WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Reformation of the Deadbeat Noble

Chapter 37

──────

The Continent's Four Geniuses (4)

Thud, thud, thud.

Judith's fists kept landing on him, one after another. Brett Lloyd's face turned to a wreck in seconds.

No one stepped in to stop the wild girl the whole time it happened.

Partly because things moved too fast. Mostly because nobody could have seen it coming in the first place.

Who would have guessed something like this would happen in the short walk from Krono Fencing Hall to the carriage?

"Y, you brat, how dare you!"

"Please wait a moment, young master! I'll go grab that woman right now..."

"Forget it."

House Lloyd's private soldiers moved to catch Judith, who had already darted a good distance away.

But Brett's raised hand stopped them cold.

Among the soldiers, all watching for a cue, House Lloyd's eldest son finally spoke.

"What is it?"

"You're bleeding from the nose."

"You're the one who hit me, and now you're going to..."

"I'm just saying it looks bad. Drop the tough act."

"Quit talking nonsense and answer me. Why'd you do it?"

"Because I was pissed off, obviously."

Judith grinned, round and easy.

The look on her face was infuriating. But Brett didn't bother answering.

He was leaving anyway. There was nothing to gain from trading more words with someone who was staying behind.

He wiped his nose with the handkerchief a servant handed him and climbed quietly into the carriage.

The soldiers, who had been hesitating, finally split up between the driver's seat and the carriage itself.

That was when Judith raised her voice, loud and clear.

"Brag about it later!"

"..."

"Taking eight hits from me, the swordsman who's going to be the best on the continent, and still standing, winning a match back when you were a kid, those'll be more than enough to brag about for the rest of your life! Not bad for someone crawling home with a face like he's about to die!"

Take care, you prissy little coward!

The carriage didn't move until she finished her curse.

Brett didn't get out or anything. A moment later, the carriage rolled off as if nothing had happened.

House Lloyd's people grew smaller in the distance.

Judith's eyes swung toward Airen and Illia, who'd been watching all of it in stunned silence.

"What are you staring at."

"Huh?"

"Nothing..."

"I still haven't cooled off. You two want a hit each too?"

Both shook their heads at once. Sword skill had nothing to do with it. Judith's sheer force of will right now was enough to make them shrink back.

Judith huffed out a short laugh at that.

Airen being meek, sure, that made sense. But she hadn't expected Illia to react the same timid way.

"Whatever. Airen."

"Yeah."

"What's that in your hand?"

"Oh, this, Illia gave me..."

"What is this. Platinum?"

Judith closed the distance fast and turned the tag over in Airen's palm, inspecting it from every angle.

Then she said, "Give me one too."

"What?"

"If you don't want to, forget it. I'm not forcing you."

"No, it's not that..."

"Then give it here."

Like Illia, Judith today had something odd about her too.

She was rough around the edges most days, but there'd always been a childish streak underneath it. Right now, though, every word out of her mouth carried a weight that made it hard to say no.

Maybe she'd caught the same feeling Airen had. Illia pulled out another one of her house's crest tags without a word of complaint.

Judith grinned and turned the metal tag over, examining it.

"Same platinum, huh. I half expected you'd hand me some cheaper stuff."

"That would never..."

"Sorry."

"What?"

"For what I said about you and your house. Sorry."

The apology came out of nowhere.

Illia's eyes went wide.

The sudden change of subject was one thing, but she'd never dreamed that Judith, proud as she was, would ever say sorry to her.

And it sounded serious too.

"I'm a nasty piece of work who never holds back, but back then, I guess... maybe it's because I never had anything like a family of my own, so I said way more than I should've."

"..."

"No, that's just an excuse. I'm sorry. I mean it."

Judith said it with her head bowed.

Her expression looked strange, like she was doing something she hated, but the sincerity in it was plain.

"...All right. I'll apologize too, for the things I said looking down on you."

Illia Lindsay returned the apology at that. Airen let out a breath of relief.

Right up until Judith had come storming over, he'd braced for anything to happen between the two of them. Instead things had worked out strangely well.

Watching them make peace so easily, after everything that had piled up between them, left him with an odd, hollow feeling for a moment.

I think I agonized over every possible way to patch things up with Illia around the mid-term evaluation, and here she just...

Not that it was a bad thing. Nothing could be better, really.

He just couldn't figure out what had gotten into Judith, and that nagged at him a little.

Had she caught on to what he was thinking?

The red haired girl, having patched things up with her old rival in record time, turned her gaze on him.

"Hey. Hurry up and get moving."

