65. Selfish

lmao guess who forgot their laptop charger like a dumbasssssss even though I swore I packed it like 3 times over and couldn’t work on this over the holiday. If you guessed this guy, you’re totally right, ugh.

That and all of the crazy snow during January has bodied me once I even got back. Lost power in my neighborhood a few times which definitely did not make this any easier. But we’re back! This chapter is fairly short but is a lot of exposition.

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After making sure the door to the student council room had closed and the sound of footsteps quieted down, Lydia looked at her fiance.

「Just what is going on, Roy-sama?」

She looked at him with a slightly reproachful look, thinking of her friend, Stephanie, who had just left the room. She was very confused by the sudden news. Lydia was the same, as she had never heard anything about it before, but she knew Roy, so she was tolerant.
She had assumed that Stephanie would have some magical power since she was adopted by a noble family. However, she had no idea that she possessed such a large amount of magical power without any specific attributes. She had also noticed that her fiance, Roy, seemed to have a premonition that the person he was waiting for would appear, but she had not thought that the person was her friend.

「That’s right! What is happening, aniki?!」 [T/N: Wasn’t sure if I wanted to translate this to brother, since I believe Claus is the only one who calls Roy this.]

In contrast to Lydia’s quiet questioning, Roy’s younger brother Claus stood from the sofa and loudly questioned him.
His mouth still had tea on it from being so nervous earlier, but he immediately accepted the napkin offered by the maid and wiped it off. In contrast to Roy’s smooth golden hair and gentle features, Claus’ silvery hair curled outwards and his narrow eyes gave him a rough impression, but he would still unconsciously register to others as also being a prince.

「I heard about the colorless girl earlier, but how could you fall in love while you have Miss Lydia!?」

「It was love at first sight. It didn’t take a lot of time.」

「Aniki, you fell in love at first sight……!?」

「I’m tired of standing.」

「Nico, that’s why I told you to sit down.」

「We’re in the middle of a conversation!? Stay quiet over there.」

Claus was stunned by his brother’s nonchalant response.
Nicholas, who was not interested in the current topic, seemed to have grown tired of standing around. He was leaning on Isaac next to him and complaining, but Lydia warned him not to interrupt.
Nicolaus pointed to the sofa where Claus had been drinking tea alone until a while ago. Nicholas said he didn’t want to sit without Isaac, but Isaac was reluctant to join them, out of consideration for Jeremias and Bernard who were standing. Lydia told them to all four sit down, but Jeremias was adamant that he wasn’t that soft, even though his master Roy had given him permission. However, before Lydia could scold him to consider the situation, his maid Emilia placed baked goods on the rest table, and Jeremias was the first to sit down.
After this exchange, Lydia sighed wearily, and Roy smiled cheerfully.
Claus moved to the sofa opposite Roy and Lydia, and prepared to listen.

「……is this okay, Miss Lydia?」

Although they said they were not in a romantic relationship, Claus saw that they were getting along well. Also, Roy’s current fiance is Lydia. Claus was worried that she might be hurt to see her fiance confess her love to another woman in front of her. Also, if she was going to blame Roy, it should be her, not him.
When Claus asked, Lydia answered.

「It is not fine.」

Then she glared at Roy.

「Telling Fanny-sama to surpass me was like a sentencing.」

「Her magical power is greater than mine. Also, she is a person who can turn her efforts into results, so it’s not impossible if she makes up her mind.」

She herself is proof of that now, and Lydia could only agree and choked on her words.
Stephanie had acquired the education befitting a count’s daughter, and there were almost no people around who criticized her for being of commoner origin. On the contrary, her attitude of not belittling her former commoner status has made her an object of admiration for those who were adopted into nobility due to their magical power or blood ties, and she has become their support.
Lydia has seen how she has become this way through her own efforts. And she knows very well how much pressure there is when becoming the fiancee of a prince. That is why she cannot remain silent about the alternative future that Roy is trying to impose on her.

「Fanny-sama has made a lot of efforts. So, it is unfair to place such a burden on her.」

「You really don’t care about my brother……」

Claus is taken aback by the complaint being based on a friend. He asked if she was okay, but she didn’t seem to care at all. Even if you ignore favoritism, it’s surprising since most women of a similar age would fall in love with his brother, but she, who is the closest to him, is the exception. This is probably the first time he had ever seen his brother seem so unpopular.

「Oh, Roy-sama is an important friend.」

「That’s why her opinion is so harsh.」

Roy said he was mentioning it because Lydia is not someone he can just ignore, and while he gave a bitter smile, he seemed pleased by her sincere attitude as a friend.
If they were not worried and had already settled the matter, Claus did not need to pursue the matter any further. And even if he questioned the future choices of those who were not here at this point, it would not lead to anything, so that was not what Claus was concerned about.

