With the 700 points I got for helping Kairos, I pushed Disguise all the way from level 1 to level 3. Then I cast it on Theo while going on at length about how worried I was that he was so handsome he’d attract a pointless amount of attention and affection working at the tavern.
That sculpted, hero-perfect face turned into something a little rounder and softer. I knocked the saturation of his brilliant blond hair down a tone as well, making it a dull gold. I diligently dotted freckles on too, but the base was so handsome that it didn’t do much.
“From now on, always go out wearing this face. You show your real face to me only. Promise.”
I added it sternly.
“Am I that handsome? Enough for you to worry about?”
Theo tilted his head.
“Yeah. I’m very worried somebody’s going to call you handsome and ask you out.”
Half sincere, half joke. Because I knew Theo wasn’t the sort of person to share erotic love with anyone. The Theo of the original game was a character with little interest in the opposite sex. Over the more than five hundred times I played, no matter which route I chose, Theo never once ended up with a lover.
For some reason, Theo beamed at my nagging. Being called handsome must have sounded that good to him. Hm. I’ll have to compliment him often from now on.
In any case, that was how Theo went off to his first day of work at a tavern. A minor’s first job being at a bar. By the moral standards of a twenty-first-century Korean it was impossible to accept. Well, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Nothing to be done about it. He’d promised me he wouldn’t touch a drop while working, so for now I decided to trust him.
Theo was working hard at Madam Cecile’s tavern. He cleared tables, took the glasses away, washed dishes. He was good with his hands, so the work came to him quickly, but his head refused to quiet down.
Rihen.
There was nothing in his head but Rihen.
A man who was always smiling away brightly. A handsome man who creased the corners of his eyes so softly when he smiled that his irises disappeared. Who sometimes came home wearing suspicious marks on his body...
He’d rushed to find work because he wanted to ease Rihen’s financial burden even a little, but now that he was actually away from him like this, unease raised its head. It was the worry that while he was gone, Rihen might once again be pressing his body against someone else’s.
Theo worked harder to shake off the stray thoughts. As he scrubbed at a table with force, the voice of a thoroughly drunk middle-aged man came from the table right beside him.
“See, with a man, you jab the prostate and he goes to pieces. Get that back hole popped open once and it doesn’t matter how manly he is, he can’t keep his head straight.”
Snickering laughter followed. The instant he heard it, Theo’s hand stopped. Rihen came to mind. Coming home with bite marks left all over him, taking out gold coins with a perfectly untroubled face.
He pictured Rihen spreading his legs with a smile. In his head, Rihen was plastered all over with kiss marks and bite marks, fawning, wrapping his legs around a man’s waist like he’d done it a hundred times. That tall, good-looking man with the vaguely shifty air and the well-built body was getting jabbed in that prostate place, dribbling tears and grinning in a filthy, vacant way.
His chest felt tight. Tight enough that breathing was difficult.
No. There’s no way Rihen would do that.
Theo shook his head a little. It was a ridiculous thing to imagine. There was no way Rihen would do such a thing. It was nothing more than a drunk man’s crude joke. Thinking that, Theo scrubbed the table harder and more thoroughly. As if he could rub the thought away along with the stains.
Don’t pay attention to talk like that.
Head down, he silently continued working.
The man launched into another story. This one was about plants that could be used as aphrodisiacs.
“There’s this thing called silverbloom, and you can get hold of it easily anywhere. It even grows on the hill behind town over there. I ground some up and tried it once, and let me tell you, it does the job for your vigor.”
They were words spilled out in a voice loosened by drink. They came out like a joke of no consequence, but the description the man gave of what silverbloom looked like stayed clearly in Theo’s ears.
When he got home, Rihen was waiting for him holding a prettily wrapped box. He was smiling away as always.
“It’s a present. Go on, open it.”
With his heart thumping, Theo untied the ribbon and opened the box. Inside was a sword of ordinary appearance. The decoration wasn’t lavish, and the design was the obvious sort you could find anywhere.
