Luman finally settled down after teasing me for ages.
I tried to think about the old lady at the inn, but the flow had already been broken, and I couldn’t remember what I’d been thinking. All that kept popping into my head was Luman constantly shoving his face at me! I swear, he knows way too well that he’s handsome. That has to be why he keeps sticking his face in mine every chance he gets! I almost bit his cheek hard and barely stopped myself.
Because I had this horrible feeling he might actually like that, since he was weird enough for it. Ugh. Creepy.
Even when I frowned for no reason and bit my lip... I still couldn’t focus.
Yeah. The truth was...
I was excited.
I wanted to go outside! I wanted to look around another village too!
Would there be people my age here?
It’s not that I wanted to make friends, absolutely not! Nothing like that. Definitely not. I was just curious, that’s all...
This was all Coco and Luman’s fault.
To make it through this brutal world, you needed a tough heart, and those two had obviously gone and made mine a little too soft.
I got all worked up, then immediately felt down again.
It hadn’t even been a full month since I left the village. Was it really okay for me to let my guard down this much?
'Get it together. It’s not like you’re out here to have fun.'
Right. I should just be grateful that I got to be somewhere comfortable with my brother.
Huh? Why does the top of my head sting?
“Aaagh!”
“Heh heh heh... Ahahahahaha!”
I looked up, and Luman was staring at me!
Apparently he’d dragged over a chair at some point and planted himself right in front of me, just blatantly watching me. His golden eyes looked exactly like a big cat’s, and that genuinely scared the shit out of me. They looked like the glow I’d seen in the cave.
'Huh? The cave?'
“Ren, you really do startle easily.”
“You scared me half to death!! Don’t you have anything better to do? Why are you so obsessed with messing with people!?”
“It’s funny watching your face turn pale, then red, all by itself. What were you thinking about? Hmm?”
“I wasn’t thinking about anything.”
“No, you definitely were. You were frowning like this while you thought. Looking at that, you really are brothers. You make the same face when you’re thinking.”
“Really?”
“Hm?”
“Do I really look like my brother?!”
“Ren, your face is a little too clo—”
“I asked if I look like him! Or I don’t? Hurry up and answer!!”
“You do! You do! You do!”
“Tch. Why’d you have to say it three times? I’m not deaf, you know.”
'Huh. Am I too close?'
Wow, Luman. His eyes are really pretty. His lashes are dark and thick too... I thought he had a handsome face, but wow, it was a really, really pretty face! Luman’s pupils slowly widened. I caught a glimpse of myself reflected in them. Wow. Weird. Me, inside someone’s eyes.
I was staring at him like I was bewitched when I heard someone swallow.
“Ren.”
Luman said my name softly.
“You’re too close...”
he whispered.
Too clo— aaagh! Why are we so close!?
“Careful—! Whew. You okay?”
I jerked backward in panic, but I fumbled and lost my balance. I almost fell right off the bed onto the floor, but Luman caught me with one hand.
I flailed in the air, and he just scooped me up like it took no effort at all, then set me back down on the bed. His face had gone stiff in an awkward way.
“......”
“......”
Wh-what the hell is this situation!?
Our eyes met again. The fine-boned hand Luman still had against my back suddenly felt unbearably ticklish!
Wh-what is this awkward situation!?
“I-I’m fine! What about my brother!? I’m going to go find him!”
“Ren! Wait—!”
Bang!
The wooden door slammed shut with a huge noise.
***
Luman’s hand closed uselessly around empty air. His ears were red. It was as if the feeling of lifting Ren was still lingering in his hand. This was just...
embarrassing.
It had felt completely different from back in the hollow, when he’d held him to save his life and split the light apart. Getting like this over a kid? What the hell. Luman pounded at his own head a few times, then raised the upper body he’d bent forward.
Jepeto was very pointedly looking away.
So you were the one who swallowed just now!
That’s why this suddenly got weird for no reason...!
While Luman, unusually enough, stood there blankly blaming someone else for his own state, Jepeto slowly lifted his head. His face was bright red too.
“Um... shouldn’t you maybe go after him? Ahem!”
“......Wait. Was Ren wearing his hood when he ran out?”
“Uh... I didn’t really see clearly...”
Bang!
He must have slammed it ridiculously hard, because part of the edge of the old wooden door had splintered and dust was drifting down.
Luman had already vanished.
“Cough. Cough, cough.”
Being part of a Hero’s party really wasn’t easy.
Jepeto made a slightly bitter face, then suddenly raised his head.
At the moment, he was alone in this room.
***
Aaaagh!
After slamming the door, Ren stood frozen in front of it for a second, then raced down the stairs. He didn’t even notice all the eyes in the hallway stabbing into his face.
Inside, Ren was screaming nonstop.
Ah, damn it, this is all because I had to go and stare at someone’s face like that! No, wait, there was no reason for that to get awkward in the first place, was there!? Then why the hell am I the one running awayyyyy!? But Ren’s legs were faster and quicker than ever.
