Wilfried’s Punishment
“...I thought it was strange that Grandmother’s truth was the only one that didn’t match what everyone else said. Assuming they’re all telling the truth, then she’s the odd one out. I love her, but... if the question is whether she’s right or wrong here, I think she’s wrong now,” Wilfried said plainly.
Ferdinand watched him calmly before prompting him to continue. “I see. And...?”
“...And I need to apologize. I’m sorry for everything I said, Ferdinand.”
Ferdinand widened his eyes slightly at the apology, then tightly furrowed his brow, carefully looking over Wilfried as though he were dissecting him.
“Wh-Why are you so mad at me? I apologized, didn’t I...?” Wilfried stammered, flinching back. With Ferdinand now watching him with an even harsher gaze, he was almost on the verge of tears.
“Don’t worry,” I said reassuringly. “You’re doing fine.”
“What’s fine about this?!” he yelped. I had an explanation at the ready, though; it was a bit hard to understand, but Ferdinand wasn’t mad at all.
“It may look as though Ferdinand got mad after you apologized, but this intense expression actually means he’s now putting his all into listening to you. All your words will reach him as you intend them to.”
“...R-Really?” Wilfried glanced between Ferdinand and me, and then at Florencia beside him, who was tightly holding his hand.
“Rozemyne,” Ferdinand interjected, “keep your irrelevant observations to yourself.”
“They’re not irrelevant; they’re important. And you really should have accepted Wilfried’s apology before getting all serious like that.”
He scoffed. “I did not say anything because I have not yet forgiven him,” he said, speaking like a big meanie before looking back at Wilfried. “Tell me what you think about the nobles who were at the tea party.”
“They... answered my questions kindly. But they tricked me into committing a crime, so they weren’t actually being kind at all. I understand now what Oswald meant when he said that not everyone who approaches me with a smile is my friend. He was talking about people like them.”
It was a lesson that he hadn’t understood until experiencing it for himself. Oswald grimaced in regret; he was surely thinking that this whole situation could have been avoided if only he’d helped Wilfried to fully grasp it sooner.
Ferdinand nodded, acknowledging that this was an important thing for Wilfried to recognize. “And that is why you were taught not to speak with nobles you do not know, and why watching what you say was so thoroughly beaten into you. Your head attendant hand-selects those allowed to meet with you to minimize dangers such as this.”
“So there was a point to all those rules...”
As a child of the archduke, Wilfried had a mountain of rules and restrictions piled onto him: don’t do this, don’t do that, you mustn’t ever do this... Without him understanding why these rules were there in the first place, it was little wonder that he would continuously break them.
“We would not restrict your actions without good reason,” Ferdinand said. “There is a point to everything in your education.”
“...I know that thanks to my reading, math, and harspiel practice.”
“I see. Do you have any other thoughts about all this?”
“The crime Grandmother committed comes off entirely differently depending on who’s talking about it. It’s important to get lots of perspectives on things.”
Ferdinand knitted his brow even tighter at this remark, appearing to have fallen into thought.
I clenched my fists, wanting to push things in the best possible direction for Wilfried. He had certainly done something shockingly careless in committing a crime, but he was growing in the right direction—he was learning from his mistake. It wasn’t that he was a failure, but rather that his education up until this point had been insufficient. This incident would no doubt prove to be a huge step for him. I had learned a lot from it, too.
“Under normal circumstances, you would be sent to the temple or imprisoned alongside your grandmother as punishment,” Ferdinand eventually said. “But matters here are not so simple.”
“What are your thoughts?” Sylvester asked Ferdinand, his expression making it clear he was just as intensely focused.
“We do not know the goals of our enemies. In the same way that those involved in an event can have their own particular truths, those working together in a plot may have their own particular goals. There are simply too many people involved for us to say anything for certain,” Ferdinand said bitterly as he looked over the notes he had written. “We are dealing with someone who knows both where the tower is and who is capable of opening its door. They must have also known, then, that once the door is open, anyone can enter. And yet they did not rescue Veronica.”
“Anyone can go inside?!” Wilfried yelped in surprise, having simply believed the other nobles when they said that they couldn’t enter.
“You were with them, so yes, they could have gone in as well. The most likely reason they did not was to avoid committing a crime themselves, though it is also possible that whoever provided them with the information did not intend to rescue Veronica, and thus falsely told them they would not be able to enter.”
The schemes that nobles came up with were so convoluted that I really couldn’t keep up. “I-I see... So, um... who exactly can open the door, then?” I asked, trying to organize the information at hand.
“It can be opened only by those capable of interacting with the foundation’s magic,” Sylvester explained. “That would be me, Florencia, Bonifatius, Ferdinand, you, and Wilfried.”
