“…?”
“Uriel.”
“Ah—!”
In that instant, Avelos bent slightly and slipped both hands around Uriel’s waist, lifting him up. His body floated upward in a sudden loss of gravity, and Uriel flailed before instinctively throwing his arms around Avelos’s neck.
Still afraid he might fall even with his arms around his neck, he wound both legs around Avelos’s waist as well. Uriel’s lower half pressed flush against Avelos’s abdomen.
One of Avelos’s eyebrows rose at Uriel clinging to him without any awareness of what he was doing, purely out of fear of falling. The hands holding Uriel by the waist tightened.
He had lifted him on impulse — because the indignant, disbelieving expression Uriel made when he didn’t believe something was endearing. But now that he had actually done it, it felt quite good.
Living as a slave, he wouldn’t have had any means to adorn himself. Yet the faint sweet scent that tickled at Avelos’s nose and the soft texture of skin against his palms made him reluctant to set him down just yet.
Avelos had never once imagined he would feel this way about a man — least of all one who had ruined his life. The strange, unsettling flutter in his chest felt similar to what he’d experienced the night he had drunk with Uriel.
Uriel, completely unaware of what Avelos was thinking, drew closer to him. With his arms around Avelos’s neck, a soft scent drifted to him — something like jasmine. It suited Avelos and yet somehow didn’t, that gentle fragrance, and Uriel tilted his head slightly further toward his neck.
Uriel’s nose hovered just at the edge of touching Avelos’s bared nape. Was there jasmine here too? It carried a heavier, more masculine undertone from something else mixed in, but the base was definitely that jasmine-like scent. Uriel’s warm breath fell against Avelos’s skin.
“…Ha…”
At Avelos’s low exhale, Uriel’s head snapped up. He had liked jasmine to begin with, and without thinking, he had buried his nose in Avelos’s neck and breathed him in.
“I believe I mentioned it before… openly tempting someone like this isn’t my preference.”
Caught off guard by Uriel’s sudden behavior, Avelos said it coldly. The moment Uriel’s warm breath had settled against his nape, his body had responded — reliably and without his permission. The tingling along his spine and the restless ache low in his abdomen felt unfamiliar and unwelcome.
The slave was Uriel. His master was Avelos himself — and yet it felt as though he were being pulled around by Uriel’s every move. If he kept holding Uriel like this, he was going to do something his better judgment would not approve of.
Avelos released the tension from the hands that had been holding Uriel up. When he let go, Uriel squeezed his eyes shut, certain he was about to drop to the floor.
But no matter how long he waited, there was no crash, no pain. His backside had simply been set down lightly on top of the desk.
It seemed Avelos had intended to put him on the desk from the start. Having set Uriel down, Avelos stepped back one pace. Uriel watched him cautiously — Avelos’s expression had turned stormy — and spoke.
“I’m sorry. Without thinking… it was a familiar scent.”
“Familiar — that’s surprising. Iluah isn’t a common plant. Is there someone around you who uses it?”
So what smelled like jasmine in this world was called iluah. When he searched his memory, Uriel found that Uriel’s memories held information on iluah as well.
It seemed to be a plant the original Uriel had used in making medicines — but since the scent itself hadn’t been something that could be stored in memory, it had only surfaced to him as something resembling jasmine.
“Are you not going to answer?”
He had been slow to respond because he was sorting through what he knew about iluah, and Avelos pressed him. His voice was low as he did, and his expression made it plainly obvious he was in a bad mood. The outer corners of his long eyes had narrowed, and one side of his mouth had pulled up in a crooked line.
Is it because he’s the Emperor — he has no patience at all. Another moment and he’s going to devour me whole.
Thinking it was simply Avelos being irritated by the delay in his answer, Uriel quickly opened his mouth.
“It was so long ago I don’t even remember.”
Avelos’s brow furrowed — Uriel’s answer clearly didn’t satisfy him. He looked as though he was about to say something, then pressed his lips shut. The tight set of his mouth and the tension along his jaw revealed just how displeased he was.
