– Bang!
“Cesare! Cesare Yanox!”
When I flung open the infirmary door as if smashing it, I saw Cesare sitting in the examination chair. Cain was standing next to him with an awkward expression.
“Huk, haah. Y-you got hurt! Cesare! Are you okay?!”
I quickly ran to Cesare and grabbed onto him.
– Thwack.
“Let go.”
But he coldly pushed me away and only treated me with contemptuous eyes.
At his gaze that seemed to blame me, saying it’s all your fault, my whole body felt like it was freezing cold.
“Ce, Cesare…!”
“Lionel, you came quite quickly?”
“Th, that…!”
Cesare crossed his arms and arrogantly crossed his legs. Even though I was standing and he was looking up at me, I kept feeling smaller.
I couldn’t say anything, my head completely blank. I couldn’t even dare ask if his body was okay out of guilt.
“What are you trying to do right now?”
“S-sorry! I’m really sorry! I forgot to fill the ice water before leaving! I got the day mixed up… I thought you were going to the library today, not sword practice. I’m really sorry!”
“Hah. Forget it. I’m not in the mood to hear your apology.”
He let out a sigh deeply tinged with resignation. Seeing that made my heart sink heavily. If it were contemptuous eyes, I’d close my eyes tight and beg and beg again, but that sigh that spoke as if he no longer expected anything from me made me speechless instead.
In the midst of all this, I kept glancing at Cesare’s face, wondering if he was badly hurt, if he had severe burns. Seeing that he was speaking properly and there were no visible severe burn marks, it seemed the priest stationed in the infirmary had treated him well.
I inwardly breathed a sigh of relief, but I still had no excuse to face Cesare. If I had prepared properly, this wouldn’t have happened.
“…S-sorry…. I have nothing to say even with ten mouths….”
Unable to bear watching me break out in cold sweat and unable to say anything, Cain finally spoke up.
“Rye must have been busy too, Cesare. He can’t just trail after you all the time.”
“Who said anything about trailing? I’m saying he should fulfill his duties before leaving.”
“Filling ice water is Rye’s duty?”
“Then whose job is it?”
When Cesare stubbornly furrowed his brow and shamelessly asked back, Cain’s face also hardened. Seeing that, I quickly grabbed Cain’s arm and pacified him.
“C, Cain…. That, it is my job…. I did… wrong.”
“See. He says so himself.”
At my halting words, Cesare preened at Cain as if to say ‘I told you so.’ Cain, seeming tired of this situation, raised both hands and brushed past me.
“I really don’t know if this is your fault, Rye. I know you admire Cesare the most, but this is… Ugh. I don’t know. I’m leaving first. You two work it out well.”
“Cain!”
Just as I hesitated while watching Cain leave, kicking his chair as if somewhat angry, Cesare asked me irritably.
“Where were you this afternoon?”
“Huh?”
“Weren’t you the one who knew better than me what schedule I have, what daily routine I have, what I need? I trusted you and left everything to you, but they say ‘the ax you trust strikes your foot’ and that’s exactly what happened. Hm?”
Cesare slowly rose from his seat and approached me. I bit my lower lip and anxiously only looked down at my toes.
“Look at my eyes. Lionel.”
Instinctively, an indescribable danger began to envelop my body. I could feel the flow of mana gently rippling in front of him.
‘Damn it. He’s trying to use brainwashing magic! I can’t meet his eyes!’
I quickly squeezed my eyes shut, but because Cesare grabbed my chin and made me meet his gaze, those dark red eyes ended up fully captured in mine.
“Can you tell me what you did this afternoon?”
Looking at Cesare’s chillingly beautiful face, I slowly opened my mouth.
“In the afternoon… I went to the temple chapel….”
It was irresistible. Whether firmly caught in the magic or not, my mouth began spilling facts regardless of my will. It felt like something slimy and unpleasant was crawling around inside my head.
– Be honest, baby. Whatever your secret is, you can honestly tell your master Cesare Yanox. Lying is bad, isn’t it? Right?
A hissing voice like a snake floated dizzily through my head.
“Ho. Chapel? Why the chapel?”
– Be honest.
“T-to organize my thoughts. I needed a quiet place. I didn’t want to be bothered by Cain.”
