[People Requiring Special Attention]

Now, with the promise to the school ball had been officially made, all I had left to do was to leisurely wait till the appointed day—or at least, that was what I was hoping for.

The thought that there was someone out there plotting behind the scenes in the academy left me unsettled.

Raul’s and Rick’s berserk incidents.

Mr. Timmons may be involved in them.

My three maids were trying all possible means to investigate him, but nothing had turned up yet… well, even the academy seemed to have yet gained any crucial leads, so the culprit must be pretty skilled at hiding their tracks.

One thing to note was that there had been no other student found going berserk following Rick’s incident.

Which led me to believe that the incidents were less to cause panic in the academy and more to experiment.

Anyway, I was thinking of going to ask Mr. Walter and Ms. Teixeira about the progress of the academy’s investigation while continuing my own investigation in secret. Ms. Teixeira, in particular, would be easier to coax, as even now she still needed me to help her research the Holy Sword.

The other problem I had to deal with was… of course, Barrett’s interpersonal relationships.

However, since I had some degree of information in this regard beforehand, I was able to handle it relatively easily.

All I had to do was simple—just ignored them.

In the original storyline, Wade succeeded in securing the position of Barrett’s exclusive merchant by sucking up to him, but I had been outrightly ignoring his flatteries. After a while, Wade stopped visiting me, perhaps judging it was futile.

So were the other guys.

Being chosen by the Holy Sword, there was no end to those trying to get in my good books. Be it academy staff, students’ parents, or even people I’d never heard of—all sorts of adults had come to visit me.

Practically all of them tried to curry favor with me by giving me blatant flatteries, but I straight up rejected them. As a result, the number of people visiting me was decreasing day by day.

――Only one guy was an exception.

It was Jarvis, who originally would become a member of the hero party and be in cahoots with Barrett to commit all sorts of unlawful acts.

He tried to talk to me at every opportunity he got. I thought that he would give up and quit it if I gave him the cold shoulder, so I always gave him curt responses, but… turned out he wouldn’t. He was strangely greatly obsessed with me.

After all his approaches, eventually…

“About Jarvis… I think he likes you, Barrett.”

…Tayte said that to me as we were relaxing in the drawing room after school as usual.

Well… with his features, he may pass off as a girl.

Still, he was a ‘man’, at the end of the day.

I don’t swing that way.

“Like, huh… Both Jarvis and I are men, though.”

“N-not that way of like; I mean as a friend.”

“I know… But if Jarvis liked me as a man—”

“Huh?”

I said that as a joke, but… Miss Tayte? Why did you clam up? Why were you blushing? What sorts of imaginations were you having about me and Jarvis?

…Pressing her sounded like a good idea, yes, but I chose to remain silent.

After a while, Tayte returned to her senses and I greeted her with a grin.

――Alright, now that I had my fill of the sight of a suffering-in-embarrassment Tayte, let’s move on to the main subject.

I’d actually asked Marina and the other maids to investigate Jarvis.

Then, shortly after that, they’d brought me all sorts of information on him, but… there was nothing special about him. He came from an ordinary middle-class family. Diligent and sincere. He had many friends, and he got along well with men and women; a regular nice guy.

He was the total opposite of Barrett.

However, why would a guy like him turned into such a villain in the original storyline?

Change of personality for progressing the story—may be the easy way to explain it, but things didn’t go that way in reality.

“It seems like Jarvis also has some secret.”

Leads on the berserk incidents may come not only from Mr. Timmons, but also from Jarvis.

――Alright.

Time to quit thinking about the complicated stuff.

I regained my mind and… focused on the ‘game’.

“Yay! I won!” Marina shouted.

“—! Such an embarrassing defeat-meow…!” Priim meowed.

At the moment, Tayte and I, plus my three maids, were playing cards. A game of old maid, to be precise. The last time I played it was when I was in elementary school, but now that I tried to pick it up again, it was surprisingly exciting.

“Now, Lady Tayte, it’s your turn-meow!” Priim turned to Tayte.

“All right!” Tayte pulled out one card from Priim’s hand.

Then her face—was dyed in despair.

She’d pulled the old maid, huh… her reactions were so easy to tell.

Well, I had a lot of things on my mind, but everything was yet to come.

The closest one would be the school ball—something was likely going to happen there as well.