Chapter 105

"You seem very nervous."

"I'm sorry."

"I wasn't asking you to apologize. I'm the one who should be sorry for calling you here like this."

His manner was gentle, as though he were trying to put her at ease. Just as it had been when they first met. Which meant she had even more reason to be nervous.

"I called you because there's something I want to ask. I thought the surest way was to ask you directly."

"Yes."

"I hear we're engaged?"

"Yes, that's right."

Erabelle answered his questions, blinking a couple of times. She was a little taken aback. She had never imagined this would be something on his mind right now.

"Is it an arranged marriage?"

He leaned a little closer and whispered the question as though they were discussing a great secret. Erabelle almost flinched back.

It was his manner, too.

She knew he had this side to him, but he was being far too familiar with someone who was, for all practical purposes, a stranger. It made her stumble over her words.

"I-I don't believe so."

"Then are we in love?"

Erabelle slowly closed her eyes and opened them again.

Why is he asking me this? Surely... She watched him, uncertain, and thought for a moment.

"Does that question take so much thought?"

I don't know.

"...There's something I need to tell you."

He raised an eyebrow. Looking at his face, which appeared perfectly healthy, Erabelle began cautiously.

"...I'm what?"

"You're gay."

"......"

Dezeb stared at her, then let out a disbelieving laugh.

"Oh, am I?"

He kept staring, as if inviting her to go on. So Erabelle explained further.

"You've seen my story?"

"Yes, I have."

Erabelle had seen that story.

The story of how the Thirteenth Prince had made a nobleman of him when he was a commoner. How, despite that, he had betrayed the Prince. How so many people had died and the Empire had declined. She had seen it all, down to the very end.

"The person you had feelings for was the Prince."

"Oh, he was?"

"Yes."

It wasn't merely a story.

At the Academy, Erabelle had been the only student who took Marquis Balva Arakan's parallel theory of the multidimensional universe seriously.

Only fragments of something with a definite existence could cross dimensions: fragments of the future or the past.

So the events in that story had either happened at some point or were certain to happen one day.

She hadn't spent her life building a bunker out of needless worry.

"And that makes me gay?"

Dezeb tipped his head back against the chair and gave a quiet laugh. His lips curved softly.

He picked up a cigarette from a nearby table and put it between his lips. He drew the smoke deep between his teeth and breathed it out again, then rose. With Erabelle between his arms, he braced both hands on the back of her chair.

"My lady."

Holding her gaze, Dezeb reached down and smoothed a stray lock of hair back from her face. Erabelle flinched before she could stop herself. Through the cigarette smoke between his teeth, she caught a glimpse of his red tongue.

As though it were sensing something outside him, perhaps even tasting it.

"I asked what we are to each other, and all you give me is something else entirely."

"I'm sorry."

"All right. Let's say I'm gay. What are we, then?"

Erabelle gripped the fabric of her trousers tightly.

"...I don't know."

He watched her for a long while, then slowly drew in another breath of smoke and let it drift out.

"All right. You can go."

Erabelle walked slowly out the door.

The management team employee waiting outside studied her face, though she didn't know why. She was perfectly fine.

"It's nothing."

His arms, black as burned ash. The dark red pills made from his blood that she took every day. All the memories he had lost....

"I'm fine. It's nothing."

Erabelle walked down to the lower levels of the temple as though nothing were wrong.

"L-Lieutenant!"

The startled employee called after her, but she didn't turn around.

"Why—why are you crying?"

"...I'm not."

She clenched her teeth.

She just kept walking, step after heavy step, her jaw locked tight.

"D-did something happen? Did he say something to you? Please don't take it too much to heart. He has no memory right now, so... P-please don't cry!"

Erabelle said nothing. She only clenched her teeth harder.

It's because of me.

Ol had said he would recover. Dezeb had said so too. That it would only be for a little while. That it was nothing....

How could this possibly be nothing?

In the original story, he had never been hurt.

