CH 17

“I’ll go out for a while and come back.”

“Again?”

“Yeah. It won’t take long.”

Several days have passed since I saw the magic.

After a late lunch, Dante was preparing to go out today. He looked busy wearing a black robe and roughly tidying up his hair.

I kept hearing his mutters, “They keep calling me, no matter how important my authority is, isn’t that something they can handle?”

I don’t know what he’s doing, but I leaned back on the sofa thinking that it must be something related to magic.

Regarding what progress has been made in the past few days, unfortunately, there has been none. After hearing Dante’s secret, things got a little easier between us, but that was it.

However, not only dramatic, it was also a change that became comfortable, so I was living the most loose daily life after learning Dante’s feelings.

Still we can’t go on like this forever, can we? Yeah, I know that. I was just thinking that I should give him a proper answer.

I had made up my mind, but there was no reason to continue this vagueness. As I feel so sorry for Dante.

I even made a grandiose decision that I must tell him today, yet he just had something to go out with.

I made a, hmm, sound, putting my hand on my chin and flicking my fingers.

“I don’t know why everyone is making a fuss because they can’t do that simple thing. Am I really the only proper magician?”

I didn’t even know what I was thinking about, and Dante’s grumbling continued.

While I was amazed by how constantly he grumbled, on the other hand, I also thought how much he didn’t want to go if he did that.

If it sounds like he’s complaining he doesn’t want to be apart from me even for a moment, then I’m probably interpreting it too exaggeratedly.

I listened to Dante’s complaints over and over, standing up quietly.

“As you say, there must be no one to follow you, well.”

“That’s true, but…”

I roughly waved my hand to block the words that were about to continue.

“You’re going to leave even if I say so, aren’t you?”

“…Yeah.”

“Alright, then.”

I approached Dante, who was ready to go. After looking up at Dante for a moment, I thought I couldn’t do it in this state, so I gestured to him to lower his head.

Dante was puzzled by my sudden behavior, yet he obeyed my gesture and lowered his body.

Anyway, one thing I can say is that he listens very well.

I realized how tall Dante was when he had to bend down like this to see me eye-to-eye.

“Have a safe trip.”

Smooch.

After kissing his white cheek, I turned around and returned to my place. And then I sat down on the sofa again, butㅡ 

ㅡBang!

“…!”

All of a sudden, there was a very loud noise outside the house. It sounded like something falling, no, exploding.

Unknowingly, I turned my head toward the window. I hurriedly got up from my seat and approached the window, but I couldn’t help but doubt my eyes at the scenery.

The forest that I could see right in front of my house just… It had just become a muddy field. It was just fine until now.

“…”

The blue scenery that made me feel comfortable just by looking at it, where did it go? And only the desolate land was there. Not all of the forest was destroyed, but as far as I could see from my house, it was a mess as if it had been struck by lightning.

Wooden poles, charred and looking like coals, fell helplessly forward and sideways, respectively. At least half of the trees that stood there were burnt black.

Looking at the gruesome scenery, I thought that if anyone had been standing there, their bones couldn’t have been picked up, and at the same time, I wondered whether such an incident could have happened on a clear day.

This can’t happen. Then who would have done this?

When I opened the window to see if I was seeing it properly, I could smell acrid smoke.

It’s even more spectacular when I stick my head out and look at it. It flew to the fence right in front of the house, which didn’t have a big function, but was still part of the yard. No, it’s a lightning bolt in a really dry sky.

No matter how much I think about it, there is only one person who can do something like this. After standing there for a moment, dumbfounded, I finally turned my head to Dante.

“Are you crazy?”

“Huh? Ah, no, wait a minute. I’ll fix it. Wait…”

Dante, hurriedly trying to come towards me, stumbled as he bumped this and that way. He seemed out of his mind. No, was it that surprising?

Crash! Eventually, there was a sound of the chair tipping over, and Dante, who had almost fallen, stood upright on the spot.

Now that I look at it, his neck, face, and ears are completely red. Seriously, even if I teased him about why he looked like the temperature was so high, he seemed to have nothing to say.

