Chapter 50. A Menu Only I Can See Almost Ended My Career in Front of a Rabbit

Chapter 50: 50. A Menu Only I Can See Almost Ended My Career in Front of a Rabbit

I stared straight ahead at a point just over Eveline’s left shoulder and tried to look like a man who was thinking about nothing in particular.

It must not have worked, because she tilted her head, and one long ear flopped to the side, and she looked at me with her amber eyes narrowed in honest curiosity.

And my darn eyes keep getting pulled towards her clothes... it looks so perfect and aesthetic! Like look at the way the stocking covered her massive side tits!

"Sir Ravenshield?"

"Yes?"

"You’re staring at something."

’Fuck.’ I cleared my throat and looked at her eyes. "I’m not staring at anything."

"You’re staring at the air." She waved a hand next to my face. "Right here... It’s like you’re reading a book that isn’t there."

Oh... thank god, but it’s still worse! My heart tried to leave through my throat.

I’m fairly sure the blood drained from my face, and I could feel the faint beginnings of a cold sweat.

This was the moment when the entire secret would collapse, and I was going to be a Royal Knight who’d been caught talking to an invisible menu in front of an SSS-Rank rabbit.

"He’s got headaches," said Alicia, in the warmest, calmest voice I’ve ever heard.

As always, Alicia came in clutch. I’d never loved her more.

She’d walked over from the bench with her hands clasped behind her back and a gentle smile on her face, as if the subject was nothing at all. "It’s from the curse."

"He gets these moments sometimes... where his eyes go unfocused, and it takes a few seconds for him to come back," Alicia said, fanning her hair while giggling. "It’s nothing dangerous."

"The curse...?" Eveline’s ears perked up. "Oh no! He’s cursed...?"

"It’s a long story."

"Oh, I’m so sorry... That sounds awful."

"It’s not so bad," I said, relieved that my voice was working. "Mostly it gives me headaches and an unreasonable amount of luck."

"Luck isn’t a bad thing."

"It depends who’s holding the dice."

Sharon was watching us with a flat, thoughtful expression. "Now that I remember..."

"Laura mentioned something about a curse," she said, slowly. "When she briefed me on Dunmore."

"She said it was powerful and that it made you stronger, but she didn’t give me details."

"It’s a complicated class," I said. "Unique, and a little unstable."

"We call it a curse because it comes with side effects."

"You’re the one with the secret unique class."

"I’m the one with the restricted-file unique class."

"I read your file... All of it. It had about four lines and a seal." Sharon shrugged. "I’m not going to pry."

"But if it starts giving you trouble in combat... I want to know. Understood?"

"Understood."

"Good! Don’t ever hide a weakness from your instructor! It’s how people die!"

"Yes, ma’am."

Eveline was looking from me to Sharon and then back with a worried frown.

"Are you going to die?" she asked.

"Not today," I said.

"Oh~! Good!"

I caught Alicia’s eye. She gave me a look that said, very clearly, ’We’ll talk later,’ and I swallowed.

Laura, on the bench, had raised one eyebrow so slowly that it felt like a threat. She wasn’t angry, though.

I could tell.

She’d seen my face when the panel appeared, and she’d put the pieces together the way she always did, quickly and quietly, and now she was just watching, with her arms folded and her chin up, as if she’d decided to give me a chance to prove that I’d handle this with some dignity.

’I’m going to...’ I told them silently. ’I swear.’

I made a promise to myself right then, standing in the middle of the training yard with a stuffed rabbit’s worth of embarrassment still coloring my ears.

I’d read the panel, and I knew what it meant, and I knew the thing it wanted. But Eveline was a person, not a line in a menu.

She’d never asked to be a candidate for anything. She’d run into a rack of swords and put a bucket on her own head, and she had no idea that the man in front of her had a mechanism in his skull that classified her as a power source.

If she turned out to like me someday, on her own, in her own time, then we’d talk. If not... that was the end of it.

Nobody was going to get pushed, least of all by me.

"Anyway," said Sharon, and clapped her hands. "Now that everyone’s been traumatized, let’s go inside."

"Eveline has something to report, and I’d like to hear it before she walks into another wall."

"I have a report?" said Eveline.

"You were supposed to give it to Hallis yesterday!"

"I... was?"

Sharon closed her eyes. "Inside... all of you! Now!"

...

The room Sharon led us to was a small, bare chamber off the side of the training hall, with a scarred wooden table, six mismatched chairs, and a window so grimy that the morning sun came through it like weak soup.

It was clearly a place where instructors yelled at students in private.

I sat on the chair nearest the door, with my ribs complaining, and Alicia took the seat beside me.

Laura sat on my other side, and Sharon dropped into a chair across the table with the heavy thump of a woman who’d had too many mornings like this one.

Eveline stood in front of the table with her hands clasped and her ears folded halfway down.

"Right," said Sharon. "Report."

"Yes, ma’am." Eveline took a deep breath. "I mean, I have it written down."

"It’s in my bag... I wrote everything neatly, and I was going to give it to Commander Hallis yesterday, but I got distracted, and then there was a hat, and..."

"A hat?"

"Mine... It blew off my head near the east gate, and I chased it for about twenty minutes, and then I got lost, and then I was hungry, and then I came here, and..." She stopped.

She looked down at her shoulder, where a leather strap crossed her jacket, and her face slowly fell. "Oh."

"Oh?"

"It’s not... with me..."

"Where is it?!"

"I think I left it in my room." She patted her jacket frantically. "Or the stable!"

"Or on the bench by the gate! Or..."

Her tail, I noticed, had swelled into a nervous puff of white fur, and something small and brown was sticking out of the pleats of her skirt.

It was the corner of a leather satchel.

"Eveline..." said Laura gently. "Look behind you."

She twisted around, and she saw the satchel, wedged between her tail and the back of her skirt, where it had been hanging the entire time.

"Oh," said Eveline, very small.

There was a pause, and then Alicia made a noise like a teakettle and slid halfway off her chair.

"It’s not funny!" Eveline wailed, pulling the satchel loose and hugging it to her chest. "It’s the pleats!"

"They’re very deep! Things get stuck in them!"

"Of course they do," Sharon said, with the weariness of a woman who had heard every possible explanation. "Read it."

Eveline fumbled with the clasp, got it open on the third try, and pulled out a thin sheaf of paper covered in careful handwriting.

She cleared her throat. The humor drained out of her face, and when she started reading, her voice was quieter and steadier than it had been all morning.

"On the ninth day of the northern retreat, our relief squad passed through the checkpoint at the Greywater crossing on the northeastern road!"

"We were behind schedule because of the monster surge, and we were ordered to clear the road for an incoming convoy!"

"What kind of convoy?" Laura asked.

"That’s the thing... It had no banner." Eveline looked up. "No house crest, no royal standard, and no regiment markings."

"Just a long line of covered wagons, six or seven of them, pulled by heavy horses, with armed riders on all sides."

"I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but the checkpoint guards were acting very strangely..."

"They wouldn’t inspect the wagons... They saluted the lead rider, and they waved the whole thing through without even asking for a manifest."

"Royal clearance," Sharon said.

"That’s what the guard captain said when I asked."

"He said it was a royal clearance and that nobody was permitted to question it." She flipped a page. "One of the wagon covers was flapping in the wind, and I could see inside."

"The crates had a mark painted on the lids... It was a circle with jagged edges, like a gear, with a line through the middle."

I felt every muscle in my body go tight.

"I wrote it down," Eveline said. "I drew it!"

"It’s right here~!"