Summoned a God by Mistake, Now He Won’t Go Back - Chapter 93

This was how it all began.

[I’ll help you.]

Acting bold and confident, Zynie began offering Alnazir various suggestions.

At first, she proposed getting Fay something she would like—clothes, a broom, a staff.

They were all things Fay might genuinely need. The only problem was that Alnazir had no currency that held value in this world.

“Should I just take them like I did the bathtub?”

Alnazir recalled the emperor’s palace, filled with glittering treasures. But he quickly dismissed the idea. He hadn’t seen brooms or staffs there, and the thought of Fay wearing the emperor’s clothes left a bad taste in his mouth.

Giving a gift did seem like a good idea. Something helpful—but not a grotesque, freshly severed head. Even if it were something trivial, what would she actually like?

After pondering, he decided to rely on past experience.

“Flowers are best.”

Fay had once directly asked him to pick flowers for her. Surely she would be even happier if he brought them of his own accord. He resolved to gather flowers first thing the next morning.

The thought that they might reconcile soon stirred his heart. And that excitement made it easier to let his guard down. Alnazir forgot the caution he had maintained since being rejected at the funeral and gave in to the impulse to touch her—just a little.

“Wh-why… what is it?”

Her frozen, frightened reaction brought him back to his senses. She looked at him the way humans once had when they fled at the mere sight of him.

Her eyes were fixed nervously on his hand.

Ah.

She was afraid of his tentacles.

He hadn’t even brought them out, yet she was already bracing for them. He couldn’t quite understand it.

His tentacles no longer hurt her. If anything, they brought her pleasure. Well… he had also used them frequently to restrain her when she tried to run.

Still, he decided that until they reconciled, he wouldn’t touch her. He lay down quietly on the bed.

“Good night, Lord Alnazir.”

He had been trying to behave, but that title felt like a provocation.

For a split second, a surge of emotion made him want to grab her limbs and make sure she never used that honorific again.

But he stopped.

He noticed the faint tremor in her breathing. The way she curled in on herself in the dark.

If he kept acting on impulse, things would only worsen.

He wanted to cherish her, love her, kiss her, but nothing went as he wished. They could communicate perfectly well, so why was it so hard to stay on good terms?

Alnazir had believed he understood humans well enough.

Lately, he realized that all he had done was observe them from the lofty vantage of a superior being. That wasn’t true understanding. He had never truly tried to comprehend them.

Why must a great ruler like him suffer through this kind of anguish?

Part of him wanted to throw everything away in frustration. But in the end, he admitted that, like it or not, he had to try.

It would be easy to seize Fay by force while she trembled in fear.

But Alnazir had tasted something else. He had tasted the sweetness of hearing her call, “Alnazir!”—smiling comfortably and fondly.

This was the struggle of a being who had learned the taste of happiness.

The next day, determined to gather flowers, Alnazir pried open every rock he could find. Unaware that flowers did not, in fact, grow inside all rocks.

When the ‘gift strategy’ failed, Zynie proposed another plan.

[Operation: Heartthrob.]

At first, he had no idea what that meant.

It turned out to be simple. Zynie brought a hairbrush and oil from her house and began experimenting with his hairstyle.

“That’s not it! You need to look more like a bad boy! That’s Fay’s type!”

She shouted noisily, rearranging his hair. It felt suspiciously like she was mocking him.

Still, Fay did pay attention. She kept watching nervously.

Alnazir endured Zynie’s scolding—if it could even be called that—and awkwardly learned how to brush his hair. Suddenly, he remembered how things had once been, and a faint melancholy settled over him.

“Alnazir, come here. Your hair’s a mess from sleeping.”

Fay would laugh as she seated him in a chair and brushed his hair. Just a few light strokes were enough to tidy it perfectly.

“Do you realize how handsome you are? I don’t know whose invoked you are, but really.”

He missed the shy pride in her smiling face.

Even after tolerating Zynie’s chatter for half a day, Fay still behaved stiffly around him.

He could only sigh.

“It is remarkably difficult to reclaim happiness once it’s lost.”

Just as he began to doubt Zynie’s usefulness, she declared that today was the perfect opportunity and dragged him into the ruined kitchen of the collapsed eastern castle.