Even setting aside the fact that Casioth Mordian possessed a body of overwhelming, exceptional physicality — Milano Mortiel, who had inherited a strong strain of blood from his mother, a distinguished knight of Knight Commander standing in the royal palace’s order, was no slouch himself.
That said, if one were being truly serious about it, Ranok came up short against Casioth in both height and build, and furthermore his opponent was the Hero who had slain the Demon King, while Ranok was a wastrel who had let every good quality he possessed go to rot — so the outcome of any clash would have been obvious.
Dain hastily stepped between the two in case a fight broke out.
“Duke, but the state of the estate…… are there no servants?”
“Yeah, none. There was one left, but he just bolted.”
He was referring to the man who had come bursting out of the house hurling abuse just before they arrived.
Dain let out a sigh heavy enough to sink the floor.
“How could a ducal house have not a single servant?”
“What’s wrong with that.”
It’s fine here. Casioth retorted and tilted the bottle in his hand toward his mouth.
But the bottle was nearly empty, and only a drop or two managed to fall with difficulty into his mouth.
Casioth clicked his tongue in disappointment and tossed the bottle aside without a care. That was when the mystery of the bottles rolling around on the estate’s floor was solved.
“I’m lowborn, so having people fussing around me like they’re serving royalty just makes me uncomfortable.”
“……!”
Dain was struck speechless at a retort so tactless it seemed to have swallowed manners whole and never looked back.
Casioth slowly approached Ranok, who had been watching that exchange with fixed attention.
The smell of alcohol grew stronger. It was a liquor-soaked scent that had been threatening to numb his nose from the moment they arrived — and yet, strangely, that sharp, acrid smell jolted Ranok’s mind awake.
Casioth came to a stop right in front of Ranok’s face.
He had been clearly shorter than Ranok at first. But as the years passed while he looked after Karin, he had gradually caught up, and by the time of their final journey together, he had completely overtaken him.
Now, he was the one looking down at Ranok.
Ten years. Feeling the weight of that time — not short by any measure — Ranok let out a hollow laugh.
— …….
From a short distance away, the Faerie was watching the two of them.
Only then did Ranok acknowledge it. The Faerie hadn’t been speaking nonsense.
He thought he could now grasp, however vaguely, what the Faerie meant by “normalization.” Still not perfectly — but somewhat.
At the very least, this isn’t normal.
“What was your name again?”
Having realized who exactly it was that had been running from reality this whole time, Ranok was finally able to smile with ease at the striking voice now sounding right before him.
“Milano.”
“Milano?”
“Yeah, Milano Mortiel.”
Dain’s jaw dropped at the utterly unrestrained informal speech, but Ranok paid no mind.
Although Milano Mortiel was twenty-three — considerably younger than the Duke of Mordian, who had turned twenty-nine this year — Ranok’s inner self was incomparably older than Casioth.
Of course, even setting that aside, Ranok had no intention of speaking formally to Casioth or putting distance between them.
Somewhat surprisingly, Casioth himself didn’t seem to care much about the informal speech either.
“……Milano.”
Rano, Rano. Well, how about that. He muttered it as if remarking on a strange coincidence, and the tone was oddly sharp.
“Mortiel, huh. I’ve heard of it — that there’s a dim-witted prince in the neighboring kingdom.”
Dain sucked in a sharp breath. Even so, calling a foreign prince dim-witted — !
“Prince, why’d you come all the way here, of all places?”
He leaned his face right up into Ranok’s.
“Did this place look like the easiest target to you?”
The man reeked of strong alcohol. It went strangely well with his rough manner — but it was a smell that clashed completely with the Casioth Ranok knew.
“What were you thinking, crawling in here?”
“Because I wanted to see you.”
Ranok answered the blunt question with equal bluntness.
At Ranok smiling as he said that, Casioth — who had been acting like he owned the world from start to finish — looked, for the first time, as though the words had been knocked clean out of him.
A stifled gasp came from the direction of Dain and Zak as well.
— Oh my. Oh my.
The Faerie had somehow produced a pair of black glasses from who knows where, and was stuffing herself with what looked like little white puffed snacks, watching the two of them with great relish.
“……What do I do with this — I’m not interested in men.”
That was the answer that finally came from Casioth after a long pause. Ranok tilted his head. He couldn’t quite grasp why that was the response to come out here.
Then — ah — he understood. They had said that despite his looks, he kept such a distance from women that there were rumors going around about whether he preferred men, or whether he simply had no interest in anyone at all.
“Is that so? That’s a relief. So it’s not that you can’t, then?”
“……Ha.”
To Ranok it had been a perfectly genuine question, but to Casioth it must have looked to anyone watching like a deliberate attempt to provoke him into a battle of wills.
The problem was, this particular kind of sparring was new even to Casioth.
