Chapter 1630 - 228 - On The Frontline (6)
I went silent.
Even though I no longer had any real relationship with them, I couldn’t simply forget the fact that, not too long ago, they had been ordinary students who were preparing to graduate from high school.
They were heroes now, and their circumstances had obviously changed dramatically since then.
Still, that didn’t magically erase their previous lives.
They had once been teenagers who worried about school, exams, friendships, and whatever other ordinary problems people their age usually dealt with.
Now they were being asked to prepare themselves for actual warfare.
That was quite a jump.
Going from worrying about graduating high school to learning how to survive a battlefield wasn’t exactly the sort of career progression anyone would put on a school brochure.
Even so, they were the ones who had come to me and asked me to train them.
I wasn’t forcing them into anything.
They had made their own decision, and if they genuinely wanted me to become their instructor, then there wasn’t much reason for me to reject them.
Besides, if they were determined enough to come all this way just to ask me, refusing without giving them a chance would probably be more troublesome in the long run.
"T-Thank you so much!"
All of them immediately bowed toward me.
Their reaction was so enthusiastic that I couldn’t help feeling a little awkward.
I had only agreed to train them, yet they were acting as though I had just solved every problem they had ever encountered.
Still, seeing how genuinely happy they were about it made me think that perhaps agreeing hadn’t been such a bad decision after all.
***
Sakai’s POV
Once again, I found myself surprised by just how much influence that man seemed to have over the entire kingdom.
The more I learned about him, the more complicated his position seemed to become.
At first, I thought he was simply someone who happened to be connected to important people.
Then I learned that he was close to the Vice Commander.
That alone was already surprising enough.
However, apparently, his connections went even further than that.
He was also close to the Commander.
"Isn’t he so handsome?" Morofuji Yume suddenly said.
"What are you talking about?" I asked, glancing at her with a somewhat confused expression. "Isn’t he already in a relationship with King Myrcella?"
"Well, I’ve been hearing some rather nasty rumors about him," Yume replied.
She sounded almost amused by the subject, which made me wonder just how much gossip she had already heard.
"Apparently, he isn’t only involved with the King. I’ve heard that he’s also involved with the Princess of the neighboring country, and that’s not even the end of it. Apparently, he has a harem of his own."
"A harem?"
The word itself sounded strange when I heard it spoken so casually.
"That’s what I’ve heard," Yume said.
"Well, this is a world where I suppose something like that is considered normal," I replied.
I still found the whole idea somewhat strange, though.
Back in my old world, I had never really been exposed to anything like that.
Monogamy was considered the normal arrangement in our society, so the idea of one person having several partners at the same time was something that still felt rather unfamiliar to me.
Then again, this world had already proven itself to be completely different from the one I came from.
There were monsters.
There was magic.
There were different races living alongside humans.
People could use abilities that would have been considered completely impossible back in my old world.
So I suppose complaining about someone having a harem was probably one of the least surprising things I could do here.
Personally, I wasn’t going to complain about a man having several women by his side.
That would have been a pretty strange thing for me to object to, especially when it wasn’t really my business in the first place.
"Which is why..." Yume continued, pausing for a moment. "If I somehow managed to become part of his harem, I don’t think I’d mind it that much."
I could only give her a wry smile after hearing that.
She certainly wasn’t wasting much time making her intentions clear.
It was almost impressive how casually she could say something like that without even looking embarrassed.
"You really don’t hesitate, do you?" I asked.
"Why should I?" she replied with a shrug.
I didn’t really have an answer for that.
Perhaps she had a point.
While Morofuji continued talking about him, Kaori remained quietly focused on the path ahead.
She hadn’t said anything throughout the conversation, but for some reason, I had the feeling that she had noticed the same thing I had.
There was something familiar about him.
It wasn’t obvious enough to immediately point out, and if I hadn’t already known Ichinose-kun, I probably wouldn’t have paid much attention to it either.
However, after looking at him for a while, I couldn’t completely ignore the slight resemblance between that man and Ichinose-kun.
There were small similarities that were difficult to explain properly, but once I noticed them, they became difficult to overlook.
Perhaps it was simply a coincidence.
It was entirely possible that I was just seeing something that wasn’t actually there because I already had Ichinose-kun in my mind.
Kaori probably understood that as well.
She didn’t say anything because she knew that thinking too deeply about it would be wrong.
After all, there was no real evidence supporting the thought.
It would have been foolish to start making assumptions based solely on a vague resemblance.
I understood that feeling.
So I didn’t say anything either.
There was no point in bringing it up when neither of us could actually prove anything.
Instead, we simply continued looking ahead while Morofuji carried on talking beside us.
Still, even though neither Kaori nor I said anything about it, I couldn’t completely get the thought out of my head.
That slight resemblance had already caught my attention.
Perhaps it meant absolutely nothing.
Perhaps it was just my imagination playing tricks on me.
Either way, I decided to leave the matter alone for the time being.