She left the main street behind, dashing first onto a rather wide but tidy backstreet before disappearing down a complex web of small alleyways.
Lefiya blindly chased that shadow for twenty or thirty minutes, wrestling with the ever-branching roads. She didn’t even know what she was doing anymore, yet she couldn’t seem to stop herself. She had to find Aiz.
Before she knew it, a considerable amount of time had passed.
Head on a swivel and mind consumed by the frantic search, Lefiya sailed around the nearest corner and found herself face-to-face with an oncoming body.
“Eeek!”
“Whoa!”
There was a sharp crack as their heads collided. Both parties landed hard on their rumps.
They were motionless for a few moments, teary-eyed and groaning as they held their heads in pain.
Of all the—!
As a Level 3 adventurer, she couldn’t believe that she had ended up splayed out on the ground like an utter klutz. It was her own fault, really. She’d gotten too caught up in her chase, unable to think of anything except Aiz.
“I’m very sor—”
“P-pardon me, ma’am!”
Her apology was cut short by an even louder one, and the speaker got to his feet in a hurry.
Upon peering upward, her eyes met those of a boy.
A rubellite-eyed, white-haired human boy.
He had the most cherubic of features, his hair reminiscent of the pure-white snow that often painted the landscape of elven villages in the woods Lefiya had once called home. He was young—there weren’t any men in her familia who were younger—and slim, his features lean and slender.
Lefiya couldn’t help but wonder if their ages weren’t so different. The boy, on the other hand, simply reached his hand toward her.
“Are you all right…? Ah—”
But then his outstretched hand suddenly stopped short.
Reflected in those ruby eyes of his were the decidedly pointy, decidedly twitchy ears of an elf. Like Filvis from Dionysus Familia, prideful elves loathed skin-to-skin contact with anyone they didn’t approve of. While this didn’t hold true for their entire race, the number of elves who couldn’t get over their discomfort was considerable.
As though familiar with it himself, the boy hesitated, unsure whether or not he should retract his hand.
All Lefiya could do was sigh. She could see in his face how distraught he was. Not wanting to be misunderstood due to the habits of other elves, she took the boy’s hand herself.
He was surprised, for sure, but not to the point that she couldn’t use his hand to pull herself to her feet.
She took a moment to dust herself off before meeting those rubellite eyes again.
“Thank you very much! And I do apologize. I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
“N-no, I—! I was the one who should have been more careful…”
Lefiya delivered her apology with a smile while the boy could only stumble over his words in response.
One might actually think the boy had never even spoken to a girl before from the way his face heated up, especially contrasted with Lefiya’s calm, very elven demeanor. His discomfort was palpable.
There was something authentic about him. A simple sort of humbleness. From the look of his lightweight armor, he must be an adventurer.
As all these thoughts ran through her mind, however, another joined them.
Oh, right—Aiz!
Practically bent forward in her urgency, she quickly asked whether or not he’d noticed someone matching Aiz’s description nearby.
“Golden hair and golden eyes…?”
“Exactly! The Sword Princess! Aiz Wallenstein! You’re an adventurer, no? Surely you know her! Have you seen her?”
She could feel the desperation building in her voice.
The boy, however, was silent, and Lefiya could have sworn she saw the beginnings of sweat forming on his temple.
“You’re, uh…not from Loki Familia, are you?”
Lefiya’s brow creased. Where’d that come from? “…? I am, yes. Why?”
The corners of the boy’s mouth twitched. It was almost as if he was hiding something. The hints of perspiration on his face quickly became full-fledged beads.
Wait a minute…Lefiya’s eyes narrowed, her demeanor shifting. There’s something quite suspicious about this…
Now she was certain he was covering something up.
“You know something, yes? Tell me what you know about Miss Aiz!” She was practically shouting at this point.
The boy didn’t waste a second—he turned tail and bolted.
“You—!”
The way his white hair fluttered in his escape reminded Lefiya of a bounding rabbit.
Not about to be outdone by a human, no matter how fast his legs could apparently go, Lefiya shot off after him like an arrow.
“You come back heeeeeeeeeere!!”
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!”
Amid the silent streets, its residents still fast asleep, the chase had begun.
His head start vanished in an instant. After throwing a glance over his shoulder only to see Lefiya gaining on him, the boy gave another startled eep.
He couldn’t have been higher than Level 1, that much was certain, which meant he was no match for the speed of a Level 3 like Lefiya, even if she was a magic user. The distance between them grew shorter, shorter, and shorter.
He definitely knew something about Aiz and what she was doing all the way out here in the wee hours of the morning—it was written all over his face.
Lefiya could feel it in her gut. The polite and sincere nice-guy bit had been nothing but an act. She revised her evaluation, seeing him now as nothing but a rude, insolent boy concealing information about her precious Aiz.
Her eyes narrowed like brilliant deep-blue razors, the rabbit in her sights.
“Eeeeeeeeeeep!”
“You little—!!”
Around and around and around they went through that chaotic disarray of back alleys. Why hadn’t she caught up with him yet?
