Chapter 139

Chapter 139

As the evening set in, we returned to the dormitory.

“Hey.”

After all the other guys had gone in, I stopped Ellen, who was the last one to enter.

“... Yeah?”

“Let’s talk for a moment.”

I felt like I needed to have a word with her.

***

I took Ellen to the park in front of the dormitory. She followed a short distance behind me.

Once I made sure there were no people around, I turned to face her.

“Hey.”

Ellen looked puzzled as to why I had suddenly called her over.

“Why have you been so wary of me lately?”

Since the kidnapping incident, she had been notably wary of me. She had even talked about going to the Dark Land suddenly, and seemed determined to follow through with it.

I didn’t want her to go to such a dangerous place, so I’d told her not to.

I expected her to at least be stubborn about it, yet she had immediately agreed not to go, which felt rather strange to me

It was unusual for her to be so accommodating toward me all of a sudden.

And I thought I knew the reason why. We had decided to keep our distance from each other, but then, suddenly, the bizarre incident of me being kidnapped arose.

She must have been shocked to suddenly lose me for real, even when she thought that it wouldn’t matter if I was gone. Moreover, she had regretted what she’d said to me and felt sorry, to the extent that she believed my kidnapping was somehow her fault. Of course, it wasn’t her fault at all.

She had told me that she disliked me because I reminded her of her brother, who had many secrets.

However, she realized she couldn’t push me away and believed that the things she had said were a mistake, leading her to feel guilty towards me.

That’s why she was being so cautious around me. She was afraid of making another mistake.

“You haven’t done anything wrong to me. What you did was right, and you had every right to feel that way. This unfortunate kidnapping incident happened, but my being kidnapped should not change how you felt about me before. You even went searching for me. If anything, I should be thankful to you. What reason do you have to feel sorry towards me?”

Ellen remained silent, looking down at the ground.

“... I don’t know,” she replied.

Ellen’s head was still bowed. She couldn’t even look me in the eyes.

“What don’t you know?”

“I don’t want to make a mistake like the last time, but I don’t know how to prevent that.”

It seemed she still regretted her actions from last time.

“I don’t know how... and that’s why it keeps happening,” she continued.

Ellen did not want to do or say something she would regret, like before. However, it seemed she was worried that whatever she said or did might turn out to be a mistake.

That was why she’d become so passive and cautious around me. That was why she had acquiesced so readily when I told her not to go to the Dark Land.

She was afraid that I might become angry or feel hurt if she insisted on going even after I told her not to.

Ellen had seemed okay so far because she didn’t really care about others. She just did what she wanted to do, without paying any attention to anyone else’s opinion.

In the end, though, she was inexperienced in dealing with people. That was why she didn’t know how to interact with those who weren’t okay with her decisions. She never paid attention to her words and actions before, but she had just started to.

“Is it okay to do this? Is it okay to say this?”

Filled with such doubts, Ellen ended up being wary of me. Since she had already made a mistake once, she had grown even more cautious because she did not want to make another.

She just didn’t know how to treat me.

While it was nice to be considered an important friend by her, I didn’t want to see her this way.

This wasn’t like her.

I didn’t want her to start becoming cautious just because of me.

“Let’s sit down.”

I motioned for Ellen to sit on a bench and sat next to her.

Even though she was someone with top-tier talents in this universe, when it came to interpersonal relationships, she was nothing but awkward.

I knew this because I was the first real “friend” she’d ever had.

After experiencing what it was like to lose me, she had probably seriously considered what I meant to her.

In the end, she thought she should treat me well while I was around.

That was why she wanted to treat me well but didn’t know how, leading her to act this way.

“You know I lied, right?”

“About the kidnapping?”

“Yes.”

Ellen seemed on the verge of giving up trying to understand it.

“You said you didn’t want to get involved with criminal organizations, though,” Ellen commented.

“I did say that, but...”

I didn’t want to be caught with my connection to a criminal organization, but Charlotte and Vertus had known about it already for a while so it was no use hiding it.

“You know... thoughts change as the situation changes. So, anyway, I failed to take over the Thieves’ Guild, but in return for burying this incident, they owe me a favor that I will get to claim from them someday.”

I wasn’t going around claiming to be the king of the underworld or anything. I wasn’t even sure if I could actually do it. Even if I could, ultimately, I’d just be playing into Vertus’s hands.

Besides, I didn’t know whether I’d even be good at that sort of thing.

In any case, I told Ellen almost everything about my rough background and the truth behind the disappearance.

Ellen nodded dumbly. “Is that... so...”

The heir to a criminal organization, and the audacious spirit aiming to devour the Thieves’ Guild after being kidnapped... While not everything had been explained clearly, Ellen nodded as if she had a rough understanding of it all. She seemed shocked that I was a more incredible person than she had imagined. There was definitely a lot of misunderstanding mixed in.

She looked at me as if I was not only incredibly dangerous, but also an impressive figure.

No. There was no way she was convinced just yet.

“Actually, though, this is all a cover.”

“... What?”

I still had more to say.

“In fact, I’m the last heir of the Demon Realm.”

Ellen looked surprised.

“But honestly, I’m not interested in war or anything like that. I just infiltrated the human world because I wanted to live comfortably.”

Ellen’s expression twisted slightly, and I could read her thoughts. “What kind of nonsense did you just say? Why is he acting like this all of a sudden?”

I could almost see the question marks forming in Ellen’s eyes.

The Demon Realm?

“Is he playing a joke in front of me? Is he crazy?”

That was the look she had.

Oh, dear.

It was too early for her to be surprised.

“But actually, that too is a disguise.”

“...?”

A disguise on top of a disguise on top of a disguise.

‘I’ll tell you the real truth.’

“In fact, I’m what you can consider the god who created this world, and am currently possessing a human body as a form of punishment.”

“...”

Ellen’s gaze shifted from perplexed astonishment to the perfect calm of a deep lake. Her bafflement had crossed the threshold into tranquility.

Her gaze had become colder than I had ever seen before. It was akin to the dangerous glint that occasionally appeared in the eyes of both Charlotte and Vertus.

However, with Ellen, it felt different.

It didn’t just give off a strong pressure; it felt genuinely lethal.

I began to fear that I might actually be murdered on the spot.

‘Yeah, maybe mentioning stuff about the Demon Realm in front of Ellen was a bit too much...? Then again... you’re the one who said you wanted to know about me, though... This is the real truth...’

“If you don’t want to tell me about it...”—her tone was icy—“Just say you don’t want to.”

Smack!

“Ouch!”

For the first time, Ellen put some force into it as she smacked the back of my head.

Ellen got up abruptly and stormed back into the dormitory, apparently fuming.

“Ugh. Damn! Wow that really hurt.”

Yeah...

Who would believe that anyway?

It seemed my mention of the Demon Realm had really pissed her off, but maybe we were good now since I’d managed to get her to quit feeling sorry for me.

“How could you say that kind of thing, knowing who my brother is? Are you out of your mind?” Ellen said.

She must have really been mad at me.

‘Hard as it may be to believe, though, that’s the real truth that you wanted to know.’

Perhaps because I managed to infuriate her, from the next day on, Ellen treated me like usual.