Chapter 3

“Th-There’s an attack! What on earth is happening?!”

The High Priest jumped up and down as he shouted.

His face was filled with horror as he stared at the poisoned needles embedded in my back.

“How dare someone attack me?! The servant of the Supreme God!”

I straightened my tingling back and sighed.

They hadn’t been targeting the High Priest. They had been targeting Ian Wadeiros, but apparently, they had gotten the wrong person.

Well, the High Priest had more enemies than Ian, so it was a reasonable assumption.

“It must have been the work of atheists!”

Terrorist attacks by atheists were common enough that I could see why they would assume that.

After all, that was why Ian and the knights had been assigned to escort the High Priest in the first place.

“God will never forgive this!”

I hadn’t anticipated this misunderstanding, but honestly, yes!

The more everyone believed this had been an attack targeting the High Priest, the better.

The more they believed that, the farther Rieard and I would be from the list of suspects.

While the High Priest continued venting his fury, I quickly scanned Ian from head to toe.

Fortunately, not a single poisoned needle had even grazed him.

“Annabelle Nadit? What is this?”

Ian’s red eyes were filled with shock as he stared at me.

“Well, if the High Priest had been hit, it would have been a serious problem, but this poison is nothing to a swordsman who can wield sword aura.”

I spoke coldly without even properly looking at him.

“I don’t feel any difficulty moving.”

Of course. I had already taken plenty of antidote before coming here.

“That’s all, then.”

Now that no one had been injured, all I could do was hope the whole incident would quietly blow over.

“You… Aren’t you Annabelle Nadit?”

Just as I was about to leave, the High Priest suddenly grabbed my hand.

“As I recall, you came in second in the last two swordsmanship tournaments. To throw yourself in front of me and save me like this… You shall surely have the blessing of God.”

The High Priest’s eyes sparkled.

With countless poisoned needles still stuck in my back, I awkwardly replied,

“I only did what I had to do.”

“No, but still… Such a remarkable act of kindness…”

The High Priest, who was already old and approaching retirement, was so moved that he couldn’t finish his sentence.

“I even asked the Wadeiros Knights to provide my escort, yet you, who had no responsibility whatsoever, stepped forward and sacrificed yourself like this…”

Since I had already started lying, I decided to finish it beautifully and spoke with determination.

“I have always respected you so deeply, High Priest, that I simply couldn’t stand by and watch.”

The High Priest was even more touched by my words and squeezed my hand tightly.

“The Temple will repay you! No matter what happens, I swear we will repay you!”

“I won’t refuse. Thank you.”

I quickly answered, hoping they might give me some money or something.

At the same time, I had to desperately pretend not to notice Ian’s scorching gaze boring into one side of my face.

“Then, I really should be going now…”

I tried to disappear back into the crowd, but Ian suddenly jumped down from his black horse and hurriedly grabbed me.

“Something is strange.”

Cold sweat trickled down my back at the murderous tone in his voice.

But I shamelessly widened my eyes and asked,

“What?”

“The fact that you suddenly appeared after being quiet for several days.”

After remembering my past life, I had stopped going to him and causing trouble.

“Let go!”

Having nothing to say, I snapped irritably and shook his arm off.

“And the fact that you did something that benefited me.”

Well, it was true that this was completely unlike something I normally would have done.

So I immediately decided to play dumb.

“I-I wasn’t helping you! Don’t get the wrong idea!”

But his chilling words continued.

“Most of all, the strangest thing is…”

His blood-red eyes flashed.

“Whenever you saw me, you always hurled insults at me. There’s no way you would simply leave this quietly. What exactly are you plotting? Tell me. Now.”

Right! I forgot the most important thing.

If I were the old Annabelle, I would already have unleashed every curse and insult imaginable.

I couldn’t let him discover how drastically I had changed!

If he became suspicious and somehow traced the matter back to me, we would lose everything.

“Ha… I was going to hold back because we’re in front of so many people…”

But my feelings toward him had already changed.

Ian hadn’t actually done anything wrong to me, and my stubborn desire to defeat him had disappeared.

I felt guilty about hurling vulgar insults and vicious curses at him for no reason like I used to.

With the decency, dignity, and sense of shame I had regained along with my past-life memories, I had resolved never to use such vulgar language again.

So I hurled some appropriately mild insults directly at his face.

“May you find half a cockroach in your sandwich! And may ten pigeons flap around on your head while shaking parasites out of their feathers!”

Ian’s face twisted horribly.

Beside him, his pink-haired deputy, Aaron, puffed out his cheeks and made strangled noises as he desperately tried to hold back his laughter.

In any case, Ian still had to continue escorting the High Priest’s procession, so he couldn’t keep me there for long.

Well, that’s one crisis dealt with.

Feeling rather proud of myself, I turned around and slipped into the crowd.

After the High Priest’s escort duty ended and Ian returned to House Wadeiros, he sat quietly, lost in thought.

