SIWALL 16

Elliot struggled hard to suppress the urge to nitpick every little detail, and persuaded Loran one more time.

“The Grand Duke is said to chop off people’s necks unconditionally when killing enemies. Customer, have you ever imagined how hard it is to sever a person’s neck? Necks have bones, so they apparently don’t cut well unless you’re exceptionally strong. What’s more, your neck is as slender, long, and delicate as a deer’s, so I feel like any blade would slice right through it.”

Loran’s expression gradually grew strange. It sounded like the kind of flattering nonsense he often heard from designers when getting formalwear fitted, yet the content itself was horrifyingly grim.

Seeing Loran looking doubtful, Elliot figured this was his moment and pressed on.

“Even if you somehow managed to make the Grand Duke kneel and break him into a slave… w-well, bosses have their own share of hardships, you know. I’ve always been on the receiving end as a mere employee, but I’ve often heard them say that managing subordinates is indescribably difficult.”

At Elliot’s impassioned persuasion, Loran put on a pensive face.

“Now that you mention it… the Grand Duke is definitely a fierce beast on the level of a tiger or a wolf. If my little game were found out, even someone like me wouldn’t make it out unscathed.”

“Right?”

Elliot rounded his eyebrows to convey comfort and empathy, nodding vigorously.

“Besides, if he fell for me and then clung to me like a clingy pest until the very end, it would be a huge nuisance.”

“Ah, true, exactly.”

“Still, it’s pretty thrilling, don’t you think? Watching his eyes earlier make me feel like he really might kill me for a second there—my heart started racing for the first time in ages.”

“Right, that… wait, what?”

“So I think I’ll just do as I originally planned.”

With those words, Loran turned around with a bright, sunny smile. The sight of his pale blue hair fluttering as he walked away looked ominously slow and detailed. For a split second, a hallucination flashed before Elliot’s eyes: Loran, shedding tears with his tongue and both hands severed.

“Customer, please, instead of that!”

Before he knew what he was doing, Elliot grabbed hold of Loran in a panic.

“Write a letter instead.”

“Pardon?”

“A love letter. Just write that, please.”

Doing this was essentially stepping onto a moving walkway that led straight into a tiger’s den. With a face on the verge of tears, Elliot drove the final nail into the coffin.

“I… I’ll write the love letter for you.”

∞ ∞ ∞

‘I’ll send you what I have to say in a letter. I’m a bit too shy, you see.’

Leaving behind those parting words to Arzen, Loran vanished like the wind. Calling it just the wind would be closer to a typhoon, but regardless, Loran’s visit had ended as bizarrely and swiftly as it began. It was absurd, but since an existence far more absurd than Loran was standing right in front of him, Arzen’s attention was firmly focused here.

He stared intently at Elliot, who was brewing tea with a look of utter despair on his face.

Even leaving aside the fact that wearing a mask in official settings was common knowledge to everyone in the empire, Elliot surely must have seen that his hair color had changed today, yet he hadn’t said a single word about it. He just kept letting out deep sighs while going about his chores.

He had expected him to ask annoying questions.

Everyone who approached Arzen was like that. The nobility went without saying, and the soldiers were no different. Aside from Henderson, the servants too had been trained and understood the terrifying gap in social standing, so they exercised restraint in his presence, but the moment Arzen walked past, they would whisper among themselves out of awe and curiosity.

Arzen was a Sword Master. He could feel everyone’s gazes and words right on his skin. People’s attention was, quite literally, enough to make his skin prickle. Still, daily life in the capital fell on the cute side. On the battlefield, amidst those horrifying scenes of slaughter….

“You had lavender tea this afternoon, so this time I’ve brewed chamomile tea instead~”

Elliot brought the tray over to the bed. A fragrant tea aroma rose up alongside the hot steam. Arzen silently picked up the teacup.

Meanwhile, Elliot waited politely off to the side. Strangely enough, that waiting didn’t feel the least bit bothersome or burdensome. His past attendants would either nervously glance at him while he drank his tea or keep their heads buried completely.

Where on earth is he looking?

Arzen cast a sidelong glance at where Elliot’s gaze was directed, but there was nothing there. Arzen pressed his lips to the teacup, then suddenly paused as if something had just occurred to him.

“Elliot Brown.”

“Yes, Grand Duke. Did you call me?”

Elliot looked at Arzen with a sweet, artificially stretched smile. It was certainly a kind and favorable-looking face, but for some reason, it felt like there was a thick wall built behind it. He was a truly bizarre fellow.

“Did you really lick the sole of his shoe?”

“Gack—Y-Yes, p-pardon?”

Arzen set the teacup down and gave the tea a lazy swirl with a teaspoon.

“I… well, yes, I l-licked it. That was why I went out there, after all.”

Elliot offered an awkward smile.

“I see.”

Arzen set the teaspoon down. The small silver spoon shone cleanly and brilliantly, wet from the tea.

“By the way, Elliot Brown.”

“Yes, yes, Grand Duke.”

