“Then, do you listen to a lover?”
Leonardo’s eyes shifted subtly. The unexpected question caught him off guard.
He had chosen that relationship casually, meaning not to interfere, but when it came back as an extremely personal question, he was momentarily at a loss for words.
He was also curious about the intention behind it. Honestly, if he wanted to ask, he should just ask directly, and Leonardo wanted to ask in return why he had brought his face unnecessarily close.
It seemed as if he were openly trying to observe how Leonardo would react. As the persistent gaze swept over his eyes, nose, and mouth, he felt like every tremor of his muscles was being dissected in detail.
Leonardo, who had received such a gaze from Hugo before, didn’t particularly like being pinned down by this intense, searching look. However, at this moment, whether he pushed his shoulders away and stood up first or casually responded, it felt like the atmosphere might become somewhat strange. It was an instinctive feeling.
The faint breath brushing against him in this narrow gap was too intriguing to ignore. The occasional skinship from yesterday became vivid across all his senses at once. But it seemed he wasn’t the only one swayed by such sensations.
The one looking down at him also appeared to be swimming in a similar time. His deep eyes grew increasingly profound.
Leonardo deliberately moved his lips, which had curled inward from being lightly bitten, as if to show them off. At that, those blue eyes of unfathomable depth fell upon the red lips that had slipped out between his teeth.
His gaze, which had lingered for what felt like a long time, returned to its original place. Leonardo, looking up at that unruffled face, finally broke the suffocating silence and managed to open his mouth.
“I do. I listen to a lover.”
It was a relatively calm voice for someone who was flustered. This time, he didn’t want to get caught up in the other’s pace like yesterday.
Rather, as if about to engage in a battle of nerves, he looked up with half-closed eyes, and in response, the other’s shadowed eyelids blinked slowly, as if answering.
At that moment, the thin golden hair that had flowed down along the backrest scattered like streaks of light across Leonardo’s forehead.
Hugo, who would have naturally reached out to tidy it up under normal circumstances, only watched quietly this time. He opened his mouth dryly just as Leonardo’s muscle strength, which had been enduring the strained posture, was reaching its limit.
“I didn’t know you were such a romantic.”
The golden eyelashes in line with his firm lips trembled slightly.
The words themselves might have been a joke, but his tone was stiff, devoid of any humor. It somehow sounded displeased. Although it couldn’t be, it also sounded like sarcasm.
Leonardo, puzzled by the rather cold response, raised his eyebrow slightly, trying to grasp his intention. However, before he could properly examine his expression, Hugo’s face, which had been close, slowly moved away.
He straightened his waist, removed his hands from the armrests, and moved along the circumference of the chair. Following his footsteps, Leonardo also tried to sit up straight, using his arms to raise his upper body.
But at that moment, Hugo, arms outstretched, grabbed Leonardo’s waist. Then he lightly lifted him as if picking up a cotton doll and sat him properly in the chair.
Leonardo, whose thighs had momentarily floated and then settled, obediently leaned his back against the backrest under Hugo’s strength. Instead of taking the opposite chair, Hugo leaned his lower body diagonally against the table right next to him. Even though he was clearly sitting on the tabletop, his legs were so long that both feet touched the ground.
Leonardo, who had been silent, quietly observed Hugo’s demeanor. Hugo placed the confiscated cigarette case on the table as it was. He ran a hand through his navy hair while washing his hands with conjured water. His brow was strangely furrowed as he looked outside the tent.
‘Is he upset?’
Leonardo, staring at his tired profile, quietly guessed at the emotion that had briefly shown on his face.
He was the person who hadn’t given up on him even when he was about to go berserk, so Leonardo wondered if he had hurt his feelings by speaking coldly, as if telling him not to care too much. Otherwise, there was no reason for him to look like that after meeting eyes in that atmosphere just now. Since it felt like a reaction to something different from what Leonardo had experienced, he was newly perplexed.
‘Is his pride slightly...’
At that moment, Hugo, who had been touching the corner of his eye with his fingertip, turned his head slightly. Sending an incomprehensible gaze, he leaned his upper body forward, placed his hand on the table, and said:
“I understand that you dislike interference, but whether it’s a lover or not, it can’t be helped while you’re here. In this place, I am your final decision-maker and protector. I have the duty to interfere so that you can regain your health, and to take responsibility for your safe return.”
As he said this, Hugo’s gaze was still directed at his own handkerchief tied around Leonardo’s neck. Leonardo’s gaze followed his, dropping to the area around his neck. As he fiddled with the knot that hadn’t loosened at all, Hugo tapped the cigarette case and added:
“I’ll return it to you when we get back and you’ve completed a thorough examination and are deemed to have no issues. And I promise not to interfere after that. We’re returning to the imperial capital tomorrow anyway, so it’s not long now.”
