I Start with a Bad Hand!

The second prince moved a little closer to me as we walked.

“It’s good if you say so.”

A playful smile was still on his face as I glanced at him unintentionally.

“But even if not, in remote places like the cherry blossom path, a wild animal from the mountains might appear.”

He suggested that it might be better for him to accompany me, and I stepped back slightly as I responded.

“Are there animals that come into the academy?”

I looked at him skeptically. The second prince shrugged.

“Right now, all the security is focused on the ballroom.”

Anything that comes in might be handled slower than usual. He said jokingly, trying to scare me.

“But you don’t have any weapons on you either, Your Highness.”

“Are you worried about me?”

His confident expression and tone left me speechless. I felt overwhelmed by his unfounded confidence. Seeing him so self-assured made it seem like he had some ace up his sleeve.

Perhaps a dagger hidden under his uniform, or some magical abilities of the prince that I wasn’t yet aware of… Maybe he could even breathe fire or summon lightning.

In the end, I decided to accept his company. After all, my concerns weren’t only about wild animals. Being in a secluded area, one never knew who might pop out on the way. Reluctantly, I walked towards the cherry blossom grove with this unwelcome partner.

***

As we walked, Icarus spoke up quietly.

“Is the response you said you’d give back with the uniform still pending?”

…That question was also one of the reasons I hesitated about when to return his school jacket. I was sure that returning it would involve mentioning that matter, but no matter how hard I tried to recall, I just couldn’t remember. There was no way I could remember something Dietrich couldn’t. Faced with a difficult question, I tried to change the subject.

“Actually, I’ve been curious about something regarding Your Highness… may I ask?”

“That doesn’t seem like an answer to my question.”

But go ahead and ask. His voice softened a bit.

“Why did you keep calling me ‘lady’?”

You knew I was no longer affiliated with the ducal house. At my words, Icarus, just like I had, closed his mouth. I thought it was fortunate that he didn’t answer as we continued walking.

“The answer to that question… you’ll come to know it on your own.”

That is, if you remember. So, this is entirely up to you.

…With that, Icarus was passing even my question back to me. It was a question I asked just to change the subject, but his response left me with nothing further to say.

Eventually, with those words marking our last exchange, we walked in silence until we suddenly reached the entrance to the cherry blossom garden. The quiet path lined with flowering trees was fluttering with petals blown by the wind. I slowly walked along the path. Walking down the endlessly stretching cherry blossom road, I felt the boundaries with reality blurring.

The reason I had thought about visiting the cherry blossom path of this academy even once was purely because I had never properly enjoyed cherry blossom viewing in reality. The damn cherry blossoms always bloomed during exam periods, and even then, they would often be washed away by the spring rain. Back then, overwhelmed by life, I kept putting it off, hoping to go next year while just walking through the campus or passing by the flowering trees on a bus, and eventually, I ended up here.

‘I could go for a beer.’

Back in Heylem, I occasionally enjoyed fermented fruit wine, but that was out of the question in the capital. With a sigh of disappointment, I plopped down on the dirt ground. I had wanted to keep some distance from the second prince anyway. No matter how grand a prince he was, he seemed unlikely to sit down on the ground in his splendid uniform. But then, suddenly following my lead, he knelt down next to me with a serious look.

“Is it because your legs are bothering you?”

Caught off guard by his unexpected response, I was momentarily flustered.

“No… that’s not it, I just wanted to sit and enjoy the flowers.”

Ah, with a relieved sigh, he promptly sat down next to me. Then, glancing at me, he rummaged through the inner pocket of his uniform jacket and handed me a handkerchief. Looking puzzled at the handkerchief, he grumbled,

“Don’t just sit on the dirt.”

The hand he extended the handkerchief with looked quite embarrassed. So, I ended up taking his handkerchief in a flurry. Though it seemed pointless now that I had already sat down…

“Thank you.”

I awkwardly expressed my gratitude to the second prince. That ended our conversation, and with nothing more to say to him, I absently picked up a flower bud that had fallen to the ground. I fiddled with the unopened flower bud, turning it this way and that.

The second prince glanced at me and then reached out his hand as if he wanted the flower bud. He didn’t seem like the type to be greedy for such a thing… I handed him the flower bud with a puzzled feeling.

In his hand, the bud made a small pop sound and began to bloom.

“Did you… do this, Your Highness?”

I looked at him with a surprised and skeptical expression. Those minor magics that every citizen of the empire could supposedly perform. In fact, I had always wondered about the magic abilities of everyone I met, trying to guess what kind of magic they might possess. However, I had not anticipated that the second prince could perform such delicate, intricate magic.

“Can you… make even fallen flower buds bloom?”

I placed another fallen flower bud into his hand. He smiled nonchalantly as if it was nothing. The small bud bloomed again in his hand. Unable to hide my amazement, I kept picking up every fallen flower bud I could see and placed them in his hand.

He quietly made each of the incomplete blooms open up. Soon, his hands were filled with small, pale pink flowers. Suddenly, I looked at him directly.

Wearing his finely tailored, luxurious uniform, and most of all, holding those tiny blossoms in his large hands as if carefully cradling them so they wouldn’t fall apart. His appearance was somewhat amusing, and I chuckled lightly. Seeing me laugh, he soon grinned as well.

“So you do know how to laugh.”

“Well, there hasn’t been much to laugh about… until now.”

Words I meant to keep in my thoughts slipped out unexpectedly. Embarrassed, I fidgeted with the flowers that had bloomed in his hands.

“Yes, certainly, it’s not a place with many reasons to laugh.”

His voice was unexpectedly kind as he said this, making it even harder for me to say anything more. I cleared my throat and spoke up.

“Now it seems we’ll have to fight off beasts with our bare hands.”

I thought you might be capable of spewing fire or something. Such a romantic ability, I said jokingly while looking at the flowers blooming in his hands.

“My ability is actually very practical. It’s just not usable right this moment.”

“That’s a big deal.” I joked, and Icarus responded in kind, playing along with the joke. As a knight, I’d sacrifice myself to buy you time to escape. His confidence was apparent, so I challenged him further.

“Even if a wolf appears?”

“Yes.”

“What about a bear?”

“That too.”

“And what if a dragon shows up?”

“A dragon… well…”

“No, have you ever actually seen a dragon?”

Eventually, our conversation drifted to whether he could catch a dragon, and even if he could, how he would prove it. I concluded that I wouldn’t believe it unless he brought me the dragon’s heart, which supposedly never stops beating. From there, Icarus and I spent a long time exchanging trivial tales. I could use water magic, and I had only recently found out it was waterproof, so now I could open my eyes underwater—really trivial stuff like that.

Icarus listened quietly at times and added his own stories to mine as the conversation continued. As we engaged in this frivolous talk, I felt a bit of joy—a sensation I had often felt before entering the world of this novel, yet now it seemed slightly awkward to experience this joy.

Of course, it wasn’t that I had felt no emotions in this novel until now. Every moment, I had experienced a range of feelings: wonder, torment, excitement, bewilderment, heaviness, elation, and loneliness. But these emotions were not what one could easily call joy.

It had been a long time since I had a conversation not filled with worries and anxieties, not trying to guess the intentions behind every word and action of another, not preoccupied with thoughts of the future. I was sharing these blurry, almost forgotten feelings of simple pleasure with Icarus, of all people. Strangely enough.

A lukewarm spring breeze blew, and the lamps shone brightly, making the falling petals sparkle. The scent of dirt and moss mixed with the subtle fragrance of flowers filled the path strewn with fluttering petals.

That day, for the first time since I had been reincarnated into this novel, I laughed out loud.