If You Cheat, Just Don’t Tell Me - Chapter 4

Seeing Freya like that, I ended up smiling along with her.

Freya—she’d told me to just call her by her name since we were engaged, was someone who paid close attention to the subtleties of people. It wasn’t that she was constantly watching people’s expressions to survive, but rather as someone in a position of leadership, she naturally understood the state of people around her and those in their circles. That’s the kind of impression she gave.

And that observational skill of Freya’s was directed at me too. Beyond the various little complaints she’d voice, Freya seemed to want to understand my inner thoughts through my everyday words and actions.

“Are you not enjoying school?”

“…Does it look like I am?”

“I’m asking because it doesn’t look like it.”

If I wasn’t in the mood, I wouldn’t attend classes, and if work came through from the adventurer’s guild where I was registered, I wouldn’t come to school at all. While I maintained the minimum attendance required to secure the credits needed for graduation, frankly speaking, I was only showing up about half the time.

I didn’t have anything particular I wanted to learn, and I didn’t really have a place there to begin with. Even before I became like this, as a “dropout,” I never had a place, and both now and before, school held little value for me.

I only attended because I was told to commute from home. That’s all it was.

Freya, who diligently came to this level of school every day, asked me that on a day when I’d actually shown up.

“Not really, I’ve never found it enjoyable.”

“…Well, looking at how you are, Dicca, I can see that.”

“My bad. You can call off our engagement anytime, you know.”

“Silly. I told you I won’t. And I didn’t mean to speak ill of you. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses.”

Ever since the day I first spoke to Freya, I’d been telling her at every opportunity, “You can break off our engagement anytime.”

If my family were to propose canceling the engagement, it would reflect poorly on Freya, and given my father’s attitude, it would be impossible for us to suggest it anyway. On that note, if Freya were to request the cancellation, the fault would be seen as mine, and I couldn’t care less what my family or this town thought of me after I graduated and left promptly.

So ideally, the engagement needed to be called off by Freya. Yet for some reason, she showed no intention of breaking it off with me.

Although I hadn’t particularly intended to hide it, I’d been hesitant to discuss my plan to “leave my home and this town,” but after that day when she said we should talk face-to-face, I promptly told Freya about it.

“…Someone as talented as you doesn’t need to stick with an engagement to someone like me, right? You probably have plenty of suitors, so why?”

In an empty classroom after school.

The room, dyed red by the setting sun, had desks and chairs neatly arranged, magically floating lamps glowed, and a broom and dustpan were cleaning on their own.

In that classroom, I was sitting at my desk, and Freya had taken the seat in front of me without permission.

I’d been caught just as I was about to head to the guild to earn some money, and somehow ended up in this situation.

“Well, yes. I might indeed be talented. I think so myself. Objectively, you know? But my talent has nothing to do with my engagement to you. This was decided through discussions between my family and yours.”

“That’s the kind of thing that could be overturned easily if you just told your family once that you don’t like me.”

“Maybe. But maybe not. Honestly, I have my doubts about your family. But my family might have their own circumstances, don’t you think? Well, anyway, I have no intention of breaking off the engagement, so this conversation is pointless.”

Freya said this while twirling her crimson hair around her finger.

Honestly, I had no idea what Freya was thinking. Freya probably didn’t understand what I was thinking either. Well, maybe she was observing me and creating opportunities to talk like this to understand that.

“You know you’re getting the short end of the stick, right?”

“It’s not good to call yourself the short end of the stick. At least, I don’t think so.”

“By the time we’d be old enough to formally register our marriage, I won’t be in this town anymore, and I’ll have left that house. I told you before, right? In that situation, an engagement is meaningless.”

“Listen, I didn’t get engaged to your family; I got engaged to you. It’s true that the engagement might have been discussed between our families, but the actual marriage is between you and me. The families don’t matter.”

No matter what I said, she rebutted it. I didn’t think her rebuttals themselves were logical… but they made it clear she had no intention of canceling the engagement. That’s the kind of rebuttals they were.

Seeing me racking my brains trying to persuade her, Freya let slip a small smile, as if unintentionally.

It looked like the smile of a girl her age, unlike the “genius Freya” who usually stood at the forefront leading many people.

“…What?”

“Nothing~? I just think you’re stubborn for insisting on breaking off the engagement when I’ve said I won’t.”

“I’ll throw those words right back at you.”

“What! That’s not true!”

Seeing Freya like that, I ended up smiling along with her.

—How long had it been since I’d last shown a genuine, unforced smile like this?

“So? That Freya girl wants to come here?”

“She’s being annoying even though I told her not to come.”

One night.

In the usual meeting place where I gathered with my regular companions, I was having a carefree conversation with Alta as usual.

“I keep telling her this isn’t a place for a young lady like her, but she won’t listen to me.”

“Hah hah! I don’t know if she’s a noble or some rich merchant’s daughter, but this ain’t no place for a proper young lady from a good family!”

“Right? I was desperate to stop her from following me today too.”

Straddling my motorbike, I looked up at the night sky.

Contrary to the noisy commotion of the meeting place and the dirty air of the city, the stars shining in the night sky were beautiful, transparent.

“Still, you’ve changed quite a bit too, Dicca.”

“…Huh? In what way?”

At Alta’s sudden words, I looked away from the night sky I’d been gazing at and unintentionally turned my gaze toward him.

There, for some reason, was the intimidating face of a muscular man looking satisfied.

“You might not have noticed, but you smile faintly when you’re talking about Freya-chan.”

“…That can’t be true.”

When Alta said that, I reflexively touched around my mouth with my right hand.

…When I talk about Freya, am I smiling? No way.

“What, so you’re getting serious about her, huh? About Freya-chan.”

“…Don’t say stupid things.”

Words that I would have clearly and strongly denied before.

For some reason, at that moment, I couldn’t refute them strongly.

“—And don’t you dare call her ‘Freya-chan’ so casually, you bastard.”

With those words, I averted my eyes from my own heart.