「Well, that’s fine, but how did you figure her out and when did you start doing this?」

The reason Claus was here was because he had been told that they needed help with a special case of magical power and the matter would be explained to him. Shortly before Claus enrolled in the academy, rumors had spread in the castle that someone with magical power without attributes had been confirmed, and since it was impossible to identify them, they were called the Colorless Lord. The others were probably called to the student council room for the same reason.
The group was told that the person who was deemed the Colorless Lord was Stephanie shortly before she arrived. It was at this time that they also heard the country’s purpose for her that Roy had told her.
Only Roy knew everything.

「May I also ask now?」

Lydia also urged Roy to reveal what he knew.
When she heard about the engagement, Roy spoke as if he had someone he was in love with. And when the conditions for breaking off the engagement that they had agreed upon were met, he had already made some preparations. At that time, she was not told the details, but it was probably safe to assume that the time had come to reveal them.

「Ahhh, yes.」

Roy smiled, thinking that this is why he called Lydia here.
After taking a sip of tea to moisten his throat, Roy spoke.

「I am aiming to be king. Just because I fell in love at first sight, I have no intention of abandoning my responsibilities and dreams. So the choice is either to give up or to make her come before me.」

So he chose the latter, Roy concluded succinctly. The method of first telling the outline is easy for the listener to understand, but the difficulty was in details despite how he said it so easily. Lydia and Claus felt that it was only because it was Roy that he was able to achieve it.

「The information I got when I first met her was that she had strong magical powers, and that hydrangeas near people with strong magical powers reflect the attributes of those people.」

At that stage, it was unclear how much magical power she had or what range they needed to be within for the hydrangeas to react. However, if there were other hydrangeas that bloomed the same color for years, it was certain that there was a possibility that there was a person with strong magical powers nearby.

「First, I had them investigate hydrangeas that bloomed the same color for more than three years without changing. Then, I measured the magical power of those living near hydrangeas that were confirmed to have bloomed the same color.」

Roy set the guideline at three years because he judged that this was the time Stephanie would realize it. If it was only two years, she would consider it to be last year, but if it was three years in a row, she would consider it to be every year. Even if he calculates that children become aware of things around the age of three, it makes sense.

「As a result, we found several people with strong magical power, but all of them except her were adults.」

The confirmed ones had given up on themselves from the beginning because they thought they had little magical power and had not been measured. As commoners with few opportunities to use magic, they did not have any accidents, but their temperament was dragged down by their aptitude attribute, and their excess magical power ate away at their bodies, leading them to live their lives mistaking this for being sickly. They were notified of their magical power through the church, and the Ministry of Magic placed them on probation.

「Next, I did an experiment myself and proved that the color changes depending on the attribute. Just when I wanted to check, I was able to get some out of season. That’s when I realized I had two attributes.」

When he tried growing them myself, pale yellow and purple hydrangeas bloomed.
He had heard from Isaac that some nobles use magic stones to change the color of hydrangeas in their gardens, so he guessed that the Ministry of Magic was doing similar research at least a little. In fact, an experiment was being conducted in one of the Ministry’s laboratories to quantify the amount of magical energy required to react to magic stones.
The Ministry’s experiments had revealed that fire is red, wind is yellow-green, and lightning is bright yellow, so Roy grew hydrangeas himself to confirm the rare light-element color. He never expected that he would be able to confirm the dark-element color as well, which would lead him to realize that Stephanie may have no element.

「Is that the one Philly was so happy to display?」

Claus had seen the hydrangeas that Roy had grown as a child.
At that time, he was not close to his brother, so it was in his sister’s room. Claus remembers well how excited his sister was when she was a child because she would say something like she received official merchandise. He thought about growing hydrangeas if it would make his sister happy, but when the time came for the hydrangeas to bloom, he had forgotten about it.

「Since we were able to confirm the colors of all the attributes, we asked the Ministry of Magic to investigate the amount of magical power and distance of humans that would change the color of hydrangeas, and I brought a proposal based on the results of that investigation to the three ministers.」

「To my father……?」

Lydia saw Roy approach her father, Duke Ernst. Wasn’t that when she was still a potential fiance?
Now that she thought about it, when she found out that Isaac and Roy knew each other, she heard that they met when Roy got lost in the downtown area. So Lydia wonders if that’s when he met Stephanie, or during a later inspection.

