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Chapter 6
A Precious Bond
“So then, milady just—snap!—grabbed my wrist, pulled me behind her, and said it.”
That night, after returning to the tower where Leon lived, Lowell sank deep into the sofa and chattered away to Leon, who was sitting across from him, recounting what had happened earlier that day.
“Go back.”
Lowering his voice, Lowell furrowed his brows and imitated the person who had said it—or at least, he seemed to. Since Leon had no idea who Lowell was imitating, he could only guess.
“Eek, I was seriously shocked back then, you know? I think I’d forgotten for a while that milady had that side to her, since we’ve repeated time so many times.”
“…I see.”
“And honestly, it could’ve been a really big problem. If milady hadn’t stopped it back then, I might’ve actually gotten hit.”
Perhaps it was because the sofa was unusually soft and comforting, but Lowell was able to recall the morning’s events in a fairly lighthearted tone.
The listener, however, had question marks floating over his head the entire time. Eventually, Leon—who had been listening silently—closed the book he was reading and asked Lowell with a puzzled expression.
“…Alright. But why are you telling me this?”
Leon genuinely couldn’t understand why Lowell was telling such a story to him, someone he’d only met for the first time yesterday.
“Huh? Can’t close friends talk about things like this?”
But Lowell countered Leon’s question with a tone that suggested he was the one who didn’t understand. He even hurriedly sat up and stared at Leon with wide eyes.
“Close…? Were we that kind of relationship?”
The unfamiliar word almost made Leon bite his tongue.
“We’re going to get married, so of course we’re close friends. A precious bond—knowing each other better than anyone else.”
Lowell said this without blinking an eye, so confidently that Leon’s perfectly reasonable question suddenly felt silly. He simply shut his mouth. Ugh. Whatever. That was exactly how he felt.
“More importantly—this. You’ve memorized it properly, right?”
With the sensation of a headache creeping in, Leon pressed a hand to his forehead and then pointed at the book spread out on the table. On its worn pages, spells were scrawled in a complex script that, at a glance, looked almost like drawings.
“Well… I’m memorizing it. But, um, is this really a spell? It practically looks like a picture.”
“You’re the one who said you wanted to learn.”
Leon had no intention of indulging complaints about magic lessons, so he spoke firmly to Lowell, who looked like he was about to slump again.
“Then is there maybe a spell that just puts the incantation straight into my head—”
“There isn’t.”
“……”
Faced with Leon’s unyielding bluntness, Lowell decided to just keep his mouth shut. The book felt heavy in his hands as he lifted it.
As Lowell read through the grimoire, Leon watched him expressionlessly, when a certain question suddenly came to mind.
“By the way, why are you keeping this a secret from your master? You’re moving along the time axis together anyway…”
“No.”
Leon’s question was immediately cut off. What’s more, Lowell was staring at him with a cold expression Leon had never seen before.
“What do you mean, no?”
Leon’s eyebrow tilted at the resolute look on Lowell’s face.
“I can’t tell Miss Aria about the regression. If she finds out that I’m regressing with her, she’ll definitely be tormented by guilt.”
“……”
“She’s already struggling as it is… I can’t torment milady like that too.”
At that moment, Leon noticed that the hand gripping the edge of the book was trembling ever so slightly.
“Torment,” Leon echoed.
“Yes.”
For a moment, Leon wondered who exactly was tormenting whom. From his perspective, it seemed more like Lowell—the one dragged into regression for reasons completely unrelated to himself—was the one being tormented.
But Leon didn’t correct him. Their relationship was bound by contract, and there was no need for him to involve himself in Lowell’s naïveté.
More than anything, seeing Lowell’s eyes well up as if he might burst into tears at any moment made Leon reluctant to say anything further and make it worse.
“……”
So Leon simply remained silent and watched.
“Wow.”
After finishing the grimoire, Lowell sprawled out on the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. Perhaps because he’d used his brain too much, the patterns on the ceiling looked like they were spinning.
As he gazed upward, even through the dizziness, he noticed how ornate the ceiling design was. Watching the swirling patterns, Lowell briefly wondered if this ceiling, too, reflected Leon’s tastes.
“The sun will rise soon. Get ready to go back.”
Part of the reason Lowell had fully lain down on the sofa was to attract the attention of its owner, Leon—but Leon didn’t even look at him as he spoke.
When Lowell turned his head to look, Leon wasn’t paying him any attention at all. Instead, he was gazing into a mirror with a satisfied expression. He looked so pleased with himself that Lowell found himself wondering, Did I set this guy up as a narcissist?
“Hey.”
Since Lowell continued lying there without saying anything, Leon finally turned to look at him.
“Could you cast a coordinate transfer spell for me?”
Seizing the moment, Lowell asked in the most pitiful, dying voice he could muster.
“Even if I use a coordinate transfer spell, I can’t go all the way to the Heinenstein estate because of the protective magic. And I’m not going through the trouble of drawing a magic circle just for you.”
“Then you can just take me there yourself.”
“What?”
“If you set the destination somewhere a little away from the estate, then cast the coordinate transfer spell on yourself, I can just tag along, right?”
Recalling what he’d just read, Lowell sat up.
“Why would I—”
“Close friends—no, people about to get married see each other off like this. Besides, you’re overflowing with mana anyway, since I shared mine with you earlier today.”
Now Lowell had even put his hands on his hips, staring straight at Leon.
“……”
Leon watched as his expression visibly darkened in real time.
“Wow! This really does get us here fast!”
When the light of the coordinate transfer spell completely faded, Lowell turned around and beamed.
Perhaps because it was his first time using coordinate transfer, the fatigue he’d felt earlier was completely buried beneath his sense of wonder.
“Just hurry up and go back already.”
Truly exhausted now, Leon waved his hand dismissively at Lowell, who was already hopping around. Leon’s mind was filled with the thought that he needed to get back to the tower and sleep immediately.
“Lowell?”
That was when a voice cut in between the excited Lowell and the weary Leon.
“…?”
Both Leon and Lowell turned their heads toward the source of the sound at the same time.
“Ah—Miss Aria…”
“Lowell? Is that really you?”
Caught in a completely unexpected situation, Lowell froze on the spot. Even though they had deliberately moved to a place far from the ducal residence, he had somehow run straight into Aria.
And then, just as Aria’s lips parted slightly, about to ask something—
Thud!
Leon’s upper body was shoved back with a dull sound, and in an instant, light began to swirl around him.
“…What?”
It was only long after the residual magic surrounding him had completely vanished that Leon finally grasped what had happened.
After blinking several times, he belatedly realized that he had been sent back to the tower by Lowell’s magic.
“Hah—did he cast a reverse transfer in the middle of all that?”
Leon looked around in disbelief. The dark room lit by a single lamp, the chill that seeped into his bones—no matter how he looked at it, this was the inside of the tower where he’d just been with Lowell.
Reverse transfer magic was simply a slight modification of an existing coordinate transfer spell, so it wasn’t particularly difficult. Still, the fact that Lowell had thought to cast it in that split second was astonishing enough.
Just then, Leon noticed the words Reverse Transfer Spell written on the grimoire Lowell had left open on the table. In other words, Lowell had immediately put into practice what he’d read just minutes ago.
“I don’t get it,” Leon muttered, closing the book.
After that, he walked over to the sofa where Lowell had been sitting and lay down.
As he was about to close his eyes, he briefly thought about what might have happened to Lowell, who had run straight into the very person he needed to keep his secret from.
But, well… since it wasn’t all that important to him, the thought was quickly pushed aside.
“He’ll figure it out.”
Feeling Lowell’s mana still lingering in his body, Leon closed his eyes.
