Chapter 497

“Curious?”

“Yeah.”

“Then remember it yourself.”

Hugo stood with his arms folded, his back against the wall of the corridor. This was the connecting passage inside the arena that led to the participants-only section. No one came and went here except contestants who had finished their match and people affiliated with The Council.

In a stillness without even white noise, Hugo stared blankly through the broad window with a face sunk in thought.

...What if I can’t remember?

“Then you’ll just have to endure the frustration yourself. Compared to the time I waited, it’s nothing.”

The moment the match ended, he had kicked himself up from his seat in the stands. It felt as though he would miss him if he did not hurry. By the time he came down into the connecting passage, Trigon Canyon was already on the verge of post-match cleanup, with most of the contestants having withdrawn.

Fortunately, he had not been too late. Now and then, spirited sparks still leapt from flames that had yet to be fully extinguished. Whenever he watched them, the flame of the silver candlestick from the previous night inevitably rose before his eyes.

Leo.

“If you still want to know in the end, then wait a little longer.”

Until when?

“Until the day I win the championship.”

That voice, sunk with unusual coldness, whispered at his ear.

“Once I win, I’ll tell you then.”

“......”

“Until then, think about it carefully. On your own.”

On his own. As though inflicting some cruel punishment, the other man’s tone had carried hidden barbs.

Unable to ask any more, Hugo had fallen silent around then. His hand rose unconsciously and rubbed over his lips and jaw, roughened by the night.

“The time he waited...”

“Yes, sir?”

At the Legion Commander’s murmur, the two knights standing guard in the corridor reacted at once. Without shifting his gaze, Hugo shook his head as though it were nothing.

Just then, noisy voices echoed from the far end of the corridor.

“At this rate, isn’t our boss really going to win the championship?”

The acrid smell of flames and ash brushed the tip of his nose. Along with it came a faint but familiar trace of magic. His blue eyes slid to the side, then fixed on the corner beyond which the approaching presence could be felt.

“Ah, I mean, if it’s not our boss, then who else would turn the arena into that kind of mess? He waved his hand once and the ground split open, the rails collapsed, and the lava just—just! Huh? Did you see the judges’ faces back there? They weren’t looking at a person, they were looking at some kind of monst—”

Ero, windmilling both arms, took the lead like a proper leader and made a tremendous fuss. Then Beatrice, who had been spinning around with him until just a moment ago, must have grown tired of it, because she only toyed with her nails and snapped back.

“Oh, shut up. You’re so loud.”

“Is that praise or an insult?”

Gillian asked with a snicker. Ero, in high spirits, went on, practically spraying spit as he spoke.

“Praise, obviously—no, worship, isn’t it? For the record, I’m our boss’s first believer!”

“Then I’ll be the lion’s first apostle. Hmm. Would retainer be better?”

“Come on, Orca, there’s no such thing! And besides, if you keep clinging on after you already got rejected, it’s not attract—”

At that very moment, Ero, who rounded the corner first, locked eyes with the man leaning against the wall. His grinning face stiffened in an instant, and his mouth, paused while trying to comprehend the situation, dropped wide open.

“W-waaaah!”

Since the nightmare from the Shower Room he had tried so hard to forget was suddenly standing right in front of him, it was only natural that a scream came out before anything else.

At the front of the group, he stumbled backward and went crashing down. The others following after him stopped one after another.

“What?”

“Joker, why all of a sudden...”

Their gazes naturally shifted to the large man standing at one side of the corridor. Leonardo, who had been moving in silence among them, was no exception.

As eyes landed on him from this direction, Hugo straightened from the wall, unfolded his arms, and stepped forward. His overwhelming presence and the chill shadow surrounding him filled the wide passage.

“It seems I startled you.”

His voice was calm, but cool, and it rang low through the long corridor. The atmosphere was not particularly heavy, yet the pressure it carried was considerable. Leonardo’s eyelids widened for an instant.

“You—”

The word rose by habit, but he closed his mouth tight as soon as he became aware of the eyes around them.

Leonardo’s concealed Adam’s apple bobbed sharply. He had not expected to run into him this abruptly.

The resentment he still felt toward the man who had disturbed him all throughout the match had not yet faded. Yet here he was, standing there without warning and blocking even his way out. Leonardo could not tell what sort of reaction he was supposed to show.

Especially not in front of his team, rather than alone.

Quite apart from the turmoil gripping Leonardo, Gillian, who had been wiping ash away with a towel, and Beatrice, who had looked thoroughly unimpressed, both went rigid the moment they saw the man.

