“I want to shower.”
Ellen sniffed her body and said she wanted to go shower.
“If you go wash up, it’ll be past bed time, won’t it?”
There were a lot of things going on and before we knew it, it was almost 11 o’clock. Of course, not keeping the curfew wouldn’t be such a big deal, but if a superintendent found us while on their patrol, it would be a slight pain in the ass. Well, it wouldn’t be very likely, of course.
I wrote a lot of scenes where Ludwig wandered about past the curfew, after all.
“I hate this smell.”
Ellen was sweating profusely and seemed to hate that sticky feeling. She must have sweat more than usual. I felt how sticky she was when I was carrying her.
Even if I put the food in front of her now, she probably wouldn’t have the appetite to actually eat it because of the smell.
I decided to make a bit more than usual today. I thought Ellen would be rather depressed.
That was why I ended up making sandwiches, so that I could bring them to her.
“……Okay. Then let’s go down to the dining hall.”
I was planning on going to the dining hall, but Ellen shook her head.
“You might get caught by the teacher.”
Hm? What should we do then? You want to eat, but then we would end up going past the curfew and we’d be at risk getting caught by the superintendent, but she still wanted to eat after being so exhausted. What kind of greed was this?
“Can’t we eat in my room?”
Ah.
Did I hear that right?
* * *
Temple didn’t separate girls and boys into different dormitories, they just divided by class, so the boys could visit the girls’ rooms and the girls could visit the boys’ rooms. In Class B, they did it often to get together and hang out.
In Class A there seemed to be only a few cases of students visiting each other’s rooms.
How could they put men and women in the same dormitory, when they were very different? What if they made trouble?
The class parts were important, but the dormitory parts were also responsible for a huge amount of the narrative progression. If the dormitory were divided into male and female, I would have only been able to describe the male characters, as Ludwig, the main character, would live in the male dormitory.
I, as the writer, was responsible for this merge of male and female dormitories, so that I could induce certain incidents and spur on relationships to form. It would have been safer to just divide them, but that would have been pretty boring probably.
Just how could anything interesting happen in a dormitory full of guys? At best, they might wake up early in the morning and decide to play soccer or something.
Therefore, there weren’t any seperate dormitories for narrative purposes, not practical ones. I didn’t have to come up with realistic settings, just one’s I could use easily. So it became an integrated dormitory for this writer’s convenience.
Anyway.
I didn’t feel much when I entered the room of my classmate who was only a little kid from my point of view.
There was a 100% chance that this girl didn’t even think about the implications.
I might have gotten kind of nervous if she was a college student. If that were the case, I probably would be stiff and stuttering.
But even that wouldn’t really work for me.
All the Temple students only felt like little kids to me!
I retrieved the basket of sandwiches from the gym and entered Ellen’s room.
As soon as we entered her room, she went straight to the shower room.
-Shaaaaa….
I heard the sound of water coming from the shower, as I put the sandwiches on a table and sat down on a chair.
It wasn’t much different from my room. Although the room smelled a bit different. Of course, it wasn’t the smell of cosmetics or something.
The room was clean, as she didn’t really spend much time here anyway.
There didn’t seem to be many of her personal belongings in here. My room also was fairly empty, but not to that extent. Although, they might be on a similar level. I didn’t have any personal belongings other than clothes and textbooks in my room either.
Rather than personal belongings, this room was filled with training equipment, probably intended for strength training, installed on Ellen’s request. Our private rooms were spacious, so there was enough space for various training equipments. I had something similar in my room. The detailed composition was slightly different, but the larger framework seemed to be the same.
Overall, it was a nice room. The only thing that made one think that this is a girl’s room was the slightly different smell.
However, although Ellen only had few belongings, she did have some.
In one corner of the room, the place where others might have their magic research table or something of that sort, there was a trunk. It was a rather long truck quite different from a normal one.
However, that trunk, painted black, was tightly sealed. It wasn’t that big, so it seemed easy to carry around. It was a long rectangular case.
Although I shouldn’t, I knew what was in there.
This was the only thing Ellen Artorius brought to Temple.
After waiting a little longer, Ellen came out of the shower room. She shook her wet hair and shivered slightly.
She wore a training suit and slippers.
Come to think of it, she always opted to wear either of those, so did I.
Either the school uniform or a training suit.
She sat on the other side of the table, facing me.
“Let’s eat and then go sleep. I’m tired.”
“Yes”
We started eating and stayed quiet as if everything had already been said. To be honest, the time I slept was the happiest time I spent these days, as my daily routine involved torturing my whole body.
There wouldn’t be something happening, like a teacher suddenly bursting in. If anyone came in here, they might misunderstand why the two of us were in the same room and strange rumors might pop up. However, Royal Class and Temple were almost devoid of students and teachers at the moment, so nothing should happen.
We just silently ate our sandwiches.
It took quite a while to eat all of them though, because I made a lot.
-Craaash!
Thunder echoed outside the window followed by the sound of rain falling. Ellen stopped eating her sandwich and looked out the window.
“Are you done?”
“No.”
Ellen stared blankly out the window and continued to munch on her sandwich.
