Chapter 27
‘How old am I anyway.’
Kasselard pulled back the covers and fell into despair. Over the past few days, his humiliations had piled up to the point of overflowing. He felt dizzy at the fact that he’d had a wet dream for the first time in ages.
“F**k.”
What irritated him was that the dream had been… really good.
And it wasn’t even about Fleur!
This was clearly because of s****l frustration. He’d been aroused the entire time he was receiving guiding. What about kissing. He hadn’t even been properly touched, and it was already the second time he’d ended with nothing but panting in her palm.
“No, right? That can’t be it.”
It had to not be it. There were words he had kept whispering into Ephinia’s ear while holding her in the dream, and he didn’t want to recall them.
His dream-self had just been crazy. His waves were tangled, and the anxiety of a Transcendent standing on the brink of rampage had clearly messed with his brain at will.
‘That guiding is ruining me!’
Giving it up felt like being strangled, but this was a moment that required a decision. Kasselard decided he would give up receiving guiding again and drink a guiding substitute instead.
“Yeah, that’s right. I was just crazy for a few days!
If he’d just take the meds and hold out for a few days, his head will go back to normal. Ephinia, that woman looking pretty will disappear too. And that ridiculous guiding…
“It wasn’t even that amazing!”
Looking at the number that had become 1208 while he slept, Kasselard snapped irritably. If he drank a guiding substitute right now, he could drop it into the 1100s.
So he didn’t need that woman.
* * *
“He’s not here either?”
Ephinia was starting to feel anger rise as she failed to meet Kasselard for the third time already. It wasn’t that she’d gone out three separate times. She kept moving to wherever he was said to be.
Kasselard’s condition was extremely bad, and guiding was absolutely necessary.
But even when she went to the locations the attendants at the Crown Prince’s Palace told her about, Kasselard wasn’t there. At the Crown Prince’s Palace, they said he’d gone to the Administrative Palace, and at the Administrative Palace, they said he’d gone to the Central Palace.
So she went all the way to the Central Palace, only to be told that he’d already returned to the Administrative Palace.
‘Should I have just gone to his office and waited?’
She hadn’t failed to consider that, but she had waited for over two hours at his office in the Administrative Palace before chasing him to the Central Palace.
The attendants at the Administrative Palace and the Crown Prince’s Palace fidgeted around Ephinia and eventually suggested that she at least eat first. It was already well past lunchtime from following Kasselard around.
“It’s fine. Thank you for the offer.”
It would be strange to eat a meal in a room where she’d come to see the Crown Prince, when he wasn’t even there. As Ephinia debated whether she should just leave, she began to suspect that Kasselard might be avoiding her.
‘Could it be because he’s embarrassed?’
During the two sessions of guiding, he had ended up in situations humiliating enough. But since he’d always seemed to feel good and acted as if he wanted Ephinia’s touch, she hadn’t considered it.
‘From the way he talks, he seems shameless.’
Was it because he was a noble to whom being attended was only natural. Or was it because he was of even higher birth, an imperial scion? He seemed completely brazen even after exposing intimate parts of himself to her.
More than that…
‘It’s like he’s acting as if he’s bewitched by me…’
That couldn’t be. Anyone else, maybe, but he was absolutely not that kind of person. Hadn’t Crown Prince Kasselard disliked her from the very beginning?
‘A Transcendent who has received even proper guiding once cannot dislike their Guide. If the match rate is high, that’s even more true.’
That was how the instructor who taught her about guiding had explained it, but Ephinia had never believed it. Kasselard, who had recorded a match rate in the 90% range said to be the first in 400 years, had looked at her with displeasure from the start.
‘Of course, that was before guiding.’
‘Why are you so pretty?’
The words he’d suddenly thrown out came back to her, and her face grew hot. At the time, she’d thought he’d said it because he wasn’t in his right mind due to guiding. Before guiding began, he’d always done nothing but make spiteful remarks toward her.
The day she’d gone to his office for the second guiding. The Kasselard she’d met then had seemed different from the first time. A bit… like he was teasing and watching her reaction. To be honest, it reminded her of someone poking and prodding before trying to seduce someone, and it made her feel strange.
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