Izayoi and Rosette spent the night out in the wild. The next day, they headed back to Anzero Knight Academy.

Once they came out of the dense forest, they hired a carriage. After two more days and a night on the road, they finally made it back to school.

“Izayoi! That up ahead is our academy!” Because they were going to enroll Izayoi, and the two of them were only a few months apart in age—at least by the looks of it—Rosette had already discussed it with her: once they were at school, they’d just call each other by name as classmates.

“Mm.” Izayoi smiled. Up on the slope ahead, an old stone gate lay half-hidden under lush green trees. At a glance, it looked like a very elegant campus.

“Let’s go in!” Rosette and Izayoi jumped down from the carriage and walked toward the school.

Since the campus was built on a hillside, there were huge trees everywhere and stone paths slanting up and down. The whole place felt vast.

“Let’s go to my dorm and rest a bit first.”

“Okay.”

On the way, they ran into a few academy students. Rosette greeted them like she usually did, but the students all seemed desperate to avoid her, like they couldn’t get away fast enough.

“Rosette!” A man in a gray robe, looking very much like a teacher, hurried over and called out to her.

“Mr. Markel?”

“Y-You… you’re… all right?”

“I… Sir, it’s a long story.”

“In any case, you’re coming with me to see the Director. Right now,” Markel said.

“I’ll go see my sister in a bit! Let me take my friend to my dorm to rest first!”

“You think this is the time to rest?? You’re coming with me, now!”

“Izayoi…”

“Just go. I’ll go with you,” Izayoi said.

So they followed the teacher to a mansion-like building with an ancient clock mounted on it. This was where the faculty offices were.

On the very top floor, in the large room in the center—that was the Director’s office.

A tall woman wearing gold-rimmed glasses and a white noble-style uniform trimmed with gold stood up the moment she saw Rosette.

She looked about twenty, hair pinned up with soft curls framing her cheeks, giving her a mature, intellectual air.

“Dysten, sis!” The moment Rosette saw her sister, her nose stung. She wanted to pour out everything, to tell her how she’d almost died out there.

But the tall, composed female Director walked straight over. There wasn’t the slightest hint of pity in her eyes. She raised her hand high and—smack!—slapped Rosette across the face.

A red mark bloomed at once on Rosette’s delicate cheek.

“Look at what you’ve done!!! You’ve got the nerve to come back alive? If you’d died in the Forgotten Cave, at least that would’ve been something to tell the Hauss family!”

“Sis…” Rosette clutched her face, aggrieved and stunned into silence.

“I warned you over and over! You were not to go adventuring anywhere beyond your trial permits! You stupid little brat—if you want to go get yourself killed, fine! But you dragged the Marquis Malov’s precious grandson, young master Hauss, along with you! And you got him killed!!! Lune came back crying to her grandmother, and now the entire kingdom knows! The king’s own envoys have come to question our academy!!! Our whole family is going to be dragged into this mess! That was the Marquis Malov’s most beloved grandson!!! And you even got another boy killed, the son of a powerful merchant house. They’ve already come here to demand answers! Tell me—how are you going to clean this up!??”

Dysten was so furious she lost all restraint. She lifted one long leg in high heels and kicked Rosette in the stomach, knocking her to the floor.

Then she stepped up, grabbed Rosette by the hair, and started to fling her toward the wall.

“Stop!” Izayoi, standing to the side, couldn’t watch anymore. She moved in and blocked Dysten. Just from that sharp, controlled motion, it was obvious that even though Dysten was a Director, she was also a formidable female knight.

Izayoi had expected Rosette to be punished upon returning, but this—punches and kicks—was going way too far.

“Who are you?” Dysten had noticed Izayoi earlier but hadn’t bothered to ask.

“Sis!” Rosette threw her arms around Dysten’s leg, crying. “She’s Izayoi. If she hadn’t defeated that terrifying monster in there, I—I definitely wouldn’t have made it back!”

Dysten looked at Izayoi, a hint of surprise in her eyes. “You’re the one who defeated the Swamp Shadow alone??? I really wouldn’t have guessed you were that strong. You saved a member of our family, so I should be thanking you. But this girl has brought disaster on our heads! She thinks just because her sister is the Director and she’s the vice president of the Student Council, she can do anything she wants! That’s why we ended up like this! Not just her—our whole family might suffer for it!”

“What happened is partly Rosette’s fault,” Izayoi said. “But in the world of adventuring, life and death are fate. At worst, Rosette was ignorant and arrogant. You can’t put all the blame for their deaths on her. The ones who killed them were the monsters. I already killed the Swamp Shadow. That should count as giving them some closure, shouldn’t it?”

“What you’re saying isn’t wrong,” Dysten replied, “but our family is just a middling house clinging to the coattails of greater nobles. Now that we’ve offended one of the kingdom’s top houses, do you really think they’ll stay neutral? They’ll take all their anger out on us! And other powers lurking behind them might seize this chance to swallow our family whole! All of this… is a disaster born from this stupid little brat’s ignorance and self-importance!”

“Then what are you going to do? Hand Rosette over?” Izayoi asked.

“Hmph. If giving her up could solve everything, we’d be lucky! Right now we don’t even know. All we’ve heard is that Marquis Malov flew into a rage! How he actually plans to settle accounts with us, we still don’t know. In any case, I’m going to keep Rosette under strict watch. We’ll wait for our family and the Malov family to decide how to handle her,” Dysten said.

Izayoi shook her head helplessly. Before, she’d felt Rosette’s spoiled temper, ignorance, arrogance, and love of the spotlight—getting her teammates killed—made her pretty damn annoying. Now, she couldn’t help finding her pitiful too.

“Enough. You can leave for now. You little brat! You’re not taking one step off campus! If you do, I won’t wait for the family to act—I’ll string you up in the academy square and whip you to death myself!” Dysten shouted.

Rosette was completely dazed. She never imagined that the big sister who had always indulged and protected her would suddenly treat her this cruelly.

She pushed herself up woodenly, her whole body trembling.

“What are you spacing out for? Get out of my sight!” Dysten snapped.

Leaving with Izayoi, Rosette didn’t say a single word along the way. She moved like her soul had left her body as she led Izayoi to her dorm.

As vice president, she had a suite on the third floor, living alone.

This time, she brought Izayoi into the room.

Seeing her like this, Izayoi could only shake her head. “Rosette, go take a shower and get some sleep. Overthinking it won’t change anything.”

Rosette stayed silent and just walked into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.