Seeing her so different from usual was slightly disturbing. I wrote the festival period only from Ludwig’s point of view, never from Ellen’s.
Therefore, I never described in detail what Ellen was feeling at the moment.
So I didn’t know how sad she must feel. Ellen stared at the pouring rain and the occasional flashes of lightning. Was she afraid of thunderstorms or did she like them? I didn’t even know that much. However, I didn’t think she was afraid.
Ellen wasn’t good with talking about herself.
Only if the object hidden away in the trunk got revealed would Ellen’s identity, which was only known to Bertus and a few teachers, be known.
“Reinhardt.”
“……Yeah?”
I was a little startled at her suddenly talking to me.
Ellen looked at me.
That was also the first time she called me by my name.
“Thanks.”
That was all she said to me, while her eyes rested on me. She wasn’t smiling at all, she also didn’t seem particularly blunt either. She wore an expression that seemed to be between those two.
I also felt like I was gradually becoming more proficient in reading her expressions.
I still wasn’t certain, but my proficiency would rise more and more.
“People sometimes feel like shit. There may or may not be a reason. That’s just how it’s supposed to be.”
Ellen stared at me sharply.
“Still, if you don’t talk about it, it will eat you up from the inside.”
It wasn’t good to suffer in silence. Although Ellen had a blunt personality, she also had her own thoughts and feelings. Just like how she appeared rather easy going at first, but eventually got mad and ended up teaching me swordsmanship.
Even the slightest bit of anger would sent me to a frenzy, while Ellen was able to maintain her composure no matter what.
In retrospect, Ellen and I were direct opposites. And in my experience, people who were the opposite of each other would get along better than people who were similar.
I talked too much and had a hot temper.
Ellen spoke very little and had a calm temperament.
In my opinion, that combination fit surprisingly well together. If two talkative people met each other, they’d just talk each other to death, if two silent people met, they’d just stay silent.
She might feel like shit, but I wondered what Ellen was thinking when I told her that it would be okay to talk.
Was she surprised I noticed that she felt depressed?
Ellen, who had been silent for a long time, slowly opened her mouth while blankly staring at the thunderstorm.
“If you could save the world in exchange for your life, do you think you should?”
It sounded nonsensical.
However, I knew the meaning behind that question.
Ellen thought that death was death no matter what one died for. Her brother saved the world but in the end she was the only one left behind. People adored Warrior Artorius, but in the end all Ellen could do was mourn her brother’s death.
So, while Ellen did miss her brother, she also resented him.
Knowing that, I also knew what to say.
“Well…. I wouldn’t know until the time came, I guess.”
As long as I wasn’t confronted with such a situation head on, no matter what I said would be meaningless.
A person who said he’d never do something like that, might end up actually doing it, and a person who said one had to make that choice, might not necessarily choose to do it.
“I’d never die like that.”
Even if she had the option to save the whole world in exchange for her own life, Ellen said, she would never make that choice.
She only had one life, and she said she’d never give it up, even if that would mean the end of the world as we know it. I looked at Ellen and nodded my head.
“Possibly so.”
I knew that Ellen Artorius would risk her life for the world in the future though.
* * *
Ellen got up and walked towards the trunk. Without a word, Ellen removed the basket that contained the sandwiches before and placed the trunk on the table.
-Click, click
Ellen, who unlocked its lock, showed me the contents without saying a single word.
“……It’s a sword. It looks quite unusual at that.”
Inside was a long-sword type sword. It wasn’t a too flashy color. It was simply black. Although that didn’t mean it was just a simple sword.
In addition to smooth lines seeming like blood vessels, there were also ancient characters engraved upon it.
It was a language I shouldn’t know, but I knew what was written on it. Just as I could read and speak this world’s language, I could read even this language. I would even be able to pronounce it.
I actually never described what characters were engraved on the sword, so it was actually my first time seeing them.
[ Forged through tears. ]
I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew well what kind of sword this was.
Ellen Artorius’ Sword.
And prior to that, Warrior Ragan Artorius’ Sword.
“This sword is called Lament.”
“…….”
This was a memento left behind by Ragan Artorius for Ellen before he participated in the Demon World War.
The Warrior Artorius was known to carry two divine swords.
The sword of Als, God of War, Alsbringer, and the sword of Mensis, the God of the Moon, Lament.
Alsbringer, which Ragan Artorius used to defeat the Demon King, became the Empire’s national treasure. However, no one knew where Lament was, except for those that knew about Ellen Artorius’ existence. Later, when Ellen’s identity was revealed in the novel, Lament’s whereabouts were also made clear.
Now Ellen revealed her true identity to me. Although it would be hard for someone to recognize the sword just by looking at it, everyone knew its name. Lament was one of the two symbols representing Warrior Artorius after all.
“No wonder you were so strong.”
I, in fact, already knew about her real identity, so I was forced to act surprised. Ellen was satisfied enough with my reaction. She raised the corners of her lips slightly, creating a smile.
She hardly smiled properly. My heart felt like it was being swept away.
[Ellen Artorius has revealed her identity sooner than expected.]
[Achievement – Ellen’s Truth]
[You have earned 500 achievement points.]
In addition to that, I unexpectedly got some achievement points.
