“You should have kept your footing. That could have been bad. You already have a face that makes other people worry on your behalf about whether you’ll ever get married.”

“You’re insane, ah, ugh, aaagh!”

He was clutching his nose and rolling around on the ground when not only Ruhir but professors and teaching assistants came running over as well.

“Mr. Victor? What happened here?”

The professor pressed a handkerchief to the bleeding nose in a fluster.

If Victor had been with the hangers-on he usually dragged around, she wouldn’t have been able to set the scene. And if there had been more people around, her story would have been seen through.

She was confident in her ability to perform emotions.

“Jea, Jeanne Nova, th, that woman.”

“-Hic.”

Jeanne immediately began shedding tears. She started crying with her shoulders trembling, and the atmosphere around them deflated in an instant. Even Victor hadn’t expected Jeanne Nova to cry, and he looked around in a panic.

“Mr. Victor said, since I’m a commoner, once I graduate from the academy, ……hic. That I could only ever become a mistress……”

“I nev, er said.”

You said something close enough. You piece of trash. A plea mixed with half-truths always landed better than a clean lie.

The word mistress left everyone frozen in shock, and the swordsmanship professor’s face was openly furious.

Even a commoner could hold all manner of occupations. There were plenty of commoners with wealth even without a title. And many people pursued free relationships or marriage rather than becoming a mistress.

People without titles married people with titles all the time. That was why everyone understood just how insulting the word mistress truly was.

And of all people, directed at Jeanne Nova, the model student who had never once lost Top rank? Students who had just finished their lectures came over asking what had happened, and everyone was appalled.

Crossline Academy strictly prohibited discriminatory words and conduct toward anyone, noble or commoner, for the duration of their enrollment. Harassment was banned under academy rules as well, making it a rigorous standard.

“Hic, sob…… That no matter how much I studied, all I’d ever be good for was warming someone’s bed.”

She had never actually said that, but Jeanne had endured a great deal over four years. Hoping this would finally be enough to get rid of Victor for good, she forced the tears out.

She covered both eyes and began crying with trembling shoulders, and someone pulled her into their arms and rushed to comfort her. She could hear Victor shouting that it wasn’t true, but his life at the academy starting tomorrow would not be smooth.

So why couldn’t you just be grateful I was ignoring you and leave it at that. Why did you have to make such a scene?

“Mr. Victor. I expect you to come with me right now.”

The professor’s voice was razor-sharp, and Victor kept shouting that it wasn’t true, but the teaching assistants dragged him away. S*xual harassment was already dealt with severely, but hierarchical violence against a commoner carried even harsher penalties. She felt laughter rising up but held it back.

Oh. The problem was that she couldn’t go to the bookshop with Ruhir now. She had to go to the counseling office and write a statement about what had happened.

Since she had wanted to ruin him thoroughly, she wrote out a detailed account mixing truth with embellishment, her eyes still swollen. Victor would surely deny everything, but she also had the help of friends who remembered him confessing to her four years ago and being turned down.

By the time she finished giving her statement and came out, it was dark outside. Good thing Ruhir was there to witness it. If he hadn’t been, how would she have gotten word to him?

“……Jeanne.”

The moment she stepped out of the academy’s main building, she came face to face with Ruhir, who had been waiting. He approached with a conflicted expression and pulled her into his arms. He held on so tightly it nearly knocked the breath out of her.

Jeanne stood still and patted him on the back, and only then did he let go.

“Look at your swollen eyes. Are you hurt anywhere?”

“No. I’m fine. ……More importantly, why didn’t you go back to the dormitory? You had no way of knowing when it would end.”

“Your friends said they’d wait too, but I told them I’d stay.”

He pressed gently on her swollen eyes as he spoke. She didn’t cry easily, but she was confident in shedding fake tears, so there was no need for him to feel bad for her.

Ruhir looking at her with such a pained expression felt very strange to her. She had always had people worrying over her, but his worry felt different somehow.

