<Chapter 23>

“Who…”

“Anya Delluara. Um… she asked me to deliver this to you.”

“Ah, thank you.”

Deeply touched inside, Laren accepted the slip of paper from her in a daze. Who could have sent something like this? He unfolded the neatly creased note, and curiosity drained from his face in a crumbling rush.

[Behind Magic Hall 1, bench table. Ensis Tatio.]

Why go to such lengths for something so simple? Laren crumpled the paper, but his eyes snagged on the postscript at the end.

[P.S. Cookies.]

He left the classroom and made his way to Magic Hall 1. It wasn’t that he was heeding the summons—pure curiosity about that afterthought had him hooked. Hurrying along, he broke into a grin at the sight of a welcome face.

A child might get away with flashy accessories and frills, but Kar stuck faithfully to his crisp white satin shirts and black trousers. It made him unmistakable even from a distance. For that matter, the academy boasted exactly one boy of that slight build.

“Kar!”

Kar turned with his usual languid motion, meeting Laren’s gaze. The faint unease that had shadowed his features yesterday was gone. Laren studied the blank, inscrutable face and mustered a bright smile.

*Yeah, what’s the use in butting heads with a kid?*

Dwelling on that scattered killing intent felt like too much effort anyway. Thanks to letting it slide, he’d submitted the pair report on time—everything was perfect, so long as Kar didn’t wish for something absurd.

“Let’s go grab some cookies.”

He took Kar’s hand and tugged him along in the direction he was headed. Kar’s composure shattered in an instant, but he made no show of resistance, trailing after Laren with mild docility.

*Looks like he’s wrapped up whatever he was doing.*

Kar’s stubborn silence had honed Laren’s instincts over time. Simple rule: why wait for replies that never came? Just barrel ahead and override.

As the two rounded into the back of Magic Hall 1, Ensis came into view. Kar’s steps hitched for a split second.

“Kar, what’s wrong?”

“Forgot something.”

“What?”

Kar offered no reply, retreating at his unhurried pace. Laren cocked his head in bewilderment but released the hand without a fuss. On reflection, nothing good could come from parading Kar in front of Ensis.

Spotting Laren approaching solo, Ensis broke into a wide grin. Those around him—at the nearby tables, taking their ease—flushed scarlet, as if singed by open flame.

A scene all too familiar; Laren shook his head. Shrewd operator. Ensis knew full well how his smiles crumbled people’s defenses.

“You’ve been scarce lately. Thought we could squeeze in some tea time.”

*Since when were we on tea-time terms?*

The urge to blurt it out welled up fierce, but a commoner’s station left no room for such presumption. Ensis had taken to treating “Ren” with casual ease at some point. It grated a little under the skin, but Laren’s attention snagged elsewhere.

“Jian said you’re partial to sandwiches and cookies.”

Laren’s pupils quivered at the array on the table. He knew them on sight. The dreamlike handmade cookies baked personally by Mercantia’s head chef, Dorben—no mistaking it. Ensis, catching the ripple in those blue eyes, propped his chin and shrugged it off as no big deal.

“An old chef acquaintance with real talent. Managed to snag some the other day.”

*Dorben’s cookies!*

Dorben’s masterpieces! Laren whooped silently. These were the very ones he’d cherished beyond measure back in Mercantia.

*To stumble on them here, at the academy!*

His eyes prickled without warning. Warning klaxons blared in his skull—*stay away from Ensis*—but his body overrode the command from his brain. Settling onto the bench table, every nerve zeroed in on those treats.

“A gift.”

Ensis extended a neatly wrapped bundle with his free hand. Laren’s blue eyes churned in turmoil; when sense returned, a piece had already vanished down his gullet. It had happened at a thunderclap’s speed.

“Ahem, you should have some too, Lord Ensis.”

Catching Laren’s sidelong glance amid his cookie trance, Ensis waved it off. No outright refusal—just letting him stuff himself—which somehow evoked the sensation of being fattened for slaughter.

