Chapter 50
Blanc was brought back by Marlene, who had doggedly come looking for him,
and Fulcare was brought back by Vieta, so everyone returned to their original places.
Starting the next day, flower pollen once again began swirling through Ahan City.
This was because the marquis had officially announced that Ahan’s Ghost had disappeared thanks to Crown Prince Roen.
The marquis even arranged a special banquet for Roen, and Marlene took the seat beside him.
It was the reward for being the first to discover the fallen prince and take action.
As Blanc and Marlene enjoyed Ahan’s hospitality,
Vieta was in Fulcare’s room with him.
Unlike Blanc, who had lost consciousness from extreme mana depletion, Fulcare had been drenched in demonic energy and forcibly drained of his vitality, so he needed time to recover even after regaining consciousness.
*
“Phew.”
Only after Vieta left the room with a meal tray did Fulcare finally let out the sigh he had been holding back.
He raised both hands and touched his ears and face.
There was still a slight warmth lingering there.
“I’m going crazy.”
Had Vieta noticed?
Fulcare covered his face with one hand.
Even for an archmage like him, concealing his feelings was exceedingly difficult.
It was all because of that damn Pesna.
Pesna’s fragrance, said to burrow into the dark corners of the human heart, had shown Fulcare countless nightmares as well.
It began with the memory of meeting the goddess who descended in the middle of a burned village and becoming a mage,
followed by memories of struggling through the Demon Realm with his companions, including Vieta,
and even the memory of Vieta, driven mad after they defeated the Demon King, charging at him.
They were all painful memories.
But of all of them, what tormented Fulcare most was….
It was the nightmare from when he was still fiercely resisting, before he became addicted to Pesna.
‘Your lover is dead.’
Saying that, Pesna summoned Vieta and kept killing her over and over.
At the time, he knew Vieta could never die like that, so he had endured it by dismissing Pesna’s words as nonsense,
but the moment he saw Vieta looking down at him with her face horribly disfigured, Fulcare could not help but concede that Pesna’s words held some truth.
Though they weren’t lovers, he was in love with Vieta.
It was a feeling he had held onto for a very long time.
From then on, he felt embarrassed whenever he looked at Vieta.
He had no desire to immediately confess his feelings to Vieta.
What mattered most to Vieta was returning to her original world.
He could never become an obstacle that held her back.
But treating her as he had before did not work as he intended, either.
“Eat.”
When he put down his spoon because he had no appetite, Vieta tore the bread into small pieces, mixed it into the soup, then held out a spoonful to him.
He tried to take the spoon, insisting that he could eat by himself, but there was no way he could win against Vieta.
In the end, Fulcare had to obediently let her feed him until he finished the bowl of soup.
The awkwardness still drove him nearly mad, but compared with everything else, this was a relief.
When Vieta had said he seemed to have a fever and placed her hand on his forehead, he had nearly lost his mind.
It was something she did casually even under normal circumstances, but this time his face had gone bright red, to the point of distress.
“Maybe I should ask Iseria to hypnotize me or something.”
He no longer had the nerve to face Vieta as if nothing were wrong; he was reduced to babbling nonsense.
Keeping his distance from Vieta would probably be best for sorting out his feelings, but he knew very well that he would be unable to do so.
*
The lavish banquet hall of the southern kingdom.
Marlene, seated at a banquet table laden with seafood, looked at Roen beside her.
He looked relaxed and dignified, but his eyes were slightly narrowed.
His violet eyes were so beautiful, even while creased in a frown, that she could have watched him forever, but she hated seeing her precious prince uncomfortable.
“Your Highness, are you uncomfortable?”
“No. I’m merely a little tired.”
“It seems to be because you have been growing the Guardian Tree.”
The marquis answered Roen on Marlene’s behalf as she nodded.
As soon as they sat down at the banquet table, the Marquis of Ahan went on at length about Roen’s achievements, allowing even Marlene, who knew nothing about elves, to understand how incredible Blanc’s actions had been.
According to the marquis, the Guardian Tree was proof that its bearer had been chosen by the World Tree.
The marquis publicly declared that even those arrogant elves did not all possess a Guardian Tree, and swore allegiance to Roen as the next Crown Prince.
He may have been flattering Prince Roen somewhat to honor Ahan’s pledge of allegiance, but Marlene liked his actions.
She, too, was happy whenever her first love, Prince Roen, proved himself exceptional.
Moreover, the more supporters Prince Roen gained, the more likely it was that her calculating father would give up that damned Prince Charles.
‘Just you wait, Father.’
Marlene clenched her fist as she thought of the father who had tried to sell her to Prince Charles.
*
‘Hmm, what on earth is Viscount Blaise thinking?’
The marquis lifted his glass to wet his lips as he stole glances at Marlene.
Marlene’s inability to take her eyes off Roen made her look like a woman who had obviously fallen in love.
Yet her father, Viscount Blaise, belonged to the pro-Imperial Consort faction.
It had not always been that way.
While Crown Prince Gabin was alive, he had acted like Gabin’s most loyal dog.
But the moment Gabin died, he betrayed everyone’s expectation that he would support Prince Roen and immediately switched his allegiance to the Third Prince, Charles.
