As Seiichirou had expected, Aresh stayed in his room that night and never showed his face. Part of that was because Seiichirou came home late, but Aresh was supposed to have the next day off work. Seiichirou had assumed that he would at least show up the next morning, but Milan the maid told him that he left the house in a rush after breakfast.
Seiichirou’s first destination was all too obvious.
“Is Orjef here?!”
The knights of the Third Royal Order gaped at the otherworlder who came barging into their station. Some knights, who saw their captain’s darling as the source of their current problems, glared at him with hostility, but Seiichirou simply waltzed up to Orjef and pulled him into Aresh’s office without a second thought.
“Have you heard anything about Aresh going to his family home?”
Orjef was surprised. Although they had promised to talk this morning, Seiichirou came in much earlier than he had expected—and he’d gone straight to the Knight’s Station instead of their meeting place. But when he heard Seiichirou’s question, Orjef calmed. He understood what this was about.
“No, that’s news to me…but what a surprise. Never thought I’d see you so flustered.”
Seiichirou blinked. It was only after Orjef pointed it out that he realized that he’d let his emotions get ahead of him.
“Sorry. I acted rashly,” he apologized with embarrassment.
This display was so unusual for him that Orjef let out a snort of laughter. Seiichirou looked away uncomfortably, which struck Orjef as even more out of character, but it was also a bit of a relief because it meant that Aresh’s feelings weren’t one-sided.
“Let me just check. You and Aresh are in a romantic relationship, right?”
Seiichirou seemed to have expected this question because he nodded without much fuss. “Yes.”
When Orjef thought about it, their relationship had been fishy from the start.
Even if Seiichirou had been summoned to this land by mistake, Aresh had no reason to be so dedicated to looking after him. It had been someone else’s job to keep an eye on Seiichirou in the first place, and yet Aresh insisted on minding Seiichirou himself. Not to mention that he even bought a house for the otherworlder to live in after he had told Orjef for years that he couldn’t be bothered to leave his family home. Even beyond that, he zealously backed the otherworlder’s policy suggestions and took on a monster-slaying job that nobody asked him to do. He’d changed for the better, and it was all because of Seiichirou.
Seiichirou also matched the traits Aresh had mentioned when he’d once asked Orjef for romantic advice: “Older,” “works at the palace,” and “passionate about their job.” Honestly, why hadn’t Orjef connected the dots sooner? This man was the only person in Aresh’s vicinity who fit the bill.
It came as a shock to Orjef, who had always thought he was savvy about relationships, but, well… Maybe it was because Seiichirou had always given off the impression that he was married to his job. This made Orjef wonder if perhaps Aresh’s feelings were one-sided, but between the lapel pin and Seiichirou’s current emotional display, that didn’t seem to be the case.
Happy for you, Aresh…
Orjef couldn’t help but get misty-eyed, but when he recalled the grueling marches Aresh had put them through between the purifying expeditions and the monster exterminations, he decided that his younger cousin deserved a bit of resentment. At the same time, he remembered that he hadn’t called for Seiichirou just so that he could make fun of Aresh.
Besides, the situation seemed to be changing.
“I didn’t hear about Aresh going back home, but I can more or less imagine why he did,” he said.
“You can?!” Seiichirou’s gaze zipped back to Orjef in surprise.
Orjef poked the other man’s chest. “It’s ’cause of that lapel pin from the dinner party. Anyone would’ve guessed what was up between you two. Not many people in this country have purple in their appearance.”
Who else got along well with the otherworlder and had the money to prepare a silver flower for him? That narrowed it down to just one person.
Not to mention that the party was a gathering of influential nobles. It was inevitable that word would reach Aresh’s family, the marquess house of Indolark.
“……Oh, I…see……”
In other words, Aresh’s family had summoned him because of his relationship with Seiichirou.
The whole business with the lapel pin had been Aresh’s decision. Although Seiichirou had his own problems with that, the idea that he was a burden to Aresh was…well, troubling, to say the least.
Wait, no! I was the one who wanted to take this slow! Aresh got ahead of himself!
This was about their relationship, after all. It was a problem that Aresh had not breathed a word to him about it going public beforehand. Why was he only hearing about it from other people after the fact? Although Aresh might have assumed that intra-nobility politics was outside Seiichirou’s domain, Seiichirou could have at least done his research and come up with ideas if he’d been given the heads-up.
“If you’re asking me about this, then I guess Aresh hasn’t told you?” Orjef said.
Seiichirou didn’t want to just nod to that, so he averted his gaze.
Orjef sighed. “Well, you guys were arguing, right? Geez, leave it to Aresh to make a mess of things…”
“What did you say?”
“Oh…whatever. Let me vent.” That reminded Seiichirou—Orjef had been wanting to talk to him before Aresh left the house. “It was the day after the dinner party. Aresh doesn’t normally give hands-on instructions to the knights, but this time he did, and…boy, was it rough.”
Although Aresh trained regularly, he hardly ever showed his subordinates what to do. When he offered his guidance, the knights who admired him jumped at the opportunity…only to be swiftly disillusioned. The training regimen was on another level entirely—far too strict for the average person.
To top it off, Aresh’s scowl afterward was thirty percent worse than usual. It was as if one could see a dark aura emanating from him. Time and again, Orjef felt the need to say something, but stopped himself before the words left his mouth. On an emotional level, he was drained well before lunch.
Aresh’s moping made it all too obvious that something had happened, and it wasn’t too difficult to figure out what might have been the cause.
“So what happened between you two?” Orjef asked bluntly. No doubt he felt the right to pry given that Seiichirou had caused him trouble, and he’d volunteered information of his own.
So Seiichirou answered frankly. “You see…”
A few minutes later, Orjef collapsed against his captain’s office table. Without the table’s support, Orjef would have been flat on the floor.
“So basically…he did all that without your consent…”
“Yes… That sums it up.”
That guy had lost his mind!
Experiencing love for the first time must have knocked a screw loose!
Aresh’s expressionless face from when they were children circled through Orjef’s mind.
“I’m so sorry about my cousin…” Orjef bowed his head.
Now it was Seiichirou’s turn to feel flustered. He hadn’t expected an apology.
“Er, no, he hasn’t really been any…trou…” He tried to finish the sentence, but then he realized it was too much of a lie.
“Ha… No need to push yourself…”
“No, I mean… Yes, he has caused trouble, but his feelings…are not a burden to me!”