CH 47.5

Alexia opens and closes her mouth a few times as she stares at Roseline, but Roseline just gives her a mischievous smile. Although Alexia’s mind has gone blank, her face is bright red.

“Bullseye, huh. …Hm? Did you think I hadn’t noticed?” Roseline says, laughing with an expression which is unbecoming of a princess. Alexia nods.

“…Yes, that is what I thought. Irene, did you also notice?!”

“I noticed a long time ago. After all, as soon as you learned that Chaos was coming to this tea party, you said you wanted to learn the proper way to make tea and spent half of the day practicing yesterday. It would be unthinkable to put in that much effort for a person you didn’t care for,” she says, taking the opportunity to express her complaints to her master after spending half a day as her practice partner continuously drinking tea to the point that just looking at tea makes her feel an urge to vomit.

Alexia’s despair deepens. The servant then mercilessly presents her master with even more despair.

“By the way, Havoc and the others who were here have also noticed.”

“Well, if you act that way towards Chaos in front of everyone, they’d have to be quite oblivious not to notice.”

“Oh dear,” Alexia groans with tears in her eyes and her face in her hands, as if her soul is about to leave her body from sheer embarrassment.

“Relax. Chaos is definitely oblivious.”

“…I have mixed feelings about that,” Alexia says, lifting her head slightly.

It’s embarrassing for other people to know her true feelings, so she’s glad that the target of her affections hasn’t noticed them. Even so, she can’t really be happy about it if he didn’t notice even when she was so obvious about it that even those around them noticed. It almost makes her wonder if he doesn’t care about her.

“I’m sure you know this, but you have a thorny path ahead of you.”

Chaos, a foreign commoner, and Alexia, a noble, are incompatible. Unlike before, she is called a saint and he is called a hero, but even now, this relationship hasn’t changed much.

Even if Chaos became a Commune noble, it’s doubtful that the Weichsel Empire will let their saint, Alexia, go. And even if Chaos became a Weichsel noble, a new noble wouldn’t have the pedigree to marry a girl from a distinguished noble family.

To begin with, he himself has insisted that he doesn’t want to be a noble, so the two of them getting married is just a pipe dream.

“At one point, I had nearly given up due to our difference in status.”

She despaired when her father confronted her with the reality that she’s not in a position to be able to freely fall in love. She wept, thinking that she would never see her teacher again. She joined this war thinking that, even if she couldn’t be by his side, she could at least bring peace to the country that he had traveled to.

Then, they reunited.

And then, she realized. No, it would be more accurate to say that she remembered.

“Even so, I still love him,” Alexia says, smiling with a troubled expression. Even though she had closed her heart so that she would never love anyone ever again, the moment he embraced her, she couldn’t stop her emotions from overflowing.

If she could reason with her emotions that easily, she wouldn’t be swayed by these emotions which she can neither suppress nor do anything about. Just as Roseline says, having feelings for him will be a thorny path, and the chances that there will be any reward at the end of it are low.

But even so…

It’s much less painful than when she was in despair. If anything, she even feels euphoria.

“So, I cannot give up.”

Even if the distance between them is large, if she takes one step at a time, no matter how slow, she’ll reach him someday. She has much more hope than back then, when she had given up on everything and closed herself off. Just thinking about it makes Alexia happy.

“I see, so that’s how it is. It seems that my meddling was unnecessary,” Roseline says, touched by Alexia’s declaration of love for Chaos, her face turning slightly red.

“No, even I think I was pretty clumsy.”

They both smile bitterly.

“It’ll be difficult, won’t it? I don’t even know how he feels about me. Perhaps he doesn’t think about me at all,” Alexia says, expressing worries common to a girl in love.

“I can assure you that that’s not the case,” Roseline says, immediately denying her concerns. “When we received the report of Weichsel’s invasion, your name came up. When he heard, Chaos was so distraught that I didn’t see him again for some time. It must have taken him a while to get back on his feet.”

“He- he did…?”

“In other words, that’s just how important you are to him. That’s good news for you.”

Alexia’s cheeks turn red.

“But thinking about it in a different way, it also shows how sensitive he is and how easily his heart breaks.”

Chaos could never become ruthless. The fact that he was unable to abandon Roseline and Alexia is what led to him intervening in a war between foreign countries.

Roseline is worried that if he continues on like this and tries to shoulder all the burden himself, it’ll eventually cause his own ruin.

“He’s not the brave hero everyone says he is. He’s not some perfect hero.”

Now that his achievements have become far too outstanding, the image of Chaos the hero has taken on a life of its own and eclipsed his true self, and it will surely affect him. But at this point, it’s impossible to undo it.

“If you love him and wish to walk alongside him, please, support him.”

