Chapter 75: ~Chapter 25~ Part 2

“How’s the tea?”

“It’s good, thank you,” I answered before taking another sip from the cup in front of me. I savored the taste as I leaned back in my favorite comfy sofa in the living room, then I breathed out in satisfaction and glanced at the young woman in a French-maid outfit standing beside me. “By the way, what exactly are you doing here?”

“I'm looking after Lady Eleanor, naturally,” Melinda, the princess’ chambermaid, answered with a mild-mannered smile. “Meister von Fraenir decided it was improper for our lady to spend the night over without supervision.”

“I see,” I nodded before turning my attention towards the lady in question. “Speaking of which, what are you doing here?”

“I was here to look after you,” the princess answered with a slight pout, like I just asked something stupid.

“So was I,” Judy added while repeatedly blowing on the cup of tea she held in both hands.

“Which reminds me, just how did you even get into my house?” The moment I asked the question, I noticed that the princess immediately and pointedly averted her eyes. I gave her a scrutinizing look, which only made her act even more forcedly nonchalant. “… You know, if you are acting that innocent, it only makes you look even more suspicious.”

“H-Huh?” She turned back to me with an astounded expression. “Really?”

I nodded and told her, “Yes. So, do you have something you want to tell me?”

After a bit of fidgeting, she gave me a pitiful smile.

“Ehehe… Y-You see, I might have been a little spooked at the time, so when we couldn’t open the door I… I broke the lock a little.”

“You did what?” I raised my voice, and she immediately began waving her hands defensively.

“B-But we fixed it! I mean, Ammy fixed it! With magic! It’s as good as new! No, it’s even better!”

I kept frowning at her for a while, but in the end I let out an exhausted breath and took another sip from my cup instead.

“Fine. I’ll let that slide. I will also not ask how you can break a lock only a little, but I cannot ignore how you are still ignoring my original question. What are you doing inside my house, on a school day?”

There was a short silence, but probably only because Judy was finishing up her tea. After she did that, she placed her cup onto the table with a barely audible clank and she took out her familiar pink smartphone from her pocket. A moment later my phone on the table let out a jaunty little tune, so I picked it right up, then I opened up the messaging app and accepted the attachment.

“What’s this?”

“My report. It will explain why we are here.”

“Oh?” I quickly skimmed through the text file and nodded in approval. “You are diligent as ever.”

“Of course.” She nodded with the closest thing to a proud smile her face could produce and then added, “I want back pay.”

“Back pay?”

“For the last three days.”

“… Still in sandwiches?” She nodded, and I could only sigh at her eccentricities. “Fine, my treat as usual. As for this,” I paused and shook the phone in my hand while pointing at the screen. “Could you give me a moment?"

“Sure.”

“So, let’s see…" I subtly glanced around the room for a second, then I began scrolling through the file while holding the phone close to my chest. "According to your report, after we left the purple zone I collapsed. Angie applied healing magic to my wounds, but since I didn’t regain consciousness, you took me home.”

“Yes,” the princess confirmed.

“Why not the hospital?”

“It would've been hard to explain where you got your injuries,” Judy supplied the answer.

“Oh, and they were half-healed too!” the princess added in a hurry, desperate to contribute to the conversation. “It would've been impossible to explain those.”

“I see,” I spoke half-heartedly before I returned to the text. “So you took me home, where I was put to rest. I stayed unconscious until just this morning, and you two stayed over to watch over me.”

“Indeed!” the princess declared proudly, for some reason.

“Did I really need guarding?”

“Yes,” Judy stated emphatically. “Amelia said that the mages would suppress any information about what happened in the Restricted Space, but some people might still try to take advantage of the situation and try to kidnap you.”

“You already said that when you barged in on me in the bathroom.” When I mentioned that, the princess instantly flushed red to her ears, but I ignored her and continued, “But who would kidnap me? The Abyssals are gone, aren’t they?”

“Not all of them,” Judy stated, and it took me a moment to catch onto her meaning.

“Speaking of which, how’s Snowy?” The three women in the room sent meaningful glances at each other, immediately raising the warning flags in my head. “Is she all right?”

“We don’t know,” Judy answered dryly. “After she woke up she ran away and we couldn’t find her.”

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“Judy!” the princess hissed while glaring at my assistant, then whispered, “We agreed not to tell him yet!”

“I can hear you,” I interjected, but I got totally ignored as Judy shrugged her shoulders.

“The chief would find out in no time anyway. I told you.”

“But he is still injured! What if he tries to find her and gets into a stupidly dangerous situation again!” the blonde girl whispered in a still clearly audible voice.

“I said, I can hear you,” I told her again, this time a little more forcefully, but I was still ignored, so while they continued arguing I simply closed my eyes and slipped into Far Sight.

My extra-sensory ability, which I still didn’t completely grasp due to my lack of understanding in regards to magic in this world, quickly found purchase on the red dot in the distance. After a split-second, I could feel my vision blur, as if I was being dragged across space itself, through walls and everything, and after another split-second, I found my disembodied consciousness in a small room.

