Chapter 107
Noel swallowed dryly.
“Are you going to reprimand me?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Arellin smiled prettily.
“You could fight with your brother. You didn’t fight over anything, so who am I to reprimand you?”
A pleasant breeze swept past them.
Flower petals fluttered.
The sound of people talking among themselves.
The festive excitement.
“But make up with him, you two are close, and you’re really into Ciel, don’t you think it’s uncomfortable that you keep doing that?”
Noel snapped his fingers.
Only the air surrounding Arellin seemed different. Noel was careful to breathe, as if the slightest misstep would cause his to dissolve into nothingness.
“Arel seems so grown up sometimes.”
“She’s actually more grown-up than you guys.”
“Haha.”
“You’re laughing at me.”
Arellin made a fat face. Though even that expression was cute.
“I don’t want to fight Pession.”
“What?”
Noel felt awkward because Arellin had gotten better.
She was nice now, but what if she got even nicer?
“Why do you suddenly want to fight Pession?”
“There are things, Arel, you don’t know.”
Arellin frowned.
Still, Arellin’s danger map was a riddle, broken into strange shapes that made it hard to know what they meant…
She no longer wondered or cared what the anomaly was.
Arellin brushed herself off and stood up.
“Anyway, I’ll go get Ciel. Do we need to make up properly?”
“Yeah.”
She stared at the back of her head, wishing she could hold on to it.
Ciel walked over, looking as if he had just finished speaking with Arellin.
“Noel.”
“Ciel.”
There was no need to say sorry, or wrong, or anything else.
Both Ciel and Noel could tell what the other was thinking the moment their eyes met.
Reconciliation wasn’t hard.
Ciel was the first to speak.
Earlier, before they went to buy skewers, Arellin had come up to him and said just one thing.
“You want to make up with Noel, don’t you?”
Arellin playfully held out her hand to Ciel, who stiffened at her words.
“Let me help you.”
And so they did.
Maybe it was because they had always been able to read each other’s minds with just a glance, but it felt different now that it was happening.
She realized how nerve-wracking it is to say what they feel and think clearly with words.
“Noel. You know, every time Arellin plays, the room lights up around me and the golden eyes glow to levels I’ve never seen before, and it’s so amazing and amazing, I think I’ve been acting out of character the whole time.”
He’s not alone in this.
Ciel was mesmerized, as if caught in a spell.
“No, Ciel. I love Arellin’s music, and I think she’s just freaked out because every time she plays, the danger level spikes to levels she’s never seen before.”
Noel delivered his words carefully and calmly.
“Oh, really?”
Ciel’s eyes widened.
The two were suddenly serious. They shook their heads as if they’d just had a fight.
“The value has increased, but so has the risk?”
“Why?”
“Then we can’t perform. We don’t want Arel to get hurt.”
They agreed dramatically.
“But Ciel, did Arel recognize who I am?”
“Did Noel? I thought so, too. Pession thought I was Noel the whole time.”
Noel and Ciel’s gazes met.
They were thinking the same thing.
“Where’s Arel?”
“She was heading that way earlier.”
“With Aaron?”
“Yep. With Pession too.”
“Come on, let’s catch up.”
Now was not the time to be alone.
***
“Are the twins making up properly?”
Leaving the twins alone to make up properly, she, Pession, and Aaron moved to the nearby cafeteria and sat down with their respective drinks.
“I’m sure they’re doing fine since we left them alone, right?”
They were separated, but that was okay because each of the five of them had an escort.
Pession, sipping blue lemonade through a straw, looked at her.
“Why were the twins fighting, anyway?”
“Over a disagreement about artistic views?”
“?”
She realizes that Sperom loves art.
She heard from the twins that the Duke of Sperom had called to sell the Grandeur series, and that their father had chewed it up. Poor Duke Sperom…
‘He said if you try to sell him one more time, he’ll burn you in front of his face. He’s got a real bad temper.’
She chewed on the ice, and revised her assessment of her father today.
“This is delicious. Try it.”
“Yummy.”
Did she mention that the evolution of the universe is moving toward a final convergence point?
When technology and civilizations advance beyond a certain level, they become similar to each other without any differences, and that’s how she feel this world is.
It’s not science, it’s magecraft, but it boasts a level of civilization that’s not much different from the modern world she know.
There was something to see everywhere they looked in the city of Huangdao, where buildings of various designs, if not urban forests, were harmoniously filled with Maido engineering.
She feels like she’s been traveling somewhere.
“Shouldn’t we get something to eat or drink?”
If they didn’t have cacao powder and coffee, she was going to preemptively suck on some honey.
The easiest items for sucking honey have long since been excavated and popularized in the metropolitan area.
‘But I can still use it if I want to use it.’
She was looking around, comparing what was similar and what was different from the modern world of her previous life.
“Huh?”
A familiar head of pink hair caught her eye.
‘It’s Chloe.’
Why is she here…
“Huh? Arel, what’s wrong?”
She swallowed dryly as her eyes reflexively met Pession’s and she smiled prettily, folding her eyes.
“Nothing…”
“I was looking at something.”
“That!”
Truth be told, she already knew about Chloe’s appearance, and she knew that she could run into her at any moment. Being overly nervous was purely her problem.
Her hands were twitching, even though she knew it was fate that Chloe and Pession would meet anyway and she couldn’t stop it.
Pession’s expression changed strangely as he looked out the window.
Did he see her? Chloe?
“Arel.”
“Uh, huh?”
Pession grinned and pointed at something.
“We should do that.”
“Huh?”
***
How did we get here?
She stood in the open lobby of the first floor of the tower in anguish. Aaron looked just as distressed as she was.
The only one excited was Pession.
[Let’s see, a full-scale event in the tower for the National Day!]
[You never know who might be talented, and we’re giving away freebies for participating!]
A letterhead with a mouth flew through the air of the tower, chattering away.
“Wizard’s Gate?”
“If you have the talent of a wizard, you can go to the final chamber.”
Pession said, a twinkle in his eye.
She was about to retort that if she had that talent, they would have known.
He looked so excited.
“…”
Aaron seemed to have the same idea, and was staring at a basic spellbook for sale on the first floor of the magic tower…
“You can do it, Archmage!”
The scammer shouts.
“Can we do this without the twins?”
“I told them to bring the twins!”
“You’re a stickler.”
Pession smirks.
“I hear if you can find the secret chamber, you can become the archmage’s apprentice.”
Matap was about to get his comeuppance, for Sangsul was shaking with fear.
“Our turn.”
Pession tugged on her hand with excitement.
Yeah, he’s this excited.
Let she guess.
“One at a time.”
The wizard guiding us explained in a tired voice.
Somehow, she just opened the door and walked in, and in an instant, she was alone.
And three doors floating in front of her.
‘Ah, so this is why they’re called wizard’s doors?’
But…
She looked at the doors and scratched her head.
“What is it?”