“What thoughts didn’t you want to be bothered about?”
‘Thoughts of escaping you.’
I focused on not letting go of my consciousness that was being devoured by dark light and carefully answered him.
“…You… Hah, thoughts of you.”
The corners of Cesare’s lips gently curved. Thinking I wanted to be buried in the dimple that hollowed deeply at the end, I exhaled a trembling breath. Anxiety was heavily seeping out at the end of my hotly parched breathing.
“What kind of thoughts about me?”
– Tell your master honestly what thoughts you have. Lionel Mellans.
‘I don’t want to.’
At the sudden resistance that arose in that moment, I shook my head slightly and stepped back. But I couldn’t turn my head away from Cesare’s gaze.
‘I don’t want to say it. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to lose my memories and be killed here…!’
“I don’t want to….”
What had been crawling up eventually shook up my entire head in complete chaos. In an instant, as if being sucked into his pupils, my head was being dyed entirely dark red.
And something hot began flowing down my cheek as I bit my lower lip hard. It was tears.
“…Lionel?”
Cesare flinched in surprise at my tears and broke his posture. Thanks to my slightly cleared mind, the strength left my legs and I collapsed to the floor.
“I don’t want to, Cesare. I said I don’t want to say it….”
‘I don’t want to die. I want to live. I want to live.’
As I clutched my head at the suddenly starting headache, flames blazed and flashed before my eyes. My vision became hazily blurred and my breath began to choke.
“Haah. Huk. Cough!”
Along with my quickening breath, I grabbed my throat. My hands and feet trembled and my ears rang dully.
‘It hurts!’
“Lionel?!”
“I don’t want to…!”
Something seemed to be tightly gripping and shaking my windpipe, making it hard to breathe. As if resisting that invisible force, I struggled and kept shaking my head.
I don’t want to. I don’t want to. I don’t want to.
While everything in my head mixed chaotically, the voice of my heart was endlessly only the sound of refusal.
At that moment, Cesare’s chest touched my head. And his urgent touch too. Cesare, seeming a bit flustered, forcibly made eye contact with me and shouted.
“Damn it. Lionel. Calm down! Everything’s fine. Everything will be fine, so look at me! Look at me! Breathe slowly out. Breathe in. Breathe out!”
– Calm down, baby. Your master wishes it so.
“Haah. Hah… Hah.”
– Calm down.
In the continuing nausea and dizziness, I slowly organized my breathing to match the hissing voice. At the same time, with Cesare’s hand patting my back, the headache that felt like it would split my head began to calmly subside.
It was strange. My whole body felt so hot and painful it might break, but only the parts touching him were cooling down from the pain like a lie.
As if Cesare was the only painkiller given to me, I quickly clung tightly to him and buried my head. Then I felt Cesare flinch greatly and pull back.
“Uhhng…. Don’t. Don’t go.”
His hesitation, afraid he might violently push me away any moment. Afraid he might coldly reject me like before, I burrowed even harder into his embrace.
I didn’t want to let go. Because the parts not touching him were painful.
“Hah… Cesare. Hah.”
“You, do you really lo…”
At the suddenly surging emotions and streaming tears, I clung to him and whined without knowing what I was saying.
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. From next time I’ll absolutely never forget the ice water. Please forgive me. Hm? I’ll really do well. I’ll absolutely never disappoint you. Please…!”
“Lionel, wait, calm down a bit!”
“Please, Cesa… re….”
– Thud.
And it was blackout again.
* * *
<The Lord only sends down trials that can be overcome, so do not be afraid. Nothing happens without meaning.>
Cedric engraved it in his heart as he transcribed the last verse, then closed the cap of his fountain pen.
It was Cedric’s habit to come to the sparsely populated chapel and do transcription when his mind felt stuffy and his surroundings noisy.
He put the notebook in his breast and fiddled with the fountain pen. Since his belongings as crown prince were always of the highest grade originally, when he occasionally borrowed other students’ items like this, there were bound to be parts that bothered him.
However, the fountain pen the unidentified junior had given him was the highest of the highest. When writing, it wrote smoothly on paper without the ink pushing, there was no ink smearing or bleeding, and the gold nib was both sharp and elegantly lined.
