Ch. 22 - Lucy Was Worried about Solon
The Exiled Jack-of-all-trades Magic Swordsman Becomes The Princess InstructorThis chapter is broken. Please report this on discord.
This chapter is broken. Please report this on discord.
Translator: Ataru
Editor: Ray
While Philia was hugging me with a red face, I was stuck not knowing what to do. There was no doubt that we would be misunderstood if someone saw us. I didn’t think anyone would believe if I were to say we were acting as “father and daughter”.
"What are you doing? Solon?"
Her voice, beautiful with a slightly low tone for a woman, echoed in the room. I turned around to the direction of the door. A gorgeous woman with red hair and red eyes was standing there. She was the “Crimson Lucy”, the professor at the Imperial Magic School.
Lucy looked at us with a distraught expression when she saw her disciple hugging a princess, who would be his disciple, while blushing. I didn't know why Lucy was here, but I thought that this situation might look confusing.
Before I could utter an excuse, Philia smiled and asked Lucy. "Were you jealous, perhaps?"
"I-I wasn't jealous at all!"
"Hmm, then, it should be okay for Solon and I to stay close together like this."
"That’s not okay!" Lucy said with a red face, then walked toward us briskly and grabbed my shoulders.
"Solon, you should be more firm. You will be the instructor of this girl. I have to say, you shouldn’t do such a brazen thing!”
"It wasn't brazen…” I tried to explain, while Philia beside me looked happy.
"But Lucy didn’t hesitate to do that when Solon was a student?"
"Wha-? I didn't do that to my disciples!"
"Didn’t you stroke his hair, hug him, and let him sleep on your lap?”
"How did you know?! Did Solon tell you?”
I shook my head. Philia stared at Lucy scornfully.
"Lucy really did all of that."
"Are you asking when you already knew the answer?”
Philia nodded to Lucy's words. Lucy's face was becoming redder at this point. Perhaps because she was too embarrassed, she decided to back down on the spot. To think that Lucy, the genius, was completely being made fun of by Philia. Lucy was a little older than me. When Lucy became my instructor, she was still a young girl, so we were more like friends than an instructor and her student. Though I didn’t know if it was right to have that kind of instructor-student relationship.
That aside, Lucy didn't use a polite way of speaking towards Princess Philia and Philia treated Lucy in a casual manner. Well, the one who brought Philia and I together was Lucy. However, I didn’t know what the relationship between them was.
"Lucy and I are cousins,” Philia answered my question.
"Cousins?"
"My mom was a ‘devil slave’. So to hide that fact, we said my mother was Lucy’s aunt in official records.”
"In other words, my aunt is the empire's Empress,” Lucy added to Philia’s explanation. It was complicated, but in short, there was no blood relationship between them. It made sense, because no matter how much of a prestigious aristocrat’s daughter Lucy was, she shouldn’t be able to easily access the insides of the Imperial Palace.
"Anyway, Solon has to explain properly, what were you doing to your fourteen-year-old disciple,” Lucy said with a serious look.
"I wasn’t doing anything,” I said and tried to look at Philia for confirmation, but she had already withdrawn into the back room. It seemed like she’d started changing her clothes before I realized. I awkwardly laughed with Lucy staring at me. We stared at each other for a while, then she sighed and said in a low voice, “It’s good to get close with the princess, but it’s better to know your boundaries.”
"Isn’t Lucy-sensei the one who introduced me to Philia-sama?”
"Yes I did, but I think you should keep a proper distance.”
"I think that was the case.”
When I nodded vaguely, Lucy looked at me with anxiety in her eyes.
"If you’re too close, you will be the one who got hurt. Because a student will someday leave and they won’t need an instructor anymore. The deeper your feelings, the worse you’ll get hurt,” Lucy said, as if she was talking about herself.
"Will you be lonely if you lose your students?" I subconsciously asked.
"My disciple is you, right?"
She was right, I thought about it. The first disciple of Professor Lucy, who was still young, was me. Her current disciple hasn’t yet graduated from the magic school.
"Do you think I’ll be lonely without you?” Lucy asked in a whisper.
"I will be happy if you think you will be."
"I thought it would be better if you had stayed at the Imperial Capital, without having founded the knight order,” Lucy muttered, staring at me with her beautiful red eyes.
"Sophia and Cleon were so hard on you. Even though you helped them many times, they went away without you. Even Philia might do so. At that time, the one who got hurt will be you. Wasn’t it painful when you were exiled from the knight order?”
"Even if I got hurt. I wouldn't regret what I did."
"Why?"
Thinking, I put the words together. "Sophia and Cleon used to rely on me, but now they have become great adventurers everyone wants to be. Right now, those two don’t need me anymore. But the reason why they could become that great, was partly because of me. And I’m proud enough for that.”
".... Rather than an adventurer, you are more like an instructor, through and through."
"Is that so?"
"Yes, you are. I’m different from you. I want to keep what’s important to me close, so I’m not suitable to be an instructor,” Lucy laughed, in a lonely way.
Notes
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