My Beloved Princess ~The Boy Called Incompetent Rises with Only a Sword and the Princess's Devotion~ - Chapter 031: Reminiscence

Three months ago.

Central Dragon Emperor Academy. The day of the entrance ceremony.

Under a cherry tree, he’d met Yotsuba sitting before a flowerbed.

Her figure with both hands layered together and raised to the heavens seemed strange, and Kishō had found it suspicious. He’d wondered if it was some religion, or perhaps an airhead type of girl.

He had to head to the main school building for the entrance ceremony. Just as he tried to pass by with hurried steps, she suddenly stood up and stood before Kishō.

On both her hands, cherry blossom petals had piled up, with an orange calendula placed as if buried among the cherry blossoms.

“Look, so many.”

Yotsuba held out both hands as if showing Kishō. While he couldn’t say even one clever line, she tilted her head.

“Are you a first-year too? Then we’re the same.”

Kishō still dreamed of that beaming smile from that time. As a nightmare.

◇◇◇◇◇

Yotsuba was the same first-year. A classmate girl. A cheerful, lively beauty. Twin tails suited her well, and she’d call out to him every time they passed in the school.

For the one week from the entrance ceremony until the aptitude attribute examination was performed, the curriculum was organized centered on interaction between students and classroom lecture courses. The only exception was swordsmanship lessons, which had no relation to aptitude attributes.

At that time, he still didn’t hold twisted feelings toward dragonkin girls, so Kishō had the desire to show his good points and appeal himself. So he demonstrated enough ability to win overwhelmingly while holding back enough not to injure anyone.

Naturally, he was popular with girls. He didn’t feel bad about it.

“Hey, Kishō-kun. You have talent in swordsmanship, don’t you?”

Yotsuba had said so when they passed in the hallway. When Kishō vaguely affirmed, she floated a bewitching smile and said “Hey, why don’t we go out?” Kishō hesitated a little, but since he didn’t particularly have a girl he liked, he had no reason to refuse and agreed. The two began dating.

Their standard date course was strolling the gardens. For them who couldn’t leave the academy without a special reason, that was about the only option, but just going around the spacious gardens bit by bit—here today, over there tomorrow—was enjoyable enough.

At first Kishō had been with her in a “somehow together” kind of way, but as their interaction progressed, he gradually became attracted to her.

However, dates were always led by her, and Kishō was constantly being led around. That was a bit worrying, but she’d said she was happier having him go along with what she wanted to do, so he decided not to think deeply about it.

They’d gazed at the sunset from the rooftop once. Her hand that he’d held for the first time was warm and slightly sweaty. He thought they’d both been nervous. He felt like their feelings had connected. From there, the distance between the two rapidly closed.

There was also a time he’d been treated to her handmade lunch box under the clock tower. After eating, when she’d given him a lap pillow, he’d enjoyed those soft thighs. He’d learned for the first time then that girls smelled this good.

One day after dating for a week. The day before the aptitude attribute examination.

Kishō and Yotsuba kissed at the fountain plaza dyed in the sunset.

Smiling bashfully, she reddened her face.

“This means we’re engaged now.”

Dragonkin make a kiss proof of engagement.

It was a rule passed down from ancient times.

This moment was the peak of happiness.

Waking from the dream from there was quick.

The next day, he received a judgment of no aptitude attribute.

Having received the trigger from the Princess, his resolve to cling to the academy and remain had solidified. So he’d been prepared to confront the instructors.

But the fraying occurred from a different direction. An ambush force had been lurking.

As academy life progressed, the fact that he had no talent besides swordsmanship was exposed to broad daylight. The plating peeled away, and the female students who’d been close to Kishō left one by one. While that was lonely, at this point it was still only a minor matter.

Because he thought that was fine as long as Yotsuba stayed beside him.

In fact, while many female students gave up on Kishō, only Yotsuba remained to the very end. Kishō was happier about that than anything else.

However, the parting came suddenly. It was about two weeks after he’d started dating Yotsuba. She’d changed so drastically he wondered if she was a different person. The fact that he had no aptitude attribute had been exposed.

“I thought something was strange. You just observe during breath lessons, and there’s even rumors you can’t use magic. So I asked the teacher.”

At first, Kishō couldn’t understand why she was angry. Though he knew “might makes right” as knowledge of dragonkin characteristics, he didn’t have the actual sense accompanying it.

Kishō’s thinking was this: Feelings of liking contain special emotions. That’s not something so light it would immediately collapse and disappear just because of no aptitude attribute. Though the days they’d dated were still shallow, they’d spent intense daily life and deepened their bond, hadn’t they? They’d even gotten engaged, after all. He’d believed it wasn’t such a fragile bond that it would easily tear.

“I get that you like strong guys. But romance isn’t just about that, is it?”

“If I’m with a weak man, I’ll die quickly. Don’t you understand that?”

She’d said so with contempt. And then—

“To act as if you have ability… you’re like a fraud.”

Of course he had no intent to deceive. It was just that dragonkin tended to scorn humans, and telling her he was half-dragonkin required considerable courage. He’d intended to tell her everything eventually, but now, even voicing those words held no meaning.

Even so, judging he needed to show sincerity, Kishō apologized while coming out about being half-dragonkin. He courageously confessed that his dragonkin abilities were remarkably reduced because he was half-dragonkin. That his lack of aptitude attribute was probably because of that.

But she turned eyes on him as if looking at filth.

“Huh? Impossible! To have lowly human blood running through you is repulsive. I intended it as an advance investment, but what a huge failure.”

Lowly human. Those words shocked him so much he couldn’t say anything back.

Kishō powerlessly crumpled to the spot and could only look up at Yotsuba continuing her abuse.

