The corridor of the manor after the battle was still. A peaceful silence so complete it was hard to believe that just an hour ago, they had been standing on a battlefield where lives hung in the balance. But the minds of the two walking through that silence were louder than any battlefield.
Footstep. Footstep.
Elian followed behind Calix, desperately fixing his gaze on the floor. The droplets falling from the ends of Calix’s damp hair kept pulling at his attention, and every time the hem of that blood-spattered coat swayed, his heart gave a lurch.
The back walking ahead of him looked too broad, too solid. The realization that he had just been sheltering behind that very back to stay alive felt strangely, freshly real. The scent of blood should have been repulsive — instead it registered like some dangerous pheromone, enough to send a thrill through him.
I’ve lost it. I’ve completely lost it. Why does this feel like this.
What had happened on the wall earlier. The sensation of those cold lips against his palm refused to fade — like a burn that wouldn’t heal. And what about that line?
My Lord.
That low voice refused to leave his ears. This wasn’t a drama script — and yet those words had actually come out of the Grand Duke of the North’s mouth. The problem was that he hadn’t hated it. Worse — the problem was that his heart had nearly burst from it.
Get it together, Elian. You’re just here to earn points. That man is just… a very handsome, very high-performance ATM. That’s all.
While Elian was internally reciting the national anthem to compose himself, Calix came to a stop ahead. They were in front of the guest quarters — Calix’s room.
“….”
Calix turned around slowly. Elian startled and stopped in his tracks. An awkward silence stretched between them. Under normal circumstances, this was where Calix would shamelessly demand something like “Standby for thirty minutes” or “I need recharging.” But right now, he was oddly avoiding eye contact.
“…Go rest.”
Calix said, shortly.
“Ah — yes! Please sleep well, Your Grace!”
Elian bowed a full ninety degrees as if he’d been waiting for this, then turned and walked toward his own room at something barely short of a sprint. The urgency in his retreating steps was practically a speed walk.
Calix stood there until Elian disappeared around the corner of the corridor. He raised his own hand and looked at it. The hand that had caught Elian’s wrist, and pressed its lips to his palm.
“…Ha.”
With a short exhale, Calix shoved his hair back roughly. The flush had spread past the tips of his ears and all the way to the back of his neck.
* * *
Sinking into the hot water he’d drawn in the tub finally coaxed some warmth into his chilled body. Dark reddish blood dispersed through the water above the surface — monster blood. Calix wiped his face down with a wet cloth. But the afterimages rising in his mind were not so easily wiped away.
My Lord.
He could barely believe he’d said it himself. By nature, he was not a man driven by possessiveness. Having been born with everything, he had never truly longed for anything — and because of his cursed body, he had never allowed himself to keep anyone close. But with Elian, it was different.
The moment the Spider Troll’s claws had lunged toward Elian, he’d heard the sound of his own reason snapping. It wasn’t simply the worry of his furnace getting broken. It was a rage that was entirely primal, entirely instinctive — an absolute refusal to allow the one warmth that had entered his domain to be harmed.
And then that palm kiss, of all things….
He should have stopped himself there. And yet — seeing Elian look up at him with that worried gaze, blood-streaked face and all, he had reached for his hand as if possessed. A palm that was firmer than expected, yet warm. He had wanted to press his lips into it and confirm something. That you belong to me.
“I’ve lost my mind. I’ve completely lost my mind.”
Calix tilted his head back and rested it against the edge of the tub. Was this a side effect of the treatment? Had pushing his Mana to stabilize so rapidly somehow melted his brain circuitry as well?
“Huu….”
He touched his own lips absentmindedly beneath the water. A spring breeze that had barged uninvited into a life that had always been cold as ice. That breeze was blowing far deeper than he had expected — and Calix had no choice but to admit it.
* * *
At the same time, in Elian’s room.
“AAAARGH!”
Elian came out of the bath, launched himself onto the bed in a full dive, and buried his face in the pillow. Then he kicked and thrashed at the blanket.
“I’ve lost it! I’ve completely lost it! Why is my heart doing this?!”
A tsunami of embarrassment crashed over him. You’ve certainly earned your keep, Your Grace — what kind of line was that?! Was he the protagonist of a romance novel?! And reaching out to wipe blood off someone’s face — what was he thinking?!
“I got swept up in the atmosphere. Right — this is just… the suspension bridge effect!”
Elian sat bolt upright and muttered to himself.
“The situation was intense. Monsters showed up, I almost died. My heart was pounding like crazy, so my brain made a mistake. It wasn’t beating because of him.”
He rationalized it with everything he had. His opponent was the Grand Duke of the North. The very man described as a cold-blooded, heartless character in the original novel, The North’s Winter Never Ends. Letting himself get swept off his feet just because he acted kind for a moment — that was a one-way ticket to ruin. But still —
I believe I told you not to die without my permission.
That overwhelming, intoxicating display of power — vaulting up an ice pillar and obliterating trolls mid-flight. Those crimson eyes that had looked at only him, through a face still unreasonably handsome even drenched in blood.