“The question is how they discovered the tower,” Ferdinand said. “The door’s barrier means there are no guards stationed there, and it is largely hidden by the surrounding trees. Few people know about its existence, let alone its function.”
“And yet someone brought it up at the tea party. Can we narrow down who laid the trap based on that information? Was Grandfather the one standing by the tower?” I asked, tilting my head curiously.
Wilfried angrily raised his eyebrows. “I would have recognized Bonifatius! If the person were someone I knew, I would have said their name.”
“Plus, Bonifatius was rampaging around during the hunting festival, trying to compete with me and win despite his age,” Sylvester added. “People would have found it strange if they heard he was quietly playing with children by the tower.”
Grandfather was rampaging around in competition with Sylvester...? I haven’t really spoken to him much, but I guess that’s how he normally acts when he’s not around me.
Ferdinand tapped a finger against his temple. “It is my belief that the former Veronica faction wishes to reunite under Wilfried, in which case it would be a very effective psychological attack to drive a wedge between him, Rozemyne, and his parents. And the reality is that they accomplished just that, albeit only temporarily.”
Wilfried and I were two core members of the Florencia faction, and pitting us against one another would force our parents to pick a side, only destabilizing things further.
“Perhaps they wish to create an archduke faction and a rebel faction, but as things stand, any such rebel faction would die out before it even began. Wilfried is on track to be disinherited or executed, neither of which would make him an ideal figurehead,” Ferdinand continued. “Having him enter the tower was such a blatantly hostile move that I consider it much more likely that their goal is not to make him a leader of sorts, but rather to eliminate him entirely.”
“But that doesn’t make sense either. If they wanted him gone permanently, they could have achieved that the moment they got him away from the tea party,” Sylvester said with a raised eyebrow.
Wilfried trembled at the reminder of just how much danger he had been in. The establishment of an opposing faction was bad enough, but the thought that he actually could have been killed was so terrifying that it sent a shiver down his spine.
Ferdinand nodded in agreement with Sylvester. “Indeed. Had they wished to eliminate Wilfried, that would have been a most fortunate opportunity. But instead, they let him go.”
“In other words, getting rid of him isn’t their goal here?” I asked.
“It seems to me that they simply do not care what happens as a result of all this. It is possible they did not know how insufficient Wilfried’s education was and thus incorrectly predicted how he would react to the situation, but regardless, there is no doubting that they accounted for this unexpectedness in their plans.”
It seemed that with so many people involved, the plotters would never have made a plan so susceptible to chance.
Ferdinand frowned, tapping the paper on the table with his pen. “To speak honestly, it may be that Wilfried was not their target at all. If we read more deeply into this and presume that hurting him was merely a preamble to their true plot, it becomes even harder to determine their goals and who they are after.”
“Hm... Yeah. What in the world is their endgame?” Sylvester asked thoughtfully.
Ferdinand briefly glanced my way, as if silently suggesting that I was their true target. A heavy sigh escaped me; I was exhausted from all the malice that surrounded us as it was.
“I guess this was all just harassment...” I murmured.
“Harassment?”
“Yes. They wanted Wilfried to see the state his grandmother is in to damage his familial relationships, and to make both you and Florencia struggle over how to punish your child. No matter what you do here, some nobles are going to be unhappy, right? And while the mana shortage means we can’t afford to simply execute every noble involved, it would be equally dangerous to leave them alive. Every option here hurts Ehrenfest in some way or another. What else could it be but some outsiders harassing us?”
Sylvester’s eyes widened. “I was so focused on the factions here that I never even considered that... Good point. You’re surprisingly smart, Rozemyne.”
“What do you mean ‘surprisingly smart’?!” I snarled, but he ignored my question and instead gave me a fairly serious look.
“Alright, Rozemyne—I’ve got a question for you and all your wits. Let’s say this was harassment from the outside. If they hold a grudge against me and want to see me suffer, what could I do here to displease them most?”
“Nothing at all, of course. Just keep things the way they are. What could frustrate them more than seeing that their attempt to stir things up hasn’t had even the slightest impact?” I said. Trying to harass someone but getting no response would probably disappoint them to no end.
Sylvester grimaced. “Keep things as they are, huh? But there is no denying that Wilfried committed a crime; we need to do something about it.”
“...So you say, but the person in question is admitting to their crime, and we have all the evidence we need. Why does the punishment need to happen immediately? I would say it can wait until we’ve figured out who pushed him into this and what their goals are. What would you say to postponing the punishment—or rather, simply keeping things as they are—until we have more information?”
Sylvester seemed convinced, but Ferdinand flatly shot down the idea. “No. That manner of response would greatly undermine the position of the archduke, which is exactly what the enemy wants.”