“Did the match go well?”

Hugo asked first in an offhand, formal tone of courtesy. But the people hearing him found themselves unable to move so much as a finger.

In a sense, it was a degree of alertness beyond mere tension. And rightly so. He was the head of the imperial faction nobility and the Supreme Legion Commander of The Council, a man whose name came up with no small frequency whenever strategies were laid in Libertas. Snow-white uniform, dark navy hair neatly swept back, and those piercing blue eyes said to freeze the blood in one’s entire body with a single lowered glance stood right before them.

That notorious Kajard, merciless toward criminals who disturbed order, and obsessed with propriety and principle.

Who could have imagined that such a figure would suddenly appear before a handful of league contestants? For Gillian and Beatrice, it felt like a threat to their very lives arriving in an utterly unprepared moment.

And as though proving it, the wrist of Beatrice’s hand, clasped tightly with Morvan’s, was trembling ever so slightly.

Only Orca looked at Hugo with open puzzlement, then caught the scent of water spreading through the air.

Hugo, sounding out the silence that followed, turned his gaze toward that killer whale. The instant their eyes met, Orca sharpened his nerves without showing it on his face. He did not know the reason, but a dangerous current could be felt from the other man. It was not plainly exposed, yet a strange hostility was stirring there.

But Hugo withdrew his gaze almost at once and extended a hand toward Ero, who was still sprawled on the floor.

“Take it.”

At first glance, it looked like an act of kindness, but it was far removed from the gentleness he had shown Leonardo. It was a command, through and through. It suited him, certainly, but to Ero, who had been so startled that his soul had practically fled his body, it was pressure of the most terrifying kind.

“Uh, y-yes...?”

Ero’s eyes darted along the line of the white glove thrust right before his face. Half-crouched and unable to decide what to do, he eventually sprang up by himself, seemingly unable to bring himself to take it.

“N-no, it’s fine! I’m okay! But wh-what brings you here...?”

Stammering and rambling, Ero flicked a glance at Leonardo. Even his boss, who was all he usually had eyes for, seemed laced with embarrassment, so this did not look like a meeting that had been arranged in advance. At just that moment, Hugo’s gaze also reached Leonardo. As though he had never held out the hand with any great intent to begin with, the hand offering grace was quickly withdrawn.

“It does not seem I am obligated to answer.”

After that cold reply, his blue eyes fixated only on Lion with relentless hunger. The others sharing the same space appeared not to exist in his mind at all, and that uncomfortable stretch of time lasted quite a while. By the time difficulty had begun to show little by little on Leonardo’s face, Hugo gave an order to the knights waiting behind him.

“Escort the contestants to the waiting room.”

“Yes, sir.”

The two knights, who had been watching the mood closely, hurried forward and began guiding the members of Team JOKER toward the opposite end of the corridor.

“This way, please.”

No one needed to be told twice. Movements grew busy at once. Every last one of them only dipped their heads stiffly and hurried around the broad corridor, giving Kajard as wide a berth as possible as they passed.

Only Leonardo remained standing there. Then, just as he, too, was about to walk past at Hugo’s side with the same show of composure—

“Lion, stay a moment. I need to speak with you.”

Bracing one hand against the corridor wall, Hugo blocked the way ahead. Leonardo, his line of sight obscured by the man’s forearm and hanging cloak, came to an abrupt stop where he stood.

“...What?”

The teammates being led away by the knights looked back, but only briefly. Orca tried to turn around at the pointed mention of “Lion,” but Gillian shoved him on by the back, and he was pushed away from the spot.

In the silence, the sound of footsteps receded farther and farther.

Leonardo stared blankly in the direction his teammates were disappearing.

The gaze driving into him from the diagonal stung, but he deliberately did not meet it.

Not only had the man ruined the thrill of victory merely by appearing, but in this exhausted, drained state, his blunt attempt to start a conversation right away was not welcome at all after the contact from the previous night. Leonardo still did not want to talk, nor was he prepared for it.

Before long, every trace of anyone else vanished entirely from the space, and only the two of them remained in the middle of the corridor.

Finding the silence almost unbearably uncomfortable, Leonardo finally opened fire first, his face full of displeasure.

“What exactly do you think you’re do—”

Just as he lifted his head with a frown and tried to protest, he could not finish the sentence. A gloved hand yanked his mask down and abruptly caught him by the chin, forcing his face up.

His golden lashes parted in startled alarm, and those beautifully cut eyes had already come right up before him.

Then Hugo tilted his head and crushed their lips together roughly. Urgency clung to the breath pressing in on him.