WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

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◈ Academy's Pure Love Dark Knight ◈

Chapter 115

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Episode 115. Even a Rose Made of Glass Has Thorns.

* * *

Phine Gransia was as empty as glass.

In Magic Hat's attack in the past, her mother had nearly died, and she'd lost almost everyone who had cherished and loved her.

Because of that, she blamed her own weakness and wanted to grow stronger, living without forming close relationships with others.

"Is it because I matter to you that you don't want me getting hurt? Phine."

"Yeah, if you got hurt.... I'd hate that."

But the man named Licht was different, to Phine.

Not only was he stronger than her,

he'd always approached her kindly even while hiding his identity, and treated her like an ordinary person even though he knew she was a princess.

Nex and Chartiness, Kainel and Ariel, and herself besides.

The number of lives he'd saved alone was far more than she could count on her fingers.

No matter how many years the young her had spent crying and resenting a hero who never came,

to Phine, Licht was a hero in the truest sense. Even if he was, like the others, a hero from another world, he was someone different to her.

The cold hands of the awkward man in the Black Knight's helmet, the small laugh he let out from behind that helmet, the warm, solid feel of his embrace.

"We have to catch Magic Hat before Empress Bellin can be freed. Phine."

"Even so, even so...."

Having come to know the warmth of that gentle heart, she was struggling desperately not to go back to the cold, numb days from before.

In fact, when Licht's heart had been pierced by Ache's attack, she'd thought her own heart was about to tear itself apart.

That was also why she'd thought of, and gone through with, transplanting a Dragon Heart, a method that meant staking her own life.

To a girl who didn't understand emotion, love felt like a merciless pain. Being at Licht's side alone made her feel safe and at ease, but,

"I don't want you getting tangled up with the demon kings anymore."

because the moment she stepped away from his side, the whole world turned gray, scattering into ash.

"Phine, you saw me handle Ache yourself. There's no one else suited for this but me."

"You nearly died. I'm the one who saved you. Licht."

She was obsessing over the chance that she might lose him again. She'd already been through something similar twice, fighting Magic Hat and Ache,

"But to stand against the demon kings' authority, Kainel alone isn't enough."

Each time, Phine had worried herself sick over Licht. Her jealousy toward the person known as the Nameless Saintess was part of the same reason.

Wolves were, by nature, pack animals.

The werewolf race, modeled after that animal's traits, formed extremely strong attachments to family and lovers, so the Black Knight's assessment hadn't been wrong.

"Do you really have to fight? You could just live an easy academy life instead. Licht."

"Then who's going to protect pure love?"

There was love in it too, but it leaned much closer to obsession.

"Don't protect something like that anymore."

This was, in a way, where the greatest difference between Phine Gransia and Lee Suhyun showed itself, in how each of them approached love.

Say, for example, there's a single, very beautiful flower standing in a field.

Her emotions had been dried up since childhood, but now that she'd recently begun feeling something fierce, she was the type who believed you had to "pick the flower" to possess it,

"There's no reason for you to sacrifice yourself like that to begin with. Licht.."

"The reason is more than enough."

He, on the other hand, carried old and painful wounds and had barely gotten back on his feet, the kind of person who believed that to protect the flower, "you could only watch it from afar."

"A reason worth grinding my own life away for."

If someone had seen this scene, they probably would have said something like this.

A woman who didn't understand love, and a man who believed the time for him to have love had already long passed,

a flickering flame that resembled obsession, and a moth throwing itself into that flame in something closer to self-sacrifice.

"..I think I'm about to get angry. Licht."

"I'm sorry. Still, an apostle is weaker than a demon king, so it'll be fine."

Love took so many different shapes from person to person that looking at it from only one side often got it wrong.

Love, in the end, was supposed to be something where two people's feelings tangled together and their hearts melted down in a furnace's tremendous heat.

But the man and woman here now fell short of being able to share their cold and their heat with each other.

"If we don't deal with the apostle, there's the problem in the North, but on top of that, I won't be able to convince Asha Aureus either."

