"Are you sure about this?"
"It's fine. This is all because Tida wasn't strong enough."
When we headed toward the party venue, we were made to wait just before the entrance. Guests were to enter in order of academic ranking, though I was told the order could change when members of the royal family were in attendance. This time, Tida, as royalty, had the second-highest overall score, so Amy had offered to give up her spot, but Caesar-sama declined before Tida even could. That said, Tida had also been unwilling to be given last place, so there was no issue with the ordering... but then came what Isabella-sama said afterward.
"Still, I really wanted Tida to do her best and take first place. I used to admire the students who entered last, but I could never get first place myself... If Tida can't manage it, then Luna... Right?"
At those words, Luna flared up in protest... but,
"If you're going to get angry, at least take your studies seriously. If you try hard and still can't do it, that's one thing, but you're always slacking off — you've got no right to complain."
She was instead scolded back, realized she was at a disadvantage, and promptly retreated to her own class. For the record, the final rankings of the royals during their time in the middle division were: the King placed third, Maria-sama placed first, Caesar-sama also placed first, Isabella-sama placed fifth, Zain placed second, Mizarria placed twelfth, Lyle placed third, and Ernest placed second. Lyle's ranking was higher than I expected — but as someone capable of becoming Minister of Military Affairs, he apparently was quite the studious type. And the one who had beaten Ernest to claim first place was apparently Grandpa, who had been cheerfully recounting those days to me.
"This year's runner-up: Tida von Blumail Klastin. Please enter."
The students had begun filing in while I was listening to Grandpa's stories. And before he could finish, Tida's name was called — with Tida leading the way, three of them entered the venue.
"Tida's been called, so it shouldn't be long now... Are you ready?"
"Yes!"
"This year's top-ranked student: Amy. Please enter."
Almost the instant Amy answered, her name was called. Like Caesar-sama and Isabella-sama, Grandpa and I tried to line up a little behind Amy to enter, but for some reason Grandpa pulled out his usual staff. A staff member on standby nearby came over to warn him — you obviously couldn't bring in anything that could serve as a weapon — but Grandpa,
"You'd have an old man walk without a cane? For that matter, you say a staff that could be used as a weapon is dangerous, but there are plenty of people in this venue who can use even more dangerous 'magic.' And if we're talking about things that could serve as weapons, the parents of students who already entered ahead of us were wearing hair ornaments and bracelets that have actually been used as weapons before!"
...ranted on and on like this until he had forcibly extracted permission to bring in his staff. Watching Grandpa, I thought,
(The ornaments can be passed off as not being weapons, but Grandpa's staff is the one he used to knock out a wyvern, so there's no way you can say it's not a weapon... Besides, Grandpa has been walking around without it this whole time... No matter how you look at it, he doesn't need it.)
...but I figured that since there was a chance students targeting Amy might try something at the party, the staff would serve as a nice deterrent, so I deliberately kept my mouth shut.
I lined up behind Amy once more, and when the doors opened and we entered the venue, a murmur rippled through the attendees who had noticed Grandpa's staff, just as expected. However, no one directly complained to Grandpa — some had called over nearby faculty members, but even those couldn't bring themselves to stop our advance and interrogate us. We arrived without incident at the spot that had been prepared for Amy.
"Now, let the party begin. Your Majesty, may we have the honor of your toast?"
"Hear, hear. To your brilliant futures — cheers!"
With the King's toast, the party officially began. Apparently, the King and Maria-sama would be heading back shortly after. The two of them hadn't originally planned on attending at all, but since they'd already come, they decided to stay until the party got underway. The reason they wouldn't stay until the end was that if both of them attended, there would be too many royals present, which might make some students uncomfortable, and more importantly, it would overshadow Tida and Caesar-sama.
"Grandpa, we've been drawing a ton of attention for a while now."
"Indeed. There are those with their eyes on us, and boys with their eyes on Amy... For now, why don't we go grab some food at the edge?"
"Yeah... Amy, shall we eat at the edge? We're standing out way too much here."
Amy also seemed aware that she was attracting attention, and she nodded at my suggestion. No one blatantly tried to follow us as we moved, but they did appear to be keeping tabs on where we were headed.
"It looks like they're all keeping each other in check. Nobody wants to be the first to approach and risk putting us in a bad mood."
"If they just kept restraining each other like that forever, that'd be great. Oh, let me grab this too."
"Mind getting mine as well?"
As we wandered around collecting delicious-looking food, my plate ended up completely heaped. Several nobles who noticed were openly smirking...
"Big brother, this is yummy too!"
With Luna arriving with an even more piled plate than mine or Grandpa's, those nobles quickly retreated out of sight.
"The stuff from the shops wasn't that impressive, but everything here is party-grade cuisine — it's all delicious."