It was clear that some sort of deal had been made when Viscount Blaise sided with Prince Charles,
but since politics naturally operated on the basis of mutual interests, the marquis could understand the viscount’s actions even if he did not support them.
However, the path the viscount’s daughter was taking was, in a word, far too immature.
She was now personally demonstrating how to end up without support from either Prince Roen or Prince Charles.
It would be nice if Lady Marlene managed to claim the seat beside Prince Roen,
but once Roen became emperor, there was little chance that he would accept Viscount Blaise, who had belonged to the pro-Imperial Consort faction.
Nor would Prince Charles accept Lady Marlene, who had defied him.
‘A woman in love is frightening.’
Aide Anatole had been urging the marquis to marry and produce an heir without delay, but seeing Marlene made all desire to marry vanish.
Just imagining his own children acting like that gave him a headache.
***
After the banquet.
Blanc visited Fulcare’s room late at night.
He had plenty of backlogged work, but he needed to apologize to Fulcare first.
Knock, knock.
After Blanc knocked, the door opened quietly only after quite some time.
The moment he saw Fulcare looking so disheveled, Blanc frowned without realizing it.
“…Your arm.”
Fulcare’s left forearm, illuminated by the moonlight, was stained purple.
“Ah, sorry. Sorry. It looks ugly, doesn’t it? I rolled my sleeve up because I was hot, but I forgot.”
Fulcare unrolled his sleeve and tried to fasten the buttons.
But his trembling hand kept slipping off the buttons.
“That’s not what’s important right now.”
Blanc entered the room, hurriedly laid Fulcare on the bed, and fastened the buttons for him.
He could have left the sleeve alone, but apparently Fulcare himself was uncomfortable having the scar exposed.
“…Did you get hurt this time?”
“I did, didn’t I?”
When Blanc hesitated, unsure what to say, Fulcare continued as though nothing were wrong.
“It’s nothing. I was covered in scars like this all the time in the Demon Realm, too. It’ll return to normal in about a month."
"Then that’s good, but…."
It couldn’t possibly be good.
How could it be good that he had been injured?
Still, he couldn’t press the point with someone who was hurt.
"More importantly, if you’re feeling well enough, could you open the bottom drawer? I feel a little guilty ordering Your Highness around, though.”
You can order me around as much as you like.
When Blanc opened the drawer Fulcare had indicated, a neatly wrapped box lay inside.
“Why? Is this something I should deliver to someone?”
It was fairly heavy, and the luxurious wrapping made it obvious that it was a gift for someone.
“It’s for you.”
Blanc’s eyes widened at the unexpected words.
“I asked an attendant to buy it today. I was going to bring it to you myself, but things ended up like this.”
“…My gift?”
What did he mean, a gift all of a sudden?
When Blanc looked utterly bewildered, Fulcare brushed back his hair and spoke.
“Don’t stare so intently and embarrass the person who gave it to you. Go ahead and open it, would you?”
Inside the luxurious box was a bottle of golden whiskey.
“I’m sorry.”
Startled by the apology that came out of nowhere after the gift, Blanc stared at Fulcare, but Fulcare seemed too embarrassed to meet his eyes and was looking out the window.
“About when we fought last time. Regardless of my intentions, I was trying to deceive you, so I should have told you the truth from the start….”
“Enough.”
Blanc cut Fulcare off.
The person who should have been apologizing was not Fulcare, but him.
“…I’m the one who’s sorry.”
This time, Fulcare stared at Blanc with wide eyes.
“It felt like I was the only one being left out. I got close to you two later than you got close to each other. Maybe that’s why I acted that way. And besides….”
It was difficult for Blanc to say that he had acted that way because he liked Vieta.
When Blanc hesitated, Fulcare raised a hand and pointed at the glass.
“Why don’t we have a drink while we talk?”
“…Is it all right for a patient to drink?”
Alcohol was the best way to have a squirm-inducing heart-to-heart.
It was welcome news, but Fulcare’s health still came first.
“Don’t worry. This won’t kill me.”
Fulcare flashed him a grin.
*
“You probably know this from Aurea, but Vieta can’t reveal her identity because of her circumstances. That’s why she lives in hiding.”
Blanc listened to Fulcare in silence.
He had understood it to some extent through his cryptic exchange with the goddess, but Fulcare’s explanation made everything much clearer.
“Because Vieta lived that way solely for the Empire, I couldn’t bring myself to tell you, the Empire’s heir, so casually.”
The moonlight that entered through the window wavered as it illuminated Fulcare.
“I thought I could live as an imperial citizen only because Vieta had sacrificed herself. So I’ve always felt guilty toward Vieta, and perhaps it was even harder to talk about because I knew how terrible that guilt was.”
After finishing his words, Fulcare drained his glass in an instant.
“…Thank you for telling me the truth.”
Embarrassed as his former self came to mind, Blanc toyed with his glass.
His master had been worrying about him from beginning to end.
In terms of both ability and thoughtfulness, Fulcare was someone Blanc felt he could never hope to equal.
“As you said, I’ll probably have trouble escaping my guilt, too. Even so, there’s one thing I know for certain.”
“…What?”
“Even if I have to bear the guilt, meeting you two was truly fortunate?”
Looking at Fulcare, who was watching him, Blanc gave him a heartfelt smile.