But the moment he gripped the hilt, the feel of it changed. Theo gave it one swing through the air. The balance was perfect, and it clung to his hand. This was definitely no ordinary sword. It was of a caliber where calling it a treasured blade wouldn’t sound strange at all.
Before joy came a stifling feeling. This... must be expensive. How did someone without a proper job get hold of it?
Even so, one thing was clear: Rihen had procured something this precious for his sake. Gratitude was the proper response.
“Thank you, Rihen.”
Theo hugged Rihen tightly. He held him like that for a moment, then asked carefully,
“Do you want to wash up together? It’s been a while.”
Rihen didn’t refuse.
The tub was somewhat cramped for two people. Their legs naturally overlapped, and the water sloshed as if it might spill over. Theo didn’t waste the opportunity and studied Rihen’s naked body relentlessly.
Now that he looked, there were other kinds of marks besides bites left clearly on his skin. On his shoulder, his waist, and his thighs were traces that looked like they’d been sucked hard by someone’s lips. There was no way Theo could know the truth, that Shane had taken arrows while burning down the holy knights’ armories and that the wounds, passing through a healing potion, had absurdly been left as marks like these.
He gently reached out and stroked the mark on Rihen’s thigh. The muscled thigh was firm, but the flesh on the inside was unexpectedly soft. Rihen’s body jolted.
“Ngh...”
A short, low moan slipped out. That sound, mixed in among the noise of the water, stayed clearly in Theo’s ears. Something inside his chest tightened.
“D-Don’t touch...”
Rihen pushed Theo away lightly, his face reddened. The gesture was closer to fluster than refusal. Theo touched him no further and obediently drew his hand back.
Strangely, his mouth was bone dry. Drawing breath did nothing for the thirst. His heart beat fast for no reason. Theo lowered his head. Looking at the lukewarm steam spreading over the water, he thought:
He wanted to turn twenty soon.
Because it felt like once he was an adult, he’d be able to put a name to this feeling.
We lay side by side in bed with the same scented oil left on our skin.
“Good night, Rihen.”
“Mm. You too.”
I brought up the status window and checked the level-up progress.
500p + 1 quest cleared : Destroy the statue (cleared) → Level up to age 15 (complete)
1,000p + 2 quests cleared : Temple arson (cleared) : Soul offering (cleared) → Level up to age 18 (complete)
1,500p + 3 quests cleared : Destroy the holy knights’ armories (cleared) : Assist Kairos’s necromancy research (cleared) : ?? → Conditions for age 20 unmet
One more quest cleared and Theo would be an adult. I was a little short on points, but that wasn’t a big problem. Soul offerings would cover it.
I spent relatively ordinary days waiting for the next quest. While Theo was out at work I put my hand to soul offerings and gathered points, and when he came home I greeted him with a smile and a face that said nothing had happened.
And then, some fifteen days later, in early March when the feel of spring had begun to seep in, the communication orb finally rang. Assuming it was Kairos, of course, I hurried to answer. But the face that surfaced above the orb belonged to someone entirely unexpected.
A female demon with green hair was looking at me. Long hair resembling snake scales spilled all the way to the floor. It was Belsina, the alchemist of the Demon King’s army.
If the good faction had Shasha, the evil faction had Belsina. In many respects she stood at Shasha’s opposite pole. Where Shasha made medicines that saved humans and harmed demons, Belsina made medicines that killed humans and healed demons.
I remembered that when I played as Shane in the game, Belsina hadn’t even treated me as a corps commander. Because of that, we’d barely had anything to do with each other. And now she was the one contacting me first.
Belsina spoke in that husky voice of hers.
“Hey, Shane. I hear you cleaned out a huge stash of drugs in the human realm? Give me some of what you’ve got. I want it for research.”
The rumor seemed to have spread that far already. After some deliberation, I agreed.
“Understood. In exchange, please share the results of your research with me as well.”
Once the results came in, I planned to quietly leak the information to Shasha. Knowing how the drug worked would help with developing a cure, after all.
Belsina went on.
“And I’ve got one more job for you. I’m developing a new restorative, and all the ingredients are in the human realm. Go get them for me.”
