“...Um?” My jaw dropped at the sight of the High Priest kneeling. All blue priests were equal in status within the temple, and it was taught that there was no need for them to kneel to each other here, so the High Priest wouldn’t be bowing before Sylvester like that if he was a blue priest.
...I thought Brother Sylvester was just a particularly high-status priest, but was he maybe a fake all along?
I knew from how close they had seemed over Spring Prayer that he and the High Priest went way back, but the High Priest had never done anything to express such a clear gap in status before. Were I to assume that I had seen a more personal side to their relationship during Spring Prayer, then this would be how they acted during official public business. In other words, not only was Sylvester not a blue priest, he was of a high enough status that someone with higher status than anyone in the Knight’s Order would kneel before him.
...Am I about to be adopted by someone ridiculously important?
I felt a cold sweat run down my back. Sylvester was of a high enough status to suppress the High Bishop and make the High Priest kneel. To be fair, he had to be to save me and everyone else, but it was still coming out of left field for me. My heart pounded as I tried to process the situation.
“Aah, Sylvester! You’ve come at the perfect time. Do me a favor and order this insolent fool to undo these bindings,” the High Bishop said while looking between him and the High Priest, still bound by the bands of light. They seemed to know each other. But all Sylvester did was glance in the kneeling High Priest’s direction without ordering him to undo the bindings.
“I hurried back at the call of the Knight’s Order, and this mess is what I find? What happened here?”
“...Wh-Who’re you?” Bindewald croaked out, his head shooting back and forth between Sylvester and the High Bishop. He wasn’t keeping up with the situation at all.
Karstedt took a step in front of Sylvester and, with his feet planted firmly and his head held high, glared down at Bindewald. “You sit before Aub Ehrenfest himself.”
“Wh... Wh-Wh-What?!” Bindewald pointed at Sylvester, shaking. “That can’t be! This is a lie!” he repeated over and over. Personally, I had absolutely no idea why he was shaking like a frog staring down the open mouth of a snake.
As I tilted my head in confusion, I heard a rustling as Dad got up so that he could kneel as well. I scooted over and whispered “Dad, do you know who that is?” in a quiet voice.
“There’s only one person in the duchy that has the same name as this city, and that’s the archduke,” he replied quietly, a grim look on his face.
...WHAT?! The adult-sized elementary schooler Sylvester is the archduke? I wanted to scream, but clamped a hand over my mouth and swallowed my surprise.
...This guy poked the cheek of a girl he’d just met, made her say “pooey,” snatched away her hair stick, performed acrobatic stunts in front of farmers, went hunting in the lower city’s forest without any guards... and he’s the archduke? A weirdo like him, the archduke? Um, what? Is this duchy going to be okay?
“You dare continue to play the fool?! Your rudeness will get you killed! That is not how one speaks to Aub Ehrenfest! Kneel, now!” barked Karstedt, interrupting my much more disrespectful thoughts.
“Y-Yes sir!” I jumped in surprise as Karstedt yelled at Bindewald, and I immediately knelt on the ground.
“...Myne. What in the world are you doing over there?” Karstedt called over in a voice tinged with both exasperation and confusion. I timidly lifted my head and saw that while everyone else was kneeling with their arms across their chests, only I was groveling with my forehead pressed against the floor. Everyone was looking at me like I was a weirdo and it kinda hurt.
“W-Well, you said to kneel, so it kind of just... happened.” Apparently I had just made a fool of myself in the middle of something very important. I hurriedly fixed my posture and knelt properly, at which point Sylvester leisurely scanned the hallway. His expression was strict and deadly serious, unlike any I had seen him wear before. Had he been like this the first time I saw him, I wouldn’t have been surprised at all to learn that he was the archduke.
Sylvester’s gaze fell on the High Bishop, whereupon he narrowed his eyes. “Now then, could you explain what happened here, uncle?”
In a shocking twist, Sylvester and the High Bishop were relatives. That meant that, if Sylvester adopted me, I would end up related to the High Bishop too.
Nooo thank you! I don’t need a great-uncle like him!
“Aah, I knew you would listen, Sylvester!”
And so the High Bishop told his story, which was more than a little twisted in his favor: Count Bindewald had been summoned here because of me; it ended up in a mess that brought Sylvester back because of me; it was all my fault for not just letting myself get imprisoned; it was my fault he was suffering in the High Priest’s bands of light; and all the problems in the temple were caused by a commoner like me being given blue robes.
In the end, everything was apparently about eighty percent my fault, plus twenty percent the High Priest’s fault. We had supposedly used Sylvester’s absence to trick him and lead him into a trap. To be honest, it was all so paper thin that I honestly had to question whether the High Bishop was just plain stupid or not. Like, I had been doing pretty much all the math in the temple’s financial ledgers while helping the High Priest; I knew well that he wasn’t trying to trap the High
