“……”
Come to think of it, had I ever recalled this thing after I lost consciousness? A being I had completely forgotten wasn’t in my heart but was blinking on my desk. The ‘thing’ the size of a child’s palm gulped down the éclair and shouted shortly again.
“Nyon!”
“Kyaaaah! Mitche?”
“Byobyo!”
Mitche happily jumped onto my face. Grabbing the back of its neck as it went nyon-nyon while sucking on my cheek, I quickly ran out of the room.
“Uaaaah! William! William Colt! Come out!”
I pounded frantically on William’s door, who was in the same dormitory building as me.
“Yaaawn. What is it. So noisy.”
“L-l-look at this!”
I showed Mitche to William, who came out with disheveled hair as if he’d been sleeping.
Mitche struggled vigorously to escape from my fingers. But William frowned heavily and looked at me.
“What.”
“This!”
“What is it. Your hand?”
“Can’t you see this? This! This tiny thing!”
“…If you’re going to play around, go away. This hyung stayed up all night packing yesterday, so I’m sleepy. Yawn.”
“You can’t see this?”
“What on earth. There’s nothing there.”
I quickly placed Mitche on my palm and pulled Mitche’s cheek. Mitche’s cheek stretching softly like cheese. Unless William had gone blind, there was no way he couldn’t see this.
“Byo-o!”
Mitche even got angry loudly, saying it hurt, but William really couldn’t see it and just stared at me blankly, treating me like a weird person.
‘He can’t see Mitche? Could it be my imagination? Am I crazy?’
But for that to be true, this was the thing that ate the éclair on my desk. Moreover, Ju Shinyoung had said this thing was the product of love toward Cesare. Then it does really exist….
‘Then only I can see it?’
After that, I walked around here and there in the dormitory showing Mitche to the kids, but there was no one who could see it. Even guys who could handle mana couldn’t even detect it. Eventually, I returned to my room and placed Mitche on the desk.
It tilted its head, touching the inkwell and quill pen as if curious about its surroundings.
“You, where did you come from?”
Mitche smiled brightly and pointed at me. Even though it resembled Cesare, the added dopey appearance was absurd, but it was so cute that laughter kept bursting out.
“Did my feelings of liking Cesare grow so much that you popped out into reality? I guess things like this are created when you’re under Addiction. Ancient artifacts really are mysterious.”
When I poked it with my finger, Mitche fell on its bottom and made a tearful face.
“Sorry! Does it hurt?”
When I quickly gathered it with my hand and patted its bottom, Mitche giggled and hugged my finger tightly. Then, as it seemed to smoothly disappear, it appeared on top of my head and stamped its feet. Then it went poof and disappeared again. It seemed to appear or disappear at will.
“This is a funny thing. Going around going byobyo.”
I lay sprawled on the bed, grinning at the cuteness on another level.
“The product of love….”
Recalling the original work as much as possible, I chewed over again what kind of artifact Addiction was. An ancient artifact whose existence on earth was unknowable. A high-grade magical tool that even people without mana could use, a legacy of the brilliant past.
Among them, Addiction was an ultimate charm magic that made one love the other person so much that gradually all surrounding situations became invisible except for that person.
‘To think only that person becomes visible, somehow it’s eerie.’
Using Addiction usually meant loving the other person tremendously, and the other person under Addiction would also love the caster madly. Both would cherish and love each other for life, but this wasn’t love—it was madness.
‘Which of the two would be more unhappy?’
The side that fell in love with someone they wouldn’t have loved if not for magic? Or the caster side that would never obtain real love for life and would have to be satisfied with only fake love?
‘No matter how I think about it, I’m the most unhappy.’
After long contemplation, I reached a clear conclusion and buried myself in the bed.
* * *
— Clatter.
The carriage was rattling as it passed near the border of the Taitus Principality. Until before, we came by teleportation magic, but from then on, foreigners couldn’t use magic circles and had to travel by carriage.
As expected, in the carriage I paid for, there were only Cesare and me. Cain neither applied for the tour group nor could participate because his exam scores were deadly.
Before departure, Cain had shouted loudly in the academy courtyard, being annoying and saying it was petty that only the two of us were going, but when I coaxed him saying I’d buy an expensive gift, he finally calmed down.
Though his lips stuck out.
Anyway, to avoid creating awkward silence since only the two of us remained, I treated Cesare with higher tension than usual. I took out tourism booklets of the Taitus Principality one by one onto the simple table in the carriage.
“The freshwater crayfish dish at a shop called ‘Blue Mushroom’ is supposed to be amazing. Actually, I already told the attendants to make a reservation.”
“Crayfish dishes are the same wherever you go.”
Cesare responded in his usual indifferent tone while crossing his arms.
“You don’t like crayfish? Oh, then how about here? If you go to Hames Plateau, there’s a plain so wide you can’t see the end of the horizon, and I checked it out because it’s supposed to be good to have horse racing there. They say you can also go to hot springs after riding horses.”
“Are you that happy to be going on a trip? You seem excited.”
“I am.”
“Are you happy to be going with me?”
“…Yeah. Hm?”
I ended up hesitating at the question that suddenly came in. Actually, it was true that I was secretly excited to be going on a trip with Cesare.
“You don’t need to try so hard, Lionel.”
“Wh-what.”
“I’m happy to be going on a trip with you too. So you don’t have to overdo it trying to satisfy me.”
“I’m not overdoing it. I was just curious about where to go, so I read a little.”
It was somehow a shabby excuse. Then Cesare picked up one of the booklets spread on the table and opened it. It had pen check marks here and there, and folded pages were visible everywhere. It clearly showed the effort I’d put into planning for days.
