nobody had asked for, then—

"Eek! Eeeek!"

—suffered a serious injury from the monkey wrench Arphina swung, crying the whole time she swung it. Diagnosis: seven weeks to heal.

Recalling that horrific day, the Technical Department students shuddered.

"……Never again."

A man collapsed and covered in blood, and a female student, herself covered in blood, swinging a monkey wrench.

The noble's family, who had collapsed, lodged a complaint with the Academy.

They demanded the Technical Department student who had struck a nobleman be expelled at once, and that a massive compensation payment be handed over.

"Never—never, ever……!"

What the Technical Department students feared wasn't the incident repeating itself.

"……It can't reach the Duchess's ears!"

A bloodied noble?

Pressure from a noble house?

None of that was anything. No, none of it was even something to be afraid of.

To begin with, the blame from the start sat with the noble who'd swilled himself stupid in a sacred place of learning and gone on a rampage.

That bastard had harassed a good dozen-odd students in the time it took to blink.

And yet somehow, the Academy at the time had gotten embroiled in a considerable dispute over how to handle the incident.

Some professors had even tried to hand down disciplinary action to Arphina, the victim.

And the professors opposed to this had hurried to contact Arphina's guardian.

The person who arrived after being contacted was not her parents or any relative.

"I thought I'd lived long enough to have some sense of things by now……"

"But watching some new crazy bastard roll off the line fresh every single year—guess I've still got a ways to go."

The noble family, whose shouting had been loud enough to bring the Academy building down, finally shut their mouths.

"Y—Your Grace……?"