Chapter 3

──Ah, damn it, ... I feel so terrible.

Standing at the back of the group, Kevin, a junior knight, frowned and cursed silently to himself, his head bowed and silent.

──What did Flora do? This is just too much...

He glared at the back of Elliot, his former colleague who had risen to become a Holy Knight, through the gaps between his comrades' backs. He wanted to yell and punch him, but his inferiority and self-preservation as a mere junior knight in this situation held him back, and he couldn't even raise his voice, which was a pathetic state of affairs.

In a corner of the citizens' quarter of the capital, the group of knights in formal attire stood out conspicuously, especially since a Holy Knight and a Holy Maiden, now famous figures, were also present.

All Kevin could do was use the concealment magic gem he had borrowed by bowing repeatedly to a palace magician to prevent the other residents from realizing the situation.

Under the shadow of Elliot's fame, Flora, his wife, was exposed to the malice of others, which had nothing to do with her own actions—this was what Kevin's girlfriend, who lived in a nearby lower town, had told him.

It was pitiful that Flora would attract even more unwanted attention.

──Basically, no matter how you look at it, it's adultery. And yet...

Overwhelming the outnumbered, a group of people pressing a single woman to divorce her husband was no different from intimidation, Kevin thought. He knew he shouldn't be saying this as a knight present in the same situation, but he couldn't help it.

Before the expedition to slay the undead beast, Kevin and Elliot were junior knights who had joined the same year and had a modest friendship.

To Kevin, Elliot was a taciturn and overly serious man, lacking in charm, but one of the few colleagues he could relax with, who didn't look down on him, a commoner with no education.

There had been times when the four of them—Elliot and Flora before they were married, Kevin, and his girlfriend Chelsea—had gone out to eat together. Their relationship wasn't particularly deep, but they were familiar enough to be considered friends.

Kevin hadn't just stood by and watched as Elliot, who had become a Holy Knight on the battlefield, and the Holy Maiden Emily, grew closer day by day.

He had often brought up Flora, who was waiting in the capital, to warn Elliot, and sometimes even tried to dissuade him seriously.

"I understand."

──Every time I warned him, he would say that, but in the end, he didn't understand anything.

Disappointment, frustration, and anger swirled within him as he looked down to suppress them. At the edge of Kevin's vision, a wavy golden hair brushed past.

──This woman... What kind of nerve does she have to come along? She's a complete idiot.

She had even offered to "accompany" the man who had come to divorce his wife and tried to stand next to Elliot. Kevin quickly pulled Emily's arm, hiding her behind the other knights to keep her out of Flora's sight. He glared at her and told her to be quiet, and she obediently did so, but even then, she tried to stretch to peek inside, which irritated him even more.

"I want to apologize..."

On the way here, Emily had said this many times.

"Your apology, which is just for your own forgiveness, is nothing but a nuisance."

Unable to hold back, he muttered these words, which seemed to have a deeper impact on Emily than he intended.

The other knights tried to comfort and protect the downcast Emily from his harsh words, but it only made him feel more foolish and irritated. Some of the knights were angry that a low-ranking junior knight had reprimanded the Holy Maiden, but he ignored them at that moment.

While many of the knights revered the Holy Maiden, Kevin felt nothing but disdain for Emily.

He had warned her many times on the battlefield that Elliot had a wife waiting for him in the capital.

──I won't let her say she didn't know.

Even knowing about his wife, she had still approached Elliot. What could she possibly be apologizing for now?