Jade took a stance that looked like he would block number 11′s attack head-on, then at the moment their swords met, he slipped his body to the side and brought the tip of his sword down.

Number 11′s sword slid along Jade’s and tilted downward.

“Wh, what? What?! Uwaaah!”

Number 11, who had gathered every last bit of his remaining strength and charged in expecting Jade to take the hit, staggered and lost his balance in an instant.

‘Now!’

With the smallest amount of force, Jade struck number 11′s sword upward from below. It was a counter, and his first offensive strike at the same time.

Thwack!

…….

…….

…….

Clatter!

A brief silence fell over the entirety of Steraci Hall.

Bwuuu-!

Then the whistle rang out, full and resounding.

Jade slowly looked down at his own two hands. The sword was still in his grip. And on the floor, number 11′s dropped sword lay there alone.

“……I, I won!”

“Uwaaaa-!!”

Cheers erupted from all around. Everyone chanted number 12.

Jade had even forgotten that his number was 12, and he simply stood there blinking, unable to believe the moment was real.

“Unbelievable!! What a turnaround! Number 12!! Our baby competitor has won-!!”

I’m not a baby……

Jade muttered blankly. His ears felt muffled, like he was hearing sounds from underwater.

The light gradually returned to Jade’s eyes, and he lifted his head and swept his gaze across the arena. Everyone sent applause toward him and number 11, cheering and calling out his number.

“Ah, Father.”

Jade suddenly recalled the voice he had heard moments ago. His mind snapped to attention.

Jade already knew where Lawrence and Ray were standing. Finding them was easy.

‘The spot where Lady Arinne is……!’

His father and Ray were definitely there. They had to be. Together with Lady Arinne.

“Big brother!!”

Ray, held in Lawrence’s arms, was calling out to Jade and waving his short arms wide.

‘Ah.’

It was real.

Ray and Father were really there. They had come to watch his match and cheer for him.

Relief rose across Jade’s face. His yellow-green eyes, shining like leaves in the light, trembled as they turned toward them.

A blue autumn sky, the occasional breeze, and the pouring sunlight wrapped around Jade’s body and heart.

From somewhere deep inside him, a swelling emotion whose meaning he could not name boiled up.

“Father! Ray!!”

Jade broke into a wide smile aimed at them. His eyes curved into crescent moons.

* * *

Jade exited to prepare for the quarterfinals, and the next match started right away.

“This year’s Evershine is seeing a remarkable showing from the youngest competitors. Competitor number 13! We look forward to next year!!”

Unlike the sixth match Jade had fought, the seventh match between numbers 13 and 14 took less than two minutes.

Number 13, who was nine years old like Jade, started beating number 14 thoroughly the moment the match began and extracted a forfeit. And then he was disqualified.

The youth division used blunted practice swords rather than sharpened live blades, but no one had anticipated there would be someone who would simply start pounding their opponent with one.

Number 13 maintained a composed posture even after receiving a disqualification for the foul. Watching him laugh heartily without a care in the face of jeering cheers, he was clearly a child with an unusual strength of spirit.

“It’s quite a remarkable tournament in every sense.”

Arinne whispered to Lawrence.

“The Empire is done for……”

Lawrence muttered with a face that had gone haggard in an instant. She asked with a puzzled look.

“What do you mean, done for?”

“No. It’s nothing.”

Lawrence kept his words to himself. He could not bring himself to say out loud, out of sheer embarrassment, that the child making a spectacle of himself up there was someone who would one day lead the Empire.

“Hey! You there. Did you see that?”

Tarsa, who had somehow spotted Lawrence with his head hanging in shame, raised a hand in a light greeting.

“Do you know that child?”

“That is, …… I don’t know that child.”

Lawrence smiled awkwardly.

Arinne narrowed her eyes. Him saying no with a guilty look on his face only made it more suspicious.

Lawrence was also the type of person whose lies showed plainly on his face.

“Ray. Go play with the nice man.”

“Mm.”

Arinne took Ray from Lawrence’s arms and left him with the man from earlier. Then she leaned in closer to Lawrence and whispered.

“Is that your illegitimate child?”

She said it deliberately, and Lawrence’s eyes went round.

“Arinne?! What, what do you take me for right now……!! Please say something sensible. I, I mean, he is a child I know. A child of someone…… I know.”

Startled out of his wits, Lawrence spilled out words in a rush, defending himself that he was not ‘that kind’ of person.

Arinne’s eyebrow twitched slightly in displeasure.

