Chapter 461

“I still can’t believe it.”

Leo whispered with his head buried down. I raised an eyebrow, wondering what he meant. As if he could tell we wanted him to continue, he immediately murmured, “You guys are alive. And so am I. The building definitely collapsed, and….”

“…….”

“Lord Rothenhahn…”

Leo stumbled over his words, as though trying to remember something he couldn’t quite recall. I looked over the bandages wrapped around his arm and head, then got to my feet and patted him on the back.

“You need to sleep more. Get some rest.”

“No. No.”

Leo hurriedly lifted his head and grabbed my arm. He looked at Ulrike and Zähringen before turning his eyes back to me. His eyes still had that distant, unreal look in them. He burrowed back under the blanket and closed his eyes.

“Let’s stay together a little longer. Just until I fall asleep…”

“…….”

I shrugged and exchanged glances with my friends. After a moment, Zähringen nodded toward Leo and said, “He’s asleep.”

“…Yeah. I guess he’s finally relaxed.”

I drew the curtains for Leo, who had fallen asleep again, and asked the nurse, “How is he doing?”

“He has a fracture in his right arm and a scalp laceration. He needs to rest because of a mild concussion.”

“When can he be discharged?”

“He can leave whenever he likes, but he absolutely needs to rest for a week. We have already notified the Association. I heard it was decided that he will return the Wednesday after Easter, though that may change.”

“Good. That’s good.”

We would be returning to a five-person team, excluding Heike and Leo. Not that it was particularly good news. His condition was better than mine, at least, but if a mage had injured his arm…

I furrowed my brow, rubbing my chin as I told my friends, “With his arm fractured, he won’t be able to do any Association work for a while. Even when he comes back, he’ll probably only be able to handle paperwork.”

“But it’s his right arm. Can he even do paperwork…?”

“He’ll manage somehow. He’s the kind of idiot who’d practice swinging a wand with his left hand just because his right one’s injured. We should give him enough work to keep him from getting any other ideas.”

While Ulrike looked puzzled by that, Zähringen spoke thoughtfully.

“You know Leo well.”

“I can’t help it…”

I narrowed my eyes and let my voice trail off, prompting Zähringen to burst out laughing.

“Hahaha! Then haven’t you trained with Leo enough by now? I think it’s time for you to start training with me.”

“Let’s train together when we get back. More importantly, if he can’t be discharged… we’ll have to go without him. Let’s pick magnolia branches in Munich and then go to Luise’s estate. Or do you want to do it the other way around?”

Ulrike looked down at Leo, thinking it over carefully, then snapped his fingers.

“I think the other way around would be better. Heike’s in a hospital room in Munich, so… I want to bring him the plant while it’s still as fresh as possible.”

“You’re just going to stick the magnolia branch in soil anyway.”

“Even so. If Leo stays like this, I don’t think he’ll be able to help us right away.”

“Right. Then we’ll take the train again this ti—”

“No!”

‘Huh?’

Ulrike went pale in an instant and waved his hands frantically. He gave an awkward smile before continuing.

“No more trains. We’re done with those…”

When I looked at Zähringen, he was wearing a similarly awkward little smile. I immediately figured out why and looked away as I muttered, “I’d like to hear how you two even made it there.”

“Right? I’ll tell you when we gather everyone and go to my house. It’ll be the first time I’ve brought our team over since I invited Heike!”

“Oh, right. You invited Heike over before.”

“Of course. We used to go back and forth between each other’s houses.”

At that, Zähringen smiled and spoke to Ulrike.

“Sounds like you had fun.”

For a moment, I felt relieved.

This team was made up of people who weren’t particularly interested in getting close to one another. With the exception of Ulrike and Heike.

There was no reason to put up walls between everyone, but when it came to work, there was no need for all of us to become inseparable friends, either. It would be nice if we did become friends, but we were already friends from the same school. There was no reason to expect anything beyond that—that was how everyone except Ulrike and Heike saw it.

If Ulrike hadn’t been here, we would have treated our team activities no differently from the way we treated politics. Heike might not have been dissatisfied with us, but he would have learned how he was supposed to live by watching us. I didn’t want him to lose out on having a proper school life, so I wouldn’t have simply left him alone, but I would have repeatedly felt that there was only so much I could do to create a school-like atmosphere by myself.

After finishing his conversation with Zähringen with a smile, Ulrike ran a hand over the bottle he was holding. He must have been thinking about Heike. Looking out at the flowering trees beyond the window, he spoke quietly.

“Heike said he wanted to go to the Ottoman Empire.”

