I Became the Second-in-Command in a Romance Fantasy Novel - Chapter 9

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Mordor

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◈ I Became the Second-in-Command in a Romance Fantasy Novel ◈

Chapter 9: My Life Was a Romance Fantasy (2)

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“We said we'd see each other in a week, didn't we?”

Through the communication orb, I could see the commander's gaunt face.

A Sword Master should be perfectly fine even if he went without sleep for a week.

Only a day had passed, yet he already looked like that.

I was genuinely worried about him, but apparently our prince wasn't.

“I wanted that too.”

I didn't want to see the commander's face every day either, but it couldn't be helped.

He'd been reduced to that state by news of Prince Ellen's first love. What would happen when he heard about his rivals?

I let out a small sigh at the future I was about to witness.

“What is it this time...?”

His voice was already limp. I felt bad for him, but it was something he needed to know.

Whether this world was a romance fantasy or not, there was no way nothing would come of that combination.

“Well.”

I told him the facts exactly as they were.

Without adding even a trace of my suspicion that this world was a romance fantasy, I simply relayed what I had witnessed with my own eyes, without exaggeration.

“Don't bullshit me...”

A curse slipped from the commander's mouth.

I'd never heard him say anything like that since becoming an instructor.

Not even when Senior Lucia came to him with resignation letters three times a week, as though an unbreakable spirit was all that mattered.

Not even when I told him the pay wasn't worth it and demanded a salary higher than his, a Sword Master's. He'd just laughed good-naturedly!

“Sadly, it's true.”

“It's a lie! Please tell me it's a lie!”

The commander cried out as if begging, but that didn't make it any less true.

“You'll feel better if you give up.”

“Aaargh!”

The commander wailed over Prince Ellen's first act of rebellion after always being so obedient and talented.

The unfortunate thing was that his grief and suffering wouldn't be his alone.

The moment our call ended, the news would spread to everyone connected to the instructors.

At the end of that chain would be the Intelligence Division.

Then the new reports beginning with the Intelligence Division would travel back along that chain, eventually reaching the commander.

And at the very end of it all would be me.

Fuck, I should've retired when Prince Ellen beat down Princess Hestia.

“...For now, this is what we've found.”

Just like that.

“Do I have to hear it?”

“Of course you do.”

They'd finished investigating someone named Daisy from the distant Empire in a single day.

As expected of the Intelligence Bureau. They were good at their jobs.

“She's the daughter of a baronial family so rural that even the Empire considers it a backwater.”

“I see.”

It was the classic background of a romance fantasy heroine.

The romance fantasies I remembered from more recently often had heroines who were villainous young ladies from ducal houses.

“Her background is so unremarkable that it's a wonder how she even got into the Imperial Academy.”

“I see.”

That, too, was a common romance fantasy heroine setup. Usually, someone like that had a hidden background.

Maybe she wasn't really the baron's daughter, or she'd learned magic from a legendary mage as a child.

There were probably stories where she awakened her talent after entering the Academy as well.

“She joined the Flower Arrangement Club simply because she likes flowers. Apparently, daisies are her territory's specialty.”

“How could the local specialty have the same name as Lady Daisy...?”

“Exactly. But her family is apparently quite close, so it doesn't seem like they named her carelessly.”

The rest of the information didn't seem all that important.

Except for one thing.

“Until recently, the Flower Arrangement Club had only two members: its president and Lady Daisy.”

The commander lamented at the mention of “until yesterday,” but something else mattered more.

“There's a club president?”

For a moment, I thought the purple-haired girl who looked like the romance fantasy heroine's friend might be the president.

Then the commander continued, and I couldn't help frowning.

“Yes. He's a fourth-year male student due to graduate this year.”

Another man?

And a senior at that?

“Fortunately, he seems to be an ordinary fellow.”

I couldn't let my guard down just because he was ordinary.

If this world's genre really was romance fantasy, the first man to cross paths with the heroine could never be normal.

“Tell me about him.”

“There's not much to say.”

What the commander told me was genuinely nothing special.

I was even starting to think I'd been seeing everything through a romance fantasy lens.

“Ah, we got a portrait too.”

“...”

This world really was a romance fantasy!

I almost shouted it.

After all...

“His eyes are always closed.”

That bastard was an always-closed-eyes character.

* * *

Bellian Erich, a fourth-year student at the Imperial Public Academy.

Class was over, but he couldn't bring himself to leave the classroom.

“How did it come to this?”

As the third son of House Erich, he had been able to enter the Imperial Academy because he had a decent head for academics.

For someone from an ordinary viscount's family, getting into the Imperial Academy was an achievement.

His parents, older brothers, and younger siblings had all held high expectations when he enrolled.

Yet nothing life-changing had happened to him.

His grades were average. Aside from taking notes, he had no particular talent.

He never took the initiative, whether at home or at the Academy.

His relationships with other students were ordinary too.

He kept a suitable distance from students like himself. That was all.

Still, there were people he had become rather close to: the upperclassmen from the Flower Arrangement Club.

It was a small club with fewer than ten members, one that could be shut down at any time.

That was why he liked it.

They met casually and enjoyed themselves without fuss, yet there was a unique closeness among them.

Their small number and lack of notable activities had repeatedly put the club at risk of being disbanded.

Every time they barely managed to resolve the issue, the invisible bond between the members grew stronger.

“This is all because of the seniors.”

“It would be such a shame for the Flower Arrangement Club to end like this.”

After the three seniors graduated last year, the Flower Arrangement Club had been set to close.

There was no helping it.

No new students had joined after Bellian, and though the Imperial Academy gave students plenty of freedom in club activities, it wouldn't maintain a one-person club.

That regretful voice kept echoing in his mind, so Bellian gathered courage unlike anything he'd shown before.

