Teron answered with silence. But before long, unable to hold out, he tossed back a sullen reply.
“Where do you think I went? I found this place and came back.”
“...You’re really going to be like this? Over nothing more than this?”
“That’s none of your business, Leopold.”
“Skip class without leave for more than a month and you’re expelled. You ought to weigh how serious a thing is.”
“Shut your mouth.”
“And I was worried. I was going out of my mind, afraid something had happened to you.”
Their eyes met. Teron’s mouth opened and closed. He lowered his gaze and stared at nothing but the floor.
“Do you have any idea how much manpower was wasted searching for you? The royal knights set out for Luden, to find you.”
At least, until he heard that.
Teron sucked in a sharp breath, and for a few seconds his face went blank, as if all thought had stopped. Then he pulled away from Leopold and slammed his head against the wall with a thud.
“Teron?”
“Shut up. Because I really do want to kill you.”
“...That’s exactly why I’m saying, why skip out like that with no word.”
Leopold, mid-complaint, realized that Teron was genuinely furious, and meekly closed his mouth. Teron hung his head low and soon muttered in a low voice.
“The moment you pull something like that again, Your Highness will have to pay the price, one way or another.”
“...I’m sorry. I really thought you’d gone to Luden. Did you hear the news? The rumor that Count Luden was dead turned out to be true. And on top of that, people are dying in Luden day in and day out.”
“You think I don’t know? Has it never crossed your mind that Your Highness is making a fuss over nothing? Why do you always go and do reckless things that end up hurting other people? If you’d thought it through even once, you wouldn’t have!”
He then let out a sigh and, for a few seconds, stared at nothing but the flames. When Leopold couldn’t manage a single word, Teron slowly added,
“I’m not moving around recklessly with nothing to rely on. Whether by magic or by sword, I can handle any danger that comes my way well enough.”
“...I’ll apologize. I won’t do it again.”
“As you know, my magic is stronger than the ordinary standard. If things go wrong, I can use teleportation magic and be gone in an instant.”
“Is that true?”
The First Prince’s face brightened. Relieved that he had finally understood properly, Teron felt at ease.
“But your mother, Lady Adeline, I’ll have to bring to the capital. This much you have to concede, Teron. Luden is dangerous right now. Something we can’t make sense of is happening there.”
To Leopold, who had spat out yet another dreadful thing, Teron Meyer replied with a dark expression.
“There’s no need. She’s already dead.”
“...What did you say?”
“So drop it.”
Leopold’s pupils trembled. Not having expected him to react to such a degree, Teron found it somehow funny and tacked on a needless remark.
“She’s the sort of person who’s better off dead anyway.”
It was true. Even now, Teron Meyer thought so.
And yet, in fact, Adeline was currently alive and perfectly well, breathing in the very heart of the capital.
He saw Leopold’s fingers twitch and tremble for a moment. The sight was so very sixteen-
no, soon-to-be-seventeen, so childlike, that Teron observed it with amusement.
“When did that happen?”
Teron turned it over in his head — when should he say Adeline had died?
“Don’t tell me it was this time? Is that why you vanished for two whole weeks? So in the end you did go to Luden?”
In the end, no fitting occasion came to mind, so he had no choice but to play along with Leopold.
“That’s right.”
“...The cause of death?”
“Just an illness.”
Leopold rolled his eyes slightly, observing Teron. Teron Meyer seemed to feel nothing at all, but by any reasonable measure that was impossible.
Adeline was surely Teron’s birth mother. And she must have been his only family. Suddenly he felt a little sorry for having gotten angry at him earlier.
“Are you all right?”
Leopold asked worriedly after a little time had passed.
Hesitation seeped through his tone. He was watching for Teron’s reaction.
A small question flitted through Teron Meyer’s mind.
How on earth had that bizarrely fragile spirit been forged?
To make such an extraordinary fuss over the death of one stranger he had barely any connection to.
But then, the First Prince had always been a strange fellow, strange enough to give one a headache. And it was something he’d learned only recently: when Teron kept his mouth shut, the First Prince’s odd symptoms only got worse.
So, with no other choice, he opened his mouth.
“I told you already. She was better off dead anyway.”
“...Why? Even so, there’s no way you’re truly fine with it.”
“What difference could it make for a woman to die when she never even bothered to act like my mother?”
