SIWALL 15

An awkward silence hung among the three people seated in the parlor. Or perhaps it was only awkward for Elliot.

Why on earth am I sitting here?

Elliot stared intently at the teacup placed before him. The tea Henderson had brewed and left behind carried a familiar scent. It was the same lavender tea Arzen drank every night.

He glanced up from the corner of his eye to observe Arzen sitting in the seat of honor.

Even though Arzen was leaning back against the sofa’s backrest, there was nothing loose or negligent about his posture. Though his dazzlingly brilliant face was concealed behind a mask, his physique—his straight, broad shoulders, his solid and thick frame, and his long-stretched legs—was remarkably striking.

Even to the eyes of another man, it was a build that made you want to latch onto him and call him “brother.”

That was precisely why Elliot could not understand Loran at all.

Customer, look at that. Just look at how big his hands are and how thick his chest is. Don’t you think you’ll go straight to the grave if you take a hit from him wrong? If you’re a man too, customer, you ought to be a little scared of that alpha male.

Elliot continuously lectured Loran inside his head.

Of course, there was no way Loran could hear any of that. After taking a quiet, elegant sip of his tea, Loran shrugged his shoulders.

“I honestly didn’t expect to see Mr. Elliot Brown here either. Elliot is a devoted follower of mine, you see. That’s why I remembered his name. Isn’t that right, Elliot?”

“Pardon…?”

Loran wore a sublime smile. For a moment, Elliot felt his scalp tingle from an intangible pressure.

It was impossible that Loran, who hadn’t even trained in martial arts, was actually emitting killing intent, yet behind his pretty face, a terrifying yaksha with a transparency of about 40 seemed to be looming over him.

Though Loran had also initially greeted Elliot without much thought, it seemed he had soon realized he couldn’t let Arzen catch on that they knew each other.

After all, if they traced how the two of them had met, Loran wouldn’t be able to claim total innocence either.

“Yes, yes, absolutely. I would gladly even kiss Lord Loran’s feet.”

Elliot chimed in with a suspiciously bright smile.

“Haha, there he goes again, Elliot. I keep telling you to stop saying you’ll lick the soles of my shoes.”

I didn’t even go that far.

Shut up and smile.

While Elliot and Loran were exchanging forced, hollow laughs, Arzen uncrossed his legs.

From behind the mask, a cold, analytical gaze could be felt observing Elliot and Loran. Arzen tapped lightly on the end of the sofa’s armrest. Even though it was a trivial action, the overwhelming pressure radiating from him naturally commanded complete attention.

“The Sculpture of the Gods, beloved by Lante, and my closest attendant are acquaintances.”

“Your closest attendant?”

Loran snapped his head around toward Elliot. His face carried a silent protest: Didn’t you say nothing like this was going on when we met yesterday? Elliot naturally and smoothly lowered his gaze.

I didn’t want to be in this position either….

“Of course, it’s hardly likely that the Sculpture of the Gods would know what kind of livelihood one of his ant-like followers makes for a living.”

“I really had no idea. I figured he’d be doing… some other, different kind of work.”

Loran barely recovered a near slip-of-the-tongue. But Arzen did not miss that opening.

“Different work? What kind of different work?”

“Just… other… basically, other stuff. He looked so starved and withered, like he’d never seen the sun, so I naturally assumed he’d be holed up at home doing some nerdish desk job. Or not working at all.”

“That makes sense.”

Arzen muttered, looking Elliot up and down. Loran nodded triumphantly as well.

For Elliot, who had just been sitting quietly only to catch stray verbal bullets, it was enough to drive him mad with injustice.

Sure, he was a little frail, but fine—even if he conceded a hundred times and understood why Arzen viewed him as a weakling, he hadn’t expected even the slender and graceful Loran to see him that way.

The corners of his mouth, which he was barely managing to hold steady, trembled violently. Sending a double middle finger to the top and bottom of the original story in his heart, Elliot chanted like a prayer: ‘Those two are customers… the customer is king….’

“Well, anyway, it doesn’t look like Elliot Brown is a spy planted by the Sculpture of the Gods, so I’ll let it slide.”

A spy!

Elliot gasped in shock. They had been harboring such terrifying suspicions! Voicing those kinds of thoughts outright rather than keeping them as a secret suspicion felt like yet another threat. It was an implicit warning that if the two of them had any kind of shady relationship, he would never let them off.

Perhaps sensing that as well, Loran’s face stiffened slightly, turning pale. He flashed a crooked smile, albeit one with a slightly different flavor than before—a somewhat uneasy laugh.