Roseline also wants to help Chaos, the one who saved her, but there are limits to what she can do in their current positions. Therefore, having even one more person who understands Chaos is vital. Even if Alexia is a noble from another country, since she knows Chaos well and admires him, Roseline hopes that she’ll be able to support him.

“Rest assured, Your Highness. I will always be on Teacher’s side.”

“That’s reassuring to hear,” Roseline says, letting out a sigh of relief at Alexia’s honest answer.

“You’re quite concerned about Teacher, aren’t you, Your Highness?”

“Ever since I left Clermont, he’s always been helping me. If it weren’t for him, I probably wouldn’t be here right now. So I want to do all I can.”

“To tell you the truth, I was worried. You and Teacher were, um, quite close. To the point that I was jealous, as disrespectful as that may be. I envied you, Your Highness.”

For a moment, Roseline is dumbfounded by Alexia’s words. Then, she bursts into laughter.

“I see, so that’s how you felt! It’s true that he’s the only man I’m close to who’s around my age. I suppose it’s only natural that you would be worried.”

Then, as if she’s just thought of something, a mischievous smile appears on Roseline’s face.

“There’s nothing for you to worry about. Chaos and I couldn’t have that sort of relationship. It would require even stricter conditions than you, Lady Alexia. But if I had to say, I would be more wary of Cornelia and Emilia. As far as I can tell, they’re only friends and neither of them seem to have any romantic feelings towards him, but mishaps can happen if you aren’t careful,” Roseline says, teasing Alexia. Watching in amusement as Alexia becomes flustered, Roseline is the very image of a girl having fun with girls’ talk.

“Jealous, huh…? But I…”

Just as Alexia feared, Chaos’s position in Commune is precarious. What Roseline revealed was only a part of it.

Granting Chaos a title isn’t only because the nobles want to strengthen their own factions by having him join their faction. The Allied Commune doesn’t exactly have friendly relations with the Weichsel Empire. Even if Weichsel has offered to help wipe out the vampires, they can’t completely let their guards down against a country that has already pointed its blade towards them once.

If the two countries go to war again, Alexia’s existence will become a huge threat. With her skills which were strong enough to infiltrate all the way to where Princess Roseline was and defeat the guards without killing them all on her own, she made a strong impression on the soldiers who were guarding the palace. Even if she’s called a saint, she’s a noble of the Weichsel Empire. There’s no telling when she’ll turn hostile towards them once more.

Since Roseline had a real conversation with her, she’s confident that Alexia won’t turn hostile, but Roseline can only say that because she’s spoken to Alexia directly, so that only applies to her personally.

If Alexia did turn hostile, Commune wouldn’t have the military strength to oppose her. However, there is a single person in Commune who has fought her off. It was Chaos, a foreigner. His existence is their trump card against the Weichsel Empire.

Then, the situation suddenly changed when Viktor tried to recruit Chaos. It became known to those around him that his stay in Commune would only be temporary and that he may leave Commune any day now.

Because of this, some nobles are plotting to keep Chaos in Commune by any means necessary and definitively claim him as their own, like collaring a wild beast.

Roseline was irritated, but their actions aren’t wrong from the perspective of the country’s best interest. And here are some points she can agree with them on.

Roseline doesn’t trust the Weichsel Empire. Or rather, she doesn’t trust the emperor, Viktor. She doesn’t have any definitive grounds for this, as it’s only based on her intuition.

The initial apology and returning the territory to improve relations between their countries does make it appear as if Viktor is sincere in his diplomacy with Commune. However, she can’t shake the thought that he’s plotting something behind the scenes.

She can’t let her guard down. Therefore, she can’t let Chaos go. At least, until she knows exactly what the Weichsel Empire is up to.

Roseline knows she has to correct this situation.

It is inadvisable to rely entirely on a single person who is not one of her citizens. Although they don’t stand out among the many who consider him to be a hero, there are bound to be those who shun him and consider him dangerous. The more influence he gains in Commune, the more he will be seen as dangerous.

If that happens, she hopes she’ll be able to settle things peacefully, but on the off chance that some influential hard-liners who looked down on Chaos ended up hurting him, she would be devastated. That could actually make Alexia their enemy.

Alexia’s influence is unimaginably large. If things go poorly, then it would be an all-out war with the Weichsel Empire who’s backing her. Then, the tragedy would repeat itself.

What would be ideal to Roseline is to gradually break free from their reliance on Chaos, get the country back on its feet, and eventually free him from this country.

She couldn’t possibly tell them that.

Roseline has become depressed at having to take advantage of her friend, caught between her country and their friendship.

Compared to her, Alexia is pure. Can she even think of anyone more honest than that? To Roseline, Alexia’s purity seemed dazzlingly bright.

“I’m the one who’s jealous of you, Alexia,” Roseline mutters to herself as she drinks her cold tea.