PMEVBO 121

Je-in had no manners. If some other bastard had acted like that right in front of him, Atsula wouldn’t have stood for it.

However, he appeared to be on the verge of death based on the pallor of his face. And the way he was desperately trying to act calm despite his condition was so pathetic… Atsula just couldn’t bring himself to raise his hand.

Chasing after a sick man was no big deal. Atsula closed the distance between himself and Je-in. But as he rounded the corner of the hallway, Je-in was nowhere to be seen.

Unless he’d vanished into thin air, the only way he could have disappeared in an instant from a windowless hallway was to go inside a room. As it happened, there was an empty room right in front of him.

He grabbed the doorknob and yanked it. The locked door didn’t budge an inch.

‘…Shit, should I break it down?’

No. He had already done that once downstairs; doing it again would be a bit much.

The commotion during the banquet had reached the Pope’s ears faster than ever before. Earlier, he hadn’t been in his right mind and had acted without thinking, but now he was relatively lucid.

‘If I hesitate even a little, he’ll disappear.’

…Just like downstairs.

Atsula clicked his tongue in frustration and kicked the door.

Bang!

He roughly kicked the shattered remains of the door aside and stepped inside. He immediately looked around the lounge, but could sense no movement anywhere in the space shrouded in darkness.

Atsula gave a crooked smile.

“……Fuck, even a sick bastard can move fast.”

***

As soon as they arrived at Cell 1004, Iser checked on Lucariel’s condition. And he soon realized one of his wrist bones was fractured.

‘……When did he get hurt?’

If he’d known this would happen, he should have infused more of the Power of Life into the water he had given him at the outdoor table.

He pressed his finger against Lucariel’s jaw to pry his mouth open. He channeled his energy through the gap in his parted lips. The swollen wrist quickly subsided.

He laid Lucariel on the floor and offered him his lap. Even as he manipulated the report panel, his hand never stopped patting his shoulder.

To return here from Chepony Castle, he fixed their location to Cell 1004. Then.

─────【 Report 】─────

The mission performer’s location is

fixed at ‘Cell 1004’.

Note:

For the mission performer, the entity responsible for the location lock is denoted as ‘ ████ ’.

The timing of the fixation is at the mission performer’s discretion.

────────────────

…He forcibly activated the location unauthorized copylock system he had previously handed over to Lucariel. As if Lucariel had used it himself to return.

Hanging on the cell walls were restraints tied to scraps of prison garb.

Removing the restraints was difficult, but putting them on was not. When not worn on the body, the buckles opened easily. Lucariel must have chosen this method knowing that.

‘It’ll take a while after waking up to remove the clerical robes and put on the restraints.’

Iser planned to stay out of the cell until then. He would receive a report that Lucariel had woken up, and about an hour later, he would return here. Along with the lie that the meeting had ended later than expected.

‘It’s bad enough that I’ve dragged Lucariel through six years in Hell, but if he finds out that I know about his mission, and that I can even manipulate it to some extent…’

…He didn’t even want to think about what would happen next.

He knew he couldn’t pull off a perfect deception. He could fabricate a situation where it looked like Lucariel had fixed his location on his own, but he couldn’t fabricate his memories.

If he’d lost consciousness at Chepony Castle and then suddenly woke up here, he’d realize that something was wrong. If things went according to plan, at least he could avoid that disorientation being directed at Iser.

So he had to hurry and get out of here. But… he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

It had been like this ever since he entered Hell and became Lucariel’s assigned guard. Leaving him alone in this dark, cold Read oncell was just too painful. He would rather have stayed by his side as a ghost-like presence, just as he had been before he came back to life.

In the end, Iser released the location lock he’d set on Lucariel, and headed toward the guards break room with him in his arms.

‘If I say I went to the cell and found him sleeping, so I moved him to the break room… would Lucariel believe me?’

…It felt like he was giving too much away.