Leonardo, who had been listening quietly, widened his eyes and asked:
“What? We’re returning tomorrow?”
“...Yes. Didn’t Flynn tell you?”
“Neither of you showed your faces all night. This is the first I’m hearing of it.”
Leonardo replied like this, but he recalled the conversation he had overheard among the members earlier in the cabin.
‘What kind of meeting takes so long? Is it because of tomorrow’s return?’
At the time, it had been noisy, so he had only half-listened and hadn’t thought specifically about what “return” meant. He hadn’t even dreamed it meant the entire force was returning to the imperial capital.
Come to think of it, he remembered that Kenis had also prefaced his statement with “although we’re returning soon” when he said it would be better if Leonardo wasn’t alone.
As he pieced things together one by one, he began to understand why the members had seemed particularly busy yesterday and today.
Seeing Leonardo’s eyes grow notably confused, Hugo added a brief explanation.
“The monster subjugation is almost finished... and although we’ve activated a barrier as a temporary measure to prevent the spread of damage from the volcanic eruption, that’s ultimately in the realm of nature, so we can’t wait until it subsides. We also can’t keep neglecting the casualties, so it was decided that the Central Branch ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) would return first. So today will be our last day staying here.”
Leonardo looked up at Hugo with a dazed expression.
‘Last?’
Returning tomorrow was certainly good news. But perhaps because the timing was earlier than expected, his heart suddenly felt unsettled.
‘Is it really over now?’
Leonardo felt something other than simple joy first. The end of the long, long subjugation. It was also a farewell to this insufferable group.
The time of promise was vaguely approaching, and amid it, he thought of a certain ending he would face at the finale.
‘There’s not much time left to be together.’
This newly realized fact left Leonardo’s mind a bit dazed. Hugo, observing his lukewarm reaction contrary to expectations, casually asked:
“Aren’t you happy?”
At this, Leonardo, who had been staring blankly into space, blinked and looked at Hugo. Then he lowered his gaze to the table. His golden eyes, moving as busily as the second hand of a clock, somehow seemed to lack composure.
Hugo, watching him as his mood seemed to have grown complicated, interlaced his hands on his thighs and murmured softly:
“I thought you’d be happy if I said we’re returning soon.”
Leonardo, who had been organizing his thoughts, raised his head again. He muttered toward Hugo with an expression that seemed somewhat unreal:
“I am happy.”
Hugo’s eyebrow muscles moved subtly. Seeing this, Leonardo asked Hugo in return:
“How about you?”
Leonardo’s question was actually a very foolish one if one knew Hugo Agrizendro. Because the answer was already clearly set.
He had come to the peninsula pushed by his superiors, bearing a heavy responsibility, watching the time bomb that was Leonardo Blaine while leading the Council’s large army. He was the person who had wished more than anyone for this subjugation to end successfully and had been counting the days until their return to the imperial capital.
However, now that he was at the crossroads of giving an extremely obvious answer, Hugo couldn’t readily respond to Leonardo’s question. Somehow, it felt like there was a different meaning in it. Not the meaning one would hear intuitively, but an implication that only they, who had shared the time that had passed, could understand.
Normally, he would have been able to grasp such things without difficulty. But today, that intention was particularly confusing. Even he didn’t know the reason well. Perhaps he was deliberately turning a blind eye to it.
Hugo suddenly recalled Leonardo saying he liked oranges. The sound of Leonardo hastily adding the object of the sentence brushed his ear.
Somehow, it felt like that scent had filled the tent again. Hugo, while trying to recall the meaning of the question, answered somewhat ambiguously:
“I’m happy too.”
From that point on, silence flowed between the two for a while. Neither of them dared to move a finger to break it.
Being as perceptive and quick-witted as they were, they couldn’t help but be aware of the tension stretched taut in their seemingly open yet isolated space.
Leonardo was curious about the inner thoughts of this man who confused him more than anyone else in his life. It sounded as if he were saying he was glad to be able to return, but the look in his eyes as he gazed at Leonardo suggested otherwise.
As he tilted his head at the returned answer and slightly furrowed his brow, the sunlight seeping in from outside swept across Leonardo’s face.
Hugo, who had been staring at those clear golden eyes through which the light passed, soon turned his gaze away, trying to shake off the intensifying atmosphere. His eyes, which moved outside the tent, were not looking at the passing members, but at yesterday’s Leonardo.
The 'Leonardo who met Felix Montero' in the report of his subordinates, who had told him in detail about what had happened while he was away.