"Huh?"

"That homework the Hall Master gave you. No idea what it is, but he said to finish it fast and come back. That's supposedly how you shake off whatever's bugging you."

"Bugging me? What do you..." Oh.

Airen let out an exclamation, remembering the conversation before the Final Evaluation.

And then he understood. He understood exactly why Judith was acting this way now.

She's clearing out whatever's been bugging each of us, in her own way.

Her method was more than a little unconventional. But somehow that made it feel even more like her.

He laughed under his breath, and Judith smiled back at him.

"What're you smirking about?"

"Nothing. Sorry."

"Sorry my ass, you apologize for everything. Whatever, just get your butt back to the fencing hall, got it? If you win and disappear on me like Brett did, I will chase you to the ends of the earth."

"Got it."

Illia stood there in silence, listening to the two of them go back and forth in a way that might have been friendly, or might have been murderous, she honestly couldn't tell.

She had no idea what they were talking about, or why Airen had suddenly gasped like that.

She wanted to ask, but no good moment ever opened up to jump in.

Clop, clop.

Before long, a carriage rolled up. House Farreira's crest flew from it.

A thin, middle-aged man approached Airen as the conversation wound down.

"Young master? And these are..."

"Ah, friends. We trained together at the fencing hall."

"I see. Thank you for keeping our young master company."

The servant felt a flicker of alarm the moment the words left his mouth. Twisted the wrong way, what he'd just said could sound oddly insulting.

Thankfully, Airen didn't seem to mind. Quietly relieved, the man pressed on.

"Should we wait until you've finished talking?"

"No, it's fine. I'll see them again."

He didn't want to keep people waiting who'd traveled so far just for him.

With that settled, Airen reached out with a smile and shook hands with Judith, then with Illia Lindsay.

"Well, see you..."

"Get back here fast."

"Don't forget, come visit our house before you head back to the fencing hall."

Having said his goodbyes to both girls, Airen Farreira walked off toward the carriage with steady steps. He glanced back once, but that was all.

Illia and Judith stood waving for a while, watching House Farreira's party shrink into the distance.

Then, a moment later.

A terrible silence settled in.

"..."

"..."

Aside from their spat three months earlier, the two of them had barely exchanged a single word, which about summed up how awkward things were between them.

Clearing out the bad blood didn't magically fix the awkwardness.

"You're not leaving yet?"

"I'm leaving tomorrow..."

"I see."

"Yeah."

"..."

"..."

"Well, I'm heading in."

"I'll... take a walk first, then head in."

And with that, the two of them parted ways.

Just as awkwardly as they'd started.

* * *

[Side Story - Judith's Aftermath]

A month passed after Airen Farreira and Brett Lloyd left.

Judith was the only trainee left at the fencing hall now.

The washouts had no reason to stay, and the ones who passed and became formal trainees had gone home for a rest before the official enrollment date in August.

But Judith had no parents, and nowhere to go back to.

She stood in the middle of the great training ground and screamed at the top of her lungs.

"AAAAAH! AAAAAAAAAAAH!"

She didn't hold back on the swearing either.

"You bastards! I'll beat every last one of you! I'll smash you all to pieces!"

She screamed and screamed and kept screaming, until her throat went raw and sore.

Until her breathing turned ragged, until she was gagging on air. Even then, nothing felt cleared out.

The bitterness wouldn't go away.

"Hah, huck, damn it..."

She hated Illia Lindsay.

Born with everything already handed to her, and still working herself to the bone on top of it. Judith hated her for that.

She hated Airen Farreira too.

Born with more talent and more grit than even Illia, and still such a hopelessly nice idiot that she couldn't even land a satisfying insult on him. That made her hate him even more.

And last of all, Brett Lloyd.

Him she hated the most.

That bastard, after all that talk about beating each other no matter what!

She'd found him irritating from the first moment she saw him, irritating all through their training too.

Honestly, even up to the moment he left, she'd never thought much of him.

That prissy noble air he carried never sat right with her.

But the way he'd acted near the end, that much hadn't been bad at all.

Throwing down a challenge against an opponent nobody else at the fencing hall would even dream of facing, and giving it everything he had, genuinely trying to win. That much, she couldn't fault him for.

Which made it all the more infuriating. The pathetic way he'd looked at the very end had lit a fire of frustration in her she couldn't stand.

That's enough.

Judith spat on the ground and steadied her breathing. Then she picked up the sword lying beside her.

The swordsmanship that unfolded from her was violent, like flame bursting into full blaze.

