Startled at Marie, who’d come rushing in, breathless, her face frozen with fear, I sprang to my feet.
“The training grounds?”
“Y-yes…”
Marie’s whole body trembled. Her face was etched with terror.
Come to think of it, I’d heard before that Marie couldn’t stand the sight of blood. She’d developed a fear of blood after a carriage accident, apparently.
“All right. I’ll go right away. Do you know how it happened?”
“Th-they were training with r-real swords… hic!“
Marie hiccuped, seeming unable to get any more words out. In her trembling eyes, I could see her blaming herself for failing to explain.
“It’s all right. That’s enough.”
Just knowing it was a real sword was enough to tell me what I needed to do.
I hurriedly swept together every hemostatic agent, tetanus medicine, and the like that I had on hand.
Then, leaving trembling Marie behind in the dispensary, I set off running toward the training grounds.
The training grounds lay in the opposite direction from the main building, well past the annex.
My breath was catching in my throat, but I didn’t stop, pushing myself harder with every step.
The training grounds I finally reached were, true to House Asheln, enormous in scale, but finding where the injured person was wasn’t hard at all.
Because from one direction came a commotion of voices and a scream. I headed straight that way.
In one corner of the dust-swept training grounds, a crowd of young men, still in training clothes rather than proper knight’s uniforms, had gathered in a huddle. Apprentice knights.
“H-hey! The bleeding won’t stop!”
“Stop the bleeding! I said stop the bleeding first!”
“Bring the ointment! Hurry!”
They were clearly panicking, running around in confusion.
Among them, I saw an injured man sitting on the ground, clutching his leg, groaning.
Bright red blood, dripping down along his clothes, was soaking the dirt a dark crimson.
Good heavens. This is a mess…!
If this went on, something terrible would happen.
I took a deep breath and pushed my way through the crowd.
“Excuse me! Let me through!”
“Uh, uh…?”
Startled by the arrival of a stranger, they were nonetheless overwhelmed by the intensity radiating from Viola, and for the moment they simply cleared a path, dazed.
“Excuse me, but who—”
“I’m a pharmacist!”
There was no time to explain any further than that. I knelt down in front of the injured man at once and examined the wound.
It’s deep…
The look of the wound was obviously, at a glance, a cut from a real sword. It seemed there’d been an accident during training… but thankfully, it had missed the artery.
“Press down on this as hard as you can!”
“Huh? Y-yes, sir!”
The apprentice knight, answering out of sheer reflex, followed my instructions and pressed down on the injured man’s wound.
“Could you take out the white bottle from my bag?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Not that one, the one beside it.”
The knights, who had been utterly lost, finally seemed to regain their wits, and nodded vigorously.
Until just a moment ago, apprentice knight Eric had been out of his mind with panic.
It had all started when, during their independent training hour, they’d simply been swinging their wooden swords, when Knight Commander Morden suddenly stormed in and shouted at them.
“Wooden swords? Who ordered wooden-sword training?”
“Instructor Eugene ordered wooden-sword training, sir.”
“…Useless. Do you think swinging around wooden swords will make you shields for the Dragonblood?”
Looking coldly over the apprentice knights, Morden had then thrown down real swords.
In effect, an order to train anew, this time with real blades.
The apprentice knights had followed the Knight Commander’s sudden order at once, but an uneasy feeling had lingered.
…Is this really all right?
With no instructor present to watch over them, they’d hesitated, but not one person there had the courage to defy the Knight Commander’s order.
And so, training continued for a while. In the end, the very thing they’d feared came to pass.
Someone had been badly hurt swinging a real blade.
In the panic that followed, Eric, along with every other apprentice knight, hadn’t known what to do.
Not long ago, the knights’ order’s physician had quit, and no replacement had come; and right now, their instructor Eugene wasn’t there either.
The only thing they had on hand was the ointment Marie had passed along from her hometown friend not long ago, but they hadn’t even been sure it was safe to use in a situation like this.
They’d certainly learned about emergencies. And yet, with a real one unfolding before their eyes, not a single one of the young apprentice knights could keep calm.
