Project J

Rihard replied, glancing sidelong at her.

"Whatever you're imagining, it's a misunderstanding, Astar."

"A misunderstanding, is it? The way you walked out of there today, you're planning to steal her back, aren't you?"

"Astar, Bella is not a thing."

"Oh, come on. Of course she isn't. That's exactly why you have to win her. If she were a thing, you could just pay for her and be done with it, but she's a person, so you can't."

Rihard chose to keep his mouth shut. Talk to Astar long enough and you lost track of what common sense even was; he had to keep his wits about him at all times.

"By the way, Commander, there's talk of you becoming Sasha's guardian. What's that about?"

"Call her Her Imperial Highness."

"Aw, come on. Sasha is Sasha. ...Fine. In any case, you're not planning to marry Her Highness, are you?"

"How in the world does every conversation with you veer off in such insane directions?"

"It doesn't? That's all anyone talks about these days."

Astar tilted her head, then let her eyes slide into a sly squint. In Philip's words, the eyes of a northern knight gone mad on dopamine had narrowed to blades.

She had carried the unconscious Noah all the way to the capital after the monster fell, and her ears had stayed open the whole way there. Having read through the backlog of love-trouble gossip, she'd had no trouble piecing together how things stood.

Ten years ago, Isabella and Rihard had been lovers. Then they had broken up.

The moment a crack opened, Damon, who had long been circling Isabella, swooped in and snatched her up. And now Rihard was the one orbiting Isabella, exactly as Damon once had.

And then Sasha had wedged her way into the middle of it all.

As if pairing everyone off would settle the matter, the banners of love had tangled themselves in every direction but the right one.

Having sorted the tangled web to her own satisfaction, Astar rubbed her chin with a grave face.

This is already a complete mess, and if I leave it be, this man will do nothing but dig the hole deeper.

What could she do? When her superior had no talent whatsoever for this sort of thing, a loyal subordinate simply had to step in.

Rihard watched with mounting unease as Astar rolled up her sleeves, eyes shining.

"Say, Commander, when you announced you'd be the Princess's guardian, didn't Bella's reaction seem a little strange to you?"

Just as she'd suspected.

Ignoring her smirk, Rihard denied it flatly.

"Not at all."

"Uh-huh. Your face says otherwise."

Astar, hailed as the greatest eccentric of the Northern Vigilante Corps, broke into a beaming grin.

"Commander, do you remember Project J? From ten years back?"

The grandiose title made Rihard's brow knot at once. Project J this, Project J that, the name glittered, but it had all amounted to some scheme about inducing jealousy.

Worse, Astar had been the only person who ever called it that. A hideous nightmare resurfaced, and Rihard went pale.

"Don't remember."

"Oh, you do. It worked wonders back then. Don't you want Bella back?"

"...It worked wonders?"

Were the two of them even sharing the same memories? Undaunted by Rihard's incredulous look, Astar pressed on.

"Oh. Did you not know, Commander? The day I walked around with my arm hooked in yours, Bella came flying at me, raging that those arms were hers and to keep my hands off them."

"...I'm sorry, what?"

"God, it took everything I had not to laugh that day."

"Hold on. If something like that happened, why didn't you tell me?"

"Please. A lady's privacy deserves protecting. Besides, you never left the men who so much as hovered near Bella alone either. Would you have wanted her to know all of that? Hmm?"

Poked in the ribs with every question, Rihard swallowed a groan. But he could not deny it.

Humiliating, mortifying, and yet the effects of Project J had apparently been real. If Astar was telling the truth, more real than he had ever known.

"Heh heh... just leave it all to me. You'll reclaim your love, and I'll claim mine. We'll build on the failures of the past and succeed this time!"

"...Are we at war?"

"Love is war, Commander. Always has been."

Rihard regarded Astar's utterly unearned solemnity with deep misgiving.

Fortunately, Noah had not been badly hurt.

A small cut above his eyebrow was the whole of it.

Why a cut, you ask?

Because that one hadn't come from the monster. It had come from Astar's swinging sword. Which meant every drop of blood he'd been drenched in belonged to the monster. Once I learned that and finally breathed again, I grumbled to my heart's content.

"So why did you pass out?"

"I must have been hit by the monster's venom."

"It had venom?"

