Harem Training System: Every Girl I Train Makes Me Stronger!

Chapter 65: 65. She Stopped Arguing With Herself Long Enough to Hear It

"But still..." Catherine bites her mouth. "They died because of me."

"They died protecting something they believed mattered more than any single one of their lives, including yours, and they chose you specifically to carry that forward," William replied. "That’s not a burden they handed you because they thought you were expendable enough to sacrifice..."

"That’s the opposite because... That’s the heaviest trust anyone can give another person, and you’ve spent eight years treating it like a punishment instead of what it actually was, which was an act of love so certain it didn’t leave room for you to argue."

Catherine’s composure finally broke entirely, tears spilling before she seemed to fully register they’d started, and she pressed the back of her hand against her mouth like she could physically hold back whatever was coming loose inside her.

William didn’t reach for her and didn’t try to close the distance. He simply stood there and let her have the moment, present without crowding it.

"I couldn’t... save them," she said, muffled behind her hand. "I felt... powerless... to the point that I was worthless as a knight!"

"No," William agreed gently. "You couldn’t..."

"But you carried what they gave you all the way to the surface, and because you did, whatever was down in that dungeon never made it out to hurt anyone else."

"That’s not nothing, Catherine... and that’s not what I call a coward’s outcome." William crossed his arms. "That’s exactly what they were counting on when they made the last decision they ever got to make."

For a long moment Catherine simply stood there, crying quietly in the middle of the academy path, and William stayed beside her, steady and unmoving, until gradually, slowly, her breathing began to even out and the worst of it passed.

"I’ve never said any of that out loud," she said finally, her voice raw. "Not once... Not even to the headmaster or to anyone."

"I know... it must be hard for you."

"Why does it feel different... saying it to you?"

William considered that carefully before answering. "Maybe because I’m not asking you to feel better about it."

"I’m just asking you to stop believing the worst possible version of what happened when the truth is considerably kinder than that, even if it doesn’t feel that way yet."

Catherine wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her coat, a small, unsteady laugh escaping despite everything. "Urgh... You’re annoyingly good at this."

"I’ve had a lot of practice talking people down from believing terrible things about themselves." William smiled. "It’s most of what my old job actually was, underneath all the sword fighting."

They stood together a while longer in the quiet of the academy grounds, and somewhere in the back of William’s mind, softer than usual, almost reverent, a familiar chime finally sounded.

[Affection Progress: Catherine Blackwood. Thirty-eight percent.]

William, given the raw, unguarded weight of the moment they were standing in, found himself entirely unable to summon his usual internal commentary about the system’s timing and simply let the notification pass in silence, unremarked.

That evening, William walked Catherine back to her house without either of them needing to discuss where they were headed; an unspoken agreement settled between them after everything the day had carried.

She let him in without hesitation this time, no careful formality at the door, and led him not toward the porch but toward the small back room he’d only ever seen through a gap in the curtains.

She hesitated at the threshold, and William stayed a respectful step behind her, giving her the space to move at whatever pace she needed.

"I haven’t been in here properly in longer than I can remember," Catherine admitted quietly. "I look at it from the doorway sometimes..."

"I’ve never actually walked all the way in."

"You don’t have to do anything tonight you’re not ready for."

"I know." She stepped inside anyway, slowly, William following a pace behind, and her eyes swept across the mounted blades with an expression that carried grief and something else now too, something quieter and more resolute.

Her gaze passed over the white-hilted sword at the center of the wall, lingering there for a long moment, before moving deliberately past it to a plainer blade mounted nearby, simpler in design, clearly well used before it had ever ended up on this wall.

"This one was Aldric’s," she said softly, reaching toward it. "He used to tease me constantly about my form."

"He said I was too precise, too clean, that real fights were messier than I ever wanted to admit."

Her fingers closed around the hilt.

It was a small motion, barely anything at all by any outside measure, but William watched her hand steady around the grip, no tremor this time, no hesitation, just a quiet, careful acknowledgment of a weight she had carried alone for eight years and, for the first time, wasn’t quite carrying entirely by herself anymore.

"He’d have liked you, I think," Catherine said, glancing back at William with something soft and tentative in her expression. "Aldric... He had a habit of trusting people who didn’t take themselves too seriously."

"I’ll take that as a compliment."

"You should... It doesn’t come easily from me." Catherine held the sword a moment longer, turning it slightly to catch what little light filtered in through the curtains, and something in her face shifted, memory surfacing gently instead of crashing over her the way it clearly had for years.

"He proposed to a girl in our supply corps two weeks before the expedition..."

"Nobody was supposed to know yet; he wanted to make some grand announcement once we got back, but he told me anyway because he said I’d have found out eventually and he’d rather I hear it from him first."

"Did she know? The girl?"

"She knows now... I made sure of that, at least, once I was well enough to leave my own bed and start facing the things I owed people." Catherine’s voice wavered slightly but didn’t break, the words coming easier than William suspected they had in a long time. "I told her everything I could about that day..."

"She asked if he’d been afraid, but I told her no, because it was true."

"None of them were afraid, not in the end... They were furious that I was arguing with them about leaving and terrified for me, but never once afraid for themselves."

William said nothing, simply letting her keep talking, sensing that the words needed room to come out on their own terms rather than being shaped by anything he might say.

"I think that’s the part that took me the longest to understand," Catherine continued. "That their last thoughts weren’t about dying..."

"They were about making sure I lived..."

"I spent years treating that as a debt I could never repay, and I suppose in some ways it still is, but I’m starting to think a debt like that isn’t meant to be repaid so much as carried forward."

"Into the people I choose to protect now... instead of the ones I couldn’t."

She glanced around the room slowly, taking in each mounted blade in turn, the twins’ matching bows resting side by side near the far wall, the quiet elf woman’s slender rapier mounted just beneath a small, faded ribbon William hadn’t noticed until now.

"I used to think keeping this room meant I was still holding onto them properly..."

"Lately I’ve started wondering if it just meant I was hiding from what holding onto them actually required... Which is considerably harder than dusting a shelf."

"What does it require?"

"Living, I think... Actually living, instead of just surviving quietly enough that nobody notices I’ve stopped." Catherine’s mouth curved into something rueful. "It’s a work in progress..."

"Most worthwhile things are."

She set the sword back exactly where it belonged, her hand lingering against the hilt for one final second before finally letting go, and when she turned to face William fully, the weight in her expression had eased into something calmer, something closer to peace than William had seen from her at any point since they’d met.

"Thank you, William," she said. "For today... and for all of it... even the parts I was angry about."

"You’re allowed to still be a little angry about those parts."

"I am... just a little. "A faint, genuine smile finally broke through, tired but real. "I think I’ll manage to forgive you for it eventually, though... and that night incident too."

"I’ll take whatever timeline works for you... and never mention that night incident again."

Catherine studied him for a moment, something warm and unguarded settling behind her eyes, and then, almost as an afterthought, she reached over and flicked off the small lantern mounted near the doorway, leaving the room of swords to settle back into its familiar, quiet dark.

"I’m not ready for the white one yet," she said, glancing back at it one final time before stepping out into the hallway. "But I don’t think it’s going to take another eight years this time..."

"No pressure either way."

"I know." She pulled the door shut gently behind them both, the click of the latch carrying none of the finality it might have carried a day earlier, and led him back toward the porch, where the tea from two nights before still sat waiting, cold now but somehow exactly the kind of ordinary neither of them minded returning to.

William found himself thinking, not for the first time, that whatever this thing was building slowly between them, it was worth every bit of the trouble it took to get here.