“Why there?”

“He said he wanted to take pictures of Islamic mosque. He said the Empire’s mosques are so magnificent that they can’t even be compared to the ones we see in our textbooks. He wants to capture the grandeur of the mosques as they catch the sunlight.”

“…….”

“Actually, that’s about all he knows. He said that if he went there and saw it for himself, maybe he’d be able to feel more. And if he came back having seen more, maybe he could capture more of the world in his photographs. …That’s what he said.”

That was something I would have rather heard from Heike himself. Still, it was fortunate enough that Heike hadn’t kept those thoughts entirely to himself, and that I could hear what he had been thinking through a friend. Considering what Heike had been like before, there was no doubt that we wouldn’t have even known this much otherwise.

I slowly nodded. Thanks to Ulrike, our team hadn’t become too stiff. There was no one on the team whom Ulrike had been close friends with before—he had gotten along reasonably well with Leo and Julia, his classmates from Imperial Third Academy and fellow top students, but he had other friends he had been close to since childhood, and they were probably all in the academy’s Student Military Corps. Even if he felt somewhat unfamiliar with our team in his own way, he wanted to become close with us. He had kindly given us the chance to grow closer to him. That was a talent no one else on our team had, something only Ulrike possessed.

The five of us and Ulrike were different. The five of us had been forced to become adults ever since our Third Academy days. And we owed Ulrike for that—at least, I did, because I wanted my friends to be able to live their lives at their own age.

“Are you guys asleep~?”

A hearty voice came from the doorway. Elias, grinning brightly with a healthy flush in his face, looked at each of us in turn before running over and throwing his arms around me.

“Well, look at that! Our Luka’s still alive!”

“Of course I am.”

I laughed and ran a hand through Elias’s long hair. His white hair, which Elias stubbornly insisted was blonde, slipped through my fingers. His laughter gradually died down as he rested his chin on my shoulder. Then he murmured, “I have absolutely no memory after meeting Einsiedel. So…”

“…….”

“When I opened my eyes here, I thought it was all over. You weren’t there, and my body felt strangely light… I was in despair, but…”

I slowly nodded to let him know I was listening. Elias suddenly pulled away, grabbed my shoulders, and grinned.

“The ceiling looked way too familiar~? That’s how I knew!”

“Knew what?”

“That you’d succeeded.”

I smiled at that. Then I looked at Ulrike and Zähringen beside me and continued.

“It wasn’t just me. Luise and Julia made things much easier. If they hadn’t been there, we might still be stuck there.”

Elias smiled without a word and hugged Zähringen—Zähringen smiled and rubbed his back—then quickly pulled away and patted Ulrike on the shoulder. When Ulrike beamed at him, Elias stared at him for a moment, shrugged, and stepped back. As Elias moved toward the bed where Leo was sleeping, he suddenly pointed at my eye and asked, “Why is one of your eyes all bloodshot?”

“Who knows? It’s not affecting my vision. More importantly, any trace of blood being drawn?”

“Apparently there’s just one, on my right arm. What about you?”

“…Nothing on me. They didn’t put anything in your body, did they?”

“They said there’s nothing like that. My mana’s completely normal, too.”

“…….”

Good. That was a relief. Elias leaned in close to Leo’s face, then suddenly turned toward me as though he had just remembered something.

“Luka, I heard you only stopped to get your head bandaged and then slipped away! They told me to drag you back.”

“Ah, I’ll go back later. I only came here because I wanted to see Leo.”

“Same here. Hey—wake up.”

Elias pinched Leo’s cheek and yanked hard. Leo frowned and buried his face in the pillow. Elias stayed silent for a while, carefully touching the bandage on Leo’s forehead. Then he quickly left the room and returned with a pen. I looked at it and asked, “What’s that for?”

“What do you think?”

Elias ran his tongue over his lips and started writing something on the bandage covering Leo’s forehead. Zähringen watched them with his arms crossed, raising an eyebrow. Look at him. He wasn’t even stopping Elias.

I watched Elias warily, like Ulrike had been doing, then placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Why don’t you write that on his arm instead…”

“Aw, it’s fine~”

“What’s fine?”

Leo answered Elias in a hoarse voice.

“Oh, you woke up.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t wake up?”

Leo naturally held out his right arm to Elias. Elias just as naturally moved it out of the way and continued writing on the bandage on his forehead.

[Departure into new affection and new clamour!]

It was exactly the sort of line from a poem Elias would read. As Elias lifted the pen, Leo furrowed his brow slightly.

“What’s the point if I can’t see it? Lukas, what did Elias write?”

