Even a Scoundrel Gets Tired

197 – The Reason I Want To Grow Stronger

And so, foregoing a freshly-

prepared, still-warm meal,

I grasped the wrist of the girl,

who even now was still hesitating,

still taking measure of the eyes around her,

and pulled her outside.

Saying I “pulled” might suggest

a forceful kind of act, but

seeing as she readily followed me,

it was clear she, too,

no longer wished to linger here.

If not, she would have immediately

protested my rudeness and wrenched her wrist free.

That wrist, held directly in my grip,

was even more slender, more delicate,

more purely white than I’d imagined.

It was almost a puzzle how such

a hand could wield such a sword.

But such wonderings were fleeting.

As I seized her wrist,

our palms brushed in passing,

and there, as expected, was a field

of calluses, countless and hardened.

Those unyielding, unbending

calluses felt intimately familiar.

For I bore them on my own hands.

The very same calluses.

A common trait among those who wield swords.

A shared mark of those who endlessly

grip, swing, slash, and cleave.

Truly, the testament, the insignia

of a swordsman’s toil could be felt upon her hand.

“Um… If we’re going, quickly…”

“…Ah, yes.”

I’d been briefly distracted by the

deeply-etched calluses, making it

hard to believe I was remembering

her unpolished swordsmanship from the first time we met.

The throng around us had somehow thickened, even more so than before.

Squeezed even tighter by the press of bodies, she urged me onward.

Only then did she and I

bolt from the restaurant,

heading for a place where

people were scarce.

Finally, we arrived at a vacant lot where

hardly anyone ever passed through, and it was only then

that I noticed her color slowly, steadily,

returning to her cheeks.

Soon after, she took a deep, shuddering breath,

and began to calm herself.

“Feeling better now?”

“..I told you, I was fine.”

Though she pretended otherwise,

the very fact that she had shown

any vulnerability to me

seemed to embarrass her.

She spoke in a voice barely louder than an ant’s footstep,

avoiding my gaze with effort,

her head darting this way and that.

But to me, her actions only

served to make her even more endearing.

‘Like a meercat…’

“S-stop it! Stop looking at me

like that!”

“..What kind of look are you talking about?”

“Th-that… like you’re looking

at something incredibly cute… ugh…”

She seemed a little ashamed

even after saying it herself,

her face flushed red,

and she didn’t continue speaking.

Come to think of it, if you really broke that statement down,

it meant she was aware that

she appeared cute to others.

Enough to be embarrassed, certainly.

Especially for someone as

overconfident as she usually was.

“..Isn’t it more embarrassing

to say something like that yourself?”

“S-Shut it, will you?!”

The more I looked, the more I saw,

it struck me that her demeanor was worlds away

from that first impression she’d made.

Initially, she’d acted like some sort of

porcupine, quills raised high,

a green girl who relied solely on talent,

charging in headfirst.

But just looking at her hands today,

she seemed like a different

person altogether…

Truly, I found her difficult to understand.

“…What? Why are you staring again?”

“It seems you’ve given a lot of thought

and consideration to the sword…?”

“Huh…? What is that supposed to mean?”

As she started to feign ignorance,

for some unfathomable reason,

I pointed with my finger, directly at

the palm of her hand,

and upon seeing it, she immediately blushed,

as if struck by sudden realization.

“N-No, this…!”

“…You seem to have held a sword a lot.”

“…Hmph, fine, so what?! Is there a problem?!”

A problem? Well…

Not exactly.

Whether she practiced swordsmanship

diligently or not,

was hardly something I should be concerned with.

Though, I couldn’t deny that a question had formed.

“…But why was your swordsmanship

so crude back then?”

“Cr-Crude…?!”

Frankly, to develop this kind of calluses

from simply holding a sword,

one would have to have been gripping it for

a rather long period.

Inevitably, a certain

question came to mind.

No matter how I pondered it,

her swordsmanship back then

was not at all reflective of

It was hard to believe that someone with such calloused hands

possessed such a

pathetically unskilled swordsmanship.

Yet… then how

could she have developed such callouses?

“Cl…clumsy, you say? My swordsmanship?”

“…Honestly, wasn’t that

something you secretly already knew?”

“W-well, I’ve never professionally

trained in swordsmanship, but…”

“…You’ve never received any swordsmanship training?”

“Hmph…yes! What’s it to you?!”

…Did that even make sense?

With talent like hers, normally

her family would’ve given her their full support,

it wouldn’t have been at all unusual.

No, even if they’d just given her as much support as other families did, it would have been fine.