It was a tidy place, a fairly high-class hotel bedroom by the looks of it. The curtains were closed, but I could still make out the shape of a human body sleeping in a fetal position on the large bed. She had several layers of blankets piled on her, so only her head could be seen, but it was obviously Snowy. Her pure white hair was hard to mistake. Her sleep was somewhat shallow, as she tossed and turned around twice during the time I studied her. At first I thought I might've woken her, but then I remembered that I could only observe things like this. Speaking of which, spying on a sleeping girl longer than absolutely necessary was rude, so with a flick of my mind (don’t ask me how that worked, it just did) I was back in my body.

I opened my eyes and beheld the two girls in front of me, still glaring at each other. Well, okay, in Judy’s case it was more of a tiny frown, but considering it was on her normally deadpan face, I judged it had about the same severity as the princess’ scowl. I let out a long breath and reached out for the teacup on the table, which got refilled during my time out. I gave an appreciative nod to Melinda on the side, then I took a sip and cleared my throat.

“She's fine for the time being, so don't worry, I won't rush out the door and get into any ‘stupidly dangerous situations’ just yet.”

The princess twitched and gave me a skeptical look, ignoring the way I threw her words back at her, before muttering a similarly critical, “How do you know that?”

Before I could answer, Judy let out a satisfied huff and answered in my stead, “I told you he would figure it out in a moment.”

“But why is he so certain about—?”

I cleared my throat again, this time a bit harder.

“Excuse me. I'm still in the room. Stop talking about me in the third person.” To my sincere surprise, not only the princess, but Judy had fallen into a sheepish silence as well. I shook my head and continued with, “So you two have been keeping an eye on me because you thought she might try to kidnap me? Really?”

“Technically I was only keeping an eye on Eleanor,” my assistant raised an objection.

“Hey! What is that supposed to mean?!” the princess flared up again and pointed an accusatory finger at the other girl. “If anything, I was the one who had to stop you from u-undressing him all the time!”

“I was only wiping his sweat,” Judy retorted with the frown back on her face.

I let out a long sigh and gestured for the maid to get closer.

“Were they like this all the time while I was asleep?”

Melinda pondered for a moment before she showed me one of her businesslike smiles and whispered, “Milady and Miss Judy actually get along very well.” After a moment of pause, she leaned a little closer and added, “I believe they are only expressing their relief this way.”

“I see… I think.”

She gave me another smile that felt maybe just a little bit mischievous. I've never seen this side of her, though to be fair, I only met her a couple of times in the past. It was oddly refreshing. Anyways, I cleared my throat for the third time and waited for the two girls’ attention to return to me.

“So, back to the report and what happened while I was out cold. Where are the others?”

“Amelia was only lightly injured, so she's already back at the School,” Judy answered after sending one last pointed glance at the other girl. “The last time we talked, she said she was writing official reports about the incident.”

“I see. Now that you mention injuries, what is my cover story?”

The two of them blanked out on me for a moment, but then the princess quickly spoke before Judy could answer, apparently still desperate to be a part of the conversation.

“We said you had the flu!” After noticing how loud she was, she toned her voice back a little and repeated, “We told them we had the flu.”

“We?”

“You, me, Judy, Josh, and Angie,” the princess spoke while counting on her fingers in a surprisingly cute display.

“So I was out, you two were keeping watch, Snowy is in hiding and…” I paused for a moment as I scrolled through the text file before glancing up in surprise. "Angie is under house arrest?" The two nodded in unison. “By the mages?" They nodded again, and I let out a troubled breath. "Another thing to fix. Great. … What about Josh?"

“You should ask him,” my assistant stated, earning a raised brow from me. She turned her phone towards me and added, “I messaged everyone that you got better. He said he's coming over.”

I wanted to ask ‘when?’, but then I remembered I had a better way to learn these things as I swiftly entered into the first stage of Far Sight, the ‘radar mode’ in which I could sense the rough location of people I could observe. To my surprise, I found Josh’s ‘dot’ coming over at a very high speed, and when I got out of my trance, I could already recognize the sound of his moped.

I stood up without any further ado and walked up to the front door while in the crossfire of the confused gazes of the other people in the room. I stood there for several long seconds, but just as the princess was about to finally break the ice and ask me what I was doing, I casually opened the door. Unsurprisingly, as per the unwritten laws of convenient timing, Josh was already standing in front of it, one hand raised and balled into a fist in preparation to knock.

I was planning to make this one of those amusing ‘how did you know that’ situations, but my intent flew out the window when I actually saw him. Josh was, frankly speaking, haggard. His short brown hair had a serious case of bed-head and his clothes were strewn over him haphazardly as if he just put on whatever was at hand. As far as I knew, he did just that. He also had black circles under his eyes, and as our gazes met, he finally let his arm down as his entire body tensed up like a piano wire about to snap. He took a deep breath and, after relaxing his posture a little, he spoke to me in a hoarse voice.

“Leo, we need to talk.”

I couldn’t help but smile at his overly serious voice as I stood aside and gestured for him to enter.

“Yes, we do.”

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