Chapter 49
Kairos furtively watched my reaction, waiting for an answer.
And I, completely dazed, could only let out a hollow laugh.
“……You crazy bastard.”
Still, the end of that suffocating awkwardness came sooner than expected.
I turned away, forcing myself to look calm, and gave him a ‘willing’ smile.
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that just now.”
I gave a casual wave behind my head, ignored him, and started walking back toward the inside of the store.
Wow, I never thought I’d hear a man say something like that to me in my lifetime.
I fanned my burning face with my hand, trying to erase that utterly absurd bullshit I had just heard from my mind.
“Rene, wait a second.”
But that lasted only a moment. Suddenly, someone seized my wrist hard from behind, and my center of gravity lurched backward.
What came into view when I turned was, predictably, his hand gripping my wrist, and his face, infinitely more serious than before.
“Are you done?”
I yanked my hand away roughly. This time, I backed away while glaring at him, filled with wariness.
“I was being serious.”
But Kairos showed no sign of the slightest hesitation. His intensely serious gaze remained fixed on my face.
Is this guy seriously insane…? As I kept backing away in confusion, my back soon touched a cold wall.
Without thinking, I quickly glanced around, then clenched my teeth and warned him in as quiet a voice as possible.
“Are you seriously crazy? What the hell are you doing with everyone watching!”
I was flustered. I hadn’t realized this guy could be this reckless.
Besides, though I had tried to ignore it, what he had just said to me was essentially a confession.
Only when I thrust both hands forward to tell him not to come any closer did Kairos finally stop in front of me.
“Why the hell are you doing this to me?”
“Give me a proper answer.”
“What?!”
“I told you earlier. I asked how I could make someone else like me. Tell me how. What do I have to do to make you, Rene….”
“W-wait! Please, just stop!”
By now, even hearing him talk about it was agonizing.
I squeezed my eyes shut once, then opened them and took a deep breath.
“All right, Kairos. Calm down first and listen to what I have to say.”
“……”
Kairos silently nodded. I continued speaking as calmly as possible.
“To get straight to the point, I don’t like you.”
“……”
Kairos’s expression instantly changed into that of a wounded puppy.
“No… more precisely, I mean I don’t like you right now. I’m not saying I’ll hate you forever.”
I added that for the sake of a possible future. For Rene—not for me.
Someday, I would return to my original body, and I didn’t want the ‘real Rene’s’ romantic prospects to get tangled up because of me.
“To begin with, Kairos, you’re only a first-year, aren’t you? What are you going to do, getting a partner already?”
“Is age really important when you like someone?”
“Of course it is! Are you just going to give up on your studies?”
“What on earth does that have to do with studying?”
“Dating will take time away from studying, and you’ll spend your energy elsewhere!”
“Somewhere else? Specifically, where do you mean?”
“Y-you’re asking me that right now?”
I let out a hollow laugh, too dumbfounded to respond.
I pulled my expression back together and shook my head.
“In any case, no matter what you do from now on, there’s absolutely no chance that I, as I am now, will come to like you. So give up already.”
This was also something I was saying for his future.
He was currently going through the most important period of his life, and there could be nothing stupider or more foolish than pouring precious time and energy into a relationship that was never going to happen.
“……”
Kairos lowered his head again, turning into a dejected puppy.
I didn’t know how he looked to other women, but honestly, to me—as a man—that expression only looked pathetic.
“Anyway, let’s consider this conversation completely over.”
I sighed and turned around. Then I headed toward the clothing racks, treating the guy before me as though he were completely invisible.
But it was right then.
“Mmph?!”
Kairos suddenly lunged at me.
Before I had time to react, his large hand clamped over my mouth, and his body slammed into me, shoving me back as though tackling me.
‘W-what?!’
The place I was helplessly pushed into was the dressing room in the corner of the clothing store. The thick curtain covering the entrance was roughly pulled aside with a sharp swish.
I couldn’t process the situation before me at all, and my entire body went rigid. Only after Kairos slammed the dressing room’s wooden door shut did I gradually begin to grasp reality.
‘This bastard… is he going this far just because I rejected him?’
A chill suddenly ran down my spine, and a primal fear engulfed my entire body. I immediately raised a hand and tried with all my strength to pry his hand off my mouth.
“Shh, keep quiet.”
But in Rene’s frail body, I couldn’t pry off his hand, no matter how hard I tried.
Feeling dizzy, I stomped down as hard as I could on the top of his foot.
“Ugh….”
A short groan escaped him at once, but his hand remained over my mouth. Instead, he now wrapped both arms tightly around me from behind, completely pinning down my struggling body.
His enormous hand, his overpowering scent filling the cramped dressing room, and his body pressed firmly against my back.
‘Disgusting!’
