Chapter 70
At the party hall lit by foreign-style lanterns, guests in obviously expensive clothing and attendants dressed in desert-dancer costumes were lost in the sweet moments brought on by the candy.
Some had openly disheveled their clothes and were pressing bare skin together. Such people would leave the sofas and head for another room while embracing one another.
One woman surveyed the debauchery with a cool gaze.
She was a slender woman of about twenty, with pale blond hair cut evenly at her chin. She wore embroidered garments and a fur cloak, with two pistols hanging at her waist.
This woman, known as Veronica, was the right hand of a man named Sloth, the host of the Candy Party.
Officially, she was a mercenary, but she also handled odd jobs and other menial tasks.
Even now, Veronica was walking around the party hall, replenishing Sloth's special incense.
There were six censers placed throughout the hall. As Veronica made her rounds, replenishing each one, she suddenly noticed that the smoke from the incense she had just replenished—or, more precisely, the magical power contained in it—was being drawn toward a single location.
"…?"
Veronica concentrated and looked toward the place where the magical power in the incense was flowing.
The magical power seemed to be concentrating on a single young man—a slender youth with long silver hair tied at the nape of his neck.
The young man wore an irritated expression as he led a petite girl out of the hall by the hand.
Veronica's very pale violet eyes shone quietly, as though she had found hope.
"…At last, I found him."
She murmured, her shoulders trembling.
(Sloth is calling me. Trouble upstairs?)
Now that she had found the person she was looking for, she no longer cared what happened to Sloth.
But to repay him for all the help he had given her, she supposed she could handle one last bit of work.
Keeping the silver-haired young man in sight, Veronica left the hall as well.
＊ ＊ ＊
Cyril walked quickly down the corridor without saying a word.
Monica was frightened by the anger radiating from Cyril's back, and could do nothing but lower her head in silence.
Ah, something like this had happened in the past, too. In a kind of escape from reality, Monica remembered when she had only just entered Serendia Academy.
(Back then, I was summoned to the student council room, and I was scared, so I hid under a desk, and then Cyril-sama got angry with me…)
And then Cyril had put ice shackles on her and dragged her to the student council room.
There were no ice shackles around Monica's wrist now, but she could feel far more of Cyril's anger through the hand gripping her wrist than she ever had through those shackles.
Eventually, Cyril stopped and unlocked a door whose number plate matched the number on the tag attached to his key.
The room was a cramped guest room with only the bare minimum of furniture. However, every piece of furnishing looked expensive. It was probably a room where prostitutes or male prostitutes received clients.
Cyril pulled Monica inside, closed the door, and released her hand.
"What were you doing in a place like this?"
At his low, interrogative voice, Monica flinched.
She opened her lips, thinking she had to say something, but no words of excuse came out.
How far would he believe her if she told him that a mysterious big sister she had met in front of her house had dragged her here to toughen her up?
To Cyril, it must have looked as though Monica had gone to that disreputable place of her own accord and become intimate with a man named Michel.
Thinking about that made a dull pain throb deep in her chest—much, much more intensely than any pain she had felt before.
Cyril had scolded her before. So why did her chest hurt this much?
…It must have been because Monica had realized she was in love.
(Is being hated by the person you love really this painful?)
As she bit her lip, lowered her head, and trembled, Cyril let out a soft breath.
"Raul told me that you were troubled by something."
"…Ngh…"
"If you have a problem, why didn't you come to me? Am I really so unreliable?"
"N-no, that's not it…!"
She couldn't say it.
She loved Cyril, had been jealous of his prospective fiancée, and had even felt happy when their engagement was called off… How could she possibly tell Cyril that?
"I'm not troubled by anything. I came here as someone's companion… Really, it's nothing at all."
When she said that and glanced up at Cyril, his expression grew even sterner.
He hated deceit and insincerity; he must have seen through Monica's lie.
(I'm being cowardly.)
She had lied to Cyril, who had worried about her and chased after her all the way here, because she didn't want him to hate her.
Even though she knew that he hated insincerity.
Cyril did not yell at her over her clumsy lie.
He merely closed his eyes, exhaled, and slowly formed his words.
"I know that you are not someone who lies without reason. There must be some circumstance that brought you to a place like this… Is it something you cannot tell me about?"
Monica felt so sorry that she wanted to cry.
Cyril trusted her—the timid Monica who could not tell him the truth or reveal her feelings.
And even so, he was speaking to her with such kindness.
(I'm sorry, Cyril-sama. I'm sorry for falling in love with you without permission, causing you trouble, and making you worry…)
Though Cyril was angry, he was looking at Monica with concern.
Come to think of it, he had always been like this, even when they were on the student council.
Cyril had always worried about Monica even as he scolded her. He had always reached out to her.
…That was what made Monica happy.
"Is there anything I can do for you?"
At those words, full of concern despite his anger, Monica found herself reaching out.
Her slender fingertips clutched the edge of Cyril's clothing as though clinging to him.
This was all Monica could manage.