"Do I look like someone who knows anything about monsters? Ugh, everything aches. Are you quite sure it was Astar who carried me here?"

"She did. I looked into it, and her handling of the whole affair was impeccable."

Not a trace of the attack remained anywhere. Astar had even worn the Belois ducal house's knight uniform when she entered the capital.

Had she claimed a knight had been dispatched from the territory to escort the Duke's close aide, not a soul would have doubted her.

The situation in the territory was much the same. Aside from the disappearance of the two vassals who kept the accounts, no one had noticed anything amiss.

Claire had thrown a fit over Noah returning straight to the capital without so much as stopping at the estate, but considering he'd been carried in unconscious, soaked in blood no less, Astar's work could only be rated excellent.

"So. Did you actually see a monster?"

Assuming there had truly been one.

"I keep telling you, it was a real monster."

"You're certain you didn't see it wrong? You could have mistaken a bear or something."

"You grew up romping through that very forest yourself, my lady. Beyond the few deer they release for the Hunting Festival, is there a single beast in those woods capable of attacking a person?"

"A monster never once sighted south of the northern border appearing out of nowhere in the heart of the Empire. That's the alternative, and it's hardly more believable."

"It was real, I'm telling you! Where is Astar? Where did she go?"

"She dumped your unconscious body and left. She still seems rather taken with you, by the way. I hear she threatened the physician on her way out, said if you were left with a scar on that face, there would be hell to pay."

"Ahem. She cannot have been serious."

"Right. And reuniting with your old flame after all these years definitely didn't have you mistaking a bear for a monster?"

"Oh, for goodness' sake!"

Noah stamped his foot, wearing the expression of a man driven to the edge of madness.

I was every bit as frustrated.

Believe him, or don't.

Noah had no reason to lie. This was no surprise celebration, and if he were going to fabricate something, would he really settle on a monster of all things?

He was right that Haute Forest held no large wild beasts, too. It bordered the territory, and as such it was kept under meticulous management.

And still.

A monster. In Belois territory.

It was simply too absurd to believe.

Reading my expression, Noah stamped his foot again, the picture of injured innocence.

"Even half out of my mind, do you truly think I cannot tell a bear from a monster? I don't know what last words the Grand Duke left behind, but those lunatics fled deep into the forest clutching their secret ledgers."

"Deeper than in the last report?"

"Yes. They crawled into ground the routine patrols never even reach. I was chasing them down when I spotted smoke and ran toward it, and there they were, burning the ledgers."

"They burned them?!"

"Yes. Unfortunately, by the time I arrived, the ledgers had already been reduced to a handful of ash. I was busy contemplating how best to catch those bastards and beat them to a pulp when suddenly a rabbit came bounding out, or no, I'm not sure 'rabbit' is the word."

Noah scratched at his head, scowling.

"Something like a ball of cotton came flying out of nowhere and clamped its jaws around those men's throats. I mean, wow. In that moment I understood, firsthand, why a pierced throat means instant death. They died without even managing a proper scream."

So in the end, the ledgers and everyone who knew their contents had all vanished alike. A headache bloomed behind my eyes, and I pressed a hand to my forehead.

"...So. Did you at least find out why Astar was in Belois territory?"

"I was unconscious for half a day straight. When, precisely, was I meant to ask?"

Fair point. He wouldn't have been in any state to.

I nodded. It wasn't as though I lacked guesses of my own. Leaning against the window frame, I let out a long sigh, and Noah heaved one right back.

This was no stroll down memory lane, yet every name I had spent years living without kept tumbling out. Noah's thoughts must have run along the same lines, because he fiddled with the treated wound above his eye and murmured:

"She vanished without a word, and all this time I wondered where she'd gone."

But that voice. That expression.

No, I mean, really.

"You... did you like Astar?"

I asked it half in disbelief, but the answer was written all over him. Where, you ask? Where else. On that dopey face of his.

At my dumbfounded look, Noah's face went up in flames in an instant. A figure of speech, but no description could have suited him better.

"L-like her? Who would like whom, exactly?! She used to trail after me every single day and then vanished without a word, so of course I looked for her!"

Noah's outburst left me utterly speechless.

Because for the life of me, I could not fathom why he would deny it when it showed that plainly.