“No, Luka! Don’t tell him!”

“Set forth amid new affections and new sounds.”

“Hng.”

Elias made a strange little noise. After hearing my answer, Leo dropped his head back onto the pillow and let out a breath that was almost a sigh.

“Rimbaud… Since when did you start reading Rimbaud? And I’m taking this bandage off right now.”

“I read it all the time. I wrote it nicely, so don’t throw it away. Keep it as a family heirloom.”

Even after Elias’s reply, Leo simply kept his eyes closed. He murmured, “I’m glad you’re all okay.”

“…….”

“…All of you. Really.”

Leo continued, his dry lips barely moving. We simply watched him in silence. There wasn’t a single person here who didn’t understand how he must have felt.

Elias suddenly buried his head against Leo’s chest. Startled out of nowhere with his eyes still closed, Leo irritably pushed him away and leaned against the headboard, now completely awake. He tried to push Elias off him as much as he could before asking me, “Narke?”

“He still haven’t—”

“I’m here.”

We turned at the voice from behind us. Narke stood in the doorway, dressed in a clean Eszett uniform, his face pale. He must have come over from Prussia after hearing the news. There was far more darkness than surprise in his expression. Leo stared silently at Narke for a moment before speaking.

“It’s good to see you.”

“…….”

“I have something I need to say to Lukas first, so… guys, could you come back in a little while?”

The others exchanged glances between Leo and me before leaving the room. Ulrike still looked at us with some concern. Once everyone had gone, I dropped into the seat beside Leo and nodded toward him. Leo unwound the bandage around his forehead and folded it as he asked, “What happened to your leg?”

“…….”

Impressive observation. No one else noticed after I got here.

He must have sensed that the flow of mana around me was slightly different. Or perhaps he’d noticed something strange about my core. Maybe both. I answered him plainly.

“Vitriol is making up my leg.”

“…What happened?”

Leo pressed his eyes shut and lowered his head. He knew what it meant for vitriol to be making up my leg: without it, I couldn’t walk. I answered calmly.

“I almost died, and since I couldn’t afford to die, I held on until the very end. That’s what happened.”

“…….”

“I couldn’t exactly let your life go to waste.”

Leo slowly raised his head. His sky-blue eyes, worn down by anxiety, were covered by a faint smile.

“I’m honored you thought of that at such a split-second moment.”

“Geez…”

I shrugged and gave a hollow laugh. Leo wasn’t finished yet. He pointed at my eye and asked, “What happened to your eye?”

“It got wet.”

“Just now?”

“No.”

“It wouldn’t get this bloodshot just because it got wet a while ago.”

I pretended not to know and shrugged again, stretching my mouth into a vague expression. Leo looked at my leg with an expression of resignation.

“You can’t remove the vitriol from your leg by yourself, can you?”

“No.”

“We’ll have to get Narke. Once he purifies the vitriol with divine power, go downstairs and have the doctor treat the damage to your leg. The sooner you recover, the better.”

I nodded and got to my feet. Or, at least, I tried to.

Leo grabbed me by the jacket and pulled me closer, then took a sniff. He stared intently at me for a moment before tilting his head.

“Alcohol?”

“…….”

“Let’s hear the details later.”

He’s got a hell of a nose. At this rate, he’d probably figure out what kind of whiskey Einsiedel had spilled, too. I shook my head and went outside to bring Narke in.

When Narke saw us, the corners of his mouth lifted slightly.

“…Leo. Lukas.”

“Hey.”

After Leo’s brief greeting, Narke hesitated over what to say before awkwardly replying, “I’m glad to see you’re alive.”

“Me too. Anyway, could you treat Lukas’s leg?”

“Ah, of course. I was thinking I should do that, too.”

Narke gave a small wave of his hand. At this point, I wasn’t even surprised that he had thought of it without anyone saying anything. I rolled up my trouser leg and showed him my left leg.

Leo and Narke both grimaced at the sight of the skin, which had turned black and gone soft like mud. Honestly, so did I. It was the first time I’d actually seen what it looked like, so I couldn’t exactly help it.

Narke took off his glove and placed his hand against my skin.

— …Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant.

He repeated the same spell three or four times, along with a purification spell. Little by little, my skin began to regain its original color. Once all the murky discoloration had disappeared, Narke cast one final spell for recovery.

— Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

After Narke restored my leg, I briefly put my foot on the ground. It hurt around the bone if I put too much weight on it, but I could walk. Narke spoke worriedly.

“It must be difficult to walk.”

“Is it? It’s not too bad. It’s much better than before.”

