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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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At dinner time.
While eating, Tana, sitting across from me, kept tapping my foot.
I wondered what it was about, but she was signaling and pointing towards Hayun.
Hayun, who was eating absent-mindedly, had an expression so serious it had darkened.
‘Sigh, maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.’
After practice ended today, I had told Hayun and the others about Rin and how Heaven Len was suspicious, but she had been in that state ever since.
I thought she had completely cut ties with the Len family when I saw her before, but perhaps it wasn’t so easy to let go after all.
Thinking it was my mistake, I couldn’t swallow my food properly.
Moreover, Eve and Sen were also watching cautiously.
I thought I should talk to her alone after dinner, but just then our eyes met.
Hayun looked around as if someone had poked her, checking the expressions of her other friends, and made an awkward smile as she apologized.
“Sorry. You were all being considerate because of me.”
“N-No! Not at all!”
“That’s right! Tonight’s dinner is really delicious!”
“I like this.”
At Hayun’s apology, Tana, Eve, and Sen hurriedly started talking about dinner.
Seeing her friends like this, Hayun scratched the back of her head.
“It’s not because of the Len family. I’ve already let go of everything. I just felt a bit skeptical about my own past.”
“Skeptical?”
When I asked again, Hayun put down her fork and answered.
“When I was told to date Ares, why didn’t I ask for details about the reason? Even though it was clearly a suspicious situation, why did I just go along with it?”
I didn’t need to say the answer, as Hayun knew it too.
At that time, Hayun thought that following the family’s orders in silence was the only way she could survive.
Even though she knew, Hayun was blaming herself for her own foolishness, but I was certain it wouldn’t last long.
Hayun would be able to overcome it well on her own.
The competition was just a few days away.
Although the results didn’t matter much, seeing the kids practicing hard made me want to cheer for them.
Just then, the second-year twins approached from behind Tana.
“S-Senior! Please have this!”
“Other seniors too, here you go!”
Ben Mayas and Valtory Mayas handed out drinks.
We were a bit surprised, but Tana skillfully accepted them with a smile and thanked them.
“Thank you, I’ll enjoy it.”
“Yes!”
“Senior Tana! Good luck in cricket!”
The Mayas kids cheered and then scurried away.
We were a bit taken aback by their completely different behavior from before, but Tana shrugged and explained.
“I went to the royal palace instead of them, remember? I guess they were really moved by that. They say I protected their dreams.”
“Can people change that much?”
Eve drank the juice the kids had given us.
Tana also seemed a bit awkward, but she didn’t look displeased.
“Anyway, it’s nice to see them getting along.”
As I rested my chin on my hand and put a straw in my drink, Tana nodded, agreeing that it was good, though she looked a bit embarrassed.
Just as I was thinking that I had become quite used to eating with my left hand instead of my broken right hand, May rushed into the dining hall.
I had meant to ask her and Rin to eat dinner together, but since neither of them was around, we had just gone ahead, but she didn’t look like she had come to eat dinner.
May, who had been looking around intently, made eye contact with me and immediately ran over.
“Sorry, but can you clean up my tray for me?”
“Your broken hand has become quite the excuse, hasn’t it?”
“We should take off that bandage later. You’re not lying about it still being broken, are you?”
Tana and Eve immediately chimed in.
These guys.
“I think I need to go somewhere. Looking at her expression.”
“Daniel!”
May, who had rushed over so quickly that beads of sweat had formed on her forehead, called out to me forcefully.
Thanks to that, the gazes of the students in the dining hall naturally turned towards us, but recognizing May as the school delinquent, some of them naturally averted their eyes.
“Come with me, the guys are badly hurt… They’re looking for you.”
“The guys?”
“Berman.”
Thinking that I must have gotten involved in something again, I agreed and stood up.
Tana and Eve waved their hands familiarly, saying they would clean up my tray, so I should go ahead.
As the city of Bairn relied on the massive stadium as its main source of income, there were many facilities and buildings supporting it.
Bairn Hospital was one of them.
It was a treatment center for those injured at the massive stadium.
Berman’s gang was hospitalized there.
Not only Rin, May’s roommate, but the dean and other professors also looked anxious.
Their condition was quite serious.
Their faces were all swollen and several bones were broken, making them look terrible from how badly they had been beaten.
“D-Daniel! You came!”