On the day of the entrance ceremony, in front of the hall where new students poured out, Bellian stood among countless clubs promoting themselves and poured every bit of courage he usually lacked into recruiting.

“The Flower Arrangement Club?”

“Y-yeah!”

There, he happened to meet a new student.

Her name was Daisy. She came from House Parvan, a baronial family from a small rural town.

Something about her felt familiar.

Both he and the former members of the Flower Arrangement Club had been in similar circumstances.

She even liked flowers, so he thought it was fate guided by the goddess.

Then she said something more.

“Can I bring my friend too?”

Amazingly, she had a childhood friend who had enrolled alongside her.

That would let them meet the club's minimum requirement of three members.

Of course, it was the bare minimum.

Keeping a club going with three people required some activity, but the Flower Arrangement Club had already pulled every possible trick to stay afloat.

He was confident.

At least until the day he graduated, he was confident he could keep the Flower Arrangement Club alive.

If he ever happened to meet the seniors who had graduated, he would be able to proudly say that the Flower Arrangement Club had survived until his graduation!

“Or was it? Was I too greedy?”

Things had been fine up to that point.

Daisy and Violet, the childhood friend she'd mentioned.

One man and two women.

He was the only man, though it didn't suit him at all.

Still, Bellian had no ulterior motives. He only wanted them to experience the daily life of the Flower Arrangement Club that he had loved.

At the Imperial Academy, one of the rare places where all four seasons could be felt, they could observe flowers that were difficult to find elsewhere.

They could arrange those flowers to suit the season and enjoy the small beauties of everyday life.

He sincerely hoped they could find that small but precious happiness amid Academy life, where they were constantly crushed beneath high-ranking nobles and geniuses.

“I'll find more members!”

That was why he'd smiled at Daisy's enthusiastic declaration and told her he'd appreciate it.

Birds of a feather flock together. Daisy didn't seem to possess any special ability, and her family wasn't particularly noteworthy.

He assumed anyone she brought would be someone like them.

That was his mistake.

“I'm Essid, a new club member.”

Was there another new student named Essid this year?

No, even if there was, how could there possibly be another student with white hair and red eyes?

Bellian had frozen at the sudden appearance of an imperial prince, wondering whether he should finish bending his half-lowered knees or straighten them.

In that half-dazed state, he accepted the prince's club application.

He returned to his dormitory and slept. He woke up. He went to the Academy.

He sat through every class in a daze, unable to write down even one note.

Could this all be a dream?

Yeah, it had to be.

Even if the odds of the prince inheriting the imperial throne were low, the next emperor hadn't even been decided yet.

There was no way a busy prince would join the Flower Arrangement Club of all clubs.

Yet when he entered the clubroom with those thoughts in mind...

“Here are the prospective new members!”

An entrance to the Demon Realm had opened alongside Daisy's bright smile.

That was yesterday.

“Seniors, the Flower Arrangement Club is immortal now.”

Bellian sat alone in the empty classroom, staring blankly at the blackboard as he thought.

One imperial prince.

One prince from the kingdom of knights.

One prince from the kingdom of magic.

One son of the margrave who guarded the Demon Realm.

One man known as the Little Sword Emperor, grandson of the Sword Emperor.

One heir apparent to a colossal merchant house that moved the continental economy beyond the Empire.

And one Flower Arrangement Club president, himself.

At this point, even if the student council stormed in as a group, they could drive them off.

No, leave him out and any one of them alone would be enough.

The Flower Arrangement Club wouldn't be disbanded for at least four years.

“Should I quit?”

But the Flower Arrangement Club that had brought Bellian peace of mind was already dead.

It had died the moment the prince joined.

Even the Flower Arrangement Club seniors in his imagination were saying, “Uh, this is a little...” before running away.

“Right. I need to graduate. I can quit by saying I need to study.”

Studying was the one thing he was reasonably good at, so he had always put effort into his academics.

He'd already secured enough graduation credits, but there was no harm in earning more.

He wouldn't inherit the family anyway.

As someone from an unremarkable house, the only way to raise his own value was to enter the imperial civil service!

“Right. As for the president's position... if I tell Daisy, someone will take it.”

There was no way he would survive long as president in a club where, aside from himself, the Little Sword Emperor was the least intimidating male member.

“Hello, Senior?”

“Ah, yes?”

The moment he made up his mind and left the classroom, a junior appeared as though they had been waiting for him.

No, they had clearly been waiting.

“I have a lot of questions about the Academy. Could you spare some time to advise me?”

No.

He wanted to say that, but recent events had sharpened Bellian's sense of danger.

This wasn't a question asking for his opinion.

It was the voice of a predator telling its prey to shut up and follow.

“O-okay.”

When Bellian had first enrolled, first-years would never have dared tell a distant fourth-year senior to follow them.

Things were different now!

With the Sword Emperor and the former Magic Tower Master serving as head professors, this year's new students marked the beginning of a golden age for the Imperial Academy.

He didn't even need to look far. He only had to remember the clubroom yesterday.

So Bellian sat tensely in a small Academy cafe, looking at the junior who had somehow already brought over two cups of tea.

“Ah, I haven't introduced myself yet. I'm Adam Smith, from the Leon Kingdom.”

“...”

He'd heard that name before.

It was the same name as the monster who had easily defeated the Little Sword Emperor on the first day of the Sword Emperor's class.

“I don't like dragging things out, so I'll get straight to the point. Our prince joined the club, didn't he?”

“R-right.”

“I'm just asking you to take good care of him.”

No, I'm going to quit.

“Our prince is quite shy. I don't think he'll get along well with the other students. If someone like you, President, could make a little effort...”

No, I'm really going to quit!