“…Okay, honestly. He was kind of — really, really cool.”
Elian shoved his face back into the pillow. No matter how hard he tried to deny it, Calix in that moment had been unfairly, illegally attractive. Detonating his Mana to save him, raging as if he would freeze the entire world.
“Ugh, forget it! Just sleep!”
Elian forced his eyes shut. But behind his closed eyelids, the sensation of those cold lips kept drifting back — and he spent the rest of the night tossing and turning until the early hours of dawn.
The next morning.
Sunlight filtered through the window and Elian blinked his eyes open with a groan.
“Mmph….”
His body felt like lead. He’d overexerted his Mana yesterday, and then spent the whole night thrashing around in his blankets on top of it. Elian wobbled out of bed. Immediately, a bone-deep chill wrapped around his entire body.
“Ugh, it’s freezing.”
His breath was visible in the air. The moment he stepped off the bed and his bare feet touched the stone floor, a cold so sharp it left no room for screaming shot straight from his soles up his spine.
God, this is foul.
This was no place for a human being to live. For Elian — Korean down to the marrow of his bones — a winter with no heated floor to press his back against was nothing short of torture. He was struck by a desperate, aching longing for the memories of his past life: a toasty heated floor, peeling tangerines under the blanket on a warm yellow ondol mat.
The broken window had been repaired, but the manor was old, and the winter winds of the North found their way in through the cracks in the walls. There was a fireplace — but it only warmed the air right beside it, nowhere near enough to heat the whole room.
Elian pulled on a fur robe over his clothes, shivering. The moment that cold seeped into his bones, every soft, fluttery romantic feeling from the night before evaporated on the spot.
Right. Romance. In this weather. Not a chance.
He was one step from freezing to death — sentiment was a luxury. The look in Elian’s eyes shifted back to the cold, rational gaze of a Korean civil engineer.
“Surviving comes first. Stay alive, then figure the rest out.”
Elian did a quick splash of water on his face and headed for the office.
* * *
“My Lord, you called for us?”
Hans and Calix’s adjutant Cedric entered the office. Their expressions were fairly bright — the lingering joy of having repelled the Monster Wave perfectly the night before. There had been some injuries, but by some miracle, no casualties.
“Yes — you’ve all worked incredibly hard. But it’s too soon to raise a toast.”
Elian spread a large sheet of paper across the desk.
“The wall is taken care of — now it’s the interior. This domain is far too cold. If we leave things as they are, half the people in this domain will have frostbite by midwinter.”
“That is… the fate of the North, is it not? There’s nothing to be done but gather more firewood.”
Hans answered with an air of resignation. But Elian shook his head.
“Firewood has its limits. Chopping trees every time is inefficient on top of that.”
Elian picked up a pen and began drawing on the paper. It was a structural diagram — a network of winding pipes running beneath the floor, with wide stone slabs laid on top of them.
“What is this?”
Cedric asked with curious eyes.
“Ondol.”
“On… dol?”
“A floor heating system. The Western style — the Empire’s style, I mean — uses a fireplace that heats the air, which is thermally inefficient. Hot air rises, so the floor stays cold.”
Elian explained with passionate energy.
“But ondol heats the floor itself. You lay pipes under the floor and run hot air or hot water through them. The entire room becomes warm and comfortable. Isn’t there nothing better for a person than a warm back and a full stomach?”
“Oh my… the floor itself becomes hot! It sounds like magic!”
Hans was astonished. But Cedric raised a practical concern.
“However, my Lord — to heat that much floor space, you’d need an enormous heat source. If you used Mana stones, the cost would be staggering.”
“Correct. The fuel is the problem.”
Elian grinned. His eyes slid past the office window toward the guest quarters.
“But we have a heat source that is exceptionally powerful, semi-permanent, and practically free of charge.”
“Surely you don’t mean….”
Cedric’s face went pale.
“Yes. We’ll have to use the Grand Duke.”
“My Lord! Asking His Grace to become a power source — that’s your head on a platter!”
“No, no — I’m not asking him to stoke a fire himself. It’s His Grace’s overflowing Mana. We use it in reverse.”
A perfect blueprint was taking shape in Elian’s mind. Calix emitted cold. But having a cooling mechanism meant that — as an equal and opposite reaction — an enormous heat exchange system could be built from it.
The heat pump principle: compress and circulate refrigerant. Run the Grand Duke’s cold through a magic circuit, and supply the heat generated as a reaction to the ondol pipes. Eco-friendly, highly efficient, and a triple benefit — it would also prevent the Grand Duke’s Mana from running out of control.
“This is a revolution.”
Elian rolled up the blueprint and gripped it in his hand.
“Let’s go. We’re getting the Grand Duke’s approval.”
“My Lord, please — you could end up as an ice sculpture doing this. Did you not witness what happened yesterday?”
Hans and Cedric tried to stop him, but Elian was already out the door. Last night’s embarrassment? The fluttering in his chest? None of that meant anything in the face of the warm heated floor he was dreaming of.
