Pen and Paper Translations

Reinhild didn’t bother to wrap up the conversation and ran straight toward the house where Rebecca had lived.

“Oh my, leaving without even a hello.”

“That’s not where Xion is!”

Amid the village center, which had been thrown into chaos, the human Rebecca’s house alone was intact.

No, more than that, it was clean as if it alone hadn’t been rained on.

‘There’s a seal cast over the whole house.’

As he drew near the house, a feeling so unpleasant it raised goosebumps came over him.

He felt the power of the Chief God.

For Reinhild, a Demon King, the fact that that revolting aura was evenly spread through a large house was torment.

He had thought the reason he hadn’t noticed the seal on this house all this time was simply because he hadn’t gone outside.

Since this house was quite far from where Xion’s house was, it wouldn’t have been strange if the weakened Reinhild hadn’t sensed anything amiss.

But that wasn’t it.

This house had a “perception interference” seal on it.

A seal that made it impossible to recognize the house unless one harbored suspicion about what it truly was. It wasn’t the crude kind that made the house invisible or made one forget it existed.

The villagers would have remembered that this house stood here, and that another human had lived here and it had passed to Xion.

Every time they passed by, they would have clearly seen the shape of the house.

But they would not take any problem tied to this house seriously.

For example, why this place alone wasn’t wet when every other building was drenched.

‘If I had just walked past, I wouldn’t have realized there was a seal.’

He wouldn’t have thought to come closer or to try the door.

Because the fact that this place was suspicious wouldn’t have caught his eye.

Who had cast this seal?

‘The hero doesn’t have that much power.’

Then that mad human of the lake?

Had he used the power with which he erased the lake to set a seal this formidable?

To have such a terrifying human for an enemy, he was starting to worry.

He was more worried that spiriting Xion away would prove harder than fighting the hero.

‘Now is the only chance.’

He had to finish everything before the hero’s party caught on to Reinhild’s movements. He just needed to find the hero’s secret hidden inside and persuade Xion to leave Rute.

If they hid as far away as possible and moved their location periodically, they could make it work somehow.

Xion would surely go with him.

Because they had promised.

“If I touch this carelessly, I’ll die.”

Like a moth to a flame, Reinhild—who had always rushed headlong into danger—finally began to make what might be called a rational judgment.

If he laid hands on this recklessly, it wouldn’t end with merely collapsing.

Reinhild picked up a long branch swept in by the rainwater and prodded the door.

No one knew better than he that doing so wouldn’t open it, but knowing the truth was inside and having to turn away was galling.

‘It’s not that there’s absolutely no way.’

No matter how strong the seal, there was a way to pierce it. Reinhild knew that method precisely.

He’d simply lost the ability to apply the theory in practice.

‘Would it be possible with the help of mana stones?’

At the very least, it was better than nothing. But it wasn’t something he could do right now.

It required far more time, and he had to move in secret so as not to be noticed by other humans.

If he were interrupted midway, the hero’s party would catch him.

Then there would never be another chance.

If the hero’s party learned that Reinhild had realized Xion’s true nature, an all-out war would begin.

The result was obvious.

‘It might be better to leave Xion and flee far away.’

At least he could preserve his life.

He’d never be able to see Xion again, but he could hide alone and survive.

Now when the hero’s party was underestimating Reinhild. 

Now when Xion had left to mind village matters. This was the perfect time to run.

But Reinhild couldn’t do that.

Because he had promised Xion.

That they would stay together.

“Alright, I can do this.”

To heck with it. He just had to avoid making mistakes.

He just needed to succeed no matter what, spirit Xion away, and escape together from the hero’s clutches.

It wasn’t a hard thing.

He could do it. He would do it.

Without fail.

❖ ❖ ❖

When is it that one avoids human eyes? At night, when the sun has set and darkness has come, and everyone is asleep.

Root Village had not a single magic device to cast light on the streets, so when night came it was especially dark.