*Whatever.*

Laren’s barriers were flimsy at best. A centimeter, if that. The mere fact of Ensis procuring Dorben’s cookies had toppled his guard with ease. Before such aching, longed-for bliss, what was pride worth clinging to?

*Mmm.*

The rush of delight ebbed as fullness settled in, and motives began to nag at him anew. Lifting his gaze to meet Ensis’s, he found that signature smile—eyes rounding in crinkled delight.

“Why?”

“Nothing…”

Laren yanked back to nonchalance in a hurry, dropping his eyes downward. No overt fishing expedition, but the over-the-top kindness felt wrong—*too* wrong.

The Ensis he knew didn’t dispense favors without a why. Even chalking it up to self-interest, a broke commoner like him offered no angle to exploit.

*Or does he know it’s me and he’s just pretending otherwise? Go to *that* length?*

If it was really that, he’d be the century’s prime madman. Maybe he was in the dark—but Ensis’s particular flavor of derangement made certainty a slippery thing. Mood twisting into knots, Laren flicked his gaze upward once more, only to meet that beaming smile again.

*Wait a second.*

From their very first encounter, Ensis had shown more warmth than the situation called for. Even back in Mercantia, he’d never tasted this brand of kindness from him. Laren’s mind summoned the memory: Ensis, smirking from the sidelines as a botched magic experiment left the tips of his hair smoldering.

*No way…*

Lost in thought, his face grew shadowed. Having polished off the last crumb of cookie, Laren met Ensis’s gaze with a solemn intensity. The sudden cessation of his eating drew Ensis’s puzzled eyes, darting back and forth between the cookie and Laren.

“Ensis.”

“What’s the matter? Not enough?”

‘Just what the hell does this guy take me for?’

He swallowed the surge of irritation and set his features in stone. As Laren’s expression deepened into gravity, Ensis caught the shift—no room for jesting here—and straightened in his seat.

“Perhaps.”

“…?”

“Perhaps, ahem.”

Ensis’s face altered at the halting delivery, words stumbling forth like reluctant confessions. His golden eyes dimmed, the playful arc of his mouth settling into a neutral line. It was the look he wore in moments of quiet tension. He seemed to have divined what was coming next.

“I don’t indulge in the pleasures of men.”

The pleasures of men. Laren and Ensis had shared years upon years together, yet they had never broached the subject of desire, of the opposite sex. Ensis’s manner toward this boy of common birth carried enough strangeness to raise an alarm.

Doubt lingered, but the smile that had just curved Ensis’s lips moments before allowed Laren to reach a verdict. It wasn’t artifice—that was a smile laced with true sentiment.

Of course, his own altered form, now fully male, was handsome and captivating enough to draw the eye of his own kind, beautiful in a way that turned heads. Was it some grudge built over time, or simple ignorance? Either way, a quiet remorse stirred in him for not even knowing Ensis’s inclinations until now. Sorry for making you fall like this.

“I’m sorry, Ensis.”

Ensis’s head drooped low at the terse refusal, murmured once more. Soon enough, his blond locks quivered in tandem with his shoulders.

‘He’s not about to cry, is he?’

Laren watched with mounting concern, but the bowed head concealed any glimpse of his features.

“Haa….”

A deep sigh escaped Ensis as he raked a hand roughly over his face. The palm that had shielded his eyes slid downward, coming to rest at the corner of his mouth.

“Hn….”

‘Is he crying? I’ve never had to soothe a man in tears.’

Had he truly gone and upset him that much? Embarrassment flooded Laren’s cheeks. As Ensis swept his hair back, a few unruly blond curls tumbled free, cascading over his forehead one by one. With his face fully pressed into the table now, Ensis’s entire frame shuddered.

“Mi….”

“Mi?”

“I’m losing my mind, really.”

