Chapter 76
After magic training was completely forbidden.
As time passed, Rinoa gradually regained her vision.
She was able to walk on her own and eat by herself.
It was a fortunate thing.
Because if it were Rinoa, she would have been quite hurt by the fact that she needed help even for such basic things.
‘But why.’
For some reason, Leon felt that Rinoa seemed to dislike that instead.
“What, is there something you don't like?”
“…It's fine.”
Even when he asked, all she did was respond sourly. She never gave a straightforward answer.
Of course, how could she honestly say it? That under the pretense of being sick, she wanted to be spoiled by him.
She could never say that, even if she died.
Instead, she could only resent Leon for failing to notice how she felt.
All she could do was send him a dissatisfied look.
‘What’s with her again.’
Leon had no way of knowing why she was acting like that.
He thought that as she got healthier, her usual temper had come back with it. When she was sick, she had at least been docile and cute.
He dismissed it as nothing more than her usual hysteria.
There was something more important.
‘I suppose it’s about time.’
Leon still hadn't told Rinoa the truth.
She was already in poor condition, and if she took a shock on top of that, he feared it would only worsen.
But now she had recovered enough. She had the right to know the truth behind the incident.
“Young lady. I have something important to tell you. Please don't be too shocked and listen carefully.”
Leon began to tell Rinoa the story.
About his conversation with Aither.
About the witch the Imperial family was hunting.
About Rinoa's origins.
None of it was ordinary, and as she listened, Rinoa was plunged into bewilderment.
And when Leon finally spoke about what Bibi might be planning.
“Stop.”
She could not bear to hear any more and cut him off.
“Stop. I don't want to hear it.”
The betrayal by someone she had trusted. The horrifying truths tangled behind it.
Rinoa's heart was still nowhere near healed enough to take all of it in.
“But, young lady. You absolutely need to know this…….”
“I said that's enough!”
In the end, Rinoa shouted.
Her shoulders rose and fell in ragged breaths beneath uncontrollable emotion.
She turned her head irritably and bit her lip hard.
“I want to be alone, so get out.”
“…….”
“Can't you hear me telling you to get out?”
“……Understood. I'll come back later.”
Leon gave a brief bow and stepped back.
He knew full well that clumsy comfort or pity would bring the current Rinoa no solace at all.
-click.
The door to the room closed.
Left alone, Rinoa hugged her knees. She buried her face deep in them.
She had wondered where things had gone wrong.
In the end, the problem had simply been that she had been born.
There was nothing she could do with a cursed bloodline like this.
Thinking that effort would have been enough was just a child's delusion.
What had Bibi been thinking when she put the poison in?
Was it a sense of duty to kill the monster? Or was it a mournful mercy to cut off this miserable fate?
Either way, it was pitiful beyond compare.
As she despaired over her lot, Rinoa entrusted her consciousness to silence.
And then.
‘……Leon.’
The end of her endless chain of thoughts invariably reached him.
Thinking about it, it was strange.
Leon must have been the first to learn that she was from the heretical bloodline the Imperial family pursued.
And yet he had not run. He had stayed by her side, even offering himself as her hands and feet while protecting her.
Why?
Why had he stayed by her side?
Once the question arose, it swelled into an uncontrollable impulse.
It felt as though she would only be satisfied if she relieved this stifling thirst right before her eyes.
Rinoa got to her feet.
***
Inside a pitch-black room.
Leon was lying on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling.
His eyes were on the void, but his mind was in a tangled mess over the situation from moments ago.
‘So it really was too much, huh.’
The fact that her blood traced back to the witch bloodline everyone despised.
The fact that she had been born not out of love or anything of the sort, but for the sake of one witch's purpose.
Pouring all that heavy burden out on her at once might have been cruel.
Should I have given her more time and unraveled it slowly?
Or would it have been better to keep my mouth shut to the very end?
Even after thinking it over again and again, I still don't know which was the right answer.