Now fear was joined by anger, bringing tears to my eyes. I hadn’t known this bastard was this insane.
My heart began beating faster and faster with fear. Starting from his forearm wrapped tightly around my side, the burning heat of anger spread throughout my body.
I barely managed to pull myself together and began coldly analyzing the situation.
‘If I resist any further, he might cast Corpus Immotus….’
There was no reasoning with someone who had already crossed the line.
And if he cast a paralysis spell, I would truly have no way left to resist.
‘……For now, I should stop resisting, endure it, and wait for an opportunity.’
Yes, for now, that was the most appropriate course of action.
It wasn’t as if I’d die just from letting him touch me a little.
‘I’m letting a man do this to me….’
It felt as though all the strength had drained from my body. When I steeled myself and stopped struggling, I heard a small sigh by my ear.
Only then did the strength in his arms, which had been hugging me painfully tightly, ease a little.
And soon, a serious yet resolute voice followed close to my ear.
“There’s a demon outside.”
“……Huh?”
Wait, what did he say? This time, my thought process stopped for an entirely different reason.
When I silently raised my head and met his gaze, he released me completely.
“It probably kept following me, waiting for a chance to target me.”
“What?”
“It wouldn’t have been able to target me directly while I was inside the school.”
Luminus Academy’s defenses were comparable to those of the Imperial Palace.
As he said, a mere demon couldn’t simply break through the barrier and sneak in.
“B-but you said you took care of all three of them?”
“I told you. I didn’t take care of them; I only drove them away temporarily. And the bastard who cast the expulsion spell on us wasn’t even one of the three.”
Kairos, his expression hardened, approached the door and peered outside. I cautiously moved up beside him and looked out the door as well.
“The people… they’re gone?”
The store, bustling only moments ago, was completely empty.
“It probably cast a wide-area perception-altering spell. Even demons like them can’t openly run wild in the middle of a major city.”
“A perception-manipulation spell?”
“Yeah. The people probably think this store is closed right now.”
“It can manipulate perception on that scale….”
I leaned my head out a little farther and looked around the store.
When our cheeks brushed, Kairos flinched and stepped back.
“So where is that demon now?”
“I don’t know.”
“What?”
“It hid itself as soon as it came in. It’s probably looking for us.”
Kairos drew the familiar staff from inside his robes.
“But don’t worry too much. When we came in, I put up a temporary barrier around this dressing room to conceal us. It won’t be able to see us or hear our voices, either.”
Kairos’s face remained calm, without the slightest tremor. The eyes of the staff-wielding Kairos gleamed sharply, like an eagle stalking its prey.
“How… how can you stay so calm even in a situation like this?”
I was genuinely curious. My heart felt like it was going to burst, even though I wasn’t the one directly involved.
Kairos looked down at me for a moment, then answered, his expression relaxing ever so slightly.
“I’m fairly used to this sort of thing.”
“Used to it….”
Could it be that even before I found him in the western forest… no, maybe Kairos had been hunting demons alone since long before he enrolled in the academy?
“……That’s impossible.”
I suddenly began to grasp the fundamental gap between our abilities.
Seeing me like that, Kairos instead smiled faintly and gently stroked my head.
“So don’t worry too much. Rene, I’ll protect you no matter what.”
“……”
I couldn’t bring myself to make a sound. I merely stared blankly up at his face.
“For now, hide here, Rene. You know how to cast a barrier spell, right?”
At his words, I silently nodded.
Kairos smiled once more, as if relieved, then adjusted his grip on the staff in his hand.
And just as he slowly opened the dressing room door… it happened.
Thump.
In an instant, my heart began pounding with such force that it seemed to echo directly in my ears.
“Ugh….”
At the same time, the strength left my legs, and my body crumpled as though collapsing in place. Heat suddenly surged through my entire body as if it had caught fire, and I burned all over as though I had stood for a long time beneath the blazing summer sun.
“R-Rene?”
Kairos, looking flustered, hurriedly supported me.
The moment his hand touched my shoulder, he flinched, and a dazed voice slipped out.
“A mana seizure?”
In an instant, my vision began to blur. My heartbeat grew faster and faster, completely beyond my control. Then an excruciating headache, too painful to bear, came crashing over me all at once.
“Aaagh….”
With one hand, I clutched my head as if it would burst, and with the other, I gripped my wildly pounding heart.
This… this was incomparably more intense than any pain I had ever experienced.
“Stay with me!”
Even Kairos’s urgent voice ringing in my ears felt impossibly distant.
And soon… my consciousness rapidly sank into a deep, dark abyss.
“Don’t tell me… a resurrection?”
The last thing I heard as my consciousness hazily faded away was Kairos’s voice, thick with bewilderment.