And so, while everyone was thrown into confusion, running this way and that—
Suddenly, a pink-haired woman had appeared, introduced herself as a pharmacist, and instantly taken charge of the whole situation.
Eric had followed the woman’s instructions faithfully. Unlike the frightened, faltering knights, there wasn’t a shred of hesitation in her eyes.
She’d washed the dirt out of the wound, disinfected it, and stopped the bleeding, treating the injury with brisk efficiency.
Finally, she’d finished her work by wrapping the wound in a pressure bandage.
He knew nothing of medicine, but her skill seemed to surpass even the knights’ order’s former dedicated physician.
It was at that moment that the pharmacist finally let out a breath of relief, as if a weight had lifted from her chest.
“Everyone’s worked so hard.”
Only meeting those gentle, sprout-like eyes did Eric realize it.
He’d been so out of his mind in the emergency that he hadn’t noticed until now.
The woman’s features were remarkably familiar.
Pink hair, fluffy as cotton candy. Her profession as a pharmacist.
And the biggest clue of all…!
“She’s really so kind and beautiful. I only w-wish I could keep serving her forever…”
Marie’s boasting seemed to ring in his ears.
Eric blinked and looked at her face again. There was no mistaking it. It matched everything Marie had described, without a single discrepancy.
Miss Squirrel!
She had to be the very Miss Squirrel everyone had been talking about. His Grace the Duke’s woman!
Eric wasn’t the only one to figure out her identity; the apprentice knights exchanged glances with one another. A few even murmured among themselves.
In truth, she was already an enormous topic of conversation within the knights’ order.
The first reason was that the ointments she’d sent through Marie had been an enormous help.
The second reason was something a knight had happened to witness not long ago.
None other than the cold Dragon Duke himself, carrying Miss Squirrel in his arms, princess-style!
That Duke…?
They didn’t know the details, but it was a genuinely shocking story. The knights’ order had been abuzz over it for some time.
Wondering whether spring was finally coming to House Asheln.
He’d thought that an exaggeration when he first heard it, but…
Now that he saw her, she herself seemed like a goddess of spring. A person who could smile this radiantly!
“Is anyone else hurt, by any chance?”
At her worried voice, the apprentice knights blushed, one after another, just a little.
“No, ma’am!”
“No one else, ma’am!”
While they answered that for now, Eric checked his own body over, disappointed for no good reason.
Am I not hurt anywhere… even a little scratch would do.
But sadly, there wasn’t so much as a single scrape to be found.
Eric shook his head, startled at himself. What on earth had he just been thinking?
“You there! What’s going on!”
It was then. Along with a booming shout, someone came striding briskly into the training grounds.
The man who’d appeared with the force of a tiger was Eugene, known as the right hand of the Vice Commander. He was also their training instructor.
“S-Sir Eugene!”
The apprentice knight with the bandaged leg wore an expression as hopeless as if he’d just come face to face with a monster.
Even though it had been because of the Commander’s forced order, the result was still that they’d caused an accident using a forbidden real sword.
Eugene saw the bloodstains and the bandages, frowned, and clicked his tongue.
“Haa. Honestly, does it itch under your skin if you’re not causing an accident? Who pulled out a real sword for independent training without a second thought!”
“Well, sir, the Commander suddenly…”
When the true culprit behind the accident was carefully named, Eugene stopped short, as if he had some idea of what had happened.
“…The treatment appears to be finished, so let’s move the injured man inside.”
“Yes, sir!”
It was then that Eugene belatedly noticed something odd.
Come to think of it, the injury looked quite severe. Who on earth had administered such excellent first aid?
There was no way these apprentice knights had that kind of skill.
Eugene turned his head to check his surroundings, but all he saw was a crowd of grim men’s faces and a shock of pink at the top of one head… no, wait.
A shock of pink hair?
He looked down, startled.
“H-hello there…?”
Only then did he spot the small woman among the towering apprentice knights.
In the otherwise gloomy training grounds, she alone shone brightly, radiantly.
It was undoubtedly the first time he’d seen her face, and yet he felt an inexplicable familiarity.
Eugene finally realized why.
“…Miss Squirrel?”
“Pardon?”
The woman tilted her head, looking puzzled.
