LDTOTSDML Chapter 7

The moment Del smiled, wide and sudden, the young lord had to fight down a full-body shudder.

"Don't dress up a shotgun wedding as something romantic."

"Either way. Being born like that—you think I'll give up on you easily, senior?"

The young lord settled instead for a glare that carried his genuine wish never to associate with the boy again.

Del didn't care either way.

"So how do I get her to like me?"

Del had thrown himself completely into the problem of running into Arphina naturally.

"If I just show up out of nowhere, I feel like that'd make her uncomfortable."

"Then just propose to her properly. As a formal engagement."

The young lord, already growing bored of the whole business, said it without much investment.

"I hate to say it myself, but you're not exactly lacking, are you."

"That's true. There's almost no one as impressive as me."

"Ah, my mistake. Your sanity, though, is severely lacking."

Setting that aside anyway.

Face, family, fortune, connections. And on top of all that, the power Del would inherit someday, and everything that came with it.

Not a single thing lacking. 

Except, again—his personality.

"If you propose as who you actually are, her family would probably love it."

If the strongest, most fearsome house in the empire proposed first, who exactly would turn it down?

They'd be frightened, if anything, but every one of them would be thanking their stars.

But Del shook his head.

"Senior would hate it instead."

"Hm."

Even the young lord agreed with that.

"Sounds like she doesn't get along with her family."

"So that method's the last resort."

The trump card he'd been saving, to use only if everything else failed and he still hadn't managed to reach Arphina.

"There's tons of that in the romance novels Mother and Aunt read. Marrying without love, and then after the wedding night, feelings just—"

"…"

At this point, the young lord actually felt sorry for Arphina.

'Shouldn't someone stop this?'

As a matter of human decency—talking this lunatic out of his love, wasn't that basically saving one innocent life? 

"Well, first…"

Having apparently sorted his thoughts, Del hauled himself up off the ground with a grunt.

The boy brushed the dirt off his trousers, his expression still complicated, but with no hesitation in it whatsoever.

"Information first. I need to know what she likes, and then I need to plan how to run into her by accident."

"…What are you going to do?"

"She's got a friend she's close with, doesn't she."

Del smiled.

"Intelligence work is basic."

"…What are you doing?"

Returning from class, Arphina found Sonia standing in front of her desk and blinked, eyes going round.

"Oh, you're back?"

Sonia, who'd gotten there first, waved.

"Before you get the wrong idea—I didn't go through your desk."

"I didn't say anything."

"Funny. It's written all over your face."

A little stung, Arphina mumbled that it wasn't like that and came over to the desk. Sonia stepped aside for its owner.

Sitting in her chair, Arphina asked, "So, what were you doing?"

Instead of answering, Sonia tilted her head toward the bookshelf mounted above the desk.

"Looking at your books."

Arphina tilted her head too. Sonia wasn't much of a reader.

"I know you read a lot, but I was just thinking—you really don't discriminate by subject, huh."

"Reading's a habit."

Arphina said.

"Before I came to the Academy, I didn't have any friends, so I just read all the time."

"Hmph. And now that you have me, you're still reading like this?"

Sonia pouted and grumbled.

Arphina paused for a second, then realized it was one of Sonia's teasing jokes and pouted right back at her.

"Ha ha."

"Puhaha!"

The two of them burst out laughing at the same time.

"Mm."

Shyly reeling in her laughter, Arphina pulled a book from the shelf and held it out to Sonia.

"This is my favorite."

"What's it about?"

"The main character gets revenge on the people who ruined her life."

"…Wow."

Sonia took the book, letting out a rough laugh.

"You read this kind of thing? First I'm hearing of it."

"I like it when good gets rewarded and evil gets punished."

Arphina, who read anything without discrimination, liked stories best when the main character got revenge on family members who'd tormented them as a child.

And it had to end with the bad parents or family getting punished, and the lonely, suffering child ending up happy without fail.

As a kid, Arphina had hunted down fairy tales and novels with that exact plot with something close to obsession.

"I guess that kind of thing is the most fun, honestly."

Sonia, who'd made rough sense of why Arphina read this genre, perched on her own desk next to Arphina's to read the book she'd been handed.

The moment she opened it, she let out a huge yawn.

Arphina set her bag down on her desk.

"Hey."

Sonia, who'd been staring blankly at the book, spoke.

"I didn't say anything."

"What?"

"Basically, it means I'm never betraying you. Ever."

"…Yeah."

Arphina, halfway through undoing her uniform buttons, nodded.

"I know."

The people Arphina had let into her heart could be counted on one hand.

And Sonia was one of them.

A month had already passed since the new students entered the Academy.

