When Leslie retorted, Aaron quickly stopped her.

"Leslie, no matter how your son is, I hope that he will do good to her. She's not just another woman, she's my sister, he's not a pervert, is he?"

"There is no way I would have produced a madman who loved his enemy."

But their conversation didn't come well to my ears.

Just by following a few basic postures in the same way, it felt like all the techniques were subtly arranged.

'I think I've heard somewhere that the habits I learned wrongly when I was a kid are going to get worse the further I try to correct it.'

Originally, this would never have happened.

To learn the basic posture correctly at once and to improve all of my skills accordingly. It would be impossible unless you go back to when you were very young and start training all over again.

This could only be explained by a divine blessing related to breaking the mirror.

Once I had mastered the basic posture, it felt like all the clumsy movements of the past were in order.

'...I want to compete once more.'

A good sword I had never had in my life, a strangely organized gesture...

This time, I was confident that I would be able to hold out to some extent.

Even if I didn't rush in as cowardly as in the past, and I didn't have to attack by aiming for gaps.

"Look." Aaron looked into my eyes and said.

"My sister wants to hit Ian even at this moment, so she can't even hear us properly."

"Okay, Annabelle." Leslie clapped once and smiled. "Then, would you like to have a match with Ian?"

I grabbed my sword and nodded.

Leslie gave attention to lan and me alternately.

"Instead, you shouldn't be as disrespectful as you were back then." Perhaps she was referring CO the first battle I did when I saved the High Priest after I remembered my previous life.

'I was going to lose anyway, so I did it roughly... Didn't Ian roughly fight me too?' When I thought about it, it seemed that only strangely meaningless swings were exchanged.

'Why did he do that then? A human being who doesn't take a single bait.'

"Especially, Ian, you purposely saw the gaps and did not just end it then. That's not polite to the other person."

"That..." After staying silent for a while, Ian sighed and finally opened his mouth. "It reminded me of a back injury the day before."

The low, calm voice suddenly warmed my ears. I didn't even know he cared about me back then. If not for my injury, he would have focused on attacking only my back...

"But this time, I really can't overlook it." Ian pulled out his sword and said calmly. "Like my mother said, it's not polite." His cool red eyes looked straight at me. After a very long time, I clenched my sword as if it were in flames.

After the match, we all had tea time in the garden. Leslie, Aaron, and Ian were among them.

"Wow, sister." Aaron admired every sip of tea.

"It turns out you're a genius, aren't you? How could you get rid of all those bad habits just because you copied the basic posture?"

Leslie also chewed on cookies and praised me continuously.

"Honestly, I didn't expect you to grow this much... If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it." She added, tilting her head.

"I heard that the amount of training you've been doing has been incredible... It really seemed like it must be the result of that tremendous amount of practice."

Leslie, Aaron, and Ian all shook their heads when they heard my training routine.

After recalling my previous life, I had lost my sense of goal and neglected it, but now I would train as hard as before.

This was because I thought that my skills were improving after a very long time of receiving Leslie's instruction.

"It's all because Leslie pointed it out and taught me exactly." I smiled shyly and said. "Thank you from the bottom of my heart."

As a result, I lost again. However, it was not the same dirty defeat as before. I really lost, but I fought well. I was no longer in a hurry to stop his attack and made really sharp attacks. It was clearly well centered when switching movements. So, it was as if I learned step by step from the beginning of my childhood.

'Then if... If I destroy the other two origins of black magic, will my shortcomings be filled again?' Then, could I really fight on par with Ian?

Now, it was not a life of running only hoping to win a swordsmanship competition, but it was still something I longed for a long time.

Winning against Ian even once.

It was the fate of being second place to be obsessed with small hopes. Of course, all the bad intentions had disappeared now, and it was just pure desire to win.

So I was able to talk to Ian, who was sitting next to me, without self-interest.

"Thank you too, for teaching me well so that I can follow along."

Life was really unpredictable.