“Let’s break up. We’re done here.”

At that devil-like decision cutting him off so easily, Kishō couldn’t accept it. So he persisted with “We got engaged, didn’t we?” She cut down that protest in one stroke.

“I’m annulling the engagement. Also—”

With cold eyes that made it clearly understood she no longer had even a speck of lingering attachment, looking down at Kishō collapsed pathetically, she added:

“Please don’t tell anyone we were engaged. It would be a stain on me.”

Without looking back even once, she left.

And then she disappeared from the academy altogether.

As if severing the abhorrent memory.

At that moment, Kishō’s world collapsed.

Black despair painted over all of the world in one color.

She’d said “It would be a stain on me.” This final statement was what hit hardest. Dragonkin girls might seem promiscuous, but they tend to value their honor. Being engaged to another means exchanging a kiss, so when an engagement is annulled, their honor becomes sullied by that amount, and their value as a woman decreases. Hating that, she’d unilaterally tried to make the engagement never have happened.

To catch the next man.

Being cursed as a fraud. Being cursed as lowly human. They were shocks, but having even the memories until now erased was the greatest shock of all.

When he realized it, his feet had headed toward the fountain plaza where they’d first exchanged a kiss.

Sitting on a bench, his gaze stared at empty space. Those eyes reflected no image. Emotion had disappeared, and he wanted to become one with the air and vanish like this. He was thinking things like how worthless him vanishing like this would be fitting.

“You look gloomy.”

Before he knew it, someone had sat beside him.

Chestnut-colored hair cut to a length where ears were just barely hidden. Large eyes and a small nose. A cute-looking girl. Her talkative-looking mouth was faintly smiling.

Suddenly, his back was struck hard with a smack, and his chest bent backward.

“You’re thinking you’re the most unfortunate in the world, aren’t you? I get it, I get that feeling!”

What a strangely familiar person. That was his first impression of her.

But strangely, he didn’t feel bad about it.

Perhaps her penetratingly bright personality made him think so.

“Who are you?”

“Me? I’m Ōka. And you?”

“…Kishō.”

“Then, from now on you’re Shō-kun.”

“Huh?”

“A nickname. A nickname. In western culture there’s something called pet names, you see—”

Ōka was endlessly talkative, and that untroubled, bottomlessly cheerful personality was salvation for Kishō at that time. Her talk had a mysterious power to heal heartbreak. Kishō told her everything that had happened. She didn’t take it seriously and listened with a teasing attitude. That fortunately worked in reverse. It was much better than having her worry strangely.

His relationship with Ōka was from there.

She not only didn’t make a boyfriend, she didn’t even make moves to cozy up to men. So she stayed beside Kishō all along. He didn’t understand her true intent. But it didn’t change that she was a precious, precious friend. If she was ever in trouble, he intended to help her no matter what he had to put aside.

Thanks to Ōka, most of his wounds healed, but they never completely healed to the end. Perhaps it was because in the months that passed, though not as a party involved, he’d witnessed dragonkin girls’ turnabouts countless times, and each time felt pain like having old wounds gouged.

Sometimes lovers’ quarrels in empty classrooms.

“I’ve come to question your future prospects.”

Sometimes third-years troubled about post-graduation paths.

“I’ll get a job with a large pack after all. I need to look at reality rather than naive romance.”

Sometimes, the ethnic migration-like switching of men when grade rankings changed greatly. This was something Kishō would later experience himself after the mock battle with the Princess.

He was fed up.

His distrust of dragonkin girls increased day by day, and he came to hold twisted feelings.

Pureblooded dragonkin men didn’t worry about such things. Even if they got depressed, they could immediately switch to the next one. But Kishō was half human. He couldn’t simply come to terms with it.

What was most troublesome was that the root of his distrust toward dragonkin girls lay precisely in the trauma sealed at the bottom of his memory. The true cause of rejecting dragonkin girls, including the Princess, lay precisely in that memory of despair like the entire world crumbling when his engagement was annulled and moreover erased. The lingering residue of his urge to reject everything and vanish without thinking about anything like this clung to him like a grudge, putting brakes on his heart and keeping him from getting close to dragonkin girls.

—We’re not equal.

While that was an undeniable fact, and Kishō himself believed it was his true feelings—

But that wasn’t his true heart. A false heart created by the mind fearing trauma. Nothing but an imitation created to feel like truth in order to protect his own heart.

—Inferiority complex about poor grades.

This was the same. Without turning eyes toward his extraordinary swordsmanship talent, he looked to emphasize only his inferior parts. By chanting in his heart “I’m only a man of this degree, so there’s no way girls would like me,” he justified his lack of attention from girls, while at the same time unconsciously holding himself back so he wouldn’t get hurt by keeping them at a distance.

Ōka had tried to persuade him several times in the past to break through Kishō’s current situation. However, since the trauma in the depths was the root of all evil, persuading Kishō’s consciousness at the surface was meaningless no matter how much. Even if he could understand the logic, it was physiologically rejected. That kind of feeling.

In other words, to resolve these, he had to overcome the trauma that was the root of all evil. What was that trauma? It was obvious.

Being disappointed in and vilely cursed.

Being abandoned by the lover he’d pledged a future with and was engaged to.

Having the engagement annulled and then made to have never happened.

So he couldn’t bring himself to reveal being half-dragonkin. Because he feared that if he told her, the favor directed at him from the Princess would disappear.

So he couldn’t accept the Princess as his legal wife. Because he feared that if he accepted, her heart would change during the time until academy graduation and the engagement would be annulled.

But now, as he witnessed the Princess’s straightforward presence, change was beginning to take root in Kishō. It wasn’t a dramatic change, but it was certainly moving in the direction of removing the lesion known as trauma.