Chapter 23
1.
The Mysterious Chess Expert.
‘No, wait. I did win at chess itself.’
Lionel, the Mysterious, Moderately Skilled Chess Expert.
In Isabella’s mind, Lionel’s identity had been narrowed down to roughly one of three possibilities.
First, the child of some noble family.
Second, a child being raised by some knightly order.
Third, a young prodigy raised by a newly emerged power—such as a climbing party or a new guild.
She had never even considered that he might be connected to Doloris.
There was no way Doloris had married a man and had a child.
And when Isabella had visited this estate a year ago, the only child here had been Ruby.
“He’s my child.”
“Huh…?”
Isabella’s mind went more or less blank.
‘What is this?’
And then.
Isabella caught an interesting change in Doloris’s face.
It subtly contorted….
A faint blush rose across her cheeks.
An ‘uh-oh’ expression appeared on top of it.
It was the face of someone who had realized she had just misspoken.
‘…Oh-ho.’
This side of her was new, too.
Isabella’s interest in Lionel welled up even further.
An obvious blunder on Doloris’s part, committed in a moment of excessive emotion.
Lionel, who exactly are you to make Doloris act like this?
And at that moment.
Isabella’s characteristic acceleration of thought manifested.
- Zzzzt….
The information in her mind began to rearrange itself.
[Why is she freaking out this much.]
‘That’s not the reaction to just one little boy.’
[The fact that he’s a boy is strange to begin with.]
‘You’d never let a man into your home. Even if he were a child.’
[Where did those gloves come from?]
‘The usual you would’ve tried to suck me dry with the gloves as bait.’
[Lionel’s right hand was… swollen.]
‘That child refused, saying he wasn’t interested in magic.’
She viewed the situation from a third-person perspective while accelerating her thoughts at the same time.
Isabella’s heart beat one beat faster.
- Zzzzt.
The noise cleared, and the information began converging toward a single conclusion.
‘Lionel is connected to the +20 gloves.’
The moment Isabella realized it, her mind became clear.
At last, she had found the weakness of the cold, sharp, occasionally seemingly kind but generally rude Doloris.
“…Heh-heh.”
She smiled happily and nodded.
“I’ve figured it out, Doloris—the core of your anger….”
But then.
“Huh?”
- Ziiing….
Without Isabella even realizing it.
A blue magic circle was quietly being drawn beneath her feet.
Her gaze turned downward.
It was teleportation magic that forcibly sent an endangered ally back outside the battlefield.
Since she had no intention of harming anyone, Isabella’s autonomous defense system did not activate.
Doloris was pressing a hand to her forehead without even looking at Isabella.
She wore an expression that said she was truly exhausted.
“Elysia, wait—”
- Boom!
Isabella’s body vanished in an instant.
“Haa….”
Doloris wondered at her own agitated emotions and
sighed.
2.
I’m not joking.
After listening to someone talk for three hours,
I felt like I could hear her voice even while I was bathing.
It had been a long time since I’d seen someone this hectic.
I headed to the study where Ruby was, without even drying my wet hair.
“You abandoned me.”
Ruby, this isn’t right.
I knocked on the study door and
“Ruby-chan~”
opened it without waiting for an answer.
“Oh… you’re here?”
Ruby answered without even looking at me, her face buried in a book.
“Hey.”
I slowly approached her and gently lowered the book.
Ruby was biting her lips tightly and puffing out her cheeks, as though she could barely keep herself from laughing.
Look at this. Look at this.
She knew everything, didn’t she?
“Did you have fun?”
Ruby asked me with the corners of her lips raised, and
at first, I had planned to punish her by tickling her toes, but….
“Heh-heh. Yeah.”
Since this was the first time I had ever seen Ruby laugh so brightly,
I simply patted her head and threw myself into the beanbag beside her.
Honestly, she didn’t seem like a bad person.
She was the passionate type, so it would have been difficult to push her away, but it also felt like I hadn’t really wanted to.
- Poof.
My half-exhausted body sank into it.
I’m tired. I could probably sleep like this.
Starting tomorrow, I had to make Doloris a pair of socks….
I was also curious about what she and Isabella would talk about.
Isabella seemed to have come here because she was curious about my gloves.
Just then.
I felt a gaze from beside me.
When I turned my head slightly, Ruby was staring intently at my forearm.
……?
“It’s gotten a little thicker. It seems… harder.”
Even if I had a grade-schooler’s body, making it run through hours of exercise would cause some temporary pumping.
Ruby seemed to find that fascinating.
“So it does work.”
“Would you have done it if I weren’t here?”
She had a good eye. Maybe that was because she was a mage.
Ruby quietly stared at my arm for several minutes like that.
Whether she watched or not, I rested.
How much time passed like that?
- Knock, knock.
