The sunlight streaming in through the window was already scorching enough to burn the skin. An entire winter had passed while he was unconscious. Even surrounded by people making a fuss, calling it a miracle that he survived, it hadn’t quite hit him—until now, as he looked out at the garden blanketed in green. Only then did the gravity of how dangerous the situation had been truly sink in.
Ah, there was one more thing that struck him. Unlike the now-warm weather, Delroz’s dried-out appearance was far more shocking. His large frame had become sharply gaunt.
‘Never thought I’d see him cry.’
The image of him shedding tears, unable to even hide them as they rolled down his face, had etched itself into his mind like a painting. It wasn’t pitiful in the way a grown man crying might normally seem—it was heartbreaking.
The emotion that stirred inside was unfamiliar, yet not unpleasant. He’d spent enough time denying how he felt. Looking back, it had been a long, stubborn struggle to wrestle a heart already tipping over.
“The wind’s still chilly.”
Their eyes met as Delroz approached. He silently reached out to close the window, but Banteon stopped his hand.
“The breeze feels nice. Leave it open.”
“You’ll catch a cold like this.”
The blanket draped across his lap was thick and cozy, far too warm for late spring. The outerwear over his shoulders was just as excessive for a day that felt more like summer. It was overprotection taken to an absurd level.
The more ridiculous part was how his body, wrapped up like this, didn’t even feel hot. Was it because of the two back-to-back reckless guiding sessions? Or because he’d been bedridden for so long?
His once-healthy body hadn’t returned to its original state. He lived with a dry cough now, and as his once-sturdy arms withered away, so did the fullness in Delroz’s face. He called out softly to Delroz, who hesitated with a worried look. When he gestured, Delroz moved closer, and Banteon gently tugged on his arm. Delroz naturally lowered himself to sit beside him.
“This is warmer.”
As he embraced Delroz’s body, warm with high body heat, a different kind of warmth than the blanket wrapped around him spread through him. Delroz’s stiff shoulders slowly relaxed, and then he pulled Banteon into a full embrace. Had he ever imagined a day would come when they could share warmth like this so naturally?
The large hand wrapped around his back and the firm jaw that rested atop his head gave him a sense of comfort he never thought possible.
Delroz carefully scooped Banteon up in his arms. He moved the wheelchair aside and carried him over to the window. Cradled in his arms, even right in front of the open window, the cold didn’t reach him.
This peaceful moment hadn’t come the instant he woke from his long sleep. There hadn’t been some fairytale where everything was resolved with Rohan and, upon opening his eyes, he was left with nothing but a blissful future.
Banteon was both the victim of a kidnapping and the heir of the family to which the accomplice, Tearot, belonged.
As both the victim and the presiding judge who had to sentence a criminal, Banteon woke to find himself facing a mountain of unresolved tasks. The Royal Court carefully inquired about his health, yet even during treatment, they began slipping work to him. If Delroz hadn’t flipped the Council’s desk into powder, Banteon might’ve ended up bedridden again.
While he compromised with reality and sorted only the most necessary documents, there were still matters that couldn’t be ignored.
“There’s still no word, right?”
“…Not yet.”
Even without a subject, Delroz responded immediately—it was that much on Banteon’s mind. With a bitter sigh, Banteon absentmindedly rubbed the back of his neck, thinking of his longtime friend.
Though perhaps, Banteon had been the only one who considered them friends.
The one who carried the unconscious Delroz and Banteon out of the desert was Tearot. He had crushed up suppressant and painkillers to force down Banteon’s throat and moved them to the nearest village.
Even if the guiding had kept them alive, if Tearot hadn’t moved them, they would’ve been scorched to death under the desert sun the next morning.
After arriving in the village, Tearot contacted the Center and then vanished. A few days later, a massive explosion was observed in the central desert.
When an investigation team later entered the desert, they found nothing resembling the ruins Banteon had described. Months of excavation didn’t even yield a single piece of marble. A blast powerful enough to obliterate the remains of an ancient kingdom entirely. Most likely, Tearot had caused it.
Already wounded by Rohan, Tearot wouldn’t have had the strength to cross the desert and do all that. The Center’s researchers speculated that Tearot had self-destructed with the ruins.
But Banteon didn’t believe the report. Until a body turned up, he couldn’t accept Tearot’s death as fact.
Knock knock.
“Come in.”