Since it was a lie he’d cobbled together on the spot, it lacked credibility. But he had no choice. Even if it meant taking a slight risk, he didn’t want to leave an unconscious Lucariel there.

He laid Lucariel on his side on the break room bed and headed to the bathroom. Changing his face took a lot of effort and time. Going back to normal was simple in comparison.

It took less than a minute for Iser to change back, and he immediately lay down next to Lucariel. As their bodies pressed close together, their breaths mingled. He patted Lucariel’s back and gazed at his face for a long time.

‎

How much time had passed? Starting from the tips, Lucariel’s black hair began to turn silver. With their bodies touching, Iser could feel Lucariel’s frame gradually shrinking. Not long after, a familiar-looking Lucariel was nestled in Iser’s arms.

Long silver hair cascaded down over his delicate features. Iser tucked the hair behind his ear, then traced the butterfly-shaped birthmark beneath his eye with the tip of his thumb.

When Lucariel went searching for the last root, stolen content Iser followed him for a while. As he did, he naturally came to realize that Lucariel was wary of the castle and the Tower of Serpents.

First, he headed for the Tower of Serpents. But he found nothing there. From there, he entered the castle and began searching from the top floor down, using the key he had obtained in advance.

It was in the banquet hall he passed through that he first saw Cardinal Bechard. The position of cardinal was one that only a single person among the clergy could hold. Therefore, it wasn’t difficult to recognize him as Cardinal Bechard by the pattern on his belt.

But even if he hadn’t been wearing his clerical robes, he would have recognized him at a glance.

……The owner of the red envelopes containing the butterfly carcasses and cigarettes was none other than that man.

The man had butterfly-shaped marks under his eyes, on his neck, and on the index finger of his left hand, exactly like Lucariel’s. It was only after hearing the clergymen whispering that he realized the butterfly marks were tattoos he’d had done to mimic Lucariel’s.

The envelope containing the dead butterflies. Lucariel’s face as he looked inside was still vivid in his mind. That was why…….

‘I wanted to carve out those tattoos he copied from him…… and kill him.’

It was a murderous intent he had never even felt toward Kogaron. It was the first time he had ever harbored such feelings toward another person.

The hand that had been tracing beneath his eyes had, before he knew it, drifted down to his neck.

──────【 Report 】──────

Memory error caused by the

“Weapon of Brainwashing”

has been restored

────────────────

His eyelashes, resembling frost flowers, trembled slightly. Soon after, Lucariel slowly opened his eyes. The moment their eyes met, Iser’s hand, which had been caressing his neck, flinched. He withdrew his hand, and asked with a calm expression,

“……Are you awake?”

Lucariel blinked slowly; his gaze swept past Iser to take in his surroundings. Just as Iser was about to say the words he had prepared, Lucariel spoke first.

“Iser Hayut.”

His voice was low and husky. Iser forced a smile and replied.

“……Yes.”

Lucariel stared at Iser in silence for a moment. Then he propped himself up on his elbows, and slowly raised his upper body before pushing Iser’s shoulder with one hand.

Iser didn’t resist; he lay flat on his back on the bed. Lucariel trapped Iser’s body between his knees and sat down on top of him.

Although they had first met when Lucariel was a priest, Iser had never once seen him in his clerical robes.

The first time he saw him was today at the outdoor table. With his black hair, he looked exactly like the image people had of priests. That was why the clerical robes suited him so well. But honestly, he couldn’t imagine what Lucariel would look like wearing them with his silver hair.

He had thought that the dark, solemn clerical robes wouldn’t suit someone as pale and soft-looking as Lucariel…

‘I was wrong.’

Against the backdrop of the old ceiling, they suited Lucariel well as he looked down at him expressionlessly. He looked colder and more detached than ever before.

…So much so that Iser wanted to look away.

Just then, his hand, which had been resting on Iser’s shoulder, moved upward. Iser’s body shuddered at the touch of his warm hand cupping his chin. Lucariel traced Iser’s lips with the tip of his index finger and spoke softly.

“You… what have you done to your face?”