“What kind of restorative has ingredients only in the human realm?”
“They’re substances humans use as aphrodisiacs. But here’s the thing. There’s a possibility they act as an excellent restorative for demons.”
She scratched at the air with a finger. A list of ingredients surfaced above the communication orb one by one.
“Write it down. They’re more common than you’d think.”
The first was a plant called silverbloom. Steeped as a tea, it apparently sharpens the senses and clouds the judgment. For demons, though, it was a catalyst that stabilized mana that had been overspent. It could be found easily on the hill behind town.
The second also grew in the mountains. Blackbreath moss. Humans burn it and use it like tobacco. Inhale it and the strength goes out of your body and your consciousness turns hazy. According to Belsina, if a demon takes it, it can raise the regeneration rate of damaged tissue. It grows in the shade of rocks or near old tree roots.
The last ingredient was the antennae of the crimson moon butterfly. For humans it works as a sexual stimulant, for demons as an awakening agent.
“If you mix all of this together, does it actually become a restorative?”
“By demon standards, yes. If a human drank it... well, they’d probably end up no different from a beast in heat, wouldn’t they?”
Belsina cackled.
“Anyway, bring the ingredients back properly. Don’t mix them up with anything else. Once it’s finished, you’ll be the first one I feed it to as a test.”
Having to become Belsina’s guinea pig wasn’t an especially pleasant development. I chose my words rationally.
“As you know, I’m a crossbreed. There’s no telling whether this would act as a restorative on me or as an aphrodisiac, is there? I don’t think I’d make a good test subject.”
“Which is exactly why I want to feed it to you all the more. It’s interesting.”
The mad scientist’s purple eyes glinted.
〈SUDDEN QUEST〉 Gather the ingredients for potion brewing Silverbloom ×25 Blackbreath moss ×20 Crimson moon butterfly antennae ×6 On success: 300 points, Belsina’s special restorative potion On failure: Belsina might just secretly inject you with poison?
It wasn’t a difficult quest. With a quest like this, sneaking around behind Theo’s back would look more suspicious. I was better off going up the mountain with him. I’d have Theo pick edible berries and mushrooms while I collected the ingredients Belsina had asked for.
I wasn’t worried about Theo looking at the ingredient list and thinking of aphrodisiacs. Would Theo even know what an aphrodisiac was to begin with? Probably not. He was such an innocent kid. A kid who knew nothing but physical training and sword practice.
Thanks to my play experience from my past life, I possibly knew Theo better than he knew himself. From the very start of the game Theo was set up as a character with no sexual experience whatsoever, and he holds that state right through to the ending.
A hero whose only desire was stopping the Demon King. A man who, rather than share a sweet tryst, would use the time to swing his sword once more. That was the kind of hero Theo was. Among players there was even a running joke that it wouldn’t be strange if Theo believed storks delivered babies. A Theo like that couldn’t possibly know the ingredients that go into an aphrodisiac.
The next morning I woke Theo, saying we should get some exercise and pick berries while we were at it.
“If it’s with you, Rihen, anything’s fine.”
Theo got up happily.
It was cold out with the early-spring cold snap. It would be colder still up the mountain. So I bundled him up carefully. I fastened his coat, fitted gloves on his hands, and wrapped a scarf snugly around his neck.
“Tell me if it feels stifling.”
Theo nodded and fiddled with the scarf. Climbing a mountain must have been that exciting, because the corners of his mouth were turned all the way up.
The hill behind town was high enough in elevation that snow was still piled up. The path was slippery, but both Theo and I had good reflexes, so there was nothing difficult about it.
...Or so I thought, and then Theo lost his footing.
“Ah!”
I reflexively caught him around the waist. Theo fell right into my arms. He’d grown a great deal compared to twelve, but maybe because he wasn’t an adult yet, he was still a little smaller than me.
“You okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. Thank you, Rihen.”
His face was red, probably from the embarrassment of nearly falling.
We climbed the snow-covered mountain path side by side again. Me scanning for herbs, Theo hunting for berries to eat.