Just as he answered the knock, Pellato stepped inside. He was holding a new stack of documents for Banteon to review.
Pellato Radern, Tearot’s father, had decided to take full responsibility for everything concerning Tearot. He had pledged to resign as acting head of the family once Banteon’s health recovered and had already returned the family’s authority and his title in advance.
Banteon had tried several times to stop him, but Pellato insisted firmly on his decision.
Normally, it would be unthinkable for someone like Pellato—acting family head—to personally carry documents, but now even the lowest-ranked assistant outranked him in status.
“My respects.”
Banteon swallowed his discomfort as he watched Pellato bow deeply at a perfect ninety degrees.
“Please, take a seat.”
He figured it was better to sit and speak as equals than to endure the awkwardness, but Pellato remained frozen in his bow, unmoving. Only after Delroz took the documents and handed them to Banteon did Pellato finally straighten his back.
“You should also lower your speech, Lord Banteon.”
“…You don’t have to go this far.”
Tearot had become a designated criminal by the Kingdom, charged with aiding Rohan’s escape and kidnapping Banteon. When Banteon regained consciousness, he deliberately testified that Tearot acted under Rohan’s control.
The only ones who truly understood Rohan’s abilities were Banteon and Delroz. Not even the Center Director had been told the full extent. The two had managed to keep the truth hidden even while developing the suit designed to suppress sensation. Thanks to that effort, as long as Banteon and Delroz kept quiet, no one would ever know the lie.
Banteon insisted that Tearot had committed his crimes while mentally incapacitated and incapable of proper judgment, and the Royal Court accepted this claim. Measures were taken so that even if Tearot returned, he would face disciplinary action but be spared the death penalty.
Only one person—Pellato Radern—refused to believe Banteon’s words.
He insisted that his son would have acted the same, even without Rohan.
“Is there anything making you uncomfortable?”
“I’m not someone worth such concern.”
The more Pellato quietly diminished his own worth, the more Banteon resented the friend who had vanished. Sensing the shadow falling over Banteon’s expression, Pellato gave a bitter smile as he spoke.
“Why would I feel discomfort when I’m letting go of something that was never mine in the first place?”
“Pardon?”
“…Would you mind if I shared an old story?”
With his gaze fixed far off, Pellato began to speak softly, as though recalling something from the distant past.
***
Long ago—fifty years in the past—there was an Esper family on the verge of extinction. With each passing year, fewer Espers were born into the family. Eventually, even the collateral branches vanished, and the family head stood alone as the last Esper of his bloodline.
In such a common and unremarkable state, not even sympathy came his way. The pitiful head of the family began fathering illegitimate children as if possessed.
He believed that if he increased the number of offspring from his own Esper bloodline, at least one of them would awaken as an Esper.
Hoping to stretch the family line just a little further, to slightly improve the odds, he brought dozens of illegitimate children into the family estate.
The results were disastrous. None of them—not even the legitimate child from his lawful wife—showed any signs of awakening as an Esper.
The family steadily declined, eventually reaching a state where they couldn’t even afford servants. At that point, the family head made a final decision.
There was an old superstition that circulated in the Kingdom like a myth: that a child with the potential to become an Esper could awaken miraculously when placed under mortal threat.
Stripped of his noble status, the illegitimate children were seen as nothing more than burdens who would split the inheritance. So the family head began calling them in one by one, locking them in solitary confinement.
‘You have the highest potential among my children to awaken as an Esper. I’ll help you.’
Whispering such sweet lies, he imprisoned the children and began torturing them—killing them one at a time.
Twenty-eight illegitimate children died. The final child was brought into the room. With his sense of reality slipping, the increasingly deranged family head stood before the last child, no longer even bothering to clean the bloodstained chamber.
‘You’re the last one. This is it. If it doesn’t work with you, we all die together.’
Holding a saw with dried blood turned pitch-black, he grinned like a madman. At this point, the idea of awakening Espers had become nothing but an excuse. He had simply turned his rage over his own circumstances onto a helpless, fragile child.
Cackling manically, he raised the blunt-edged saw toward the last child.
That day, the foolish family head’s wish came true.
***
“That story…”
“That illegitimate child was me. I became the last Esper of a bloodline whose very name has now vanished.”
It was a story Banteon had never heard before. He’d never even caught a rumor that Pellato had been an illegitimate child of another family. Covering his mouth, Banteon finally managed to part his trembling lips.