“…….”

There was no point in dwelling on things that wouldn’t change anything. As I felt the mood growing heavier, I changed the subject.

“Ah, I’ll take a few days of sick leave, too. I can’t use magic in this condition anyway.”

“That’s not a good thing…”

“Think of it this way. I can keep you from getting bored until you recover. Look on the bright side.”

Leo looked at me as though he were listening to complete nonsense, then ignored me and looked at Narke instead. Narke was already facing him, knowing that Leo had something to say. Leo’s quiet voice filled the hospital room.

“Narke. Did you know this was going to happen today?”

Narke’s brow furrowed. His lips moved soundlessly for a moment before he seemed to steel himself and answered.

“I suppose I should be honest.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“It’s not that I had no idea.”

“…….”

The mood grew even heavier. I looked at Narke, then turned to Leo. Leo was watching Narke calmly. Narke continued in a quiet voice.

“I don’t deliberately look into the future very often. I don’t want to know if I can help it. But…”

“…….”

“I’m sorry. There was no way to avoid this.”

“I suppose not. How much can we really change, anyway?”

Leo slowly answered, pressing his fingers to his brow. Perhaps it was the medicine, or perhaps something else, but he seemed almost resigned. Narke’s expression remained dark as he lowered his voice.

“There are things that won’t change no matter how hard you try. If we wanted to avoid all of this…”

Even after I waited, he didn’t continue. Instead of saying what he had originally intended to say, Narke ended with an apology.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

Leo asked quietly, without sounding accusatory or even particularly confused. When no answer came right away, he continued.

“It’s already happened. What can we do about it? We all made it back. And we’ve laid the foundation for bringing Heike back.”

Leo said that while staring into empty space, then threw off the covers.

“Let’s just get ready to leave. Luise said we should all go to his house.”

“You really went and got discharged.”

Four hours later, after finishing the rest of our treatment, we left the hospital and gathered at the Munich Residenz. Elias stared at Leo in amazement. Ulrike, apparently happy about everything, grinned brightly, patted Leo on the back, and teased him.

“You wanted to come over to my house that badly~?”

“Is that what it looks like? The doctor is going there too, so it was fine for me to leave early.”

“Right. You’re going to rest at my place for two days. You too, Lukas. And Leo, we’re going to pick some magnolia branches on the way back, so help me out when we do.”

“Of course.”

Leo answered with a smile.

After gathering a few things, we all went out into the courtyard of the Munich Residenz and stood in front of the warp point. The midday sun beat down on our heads. Ulrike suddenly turned around and looked over the five of us.

“All right, listen up. We’re stopping by the Prussian border checkpoint, then warping straight to the Kleist estate. No carriage. Absolutely not. Got it?”

Elias, who had always hated carriages—the Imperial carriage in particular—gave a short reply.

“Sounds good.”

“Good? That’s a relief. And now, here’s the important part. We’re not going to greet my mother or the head butler. We’re going straight to the laboratory at the far end of the third floor of the mansion. I’ll warp all of us there.”

“Hmm?”

I exchanged glances with my friends. This was news to all of us. Having a laboratory at home wasn’t unusual enough to surprise anyone, but not even seeing his mother? He should at least tell the head butler. As we stood there, caught off guard, Ulrike looked at me with a determined expression.

“Lukas said he’d make some special caramel for us.”

“…I never said it would be special. And what does that have to do with anything?”

“Could you make it as a surprise for my mother and the rest of the family? Tell me the recipe.”

“…….”

For one thing, I wasn’t sure how special adding a little sodium bicarbonate to sugar would make it—wouldn’t it just taste like sugar? And I wasn’t even sure whether his mother would like candy made from melted sugar in the first place…

But Ulrike looked so determined that none of us could bring ourselves to argue. More accurately, we wanted to, but we were swept along by Ulrike’s relentless insistence and had to hurry to the Prussian border checkpoint.

And just like that, without even knowing where we were, we warped onto the grounds of some estate and sneaked through the back entrance before anyone could spot us. Ulrike only realized belatedly that I couldn’t run, so he scooped me up and ran inside with me.

‘…If we were going to do this, couldn’t we have warped somewhere closer to the back entrance…?’

Whatever. We were still reeling from Ulrike’s swift execution—we had been in the courtyard of the Munich Residenz just ten minutes ago—and somehow we successfully picked the lock on the laboratory door and slipped inside. Ulrike carefully set me down and shouted, “All right, Lukas! Tell me what we need!”

“Hmm. A plate, first. Foil. And sugar… sodium bicarbonate. Measuring spoons, one of each size.”

