Chapter 92
The reason the Tower Master had gone through with all this was the whispering of the two young ladies.
“Lady Scarlett. Men are nothing more than male beasts who turn their eyes away when other women come wagging their tails at them.”
“L-Lady Scarlett?”
“So you have to grab him tight and shake him so he can never run away again!! Do you understand?!”
Although Akion had never actually flirted with another woman, women seemed to flock to him of their own accord.
And with the Tower Master's own feelings leaning toward Akion these days… those words had struck a little too close to home.
So she had mobilized power, strength, and sheer force of will to arrange a one-on-one date with Akion,
and for the first time in her life, she was forming a relationship with a man from a romantic perspective.
- Squeeze…!
“Ngh.”
Of course, there had been men who desired her during her two-thousand-year life as a dragon.
Some had claimed that because they were the hero's brother, their child with her would become the new emperor.
Others had promised that a man who had ensnared countless women would whisper words of love to her every night.
And a great warrior from the north had even promised to come and pin her beneath him.
- Rub, rub~
“Ngh.”
“What's wrong?”
“Nothing. It's nothing.”
If a man came up to a dragon and abruptly said, ‘Be mine,’ there was no way she would respond, ‘Heeung, okay♡.’
So when she rejected them and they either insulted her without understanding the difference in strength or tried to assault her, she naturally had to teach them a lesson.
Thanks to that, the Tower Master's terrible reputation spread far and wide,
and people stopped daring to call her by her name casually, referring to her simply as the ‘Tower Master.’ But anyway.
- Rub, rub, rub!
“Nghh!”
“What's wrong?”
“A-Akion. Stop playing around…!”
In conclusion,
she was a woman who had never gone on a date with a man in her two thousand years of life,
nor had she ever held a man's hand during a date.
It was exactly the sort of situation where the Tower Master would normally go, ‘Hweeeng, I like it~’… but there was one problem: Akion.
More precisely, the flirting hormones flowing through his blood.
“What sort of prank?”
“You mean interlacing your fingers and rubbing them with our palms touching, th-that sort of thing!”
The memories of the living history book known as Tower Master Lidashid vividly retained what each generation of the Enerysis family had been like.
There had been cases like Elena, the first count, who had been devoted to a single love, but most of them…
- Press, press.
“Nghhh…!”
“What's the problem?”
had kept quite a lot of female friends around.
Not merely female friends, either, but female friends with a certain amount of romance between them.
It was strange. Rather than seeming intentional, romantic partners simply seemed to get drawn to them naturally.
Juan, on the other hand, had deliberately exploited that tendency.
“How could this be a problem between you and me, Tower Master? We're close, aren't we?”
“Just because we're close doesn't mean you can play with my hand like th-that! I-I permit—Ngh…!”
Anyway, to borrow Goldie's expression, one could call it ‘very fox-like!’
He had grabbed her hand first,
interlaced their fingers,
and was kneading her hand relentlessly while saying, ‘We're close, so it doesn't matter.’?!
Even the romantically clueless Tower Master knew this was something only lovers did!
“If you don't like it, I'll stop.”
“N-no, don't…!”
After teasing a person's… no, a dragon's heart like that, he was going to stop?
The Tower Master wanted to cover her mouth after that denial slipped out by mistake,
and Akion, watching her…
- Squeeze~!
“If you like it, that's all that matters.”
With a subtle smile carrying genuine warmth rather than his usual business smile, he squeezed her hand even tighter.
The fact that he was being genuinely sincere made it all the more infuriating to the Tower Master.
“Ugh, ughhh…!”
No wonder Goldie called him a fox.
Despite being the one who had planned the date, the Tower Master began getting dragged around by Akion.
*
Of course, Akion wasn't completely oblivious to her feelings.
After all, her words and actions were similar to Scarlett's behavior toward Juan.
‘She secretly likes it.’
He was merely following Juan's instructions on how to make a woman feel good(?) for the moment.
Besides, the Tower Master's reactions were so entertaining that he kept teasing her even more.
‘Father was popular too, wasn't he?’
According to Countess Lucretia's testimony, even Delford had gone around with women hanging off him during his academy days.
Seeing Akion enjoy this sort of behavior just like Juan did… it might have been an Enerysis family trait.
“Tower Master, why is your face so red?”
“Do not tease me!!”
Besides, the method Juan had taught him for winning a woman's heart was something meant for lovers, not friends.
“Don't be like that. Will you tell me?”
“I told you not to tease me!!”
Because of that, the Tower Master's thought process was gradually shutting down.
Akion, meanwhile, was cackling because he found it fun.
“Ahem. Anyway… we've arrived.”
In any case, today was the day the Tower Master had mobilized everything she had to steal Akion away from Goldie, Aysirel, Flare, and the Saintess.
But the morning had been spent on deep-fried ice cream, leaving them short on time….