“……Are you hungry?”

“Starving. Oh. If this hadn’t happened, we could have gone out and eaten something good.”

“I got food. I remembered what you enjoyed eating the last time we went out.”

At that she looked up at him, and Ruhir brought her to the hideout. It was a weekday, so she had wondered if his friends might be there, but no one was. On the table sat a meal still letting off steam. Just the sight of it made her mouth water.

Ruhir quickly sat Jeanne down. In the bright light, her swollen eyes looked even worse.

He never could have imagined something like this happening to Jeanne. And seeing her cry so wretchedly had left him in a terrible mood.

He had asked the professor, and she said that since it was harassment that had gone on for a long time, they would not let it pass. How had Jeanne endured it for over four years? Apparently her friends had been telling her for a long time to just report it.

But she had brushed it off saying she could ignore it, and it had come to this.

“Is it good?”

“Yes. It’s delicious. I’m amazed it’s still steaming. How did you manage that?”

“I kept it warm with magic.”

“Oh. Right, you can use it that way.”

He portioned out the food in front of Jeanne’s bowl so she could eat a bit of everything. His unsettled feelings refused to calm down easily. She had cried at the opera too, but that had been a different kind of crying.

The image of her face a mess, crumbling as she wept, kept coming back to him.

“Eat with me, Ruhir.”

“……Right.”

“It’s really good. I was so hungry. You saved me, honestly.”

If not for her swollen eyes, she looked as though nothing had happened at all. Crossline Academy was extremely strict about harassment, so anyone who pulled something like this had to be prepared to be expelled. And yet there was someone out there reckless enough to do it.

On top of that, the words that had come out of that man’s mouth were words connected to Ruhir himself. A mistress? A mistress? What lunacy?

It had been ages since the imperial family had banned taking mistresses. And if an heir could not be produced, provisions for that had long since been put in place as well.

It hadn’t been long since he started dating at Lilian’s request. Even so, he felt terribly sorry that she had heard such insane words because of him. Everything about her was beyond reproach, and yet she had been hearing things like that simply for being a commoner?

Completely unaware of any of this going through Ruhir’s mind, Jeanne ate with great enthusiasm, as hungry as she was. When she finished, she wiped her mouth, leaned back in her chair, and stretched out with a long exhale.

“That was so good. What would I have done without you, Ruhir.”

It would have been a lie to say she wasn’t a little down. But filling her stomach with something delicious had sent the bad feeling flying far away. She opened the window to air the room out, then quickly tidied up the dishes and put them in the bin.

After that, Ruhir made Jeanne a warm cup of tea. With a good meal in her stomach and tea to follow, there was nothing more she could ask for.

He had been lost in thought for a moment before he carefully opened his mouth.

“Jeanne.”

“Yes?”

“Have you been hearing things like that often? Mistress, or things along those lines.”

“No. Never. Today was the first time since we started dating.”

“……I’m sorry. I feel like you heard that because of me.”

“Why would that be your fault? Victor is the one who acted like trash. We’ve had bad blood for four years.”

“……”

“When he first confessed, I turned him down, and after that he kept confessing, so I humiliated him outright. After that he held a grudge and picked petty fights.”

That meant there had been incidents like this, more or less, for nearly four years. This afternoon, if it had been somewhere she was alone instead of outside the swordsmanship training hall, what could she have done after hearing something like that?

“Ruhir. Do you have any intention of making me your mistress?”

“What? Of course not.”

“See. Then you have no reason to feel guilty. That type always goes for whatever will hurt the most. The things he used to say before were along the lines of a commoner can’t succeed. That sort of thing.”

“……Why didn’t you report it?”

“I thought ignoring it would be fine. And our lectures don’t overlap, so it had been a long time since we’d actually come face to face like this.”

She hadn’t expected him to have the nerve to say something like whether she was going to become a mistress. She had originally wanted to hit him, but that would have made her the aggressor too. Sending his face into the wall had to do instead.