He could have just said it was a child he knew from the start. Lawrence always needed a good poke before he would open his mouth.

“He’s coming this way.”

“What?!”

Lawrence snapped his head around. Tarsa was indeed walking toward him and Arinne.

“Marquis. Why are you pretending not to see me?”

“……”

Told to exit, Tarsa had run toward the stands instead of the exit and leapt up to hang from the railing.

“Please climb up first, it’s dangerous.”

Lawrence grabbed Tarsa and lifted him up into the stands.

He would have preferred to leave him be, but the railing was too high for a child to climb up alone, and leaving him hanging there was unsettling.

“What do you think you’re doing, exiting into the stands? No, wait. You were disqualified, so you’re no longer a competitor anyway. Have some shame.”

“Haha. Thank you.”

Tarsa smiled with his teeth showing. His gentle face, with two front teeth missing side by side, left an impression.

‘Why does such a young child talk like that?’

Arinne tilted her head as she listened in on the strange exchange between Lawrence and Tarsa.

It was common enough for noble children who thought themselves the best in the world to speak informally to anyone.

She could overlook the child’s manner as lacking in etiquette, but his speech pattern sounded exactly like a white-haired old man.

It was also strange that Lawrence was using formal speech toward a child Jade’s age. For him to be that deferential, the other party would have to be royalty at minimum.

‘There are no young children in the imperial family, are there? Except for the imperial princess who is turning four or five soon……’

Arinne grew more suspicious and listened closely to the two of them.

“You can be proud of me. I essentially took revenge for your son.”

Tarsa said proudly, puffing out his chest.

“What do you mean by revenge?”

Arinne cut in without holding back. ‘Your son’ would mean Jade, and ‘revenge’ was another matter entirely. Those words bothered her.

“Hm?”

Tarsa’s gaze shifted from Lawrence to Arinne.

“And who might this lovely person be? If I were ten years older, I would have proposed. What a shame that I am only nine.”

“……”

Her usually impassive face, which rarely crumpled, twisted with distaste.

“Arinne, I’m sorry. Let’s step away for a moment. I think I need to take this child to his guardian.”

“Yes, go ahead.”

“Then, just a moment.”

Lawrence unwrapped one of Ray’s snacks and popped it into Tarsa’s mouth, then led Tarsa off to a corner.

“Lord Tarsa. Please do not act like His Majesty outside the palace as well.”

Lawrence lowered his voice and spoke to the child in a firm tone.

Having grown up in the palace and met only adults, Tarsa had picked up their manner of speaking wholesale.

Before worrying about Tarsa having no friends his own age, the Emperor needed to help him fix that strange way of talking that came tumbling out whenever he ran into someone he knew.

“Oh~? It’s only natural to take after one’s grandmother. Don’t you find it admirable that I, at nine years old, have mastered the Emperor’s manner of speaking?”

“There is no such thing as the Emperor’s manner of speaking.”

What he said in the name of projecting dignity was a perfect imitation of the Emperor, making him seem like a precocious old soul on top of being a slippery one.

Much of why the child had ended up speaking this way was because Tarsa, knowing he would one day become Emperor, had taken his grandfather the Emperor’s manner of speaking as the ‘imperial speech’ he needed to use in order to become Emperor.

“So what did you mean by revenge?”

Lawrence asked with a sigh.

“My, my. I thought quite highly of you, but I was wrong.”

Tarsa looked at Lawrence with pity and crossed his arms.

“By revenge, I mean,”

“Not the meaning. What did you mean when you said you took revenge for my son? Did something happen before the match?”

“Hmm.”

Tarsa pursed his lips like a bird and drew out the sound.

“So, earlier you see……”

Tarsa hesitated with a vaguely uneasy feeling, then explained to Lawrence one by one what had happened in the waiting room.

From number 14′s outburst to the story of the administrator who had treated the children differently based on their appearance.

Lawrence’s expression hardened as he listened to Tarsa speak.

“Understood. I will look into it separately after this is over.”

“Is Jade going to be scolded?”

“I won’t scold him.”

“That’s a relief then……”

Every time Tarsa caused trouble, the people around him rather than himself ended up getting scolded more, so he had been worried that Jade and the others might get in trouble over the fact that he had beaten number 14 with his sword and forced a forfeit, all in the name of taking revenge for Jade.

“Your Highness, please return now. If you don’t go right away, I will tell Calon.”

At Lawrence’s firm words, Tarsa’s eyebrows drooped in disappointment.

“Hmph. You’re a mean adult who toys with a child’s sincere feelings……”