Chapter 87
Sigh. Well, at least I’m alive, so I get to meet Dalin as my junior.
This was still better than dying cleanly without ever meeting her. Even rolling around in a dung heap, life was better than death.
Dalin—the one people compared me to in the original story. The fact that I survived like this and ended up taking her on as my junior felt incredibly strange.
She looks like me, huh….
…No matter how I thought about it, being told I resembled a walking liability like her was seriously irritating. Still, Dalin hadn’t done anything wrong to me directly yet.
Right. It wouldn’t be fair to hold prejudice against her just because of the original story—
…But didn’t she literally start with “Hello” the moment she walked in?
The fact that Dalin was a certified disaster had already been confirmed with my own eyes. Damn it.
* * *
I took a deep breath and decided to train Dalin step by step.
The moment I saw her bright, innocent face, my blood pressure spiked. So this was how the seniors must have felt when they first met Patty and Matty.
For now, Dalin unpacked her things under Benny’s guidance and ate with Benny as well. That was my attempt to minimize the number of times my blood pressure would skyrocket because of her.
But eventually… the time came when I had to personally take charge of Dalin’s training.
“Hey! Run already!”
“Huff—huff—I can’t—”
“You can! You can do it!”
“When does this end—”
“If you’ve got time to talk, shut your mouth and run!”
“I’m tired…”
“What did you say?!”
Hellish rookie training had begun.
I bore into Dalin with blazing eyes, while she ran laps around the training ground with tears welling up in her eyes.
“Damn it! I told you, if you try, you can do it!”
“Could we maybe do it in five minutes…?”
…This is a complete mess.
Eventually, Dalin collapsed onto the ground. I smiled brightly at the sight—so brightly that Jason, who had been watching the training from afar, visibly flinched.
What are you looking at, you bastard.
Apparently, my lips spelled that out clearly enough, because Jason immediately fled the scene.
“Dalin, you really can do this…”
I spoke in the gentlest voice I’d ever used. Dalin panted heavily as she answered.
“Huff… but—”
“No, Dalin… there is no ‘but.’”
For the first time, I felt like I understood why April used to sound so gentle—her face and her voice.
When you’re desperately holding back your rage, an artificial, fake kindness naturally comes out.
That wasn’t a gentle voice.
It was a voice suppressing fury.
“I mean it. You really can do it…”
Dalin would be able to endure any difficult training.
She didn’t know it yet, since sword training hadn’t begun, but according to the original story she used light-attribute aura. That meant she carried strong Arkon blood.
And that meant her physical potential was exceptional.
She just hadn’t used her body like this before, so she didn’t realize it… but with enough training, Dalin would awaken on her own.
“Lady Salubia… do you really believe that…?”
Dalin asked in a strangely moved voice. I smiled again and replied.
“Yeah, Dalin. Of course. You can do it.”
Because I’ll make sure you do.
I narrowed my eyes and whispered to her sweetly.
“You seem to lack motivation when training alone. From now on, your seniors will run right beside you, okay? Hehe. Hey, Jason! What are you doing standing around? Go get the others!”
“W-wait! If you give me just a little time, I think I can do it on my own—!”
“Is my time yours to waste? You think you can just steal a senior’s time? Hey, Jason! Why aren’t you moving already?!”
“L-Lady Salubia, please—”
I watched Dalin scramble to her feet and start running again, and smiled with satisfaction.
Violence and fear really do save everyone.
“Don’t worry, Dalin. You’re never going to die to monsters…”
We’d already lost half of the four rookies last time, so I was planning to train even harder—and then Dalin showed up at this timing.
It would probably take even more effort to make her pull her own weight compared to other juniors.
So I made a firmer resolve than ever before.
“From now on, Dalin is my personal responsibility…”
* * *
“Hey! I said tighten your core! Core, core!”
“Huff… my body seriously won’t lift—”
“Milfy! Where’s Milfy?!”
“I think I can do it…!”
During one full week of rookie training—
“My arms seriously have no strength left—”
“Benny, are you even managing your junior?”