Teron Meyer’s ash-gray eyes were gazing into empty space. He seemed to be recalling something. It was a face one couldn’t intrude upon, so Leopold said quietly,
“If you need my help, say so.”
“There’s no need.”
“I know you hate me. Even so, there are things I can do for you. If you want money or people, tell me anytime. Your feelings and using me are two separate matters.”
There was no answer, so he gave Teron’s arm a light tap. When Leopold stared at him intently, he turned his face slightly away and quietly lowered even his eyes to the floor. It was so utterly absurd that Leopold pressed him.
“Understood?”
At that, the ash-gray eyes met Leopold Deluah’s once more. Teron said nothing for a moment, staring at him, then retorted.
“Stay out of my business.”
“Yeah, understood.”
“...I really don’t need it. Cut the pointless talk and just go back to the Academy.”
When Teron tried once again to draw a teleportation magic circle, Leopold desperately blocked him.
Teron, too, felt the acid rising up from his stomach despite having swallowed a healing potion, so he simply gave up. Teron, who had lain blankly for a long while before the fireplace, was dragged off by force at Leopold’s suggestion.
“Let’s head down the mountain. I’m hungry.”
“Eat once you’re back. If you mean to keep blocking my teleportation magic, you’d best be prepared to starve.”
“Use magic in this state and you’ll be laid up sick for another week. First, tell me where we are.”
“...A mountain between Luden and Zidnun.”
“Is there a village down below?”
Teron Meyer pulled his robe all the way up to his mouth and lay down on the floor with his arms crossed.
The blond-haired boy paid him no mind and opened the villa door.
With a click, a cold wind greeted them.
“What is this you’re doing?”
“You’re worn out, so I’ll go buy something for you to eat.”
“Don’t make a fool of yourself. Close this door.”
“...”
“I said close it.”
Fortunately, the door closed.
Only, when he glanced over, Leopold had evaporated.
He had no doubt gone out the door.
His head beginning to seethe with irritation, Teron Meyer kicked the emptied healing-potion bottle.
The innocent bottle struck the wall and made a sharp, shattering sound. Teron walked straight over and flung the villa door open.
The boy with torn, soaked clothes and disheveled hair still shone like a prince of Deluah despite his shabby state. The prince, seeing Teron, curled the corner of his mouth into a grin.
“Why’d you come?”
“Don’t speak to me.”
“But then why are you following?”
“I told you to shut your mouth.”
He giggled.
“All right, have it your way.”
They’d fought monsters all through the small hours, yet now it had somehow become daytime, the sun beating down.
As they kept making their way down the mountain, a house came into view. They knocked on its door and asked where the village was, and when they walked on according to the owner’s directions, the sight of a marketplace appeared.
“Looks delicious.”
Leopold’s eyes sparkled and his mouth fell open. A prince ought not even to glance at filthy street food, yet his palate was as lowbrow as could be.
Sneering inwardly, Teron soon found a cheap fruit drink and a meat skewer pressed into his hands.
“Well? Is it good?”
“It’ll be good. It’s a beast I killed just this dawn! And what’s more, this one’s a lamb raised on nothing but special feed, so there’s no way it won’t be tasty.”
So said the middle-aged woman selling the skewers. Leopold took a bite of it, folded his eyes prettily, and produced a kind smile.
Thanks to that, the woman and everyone around fixed their gazes on them, or, to be precise, on Leopold.
A child stared blankly at Leopold, then slipped his way in between them.
“Mm, it’s good, really. I’ve never tasted seasoning like this before.”
“It’s a common flavor around here... Are you outsiders?”
“That’s right.”
“Thought so, an unfamiliar face. Our village has been dreadful lately, but other places must not be. You can even wander about freely like this.”
For a moment, emotions like fear and sorrow settled over the woman’s face.
People gradually drew closer. The onlookers watched them, or, to be precise, Leopold Deluah, with curiosity in their eyes.
In this dull village, the appearance of a young, handsome man was quite the momentous event.
“Why do you say it’s been dreadful?”
The instant Leopold asked, the child who had been watching him burst into tears in a flash.
“Waaah!”
Tears streaming down, the child screamed. Jabbing an accusing index finger, he wailed.
“A devil! There’s a devil here! Save me, waaah-!”
What the fingertip pointed at was Teron.
