A Practical Guide to Ending a One-Sided Love - Chapter 43

“Um, sir…”

Even the way she hesitantly spoke with a clearly shy face was excessively beautiful. Enough to make him want to swallow the woman before him whole and never release her.

“What is it?”

He forced calm and answered in an ordinary tone. He didn’t want her to read his indecent thoughts and run away.

“Here…”

Leila whispered like a sigh and reached toward his lips. His pleasantly beating heart suddenly leapt hard. Right now even her smallest gesture was excessive stimulation to him.

Soft, gentle fingers like foxtail grass lightly wiped his lips. After a moment, as if explaining her action, Leila raised her fingertips and showed them to him.

“This was on you.”

Rouge as bright as her cheeks stained her pale fingers. While he had been mindlessly biting and sucking her lips the moment the chance came, it must have transferred to his lips. Come to think of it, faint reddish dye was also smudged around Leila’s mouth. It seemed she had even put on makeup she normally didn’t wear for their outing.

Bjorn unconsciously drew a deep breath. Facing Leila in this narrow dark place, this situation where she wiped her trace from his mouth, felt incredibly secretive and intimate.

It was an afternoon where even the sunlight entering through the window crack and a single drifting speck of dust felt stimulating. But more than anything, what heated his head was the faint glimmer of desire and excitement in Leila’s eyes.

Without realizing it, Bjorn grabbed the hand she held out. Then, as if receiving a revelation that he must do so, he naturally licked it with his tongue.

A human finger couldn’t possibly taste sweet, yet what he felt on the tip of his tongue was clearly sweetness.

“Th-that hand isn’t clean, Sir…”

Startled, Leila reflexively tried to pull her hand away, but naturally he didn’t release it. The finger, almost swallowed to the end, was helplessly toyed with inside his mouth.

As he sucked the fingertips wriggling in embarrassment, Leila’s face flushed even more than before. It looked as though juice might burst if bitten, a sight that made him salivate. Impossible to leave alone.

“Sir, wait… ngh!”

In the end Bjorn indulged his desire and captured Leila’s lips several more times.

The two arrived at the theater around the start of the opera’s second act.

* * *

He didn’t know what state of mind he watched the performance in. More focused on fiddling with Leila’s hand than the singing and music filling the stage, Bjorn didn’t remember even the actress’s hair color, much less the story of the opera.

After leaving the theater, the two slowly walked to Leila’s bookstore. The sun was already beginning to set. Once they left the crowded theater district, the number of people noticeably dwindled. It was then that Leila, glancing around for some reason, spoke.

“If it’s alright, how about I escort you to the temple today?”

His ears, soaked in the happiness of walking hand in hand with a woman who liked him, heard words he couldn’t understand.

“What do you mean?”

Escorting a lady was a knight’s duty, but the reverse couldn’t stand. Bjorn was puzzled.

“Actually… I’m worried.”

The doubt was resolved soon enough.

“If you run into unsavory people again on your way back to the temple this late…”

The clownish act he had completely forgotten suddenly returned and struck the back of his head. At the unexpected reason, strength drained from him as if a weak point had been pierced.

Right, he almost forgot.

In Leila’s mind, he was a weakling who couldn’t even defeat two ruffians.

Before worrying about what to do with this relationship, he now had to worry how to correct the countless lies he had told.

Yet separate from the serious concern, his trust toward Leila grew deeper.

Leila, who accepted even his unreliable appearance. Leila, who didn’t waver no matter what he did. Leila, who, afraid he might be in danger, said she would escort him to the temple with that fragile body. She was like an angel sent down to absolve Bjorn’s original sin.

For her sake as well, it was time to decide.

“It’s alright. Usually people rarely approach me because of my attire, and recently I have been devoting myself to training again.”

If he would choose to remain by Leila’s side, he would have to slowly restore the dignity and prestige that had been worn away like sand before waves.

Of course, more important than that was informing Allen and Todd of his decision and stopping the deception toward Leila. The scales had already tipped heavily, but a final resolve was needed.