Berman, his face wrapped in bandages, which muffled his pronunciation, greeted me overly enthusiastically.
The other professors also approached behind me.
“Why? What happened?”
I wondered why they had called for me, but as I listened to the story, I realized I was deeply involved.
We had been asked by Hendrick to beat up Anton.
Of course, we had refused, but the night walk had been the problem.
I had dealt with the guys who had said things they shouldn’t have about Rin, and naturally, the request had been fulfilled.
Misunderstanding that we had accepted the request, Hendrick had handed over the money bag to Berman today.
But it had been stolen by pirates roaming the streets.
“Pirates?”
Wait, pirates appeared, and not even at sea?
I wondered what this was about, but the guys lying in the hospital beds all spoke in unison.
“They said they were pirates!”
“That’s right! They were really strong!”
“It hurt so much, sob.”
May burst out in anger at these guys who were all whining.
“That’s what you get for accepting strange money and getting beaten up!”
The guys who had been sniffling until just now immediately stopped.
In the end, you could say they were punished for trying to get money without doing anything.
“How did they know the bag contained money?”
Rin put into words exactly what I had been thinking.
The other professors also seemed to have the same thought, as they pondered with serious expressions.
“It must be connected to that guy named Hendrick.”
“A mere student involved with pirates?”
At my words, the dean put his hand to his forehead with an expression of disbelief, but he couldn’t come up with any other more convincing hypotheses.
As even the other professors grew more suspicious of Hendrick, Jeffrey, the Class A homeroom teacher, clenched his fist and vented his anger.
“Let’s go to Pales right now and talk! This isn’t something we can just let slide! A student colluding with pirates? And they even injured members selected for the competition? Those crazy bastards!”
I remembered him not being such a passionate teacher when I saw him before, but it seemed he thought this could implicate Pales.
However, Amanda, our class’s homeroom teacher, refuted.
“It’s just circumstantial evidence. We don’t have proof yet that this student named Hendrick is really involved with pirates, and even if we could prove it, we can’t say anything about the competition.”
Because I had beaten up Anton’s gang.
Of course, they had started the trouble first, but still, that was how the situation had turned out.
“Of course, I’m not saying you did wrong. It’s not something I should say as a teacher, but… you did well protecting your friends.”
Amanda comforted me, perhaps worried I might feel discouraged, but I didn’t care at all.
I was confident I would beat them even more severely if the same situation arose again.
In the end, the conversation reached a stalemate, and the professors sent us out, saying they would discuss among themselves.
Rin, May, and I ended up walking back to our lodgings in the night, and May asked,
“Isn’t there any way?”
May clenched her fists as she asked, unable to bear that her immature friends had ended up like this.
Rin put her hand to her chest as if she could find them using her imprint, but I shook my head and said,
“There is. We can definitely find them. So stay put. There are experts for this kind of thing.”
“Experts?”
I grinned at May’s question.
We had someone from the Chokugen Faction, and a princess with her own personal intelligence organization, didn’t we?
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Elise wasn’t doing anything for this competition.
No, she hadn’t set foot in the massive Bairn Stadium even once.
She was living leisurely, cooped up on the top floor of the hotel, and she had her reasons.
Since she had shown her face at the recent royal banquet, people would now recognize her as the Third Princess.
Not wanting to deal with the fatigue that would come from that, she was ignoring everyone around her and just waiting for the day the competition ended.
“Princess, I’ll leave the fruit you said you wanted here.”
“Thank you, Bertia. How are the preparations for the competition going?”
It wasn’t that she had no interest in the competition at all.
No, actually she hadn’t been interested, but recently she had become curious.
Being cooped up in her room with nothing to do had naturally made her wonder.
“It seems many students are getting injured. But it doesn’t seem to be because of practice, rather due to external issues.”
“Isn’t it because of delinquents like May beating up kids behind the scenes?”
“Berman, Miss May’s right-hand man, was hospitalized at lunchtime today.”
“What?”
Wondering what that was about, she sat up abruptly in bed.
At that moment, the hotel door swung open and a black-haired boy entered.
“You’ve set up quite a palace for yourself here.”
It was Daniel McLean, who immediately frowned.
“Master!”
It was Elise, who rushed towards Daniel, whom she hadn’t seen in a while despite staying in the same hotel.
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[lol i told u guys some peeps about to get beat the fuck up i meant the pirates]