So the Tower Master wanted to take her time with the rest of the day's schedule.
“This is… a theater, isn't it?”
She wanted an activity that would let him clear his head, even briefly, and simply enjoy himself by laughing or crying.
Something like a play.
*
Whether in his previous life or this one, theaters were unfamiliar places to Akion.
In both lives combined, the only kind of theater he had ever visited was a movie theater.
“Ohhh, Romiela!”
“Ah, Julian!”
He had never seen a musical, either, so how could he possibly have experience with plays?
As he watched a play that seemed to be a moderately adapted and comedified version of Romeo and Juliet, Akion was bewildered by this unfamiliar culture.
“Pfft, how amusing.”
The Tower Master seemed to share the public's sense of humor and was enjoying herself.
But Akion had the values and thought processes of his previous life installed in him, so… he couldn't relate at all.
“Ha ha.”
Still, hadn't the Tower Master brought him here with consideration for him?
So Akion forced himself to laugh along with the mood.
- Press.
“Akion.”
But the Tower Master had spent over two thousand years watching countless intelligent beings with emotions.
Sensing that something was off with Akion, she covered the back of his hand with her own.
“Is it perhaps not to your liking…?”
She couldn't read his emotions, but she could at least notice his business smile.
Akion hesitated over whether or not to tell her as he met the Tower Master's anxious gaze, but….
“W-was it that obvious?”
Instead of telling a well-intentioned lie, he confessed an uncomfortable truth.
He was sure she would see through him no matter how much he tried to hide it.
“I see….”
After pondering Akion's frank and honest answer, the Tower Master
- Grip!
“Then let us leave.”
“Pardon?”
immediately took Akion's hand and led him away.
Out of the theater, that was.
“No, why? You said it was difficult to get these tickets.”
Since they had already come out, Akion intended to stay with her until the end.
He hadn't expected the Tower Master to scrap the schedule the moment he said he disliked it, though.
“We can still watch until the end—.”
“Akion.”
At the end of summer, when the heat was beginning to fade,
beneath a night sky filled with stars densely scattered across a navy-blue palette and illuminated by several moons,
the Tower Master leaned against the theater's empty veranda and looked up at the sky.
“One of the things I regret is having forced someone who cared for me, only to lose him.”
In her life spanning a millennium and another thousand years of the Empire, there had been people sacrificed to her commands.
Some had once been her friends, and some had been people she taught.
“So, at least when I can bear the cost myself… I have wanted to respect and consider the wishes of those who have entered my heart.”
Even for a dragon who had lived ten thousand years, that night sky would be eternal.
So it was only natural for it to serve as a device for recalling old memories.
Following the Tower Master's gaze, Akion looked up at the sky as well… and then a question arose from her earlier statement.
“Then why did you force me to become your disciple when we first met?”
“You little rascal. Now you know how glorious that is for a human!”
“Heh heh.”
Of course, he had only been joking.
Akion now understood that the fact he had rejected her offer because he hadn't known the Tower Master's influence at the time had actually been socially absurd.
“And back then, I didn't have much fondness for you. I merely thought you were an exceptionally clever child.”
“You did?”
“Mm. Perhaps a genius who could express natural phenomena as equations?”
Of course, that formalization rested on the foundations built by the scientists of Akion's previous life.
Hearing that, Akion couldn't help but puff out his chest a little.
“What about now?”
As the conversation followed that train of thought, they naturally arrived at the question of how she felt now.
Akion knew by now that the Tower Master held a somewhat different kind of affection for him.
“Now, you say.”
A little anxiety, a little expectation.
And something somewhat larger… something warm.
That was the kind of emotion Akion sensed in the Tower Master's gaze.
- Slide.
Before he had time to feel the weighty something gradually filling the gaze that had fallen from the sky,
the Tower Master placed her hand over the back of his to keep Akion from running away.
“I should not judge others too hastily, but… in my eyes, Akion, you seem to have thick defensive mechanisms around your heart.”
“……”
And she dug straight into Akion's wounded spot.
“Did Goldie… tell you about me?”
“Only as much as she worries about you. Do not concern yourself. She told me only when it was just Goldie and me.”
Honestly, Akion wanted to get away from there immediately.
But the gentle hand stroking his seemed to be soothing him, telling him that it was all right.
“Everything that acts upon a person during infancy and adolescence shapes that person's character. Yet you are a good person, as if to prove those words wrong.”
- Pat, pat.
“Isn't that right, Goldie?”
“Urk.”
She even called out Goldie, who had been hiding nearby and eavesdropping.
Of the three now facing one another, Goldie fidgeted before taking a deep breath.
“Because I've seen Young Master get bullied… terribly….”
“Goldie.”
“So I could see that Young Master couldn't easily trust people. Mm, so in Goldie's eyes….”
From Goldie's perspective, pointing out a flaw in the young master she served was an insane thing to do.