“As expected of Lante’s hero, who has rolled around battlefields since childhood. Finding suspicion even in a mere coincidence.”

“Sometimes a trivial coincidence is what decides life and death.”

“Indeed, I agree.”

Loran smiled prettily and cast his gaze toward the window. Then, suddenly opening his eyes wide, he put on a grave expression.

“Your Grace, did you just see that? A black bird flew past out there!”

He continued, furrowing his brow with worry.

“What if the wing-flapping of that black bird right now decides the life and death of everyone in this room? I’m so terrified.”

“—Gahk.”

Elliot, who had been drinking his tea with trembling hands, let out an unsightly, jarring cough.

The parlor, bathed in affectionate afternoon sunlight, instantly chilled as if it had been plunged into a minus-55-degree glacial base.

Loran was looking straight into the eyes behind Arzen’s mask, maintaining his trademark holy smile. Arzen stared right back at Loran without a single twitch.

Only poor Elliot—the ordinary citizen who had spent years reading the room, mediating conflicts, and catering to everyone’s whims—was at his wits’ end amidst this suffocating battle of nerves.

No matter how much of a dark romance novel this was, what kind of opening to a romance story was this supposed to be? He hadn’t seen all that many romance narratives in his life, but he knew for a fact that this wasn’t how love was supposed to blossom.

“I don’t know about the black bird that just flew past, but the black-haired human sitting right here in front of you can quite sufficiently decide your life and death.”

Loran didn’t bat an eye even at Arzen’s outright threat of murder. Of course, Elliot was rolling his eyes like a madman in his seat and trembling like an aspen leaf.

“Then tell me, Sculpture of the Gods. Why on earth did you come here?”

“I haven’t even finished a single cup of tea yet, and you’re already asking for my business. You’re much more impatient than I’d heard.”

“It’s best to forget whatever you’ve heard about me. Not a single truth will be among it.”

“I’m not particularly interested in Your Grace’s truths. Actually, what I’m interested in is—”

“The soles of his shoes!”

It was then that Elliot leaped straight to his feet. At the strange word he shouted, several question marks popped up over the heads of both Arzen and Loran.

“Elliot Brown. Have you lost your mind?”

Arzen asked as if genuinely curious.

“I-It’s, i-it’s, t-time, t-time to lick the soles of his shoes!”

“—Pardon?”

Even if Elliot had stripped off all his clothes right then and there and offered to bake thirty sheets of cake, Loran wouldn’t have made that kind of expression. He was looking up at Elliot with a bizarre look, as if he had just laid eyes on an extraterrestrial lifeform.

I’m doing this to keep you alive, you idiot!

Elliot explained desperately to Arzen.

“F-Foreigners have a custom where, at a certain time of day, they take time to pray to the deity they serve. A-And for me, right now is precisely the time to… well, to lick the soles of my beloved and adored Lord Loran Pedet’s shoes. Please excuse us.”

Without missing a beat, Elliot grabbed Loran by the arm and vanished out of the parlor in a flash.

Arzen, who had never once missed an enemy soldier on a battlefield, was abruptly left all alone, having lost track of both people in one fell swoop. He blinked blankly beneath his mask.

“…What on earth is a fan-heart obsession?”

Whatever it was, it truly seemed to be an absolute, unshakeable truth that Elliot was a fervent follower of Loran.

∞ ∞ ∞

“What gives? You must have wanted some physical contact with me given the chance, but I really hate people touching my body like that.”

Loran shook off his arm with a chilly tone. But Elliot was far too desperate for any such nonsense to register in his mind.

“Customer, if I may ask, what exactly were you planning to say to the Grand Duke just now?”

“What do you mean, what? Just because we pretended not to know each other for a moment, don’t tell me you’ve completely forgotten what we talked about yesterday? They said you were a heavy drinker, but your cognitive functions really must have deteriorated quite a bit.”

Loran stared at a deathly pale Elliot for a moment before letting out a sigh.

“I was going to say that what I’m interested in is the Grand Duke’s heart. Which means I’m going to seduce you—”

“Customer.”

Elliot barely moved his trembling lips. By now, his lips were practically blue.

“If you keep that up, you really… are going to pass away.”

“You want me to go home?”

“No. You’re going to pass away. You’re going to leave this world. You’re going to breathe your last, customer.”

Despite Elliot’s helpful translation, Loran crossed his arms with a slightly irritated expression, looking as though he didn’t understand at all.

“Sure, things are a bit rocky between the Grand Duke and me right now.”

It’s a bit more than just ‘rocky’….

“But if I convey my true feelings, the Grand Duke will probably fall for me too.”

I’m pretty sure those aren’t your true feelings either….