I looked at Dante like that and asked.

“Why are you dropping thunderbolts all of a sudden?”

“I thought I wanted to break something, without me knowing…”

“…”

“…”

In the silence that followed, Dante finally buried his face in his palms. He continued to wipe his face dry as if he was trying to calm down, and then said in a voice that he would die of embarrassment in the past.

“…I’m sorry to say this in the meantime, but can you do it one more time?”

At those words, I had no choice but to burst into laughter and kiss him one more time.

***

M1.

Masha is a girl who lives in a rural village.

Her red hair and freckles looked good on her, and she was an ordinary child who enjoyed chatting, loved good food, and went crazy about romance novels.

If you say it like this, she doesn’t look any different from the other village children, but Masha had one peculiar, if unusual, characteristic.

That is, Masha likes good-looking people more than everyone else, maybe a little too much!

But since she hadn’t left her hometown until she was 16, she had never actually met anyone whom she would think was really handsome.

They say one can’t imagine more than one actually experiences, but Masha knew instinctively. That the boys her own age aren’t very good looking.

Sometimes, paintings of the faces of high-ranking people would be handed down to the village, but even when she saw the faces that must have been painstakingly polished, she felt that something was lacking in them.

Surely, somewhere in the world, there must be a face that is so perfect that it makes her exclaim!

…And there was someone who miraculously came to Masha, a young man named Dante.

The person who had been living in this village for several months was a ray of light in Masha’s life. The moment Masha met Dante for the first time, she had a hunch that she would never meet such a face again in her life.

Masha was one of those people who didn’t see Dante and Ei when they sometimes came into town to buy groceries, but as soon as she saw Dante, she lamented that she should’ve listened more carefully to her friends’ silly comments.

She thought then she wouldn’t mind if a handsome guy showed up in this rural village!

In fact, she wondered how a person who was still so precious, seemed to have a lot of money, and above all, had a great face, to live in such a rural town.

What did they say? Since the lightning had burnt the walls of the house and made it difficult to fix itㅡBrother’s girlfriend was beside him and told him not to make excuses, but she wasn’t sure what it meantㅡhe said he was going to live in the village.

She didn’t understand the fact that he lived in the forest, but she just passed it off as if he was a fairy. What is the importance of circumstances, stagnation, and things you can’t see? The important thing is that she can appreciate this beauty in person!

Whenever Masha saw Dante’s face, she could barely contain her desire to jump out. She wondered if there was such a face in this world. In fact, when she saw Dante for the first time, not only did she jump, she even leaped.

From that day on, a change came to Masha’s inner side. No matter what annoyance happened, a look on Brother’s face seemed to relieve all resentment, and a single voice from him could even make her faint.

He’s handsome, has a good personality, bla-bla-bla. He really was the one who had it all.

There are rumors that he’s a magician, but that really doesn’t matter. The star in my heart.

So Masha, to be honest, didn’t really like Brother’s girlfriend. The girls in the village call Ei ‘big sister’ except Masha.

Maybe it was out of jealousy. She insisted that it wasn’t for that reason, but anyone could see that it was jealousy. An emotion that started from envy and was born with a mixture of despise and hatred.

Masha was an innocent girl in a rural village, so she couldn’t envy Ei with all her might, but she did enough to disapprove of her.

She understood that they were lovers, because from a glance she could tell how much Dante liked Ei, but she couldn’t understand how they became lovers and what attracted him to Ei.

Masha thought Ei was strange, as she didn’t seem to be overjoyed by Dante’s displays of affection. Why does Brother Dante like someone like that?

How did he fall for someone who was indifferent, blunt, and careless about everything? She wondered if there was a big change in her personality after she had a lover, yet again, it didn’t seem like it.

She tried not to show it when she was with her friends, but Masha was always dissatisfied with Ei. At that point, she couldn’t understand her friends who followed Ei well and wanted to be close with her.

If it were her, she wouldn’t like someone who has no feelings, whose insides she doesn’t know.

Maybe Masha was going to continue to dislike Ei.

If it wasn’t for that day.