「What did you propose to Father back then?」

「It was to lay the groundwork for an environment where commoners with high magical powers could study.」

「The groundwork, you say……」

「Establishing a system to detect those with high magical powers early on, and building an environment to accept them. Along with that, establishing an auditing agency.」

「So, more families are adopting commoners?」

「Indeed, I’ve heard that since Fanny-sama, several children have been adopted each year.」

Claus and Lydia both felt the need for an adoptive environment, so they immediately thought of it.
Many of the people who sided with the second prince, Claus, were obsessed with status, such as magicalists, and it was easier to hear about those with low magical powers or those of commoner origin. Lydia could be seen at tea parties, and in the case of young ladies, her friends Stephanie and Zaskia would take the initiative to talk to them, so there were many opportunities for them to get to know each other.

「I was originally wondering. Since magical power is not hereditary, there should be commoners with strong magical power and nobles with weak magical power. If that’s the case, we need to create an environment in which people can receive magical education in the future according to their magical power, not their status. And vice versa.」

Education in magical control can be received according to the amount of magical power. This would be the ultimate ideal, but currently literacy and literacy skills are disparate in proportion to social status, and because paper and books are not widely available, they are not at the stage where they can immediately create educational institutions for commoners and those without magical power.
However, children with high magical power are in demand among noble families who have not been blessed with children or who have not had children with high magical power. If there was an institution that could conduct a preliminary investigation of the family environment of the adopting family and observe their progress, adoption would not be as difficult.

「Even so, how can we detect it early……?」

Not everyone grows hydrangeas as conveniently as Stephanie. Even if you plant hydrangeas in a residential area, it takes time to identify those who are affecting them. Lydia did not know how those who were adopted after her friend were discovered.
Roy smiled at Lydia’s question.

「If they get familiar with the national flower from an early age, it will foster a sense of patriotism.」

「Oh, so that’s why they started holding contests.」

「Zack, do you know anything?」

Isaac was out of the loop because he couldn’t keep up with the conversation, but he recognized the lines Roy had just spoken.
When Lydia asked Isaac , who was facing the rest area, Isaac told her about an event he was familiar with.

「For quite some time now, churches have been handing out hydrangea seedlings to children at the flower festival in May, and the following June they hold a hydrangea contest.」

Isaac muttered that he had always thought it was just a diversion for children who find it difficult to go outside during the rainy season.
At the fertility festival at the end of spring, children aged five to seven are given hydrangea seedlings, and the winner is decided at the contest the following month. The hydrangeas are collected at that time unless the person wishes to continue. It has now taken root in every region as an event that motivates children to win prizes.
The reason why Roy’s words sounded familiar is because the church distributes hydrangeas with the same phrase.
The name of the country of Abendroth means sunset. The only part of the country that faces the sea is the west, so neighboring countries call it the country where the sun sets. The hydrangea is usually either light blue or orange, and the way it changes color every year is similar to the changing of the sky, so it is considered to be the flower that symbolizes Abendroth.

「I wanted to participate too, but by the time it started I was out of the target age range.」

「You really wanted to participate that much?」

Lydia asked that to Isaac, thinking that he was interested in participating as a gardener, seeing his disappointed look.

「It’s because if you win, you get a year’s supply of bread.」

「Zack……」

Lydia was astonished by his eager answer. Even if he could participate, wouldn’t it be an abuse of power if an apprentice gardener won? Roy gulped in amusement at the great effect of the prize.

「If they self-report it, it will be easier to tally up the results.」

It would certainly be easier to gather information if the hydrangea contest was hosted by the church, which is responsible for measuring magical power. If the commoners were able to get livelihood assistance, they would be more likely to participate like Isaac.
In any case, everyone was convinced of the method to find those with high magical power.

「Ah, so this is what they mean when they say you can avoid explaining things.」

「Mmm. They say that nobles are not familiar with commoner events.」

Isaac didn’t understand why he was asked to be here, but he realized that it was his role to explain the situation on the commoner’s side. Isaac was the only commoner in the student council room right now. Since this event started after she was adopted by the Earl family, Stephanie, who had already left the room, didn’t know about the competition.

「Well, that’s how it was. I just created an environment that would create the possibility of her becoming an engagement target for the royal family. The rest was up to her will, and becoming close to Miss Lydia was just an unexpected coincidence.」

It was all a gamble, Roy said.
Whether Stephanie would accept the adoption offer was also up to her choice.
It was fortunate for Roy that she had become close to Lydia, and that she had improved her education so that she could be on par with her friends, and that she was not affected by Lydia’s magical power. And since Lydia’s friends, including her, had been reluctant to meet him in person, today was the day for their reunion. It was funny that they hadn’t seen each other so often up until now, so it was more funny than unfortunate.

「I can’t believe my brother would go to such lengths for a woman……」

Claus muttered that, unable to believe the situation, but Roy smiled and laughed.

