WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Reformation of the Deadbeat Noble

Chapter 12

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Growth (1)

The physical training room was nearly empty this late at night.

It wasn't just the hour. It had been like this ever since July began. The fire that had once burned in the trainees' hearts during their first weeks had mostly gone out.

That wasn't their fault, of course.

Training that would break even a seasoned soldier ran from before dawn until late afternoon, without rest.

Add in the sweltering summer heat, and it would have been strange for anyone to seek out more training on top of that.

One of those strange few was Judith.

The girl with red hair cropped to her shoulders started her workout with a sharp grunt.

"Hoop, hoop, hoop, hup!"

Lower body conditioning using resistance bands.

It wasn't the kind of intimidating sight you'd get from loading heavy plates onto both ends of a barbell and hoisting it up.

At a glance, someone might mistake it for a cute little exercise suited to a twelve-year-old girl.

It wasn't.

Judith was a prodigy.

Among the continent's chosen talents, hand-picked by the instructors of Krono Fencing Hall, she stood out as one of the very best, in both raw gift and body.

And yet she never let that make her complacent. Every day, she pushed through brutal extra training.

The bands she used were no ordinary equipment.

They'd been enchanted to push resistance to an extreme, objects an average person couldn't even pull taut.

The girl kept pulling anyway.

She didn't stop even when exhausted, even when the burn hit like fire at the point of strain. This was the moment that mattered most.

Whether she managed one more rep here or not would decide the quality of the muscle she built.

Judith didn't let go of the band until she'd broken her own personal record.

"Haaa! Ha, ha, ha..."

The girl collapsed flat on the floor.

Her head spun and nausea crept up. But she was used to that by now.

More than the discomfort, what filled her with happiness was the sense that she'd taken one more step forward today.

That happiness turned into satisfaction, and satisfaction settled into comfort. It made sense. She'd accomplished what she set out to do, so of course her mind felt at ease.

That's enough for today.

She was just rising to her feet with a faint smile when it happened.

Crash!

"Ugh, uh, uughh!"

A nauseating sound came from nearby. Judith frowned.

Not because the sound itself bothered her.

The one retching had just finished a set of heavy squats, and feeling sick after lower body training was nothing unusual.

Judith herself had experienced that more times than she could count.

The problem wasn't the sound. It was the person. Or more precisely, it was the sheer force of will that person kept showing.

Her face hardened as she whispered his name.

"Airen Farreira..."

Judith simply couldn't understand him.

When he'd first entered the hall, he'd been nothing but trash.

Three years older than her and having accomplished nothing, yet somehow living a comfortable, trouble-free life anyway. A worthless noble brat.

So she'd ignored him. She hadn't even gone near him, afraid that if he entered her sight she'd end up grabbing him by the collar.

She'd assumed she wouldn't have any reason to deal with him past the Mid-Term Evaluation anyway.

This place was harsh enough that a coasting freeloader who'd wormed his way in through connections had no business surviving here.

But he had. He'd held on.

She'd misjudged him.

The lazy lord, Airen Farreira, had clung on with a tenacity that bordered on desperate.

Despite starting from a body far worse off than everyone else's, he'd thrown himself into voluntary training day after day, straining with everything he had just to move forward.

But even working that hard, his progress had been slow. He simply hadn't built up nearly enough before entering the hall.

That was exactly why it made no sense to her.

With a body like that, how could he push himself this hard?

He was, admittedly, much better than when he'd first arrived.

The body that had once fit the word "weakling" perfectly now carried solid muscle, and his overall physical capabilities, stamina included, had leaped forward dramatically.

If she hadn't watched it happen with her own eyes, she never would have believed such a result was possible.

Even so, compared to herself, Airen Farreira still fell short in every category.

Which meant that for the same hours spent, his mental toll was heavier than hers.

Stamina and willpower weren't separate things. They were tangled together.

Someone with stamina to spare naturally had more room to spare mentally too.

And yet this guy kept training well past the point where she'd felt satisfied and called it a day.

Judith found that astonishing.

And it infuriated her.

Am I weaker willed than the guy who got called the lazy lord?