She willed her legs to move faster, her eyes glued to the boy’s back and her mind screaming.
—He’s used to this!
The way he used the complicated back roads to his advantage, almost as though he’d been trained by Daedalus himself, and that explosive dash of his—
Lefiya found herself at a loss. What kind of monsters had hounded him at Level 1 that he needed to be this good at running away?
Still, she was close. She had only about five meders left.
No matter what he did, at this point, there was no way he could shake her.
Gotcha! No sooner had the thought entered her head, however, than the boy leaped down a new street.
“Wh-where’d he go?!”
In the instant it took Lefiya’s field of vision to shift to this new alleyway, the boy had simply vanished.
Where is he?! She was in a panic now. Head whipping from side to side, she discovered the entrance to another side corridor and tore down it in a flash, arms swinging wildly.
Caught up in her search for Aiz, she neglected to fully take in her surroundings. Failed to closely examine the small enclosure, hidden in the shadows of the nearby buildings like a blind spot.
And she never noticed the old stone well, its bucket rattling from its pulley…but no one in sight touching it.
“Good…morning?”
“Haah, haah, haah…! G-good morning!!”
“…Is everything all right?”
“Oh, sure…I’m fine! Just had a…a bit of a run-in…with a forest fairy…”
“A forest…fairy?”
“So beautiful but so terrifying…!”
“Are you…sure you’re all right?”
“If I could…sit down for a little bit…”
“Right, of course…”
And thus the first act atop the city walls came to a close.
The real training, however, had yet to begin.
“Haah, haah, haah…!”
Three hours must have passed since she started chasing after that boy, the sun now peeking out from below the horizon and the sky a gentle pink. Lefiya’s shoulders heaved with every breath.
It would seem so much time spent running was too much even for a Level 3. Her stamina was depleted, her skin soaked with sweat, and her body teetered in exhaustion.
“Where in the world is he…?!”
The lovely elf girl had nearly worn herself out.
As fruitless as her persistent efforts to find Aiz and the boy had become, she couldn’t give up.
It was at that moment, however, that she felt someone’s presence behind her.
Two someones, actually.
With a little gasp—and a sudden feeling of foreboding—she quickly dove behind the nearest cover she could find.
Peeping her head out just enough to have a look, she felt her heart stop.
It was her target. The boy with the white hair. And practically hanging off his shoulder was none other than Aiz.
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat—?!
With a mighty ZAP, a colossal lightning bolt seemed to strike the top of her head.
Her every muscle frozen in shock, Lefiya found herself rooted to the spot, skin cold and clammy.
Had she looked closely, she would have noticed Aiz was simply lending the boy an arm—he was quite bedraggled and altogether spent by this point, after all. But Lefiya was not examining closely. No, those blue eyes of hers saw nothing but a passionate, intimate embrace.
Someone somewhere was laughing at her, their mocking voice, real or not, ringing in her ears. She was nothing more than a living statue in the shadows.
Aiz, on the other hand, completely oblivious to her junior’s turmoil, walked right past Lefiya in her despondent heartache, consoling the boy all the while.
That night, as the members of Loki Familia were helping themselves to supper in a corner of their large mess hall, a certain elven maiden was wallowing in a cloud of misery, avoiding all eye contact with her peers.
“…What happened to her?”
“No idea…”
Tione and Tiona could be heard whispering back and forth, the two of them huddled together in front of Lefiya as though conducting some sort of secret meeting. And, indeed, Lefiya’s head was curved at an unnatural angle that was almost gruesome. Even Aiz, sitting next to the two Amazonian sisters, had finally noticed Lefiya’s distressed aura. It puzzled her.
Every girl in the hall and even the guys currently congregating around Bete and Raul were visibly whispering, elbowing one another, and generally keeping their distance from the dejected elf.
“…Lefi…ya? Is everything all right?”
Girding herself against the oppressive miasma enveloping the girl, Aiz took a step toward Lefiya—an act that garnered the admiring gazes of her peers. The trembling hesitation in her voice was audible.
Lefiya didn’t respond, not even lifting her head.
Just as Aiz was getting truly worried about the girl’s state of mind, Lefiya posed a question calmly, gently, in a husky timbre practically squeezed from her throat.
“What were you doing with that human this morning, Miss Aiz?”
“?!”
Aiz was overwhelmed by an incredible sense of enmity and menace…How does she know?!
Lefiya just sat there, waiting for Aiz’s response, with her head bowed, her eyes hidden beneath her bangs, and extraordinary gloom emanating from her every pore.
The incriminating silence only heightened Aiz’s turmoil. She could feel everyone’s eyes and attention on her back. She needed to do something. Grabbing Lefiya’s hand, she quickly pulled her out of the mess hall.
“L-Lefiya…how did you know…?”
She took Lefiya to an empty room, still very much on edge.
It was rare to see Aiz so visibly shaken. Lefiya, on the other hand, had yet to lift her head.
As the pressure continued to throw Aiz’s consciousness into disarray, Lefiya finally parted her lips in response.
