Chapter 31
“Me? Why?”
“Where I lived, there was no one like you. Pale, graceful, someone who smelled so nice. Even if by some miraculous accident we happened to walk down the same street, I wouldn’t have dared to look at you. And you wouldn’t have even glanced my way.”
His voice came out flatly.
The words were full of self-deprecation, yet there was no sorrow in them. It was just a dry recitation of facts.
“Hey, what are you talking about? You’re paler and more graceful than I-”
I stopped short.
I realized the ‘me’ he was referring to wasn’t Ian, but Ares.
Even after four hundred years since his death, the name of Ares remained untarnished, worshiped by the entire nation.
Compared to that, Lillian Everett was a nobody. A noble in name only, with no fame or following.
Which is why I couldn’t understand why he sounded so self-deprecating.
Was there something in his past I didn’t know about?
There was a side quest involving Ares’s backstory, but I’d skipped through it so fast I could barely remember anything.
Especially during the childhood segments, I’m pretty sure I had one hand on the spacebar and the other on my phone.
Maybe all of Ian’s extreme caution was tied to something in his past.
“If I had been born not as Ares, but in this body… then maybe I could’ve met a woman as lovely as you, loved her, and built a quiet life.”
The wind blew. A warm breeze carrying the sweet scent of grapes swept through Ian’s hair… and through the thick thatch of hair between his thighs.
His blue eyes glimmered faintly beneath his long lashes, a vision of wistfulness.
But with all that flesh swinging every time he moved, there was no way I could stay immersed in the mood.
“Things turn out differently depending on what you do. Even the original Ian couldn’t date the original Lillian just because he had that face.”
He had been walking just fine, but suddenly came to a halt.
What now?
When I looked up at him, he tilted his head slightly, eyes clouded with confusion.
“Wait, did I hear that right? You’re saying we’re not… a couple?”
“Yeah.”
“Then what are we?”
“What else? We’re childhood friends. Super close ones. Oh, and we’re the same age. I think we even have the same birthday.”
Crack-.
His face went pale. Like lightning had struck just above his head, he froze completely. Ian suddenly clutched his chest and bent over.
“Why, what’s wrong?”
“It feels like my heart is tearing apart.”
“What?! Is it some leftover effect from the giant hornet? Where does it hurt? Huh?”
Ian tilted his head upward. A single bead of sweat rolled slowly down from beneath his temple.
“I didn’t know it could be this unbearable… when two people’s feelings aren’t the same. Why don’t you love me? Why are you making me suffer like this?”
“……”
“I’ve lived through captivity, endured every kind of torture. They cut open my lower abdomen and dragged out my organs. I went nearly half a month without sleep. I thought I had experienced every pain a man could feel… but this… this is new.”
I looked down at the gasping Ian with eyes gone cold.
All this over a one-sided crush. He was out here doing the most.
I turned away from him and started walking ahead. Behind me, Ian shouted, “It’s dangerous!” and hurried after me.
***
“Please, come inside. Lady Marie Fione is waiting for you.”
In the end, we were late for the lesson.
The moment I saw the carriage parked outside the annex, I had taken off running, but it wasn’t enough to get into the tutoring room ahead of someone who had already arrived.
“Please move.”
I spoke through clenched teeth. Ian was standing at the door with his ear pressed to it, cautiously trying to assess something.
“A middle-aged woman. Judging by her footsteps, she’s a little over 170 centimeters tall. Edelinean, maybe? No, calmer… likely from Theotoros. I don’t sense any other presence besides… Ugh.”
I drove my elbow hard into his side. Anything less wouldn’t make him flinch, so I hit him with the full hope of dealing critical damage. Ian staggered and finally stepped aside. His face twisted in frustration.
“If I were my original self, an attack like that wouldn’t have—”
“Shut it.”
Click-.
As the door opened, just as he had said, a tall middle-aged woman greeted us with a pleasant smile. From beneath a wide-brimmed violet hat, I saw pale lipstick and a refined expression. With her white lace gloves placed delicately over her chest, everything about her was elegant and unmistakably noble.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Marie Fio—”
Her gentle smile froze mid-sentence.
Because the massive figure behind me had just entered the room.
Lady Marie’s brown eyes swept from Ian’s face down to his toes, slowly.
Her powdered face drained of color. Both hands began to tremble as she let out a sharp scream.
“M-my Lady!”
At the sudden outcry, the servants rushed in.
The moment they saw Marie’s face twist in horror at the sight of Ian’s naked body, they finally realized what they had failed to do.
They should have warned her more firmly, more insistently.
The problem was that even the servants, along with me, had gotten far too used to Ian striding around the mansion completely naked.
Lady Marie continued to shriek at the top of her lungs as she fled the tutoring room.
She scrambled into her carriage as if she’d just seen a ghost and disappeared down the estate road without ever looking back.
“……”
The two of us left behind just stood there, dazed, staring at the empty chair where Lady Marie had been sitting moments ago.
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