Chapter 10 - Volume 1 (2/2)

His legs felt tangled up; he moved them and shot out of the room to find a small body crouching there. On instinct, he reached out his hand to her. Just as he tried to hold her up, she grabbed his arm.

Even as her face was cramped out of pain, she still tried to show him her usual smile. He couldn’t help but feel ashamed of himself at that. Just what was he forcing her to do? Making her come all the way here even though he’d hurt her, and on top of that making her do the impossible, forcing her to smile for him.

She still said, 「Don’t apologize,」 to someone as pathetic as him. She said, 「I want to play with you again,」 to someone like him. She told someone like him that she liked him.

「Filmina, is this okay with you?」

「It’s okay.」

Then, even as she lost her consciousness, she put on a smile for him. ‘Do you want to play?’ He thought she would never come. Agedilus really thought there was no way she’d say that. That’s why when she did say it for him, he couldn’t do anything but reply, 「Of course.」

His foster father showed up immediately after that and took her home to the Adina Estate, still unconscious. He watched from his room as they left.

It was that day he was called by his foster father. He had poured water and thin porridge into his body that had gone so long without eating or drinking. When he visited his foster father’s library, he asked him, 「Do you still want to go to the Academy of Magic?」

「Your existence has become public once again with this incident, hasn’t it? The university president said it’s too dangerous to leave you be and keep things as they are. We could get by with me holding your power back until now, but that doesn’t seem to be enough anymore. Good god, I would’ve thought they’d have gotten better as the time passes, but no one’s changed a bit since my time there.」

His foster father let out a sigh as if amazed and worn-out, covering his eyes. The words he’d spit out regretfully were so full of concern that Agedilus felt guilty.

「……Sorry. I couldn’t protect you even when you’re still young.」

「I’ve already been protected more than enough.」

Protected by his foster father too, and by her too. That’s why this time… He thought.

Unable to put it in words, he lowered his head. His foster father patted his head, crumpling his hair, and then embraced him with all his heart. The warmth and strength of his arms pressed against Agedilus’s back. That’s why he asked. About Filmina, about her physical condition.

Just as he asked again, his foster father’s previously calm expression stiffened. That expression he made, opening his mouth to speak as he grasped Agedilus’s shoulders, told him much more clearly that her condition wasn’t good in the slightest than his words could.

「Her life isn’t in danger anymore. But as I said before, the scars on her back will likely never disappear. She may be the young lady of the Adina family, but the world’s reaction towards this won’t be favorable, you know?」

「That’s why I’ll protect Filmina.」

「Is that because you feel guilty towards her? If so, then stop now. She’s not going to be happy if you protect her because you feel obligated towards her or pity her. That’ll just make her miserable. Surely even you know she’s like that.」

As his father continued, Agedilus instinctively raised his voice.

「—That’s not true! It’s not like that!」

It wasn’t like that. If this emotion was just obligation or guilt, it wouldn’t be so painful. If he’d just been basking in nothing but guilt, obligation, it would have been so easy. But that wasn’t it, and that’s why it was so painful.

He had given her an injury that wouldn’t go away her entire life. No matter how sorry he was, it would never be enough. As a woman, as a noble, as a person who engaged in magic, she had received a wound that had to be shunned. Even if he apologized, it wasn’t something he could apologize enough for.

……But. But, when he heard it, he felt, just a little. Agedilus felt, really just a little happy too. He ended up feeling joy.

Well, wasn’t that right? With that wound, she couldn’t go anywhere now. No doubt there was no one who would willingly choose her in this world that shunned wounds and injuries caused by spirits. Definitely no one but him.

Agedilus was made aware of how he was the worst, most disgusting living creature on the planet to be thinking like this. He thought himself unforgivable and detestable. He was so gross for harboring feelings like this. He didn’t know the names of those feelings.

But her smile as she bore that pain told him. It was crooked because of the pain, but Agedilus thought it more beautiful than anything, it was precious to him.

Accepting it was scary. But he had no choice but to accept it. The reason he wanted to protect her. The reason was.

「It’s because I love Filmina.」

Putting it in words, he realized once again that it was true. That was right. In the end, that’s how it was. He, Agedilus Von Lancent, loved Filmina Veer Adina. He was sure he’d loved her from the moment he met her. The second he saw her smile as she said, 「Beautiful,」 to his hair that everyone loathed and those eyes that made everyone uneasy. He had fallen in love with her.

As he told his foster father that, looking straight up at him with his fists clenched, his foster father narrowed his blue eyes and smiled in satisfaction.

「You are my son, my pride.」

The only one in this whole wide world whimsical enough to say that about a parasite like him was surely just his foster father.

And then, the day he was to leave for the Academy of Magic came. Filmina had shown up at the Lancent Estate with her parents and brother especially to see him off. It had been a long while since he’d seen her face, and she looked a little thin. But the smile on her face made him feel incredibly relieved, just as it did before he’d hurt her.

His foster father smiled gently. Her parents seemed to have been told of the news before; her father looked like he was somehow glaring at him, while her mother looked pleased, both watching them.

Surrounded by those gazes on him, Agedilus resolved himself and opened his mouth. The tension then was just as high as the time he first used magic – when Filmina had once got a papercut from a magical book, and he’d used the power of a water spirit to cast healing magic on her finger.

You could say in his short 9 years living, Agedilus had almost never wanted anything. He hadn’t thought about wanting something. But just this time was different. There was something he wanted from the bottom of his heart. He might be rejected. He might be laughed off with a ‘Surely you’re joking?’ But, even so. Even so, he just wanted proof that he was there beside her.

「Filmina.」

「What is it?」

「Would you wait for me?」

「Yes, of course.」

She replied with a smile in her usual tone. Surely only his foster father knew how happy that response made him.