-Bang!
It was then.
The tightly shut door opened without warning, and Leon reflexively sat up.
His nerves, which had been on guard for a midnight intruder, froze the moment he recognized the silhouette at the doorway.
“Young lady?”
Standing there with the dark hallway at her back was none other than Rinoa.
And wearing nothing but a thin nightgown thrown on carelessly.
Leon couldn't hide his flustered expression as he hurriedly got out of bed.
“Young lady. What brings you here at this hour…?”
Rinoa wordlessly strode into the room. She passed Leon and climbed right onto the bed.
She even settled in and lay down.
“Young lady…?”
“I'm sleeping here tonight.”
“Pardon?”
“I'm your master, so your bed is mine too. Any objections?”
“…….”
Not only had Rinoa stormed in in the middle of the night, she was also showing off a miracle of logic.
Leon lost his words for a moment. Then he quickly came to his senses.
He had long since learned that squabbling with Rinoa was a waste of life.
“Understood. Then I'll sleep outside…….”
“Come here.”
“…….”
“Come here.”
Rinoa tapped the spot beside her with her hand.
At that, Leon finally couldn't hold back and blurted out exactly what was on his mind.
“Do you perhaps have a headache?”
“What?”
“Isn't that obvious? The young lady wants to share a bed with a slave, of all people. Unless you've lost your mind, that makes no sense.”
Rinoa frowned fiercely.
“The one who's lost her mind is you, not me. You think I'm telling you to sleep with me because I want to?”
“Then what?”
“What if an assassin comes while I'm asleep?”
“Ugh.”
There it was again.
Sound logic, yet forced.
A miracle of invincible logic.
‘Aren't you tired of this yet.’
Leon already knew perfectly well what would come next if he took it one step further.
“Bibi…….”
“Yes, yes. If it were Bibi, she'd have slept beside you. But I'm not Bibi, am I? If I had been born a woman too, I'd have slept beside you. What, should I go learn a spell from Iscalon that turns me into a woman?”
“I don't want that.”
Leon refused flatly.
At her headstrong attitude, Leon gave up with a sigh.
“If you're that worried about assassins, I'll keep watch here. Wouldn't that be safer?”
“Do whatever you want.”
Rinoa turned around with a huff, showing him her back. She pulled the blanket up to her neck.
Tonight's sleep was a lost cause.
Leon sighed and dragged over a chair to sit down.
“The bed's narrow.”
“The young lady's bed is absurdly wide.”
“It's not very soft either.”
“Compared to a pile of straw, this is practically a cloud.”
“You sure do sleep in a place like this.”
“If all you're going to do is complain, why don't you just leave?”
“Forget it. The kindhearted me will endure it.”
Leon’s bed was clearly nowhere near the quality of the bed in Rinoa's bedroom.
If she slept in a place like this, her joints would surely be in pieces by morning.
But ironically, Rinoa felt more at ease in this bed than in her own.
The bedding carried the same scent as Leon. It felt as though she were being wrapped in him.
It was incredibly comforting.
So much so that it made all her negative feelings fly away.
Rinoa turned over again. She cracked one eye open to check what Leon was doing.
Leon was sitting in the chair, arms folded, eyes closed.
“…Asleep?”
“I'm not asleep.”
“Then why are you closing your eyes?”
“When your field of vision is limited, focusing on hearing makes it easier to sense movement. You were worried about assassins, weren't you?”
Leon replied in a flat voice without opening his eyes.
At his calm demeanor, Rinoa secretly tightened her grip on the blanket.
Because there was something she absolutely had to ask.
“You......”
Rinoa began to speak in a faintly trembling voice.
“You figured out long ago that I was of the witch bloodline.”
“That's right.”
“Then why didn't you run away? If it became known that you were a witch's bodyguard, you wouldn't be safe either.”
Only then did Leon open his eyes and meet Rinoa's gaze.