“This morning, I chased you to the northwestern part of town…It was there that I witnessed a goddess of the sword with beautiful golden hair and eyes in the arms of an unknown human boy.”
“?!”
“Miss Aiz, you wouldn’t…happen to have some sort of long-lost sister, would you? Or perhaps I was hallucinating…? I…I have been thinking about it all day, Miss Aiz, and I still have yet to come up with an explanation that makes sense…”
“L-Lefiya, try and…calm down for a moment, would you?”
“If that really was you, Miss Aiz…I…I—!!”
The pressure in the room multiplied exponentially.
Lefiya drew closer. The veteran top-class adventurer was sweating. She could feel the elf’s shadow consuming her.
When she slowly raised her head, there were tears in those brilliant azure eyes.
At any moment, it seemed she would fling herself upon Aiz in a sobbing fit like a child who’d lost her most precious, admired, beloved sister for some reason, and Aiz was terrified.
There was no longer any way for her to hide what she’d done. It was that frightening thought that prompted her to spill everything.
“……You were training on top of the wall?”
“Y-yes.”
“…Then who was that boy holding you?”
“Um…But he was having trouble walking, so I simply lent him my shoulder…”
It didn’t take long before the interrogation made the situation crystal clear.
The black cloud of miasmatic anguish exuding from Lefiya steadily dissipated, and light returned to her vacant eyes.
“So…what you are saying is that…you are going to be training this human before the expedition begins?”
Aiz nodded. Now that Lefiya had returned to her normal, calm self, she let out a sigh of relief as she smoothed down the front of her clothes.
T-to think that boy would ask someone from another familia to train him. For free, even! Does he have no sense?!
Of course, that didn’t prevent a different concern from forming in the back of Lefiya’s mind.
Camaraderie between gods and their familias’ members was understandable, but this? This went far beyond the scope of simple kindness. And of all the possibilities, Hestia Familia? Just who are they?!
And even then there was the issue of their differing social statuses.
On the one hand, there was this lower-class adventurer from an insignificant familia, and on the other was not only a top-class adventurer but one of the leaders of the strongest factions in the entire city to boot.
Anyone else listening to this would surely tell him to “learn his place.”
This is insane! Unbelievable! Outrageous!!
All manner of curses rang through her head, the face of that white-haired boy rising in her mind.
The impudence of that boy! All alone with Miss Aiz like that! I am so…so…JEALOUS!!
That was the reason, ultimately.
That boy was monopolizing her Aiz for personal early morning training.
Lefiya’s entire being curdled with envy at the mere thought of that nameless white-haired boy.
“Um…I think you may have gotten the wrong impression. I was the one who offered to train him…It’s not his fault. He wouldn’t be involved if not for me.” Seeing the resentment and jealousy playing out like a wordless soliloquy on Lefiya’s face, Aiz quickly tried to intervene.
The desperate way Aiz tried to cover for the boy, however, only worsened Lefiya’s mood, expressed as a guttural “Gnkk…”
Look at her, so concerned for him. Does that boy know how lucky he is? Does he?!
“Please, Lefiya. Don’t tell Loki, Finn…anyone about this, okay?”
That beautiful curve of her brows. That golden tremble of her eyes.
Do you really want to train him that much, Miss Aiz? the voice in her head implored weakly, frailly, as she trembled in sil
ence.
She tried to keep her emotions from rushing out, but she couldn’t bear it any longer.
The jealousy welling up inside finally exploded, her voice rising as she hardened her resolve.
“If…if you want me to keep this secret, you will have to do something for me!”
No one would have believed that Lefiya, now completely red in the face, had demanded something from the person she admired more than anyone in the world.
It completely blindsided Aiz. A mutiny like this, or resistance rather, was the last thing she’d expected, and it shocked her.
Seeing the look on Aiz’s face made Lefiya’s heart ache, but there was no turning back now.
“Y-you must train me, as well! Just like that human! Only you and me! Alone!!”
The words crackled on her tongue, her face a brilliant shade of red.
All Aiz could do for a moment was blink in silence.
Then, finally, she nodded ever so slightly.
“If that’s what you want…”
“R-really?!”
Aiz nodded again. “Yes…It’s all right.”
“Y-yes!”
Lefiya gave a little leap right there on the floor, her hands clasped tightly in front of her. Her long bright sunny locks swirled around from her prancing, revealing the light-pink flush of her soft cheeks.
She was positively beaming. Her earlier jealousy, the boy—everything else was forgotten.
And all her beloved Aiz could do was stare in confusion as the elf girl twirled around and around and around.
Thus, in return for keeping the practice atop the city walls a secret, Aiz came to train not one but two.
Only six days remained until the day of the expedition.
This marked the second day of their training.
Same as the day before, Aiz had been conducting the breeze with her scabbard atop the city walls since the early hours of the morning.
The wind shrieked, and in every fading flash of her vigorous slashing was the white-haired Bell.
“Make every move count. Think before you move. Use the space to your advantage.”
“R-right!”
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side: Sword Oratoria, Vol. 4 Page 2