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chapter 27
“Sol, to you? Really?”
“Exactly. She must be so busy she couldn’t even come deliver it herself.”
Yurian covered her mouth with one hand and laughed silently.
Would you believe that if it were you?
It was such a childish provocation—so very Angela. She was always making things up like this to drive a wedge between people and Yurian. And if she ever got caught, she could simply deny it all, asking when she had ever said such a thing. To the person on the receiving end, the trick was painfully obvious, but because Angela was considered trustworthy, quite a few people fell for it.
“I’ve lost my appetite. I can’t sit here any longer. I’ll return to my room and eat there.”
Theoern—the idiot who had once been her fiancé—was one of them. Yurian watched him turn away with a plate of sandwiches in his hands, and just as he reached the doorway, she spoke.
“That’s strange.”
“—Were you talking to me?”
“You say you can’t sit here any longer, but you never sat down to begin with.”
At Yurian’s words, both Theoern and Angela stiffened. Come to think of it, even on the first day they came to the Grand Temple, Theoern hadn’t sat in a chair. Back then she’d thought he was simply avoiding her, but since that day she hadn’t once seen him sit on a dining chair for any of his meals.
There’s something going on.
Yurian narrowed her eyes.
“Is it that you won’t sit on chairs?” she asked. “Or that you can’t?”
“What exactly are you trying to say?”
“So—do you refuse to sit, or are you unable to—”
“What’s your point?”
Were his ears blocked? Or did he think he could just keep denying it? If Yurian had been alone, she would have shrugged it off and walked away. But today, she wasn’t alone. She flicked her gaze toward Lucas.
The night before, at dawn, Yurian had gone to Lucas’s room to conspire with him about something.
“I don’t know what you want, but I’m busy, so make it quick and get out.”
Despite the late hour, he was flipping through thick tomes, struggling to find any clue related to an oracle. Yurian shoved past him as he blocked the doorway and walked in.
“Busy looking for this?”
Dark circles hung heavily under Lucas’s eyes, as though he’d gone several nights without sleep. Unlike her, who stayed up by choice, he looked genuinely exhausted. What was irritating was that even so, his handsome face showed no flaws.
Yurian waved the second beggar’s wallet she had picked up in front of him.
“Why does the young lady have that now? Did you learn pickpocketing while I wasn’t looking?”
“So the so-called Lord of the Mage Tower gets taken in by petty pickpocket tricks?”
“Tch! You always have to get the last word!”
Lucas clicked his tongue and reached to snatch the wallet from her hand. Yurian, however, deliberately pulled it away. Played by her childish move, a crease formed between his brows.
“Are you just messing with me?”
“When did I ever say I’d give it back?”
“—You said it was only right to return lost property to its owner.”
His voice dropped low as his eyebrows curved downward. Whether he was trying to use his looks or was just delirious from exhaustion, it was an unpleasant sight either way.
“Don’t make a face that doesn’t suit you. I’m not saying I won’t return it.”
“Then what do you want? Money?”
“So the Mage Tower lord, tighter than salt, jumps straight to money? I guess this must be important.”
Yurian smiled leisurely, and Lucas’s expression crumbled. Needless to say, it was her victory.
“I’m not proposing a deal. Returning what I found is only natural. But I’ve extended kindness to you—practically my enemy—twice now, so I trust the great Lord of the Mage Tower wouldn’t shamelessly pretend nothing happened.”
“The Mage Tower lord’s time is expensive. Get to the point.”
Good enough. Yurian forced down the eight front teeth that threatened to spill out with a grin and spoke calmly.
“There’s an experiment I want to try. I need your power for it.”
—
Back in the present, Lucas lifted Theoern’s body into the air. The Mage Tower lord’s magic was convenient—no incantations required. As Theoern was dragged closer to a chair, he flailed wildly, struggling in panic.
“W-What is this?!”
“I told you—if you’d just sat down nicely, we wouldn’t be doing this.”
“Let go! Put me down! The chair—the chair is not okay!”
It was a scream so desperate it sounded like a death cry, as though he bore some mortal grudge against chairs. Anyone watching might have thought Lucas was torturing him. After thrashing about for a while, Theoern’s backside finally brushed lightly against the chair.
Thud.
At that moment, Lucas’s magic abruptly released, and Theoern’s body dropped to the floor.
“Huh?”
“Th-This humiliation!”
Instead of sitting on the chair, Theoern fell to his knees before it. Not the romantic, one-knee pose of a knight pledging love to a lady, but both knees on the ground, head bowed.
Yurian recognized the posture immediately. It was the stance nobles forced upon slaves—a posture of submission.
“Lucas, did you do that?”
“No.”
Jackpot. To think I’d live to see that arrogant, self-absorbed crown prince kneel. Dumbfounded, Yurian looked at Theoern, who was trembling in humiliation.
“So you’re telling me the mighty Crown Prince knelt just because he didn’t want to sit on a chair? Did you develop a fear of chairs while I wasn’t looking? Or is it that—well—do you have some illness in a place you can’t talk about?”
“That’s not it!”
As though crushed by an invisible force, Theoern struggled for a long moment before finally rising, his body shaking. Unable to hide his shame, he spoke in a trembling voice.
“—I can’t help it.”
“What?”
“I can’t sit on chairs! The moment I get close to one, my knees give out on their own! That’s why I can’t sit! Satisfied now?!”
Satisfied? Yurian blinked her blue eyes a few times, then clutched her stomach and burst out laughing.
“Ahahahaha! Oh my goodness! Hahaha!”
“……”
At her utterly unrefined, undignified laughter, Theoern and Angela—and even Lucas—scowled. Lucas looked as though he already regretted having stood on her side, embarrassed even for a moment. Still, how could anyone not laugh at this?
For the first time since coming here, Yurian applauded the workings of the gods. Never in her life had she imagined she’d see Theoern Axel Rathem—arrogance incarnate—on his knees.
“…Wait. ‘Arrogance’?”
In an instant, the word struck her mind like lightning.
{Theoern Axel Rathem is arrogant.}
Why that? She felt as though she’d grasped something crucial, yet the thought refused to take shape.
One thing was certain: Yurian had always wanted, at least once even in her dreams, to see Theoern kneel in disgrace. No—she had expected that something like this would inevitably happen someday.
Crash—smash!
Just as she felt she was on the verge of finding a meaningful clue, the dining hall window shattered with a deafening noise. Wondering why perfectly intact glass had suddenly broken, she approached the window. From afar came furious voices—many of them.
“Kill them—now!”
“What in the world is the temple doing?! Kill the criminals at once and appease the gods’ anger!”
“That’s right! What if the gods are enraged because of them?! Sins must be paid with death!”
“Hear, hear!”
In the Holy Nation, there was, in principle, no noble class. The country existed solely to operate the Grand Temple, and its inhabitants consisted of farmers who worked the land, pilgrims visiting the holy site, and merchants who did business with them.
What they all shared was an unnaturally intense faith, since their livelihoods depended on the temple. And to fanatics like these, anyone branded a sinner by the gods was no different from a traitor—someone who deserved to be beaten to death with stones.