Ensis pounded the table with a sharp crack of his fist and dissolved into roaring laughter. Classmates nearby jolted, heads swiveling in surprise, but the peals only swelled, unrestrained. Laren waited it out, his own mood curdling into something sharp and irritable.

‘What the—yes or no?’

“How can you even….”

The reaction suggested his assumption had missed the mark entirely. If it wasn’t that, then fine—just say so. What was so hilarious about it that he had to thump the table like that? Laren’s scowl refused to ease, face twisted tight, while Ensis—perhaps making a half-hearted effort to rein it in—clapped both hands over his mouth.

“Ren.”

Laren made no reply, his composure frayed by the stubborn grin still tugging at Ensis’s lips. At the sight of that deeply furrowed glare, a leaky hiss of suppressed mirth escaped Ensis once more.

“You’re right that I like you, but….”

“But?”

“It’s not that kind of feeling. I’m no sodomite, not in the slightest.”

A misunderstanding, then—though no clarification followed on the matter of his overly generous warmth, the way he drew so close without cause.

“Then why do you keep coming at me like this… no, why treat me so kindly?”

“Well, that’s… um.”

He canted his head a touch, as if fishing for the right words. Laren eyed the radiant smile with a piercing scrutiny, but Ensis’s true motives eluded him, slippery as ever.

“Because you please me.”

“….”

“As a friend?”

Those gleaming golden eyes brimmed with honesty. Friend. For now, they stood merely as the scion of a ducal house and one unremarkable classmate among many, yet the word landed with an unexpected rightness, mirroring the unspoken bond between them.

Ensis rested his chin in his hand, gaze lingering on Laren’s back as he wrapped up their brief encounter and drifted away. At this pace, the truth—that he knew Laren’s secret all along—might slip out before long. And yet, how could he resist? The delicious absurdity of it all was driving him half-mad with delight.

It was a stroke of pure luck that Laren showed so little curiosity for anyone beyond his own concerns. To have pegged the Ensis he’d known for over a decade as some pursuer of men—preposterous. The memory bubbled up, and Ensis thunked his forehead against the table, dissolving into fresh spasms of laughter that lasted ages.

‘Suspicious bastard, through and through.’

Back in the dormitory after their verbal tussle with Ensis, Laren collapsed face-first into the bed. It looked as though he meant to let the whole thing slide under the banner of “friend,” but deep down, he couldn’t buy that Ensis had sidled up to him for such a simple reason. He’d watched the man for years, after all—he wasn’t some gullible fool to swallow it whole.

“The stew from the head chef—you absolutely have to try it. When you’re back, we’ll make good on that promise for a tour of the capital. Until then, mind Kana well…. La… Ren….”

Since arriving at the academy, he’d been drafting letters to Naias in stolen moments here and there. A pity he couldn’t expect replies, what with leaving the sender’s address blank.

With the letter to Naias sealed and set aside, Laren snuffed out the desk lamp’s wavering flame. Settling into bed, his eyes fell on the empty bunk opposite—vacant, as always, tonight.

‘What errand brings him to a building tied to the magical arts?’

Of all the souls Laren had crossed paths with at the academy, Kar was the most elusive, a ghost in the halls. Where did that slight frame roam each night? Eyes shut, he shifted restlessly beneath the covers, and sleep came crashing down at last. The day had pressed on him with unusual weight—this whirlwind of fresh surroundings and unfamiliar faces, all crammed into so brief a span.

* * *

A breeze slithered through the cracked window, teasing his cheek. Laren rubbed at it on instinct, then flung his eyes wide. Blinking the sleep away, he took in the room: subtly altered from the hush before slumber claimed him. Unseen garments draped across the far bed snapped him fully awake.

‘Did Kar slip in and out sometime in the night?’

A click from the latch, and the bathroom door swung open in a billow of warm steam. A silhouette stepped forth, and the dormitory plunged into a stunned hush.

“Waaaaah!”

Laren let out a piercing shriek and plunged his face into the pillow. A stranger—a man he didn’t know—lurking in their dormitory.