"P-please… don't hate me…"
The words left her mouth, and Monica's face flushed with embarrassment.
For Monica, who had grown up amid malice from a young age, "Please don't hate me" was a wish more earnest—and more extravagant—than anything in the world.
(I have no right to wish for something like this…!)
As Monica was ashamed of having voiced such a wish beyond her station, her vision suddenly went dark.
It was Cyril's shoulder blocking her view.
An arm wrapped around her back and pulled her frail, breakable body into an embrace.
"I could never hate you."
＊ ＊ ＊
From the moment he entered the establishment, Cyril had been suffering from intense dizziness.
His head spun terribly, and every now and then he felt intoxicated, as though a haze were clouding his thoughts.
If he let his guard down, he felt as though he might release the reins of reason and act on impulse alone.
That was why Cyril had remained tense the entire time.
When he saw Monica being pinned down on a sofa in the hall, his vision went white with rage, and he nearly began chanting an attack spell on the spot, but he still managed to restrain himself.
Even while questioning Monica, Cyril had nearly shouted several times.
──To think you were so defenseless in front of such a frivolous man!
──What would you have done if something had happened?!
──Why would you keep something like this to yourself without consulting anyone?!
He had swallowed those words, suppressed the impulse surging up from his gut, and tried to speak calmly—or so he thought.
But when Monica tentatively pinched the edge of his clothes and looked up at him with tearful eyes, Cyril's mind went blank.
"P-please… don't hate me…"
The moment his mind understood those words, he had pulled Monica into his arms before he could think.
"I could never hate you."
The words slipped surprisingly smoothly from Cyril's mouth. They were his true feelings, spilling out on impulse.
There was no way he could ever come to hate Monica. So why had he said something like that?
If only she would be more selfish. If only she would want more. If only she would ask for more.
(…Why is that such a lonely wish?)
His fingers tightened unconsciously around Monica's back, and her body gave a little jerk.
Cyril looked down at Monica's face in his arms.
Monica's face was bright red all the way to her ears, and her tear-filled eyes and half-open lips trembled.
(………… What am I doing──?!)
The effects of the magical drug had weakened because they had moved away from the incense-filled room. Cyril, however, had no idea what had been happening to his body.
Only now did Cyril finally realize that he had impulsively embraced Monica. Far too late.
Cyril turned bright red and opened and closed his mouth soundlessly. Monica, still bright red, trembled all over.
Cyril was so panicked that he couldn't even speak, and he failed to realize that he should at least let go of Monica.
(Bringing a woman into a room and embracing her—this is the height of indecency! Someone, hit me!)
That wish came true in an unexpected way.
The 〈Thorn Witch〉 Raul Roseberg kicked down the door and burst into the room, raising his right hand high.
"Hyaaah!"
With a vigorous battle cry utterly unsuited to his refined features, Raul snapped the candy he held between his fingers and shoved it into Cyril's mouth. It was a rose candy made by Raul himself.
The scent of the rose syrup sealed inside the candy spread throughout Cyril's mouth, and his consciousness began to fade…
＊ ＊ ＊
"Whew, good thing I happened to have the Roseberg family's secret rose candy with me! I added a slightly stronger sedative to it, so he'll be back to his senses when he wakes up!"
Monica opened and closed her mouth in bewilderment as she looked back and forth between Raul, who was smiling brightly after finishing his task, and Cyril, who lay unconscious on the floor.
"E-er, um… Raul-sama…?"
"This place was burning incense infused with a magical drug. The kind with an effect like an aphrodisiac. Cyril has that constitution that makes him absorb too much magical power, right? So it looks like it affected him extra strongly."
"M-magical drugs… I-I see! Magical drugs, of course!"
Monica spoke rapidly as though trying to convince herself, nodding repeatedly for no reason.
Raul gazed at Cyril sprawled on the floor and muttered as though talking to himself, arms folded.
"Still, that incense they were burning downstairs… Something about it bothers me. It smelled like the Roseberg family's secret love potion. Not exactly the same, though… It was like they'd mixed something into it."
"……?"
The Roseberg family's love potion, adulterated with something else.
Melissa had complained that the product she sold was being ruined and circulated.
And there was the rose-scented candy Melissa had given her.
Those three things came together, and a certain possibility rose in Monica's mind.
(C-could it be…?)
Just then, a tremendous noise came from the floor above. It sounded as though all the furniture in a room had been overturned.
Monica remembered that this was the room closest to the stairs. For some reason, she felt a sense of foreboding.
As Monica pressed a hand to her chest, she heard the sound of glass shattering upstairs.
When she glanced toward the window, a table came crashing down from upstairs amid shards of glass.
"Do you think they're having a lover's quarrel upstairs?"
Raul opened the window as he spoke idly and looked up at the window on the floor above.
Monica approached the window and looked up as well.
The upstairs window had been shattered to pieces, and green vines stretched out through it. They were rose vines, twisting like snakes with minds of their own.
"Ah, Big Sis's thorns."
At Raul's words, Monica realized that her guess had been right.