I couldn't believe I could have a normal conversation with Ian over tea.

"It's nothing... Thanks to you, I was very nervous after a long time." He said with a loose smile.

"Learn well from my mother consistently. I'm looking forward to the next match." As expected, the Wade spirit was very noble.

If it were me, I would feel bad for the person in second place to chase after his mother's teaching, but his face had real joy.

"It was the first time in eight years that we had a fun match."

'If it's been 8 years, are you talking about our first fight when we were 14 years old?' I quietly looked at Ian without answering.

In eight years, Ian had grown from a bright boy to a handsome young man.

Ian sitting quietly in a beautiful garden in the middle of the day was like looking at a painting.

Even his tea drinking posture was perfectly aristocratic.

After eight years, this was the first time I had ever seen him like this.

'Yeah, this is probably normal... Usually friendships are built quietly while drinking tea.' But did I ever want to build a friendship with Ian...? Thinking about it, I felt like I was possessed by something.

At first I didn't really want to get involved with the Duke of Wade, but it became like this. 'But Leslie is so good.' It was a time when I couldn't organize my thoughts. A servant hurriedly ran over and handed a letter to Ian.

"I came because of an urgent letter."

"Okay?" Ian accepted the letter calmly, but he couldn't hide that his expression hardened slightly as he read it.

"What? Isn't this the envelope used by the imperial family?" When Leslie asked with her eyes wide open, Ian answered calmly.

"Yes. This is an invitation from Prince Robert. I will have to enter the palace soon."

"Urn, why officially like this?" Usually Ian and Robert met informally, so I was a little surprised too. Ian answered slowly.

"He invited not only me, but Annabelle as well. He said he would like to express his gratitude for the work at the black market."

I was startled and asked.

"To me too?" When I asked, confused, he said calmly. "Perhaps the same invitation arrived at the Rainfield Manor." I rolled my eyes and took a sip of tea.

Everyone knew that Ian and the prince were friends, but I was just a commoner who happened to get along with them.

A commoner who had no chance of becoming a noble unless I secretly bought a title from a distant province.

No matter how much the rights of commoners were rising, the public opinion of us was very important in politics these days, but commoners were still commoners. I didn't do anything to save his life, so he didn't even need to thank me by inviting me to the Imperial Palace.

In other words, there was no way a calculating person like Robert would do such an unexpected act, saying he would only say "Thank you."

'Obviously, he was looking for an excuse to say something else.'

Ian's expression wasn't that good either, perhaps thinking the same thing.

"Even if you say so, why did he call me?"

"Well..." We were both getting serious, but Leslie intervened with a blink of an eye.

"He was doing well with Annabelle, but now that she has become a commoner, how complicated must it be." Leslie said seriously.

"There is no law prohibiting the royal family and commoners from marrying, but there is still no precedent. But because he misses you so much, he called Ian to the Imperial Palace as an excuse. Right, Annabelle?"

"Well... Uh... Well..."

It certainly didn't feel that way at all, but I couldn't openly answer.

"Hey, you probably feel uncomfortable with that. I like very ordinary marriages unlike the ones that are the biggest of the century. It's okay, you can do it." Leslie said cheerfully.

"Since I was an unprecedented commoner who married the Duke."

There were few Duchesses in the empire, and Leslie was the first commoner Duchess.

"If you don't care about what other people are saying and you don't go out in social circles, it won't be difficult. You can just spend money and live comfortably."

"That, though... Well... Anyways, I'm not sure what Prince Robert's intentions are..." Seeing my shivering reaction, Leslie frowned and continued her wild guess.

"I guess I'll call the imperial palace first and then look at the public opinion. It's a scandal between two people, because no one in the social world doesn't know."

"Mother." Ian said in a slightly annoyed voice. "Since when did you become interested in that?"

"I'm not interested, but I have quite a bit of insight." Then her maid brought her the tea food prepared on a tray. The tea food she prepared in her kitchen was a hot cake that had just been baked and it smelled good.