Even if she were scolded and thrown out for it, Goldie would have no right to complain….
“It seemed like Young Master trusted relationships based more on information… on contracts, than relationships between people.”
For the sake of the young master she trusted most, she could at least speak her mind.
- Squeeze.
As she said this, Goldie tightly gripped Akion's sleeve and fidgeted helplessly.
Akion knew very well why she was doing this… because she was afraid he would be hurt.
“And yet the breadth of what you give is so great. It almost seems as if you hate making enemies.”
When you thought about it, Akion had had a difficult time as a minor in both his previous and current lives.
His parents had both behaved like trash in both lives,
and in his previous life, there had been countless people who slandered him out of jealousy over his research talent,
while in this life, he had been subjected to endless bullying because people looked down on his meager magical talent.
“So… u-ugh, I'm sorry, Young Master….”
And yet there was one thing Akion could know for certain now.
“I am sorry, Akion. It may be an unnecessary concern, but Goldie and I did this because we were so worried about you.”
“I-I don't know if Young Master knows this… but Goldie and the Tower Master both like Young Master a little. No, not a little—they like you a lot!”
“Why would you say that so bluntly?!”
These people cared about Akion so very, very much.
“Haaah, anyway… that's why I was about to say that I would wait. Do you know how long I've been circling around just to say this?”
“Uuugh, I'm sorry….”
And they were saying they would wait beside Akion until he opened his heart.
They would keep helping him while they waited.
Akion felt more than just a tickling in his heart… he felt a tingling jolt all over.
“If you wish to chastise me for this, I shall take responsibility. When you think about it, I did little more than gossip about you with Goldie behind your back—uh?!”
“G-Goldie won't run away either… Even if you take out your anger on Goldie for as long as you're angry, Goldie will quietly stay—whoa!”
How could people's hearts be this beautiful?
Akion immediately hugged both Goldie and the Tower Master tightly.
“Thank you.”
“Ah, ah, yes. Right.”
“Young Master….”
In his embrace, which carried a faint metallic scent, Goldie and the Tower Master were bewildered, yet…
- Squeeze….
- Pat, pat.
they naturally hugged him back.
Judging by how his body was trembling, he might even have been crying….
So they thought they should ease the pain in his wounded heart.
*
The next day.
“Akion, descending.”
Akion burst out of the lodging house looking a little brighter than usual.
Perhaps it was because he had shared his feelings to some extent with Goldie and the Tower Master the previous day; thanks to that, the weight on his heart had lightened.
“Coolness confirmed.”
“What nonsense is this idiot spouting the moment he comes out?”
Of course, he still had to endure Juan's look of someone seeing a madman.
Juan, who had been about to ask Akion whether the date the day before had gone well, let out a deep sigh.
“Judging by how you look, I guess it went well.”
“Are you praising yourself after throwing me at a dragon, Big Brother?”
“Then should I have picked a fight with the dragon?”
“Tsk.”
If he picked a fight, Juan would turn from Juan (Big Brother) into Juan (Big Sister) again.
From Juan's perspective, he had no choice but to agree.
“So, how did it go?”
Still, Juan couldn't help being curious.
Had his youngest little brother really managed to seduce a dragon?!
“No.”
“Did you try everything I taught you? What was the Tower Master's reaction?”
“I did all of it, and she got incredibly embarrassed and kept clinging to me.”
“Are you impotent?”
That was the first thought that came to Juan after hearing Akion's answer.
Since he didn't know the circumstances behind it, it was an understandable thought, but from Akion's perspective, it was terribly unfair.
“Anyway, she said she would wait.”
“Oh, I guess she does have feelings for you. Hang in there.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
In any case, it was still the weekend today.
With no work to do, Akion decided to go get something to eat with Juan, partly so he could tell him the details he didn't know.
And then,
- Hummmmmm!!!
“Good Lord.”
“Oh my God.”
Akion encountered a group of holy knights with their hair standing straight up in front of Montblanche, right in the middle of the main street.
“Heh heh heh… As expected, the espresso of Saint Akion! An incredible power is surging through me!!!”
“With this power, I could split even a high-ranking black mage in half and kill him!”
As the conversation grew increasingly violent,
“You know those senior knights who went east? They'll be bringing back good news soon, so let's look forward to it, heh heh!”
“What?”
Akion heard something he could not simply ignore.
“Wait a moment!!!”
“Hmm? O-oh!! Saint Akion!!!”
“What sort of news are the people who went east supposed to bring back?!”
What kind of news could they possibly be bringing that had them talking about espresso?!
The answer was…
“Why, because they took black holy relics with them to subjugate demons!”
“And the Saintess discovered this yesterday, but she said concentrating it would produce an even more powerful effect!!”
“Oh my God!!”
The veteran holy knights had taken concentrated espresso extract with them on their demon-subjugation expedition.