SIWALL Ch 28

While Elliot was feeling bitter, Arzen took out a small potion vial and took a sip. It was a pale emerald-green potion he had received from the old woman on Hemp Street.

Before Elliot could even ask what it was, the color of Arzen’s hair and eyelashes rapidly dyed pitch black. Elliot’s eyes popped out in shock.

“H-, h-, hair… hair….”

“Don’t make a fuss.”

With those words, Arzen tucked the potion vial away and unfastened his voluminous black cloak. Beneath it, he was wearing a light gray riding suit fit for a noble.

“Gasp…!”

Now, let’s step back for a moment to when Elliot was Lim Seongsik.

Among his coworkers at a family restaurant, there was a girl named Suji who loved idols. Lim Seongsik had a slight, very slight crush on Suji. However, leaving behind the cryptic remark that she wasn’t interested in ‘real-life guys,’ Suji would fiercely show off things called photo cards.

In those photo cards, the idols with their sparkling eyes dyed their hair red, blue, or yellow. They wore prince-like outfits, black leather jackets, or school uniforms.

At the time, he hadn’t really understood Suji.

Aren’t these idols real-life guys, too?

And above all….

‘So you’re spending money just because you want to see pictures of them in different clothes?’

What had Suji said when Lim Seongsik asked her that way? Something about the innocent and cruel questions of an ordinary person, or something along those lines….

Anyway, right now, Elliot completely understood Suji from back then. Arzen in his riding suit was genuinely, breathtakingly stunning.

Arzen wore a light gray, thin quilted vest over a white shirt. Tucked below a trim, tapered waist resembling an inverted triangle were trousers in a deeper shade of gray. The black leather knee-high boots fit sleekly and looked exceptionally dashing.

His pitch-black hair made his striking features look suffused with melancholy, creating a supernatural, otherworldly presence in contrast to his glacier-like eyes.

Elliot almost drooled.

Suji, mate, I want to have this look as a photo card right now, too.

As Arzen folded and tidied his cloak, he scanned the inside of the carriage and the driver’s seat with eyes full of suspicion at Elliot’s peculiar expression.

“Why are you making such a sinister face? Could it be that I really shouldn’t trust you after all?”

“N-n… pardon? Ah, no? What kind of sinister face am I ma-, making?”

“….”

Arzen’s eyebrows twitched. Looking somewhat displeased, Elliot quickly changed the subject.

“By the way, that potion was a medicine that changes hair color. I was already thinking it was amazing…”

Arzen glared at Elliot for a moment, but went along with his shift in conversation anyway.

“There’s no particular reason for changing hair color.”

“Yes, yes, you just did it because people are bothersome, right?”

“How did you know?”

He knew because he saw it in the original work. But he couldn’t say that, so Elliot beamed the most benevolent smile he could muster. He had a magic word called ‘intuition.’

“My intuition… just told me that’s how it would be.”

Arzen stared at Elliot as if left completely speechless. His eyes quivered minutely, but Elliot didn’t notice.

“I won’t tell a soul.”

Elliot made a theatrical zipping motion across his lips and added:

“I’ll keep ‘my mouth’ shut.”

At that, Arzen let out a brief yet distinct laugh.

“Fine. Mouth.”

Then he turned his head toward the carriage window.

Elliot gazed blankly at Arzen’s high, sharp bridge of the nose. Just like the pitch-black hair shadowing his forehead and his black eyelashes, his pale gray eyes, sparkling silver when catching the light, engraved themselves into Elliot’s heart one by one through his gaze.

He didn’t want to act cheesy, but this was the first time he was seeing Arzen genuinely smile. Even though there had been times when he sneered at him or acted as if trying to hold back a laugh, a smile directed at him….

Wait, did Arzen Teron just smile brightly at me?

“You’re looking at me with those sinister eyes again. You do know that acting like that is genuinely suspicious, right?”

Arzen asked, stroking the corner of his lips with his hand.

However, Elliot couldn’t say a word. That was because he had frozen like a stone while trying to process Arzen’s smile with his brain.

“Elliot Brown.”

“….”

“Hey.”

“….”

“…Are you feeling unwell?”

Elliot could see Arzen hesitating.

Even by Elliot’s own standards, he was acting a bit strange right now. He needed to answer, but the scene of Arzen smiling kept replaying like an illusion right before his eyes.