"Back in my day, neither the shop food nor the cafeteria was anything to write home about. I used to sneak out of the academy all the time to eat at restaurants in town."
"Wow~ The cafeteria food is pretty good too, though. But big brother's cooking is better."
"Cafeteria food tends to be on the pricey side, doesn't it? It's a lot every day, but cooking for yourself is much cheaper."
Even Amy, who despite being a commoner earned a decent income from Ku-chan's threads and her adventurer activities, apparently didn't eat at the cafeteria every day. When I asked if it was because of money—
"Well, there are cheap dishes, but... they're not very tasty."
Apparently, that was the case. When she tried to order something good, it came with a matching price tag, so she only ate there occasionally. And rather than eating cheap but unappetizing food, she preferred to cook for herself — it cost less, and she could eat whatever she wanted.
"Whoa!"
While I was talking with Amy and the others, a sudden loud noise rang out from nearby. The culprit was Gramps. He had dropped the walking cane he was holding.
"My sincerest apologies."
Gramps offered his apologies to everyone around him, but he didn't look particularly remorseful. After all, he had dropped the cane on purpose.
The reason Gramps deliberately dropped his cane was that multiple male students had been trying to approach Amy. Having seen Luna be the first to make contact with Amy and then chat with her amicably, they probably figured they could pretend to greet Luna and use that as an excuse to get close to Amy. To nip that in the bud, Gramps dropped his cane to make a loud noise.
"Flies, I tell you — or maybe I should say cowards, the lot of them. Shrinking back over a little scare... Not a shred of backbone among them, is there?"
Gramps's mumbling probably hadn't been audible to anyone, but one male student approached with confident strides... or so I thought — it was Tida.
"Tenma, would you mind if I joined you?"
"If Amy's fine with it, I don't mind."
At those words, Tida looked at Amy with a slightly worried expression. Amy smiled wryly and let Tida join the conversation... but behind her, Luna was desperately crossing both arms into an X to signal her objection. Well, it had all happened behind Amy's back, so she hadn't seen a thing, and Tida naturally ignored it — so Luna's protest came to nothing.
With Tida's arrival, the other male students found it even harder to approach. Some gave up and headed toward other female students instead. However, the onlookers who had seemed to decrease thanks to those giving up ended up increasing again because of the new wave of female students aiming for Tida. On top of that, a subtle rivalry began brewing among the female students themselves, and the atmosphere started to sour a little.
In the midst of all this, Luna seemed to spot someone and began beckoning them over. But the person she was calling didn't come, so she ran off to get them directly. And who she brought back was—
"Big brother, these are my friends!"
A handful of female students. Luna's friends looked quite nervous and couldn't seem to settle down.
"It's fine. My big brother, gramps, and Amy-chan..."
"...are..."
"...all really nice."
Luna had deliberately left out Tida's name, and Tida seemed to understand that he couldn't very well get angry about it — on the surface, he welcomed Luna's friends with a smile, but the glance he shot Luna when they weren't looking turned sharp for just an instant.
"Would you mind if we joined too?"
I was talking with Luna's friends for a while — or rather, answering their questions — when Caesar-sama and Isabella-sama arrived. On top of that, their bodyguards from the Royal Guard showed up too, and the population density around me skyrocketed in an instant. This only made Luna's friends, who had just started to relax, lose their composure all over again. After that, the parents of Luna's friends noticed something was off with their children, greeted Caesar-sama, and then came to collect their kids. The other students who witnessed this began approaching with their own parents to greet Caesar-sama, and they started striking up conversations with Amy, Tida, and me as well.
Among the students who came to talk to me, I tried to answer as politely as I could when they asked about the recent matches or the martial arts tournament — their impressions and questions, that sort of thing. But when it came to those who wanted me to recommend them to Amy or Tida, who wanted me to put in a good word...
Requests.
I sent every last one of those students away before they could finish.
After all, if I was getting students asking me to introduce them to Amy or Tida, the two of them must have had several times as many students filing through to talk to them.
Tida handled the conversations with ease, but Amy seemed subtly uncomfortable. One of the male students talking to her apparently noticed, and was trying rather aggressively to extract some kind of promise from her. But then—
"I'm going to borrow Amy for a sec. Amy, let's go."
Luna inserted herself between Amy and the male student and tried to lead Amy away. The male student, offended that someone was butting in and pulling her away mid-conversation, moved to stop Luna with a reproachful look—
"Isn't it more rude to demand a girl explain why she's stepping away in the middle of a conversation? And I think forcing someone to keep talking when they'd rather not is rather poor form."
With that, she led Amy straight out of the party venue.
