At the first outpost on the front line, magical beasts had been swarming in droves all night long, and they’d barely managed to hold them back with a barrier. When Lampel stepped outside the outpost tensely, soldiers were gathered on top of the ramparts, murmuring. Lampel pushed through them and moved forward.
“What is it? Are more coming?”
“No. It’s the opposite. About half of the magical beasts suddenly disappeared!”
“They didn’t run away but disappeared? Speak properly.”
Lampel put one leg up on the rampart and looked down. In the pit where they’d gathered the Greedy Pigs in one place, there were indeed magical beasts reduced by half.
As Lampel frowned and looked closely, he could see several magical beasts whose bodies were melting away and disappearing on their own even now.
One soldier bowed his head and hastily spoke up.
“Could it be that the holy barrier has been restored again?”
At those words, the faces of the soldiers around them began to brighten. If the holy barrier was doing its job, exterminating the magical beasts would surely become as easy as before.
Lampel watched this without saying anything, then shouted to the soldiers.
“We don’t know when those bastards will strike again. Reorganize the troops right now and replenish your strength. Report the wounded quickly!”
“Yes! Understood!”
The soldiers moved while letting out sighs of relief at the leisure they’d found after a long time. But only Lampel looked at the disappearing magical beasts with an unconvinced expression.
—Keureureureu…!
‘It doesn’t look like disappearance, but more like they’re being drained of mana.’
Lampel didn’t know why the memory of the old Mellans couple suddenly came to mind, but he had a premonition that it probably wasn’t a coincidence.
* * *
A sunny morning.
Cesare stood in front of Lionel’s dormitory room door with a small sigh. He clearly remembered his disgraceful behavior from last night and what he’d done with Lionel. As he deliberated dozens of times whether to knock or not, the door opened first.
Lionel, dressed in his uniform and about to come out, saw Cesare and froze with a hardened expression. At that sight, Cesare, whose heart stung in one corner, deliberately stood crookedly as usual. It was because he hoped Lionel would come out as usual too.
“Good morning.”
“…Yeah. Good morning.”
Lionel somehow seemed to lack energy. But unlike before, he didn’t show signs of being flustered or anxious like rolling his eyes, which was somehow a bit different from usual. Was it because his eyelids were swollen?
“I came to talk because I thought you might have been surprised yesterday.”
“I’m going to eat breakfast right now, will the talk be long?”
“No.”
“…Then come in.”
Lionel opened the door and let Cesare inside. It was Lionel’s room, messy as always. Lionel didn’t even tell him to sit down and just blinked while staring at him.
“…What, what are you looking at.”
“Because you’re handsome today too.”
At the compliment of being handsome, Cesare felt his eyelids trembling and took a deep breath inwardly. He has an eye for things. Right, it was no different from usual. Lionel was in love with him.
“To explain first, yesterday was my amplifier.”
“Amplifier?”
“Didn’t you learn in class? Magicians sometimes go through a period when their power explosively increases while training their mana. At that time, a phenomenon can occur where the body can’t withstand the powerful mana, so mana leaks out for a moment and they lose their reason.”
“But the feeling was similar to Mad Crow’s…. Are you really okay?”
Lionel furrowed his brow and asked worriedly. That concerned gaze was cute.
“No matter how much it was me, it probably wasn’t to that extent. You must have mistaken it.”
Even for Cesare who answered like that, there were a few phenomena he couldn’t understand. He hadn’t been training magic, he’d just been looking for Lionel in the pouring rain, yet his mana had boiled up.
And when he discovered the sleeve garter at Jayden’s party venue, he’d felt an amplification of mana he’d never experienced before. On top of that, not only had he distorted many people’s memories all at once without any excess, but his Brainwashing Magic had even worked on Cedric, who had imperial blood mixed in, which was clearly far beyond his own abilities.
However, he didn’t want to worry Lionel with strange words for no reason. Especially since he’d acted even more disgracefully last night.
“I see…. So that’s what it was. I hope you take good care of yourself.”
The conversation ended too blandly. He chose and chose his words for what to say, but what came out was conventional.
“Lionel. Do you remember what happened yesterday?”
“…Yeah. I remember everything.”
“That, it wasn’t so bad. I guess I’ve adapted well now.”
“To what?”
“Kissing.”
“Ah.”
Ah. That one word was the end of the answer that came from Lionel. Lionel’s eyes were slightly lowered. Wondering if he was being evasive out of embarrassment, Cesare approached him closely as if testing.
Under his golden eyelashes, innocent green eyes blinked and looked up at him. Rather, Cesare found himself at a loss for words at the feeling that the tower firmly built in one side of his chest was collapsing. Was Lionel always this… pretty-looking?
“Whyyy?”
His appearance, stretching out the end of his words with a foolish grinning smile, was definitely the same as usual.
“Sorry, Cesare. I have to go eat breakfast, is there more work to order? It’s rush hour at the cafeteria.”
As the blond sunshine swayed and was about to disappear before his eyes, Cesare quickly grabbed his wrist.
“Wait. Why didn’t you come out yesterday?”
“Where?”
“Friday afternoon, we promised to meet in front of the clock tower. To go out together.”