He smiles, smiles, and smiles.

At Elliot.

“Grand Duke, just once…”

“What?”

“Just once more—wouldn’t you mind smiling for me?”

Elliot asked pleadingly. Even as he watched Arzen’s expression sour rapidly, Elliot felt no remorse at all. He felt like someone enchanted by the singing of a siren. Though in this case, he was enchanted by the face of the man sitting right in front of him.

“Judging by the fact that you’re spouting nonsense, it seems there’s nothing wrong with you after all.”

Arzen’s tone was chilly.

“Don’t overstep your bounds.”

Before long, the carriage arrived in front of the Teron Grand Duchy mansion. However, since they still had a long way to drive inside the estate grounds, they would have to share this carriage for a while longer.

Meanwhile, though the driver of an ordinary public carriage had carried lower nobles or aristocratic lovers having secret trysts, he had never come anywhere near the mansion of such a formidable figure as the Grand Duke of Teron. As he watched the gates of the Grand Duchy open automatically, he cowered in fear, and his tension transmitted straight to the horses he was driving.

Whinny, prrr.

Accompanied by the sound of several horses snorting violently in excitement, the carriage rattled unsteadily.

“Oh dear, you fellows, wait a second! S-, sorry, patrons!”

The driver shouted frantically from outside.

However, there was no reply from within. Since aristocrats habitually ignored the words of commoners, the driver simply brushed off the disregard without a second thought.

And inside the awkwardly quiet carriage, an unintended incident was unfolding due to the sudden jolting.

“What on earth… are you doing right now?”

Arzen posed the question while looking down at the back of Elliot’s head, which was buried deep between his thighs. Very slowly, as if chewing him to death.

“I-, I’m sorry!”

Elliot scrambled up to his feet. His face flushed a pitiful crimson from the rush of blood. Straightening his crooked glasses, Elliot tried desperately not to think about what on earth had just been pressed against his left cheek.

Whoa, seriously… something huge… anyway, it was immense.

Elliot deliberately looked up at the carriage ceiling to tear his gaze away from Arzen’s lower body.

“It becomes clearer by the day that you are not a spy. The Emperor has no business employing someone this scatterbrained as a spy.”

“Th-, that’s a relief, then.”

Elliot blurted out whatever came to mind, but realizing how his words sounded, he quickly scrambled to patch things up.

“No! Not that I’m relieved the Emperor is thorough at picking spies, but rather that you’re convinced I’m not a spy… is what’s a relief…”

“Why is your gaze drifting lower and lower as you talk?”

“I’m sorry!”

Elliot jerked his head upward in a flash. Yet fixing his gaze on the carriage ceiling couldn’t possibly make the sensation on his cheek vanish. His cheek still retained a lukewarm temperature alongside an excessively vivid sense of volume. He gently rolled his tongue to the left to sweep across the inside of his cheek.

‘Could it be that he hides weapons on his inner thighs, too? That’s entirely possible. He’s such a deeply paranoid person….’

Elliot argued back earnestly in his thoughts. It was a defense of unknown purpose, for an unknown recipient.

“No matter how paranoid I am, I do not hide weapons on my inner thighs.”

“…Huh? Just now…”

“I said it out loud.”

“No… I definitely thought it in my head….”

“You spoke it aloud.”

“M-, my apologies, I’m truly sorry!”

Elliot cried out, squeezing his eyes shut. It was a blunder born of overwhelming shock.

This time, Arzen said nothing at all. Once again, a profound silence settled inside the carriage.

And the very next day, Arzen received a strange letter from Loran.

{To the magnanimous Grand Duke Arzen Teron,

O Grand Duke, greatest even within the vast Lantar. Since there was no reply to the letter I sent you the other day, I take up my pen once more. I give thanks every day for the grand and immense grace Your Grace bestows upon this Empire.

Today I heard a story that Your Grace alone constitutes an extraordinary military force for this Empire. I thought to myself that it is truly fitting for such a large and strapping Grand Duke. The retreating figure of Your Grace commanding such a massive army with a single long, thick sword must surely be quite sizeable as well. Your Grace is an extra-large national treasure of this country.

Expressing gratitude as vast as Your Grace’s existence. I shall be awaiting your reply.

From Loran Pedet, feeling ordinary much like other men}