Of course, she could tell herself that an injury was no great matter. What about the people he had hurt? She was one of them.

She had been struck by that identification tag for almost four years. One small misstep and she would certainly have died. No—she wouldn't even have been able to die. The modularization would have gone ahead. There was no arguing with that.

The survival period in the wagers made on her again and again had been only a month.

How many days had he bet on?

She was certain it had been less than a month.

And in fact... she had, in fact—

At last, Erabelle emerged from the temple. Standing in the middle of the sacred precinct, she raised her arm and looked at it, at the dark red characters covering its inner surface.

They had been inscribed with his blood. The pills she took every single day to maintain them were made from his blood too.

She couldn't fail to know.

However vast the universe might be, she doubted there was another color quite so ominous.

Erabelle stared at the arms and legs she had lost in Moln City. They were whole now, as though it had never happened.

She remembered his limbs during that same period, black as charcoal. They had recovered little by little, in exact measure with the sensation returning to her own.... She couldn't fail to know. She couldn't.

And now his memories, too....

He had said they would come back. He had said it would only be for a little while. Whether she believed him or not, whether what he had said was actually true or not—

She couldn't be sure she was a good choice for him.

He had been hurt because of her again.

Dezeb looked down at the woman who had stopped walking and stood motionless in the middle of the sacred precinct. He breathed out a long stream of cigarette smoke, drew deeply on it, and exhaled again. Between the curls of smoke, his damp tongue licked at the emotions lingering in the air.

Unease, fear, the clammy sweat that had gathered on her skin, and even that strange sadness falling from her in drops—

What did she have to be so sad about?

After tasting the traces of those drifting emotions, he let out another long stream of acrid smoke.

"...Ha."

It was absurd.

So was the precum leaking in a steady trickle from his cock, hard enough to reach his lower abdomen.

"Is this face not attractive enough?"

Ol looked distinctly uncomfortable at the question coming from a face beautiful enough to devour someone.

"Maybe it's because she knows I'm a monster?"

"Even if someone knew, no human could resist a Type 1 shell."

"There's one right there."

That human was crying without a sound. He couldn't imagine where all those tears were coming from. Her face was wet and contorted, yet all he could hear from her was the sound of her breathing.

"Why the hell is she crying?"

Dezeb couldn't understand it. He'd gotten a little pissed off partway through, but he hadn't even acted frightening. Besides....

"My cock gets so hard looking at a woman I'm about to come on my own... and she calls me gay?"

Ol discreetly looked away. Apparently he had no wish to meet Dezeb's eyes and become the target of his temper.

"Wouldn't bisexual at least be more accurate? It's not as if our relationship could have been entirely platonic."

Judging by the state of his body, that was impossible.

It had been the same at the retrieval ceremony.

When he recovered his divinity, that scent had been the first thing he noticed: the smell of that woman's arousal, still streaming from his own genitals.

The Dogs had scarcely dared breathe around her. He had quickly realized that he must have been just as vicious about other things as he had been about the spell system he'd laid inside her body.

Saliva gathered around the cigarette held between his teeth.

He swallowed the fluid and drew deeply on the cigarette again. Both above and below....

After two months of his body reacting this way, he was getting rather sick of it. He had thought seeing her might help. It had only made him more restless.

Dezeb clicked his tongue and bit down on the filter.

Whatever Ol made of that, he cautiously spoke up.

"Dezeb, as you know, the spell system is affected by your mental imagery."

Dezeb turned only his eyes to stare at Ol. No one had asked him to speak up for the woman, yet there he was doing it.

Why? Dezeb narrowed his eyes.

"Interested in her?"

"...Not at all."

There was something strangely familiar about Ol's response.

"Shall I bring her back?"

"What for? So I can fuck a woman who's crying?"

And Ol realized that his master's mood had turned thoroughly sour.

"Leave her alone."

Dezeb couldn't take his eyes off her, even as he spoke as though he didn't care.