Having settled a little into Academy life, the first-years had completely shed the bright-eyed anticipation they'd shown on their first day.

"Uhhhh…"

"Uhh…"

The first-year Political Department students in particular looked ready to pass out in every single class.

They'd all grown up being told, on the outside, how smart they were, but the Academy trampled the raised noses of these fresh-faced prodigies flat, one class at a time, until they understood reality.

The students, groaning under a workload beyond imagining and an assignment load even more brutal, were slowly being ground down.

"I—is this really a first-year class?"

"Ugh, I think I'm going to be sick…"

"Where on earth did this person even come from…"

"You don't know? Professor Erkina used to run the Academy itself."

"Then why is she teaching us here?"

"Her first student was the Duke, apparently. So probably…"

In the middle of all this, there were still students who remained unfazed and full of energy.

One was, naturally, the young lord—the very reason a retired professor had come out of retirement. As the Duchess's younger brother, he walked out of the class everyone else was groaning through looking, alone, radiant and perfectly composed.

And then there was one more.

"Wow, that professor's class is really fun!"

The commoner first-year who'd been remarkable since day one—Del.

"My lord, want to work on today's assignment with me?"

"No."

"Let's do it together! I always want to be with my lord."

Del was a genuinely difficult person to categorize.

On the first day, he'd made the rounds as a rumor purely for his looks, beautiful enough to hold his own even standing next to the young lord.

Then he'd confessed to a third-year senior out of nowhere, gotten rejected twice, and earned a little sympathy for it.

"Ah, would my lord like this? Chocolate cookies from home."

"Go away."

"Then how about a strawberry-milk candy?"

"Don't you have class?"

"I've got the exact same schedule as you, my lord. Hehe."

By now, he'd been permanently stamped: Handsome, Clueless Lunatic. 

"…You're really something, you know that?"

Boves, who shared a dorm room with Del, sidled up next to him to strike up a conversation.

"What is?"

Del asked, his expression completely innocent.

"Aren't you scared? Of that lord?"

"Why would I be scared? He's just a person, same as us."

"Yeah, but he's a noble. And not just any noble—the little brother of the Duke, who's famous for being terrifying!"

"I think it's kind of impressive you can say that so confidently, actually."

Del had exchanged names with his dorm-mates.

"I'm Del. What's your name, though?"

"This guy... we've been sharing this dorm for almost a month now."

Wounded, Boves told him his name anyway.

"I'm Boves. And this quiet one over here is Agnus."

"Wait, why didn't we introduce ourselves earlier?"

"Because you were too busy sobbing to yourself about wanting to see your Technical Department senior every single day!"

Boves had a cheerful disposition, and Agnus didn't talk much but knew how to actually listen to what other people said.

"So, want to go to the library and work on the assignment together?"

Del threw an arm over each of his friends' shoulders and hustled them off to grab a table.

Lately, Arphina felt like she'd fallen into some kind of trap.

"…"

The situation was troubling enough that worry showed clearly on a face that usually gave nothing away.

Friends, seniors, juniors—everyone who saw her kept asking if something was wrong.

Eventually, Arphina brought it to Sonia.

"He keeps showing up."

"…Huh?"

It was a fairly compressed complaint, missing quite a lot of context. Sonia, in the middle of biting into a piece of fruit as a pre-dinner snack, dropped it.

The apple rolled across the floor and thudded to a stop against the door.

"…Is—is it a ghost you're seeing?"

Arphina shook her head fast, side to side.

"He keeps catching my eye."

"Hey, could you maybe try being a little more precise? What exactly is 'showing up'?"

"…"

Arphina hesitated, then whispered, her face frightened.

"The—the one who confessed to me…"

Arphina's biggest worry these days was Del.

It wasn't that Del had come back to confess to her again, or that he'd been fawning around trying to strike up a friendship.

"I see him everywhere I go."

The first time was the library.

She'd gone to return a book and borrow a new one, and in the reading area packed with students, one boy stood out, glowing on his own. Del.

Among all the faces that blurred into sameness, Del alone seemed to be shining with some kind of divine blessing and favoritism.

His bright gold hair was slightly mussed, and his blue eyes, narrowed in concentration, carried a fairly serious quality.

"…He really is pretty."

Seeing Del up close for the first time, Arphina was purely, genuinely impressed.

She'd been too nervous to really register it when he confessed to her, but watching him from a little distance now, with a clear head, Del really was beautiful.

He was the third most beautiful person Arphina had ever seen in her life.

The first was the Duchess.

The second was the Duchess's son, whom she'd met exactly once as a child.

But that was as far as Arphina's assessment went.

Arphina found the book she'd been looking for and hurried straight out of the library.

But the next day.