After Strict Instructions 5

I was taken to the mansion's garden by Sabrina, along with a maid she called to when we left the training area.

Sabrina and I sat on a single table in the middle of the wide space of the garden. While we had small talks, the maid brought us some fancy sweets and brewed for us the tea Sabrina herself picked.

"This tea is quite flavorful. It's exclusively exported from a foreign country, so it's difficult to get, unfortunately."

"I see..."

I'm sure I tasted the same tea ages ago. The foreign country she mentioned must be one of the places I visited before.

I looked at Sabrina once more. She sure was pretty. She's the very picture of a noble lady. She presents herself properly and her words comes out smart and eloquent. Evidently, she's very far from the kind of lady I am.

"Hm? What are you thinking about, Eria-sama?"

"Ah... It's nothing... I just though that you're very pretty," I awkwardly said, before then following with a concerned request, "And please, there's no need for the honorifics."

"Is that so? Fufu... You're beautiful as well, Eria. Ahh... might I request you to address me like a friend too? I know that my position as a noble requires you to be polite, but I'll be troubled if a lady like you addresses me with so much undeserved respect."

To attempt to shorten the gap between us so quickly... I don't mind it, but when I'm facing a noble lady like her, there's just no way I can do it that easily.

"Th-then, Sabrina-sa... Excuse me... Sabrina, if you told me so..." I reluctantly said.

"Fufufu..." Sabrina grinned, and continuing our conversation, she spoke again with so much vigor, "You were such great a lecturer, Eria! I'm honestly amazed. I never saw those knights so absorbed in anything before."

"All I can say is that I did my best."

I'm actually relieved she thought of it like that. I honestly can't tell if I'm skilled as a teacher or not, so her opinion on it was greatly appreciated.

"I enjoyed watching you teach them," she smiled and said, but then while looking away with a sour face, she continued, "But I'm honestly quite dissapointed. When I heard you were coming here, I expected to see your prowess with my own eyes. I'm dissapointed I didn't see you demonstrate some of it."

Huh? She's upset about that? So she has the tomboy side to her as well?

"That really is a bit unfortunate," I replied with a forced smile.

"Mm... you must be surprised at how excited I am at the thought of seeing you in action? You must be thinking that I'm quite the tomboy as well?"

She guessed my thoughts...? Now that I think about it, she pays particularly close attention to my face. Can she perhaps read me by my expressions?

"Unexpectedly, you're quite easy to read," Sabrina mutters while staring at me with one eye closed.

Am I really that easy to read?

My work as an adventurer never really require me to deal with people on a professional level. Even in my previous life, I died before I can work in an office. All I did was work in some part-time jobs to pay for school. For that reason, I find it hard to converse on a level where I needed to mind my words and facial expressions.

Even still, I was able to memorize and use more convoluted and complex words to deal with some pesky nobility in my years living in this world. The problem is that I was never able develop a poker face.

Sabrina looked at me one last time, before she spoke again and start to explain herself.

"Well, it's true, I like hearing heroic tales. I find them exciting and fascinating."

"I see..."

"I want to experience the same things as the heroes in those stories did, but as a Noble's daughter, I can't simply abandon the responsibilities I have..."

Suddenly, the atmosphere around her became gloomy.

Hers is kind of a typical story; the daughter of a noble family, forced to be married off, and jealous of the lives the others spend freely.

Should I try to console her? But... I've never been put in her position before, so I don't have an idea on what to say.

Perhaps realizing my predicament, Sabrina's eyes widened, and she promptly waved her hands at me.

"Ah! I didn't mean to be so down! I'm happy with my life as an aristocrat! I really, really just enjoy fantastic stories!" she hurriedly explained. "That's why I invited you here to hear from you personally. You know, what it's like defeating strong monsters and other such things..."

Since it's just that...

"Um... okay, I can share some of my stories with you. I don't think they're anything special, but if you're willing to listen to them..."

"Please!"

After Sabrina nodded in affirmation, I told some of my exploits that first comes into my mind. All the while I share them, Sabrina was excitedly nodding along, immersed and focused.

"So you really fought those kinds of monsters? And you even defeated other evil adventurers? You really are amazing!"

Of course, I left the small details in my stories untold, or, at the very least, vaguely convey them. Like, instead of specifically saying what rank of adventurers I came across to, I only and vaguely said they were "strong adventurers".

A few minutes have passed since we started talking, so I told her plenty of stories already, however, I'm not seeing any signs of her getting tired of them. In fact, she just started asking questions, pushing me to talk even more.

"When I hear stories like yours, it always ends with the main person ending up with another person they saved. Did you also get someone to like you after they saw how awesome you were?"

"Heh... I can't remember..."

"Ah, of course... it's not exclusive only to the girls you saved, but even the boys," she added.

So it's not even the men I saved that she consider falling for me first? Is that because the hero usually was a man who always gets to marry the woman he saved in one of his adventurers?

It's distorted thinking, but... I think our thought process were actually the same. If it was me, I'd also assume that the hero in a fantasy story or film I heard about for the first time was a man.

But... she knows I'm a woman, right? So why did she assume the girls would fall for me first? Is me assuming that the boys should fall for me first also wrong...?

"Is there any?"

Her question is really difficult to answer. After all, the only people that comes into my mind are those who approaches me first, even before that they see how powerful I am.

It's annoying, but almost all of them only like me because of my appearance. Now that I think about it, that truly is such a typical thing to say. I never guessed that such a thought would ever come to my head.

"Well, there is one girl..."

Now that I think about it, there is one.

"I don't think it counts... but it really is the only person that comes into my mind," I said while scratching my cheeks.

That's right, there might also be others, but right now, there is only one person that comes into my mind, and that is Soap.

Soap is the young demonkin girl I picked up when I just started adventuring. I was looking to form a party, and that's when I encountered her.

After I saved her from getting beat up by a store merchant she stole from, she just started following me around all the time, that I was forced to take her into my wing. After training her a bit, she became the first member of the party I formed.

A few years passed and she became an adult, it was then that she started saying nonsensical things, like wanting to marry me. She said she didn't mind that we're both women. Soap turned into a beautiful lady, but as someone I raised on my own, I just couldn't think of her that way.

She seemed really dissapointed at my answer, but she still stick around with me for a few more years. After that, she left our party and decided to explore the world on her own.

That reminds me... She recently just got married... I wonder how she is doing? Is it really fine with her when her husband has such a harem?

"Something like that happened?"

I told Sabrina the entire story. Since I was happily reminiscing about it as well, I simply let my mouth speak on its own.

"So not every story ends with a happy ending?" Sabrina mumbles in contemplation.