The alcohol lamp was already sitting right in front of us. Ulrike dragged Narke over and began opening the cabinets in the laboratory. Leo, who was still standing there with a thoroughly bewildered look on his face, asked me, “What are you making that you need sodium bicarbonate for?”

“Caramel. Or candy.”

“You use sodium bicarbonate to make caramel candy? Do you really need it?”

“You can use it. Anyway, we need to heat the sodium bicarbonate above eighty degrees so it releases carbon dioxide.”

“…Sure, whatever. Go ahead. But other than making it bubble, I don’t think it’ll make much of a difference. Does it change the taste?”

“Honestly, I don’t know either.”

I’d have to be obsessed with food to know that… Food was so far outside my field of interest that I barely knew anything about it. I was the kind of person who sincerely wished humans could live without eating food, so I had no desire to learn about differences in taste.

Of course, being picky about flavors was a separate matter, so I couldn’t exactly eat just anything. Maybe because of that—or maybe because I simply didn’t have much useless curiosity—I’d fortunately never had the chance to learn the difference between dalgona and a lump of hardened, cooked sugar.

And I wasn’t particularly interested in finding out anytime soon.

“Here, Lukas~”

Narke set down a bottle of sodium bicarbonate and a sack of sugar in front of me with a smile. Ulrike brought me a pair of gloves, and with that, I lost the will to argue any further. I obediently put on the lab coat and gloves. Then I took a deep breath.

As I closed my eyes and exhaled, silence fell over the room. They were obviously all watching me. When I opened my eyes and looked at my friends, sure enough, I was right. Zähringen glanced at Elias, who was watching with his eyes shining, then burst out laughing.

“What are you being so serious about?”

“I have to be serious.”

There were personal reasons why I had to be serious.

Personally, I didn’t think it was particularly desirable, but when I considered my age, hometown, workplace, living conditions, appetite, and everything else, I had almost never had a reason to cook for myself. Of course, I could make soup with ingredients from a retort pouch, but anyway, I had tried because I didn’t want to live as someone who couldn’t even feed himself. Apparently, even survival cooking required a certain amount of talent. Neither the process nor the results had been particularly good, so I couldn’t help being nervous.

‘Still, it’s worth a try.’

For one thing, it was hardly even fair to call this cooking. I knew perfectly well that I was still young enough to have barely reached adulthood, but even at my age, there was no way I should be incapable of cooking a little sugar on my own—therefore, I absolutely shouldn’t think about what to do if I failed to cook it.

I took a deep breath, raised the torch lever, and lit it. I was just grateful it wasn’t an induction cooktop. After all the science experiments I’d done throughout elementary, middle, and high school, lighting an alcohol lamp was a piece of cake.

Just then, Ulrike carefully placed a hand on my shoulder.

“Should you be doing this over a gas stove instead? With an alcohol lamp, you can only adjust the flame by changing the height of the tripod, so I thought it might be uncomfortable for you.”

“Is it easier if you can adjust the flame with a lever?”

“Isn’t that obvious? But if it’s not uncomfortable, then let’s just use this! We might get caught if we go to the kitchen.”

Right. It sounded reasonable for a moment, but that was the talk of someone who didn’t know what he was saying.

Ulrike seemed to believe that we had to be able to adjust the flame. But once you add the option of adjusting the heat, someone who’s inexperienced and untalented at cooking has to deal with yet another thing at the same time. Before you know it, you’ll mess up the order of everything and ruin the whole thing. I knew perfectly well that controlling the heat was important, but there was an order to everything. If you weren’t talented at controlling the flame, you simply gave up and found something else you were good at.

I shook my head.

“Yeah. I already lit it anyway.”

“…….”

I could feel Leo narrowing his eyes at me suspiciously. I gave him a meaningful look, as if to say he could trust me. I couldn’t understand what gave him the right to doubt me like that when he hadn’t even witnessed my great achievement of making an entire river of doenjang-jjigae¹ about a year ago, but I figured today was my chance to overturn that baseless criticism.

Leo only frowned even more, clearly having no idea what my look was supposed to mean. I held up the measuring spoons and gestured toward the bag of sugar Elias was holding. Elias grinned and tore open the bag before setting the sugar down in front of me.

I swallowed hard, then met the eyes of my friends gathered in a circle around the table.

“All right. Let’s get started.”

Translator Note

1. Doenjang-jjigae (soybean paste stew) is a Korean traditional jjigae, made from the primary ingredient of doenjang, and additional optional ingredients of vegetables, seafood, and meat. ↩︎