sickly chapter 3

Horrified, I stared open-mouthed, but Father shifted his gaze from me to Hamilton and said, “Hamilton, she is your sister, so look after Catherine well.”

“Father, I don’t think this is right. It’s too dangerous there.” Hamilton shook his head.

Good, you tell him! I chimed in, agreeing with him. “That’s right, Father. What if I collapse at the Academy again?”

“Exactly, what if she collapses again? Besides, there are many strange male students at the Academy. How can we send her to such a place?”

Father merely shrugged at our protests, as if it were of little consequence, and replied, “I’ve sent several of our family’s doctors to the Academy just in case, and we’ve built a new family annex right next door, so there’s no need to worry. And Hamilton, with you accompanying her, I don’t think we need to fret much.”

His response left me speechless, and I frantically rolled my eyes. Ah, now that I remember! This was it! I pulled out the engagement termination document I had been meaning to retrieve and thrust it into Father’s face.

He and the rest of the family stared at it with bewildered expressions.

“Catherine, what is this?”

I took a deep breath and declared, “It’s the termination of the engagement.”

“What?” Everyone’s eyes widened.

“A termination of the engagement?” Hamilton was the first to speak.

I nodded at his question, and Mother asked, looking flustered, “I don’t understand what this is about all of a sudden. Can you tell us why you want to end the engagement?”

“Well, Oswin first suggested breaking it off, but I didn’t want our family to be the one who was rejected. And frankly, I didn’t like Oswin very much either.”

At my words, Hamilton nodded his head repeatedly and mumbled to himself, “Yes. That fellow was a pain in the neck. It’s for the best.”

“And I’m too good for him,” I added, shrugging lightly. I continued, addressing my still-dumbfounded parents, “So, Oswin attends that Academy, doesn’t he? It might be a little awkward to run into him…”

In truth, meeting him didn’t bother me at all. To me, Oswin was merely a gnat. However, the crucial point was the potential for him to misunderstand! What if he misunderstands that I like him and followed him into the Academy?

Father, looking troubled, took off his spectacles and tucked the termination document into his pocket. He said, “Yes. If you don’t like your fiancé, I won’t force the engagement. But, there’s a problem.” He let out a long sigh. “I didn’t know this would happen, and I’ve already sent the admission papers to the Academy.”

“Excuse me?” Already?

Mother answered for him, seeing my astonished face. “Catherine, we were worried because you’ve been frail since childhood, unable to go out often or make friends… So we thought you would be happy if we sent you to the Academy.”

“We’re sorry for deciding this without you.”

Seeing my parents look at me with apologetic eyes, I couldn’t easily open my mouth, feeling like I’d swallowed a honeycomb. It was because I understood their intentions.

“…Can’t the admission be canceled?”

It was an Academy supported by the Imperial Family, and I’d heard the procedure was quite complicated. I asked Hamilton, who was a current student, and he replied with a helpless sigh, “Yeah, probably not.”

At his answer, my parents looked even more apologetic, and I held back the breath that threatened to escape.

“Catherine, if you really don’t want to go, we’ll try everything to cancel it.”

“Yes. You don’t have to go if it’s a burden.”

I frowned, thinking it over, but in the end, I could only shake my head horizontally at their words.

“…No. I’ll go to the Academy.”

It was all for my benefit. This life of staying cooped up inside wasn’t bad, but because of it, I didn’t have a single friend. Furthermore, I didn’t want to cause my parents trouble just because of Oswin Lyndon, and the thought of me running away from him suddenly annoyed me. Why should I be the one to avoid him? He should be the one avoiding me.

I might be misunderstood as following him, but that was just a misunderstanding, so I could just ignore it.

I nodded and said again, “I’ll try to make a lot of friends at the Academy.”

Only then did my parents’ faces brighten, and simultaneously, several status windows popped up before my eyes.

[Congratulations! You are now a student at Brickhurst Academy!]

[If you give up on participating in the game or fail to achieve the ending quest, you will marry your former fiancé, Oswin Lyndon.]

It wasn’t over just because I’d ended the engagement!

In despair, I gripped the knife tightly. Fine, let’s just do it. I’ll get the happy ending somehow and finish the game, just finish it!

The carriage stopped in front of the enormous Academy building, constructed of large glass windows and white walls. Soon, the coachman who drove the carriage announced, “Young Master, Young Lady, we have arrived.”

I gaped at the building through the window and prepared to disembark. However, Hamilton didn’t budge from his seat and grabbed my arm.

“Catherine, perhaps we should just go back?” he asked, glancing out the window. Outside, several students were gathered, chatting. Seeing this, he continued, “This is your first time taking classes with so many people. Aren’t you scared?”