At Cesare’s expression that seemed to say, ‘Will you still play dumb?’, I gave up and buried my face in the carriage cushion.
“Fine! I stayed up two nights planning this. Is that wrong…?”
“Phew. I wondered why the area under your eyes was so dark.”
“Finding out about these things is originally my family’s way, you see. Tsk….”
A swan moves its webbed feet uglily under the water but swims gracefully above. I wanted to look only graceful to Cesare, not show him these webbed feet. I wanted to look professional like Grandpa Chad who’s always prepared….
That’s when Cesare sat in the seat next to me and pulled my upper body.
“Lie down. You need to rest.”
“Huh?”
It was the second time experiencing his lap pillow. Having been pulled down without understanding why, I just blinked and looked up. Along with Cesare’s sharp jawline, Mitche sitting on top of his head was looking at me and smiling.
“Your body probably hasn’t fully recovered yet, and I don’t understand what you’re trying to do staying up at night without sleeping. If it was going to be like this, I wouldn’t have nursed you when you were unconscious.”
Can’t you say something nicer! My heart that had been pounding became pointless as my expectations immediately cooled at his cold tone.
“Can’t I even use my body as I please?”
When I answered with my lips pouting, he looked at my face and got irritated.
“Managing my human resources is also a noble’s virtue. And your ugly face is getting uglier, so don’t make that face anywhere. Close your eyes.”
I won’t close them. Bleh. I’m going to look at your face. While grumbling inwardly, I lay properly on his thigh and admired his sculptural face.
“Lionel. Instead of places I’d like, isn’t there anywhere you want to go? Ah, would you like this kind of place? Cyclamen Garden.”
A small teddy bear making a thumbs-up pose with ‘Full of flowers and butterflies, loved by ladies and young children!’ written was the description of Cyclamen Garden.
This is the level he sees me at. Secretly sighing, I took this opportunity to subtly bring it up.
“Actually, there is a place I want to go in the principality. No, should I say there’s someone I want to see?”
“Who? By any chance, Princess Françoise?”
I could feel Cesare’s eyes sharpen suddenly as he became on edge. Swallowing dry saliva at the inexplicable tension, I answered.
“No. Your father. Duke Lampel Yanox.”
As soon as I brought up Lampel Yanox’s story, Cesare’s face relaxed. This bastard’s moods change as quickly as boiling porridge, making it really hard to please him. It’s because it’s me that I’m accommodating him—in the Republic of Korea, this kid would have already appeared on the ‘Our Golden Child’ program and then some.
“Does what Priest Heiss said bother you? You don’t believe that ridiculous speculation that my father cast magic on you, do you?”
“Not that, but someone did cast Brainwashing Magic on me and I almost died. If it weren’t for Priest Heiss, I still wouldn’t know that fact even now.”
“…That will never happen again now. Because I’m keeping a close eye on things.”
“I can’t be certain. It’s strange that the assassin at Homecoming disguised themselves like you, and I feel like my fall isn’t completely unrelated to that. It seems like someone is targeting us.”
I deliberately pretended to be very frightened by connecting it to the terrorist incident.
“If we meet Duke Yanox, we might be able to reveal who’s behind it. He’s an excellent mage. Don’t you think so too?”
When I asked as if subtly probing, Cesare nodded though halfheartedly.
“Cesare. Do you have any idea who’s behind that terrorist incident?”
“…At first, I thought it might be the imperial family’s self-directed play to frame me.”
“May I ask why the imperial family is trying to frame you?”
“Our ducal family is the power second only to the imperial family. It’s natural to be continuously checked for imperial power concentration. Dummy.”
While in reality being hated by the imperial family for some reason. Really now. It was too roughly glossed-over an excuse that only a child would believe, but I nodded.
“I see.”
“But this incident wasn’t orchestrated by the imperial family. That assassin deliberately instigated conflict to show people that Cedric and I don’t get along well.”
“Who benefits from you being isolated like that? The Byrn Ducal family? The Lexton Marquisate?”
“…Lionel. The purpose of this incident isn’t to isolate me. Our Yanox is a family representing mages, and the imperial family is power based on the Grand Temple. This doesn’t simply show friction between me and Cedric—it means conflict beyond that.”
Mana and divine power. Recalling existences that couldn’t mix like water and oil, I could vaguely see the beings standing behind Cesare and Cedric.
“Wait. That assassin also tried to assassinate using magic, right? That means the assassin is a mage.”
“Right. That’s what became troublesome. Since it’s spreading that the assassin was someone who uses mana….”
An invisible power struggle between mages and priests. But this was already an empire that regarded divine power as a good force. Moreover, divine power also had the power to nullify magic, so if the two forces properly clashed, the temple would inevitably win.
“Already several mages have sent me letters. Saying they feel bad because the imperial army and temple are arbitrarily arresting and interrogating them.”
“But why would mages deliberately antagonize the imperial family? They can’t even fight if the temple steps forward!”
“I don’t know the details either. So when I meet Father, I’m going to try talking about whether there are any mages he suspects. I’m really curious about many things, Lionel. Will you just sleep?”
“Hmm. Since the Duke is also a mage, will he be angry when he hears this news?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he won’t even care. He’s such a… selfish person.”
“Heh. My future father-in-law is quite a picky person.”
In that moment, a joke that didn’t go through my brain accidentally popped out.
“What? Father-in-law?”
Cesare’s one eyebrow twisted dangerously as he looked at me. Only then did I realize my slip of the tongue and quickly covered my mouth.