Someone knocked on the door.
“Yes.”
The door opened at the same time as my answer, and
Doloris was standing there.
And she had a rather melancholy expression.
3.
‘Lionel? I’ve prepared the ore, and applied the lubricant too.’
She seemed to have spent extra time outside preparing gifts for Ruby and me.
There was nothing else on today’s schedule.
As time passed, the three of us prepared to go to sleep.
- Snore….
Ruby fell asleep.
Moonlight entered the bed through the window.
My body was deeply fatigued from the hard training and Isabella’s ant hell, but
my mind was still awake.
…….
I turned my head and looked at Doloris.
She seemed to be preparing to sleep peacefully with her eyes closed.
Honestly, I hadn’t known her long enough to make a clear judgment, but
‘She looks drained.’
That was the thought I had.
She seemed a little different after Isabella had arrived.
But I wasn’t the type to suppress my curiosity.
Nor was I perceptive enough to carefully read someone’s feelings.
“Lady Doloris.”
I called her quietly.
…….
She slowly opened her eyes, turned her head toward me, and smiled gently.
I asked her directly.
“Did something happen today?”
“……Sometimes, Lionel.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t seem like a child.”
……
That suddenly hit a little too close to home.
Instead of answering, Doloris gave me a warm smile and rose from her place.
Then, just like yesterday, she walked around the bed and came over to my side.
- Sliiip.
The blanket was pulled back slightly, and she lay down beside me.
“Because I feel a little sorry for you, Lionel?”
“Me?”
What could she possibly feel sorry about toward me?
“It was a little noisy today, wasn’t it?”
“It wasn’t bad.”
She seemed to be talking about Isabella.
It wasn’t as though I had felt bad about it.
……
But perhaps that wasn’t the answer she wanted.
Doloris squeezed her eyes shut and barely managed to open her mouth.
“If you want to take Isabella’s magic lessons… tell me anytime.”
“What?”
“I can send you to Isabella by carriage.”
What was she talking about?
I absolutely, definitely did not want that.
I admitted that Isabella wasn’t actually a bad person.
But I didn’t want to sit face-to-face with her again.
I can’t do that twice. Nope.
……
I carefully studied the expression of the Doloris who had just delivered that shocking statement.
It wasn’t that she wanted me to leave.
Wait.
Her eyes were closed, and her face looked as though she had steeled herself for something.
Only after seeing that expression did I begin to understand the situation.
‘……No way.’
This woman.
Did she think I had taken a liking to Isabella?
From Doloris’s perspective.
It might have looked as though I had spent a fairly enjoyable time with Isabella.
So perhaps she had resolved to allow me to take Isabella’s magic lessons, even though she didn’t want to, because she was afraid I might want them.
“Um, Lady Doloris.”
“Yes.”
“I like you, Lady Doloris.”
Doloris’s eyes slowly opened.
What else would I be working this hard for?
“I don’t like magic, and I don’t like anything else either.”
Meeting her gaze, I continued.
“I have no plans to go anywhere.”
I said it like a joke, but
“I like you, Lady Doloris.”
This life, it’s you, Doloris.
If a thirty-year-old said something like this, people would point at him and call him a desperate creep or a lunatic.
But I was Lionel, thirteen years old.
This much cringe was worth enduring.
“I see… Lionel….”
Doloris closed her eyes and nodded.
And then.
Her feet caught my eye.
She was barefoot.
I had told her to go without them, and she really was doing so.
And her feet, now that she had removed the equipment that stopped the curse, were….
‘They’re frozen.’
They were frozen blue enough for anyone to recognize it at a glance.
She must have spent the entire morning walking around wearing nothing but dress shoes on her bare feet.
This woman planned to stay like this until the shoes I made for her were ready.
And she wanted me to go somewhere?
That was absurd.
I felt deeply uncomfortable.
When my mind fixated on one thing, I tended not to see anything else around me.
- Grab.
“Eek?!”
I grabbed Doloris’s foot.
“Lionel, let go! It’s cold….”
It was cold. Really, unbearably cold.
Living like this was too upsetting.
I didn’t know. I just….
“I’ll be back.”
I sprang to my feet.
My bedtime privileges had already been revoked anyway, and my hand had almost completely healed by the afternoon, perhaps because the medicine had started working.
I picked up the socks on her nightstand.
I gripped Tmir’s Frozen Footing tightly in my hand and waved it around.
- Whish-whish.
When I waved her socks back and forth,
Doloris’s cheeks turned red.
“I’m taking these.”
Late at night.
Even when you worked, you were supposed to do it when your mind was sharp.
Studying and gaming were the same way.
“Go to sleep first.”
Doloris started to say something, but eventually closed her mouth.
[No one can stop him, mm-hmm.]
Her face already knew that trying to stop me would be pointless.
notes