“…But I’ll keep trying.”
Dalin tried to drop out eleven times out of ten training sessions.
“Isn’t there any free time?”
“Sure. How about some free time with Sanchez?”
“…I meant I want to train without free time.”
After my tear-soaked efforts, Dalin finally completed the same level of training as everyone else. Of course, it was a brutal process.
Phew. Poor me, working so hard training Dalin.
“Sniff… Lady Milfy. Thank goodness rookie training is finally over. We really suffered… the past week was pure hell…”
“Jason, don’t relax yet. From what I see, Lady Salubia plans to keep grinding us down.”
“Were you just talking about me? Border Defense Gymnastics, set number four!”
Still, as a result, Dalin had improved a lot. She was still oblivious and weak, but at least she tried whenever I gave her an order.
“Dalin, go get the warehouse key from Lady Ishina.”
“Yes.”
Hmm. To properly finish rookie training, Dalin still had swordsmanship left.
Since everyone else would be training later anyway, I’d have Aquila take her and teach her then.
Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen Aquila much lately—probably because I’d been stuck with Dalin every second of the last week.
Since relationships from the original story had already gone off the rails, Aquila didn’t seem particularly interested in Dalin either.
Well, Dalin was better than before now, so I could loosen up a bit—
“Um, Lady Salubia…”
“What? You’re back already?”
I looked up at Dalin, surprised by how quickly she returned. But the key she should’ve been holding was nowhere to be seen.
“Where’s the key?”
“It’s not that—Lord Blaim and Lord Topinut told me to tell you to hurry over—”
“…What? You mean Lord Blair and Lord Topio?”
Those two personality-defective monsters calling for me meant—
“What did you mess up?”
“I—I thought they were Lady Ishina and talked to them—”
“…You mean Lady Ishina?”
Damn it. My mistake. Everything I ordered this idiot to memorize must’ve evaporated into thin air.
I’m dead. I’m so dead.
Raising training intensity by one level, damn it.
* * *
“Salubia, can’t you manage your kids properly? Kids these days have no sense, damn it.”
“Why are we, at this rank, having to deal with rookie management?”
“I’ll correct it.”
My voice was probably grinding between my teeth as I said it.
“When did we change our name to Ishina? We’re two people—how do we look like Ishina? Hey, I’ll be ‘I,’ you be ‘Shina,’ Topio.”
“Heh. Does the rookie not know honorific hierarchy exists? ‘Lady Ishina, I need to give Lady Salubia the key’? What nonsense.”
I kept my face neutral—again and again—as I endured the rage of the two disasters.
Of all people, she had to screw up in front of these two? I’ll kill her, Dalin…
When they finally finished chewing us out and walked away, I lifted myself off the ground and turned to Dalin with a pretty smile.
“Dalin…”
“S-sorry—”
“To think I’d be bowing on the ground in front of a rookie at this rank… how deeply moving.”
“I—I’m sorry—”
“Head down, you little shit.”
The era of human peach, human apricot, and human grapefruit was over. Standing before me now was a human blood-pressure medication.
“You said you memorized the names and class numbers! You said you did! I emphasized honorific hierarchy like twenty times!”
“I—I don’t remember well—”
“You remember everything else just fine, so why this of all things?!”
“My memory’s bad—”
“Stop lying! You know everything already! If you try, you can memorize anything!”
In the original story, she remembered every tiny thing the male leads said and moved them to tears—bad memory, my ass.
“Do you remember your direct seniors’ names?”
“Um… Alexander and Jenny…?”
“How do Abraham and Nero become Alexander and Jenny?! Seriously!”
As I furiously drilled memorization into Dalin’s skull, Ishina approached us with a tired expression.
“Salubia, calm down.”
“Are you taking the rookie’s side?!”
“…What? No, I’m genuinely worried about your hypertension.”
…Fair point.
“No, but Dalin started it—”
“Drink some water and calm down.”
Ishina shoved a water bottle straight into my mouth, forcing me to swallow the cold water.
…Okay. That helped a little.
“…But Dalin started it!”