Ranok slowly looked the man up and down — his words evidently lost somewhere in his bewilderment.
Casioth was leaning in a crooked stance, but he couldn’t quite shake the disciplined bearing unique to martial artists who had trained for years.
In other words — even when he wanted to come across as a ruffian, his foundational form was simply too well-drilled to let him pull it off convincingly.
The Sword Saint, was it — he took the boy on as a disciple late, but it seems he taught him well, Ranok thought, in the manner of an overly invested parent.
“How about you ease up on the drinking. It can’t be good for you.”
Ranok went ahead and launched into a lecture while he was at it. Casioth, who had been wearing a look of confused disorientation, immediately fixed him with a cold gaze and sneered.
“Prince, I have no idea what’s going on in that little head of yours, but that’s not an area you need to concern yourself with.”
“Your head’s small too.”
This time, Casioth’s mouth closed completely.
Ranok was simply being honest, but to anyone watching, it looked like nothing short of audaciously talking back to none other than the ill-tempered Duke of Mordian himself.
Dain in particular was on the verge of foaming at the mouth.
A duke of the empire is on equal footing with a prince of that kingdom — if anything, the title outranks him — and yet this prince still thinks he’s royalty?! He’s a hostage, on top of everything else! He’s been thrown away!
What on earth does he think that lunatic duke is going to do, talking back to him like that?!
“Ha.”
But to everyone’s surprise, Casioth burst out laughing. It wasn’t exactly a laugh bursting with good humor, and his eyes remained dry as ever — but he laughed.
“You’re an entertaining prince.”
He said that, and pulled his face back from where it had been thrust right up against Ranok’s.
“Ph-phew.”
“Haaah.”
Dain and Zak exhaled with barely contained relief at that — but Ranok swallowed down his disappointment.
Because he had wanted to look a little longer, and a little closer, at the one who had been an ache in his heart, reunited after ten years.
But was this really the moment to be feeling sorry about that?
Ranok may have closed his eyes and opened them only to find ten years had passed — but Casioth had spent those ten years alone, slowly falling apart. This was no moment for complaints.
“This house is too big anyway, so do as you like.”
What finally fell from Casioth’s lips was permission. It had been an imperial command from the start, so he had no real grounds to refuse.
Burning the edict had certainly been an act of defiance — but at least this much was still within the range of what Dain could handle and smooth over.
“Thank you, Duke.”
Dain exhaled with relief and extended his thanks, but Casioth wasn’t finished.
“Just exist like you’re dead, in return. I’ve been living here thinking of this place as one great big coffin, too.”
“……”
“You and I both — we’re a perfect fit.”
With those words, the man turned and ambled away into the interior of the estate.
At last, that immense presence disappeared.
“A-ahem. Prince, then I shall go help the coachman with the luggage.”
“M-me too!”
Ranok’s luggage had been nearly all lost when the carriage he had originally arrived in was completely wrecked — so there was hardly anything to bring in — and yet Zak, apparently unwilling to spend another moment inside this suffocating estate, scurried out after Dain without a second look back.
And just like that, Ranok was left alone with the Faerie.
“……A coffin.”
Ranok stood alone, turning over the words Casioth had left behind.
Who in the world referred to their own home as a great big coffin? Just hearing it was enough to make his chest feel tight.
— Does it feel a little more real now?
The Faerie, watching him, asked.
“What does.”
— The ten years you lost.
Who said I lost them? Ranok let out a quiet, wry laugh.
“I didn’t lose them.”
— What — you still….
“He’s the one who lost them.”
Ranok gestured with his chin toward the spot where Casioth had disappeared.
At that, the Faerie fell silent.
“All that talk about normalization and whatever — honestly, I thought it was nonsense.”
— What do you mean? I told you clearly it was the words of the goddess……
“Now I think I understand a little.”
Honestly, Ranok still had no particular thoughts about what the goddess wanted. But having actually seen Casioth in person, he felt — regardless of what the goddess wanted — that he had to stay by Casioth’s side. In whatever way, in whatever form.
He couldn’t go anywhere and leave someone like this behind.
The Faerie, who had been glowering at Ranok with displeasure, swallowed a sigh and asked.
— So what are you going to do now? He didn’t recognize you, and he’s clearly not the least bit welcoming toward you.
“That’s only natural.”
Who would ever think that an acquaintance who had died ten years ago had come back as a prince of a neighboring kingdom.
“It’s better to keep my identity hidden. Not that he’d believe me even if I told him.”
It would take the imagination of a novelist to even entertain that kind of scenario. And the Casioth Ranok knew was a child with not a shred of imagination to his name.
“And Casioth would never welcome me anyway.”
To Casioth, Ranok was, after all, the one who had betrayed him — and then lost his life at Casioth’s own hands.