“If that’s their goal, then it’s going to happen whether Wilfried is punished or not. And if they’re hoping to reduce the amount of mana Ehrenfest has available, then eliminating Wilfried or getting us to execute all the nobles involved would only please them. We should keep things as they are and gather more information before deciding whether or not to punish anyone,” I suggested, but Ferdinand obstinately shook his head.
“He cannot get away from this without facing the consequences. Wilfried must receive some form of punishment, and that is non-negotiable.”
“In that case, we could make it seem as though we’re punishing him, when in reality we’re not doing anything at all.”
“Do you have any ideas, Rozemyne?” Charlotte asked, breaking her tearful silence to look up at me with her eyes shining hopefully. “Are you going to save Wilfried?” I could tell that she was praying for me to rescue him.
Okay, I need to make sure I look good in front of Charlotte. I want to seem cool, but I don’t actually have any good ideas! Aaah! Aaaaaah!
I flailed about internally as I desperately tried to piece something together, putting my so frequently mocked brain on full throttle in an attempt to remember as much as I could about the treatment of criminals.
“If one of our priorities here is figuring out who we’re dealing with and what their goals are, we should use the magic tool for peering into memories,” I suggested.
There were apparently so many people involved in this scheme that Wilfried couldn’t remember all their faces, and since he had interrupted their gossip without going through any introductions, he didn’t know their names either. But if we peered into his memories with the tool, then as far as I was aware, it would be easy to determine their identities.
“He was of course tricked into it, but Wilfried is now a criminal who committed a grave crime,” I added. “We should therefore use the magic tool reserved for grave criminals to identify our enemies. That way, people will understand that we have punished Wilfried, and we will greatly increase our knowledge of the situation. If we proceed to maintain the status quo afterward, won’t it seem like we are making a calculated political decision based on information that only we have?”
I truly had put my heart into my suggestion. Ferdinand was thinking it over carefully, lightly tapping his temple with a stern expression. Charlotte, meanwhile, continued to watch me with hopeful eyes, spurring me to continue.
“It will serve as a meaningful punishment for Wilfried, since all his embarrassing memories will be revealed, and if Sylvester is the one who uses the tool, he can see what problems have been holding his son back.”
“We certainly would be able to identify a significant swathe of dangerous nobles in the duchy that way...” Ferdinand mused. “Very well. We shall use these memories as a base on which to punish the nobles involved, and remove the guarantee that Wilfried will be the next archduke. How does that sound, Sylvester? Do recall that Wilfried is being targeted because you proclaimed him to be the next archduke.”
Sylvester grinned with relief, then turned to Wilfried. “As mentioned, you are to be treated as a grave criminal, and your memories will be searched with a magic tool. In turn, your position as the next archduke will no longer be guaranteed. This is your punishment. Take care not to behave so carelessly again, and never leave the sight of your attendants and guard knights.”
“Yes, Father.”
With the decision made that Wilfried would only receive a light punishment, the mood eased considerably. I even noticed Charlotte place a hand on her chest and let out a quiet, “Thank goodness.”
“Truly...” Florencia agreed, wiping the tears from her eyes and hugging Wilfried close. “I could ask for nothing more than to avoid my beloved son being taken away from me again. Rozemyne, I thank you ever so much.”
I responded to her kind words with a smile.
Wilfried, who was wriggling awkwardly in his mother’s arms, called out to me next. “I love my Grandmother, but now I understand that she was wrong. I’m... sorry for doubting you. Really.”
“Think nothing of it, dear brother.”
With that, Charlotte leapt down from her chair and raced over to me. “Rozemyne, you’re so amazing! I’m so proud to have a big sister like you!”
“You saying that makes this all worthwhile, Charlotte.”
Woohoo! I did it! I’m a respectable older sister now!
Charlotte and I joined hands and jumped for joy while both Sylvester and Karstedt also praised me for my suggestion. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Wilfried wiggling out of Florencia’s arms and going over to his attendants, asking them to stick with him. Lamprecht gave a big nod in reply.
Ferdinand, having been watching us all, rose from his chair and strode over to Wilfried, who tensed up in fear of what he was about to be told.
“It will not be easy to overcome this stain on your reputation. If you continue to work hard and focus on the future, however, you will surely continue to grow,” Ferdinand said. “Sincerity such as yours is a hard virtue to acquire.”
For a moment, Wilfried simply looked up, his mouth agape in confused disbelief. But his expression soon turned into a happy—albeit somewhat conflicted—smile. “I’ll do my best,” he said, kneeling down. “I’ll do my best not to waste the opportunity given to me. Thank you, Ferd— No, thank you, Uncle.”
With that, Ferdinand swiftly exited the room, seemingly having nothing else to say to Wilfried. I wasn’t sure if anyone else had noticed, but he had walked away a little faster than usual.
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