“Hm? I never made that kind of promise with you. Are you sure it was yesterday? Don’t tell me that’s why you were so angry?”
Lionel’s face crumpled strangely. He really seemed not to know, and it didn’t particularly seem like he was lying.
‘Right. Let’s put that aside for now.’
“Then why did you give Cedric a gift?”
“Heh. That’s a secret.”
As Lionel giggled in response, Cesare answered slightly irritated.
“Lionel. I’m not in the mood to joke around. Answer properly.”
Then Lionel, who had been smiling brightly until then, pulled his wrist away with a tak and answered coolly.
“I said it’s a secret. That it’s nothing to do with you.”
“……!”
“Hup, Cesare. Sorry! If I want to get an omelet, I really have to go now.”
It was instantaneous. The coldness shown unconsciously changed back to a grinning face. It was an expression that passed so quickly he wondered if he’d seen it wrong. Without time to say anything, Lionel was already rushing out of the corridor with a clatter.
“Cesare, see you later!”
Though it was full of an indescribable sense of incongruity, Cesare couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was.
* * *
After parting with Cesare, I just grabbed a ham sandwich from the cafeteria. I found a seat at one of the metal tables placed throughout the campus and took out a piece of paper from my pocket.
<Checklist>
It was the so-called ‘Addiction Checklist’ that I’d been agonizing over and creating for the past few days. The questions written inside were mostly things like this:
<Does your heart flutter when you see Trash?>
<Do you want to kiss Trash?>
These were strange items that would make anyone who saw them think I was a trash fetishist, but to me they were quite serious.
Because I didn’t know how the artifact that undoes the Addiction was used, I made these to confirm whether it actually had any effect.
Actually, even now I was uncertain. Of course, when I saw Cesare today, I didn’t feel as excited and thrilled as before, but I wasn’t sure if the Addiction was definitely released. It’s not like emotions are clearly visible in colors like black and white.
When I combined the artifacts, bright light did pour out, but aside from hearing Cesare’s hallucination pleading to me, there were no particular noticeable changes.
‘Come to think of it, what was that hallucination? That when the imperial army comes, I should have run away like Cain…?’
As if I’d been killed by the imperial army or something.
‘Thinking about it, I heard Cesare’s voice when I fell in the library too. He was pleading for me not to die.’
After pondering this and that for a while, I came up with one plausible hypothesis.
‘Could those be prophetic dreams and I’ll die later? By the imperial army?’
Suddenly my spine went cold. After all that effort until now, a guillotine ending after all. Haha. Only now did my heart, which had been swollen with feelings for Cesare, burst with a pop and reality seemed to come into view.
But now that the artifact was in my hands, the future might change. If the Addiction was undone, I could escape from that bastard’s clutches and escape the foreseen future.
‘Anyway, I’m glad I made this at least.’
Forcibly shaking off my anxious heart, I turned my eyes back to the paper. All the answers to the questionnaire I’d made before were ‘YES’. There were even hearts drawn instead of circles in the YES check boxes.
Recalling my experience meeting Cesare this morning, I slowly answered the questionnaire.
<Does your heart flutter when you see Trash?>
My heart didn’t exactly pound tremendously, but Cesare is extremely handsome. Isn’t it human nature to have your heart flutter when you see a handsome person?
With ambiguous thoughts, I drew a line between YES and NO. Next question.
<Do you feel like you’re dying of happiness when you touch Trash?>
I recalled when he grabbed my wrist today. Remembering last night when he said, ‘I wish you didn’t love me,’ my mood was quite… shitty.
I confidently drew a circle in the NO box. Somehow I feel proud.
<Do you want to kiss Trash?>
That bastard is damn good at kissing. Even if I don’t like fish dishes, if a top chef serves a fish dish, it’s no different from eating it deliciously and wanting to eat it again.
I drew a long line for this one too.
<Do you want to give Trash money?>
Even cutting off donations to underprivileged neighbors you don’t know creates guilt, so would Cesare be any different? A line for this one too….
After sticking out my tongue and filling out the questionnaire for a while like that, I checked the last question.
<Do you have Mitche?>
“……”
Mitche, who hasn’t been seen since last night. The pen stopped for a long while over the NO box, then soon drew a circle.
“Isn’t this enough to be released… or not?”
I frowned ambiguously while looking at the several lines and circles filling the NO boxes. One thing that’s certain is that I wasn’t confident about YES for any question.
Though I felt somewhat uncomfortable, it was also true that I felt a sense of liberation. After agonizing throughout breakfast time, I finally declared to myself.
“I think I don’t like that trash anymore!”
* * *
I went into my morning class and Cesare was sitting alone in the lecture hall. My heart fluttered slightly at his handsome face, but this must be a natural reaction because I’m a face-lover.
“Cesare. Is Cain skipping class again today?”
“He was attending classes diligently for a while, but lately he’s not showing up again.”
“How’s he really going to handle exams like that.”
I naturally responded and sat in the row in front of Cesare, not next to him. My goodness, turning down the seat next to him and sitting in front—this is a miracle. I was definitely free from that bastard’s love!
“Lionel. The seat next to me is empty. Where are you sitting?”
What about it, you trash bastard.