“Sir! Are you headi—”
The boy who had guided Ren’s group to the inn earlier saw Ren barreling downstairs with terrifying speed, started to say something, and then froze blankly. Ren was in such a hurry to get out that he didn’t even look at the boy’s face. Ah, maybe their eyes met for about 0.01 seconds.
The boy got a double nosebleed.
Because the sight of Ren biting his lip and those damp green eyes had been too adorable. The inn fell into a bizarre, untimely silence, like a ghost had just walked through.
Even the people enjoying a late meal and early drinks froze the instant they saw Ren’s face—because he had forgotten to put his hood back on.
Thud thud thud!
The noise from the stairs shattered the silence. Not long after Ren charged out, a tall, strikingly handsome man came running after him with a frightening look on his face.
“Hey, Tommy.”
“Yeeah...”
Tommy, the innkeeper’s grandson, rubbed at his nosebleed in a daze as he answered.
“Since when did this inn have so many gorgeous men coming through it? Or was I dreaming? Hah hah hah! Another beer!”
That one man’s question kicked off a heated buzz through the whole dining room.
“What family do you think he belongs to?”
“If he lived in this village, there’s no way we wouldn’t know! Obviously he’s from out of town!”
“Man. He looked like some fairy right out of a legend.”
“No, with ears a little pointed like that, didn’t he look more like an elf?”
“Well, I’ll be damned! I’ve never seen eyes like that. And his hair was blond too, right?”
“Hic! Yeah, hic! That must be why he came in all bundled up earlier!”
The people gathered around the tables carried the subject from Ren to the rest of the Hero’s party. Even in the best possible light, their builds didn’t look like ordinary people, so in truth, the moment they’d entered this tiny village, they had already become the hottest topic in town. Mercenaries? Knights? People threw out all kinds of guesses. The conversation finally circled back to the boy who had just run out.
Any time the old men’s comments started crossing a line, Tommy would practically lunge at them with poison in his eyes. The rest of the time, he grinned to himself while wiping down the tables. The streaks of dried blood were still on his face.
“You little punk! What are you smirking abou— what the hell happened to your face!? Who hit you—”
“Hee hee. No, Grandma. I get it now. I get why you were staring at him like that.”
“What kind of nonsense did you eat? What’s wrong with you!”
Tommy kept laughing even while she grabbed his shoulders and shook him.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen someone who looked that angelic... Grandma! Do you think he was really an elf or a fairy?!”
Tommy had said it with his eyes wide open, but before long they went dreamy and slack again.
The old innkeeper understood immediately. The angel her grandson was talking about meant the boy who had come in earlier.
***
“Haaah... haaah... ngh. Hah, hah...”
Ugh.
Ren barely managed to swallow back the thin saliva that kept trying to spill from his mouth. He stood with his hands braced on his knees, trying to catch his breath, but his ragged breathing refused to settle down. His shoes and the hems of his pants were a mess from running over the slushy, melting snow. He’d run so hard that even in the winter wind, he was sweating, his whole body flushed with heat. At this point he was practically hot.
“Wh-where am I...”
He’d just run without thinking and ended up somewhere he didn’t recognize. Ren worried for a second about whether he’d find his way back, but then thought, I ran in a straight line, so I can just turn around and run straight back, with ridiculous optimism.
The place Ren had run to was the village market street.
Small shops lined the road, and there was an alley where children were playing. The local kids looked at Ren with curious expressions as he came running all the way from afar. The adults were no different. Blond hair glittering in the sunlight drew attention even when he was standing still. Their gazes naturally turned toward him.
“Hooo...”
Ren let out a long breath and straightened up.
But somehow, it felt like everyone around him was staring at him.
“Hhk—”
Someone sucked in a sharp breath. Someone else coughed. Another person started hiccuping! In this tiny village, Ren’s face was the kind of beauty that came as a genuine shock. A couple briefly let go of each other’s hands, then hurriedly clasped them again, and the little kids’ eyes lit up. One young man with a face red as fire kept trying to work up the nerve to approach Ren.
Ren narrowed his eyes.
'Don’t tell me they’re all staring at me... what do you mean, “don’t tell me”?'
'They are staring at me!'
Ren flinched at all the blank looks fixed on him—mouths hanging slightly open—then deliberately puffed his chest out even more. He made the fiercest, ugliest face he could at the young man who kept twitching while staring at him!
And what if you are staring!?
How long are you planning to keep staring!?
Take a look and move on ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ already! What am I, an animal!?
Kyaaah!
Ren thought of beasts puffing themselves up and glared fiercely. The sharp force of it sent the young man, who’d been about to talk to him, fleeing, and some of the kids started to tear up.
“Eek!”
He could even hear someone hiccup in fright.
There were still a lot of people around, but when Ren lifted his eyes and glared so viciously, they couldn’t quite bring themselves to openly stare or talk to him. Instead, they awkwardly went about their business—
or invented business to go about.
Meanwhile, Ren felt deeply satisfied!
For some reason, it felt like he ought to dust off his hands.
'Hmph!'
Ren snorted and plopped himself down by a tree. The posture was outrageously sloppy. If he’d been sitting like that in the capital, a patrolman probably would have hauled him in.
“Hey.”
Right then, someone came over looking for trouble.
