The tone was chilled — edged with something almost violent — but Noxie didn’t so much as blink. He turned past Axel and addressed me directly.
“We had so much more to talk about today. Unfortunate how it turned out. So when shall we meet next?”
I could not help being baffled.
Hadn’t we already finished everything? Why was he suddenly doing this?
Anxious about the impression this might be leaving on Axel, I glanced over at him — but to my relief, nothing seemed to have visibly changed.
I had just started to breathe easy when Axel’s voice arrived.
“Ah, yes. Next time, perhaps all three of us should meet — Lady Melberine and I together.”
His voice was perfectly composed. His expression was not.
For a moment, I failed to process the sentence properly, and simply blinked.
…What did he just say. My — lover?
I genuinely wasn’t sure I had heard those words in the right order, coming from Axel’s mouth.
While I stared at him with extremely wide eyes, Noxie reacted to the statement.
The smile he’d been wearing settled oddly, becoming something stiffer.
“…All three. That would be difficult, I think. We have some quite important things to discuss that day.”
“If it’s something important, all the more reason I should be there. You may not know this yet, but there’s nothing we keep from each other. Certainly nothing we hide.”
An invisible current ran between them. I had not in my wildest imagination expected them to be this openly hostile toward one another.
Before I could intervene, the exchange that was really an argument resumed.
“Is that so. I’m not so sure about that. You may not realize, but we’re not exactly ordinary acquaintances.”
“We’re each other’s one and only irreplaceable best friend. Isn’t that right, Yudi?”
As naturally as though it were a nickname he had always used, Noxie said it with a bright smile and looked to me for confirmation.
A nickname I had never heard in my life.
Yudi. What on earth—
Simultaneously, two very intense gazes locked onto me from both sides. Axel’s seemed to be asking: is that actually true?
I had been about to deny it — and then stopped.
The memory came back, sudden and sharp: I had tearfully told Noxie that we were best friends. I had said those exact words to him.
If I denied it carelessly now, there was no telling what he might do. Right now, Noxie was a walking explosive with a very unpredictable fuse.
His mood could flip and undo the arrangement we had just agreed to.
The moment I made that connection, the blood drained from my face.
I can’t let that happen—
I nodded quickly.
“W-well… that’s right…?”
Remembering Axel a beat too late, I looked sideways at him — but the moment had already passed.
Axel’s gaze had gone razor-sharp, and he was looking at me as though he might devour me whole.
“Lady Melberine — did you just agree to that?”
“Oh, I — thinking about it again, it might not be quite that level—”
I rushed to course-correct, and this time Noxie reacted.
“What? Is that actually true?”
“…That is, I mean—”
Now I genuinely wanted to cry. I had been backed into a corner where neither answer was safe.
I was desperately trying to think my way out when, from somewhere nearby, an urgent, insistent sound began.
The kind that could only be a summoning device.
I followed the source — and realized it was coming from Noxie’s direction.
By instinct, I knew this sound was my rescue.
With rare irritation in his expression, Noxie silenced the device and pinched the bridge of his nose.
I looked at him and ventured carefully:
“…Don’t you need to go? That sounded urgent.”
“I suppose I do…”
He looked at me steadily.
“But when you make it that obvious, it makes me want to stay.”
I felt a prick of guilt and rushed to cover it.
“I’m not making it obvious. I just meant that you’re obviously very busy and there’s no need to stay on my account.”
“Is that right?”
I nodded vigorously.
“Fine then. We’ll pick this up another time. Unfortunate, but I should go.”
“Of course. Go ahead.”
Noxie smiled faintly and rose from his seat, stepping around toward me. Before I could think to wonder what he was doing, he lifted my hand and pressed his lips to the back of it.
Until next time. Just the two of us.
His eyes curved with a smile — and then he was simply gone.
The abrupt contact startled me, and by the time I let out a quiet breath of relief at his absence, I felt the weight of something else.
A gaze. From directly beside me, intense enough to feel physical.
I could not turn my head. I stayed completely frozen.
When I finally peeked sideways, Axel was standing there radiating a terrifying kind of energy. I swallowed dryly.
Right. Not everything was over yet.
The biggest problem was still right here.
I somehow managed to rotate my neck and look at Axel, and smiled.
Right — when in doubt, smile. It was my most earnest effort to salvage the atmosphere. It was entirely ineffective.
Axel looked at me with eyes like ice and asked:
“So. What exactly is your relationship with that person?”
“My relationship? Your Highness, there’s nothing to call a relationship. He’s just a business associate — a friend.”
It felt uncomfortably like being caught in something I hadn’t done, and that inexplicable guilt made me look away without meaning to.
That evasion, however, only poured fuel on the fire. Axel’s eyebrow moved.
“A friend? The one and only irreplaceable best friend — are you saying that to me, Lady Melberine, right now?”
“U-one and only, that’s ridiculous. That was just Noxie being — it was a joke—”
“And he called you Yudi. From when exactly did you become so intimate as to exchange nicknames like that?”
He began releasing words he had clearly been holding back, one after another.
“Why isn’t Lady Melberine answering?”
Because you haven’t given me time to answer, Your Highness…
I was so unused to seeing him riled up like this that I could only blink.
When my shock rendered me speechless, Axel pushed again — with something unmistakably close to anxiety now edging his voice.
“Why — is it possible Lady Melberine has begun to prefer the mage over me?”
“What? That makes absolutely no sense, Your Highness.”
Those words cut through the fog.
Me, having feelings for Noxie. What kind of nonsense—
I frowned, and began addressing his accusations one by one.
“Yes, I did say best friend — but there were circumstances behind that. And I have certainly never said anything about being one and only. And being called Yudi — that was genuinely the first time I’d heard it today. We don’t use nicknames like that. Did you not see how startled I was? My interpretation is that Noxie was just being deliberately provocative.”
“Then why are you still calling him Noxie right now?”
That stopped me.
“…Because that’s his name? It’s not a nickname, Your Highness.”
“Right. So why would you—”
He had clearly wanted to say more, but trailed off, the words dying before they reached the end.
Something in his visible frustration tugged at a thread in my mind, and I gave voice to the thought without quite meaning to.
“You’re not suggesting I call him the mage instead of his name, are you, Your Highness?”
Even I could hear how far that had gone. Yet somehow, there was no correction coming. In fact — he was looking away.
Was that actually it?
Axel seemed to recognize, somewhere in himself, that the suggestion was a bit much — and couldn’t get any other words out.
I stared at him and felt something shift.
Come to think of it…
Everything about Axel’s behavior today had been slightly off — working wrong, like a piece of machinery that had been knocked out of alignment. It was only now occurring to me to find that strange.
Under normal circumstances, Axel couldn’t have cared less who I met or what I did. And yet here he was, reacting like this.
Which meant…
I studied him with uncertain eyes and let the word out quietly.
“…Jealous?”
