It was one of the busiest times at the dining hall, and Blade sat at his usual table, shoveling katsu curry into his mouth, when an intrusive thought—one besides Mmm! Katsu curry is so damn gooood!!!—entered his mind. He scanned the room, searching for the thought’s source.
He found Lunaria with a plate of food in her hand, her eyes scanning for an empty seat.
“Oh! Hey, Lunaria! Over here!” he called, vigorously waving his spoon in the air at her.
Her presence was undoubtedly the cause of his intrusive thoughts. Either his Hero Ears, Hero Eyes, or maybe even his Hero Sixth Sense had picked up Lunaria’s distress and promptly sent a signal to his subconscious to snap him out of his katsu curry-induced trance.
Lunaria, spotting him, walked up to the table. “Oh… It looks like you’re all full here, too… I’ll look somewhere else.”
“Hmm?”
Blade looked around. Not long ago, this table had been Earnest’s exclusive domain—back when she’d reigned over this school as the Empress, standing tall and proud with her steely eyes. The other students, fearing her wrath, had never dared approach her table. So no matter how busy lunchtime got, Earnest always had the entire space to herself.
Now that Earnest had fallen from her throne, so to speak, that table belonged to what people called Earnest’s Gang—and, apparently, it was full. Considerably over capacity, in fact, given how ten or so people were occupying a table meant for eight.
“Here! Come over here!”
“I’ll pass,” Lunaria replied with the elegant smile of an elite noble. “It already looks pretty full.”
“Nah, nah, here! Over here!” Blade tossed Cú over to Claire and patted the newly empty “seat.”
“You dumbass!” Earnest elbowed him in the temple.
“Hey, that hurt. What was that for?”
“You’re inviting a girl to sit on your lap? What are you, stupid?”
“Cú’s a girl, too, isn’t she? …You are, right?” Blade turned to Cú.
“Yes!” Cú replied. “I’m a girl! A female!”
“Well, Cú’s a different story, isn’t she? And come to think of it, you’re always—”
“Oh… Okay, I’ll move, then. Here you go, Lunaria. Ovie, if you could take Cú…”
Claire politely stood up and passed Cú once again, this time to the Overlord. Those two always got along, perhaps because they were both magic beasts. In fact, they were good friends, and often chatted one-on-one. The Overlord seemed to enjoy looking out for the little dragon, too, calling her the “draconic scion” and so forth.
“I…am quite reluctant to turn down your invitation, Blade. But as a lady, I’m afraid I cannot act so shamelessly in public. And so, Blade, and everyone else…I bid you farewell for now.”
With that, Lunaria left. She eventually found a seat by the window on the opposite end of the dining hall, where she ate all alone.
“Hey, Blade. Hello? Are you listening to me?” The Empress started poking at him again.
At this, Blade finally realized that Earnest had been lecturing him about his behavior this entire time…or, to be more specific, ever since he first invited Lunaria to sit on his lap.
“Are you done yet?” he asked.
“No. No, I’m not done. I still have a lot to say—”
Blade opted not to listen. His Hero Ears could detect a pin dropping miles away, but they could also fully block out loud noises nearby.
Thus, as he ignored Earnest’s ranting and raving, Blade thought some more about Lunaria. After fighting Earnest in a recent interschool competition and bringing her to an epoch-making draw, Lunaria had somehow ended up attending Rosewood Academy. They were calling her a “special exchange student,” and while Blade didn’t really know what that meant, he knew she was his friend—and as long as they were friends, everything else was trivial.
So getting back to the issue at hand, when Blade saw Lunaria eating alone, he had the overwhelming desire to do something about it. And he thought he had a pretty good idea of why she preferred not to interact with others.
“…So that’s the long and short of it, but do you understand what I’m trying to say, Blade?” asked Earnest.
“Yeah, I understand.” In fact, he didn’t understand at all. He hadn’t heard a word she said. But for now, he simply nodded.
“Hey… Are you looking at Lunaria?”
“Yeah. She eats alone a lot, doesn’t she?”
“All the time.”
“I’m worried about her.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s like you used to be. Eating alone.”
“A-alone…? What do you mean? I never found it painful to eat all alone! I never thought even once that I should just take my plate and go eat in a bathroom stall!”
Something about the phrase “eating alone” seemed to have set Earnest off.
“I don’t care about you, all right?” said Blade. “We’re talking about Lunaria.”
“You don’t care…?!”
For a while after that, they ate in silence. Blade would pick up a piece of pork cutlet from the sea of curry in front of him and pop it into his mouth, while Earnest used a large custom-made spoon to hoist a quantity of food much greater than her mouth should be able to hold up to her face. This continued until her trough-sized mountain of fried rice disappeared from sight.
Once she’d finished her fried rice and started on the workman’s bucket of macaroni and cheese next to it, she started speaking again. “Listen. I really don’t think you need to worry about her, okay? She’s always been like that. She’s used to it—geniuses like her need to be. She probably sees herself as a different species from the rest of us ordinary folk anyway.”
“Wow. That’s pretty mean of you,” Blade shot back.
“Huuuh? I-I’m trying to be considerate!”
“No you’re not. Not at all.”
Even someone like Blade, a newcomer to the concept of common sense, could tell that Earnest was being pretty harsh by typical standards. But he couldn’t be sure, so he glanced around at his tablemates. Some nodded their agreement, while others folded their arms and looked generally appalled. These reactions made Blade a lot more confident about his judgment.
“No, with me, it’s…it’s a matter of trust! Right, trust! That disgusting genius—I mean, um, Lunaria’s completely fine with that sort of thing. She’s doing great! How’s the old saying go? It’s always the weeds that grow the tallest! That’s what I mean. That’s the kind of trust I have in her!”
“But geniuses can be pretty fragile, too, right?”
“Huh?”
Earnest stopped eating. Blade fell silent, his eyes still trained on Lunaria as she ate alone on the other side of the room.