“…Very well.”
“…?”
“I came today to give you this.”
Avelos indicated something. Looking in the direction his hand pointed, Uriel noticed a rather large picnic basket sitting on the desk he was perched on.
“I received it by chance and had nowhere to put it, so I brought it here.”
“What is this?”
When would an Emperor ever just happen to receive something like this, Uriel thought, but asked nothing further and opened the basket. When the lid came off, the rich, toasty smell of bread spread through the library. Inside the basket were several varieties of bread, each neatly wrapped in paper.
“Don’t you like things like this?”
Avelos asked when Uriel just stared blankly into the basket.
“I do. I just never expected to receive something like this from Your Majesty… Thank you.”
Uriel expressed his thanks and pulled the basket toward himself. Wondering if he should now climb down from the desk and get back to organizing the library, he glanced at Avelos. Avelos was watching him with an expression full of unmistakable expectation.
Uriel let out a silent sigh at that blatantly expectant look. You barged in first thing in the morning and made a nuisance of yourself — and now suddenly a basket of bread?
If this were before, he might honestly have received it with a glad heart, whatever Avelos’s intentions. Life as a slave, given only one meal a day, always left him hungry. But lately, Alec had been coming nearly every morning, and they had been eating breakfast together.
“…Your Majesty. Shall I eat it now?”
“It would taste best while it’s freshly made.”
Eat it now. He’d clearly said he received it by chance — and yet he knew it had just been made. It seemed he had no choice but to eat at least some of it in front of him.
Uriel looked down into the basket and selected one of the smaller pieces. He picked it up thinking it looked something like an egg tart, and it was heavier than expected. He parted his lips and began eating from the edge, in small bites.
“Does it taste all right?”
“…Yes.”
Uriel gave a short answer to Avelos’s question. He glanced at Avelos’s face and could tell the answer didn’t sit well with him. Uriel inwardly sighed. After swallowing everything in his mouth, he offered the response Avelos seemed to be waiting for.
“It’s delicious. Being freshly made, it’s warm and moist. Just the right amount of sweetness — it seems like someone with exceptional skill made it.”
He wasn’t used to giving compliments. He had even worried Avelos might find it too sycophantic and dislike it — but that turned out to be a needless concern. What felt awkward and stilted to Uriel clearly landed well with Avelos.
“Have plenty. You’re far too thin, Uriel.”
Probably not the most fitting thing to say — coming from the man who made me a slave and reduced me to one meal a day. It was so absurd that Uriel stopped mid-bite and stared at him.
“Uriel?”
“No, it’s nothing…”
Avelos called his name when he stopped eating, with an expression that plainly asked what was the matter. Looking at that face, Uriel thought: he might genuinely not know. He was the Emperor — but being the Emperor didn’t mean he knew every detail of how the imperial household ran. Whether a slave ate one meal or two was hardly something an Emperor would concern himself with.
Instead of answering, Uriel quietly chewed his bread. And so, until Uriel finished the second piece, Avelos did nothing but watch his lips. If he ate one more, he was going to end up too full and unwell — or get indigestion from Avelos’s suffocating attention, whichever came first.
Fortunately, before that could happen, Avelos said he had an appointment and left the library, leaving Uriel behind. Uriel leaned his back against something and sat there, looking worn out.
Well, at least he didn’t tell me to finish all of it.
He had worried that Avelos might insist he eat every last piece in front of him — so that was a relief. Uriel looked back and forth between the door Avelos had walked out of and the basket of bread he’d left behind. He could tell roughly that Avelos’s attitude had changed since the night they drank together — but since he had absolutely no memory of what he himself had done, it was deeply frustrating.
Judging by his behavior, Avelos seemed to remember everything from that night, unlike Uriel. But Uriel had no desire to ask him what had happened.
If Avelos got angry that Uriel didn’t remember, that would be a bad reaction — and the alternative, having Avelos invite him to try and piece it together himself, was equally unwelcome from where Uriel was standing.