Aaron, who had come to report on the knights’ affairs, grinned.

“Lord Ian.”

“What.”

“Are you perhaps thinking about Lady Annabelle?”

“Shut up.”

“Judging by the fact that an insult came flying my way, I guess I’m right.”

Aaron’s dark blue eyes curved into crescents as he grinned.

Ian chose not to respond.

In fact, Aaron was right.

Even while on escort duty, Ian had been thinking about Annabelle the entire time.

On the way back from the Imperial Palace to the Temple, there had actually been another terrorist attack by atheists, so the poisoned-needle incident had simply been buried beneath the second incident.

But Ian couldn’t let the first incident go.

Something was strange.

Thinking back to the angle and direction from which the poisoned needles had flown, it was far more reasonable to conclude that he, rather than the High Priest, had been the target.

And if that was the case, it was even stranger.

Why on earth would Annabelle take the poisoned needles meant for him?

Judging from the fact that she had been completely unaffected despite having countless needles embedded in her back, the poison probably wasn’t particularly dangerous to swordsmen…

“There are two possibilities we should consider here.”

Aaron subtly sat down in front of him and began speaking in a serious tone.

“First, she wanted to steal the credit for Lord Ian’s achievement in escorting the High Priest and make herself look impressive.”

“Rejected.”

Ian, who had gradually begun paying attention to Aaron’s words, immediately answered.

“The old High Priest was the only one who was moved. It didn’t particularly improve Annabelle’s reputation.”

“Second.”

Aaron raised an eyebrow.

“Perhaps she was afraid that if Lord Ian were injured, you wouldn’t be able to have a fair match at the tournament!”

“That’s impossible.”

Ian shook his head.

“Annabelle and the words ‘fair match’ don’t belong in the same sentence.”

“Still, shouldn’t you be grateful? Perhaps you should at least thank her…”

“Even without Annabelle, I could have easily avoided them.”

Even with the worst possible luck, one of the needles probably would have only grazed him.

It didn’t seem to be particularly potent poison, either, so there was no need to thank her.

“But she hasn’t come at all these past few days, has she? Perhaps something happened to change her mind.”

A brief silence followed Aaron’s words.

Finally, Ian waved his hand irritably.

“Enough. I’ll just ignore her as I always have. What do I care what she’s thinking?”

“I’m extremely curious.”

Aaron smiled broadly.

“Even the insult she threw at the end was different from usual. It was strangely cute and incredibly specific, too… You’d better watch out for pigeons when you’re walking around. And be careful with your sandwiches.”

“Get out.”

“That’s rather harsh…”

“Are you not leaving right now?”

Ian mercilessly drove Aaron out and went to bed later than usual.

It suddenly occurred to Ian that even if he added up every moment he had spent thinking about Annabelle over the past twenty-two years, it still wouldn’t amount to as much time as he had spent thinking about her today.

It’s probably just a temporary whim.

Even after going to bed, he tossed and turned.

Why did the image of Annabelle with poisoned needles sticking out of her back keep appearing whenever he closed his eyes?

It had been far too visually striking for him to simply ignore.

She looked like some kind of hedgehog…

That back with countless poisoned needles stuck into it…

The sight of her disappearing into the crowd kept flashing through his mind.

Eventually, Ian abruptly got up and called for a servant.

“Lord Ian? What’s going on in the middle of the night…?”

“Find out whether Annabelle Nadit is all right. Especially her back.”

“What? Right now?”

“As quickly as possible.”

After sending the servant away, Ian sat fully upright with his arms crossed and thought.

It was nothing more than a strange incident. Something like this will never happen again, so once I confirm that she’s safe, I’ll truly stop thinking about it.

“Are you completely insane? Why would you do something like that…?”

“I’m the one you should be thanking.”

Rieard came storming in after hearing the rumors, but I answered bluntly.

I had already taken the antidote beforehand and had even secretly received treatment from a physician, so I was perfectly fine.

“Ian looked like he was going to avoid every single one of them. His exceptional reflexes had already prepared him to dodge them all. So I was worried we might fail to injure him even once and get caught instead. That’s why I took them for him.”

“How did you know that?”

“I’m second place. I’ve sparred with Ian countless times. You may not know, but I do.”

Being the second-best swordswoman in the Empire had its advantages.

For one thing, it was incredibly easy to bluff against anyone other than Ian.

Rieard had brown hair and brown eyes and looked nothing like me.

He didn’t have even the slightest talent for swordsmanship and couldn’t even wield sword aura.

So no matter what excuse I made up, it was easy to shut him up.

“Well, we couldn’t expect to succeed on the first try. We’ll get results next time.”

Because of the enthusiastic discussions I had participated in back then about injuring Ian, Rieard didn’t seem to suspect me at all.

“This is our last chance to live a proper noble life. We have to ruin Ian Wadeiros somehow, no matter what it takes.”

But all that would get ruined was us.

It was incredibly frustrating.