Gone was her usual fierce, venomous stare. She was looking at Leon with damp, glistening eyes.
“You're someone who can't do anything on her own, so I need to stay by your side.”
“What do you mean I can't do anything?”
“Then what can you do?”
Rinoa thought for a moment.
Magic... she couldn't use it anymore.
She couldn't use a sword either.
Cooking was obviously out of the question.
She didn't know how to clean either.
She did know how to eat on her own, but if she said that out loud, she'd only become a laughingstock.
After a long while of straining to find her own talents, Rinoa finally forced out an answer.
“I can read books.”
“Is that supposed to be impressive?”
“Of course it is. Being able to read and write means being able to acquire and freely wield the vast wealth of knowledge accumulated over hundreds of years. Considering that most people in the Empire are illiterate, reading is a noble intellect that only a select few chosen ones can handle.”
Rinoa rattled on and on.
At her self-proud attitude, Leon let out a snort.
“Talk is cheap. If I were the master and the young lady the slave, I'd throw you away in an instant.”
“And that's the difference between you and me. I recognized your worth while you were rolling around in the arena and took you in, but you would have thrown away someone like me just for not being useful right away. In short, it's a difference in foresight.”
It was shamelessly arrogant superiority.
It wasn't exactly something she should be saying while she was sprawled out on a slave's cramped bed after forcibly taking it.
“Then if there were a slave like the young lady, what would you use them for?”
“If I were the slave...?”
Rinoa's pupils drifted off into space.
Even by her own standards, there wasn't much she could put to use right away.
Her stamina was rock bottom, her personality wasn't exactly pleasant, and her only real skill was being able to read.
But if she quietly admitted that here, her pride would take a hit.
After wracking her brain, Rinoa came up with a value of her own that no one could deny.
“I'd keep her as decoration.”
“……Decoration?”
“Yeah. I'd put a plush chair in some corner of the room and just let her sit there. Even without making her do any hard work, simply keeping her around would easily be worth the equivalent of several hundred exceptionally capable slaves.”
“What on earth is that conclusion based on?”
“Because I'm pretty.”
“……?”
Leon tilted his head, wondering if he'd misheard.
But Rinoa continued boldly.
“Just looking at me would ease your fatigue and relieve your stress. It's a value that can't be measured in money.”
A declaration without a shred of shame, utterly arrogant and brimming with certainty.
Leon blinked blankly, then let out an incredulous sigh.
Rinoa narrowed her brows.
“Why aren't you agreeing? Are you saying I'm not pretty?”
“So you want to earn your keep with nothing but your face. Well, I won't exactly deny it.”
In the end, Leon couldn't bring himself to put down her looks and took a step back.
She was pretty, after all.
The kind of face that'd get you turned away at a meet-the-parents dinner, perhaps.
At his lukewarm surrender, Rinoa's lips curled slightly, as though she were basking in victory.
“Even without someone like you, my future is bright. I can do everything myself.”
“Then should I just leave?”
“……No.”
“What are you even talking about? Stop babbling and go to sleep.”
And with that, the room fell silent.
Rinoa quietly watched Leon sitting in the chair, only her eyes peeking out from under the blanket.
It was a truly useless exchange of banter. Trivial complaining and insolent retorts.
If it had been before, this would have been a conversation she would have cut off in one stroke as disrespectful, but strangely enough, this squabbling felt very comfortable now.
So much so that the cruel truths that had driven her all day felt like nothing.
‘Maybe it doesn't matter if I'm a witch or whatever…….’
As long as Leon stayed by her side like this.
Of course, Rinoa had no intention of being satisfied with her current state. She wanted even more than this.
Even so, it would be terribly humiliating for her to make the first move, so she'd have to make Leon come to her first.
It might take quite a while, but that was fine.
Leon was a slave.
As long as she didn't let him go, he'd stay by her side for the rest of his life.
‘There was no need to rush at all.’