I Start with a Bad Hand!

I was adopted, after all. 

No, even if I wasn’t an adopted child, Dietrich herself wouldn’t know her birthday. It felt awkward to mention my real birthday too. Swallowing the rest of my words, I picked up my coat.

“Ah… I, again, have been rude…”

Klaus muttered in a voice that seemed to crawl back into itself. Oh dear. How can he be so innocently troubled? While needlessly fiddling with my wet hair, I replied.

“It’s okay. Precisely speaking, I don’t know, but I live thinking every day is my birthday from the start of autumn until before winter comes.”

“I love autumn the most,” I said with a smile. In reality, my birthday was in autumn, so living with that mindset wasn’t bad at all.

“Really?”

“Of course.”

That would be really nice. To have a birthday that lasts several months. Klaus, having taken the coat I had picked up, helped me into it as if serving me.

“Uh… but that autumn is based on our domain, so it’s about a week long.”

“Autumn only lasts a week?”

Klaus paused his serving for a moment then muttered, “A week?” after a brief thought.

That astonishing occurrence was happening in Heylem. The moment it started to show autumn colors, it would rain relentlessly, and once the rain eased, winter would begin. A barren domain strangely mixed like Gangwon Province and Scandinavia. That was Dietrich’s domain, Heylem.

“Truly.”

Klaus’s reaction was so adorable, I couldn’t help but smile in my reply. Amidst this, a servant of the ducal house brought some clothes and an umbrella to change into.

“In return, winter lasts for 6 months.”

“Wow…”

In a place devoid of any servants nearby, I cautiously whispered to Klaus.

“I’ll invite you. Come and visit.”

The informal tone didn’t necessarily imply intimacy, but seeing Klaus now dirtier than me, I just wanted to speak comfortably. No sooner had I finished speaking than Klaus’s eyes widened then softly narrowed with a smile.

“Come during the vacation. The snow will be pretty by then.”

It seemed unlikely that a young lord of the ducal house would visit that rural corner… But still, I decided to invite him as a courtesy. I also wanted to show this city mouse, born and raised in the south, what a snow hell was like.

“I definitely will.”

Klaus whispered back similarly.

“Thank you for coming today. And…”

Klaus, covered in mud, took off his soiled gloves and slipped a new pair onto my hands. Those gloves, which should have been stiff, went on smoothly because of how much he had kneaded them.

Even with gloves now on both of my hands, he didn’t let go. He paused for a moment, took a breath, and gently kissed my hands.

“Take care. Let’s meet again.”

He smiled sheepishly, making me sigh inwardly without realizing it.

‘Wow… I’m in trouble.’

I shouldn’t keep leaving good things behind in this world. I shouldn’t keep getting attached. Despite my resolutions, this world too had too many tender things.

‘But this is just for a moment. Just a moment.’

I need to pull myself together. Let’s get a grip. I brushed over the gloves briefly, then took them off again. And carefully tucked them back into the small bag I had brought.

That marked the end of my brief deviation. Accompanied by the ducal house’s new clothes that softly tickled my nose with some kind of fragrance.

***

“Did you enjoy your break?”

“No….”

I had truly only rested for a half day, yet the intensity of my training had only increased, as if the rest required compensating. It didn’t seem to add up.

Now, Agatha didn’t rest even when it rained. She followed some training method she had heard about somewhere and even went to the cemetery. However, a suspicious graveyard keeper stopped the student who was sneaking around at night with a bow, and I ended up having no choice but to train at the academy’s archery range with all the lights out.

Fortunately, the dark academy was scary enough, and so was Agatha, who kept a fierce watch on me, telling me to shoot arrows in such a place.

Thanks to that, there were days when I felt like I couldn’t step out of bed. Each time, I forced myself up with the thought that if not now, then when would I ever get another chance? Probably because I was crazy about money…

‘I will definitely win the autumn hunting festival and find a way if I make some money’—that goal kept me moving. Of course, Agatha helped a lot too, by coming to the dorm and knocking on my door if I didn’t come out of my room even as time passed.

‘Less than a month left.’

I can do it. I can’t delay any longer. My escape. Dietrich’s comeback.

And so, the vacation ended.