The abandoned male student was mocked by the other students, and then his panicked parents hurried over and dragged him away. His parents had been talking to Caesar-sama when they suddenly rushed off, so I imagine either Caesar-sama or Isabella-sama had said something to them. Luna's reason for taking Amy away... was probably to take her to the restroom. That was the excuse, at least; the real reason was to get her away from that male student. But from everyone else's perspective, he was the guy who "embarrassed a girl" or "was too clueless to notice she didn't want to be around him."
"Hmm... come to think of it, a surprising amount of time has passed without us noticing."
"It really has."
The male student and his parents had barely left when Caesar-sama turned to Isabella-sama and the two began talking, so the students and parents who had been watching from a distance lost their window to approach Caesar-sama.
"You've been working hard. Shall I fetch something for you?"
"I'm used to this, but aren't you the one who should be tired, Tenma? Oh, just have the waiters bring the drinks — there's no need for you to go yourself."
"That's right. It must have been even more exhausting for Tenma, since he's not accustomed to these things. Some rather clueless students did make their way over to him, you know."
Once the students' parents had cleared out, I went over to Caesar-sama and Isabella-sama, and the two greeted me in their usual easygoing way. Isabella-sama, moreover, in a voice just loud enough for those nearby to hear, had warned the students and parents who came with—
Requests.
—to have me introduce them to Amy or Tida. Because of that, those students and their parents moved to the far side of the venue, as far from us as they could manage.
"I think that should've gotten rid of most of the idiots."
"Let's hope so."
"I'm sure there are still some, but there should be fewer now. Anyway, what about Tida and Grandpa..."
While we'd been talking, Tida and Grandpa hadn't joined in, and I was wondering what had happened to them. It seemed they'd noticed they hadn't been part of the conversation either, because they started looking around with me, and—
"Oh, Grandpa just went to check out the food and drinks. But Tida..."
"What's he doing over there?"
"Isn't that the direction Luna and Amy went?"
Tida was staring intently in the direction Amy and Luna had gone, wearing a complicated expression on his face.
"Well, the annoying crowd is gone now, so it should be fine to leave him be."
Caesar-sama said that, and Isabella-sama agreed to let him do as he pleased for a while, so I decided to leave him alone too. After some time, Grandpa came back carrying a mountain of food, and we snacked on what he'd brought while chatting idly with Caesar-sama and the others.
"Hm? Looks like Amy and Luna are coming back."
About an hour after Amy and Luna had disappeared, the two of them finally returned. Tida looked relieved to see them back, letting out a deep sigh of relief.
"Luna, you were quite late."
"Well, I was chatting with some friends."
It turned out that Luna hadn't actually taken Amy to the bathroom — she'd been trying to help her escape from that persistent male student. But beyond that, she'd also promised some friends she'd met before Caesar-sama arrived that she'd see them at some point. Apparently, she'd originally planned to slip away on her own, but right before leaving, she started worrying about Amy too, so she thought, "Then I'll just bring her along with me!"
According to Amy, the friends waiting where they'd snuck off to were surprised that Amy was with her, but since Luna had told them plenty about Amy, they welcomed her warmly. However, she apparently got bombarded with all sorts of questions, and by the end, they'd even made plans to study together sometime.
"But they were all really nice kids, so it was easy to talk to them."
Luna's friends were all apparently children of nobles, but being Luna's friends, they didn't hold any discriminatory views.
"Good for you, making some nice juniors."
"Yeah!"
Amy responded happily, and Luna was also pleased that her friends had been praised.
"Well, if that's the reason, I suppose being late can't be helped. They must have felt uncomfortable staying here with Isabella and me around anyway."
Just when I thought things would move forward with Amy and Luna now joining the conversation...
"Hey, Amy? Got a second?"
It was Tida, who had been waiting for Amy the most, who spoke to her with a serious look on his face.
"Um... what's it about?"
Amy seemed a bit flustered by Tida's serious expression, but she quickly agreed and turned to face him.
"Might that kid... be planning to confess?"
"Judging by his mood, it's quite possible."
"Right here?"
"Quietly. Looks like Tida's going," Grandpa whispered.
Speaking softly so Tida and Amy wouldn't hear, we watched as, just as Grandpa said, Tida took several deep breaths before fixing Amy with a look that said he had steeled his resolve. Meanwhile, Luna, perhaps intending to interfere with Tida's actions, tried to wedge herself between him and Amy, but was caught by Caesar-sama and Isabella-sama, and wore a very dissatisfied expression. Then...
"Amy... please...
marry
me!"
Tida's confession went completely over our heads. Everyone present—including us—who had been watching Tida and Amy, froze in unison.
And that included Amy, who had been confessed to... or rather, Amy seemed the most bewildered of all, frozen as if she had even forgotten how to blink.