The red-haired girl clenched her teeth. Her hair was damp with sweat, but the heat radiating off her scalp gave the impression that flames were flickering there.

Judith understood it, in some vague way.

Whatever he used to be, the person in front of her now wasn't lazy.

Airen Farreira's willpower was strong enough, at times, to stir something close to respect in her. Like steel.

But she couldn't accept that.

Not yet. Not now!

"Hup!"

Finished with her thoughts, she rose to her feet with a grunt.

She shot a glare at the lazy lord, then went right back into her training.

That night, Judith worked out even longer than Airen before finally leaving the training room.

She barely managed to shower before falling asleep, a faint smile settling on her face.

* * *

"Whew."

A little earlier than when Judith drifted off, Airen lay down in bed after finishing a grueling day.

He gave no thought at all to leaving the training room before the red-haired girl did.

He wasn't competing with anyone in the first place.

Finish the assigned work, rest at the assigned time. That was all that mattered.

Illia had said the same thing was good, hadn't she. Don't worry about others, just move at your own pace.

She was right.

The man in his dreams followed the same routine every single day. Never too little, never too much.

After turning that image over in his mind once more, Airen thought of someone else.

Judith.

A girl whose strength was hard to believe in someone only twelve. Endurance, muscle, reflexes, flexibility, her overall physical ability was in a different league from his.

Lately, that remarkable kid had started watching him.

Airen wasn't a fool, of course. He understood exactly what that look meant.

She's starting to notice me.

Not just her.

Brett Lloyd, who stood at the top alongside Judith. The upper-tier kids too, less gifted than those two but still talented.

And every other trainee had begun watching him warily now.

It was a completely different atmosphere from the early days, when contempt, mockery, and sneers had been the norm.

It felt strange.

He'd spent his whole life on the receiving end of pointed fingers.

Airen wasn't unaware of the gossip and scorn whispered behind his back.

But knowing about it had never made him want to fix it. At first, he simply hadn't had the strength to. Later, he'd just come to accept it as the way things were.

This is who I am, and this is how I'll live forever. That resignation had followed him straight through to age fifteen.

But not anymore.

Bran Sommerville, a wandering knight he'd never even met before, had acknowledged him.

Brett Lloyd, a high-ranking noble of the Gerbera Kingdom, now saw him differently.

Judith, who used to treat him like he didn't exist, was now wary of him.

All of it felt like a miracle he never could have imagined before.

Enough thinking about this.

Airen shook his head where he lay in bed.

Honestly, it wasn't a bad feeling.

But if someone asked whether it felt good, he couldn't say for certain either.

There was no helping that.

The boy's heart simply wasn't open wide enough yet to enjoy the flood of positive attention coming his way for the first time in his life.

And he was far too cautious for that, besides.

So the lazy lord decided to think about something else instead.

Why am I helping you? Well...

I just don't like passing judgment on someone else's future without really understanding it.

Don't worry about the whispers or the looks. Don't worry about me either. Now, shall we get back to it?

That was what Illia Lindsay had said, when he'd asked her why she was helping him.

It hadn't been a convincing answer.

She wasn't the type to concern herself with other people's business.

And she was even less the type driven by burning justice or overflowing sympathy.

He could tell that much just from the brief glances they exchanged.

For someone like her to show that kind of consideration for his situation was strange.

There had to be some other reason...

"..."

Airen mulled it over for a moment, then shook his head again.

This was another question with no answer in sight.

Besides, he'd already wasted an hour on pointless thoughts. That wouldn't do.

He'd learned the hard way over the past few months just how important rest was.

And in Airen's case, there was one more benefit to it.

The strange dream that came to him through sleep.

Thanks to that dream, the boy could steady his resolve endlessly. He could greet every morning with fresh determination.

The urge to pick up a sword again is getting harder to ignore...

Still, he only had to wait a little longer before he could hold one once more.

Airen touched the sword pendant his younger sibling had given him and closed his eyes, and soon drifted off to sleep.

Then, the next day.

"..."

The lazy lord had a different kind of dream than usual.

And he woke into morning with a heart unlike any he'd carried before.

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