A style she'd first grasped through the Hall Master's Sword Dance, then sharpened through her sparring matches with Brett Lloyd.

Her sparring partner was gone now, sure. But that was fine.

Just a little longer, and she'd become a proper trainee of Krono Fencing Hall, and there'd be seniors there far more impressive than he'd ever been, plenty of them.

More than enough people to go around for her.

So drop the useless thoughts.

Swing the sword harder, work to smash Illia and Airen both to pieces.

That was what she was thinking when it happened.

Clang!

A practice steel sword cut in out of nowhere.

Judith flinched, startled.

Not because her full-force swing had been parried. That alone meant nothing, she was only impressive among the trainee candidates. Next to the instructors, her swordsmanship was still a child's game.

But if the one who'd crossed blades with her was another trainee, that changed things.

She called out the name.

"Brett..."

"I went home and thought it over carefully," Brett said.

He raised his sword again and settled into his stance.

That same familiar pressure came rolling off him.

A dense, airless feeling, like a sphere of water closing in with not a single gap in it.

"Illia Lindsay or Airen Farreira, fine, I get it. But getting beaten up by you and just going home like that, that didn't sit well with me."

"So?"

"I mean I begged the Hall Master. Practically groveled, to let me back in."

"Guess he's got a good heart, taking in a guy like you."

"He's got far more character than you'll ever have."

"Piss off."

"I've wanted to say this for a while, go easy on the swearing. You sound like a scared dog yapping."

"You insufferable little..."

She kept cursing at him, but Judith's expression wasn't unhappy at all. Neither was Brett's.

The two of them, reunited after all this time, crossed swords without another word. Until the sun went down.

You two are no less than those other two.

Hall Master Ian watched the boy and girl for a long time from a distance.

A satisfied smile stayed on his face long after, and didn't leave.

* * *

[Side Story - Illia Lindsay's Aftermath]

On the road home from Krono Fencing Hall, Illia Lindsay felt a pang of regret.

When she'd first enrolled, the place had been just one more step on a long staircase she had to climb. It wasn't like that anymore.

Friendship aside, the people she'd met there had come to mean a great deal to her.

That didn't mean she planned on going back to the fencing hall, though.

As long as her house's own swordsmanship exists, there's nowhere better suited to my growth than home.

Thinking of her house, a smile crept onto Illia Lindsay's lips.

However much the bonds from the fencing hall meant to her, they couldn't compare to home.

She missed her parents, whom she hadn't seen in a year. She missed the house knights who'd doted on her like a daughter.

And... her brother, who hadn't left his room in years. This time, she wanted to see him too.

It can get better. It really can.

The suffocating weight of expectations, awe, and admiration people threw at her without asking.

The equally unasked-for sting of sharp criticism, mockery, and contempt. She understood exactly how much that could hurt.

But enduring it, overcoming it, wasn't impossible.

Airen Farreira managed it, after all.

A boy who hadn't bent under the sharp stares of so many people, who never lost himself, who kept moving forward. A boy who, in the end, had completed a great sword.

She would tell her brother his story. She would tell him her own story too, of how his help had freed her from the same trap.

And bit by bit, as time passed...

He would find his footing again, surely.

Her brother wasn't a weak man.

"Huh?"

While she was lost in that thought, a flower caught her eye outside the carriage window.

A yellow Adonis flower. The same flower engraved on the bracelet Airen had given her.

She had the carriage stopped.

"Do you need flowers, my lady? We're almost at the estate. I could stop by a flower shop right away..."

"No, this is fine. Let's keep going."

Illia wrapped an armful of the Adonis flowers in paper and breathed in their scent. Old memories surfaced.

Up until she was seven, the estate's garden had been full of yellow Adonis flowers.

The flowers Carl Lindsay had given her that day had been Adonis too.

The image of her brother, handing her that yellow bouquet, promising he'd come back victorious, was still vivid in her mind.

Since then, the Adonis flower had settled into something painful for both of them. But Illia felt fine now.

Talking with Airen seemed to have let her set down the weight of that painful memory for good.

Still, my brother might not be there yet...

With the estate not far off now, a small worry crept in.

She'd worked through it, but her brother was still struggling. Maybe the sight of the flower would bring that old pain rushing back for him.

But it was something he'd have to face eventually.

He couldn't stay trapped in the past forever.

The two conflicting thoughts wrestled inside Illia Lindsay's head the rest of the way, and she still hadn't settled on an answer by the time she reached the estate.

Then, a little while later.