「She brought things forward, so I did it sooner than I’d wanted to.」

Separate the values ​​of social status and magical power, remind the nobles of their true responsibilities, and allow them to receive education regardless of social status. This was something he had planned to do after he came of age or became king.
The necessary materials were conveniently gathered around the time he met her, so he moved earlier than expected. After that, he was able to meet Tobias, a nobleman with no magical powers, and was able to start separating the values ​​of social status and magical power that are deeply rooted in the nobles.
Although he is still only half-hearted in his ambition, he is progressing smoothly and faster than planned, which makes Roy very happy.

「……Roy-sama, do you really love Fanny-sama?」

They say love is blind, but to Lydia, Roy seems very calm. As a friend, she wanted to support Roy, but as a friend of Stephanie, she felt that she had to find out if he was really in love with her.
Roy accepted Lydia’s questioning gaze as a matter of fact and smiled.

「I said it was love at first sight, but I think I fell in love with Stephanie again because she came to this school after living her own life.」

Her sunset-like hair, which turned from a pale orange similar to peach to a dark orange at the tips, had grown long enough to reach her shoulder blades. Her large, round eyes now had a more focused gaze than before, but her rich expressions seemed unchanged.
When he first met her, she was a small, cute girl.
It’s this girl.
He intuitively felt it without even exchanging a word, and he was mesmerized.
If that intuition he felt when we first met was love at first sight, it could also be said to have been a blind judgment, as he knew almost nothing but her appearance.
He wanted to meet her again and talk to her. He knew where she lived, so it would have been easy to find out her identity and pretend to be a commoner. But what Roy wanted was to meet her as himself and exchange words.
Therefore, the difficult reunion took a long time. But the moment his eyes met hers, he was captivated again and realized it was her, so he had no choice but to turn his intuition into certainty. It was quite a shock that she didn’t even recognize him as a human. Well, today he met her as he was, officially a prince, so it won’t be a problem if he is recognized as a human from now on.
He is very happy that there will be a future with her.

「Today, I feel glad that I fell in love with her.」

Roy, smiling with joy, was just a 16-year-old boy.

「Roy-sama……」

Seeing that expression, Lydia had no choice but to support the two of them. Claus was slightly surprised at his brother’s appearance, which was appropriate for his age.

「……for Leo as the prince, just confessing to the girl he likes is really troublesome.」

「I already knew it, but you were a mean brat, weren’t you?」

Ugh, Isaac and Nicholas said with the indescribable expressions on their faces as they each expressed their thoughts. Lydia, who was deeply moved by the lack of appreciation for the hardships of her old acquaintance, became annoyed.

「You two, if you’re friends of Roy-sama, why don’t you at least support him?」

「Leo would do it on his own.」

「If she falls for him because of such persistent and cruel methods, Fanny-sama has bad taste in men.」 [T/N: lmao Nico throwing haymakers out here like nobody’s business]

「That’s not true!」

The two of them were hesitant when Lydia insisted that he was devoted and wonderful.
Roy’s eyes widened as he watched his friends defending him and exchanging honest opinions. Before he knew it, Lydia had begun to lecture them about why they couldn’t just support their friends.
He had good friends. That was the reality of the scene he was seeing now.
When he was young, he thought that if he wanted to become king, he would have to give up on love and friends on an equal footing. But since he hadn’t given up, he now had both.
It was kind of funny, and Roy laughed out loud.
Surprised by Roy laughing out loud, Lydia and the others stopped moving and turned to face him.

「Well, I guess I should try being selfish too.」

This is the result of being selfish when she was young. It’s not bad to follow your feelings as you get older.

「Thank you for being there for me, Miss Lydia. I’ll consult you when I’m in trouble.」

「I’ll help however I can. Even if we’re no longer engaged!」

Roy’s eyes soften when Lydia says she’ll stay friends with him even after the engagement is broken. What a reliable fiancée.
Only Lydia is willing to support him, and Isaac and Nicholas, who she has asked for help from, look grim, and Claus looks very unwilling, saying he doesn’t want to get involved in his brother’s love affairs. Jeremias doesn’t even understand, and is still stuffing his face with baked goods. Bernard is interested in the rare magical power of no attribute, but he is wondering to himself whether he should talk to his master’s beloved.
Looking at each of them in turn, Roy found the three different expressions interesting.
First of all, he began to say, drawing everyone’s attention to himself.

「I’ll try my best.」

Roy said that, brightly smiling.

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Man, I love Nico being a little shit lmao

Anyways yeah again, sorry for the massive delay on this one. Even though it was relatively short, too much crap happened all at once. We should be on track to finish sometime this year, provided I don’t get bodied by work again. Unfortunately, being promoted does mean I also have more stuff to do hahahaha.

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