And the sparkling band surrounding the rim of the black cap wasn’t ordinary plating but the highest-grade decoration made of glass hardened with diamond powder. To leave without getting back such an expensive handmade item meant they weren’t from an ordinary family.
“They don’t seem to be from an ordinary noble family, so why don’t I know the name?”
The initials engraved on the fountain pen were ‘L.M.’. It was clearly the name of the junior with blond hair, verdant green eyes, and a small mark below the eye he had just met.
But there was no name in his head that matched those initials.
Soon putting the fountain pen into his breast as well, he leaned his back against the long chapel bench, relaxed his strength completely, and even opened the brooch fixing his uniform cape to release tension.
“Phew.”
As he closed his eyes and emptied his head, the image of the junior from earlier suddenly came to mind again.
“Will they come to the chapel again? I need to return the fountain pen.”
Usually when he spoke to someone, others would become desperate to build closer relations somehow, but this person didn’t even teach him their name and ran away shouting a hastily made up excuse.
“Hmm.”
What’s the name? If it’s L… Roy? That doesn’t suit them. Leopold? That name is too heavy. It seems like it would be a slightly cuter name. Linley? This seems too light. What could the name be?
A small smile hung on Cedric’s lips as he recalled the junior’s clumsy appearance, treating him with wriggling wariness-filled gestures like a puppy separated from its mother’s embrace, yet glancing at him with curious eyes.
* * *
By the window where white lace curtains fluttered, Cesare was quietly looking at Lionel lying on the infirmary bed without moving.
Watching Lionel cling to him sobbing in a state of not being in his right mind until just moments ago, he was certain. Those cute emerald eyes looking at him hotly.
Recalling them sent a thrilling sense of conquest rushing through his entire body.
‘It’s certain. Lionel loves me.’
The days he had seriously agonized over whether to use the precious Addiction passed down as a family heirloom on the annoying Lionel who kept trying to run away were rendered meaningless—as soon as he used the Addiction magic, the effect was certain. No, tremendously satisfying to the point where ‘certain’ was an insufficient word.
This was the Lionel who had scattered marriage proposals even to women whose faces he didn’t know, trying to marry and escape his side. But now he threw himself into his embrace crying not to be abandoned first.
‘Fund procurement is now worry-free. From now on I’ll suck the Mellans merchant guild’s spine dry. When I’ve used even an artifact, shouldn’t I receive at least this much?’
Cesare comfortably crossed his legs and changed his posture. But there was one thing that kept bothering him.
‘Why did he suddenly try to break off relations with me?’
This was the Lionel he’d been with since middle division.
Lionel, who wasn’t smart and didn’t have proper noble connections, couldn’t have noticed that Yanox was ostracized by the imperial family and was a ducal house in name only, and even less could he have noticed the ambition to plot rebellion in the future.
Even back then, he had asked him several times with brainwashing magic, but the result was always the same as today. Mental collapse due to conflict between magic and ego.
Everyone has at least one secret they want to hide, and the unconscious protection of it was tremendous. No matter how renowned the young duke of Yanox was, for a boy who was merely an academy student, breaking through that wasn’t easy.
‘There must have been a reason as tremendous as desperately hiding the fact that he loves me, but it’s regrettable not knowing what it is. How annoying.’
Cesare thought that Lionel desperately resisted the brainwashing magic because he wanted to hide his love for him.
‘Still, it seems I succeeded in erasing memories so he wouldn’t feel dissonance toward me. It would be more convenient if I could use brainwashing magic freely like Father, but that’s regrettable.’
Just in case, when he stopped by Lionel’s dormitory last time, he searched the room too, but there was no sign that he had regained his memories.
Cesare let out a small sigh and pressed Lionel’s cheek hard with his index finger.
“I’m bored of waiting now. Wake up, idiot.”
Liking the softly sinking texture of Lionel’s cheek a bit, he poked the cheek hard several more times.
“Hm?”
Are guys’ cheeks originally this… soft? Just in case, Cesare lightly touched his own cheek, then lightly pinched Lionel’s cheek. As expected, Lionel’s cheek was softer than his own.
“Uhhng. Don’t….”
When Lionel pushed him away in his sleep and turned his head sharply away, Cesare snorted.
‘Look at this? How dare someone like you refuse my touch? While liking me, you dare?’