"Why do you even need to convince Duchess Asha in the first place. Licht."

Even if Lee Suhyun told her that a status window hung right in front of his eyes and that he was trying to stop Phine Gransia's future death, there was no way she could understand that.

If anything, the obsession she'd carried this far might only get worse.

"Because that's what a Pure Love Black Knight does."

He spoke like he was making a vow, looking at his own helmet reflected in the blue holy sword he held tightly in his grip.

"What even is pure love, anyway.."

Phine opened her mouth, tail and ears drooping. No matter how much she thought about it, she couldn't tell what this uncomfortable feeling was.

"Love doesn't solve everything, does it. Licht."

"But it's a force that can change a person."

Parallel lines, neither able to understand the other. Black and white. Queen and knight. Glass Knight and Black Knight.

How could a flame ever understand the heart of the moth that throws itself into it?

Phine, unaware that Licht went around stitching together other people's love lines for the sake of his own happiness, found it absurd.

"If it's about the marriage arrangement, I could just convince them myself."

"Then what about the relationship between Duchess Asha and Senior Nex?"

She didn't know that if he'd ever run from his duty as the Pure Love Black Knight, plenty would have turned out differently.

"It'll work itself out somehow. Somehow...."

Because to the princess, a commoner talking a duke into changing a marriage arrangement sounded like a shocking notion.

Licht's judgment of Phine wasn't distorted. It was less the feeling of looking at someone she loved, and more like looking at a doll she cherished and treasured.

An emotion that had never matured. A love that gave no thought to anyone else.

"Are you saying it's fine if Senior Nex and Senior Chartiness end up unhappy?"

"You don't have to be the one to step in. I don't get it."

It was closer to obsession than love, and just as the Heavenly Demon had once said, her jealousy ran far too strong.

"A parent can't be honest with her own child, that's something that needs fixing."

Phine, still unaware of her own feelings, was searching for the reason in the books she'd read. The same went for why she'd once tried to kiss him.

In the romance novels she'd read, even when a fresh, budding romantic current flowed between each character, there was always a problem.

In the end, what mattered was which man the female lead finally chose, and that choice was confirmed, more often than not, with a kiss.

"In the books I've read, it was easy."

Even in the economics and statecraft texts she'd studied to secure her succession rights, there was nothing that placed importance on pure love.

"If the problem is people talking behind our backs, then in the end, we just have to silence them."

She wasn't the Nameless Saintess anymore, not now. She was the Gransia Empire's princess.

A position where, if she wanted something badly enough, she could get it even by using her own power.

"Phine."

"I just.... as much as I think about you."

As a princess, what she ultimately wanted was to make Licht want only her. It was less that she wished to receive his love, and closer to wanting to possess it entirely.

"I want you to think I matter to you too."

That near-kiss from before had also been a calculated move on Phine's part, because something in her chest had felt cut by a blade, cold and suffocating, more than she could bear.

"This is, Licht's fault."

"Don't let your feelings run ahead of everything else. Phine."

The truth was, misfortune had come to find both Phine and Lee Suhyun far too early for either of them to know a mature love. The man in the Black Knight's helmet dropped his head.

"Even so, no means no. Licht."

"Do you know what kind of ability the Apostle of Wrath has?"

He let out a long sigh and told the princess what he knew. In the first place, the imperial family hadn't even wanted to send her to the North, for her own safety.

"Like the name says, probably something that makes the target furious."

"That's right. That's why you need me."

Like the old saying goes, it's the well-behaved cat, or in this case wolf, that sneaks up onto the stove first. Phine had already been showing a degree of obsession and stubbornness well past normal.

"Because I can resist an apostle's ability to some extent."

"I have a Masterpiece too. Licht."

Of course, plenty of this was Lee Suhyun's own doing, and there was also the fault of not having recognized her as the Nameless Saintess sooner.

"..Don't get involved. Just stay put."

Because of the misfortune Magic Hat had sown, the flame of jealousy had settled into the cold, empty heart of the Glass Knight before love ever could.