Once her father told her the news, she realized there was no decision left to make.

Your brother... left home. No, if I'm honest, it might be more accurate to say he's gone missing.

Carl Lindsay, the eldest son of House Lindsay, had vanished overnight.

No sign of him anywhere in the castle. They'd searched every corner of the territory, then the neighboring territories too, and still nothing.

It shouldn't have been possible.

There's... no trace of him at all. It's as if magic, no, Sorcery was used. He vanished without a single clue. With my limited skill, I can't even begin to guess what's become of the young master.

That had come from the house mage.

A disappearance with no leads, not even the smallest thread to pull. Perfect and complete.

Illia Lindsay's legs gave out under her.

"..."

The happy memories of the fencing hall faded away.

The Adonis flowers she'd brought back were thrown aside, trampled underfoot.

Sinking back into gloom, she couldn't help but hear the rumors that started to spread.

The heir of House Lindsay has gone missing!

Three months with no progress on the disappearance, and now the case is leaning toward suicide...

The heir of House Lindsay, unable to face the future, finally takes his own life!

Carl Lindsay, broken by his defeat to Ignet, meets a genius's tragic end!

Will House Lindsay ever surpass Ignet, or is that a wall they're doomed to never clear?

She didn't want to care.

She didn't want to listen.

But she couldn't help it. No matter how hard she covered her ears and shut her eyes, the words and stares of others kept digging in, darkening Illia Lindsay's heart.

Maybe her brother was still alive.

Alive, and living out each agonizing day as those rumors chased him through the streets.

Or maybe her brother was already dead.

If so, he would have drawn his last breath still choking under the weight of everyone's eyes.

What was she supposed to do?

Cut off the heads of every last person spouting nonsense?

Sadly, that wasn't something she could do.

Even Illia Lindsay, with talent that surpassed Carl Lindsay's, didn't have that kind of power.

But making them shut their mouths, that she could manage.

Ignet.

She would tear down every achievement Ignet had built, one by one.

She would rewrite every record for youngest achiever that Ignet had left on the world.

And then she would tell them all.

If not for their disgusting eyes and mouths, her brother could have beaten Ignet too, just as she herself could. That future had been possible too.

"I'm going to increase my training hours going forward."

Her resolve to walk her own path had blurred.

Her determination not to be swayed by others' words had faded too.

In their place came a rage at the world.

And beyond that, something closer to obsession.

"..."

Count Joshua Lindsay could do nothing but watch as a cold, sharp hatred began to settle over his lovely daughter's sword.

* * *

Sometime between Judith and Brett Lloyd's reunion and before Illia Lindsay reached her family's estate.

Airen Farreira stared out the carriage window the whole way home, his face set and grim.

Marcus, his servant, watched him with a look of concern.

Well, he held out a whole year, but a washout is a washout after all...

He still didn't know that the lazy young lord had passed.

There was no way he could have known. Airen hadn't said a word about it yet.

Right now the boy's mind was so full of the Hall Master's advice that he'd even forgotten to share something this important with his own servant.

What does the sword, swordsmanship, mean to me?

No, before that, what kind of person am I?

Airen Farreira had never once stopped to think this seriously about himself in his entire life.

Of course he hadn't.

As a child, he'd buried himself in bed and run to the very edge of escape, and after that strange dream, he'd simply chased the man's sword without a shred of doubt or resistance.

For the boy, for Airen, this was a difficult question in particular.

His grim expression couldn't be helped.

Hmm. What should I say to lift the young master's spirits?

In the silence of the carriage, the servant Marcus turned the question over endlessly.

Truth was, Airen's condition had improved a great deal from before.

His once thin, unremarkable frame had turned into a sturdy, well built one, and that alone counted as remarkable progress.

Add to that the fact that he'd made friends with children outside his own house, and wanting anything more from him might just be greedy.

Still, doing whatever I can to ease even a little of the young master's worry, that's my job...

Marcus was racking his brain to do right by his duty when something caught his eye.

Something glinting in the young master's hand.

"Um, excuse me, young master."

"Hm?"

"Sorry to bother you, but... what you're holding right now..."

"Oh, this?"

"Yes, yes! That! Could I take a look?"

The servant's voice trembled as he spoke, and Airen nodded.

His hand had just been idly fiddling with it out of restlessness, apparently, and curiosity had gotten the better of him. He handed the object over to Marcus without hesitation.

A moment later, a loud voice rang out inside the carriage.

"Th, the, House Lindsay's platinum tag! Wh, where did you get, g, get this, young master?!"

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried