CH 47

also, if you see frody being referred to as ‘friday’ anywhere in the chapter (or future ones), pls lmk in the mistakes channel on my discord or the comments below, my google docs likes to autocorrect frody’s name to friday GHSDLKFJFDSJ

“I told you already. Don’t make me regret my first ‘act of mercy’.”

“…Are you really being salty when we were just having a little chat?” 

Although Frody had put it like that, everyone here knew that it was a lie. 

“I thought it was strange for you to have left more traces of yourself than necessary in the area, but in the end, it was just to deceive my eyes so you could come and see Ara. That was your true intention.”

It was the appearance of Lecht, who seemed to have chased after the traces left by Frody so far. Seemingly having been led on a wild goose chase, Lecht’s ego seemed to be wounded.

In response, Frody replied slyly, “True intention? I was just enjoying my game of hide and seek with you, Little Brother.” As if he held no malice toward him. “And I simply came here because I thought our Saintess would want to see me.”

His eyes curved up at me. If he had a tail, it would’ve been swaying back and forth, telling me to come already. That was how much his voice was wrapped in enchantment. Though it didn’t work on me, the Saintess.

“Why would I want to see you?”

“Think about it carefully. You obviously thought that you wanted to meet me though?”

When I looked dumbfounded, he added with a hehe~, “Wasn’t I the only one who could solve the false accusation against you, Saintess?”

“What a unique way of using the words, ‘I want to see you’.”

If ‘I want to see you’ meant, ‘I want to meet up and talk about something’, then I did want to see him. But I had a hunch that Frody would’ve never mistaken the two of them for something else.

“I didn’t want to see you. Please leave.” I waved my hand like I was swatting away a fly. 

“Really?”

“Yes.” 

Rather than asking Frody for help, I’d rather give candy to a child. 

“Oho~?”

Although he snorted as if he couldn’t believe it, I continued to ignore him and said, “You came by yourself when you came, so leave by yourself too then.”

I turned around without confirming whether or not he was leaving. I grabbed the arm of Lecht, who was next to me. Lecht noticed what I wanted straight away and let me naturally toward the building before I could pull him in that direction. 

However, before we left the garden, Frody said once again, “I warned you.”

I stopped in my tracks and turned my head. I frowned at Frody’s triumphant appearance. It showed a firm belief that one day, I’d definitely be betrayed by Lecht.

Although it bothered me, I didn’t really want to argue with him over nothing.  “You’d better look after yourself properly. Since I’ll definitely get even with you for what you’ve done to us humans.”

I was annoyed at the fact that he kept hiding behind the excuse of it being ‘his contractor’s request’ to avoid taking responsibility for causing that accident.

I turned my head and dragged Lecht back into the building. When I left the garden where the cool late autumn breeze was blowing and came inside, the warm air immediately melted my numb cheeks and ears. 

“Oh right, Lecht, if anyone sees your wings…!”

Although I had returned to the building in a huff, I quickly turned my head towards him when I realised belatedly what he still looked like. However, he had already folded his wings back in, and also put his sword back into its sheath as well. 

“Did you not get caught, even while you flew here in that state?”

“It’s been a hundred years since I’ve lived in the human realm. I know how to stay out of sight.”

Aha… I was worried over nothing. 

“That… I’m sorry.” I apologised to Lecht before I could say anything else. “I was the one who brought up the idea to persuade Frody first, made you chase after him, then ended up discarding him on my own as well.”

It was an apology for wasting his efforts. 

“I couldn’t get through to him at all. I can see why you opposed this method in the first place, Lecht.”

Lecht, who listened to me sighing, took off his coat and wrapped it around me. “Don’t say you’re sorry. I’m actually happy that you said you wouldn’t get involved with him any further.”

My turbulent mind calmed down slightly after feeling the weight of the heavy coat on my shoulders. My feelings of discomfort that came after meeting Frody turned for the better. 

“I didn’t do it just to hear an apology, and if it’s for you, then I can do as much as you want.” He added softly, “I guess you didn’t get it.” 

I could feel a sort of sadness in his voice for some reason. His expression was no different from usual, and he didn’t use a different tone in voice either. His hands went to fix my coat, as if to drive out all the cold energy from my body.

“Then, thank you?”

His hand, which had been fastening each button, one by one, paused in its motion.

“Saying that should be fine, right?”

It was subtle, but I could see the corners of his mouth rising. I guess that’s what he really wanted to hear instead. I thought it was unexpectedly cuter than I thought it would be for him to pretend not to smile and hide it, so I laughed.

“…Why are you laughing?” At my sudden laugh, he asked me with a slightly anxious expression. 

My lips kept going up since I found it so cute that a man who could decide to destroy the empire or even the demon realm if he wanted to, would get so nervous at just a smile from me. I bit my lip and tried to stifle my laughter, but the more I tried to, the harder I ended up laughing.

He examined my face with an uneasy expression. “Ara?” He seemed to be worried that something he had said was wrong. 

“Because you’re cute.” I spoke frankly, thinking that I didn’t have to hide it. “It’s because you’re so cute, Lecht.”

“I’m, what…?”

The word ‘cute’ didn’t go well at all with the words, ‘Demon King’ and ‘The Grand Duke of Arvis’. But those were the thoughts of people who didn’t really know Lecht. 

He was a man who was like an onion. No matter how many layers I peeled off, there would always be a new charm that would be revealed, and would make me laugh continuously nonstop. 

He looked at me with large eyes, as if what I had said was an extreme shock to him.

“Other people wouldn’t understand, would they?”

At my question, Lecht looked at me with a confused expression on his face and nodded his head minutely. Meanwhile, the tips of his ears slowly turned red. Perhaps it was because I had already been made aware of his cuteness already, but even that appearance of his was cute to me.

I couldn’t stop laughing and buried half of my face into his large coat. I kept laughing so hard that my cheekbones started to ache. 

Looking back on it now, this morning was full of failures in many ways, as well as issues that caused me to have complex thoughts about it. 

Alion had told Meliara what she had wanted to hear her whole life, but she herself was already in an irreversible situation, leaving only regret behind. And instead of requesting help from Frody, we came to the uncomfortable conclusion that Frody was a target that had to be unconditionally guarded against. 

‘It’s clearly a very frustrating situation.’

Laughter continued to flow out uncontrollably from my lips. 

‘But I think I can figure it all out somehow.’

I thought that I could get through anything with this man. The scent of the coat that wrapped around me was good, so I ended up gaining groundless confidence. 

pls do not share this anywhere or u will always stub ur toe when u walk past a door frame !! this translation has been stolen from mioscorner.com, pls only read there i’m begging u :kneels:

LECHT’S TINY BLUSH HGLSKFJDDFJS

The refreshing scent that remained on his clothes soaked deeply into my lungs as I remembered Lecht’s wings again. Since it was my first time seeing it, it was so captivating that I ended up being fascinated as soon as I saw it.

“By the way, Lecht.”

He raised his eyebrows slightly at my call, as if he was asking ‘what is it?’

“Why don’t you have any horns?”

“…?”

“If you undo your human appearance, shouldn’t you have both horns and wings?”

Lecht, who was the Demon King in the original novel, even had long hair as well. But where did the long hair and horns go, and why did only the wings end up coming out?

“Like I said earlier, I’ve lived in the human realm for a hundred years. It’s simple enough for me to undo certain parts of my human appearance.”

“Oh…”

So you’re saying that it’s easy for you to walk around just with your wings out. How fascinating. I tried to picture his majestic figure with wings again. It was so spectacular that I wanted to keep it as a picture.

“If I say that I want to see it, will you show it to me again…?”

“Of course.” He answered unhesitatingly. “Anytime you want.”

“Then the horns as well…?” I asked cautiously, just in case it was offensive, but he nodded his head with a ‘you’re so cute’ look in his eyes. “Then I’ll look forward to it, Lecht’s horns.”

I covered my face with his clothes again to hide my laughter. Nevertheless, I couldn’t hide my cheeks from going up, and when he saw me smiling like that, Lecht ended up smiling as well.

“Do you like wings and horns that much?”

Oh, so it was that obvious I liked it. My eyes widened as I nodded.

“Seriously…” He swept a finger over the cheek of me, who was still draped in his coat. “Not a single thing has changed about you.”

“Really…?”

It was Lecht who didn’t bring up the me from a hundred years ago ever since I had said it was burdensome. But he whispered, as if he couldn’t hold it in any longer.

I didn’t feel as much repulsion as before either. That’s how much it showed that I was leaning towards Lecht, right?

“You’re seriously exactly the same. Whether it’s your habits, mannerisms, the way you speak, or your preferences; all of it. A hundred years ago, you loved my horns and wings just as much as well.”

He covered my face with his entire palm, perhaps because he wasn’t satisfied with using just the back of his finger lightly. I didn’t try to avoid it either, since the feeling of his calluses that developed from holding a sword felt nice against my skin.

“Is it… still awkward?” He asked in a nervous voice. “I thought I was already used to waiting though.”

With the ends of his eyes drooping down slightly, it was an expression of Lecht’s that I had never seen before, so my heart started to race. 

“Waiting for you while you’re in a place where I can’t see you and where time is irrelevant is completely different to waiting calmly for you when you’re already right in front of me.”

As expected, was he also nervous about Frody’s appearance today? An untimely confession of his heart soon ensued.

“I don’t know how much longer I’ll have to wait for you to get used to me… so I don’t know what I should do.”

Although he was expressing it in a pretty roundabout way, he was without a doubt, complaining about it being difficult. This man is seriously a master at shaking people’s hearts… even if I didn’t think he was cute, seeing him with this sort of appearance made me even more helpless against him.

“Lecht…”

I placed my hand over his hand which was stroking my cheek. Even though my hand was so small it was simply too ridiculous to cover his large hand, he paused in his actions at my touch.

Looking at him staring down at me with such profound eyes, I inhaled deeply and opened my mouth. “You know, we…”

Then.

“Saintess!”

“Ara!”

Linden was running along with the three priests from the end of the corridor. Surprised, I turned my head, Lecht’s hand naturally slipping off from my body.

Although it was a pity that I had missed the opportunity to talk to him properly, upon seeing them running toward me in such a hurry, I promised that I’d continue the conversation with him next time. Lecht also took a step back, as if he had caught my meaning.

“What’s wrong everyone?”

“There’s something ridiculous going on in the town square!”

“I have a way to catch that woman!”

They all spat out in unison, as if they had only been waiting for me to ask. The Priest Trio looked both shocked and dumbfounded, while Linden seemed rather excited. 

“Something ridiculous? And a way to catch Olivia?”

Perhaps because they were all talking about the same thing, they appointed Linden to talk on behalf of them. “That woman succeeded in curing the epidemic.”

“What…?”

“It isn’t just one or two people either, but dozens of them, so I can’t even say it’s a coincidence either.”

My eyes were even wider than they were before. “That’s ridiculous…”

It was so ridiculous that I couldn’t even continue to speak. Even if the wounds that are caused by the disease can be healed, diseases such as infectious diseases themselves could not be healed with the divine power of Solarism. 

It was because of the characteristics of the divine power, so words like, ‘because she’s the Saintess’, and ‘because I have more divine power that’s purer’ wouldn’t make sense. It was like treating a burn with advanced hemostasis.

“Right? Isn’t it ridiculous? How can the divine power of Solarism purify it?”

“The High Priest of Solarism is always saying things like, ‘There must be a mistake,’ and, ‘Diseases are normally like bruises in the body, so the divine power of Solarism should be fine,’ but he’s clearly just full of crap!”

“Doesn’t this seem rather fishy? I can’t make sense of it at all in my head. How is this the divine power of Solarism?”

The trio of priests, who did not know that Olivia was a fake saintess, were rather passionate about this dumbfounding and stuffed up situation.

“It’s a situation where the High Priest of Solarism and their priests are taking care of people in the town square. That’s why the situation has been completely reversed.” Linden, who knew Olivia was the fake saintess despite not knowing who Frody was, added quietly. “She probably wasn’t aware that she couldn’t cure the disease with the divine power of Solarism, and ended up blindly healing people with the unknown power she uses.”

It must have been a mistake since she had never actually used real divine power before. It was about the same level, no, even more fruitless and absurd than the incident where my peppermint tea had suddenly turned into chamomile tea. 

“Huu…”

That’s why they say you’ll get caught if your tail is too long1. 

When I was at such a loss for words because of how absurd the situation was, Linden smiled and said what I wanted to say instead. “She dug her own grave.”

In any case… looks like I’ll be able to blow my nose without even lifting a hand2?

[1] if you keep doing something no matter how quietly you try to do it, in the end you will be caught. there are no secrets that can be kept forever.

[2] 손도 안 대고 코 풀게 생겼는데 = take it easy without lifting a finge