“Didn’t you kneel in front of me before and say you respected me?”

“M… Me?”

“I’m quite certain you did on your very first day working here.”

Arzen caught the subtle muscle spasms twitching at the corners of Elliot’s smiling mouth. He also noticed fine beads of sweat popping up around Elliot’s temples. He saw his pupils dilating and contracting, his nose flaring and narrowing as he hastily gulped down a ragged breath, and his Adam’s apple bobbing reflexively.

A massive flood of physiological data poured in all at once. Truly, all of it was ‘visible’ to Arzen’s eyes. Just as it had always been.

Elliot Brown was excessively nervous in front of Arzen. It was a reaction distinctly different from when he had mistaken Arzen for Henderson. In other words, he had only started getting nervous ever since he found out he was ‘Arzen Teron.’

The root of that tension wasn’t simple respect or admiration. Fear. He could recognize that, too. After all, he had lived a life more familiar with fear than anyone else.

Elliot was afraid of him. And it was the kind of fear that came with a threat to his life.

Elliot Brown, I can only think of one reason for that.

It meant he had done—or was planning to do—something that warranted death if caught by him. Thinking to himself, Arzen picked up the teacup and savored its fragrance. Just by the scent alone, he could tell it was a rather well-crafted tea. However.

“Elliot Brown, can you lick my feet, too?”

Arzen chuckled as he set the teacup back down. He wasn’t going to drink a single drop of this tea tonight.

Let’s find out piece by piece what kind of little stray dog you are and what you came in here to do.

His parting words to Luor tonight—that he would expose Elliot—hadn’t been an empty threat. And that night was only just beginning.

Meanwhile, Elliot was flabbergasted by Arzen’s remark.

Has this guy lost his mind? There are terrible customers, and then there are catastrophic nightmares like this.

He wants me to lick his feet? Doesn’t he know the saying, ‘Even part-time workers are someone’s precious children’?

If you uploaded that comment to the internet right now, you’d have your identity fully doxed and find yourself thrown right into a South Korean cyberbullying project to force a national public apology, you jerk.

Elliot managed his expression as best as he could to hide the criticism threatening to burst out.

Then again, this wasn’t South Korea, and even if it were, he wouldn’t have been able to type a single character anywhere online anyway.

As always, the only thing he could rely on was his own patience. What harm could adding one more line to a heart where the Chinese character for ‘patience’ had already been carved hundreds and thousands of times possibly do?

Elliot put on the perfect, seamless smile he had used for years to fool customers and managers alike. Hoping that even this fabricated friendliness would fool this murderous dark-romance tyrant.

“I am terribly, terribly sorry, Grand Duke, but my tongue… for religious reasons, can only move… ahem, exclusively for the Sculpture of the Gods.”

Elliot forced out the utterly embarrassing excuse.

“Religious reasons, you say.”

“Yes, yes, exactly, Grand Duke.”

“The Sculpture of the Gods is merely a human being. He is no god. Can you really call that a religious reason?”

“Well, when you love someone enough, it practically becomes a religion….”

As Elliot chuckled and glossed over it with sheer nonsense, Arzen let out a soft huff of amusement.

“Quite romantic, Elliot Brown.”

With that, Arzen picked up his teacup and walked over to the window. Over the past two days, whenever he drank tea in bed, he would plunge straight into instant sleep, but today he didn’t seem to want to fall asleep right away.

He looked down at a small potted plant placed in front of the open window while slowly, lazily swirling his teacup in circles.

“You can drink the rest of the tea. I think this one cup will be quite enough for me tonight.”

He had just been feeling thirsty, anyway. Promptly pouring the tea into a spare cup, Elliot glanced sideways at Arzen’s back as the man gazed out the window.

Could it be that he had a lot on his mind after meeting the original story’s bottom? True, their first meeting had been a total mess, but they were still the main characters of a four-volume epic BL novel.

Even now, out there somewhere in the scenery beyond the window, there was a non-zero chance he was picturing Loran’s golden eyes and thinking, ‘Hah, he was the first man to ever treat me like that.’

Just looking at their faces, they were a match made in heaven, though.

Elliot mentally clicked his tongue and picked up the teacup filled to the brim with hot chamomile tea.

“Then I’ll enjoy it gratefully.”

Elliot offered a polite greeting and swallowed the tea. He could feel the sweet yet bitter liquid sliding down his throat, slowly warming his previously chilled body. Just as the chamomile fragrance spread across his nose and mouth, and the passing heat left the inside of his throat dry and scratchy, Arzen turned his body toward Elliot.

“How is the tea?”

“It’s good. I think I’ll sleep really well tonight, too.”

Elliot smiled brightly and gave a thumbs-up.

At that, the corners of Arzen’s lips curved into a smooth arc. Once again, radiance beamed from his face, leaving Elliot’s mind blank for a moment.

Arzen flipped his teacup upside down and poured the tea directly over the potted plant.

The plant, which had been proudly sprouting vibrant, tender leaves atop its long stalk, wilted instantly in a single stroke.