I just shot arrows all along. It passed so quickly that I wondered how time could fly by so fast.

Agnes, who had been to some beach in the south before the vacation ended, grumbled with a slightly sunburned face.

“Why does the vacation feel so short?”

“I know, right? It feels like it just started yesterday.”

The academy was filled with the energy of the new semester and excitement for the autumn festival, but somehow, I still felt the fatigue from last semester hadn’t fully dissipated.

“What are you doing during the autumn festival?”

“Let’s go to the festival together with the senior.” 

Agnes chatted excitedly as we walked to class. Unlike last semester, when I almost always attended classes alone, this time I managed to align my schedule with Agnes to attend the same classes.

“Me? I have a prior engagement.”

“What? You don’t have friends. Who with?”

How could she say that to someone who really has no friends… Agnes was mercilessly playing with the truth.

‘But how can I tell her that monsters are expected at the hunt, and I plan to catch one for a prize? Would it make sense for a mere student to anticipate and achieve that?’

I had no choice but to be vague in my response.

“Just something.”

Agnes squinted her eyes and continued to interrogate me, but after repeated non-committal answers, she finally stopped asking in frustration.

“No, I really don’t know much either. Let’s meet on the last day at 7 PM by the clock tower in the capital square. If I’m not there in 10 minutes, go ahead without me.”

“Are you really not going to tell me what it is?”

“I’ll tell you after I come back. After I return.”

In a world without cell phones, arranging meetings was quite analog. Agnes seemed unsatisfied with my response, but we had agreed to meet and talk later, so it seemed she would let it go for now.

As time flew by, the day of the autumn festival quickly approached.

***

“I am from Heylem of Degoph.”

The person registering participants for the hunt glanced at me briefly before indifferently returning to his paperwork. He had the look of a weary office worker who had come in over the holiday.

“Your name?”

“…Beatrice.”

I answered while pulling my robe down further over my face. Fortunately, the registrar just glanced at me and then began to write without much interest.

Beatrice is the name of the baroness. The reason I used a pseudonym was simple.

‘I don’t want to get caught up in gossip by winning under my own name.’

What I needed was money, not fame. It wasn’t a made-up name, and it wasn’t being used for anything bad, so it should be fine.

Upon hearing my response, the registrar kindly asked for the color of the marker string to indicate the captured prey and the initials to be engraved on it. The string had a spell on it, making it impossible to untie unless done by the person who tied it.

“Please engrave ‘Degoph’ on the navy string.”

“Navy… Degoph…”

He scribbled something on the paperwork with one hand while engraving the initials onto the navy strings piled beside him with the other.

‘Marking so many with magic at once. He must be highly skilled.’

He then handed me several strings with the initials already engraved. I picked up just one of them.

“One is enough.”

The prey I’m aiming for today is just one. I told him confidently, and the registrar responded, maintaining his dead-fish eyes and a wry smile.

“Still, just in case, you might want to take a few.”

“Okay.”

I’m targeting only one prey today, but just in case… I moved forward energetically.

I had been waiting just for today.

Using a teleportation scroll, I moved to a location I had scouted beforehand based on coordinates. It was a spot I had checked and selected several times on the map—a clearing right below a cliff.

‘With the retreat blocked, unless a monster jumps down from the cliff, it can only come from the front.’

I lightly touched my quiver. Several arrows equipped with magic artifacts. And two teleportation scrolls prepared for emergencies. These were my lifelines and my salvation.

‘Of course, they were so expensive that my hands trembled when I bought them.’

Especially the arrows with artifacts were as expensive as a dress. I had poured everything into this—from the money the Baron and Baroness gave for a ball gown at the academy to the emergency funds brought from Heylem.

‘I even gave up the money for winter clothes. So please…’

There’s no one more serious about this hunt than me. Because no one else brings weapons equipped with artifacts to an autumn hunt. It’s like inviting a world champion to a primary school sports day as a mercenary.

‘Isn’t that a bit too much?’

Though the royal family sponsors it, the hunt is less about serious hunting and more an extension of social activities. The prize money from the hunt is usually donated to charity or used for charitable causes. There was a reason I was staking my life on this hunt.

‘Because in the original story, someone tried to flirt with Roxanne and got severely punished by a monster.’