After all, her talent

wasn’t something that would simply stagnate.

She’d even drawn out Sword Silk from

a mere sparring match, enough said.

Even just a mediocre third-rate instructor

would have been enough for her to

supplement and further refine

her own swordsmanship.

But instead of that,

the family hadn’t given her any support?

Among the most common

educations in aristocratic society

were swordsmanship and magic lessons, weren’t they?

“Might I ask the reason?”

“…Our family head believes that

there are set roles for

men and women.”

“….”

“He believes men must protect women,

and women must support those men.”

“…Male chauvinism, then?”

“…Yeah, pretty much.”

Just from hearing her words, it sounded

Her father seemed the very archetype of a man

possessed of a son-preference.

One who believed that the tasks of men

and the tasks of women

were divided with stark clarity.

In her original world, such s*xism would have

ignited controversy long ago,

upending the family in a single stroke,

but alas, in this world,

a preference for sons was not so rare a thing.

Indeed, even in the 21st century,

such ideologies still clung to certain people.

Besides, it was true that a man’s

physical prowess often surpassed a woman’s,

making him more suited to learning swordsmanship,

more apt to cultivate his martial strength.

“It was a knight who first

taught me to wield a blade.”

“….”

“When I first gripped a sword,

it was that knight who praised me, calling me

a prodigy.”

“….”

“..Though the Lord of the House only

ever roared with reprimands..”

“….”

“Still, it was enjoyable,

for it was the first time in my life that

I had things I actually wanted to do.”

According to her words,

the knight who taught her

was not a particularly strong man.

In fact, she claimed to have surpassed his skill

by the time she was thirteen.

Within her family’s ranks,

he was not a particularly remarkable knight,

and his assignment to her

was said to be a mere coincidence.

Simply, a perfect accident.

And his swordsmanship, too,

was not of a particularly renowned style.

Known as a family of knights, it wasn’t

the Reinhardt family’s greatsword style, nor was it

the lightning-fast draw

that severed necks in a blink. It wasn’t

the Empire’s knights’ swordsmanship either, with its distinct,

restrained movements, pursuing

efficiency above all else.

No, it was swordsmanship passed down solely from his master, so he said.

Noble scions who’d received

early training from other renowned

sword masters would undoubtedly scoff, but

she, who’d never once

held a sword since birth, saw

his swordsmanship as the most fascinating thing in the world then.

Back then, no one

in her family would teach her, or any

other woman, the art of the blade.

“I even begged the Lord to allow me to learn

swordsmanship, but only met with refusal.”

“….”

“They said there was little chance I’d

ever need to wield a sword anyway.”

“….”

“Still, I refused

to give up on the sword,

so I resolved to learn in secret.”

Of course, learning that swordsmanship

from him was no easy task, she said.

Not only was evading the family’s eyes

a trial, but

the techniques he taught were

all ill-suited to her physique, so

she had to adapt

several of the forms herself.

And that wasn’t all.

The knight was always the only one

who practiced with her,

and he alone recognized her achievements,

so, as far as swordsmanship was concerned,

The circumstances surrounding her were so harsh, and yet,

despite it all, she

had endured such things

just to hold a sword.

“Practicing the sword, so secretly, away from the

family’s eyes,

before I knew it, I became someone the family acknowledged.”

“….”

“And by then, even

the Lord of the House couldn’t actually

tell me to stop wielding the sword.”

“….”

“Well, he did offer to assign me a proper

swordsmanship instructor, but…”

When the swordsmanship instructor

my father had called for actually arrived,

she is said to have refused the instruction.

The very swordsmanship education

she had so yearned for.

Well, even if she claimed

it was because she was already too accustomed to her own style,

one could easily sense there was another reason entirely.

Perhaps because he was the only one

who recognized her swordsmanship,

which even her own father hadn’t.

Rather than honing her swordsmanship

under another, far more skilled instructor,

she probably wanted to inherit

*his* swordsmanship directly. That must have been it.

“And…did I mention?

I want to change the family.”

“..Yes, you did.”

“Of course, I want to cleanse the

family’s dishonor, but I also want to change, completely,

the customs that favor the men of the family, every single one of them.”

“….”

“I don’t want to pass down the

same experiences I had

to the people of our family who will be born in the future.”

“….”

“Therefore, I will become strong. Absolutely.”

In that instant, a single dewdrop fell

from the leaves directly above me, and

at that same moment, the dazzling dawn light

struck my eyes so I couldn’t quite see, but

perhaps, at that time, her visage was

more resilient and beautiful

than any I had witnessed before.