"A Masterpiece won't be enough to stop it."

"I blocked Magic Hat's attack, didn't I."

Unable to control the two emotions churning murkily together inside her, she kept drawing physically closer to Licht, showing her possessiveness.

"That one's a demon king who conjures illusions through magic, Phine."

His reactions were cute to her, too, and every time she made physical contact with him like this, it gave her the sense that she'd won against that person called the Nameless Saintess.

"Even if I fall into a state of wrath, I could never raise my blade against you."

"..."

But despite all of Phine's efforts, the man in the Black Knight's helmet spoke with an unshakable resolve.

He'd never lost his reason, even when struck by the abilities of the Apostles of Lust and Gluttony.

"But Phine, are you confident you'd never cast a spell at me, no matter how angry you got?"

"Yeah. Probably..?"

The white-haired girl trailed off, fidgeting awkwardly with the rose ornament with one hand, and it was plain to see she was lying.

"Phine.... Lying is bad."

"I'll handle it. So.."

As she said that, Phine secretly drew out a magic circle, leaning her back against the door and hiding her hand so she wouldn't be caught.

Fzzt. The glass magic raised layer after layer of walls from outside, sealing off Lee Suhyun's room like an isolated cell. And when the conversation didn't go the way she'd hoped,

"Starting today, don't move a step out of this room."

The princess left the Black Knight with those words and walked out the door. Her wolf's eyes, gleaming gold, met his brown ones.

"Because I can't stand to watch you sacrifice yourself or get hurt anymore."

That gaze even carried a faint chill, and the voice that slipped through the gap in the door was one wrapped in cold.

* * *

Waking up the next morning, I went over everything that had happened and been said so far.

'This is insane. Seriously.'

Everything Phine had said and done lately leaned closer to trying to own me. A feeling that ran close to possessiveness.

"Guess I really did push my body too hard."

Her obsession with me had grown severe enough to be frightening for a girl who was just supposed to be in love. Back when I'd been lying in the hospital bed, she'd even tried to follow me to the bathroom.

That was the reason I'd tried to force myself to walk and ended up falling to the floor.

'If the Grand Route doesn't come true, or if I don't at least kill Magic Hat first, there's no happy ending waiting for us.'

The game developers had been vicious. There were cases where Dennis got poisoned during his encounter with Ache and hit a bad ending, or where Ariel got abandoned because of Kainel's harem.

<Black Heart> was the kind of game that would ruthlessly toss aside even a childhood friend or an original protagonist who'd waited twenty years,

and unless it was the Grand Route ending that the bastard who stuck me in this body had promised, Phine Gransia was certain to fall into misfortune.

Plenty of the game knowledge I had didn't line up right either, so there was no way just taking down a single demon king would resolve her death.

'And it's not like I can just show her the status window either.'

No matter how many times I quietly said "status window" in my room, or called out "status open," no transparent panel ever appeared.

To begin with, the updates lagged, and there'd been times I'd wondered why the hell the affection level wasn't going up.

'Guess I should go hear that prophecy I asked the sage about earlier.'

Now that Erasure of Knowledge was gone, she should be able to see every possible outcome. If I could learn of some unhappy future from that ahead of time, it'd be worth it.

I hated getting spoiled, but there was no other way. At this rate, I was really about to end up locked away in the imperial dungeons.

"Huh? It's locked?"

I grabbed the doorknob and turned it, meaning to get some fresh air and clear my head.

The door didn't open, the knob wouldn't turn all the way.

Why was a door meant to lock from the inside, locked from the outside instead?

This had happened sometime after Phine left my room. It was strangely unsettling. No way.

Click, click. The doorknob rattled, and a few shimmering shards of glass fell from it. Struck by an instant feeling of doom, I threw the window open, but

"I'm completely locked in. She really meant it, not to go outside."

There was another layer of glass wall outside, so even reaching my hand out just hit something transparent. Not a hint of breeze got through the room.

"..Old Thought, Reminiscence."

Regretting all the karma I'd built up until now, I summoned the holy sword.

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