Moving stealthily in the dark made it easy to avoid attention.

‘The problem is slipping out without Xion noticing.’

Xion never fell asleep before Reinhild.

Come to think of it, he had never seen Xion asleep. Even when he thought Xion was asleep, most of the time it turned out he had only been pretending.

As the hero’s companion, had he been trying not to sleep before the Demon King?

That didn’t matter.

‘Is there a way to make Xion fall asleep first or leave his post?’

He thought and thought, but there was no such method.

The only times Reinhild had been able to act on his own so far were when the village humans took Xion outside.

But on a day like today, when the village humans, exhausted from the restoration work, had sunk into a deep sleep, who would take Xion away for Reinhild’s sake?

He couldn’t sit around waiting for such luck to stack up.

This time, Reinhild had to find a way on his own.

As always, he made a plan that was perfect only by Demon King standards.

First, Reinhild delayed his bedtime as much as possible, waiting for the other humans to fall asleep.

“It’s time to sleep now.”

“I want to stay like this just a little longer.”

According to the accumulated statistics of Xion’s behavioral patterns during the time they had spent together, if he said something like this and wrapped his arms around Xion’s waist, Xion would, with high probability, indulge Reinhild’s clinginess.

“You’ll be very tired tomorrow.”

“It’s fine. We’ll be tired together.”

Got him!

Xion soothed Reinhild with words full of concern, but he didn’t try to force him to sleep.

“Will it rain again tomorrow?”

“For the time being, you needn’t worry. Even if a downpour comes again tomorrow, we should make preparations in advance so the house won’t collapse.”

“Mm. Are all the repairs finished?”

To keep the conversation going with Xion, Reinhild squeezed out question after question he didn’t mean.

He held himself back from asking over and over whether Xion was really in league with the hero.

He was curious how Xion would react if he asked that, but he wasn’t foolish enough to ruin his plan with his own hands.

“We really must sleep now. It’s late, Rein.”

With gentle but firm words, Xion reached out his hand. He clearly meant to put him to sleep.

Reinhild subtly drew his body back.

“I’ll just drink some water and then sleep.”

Before Xion could offer to bring water, he sprang up and dashed out of the room. Then he grabbed the strawberry jam sitting on the table.

The very same strawberry jam he had used when drawing the magic circle. It wasn’t its intended use, but it was, honestly, a very handy jam.

Reinhild poured the strawberry jam straight onto his clothes.

“Ah!”

“What happened!”

Awkward as the exclamation was, Xion reacted at once and rushed out.

“I got hungry and was going to eat some bread, and I spilled it.”

The strawberry jam was running down from Reinhild’s collarbone over his chest.

If someone had asked how on earth one had to eat strawberry jam to end up like this, he would have had no answer. Luckily, Xion said nothing.

More precisely, he couldn’t say anything.

Because before Xion could do anything, Reinhild had already stripped off his top.

The sticky strawberry jam that had seeped inside his clothes ran down Reinhild’s white skin.

“I’ll go wash up!”

Before Xion could tell him to wash, Reinhild neatly preempted him.

Was that too hasty?

Worried that Xion might have sensed something suspicious, Reinhild stole a glance at him.

Even if the tips of his ears were a little red, Xion was the same as always.

“I’ll… take care of things here.”

Whether Xion was wrestling with his reason or not upon seeing Reinhild drenched in strawberry jam, Reinhild bolted into the bathroom in a hurry.

While Xion was away from his post, he had already stashed a change of clothes in the bathroom.

He was no longer the sloppy Demon King who ran away without taking a single coin.

He had learned, with his whole body during the last village escape, the lesson that when making a plan, one must be thorough in the unexpected parts.

Reinhild wiped off the strawberry jam roughly with a towel and threw on his clothes.

Then, through the small bathroom window, he slipped out of the house.

Fortunately, for a Demon King, Reinhild’s build was on the small side.

Otherwise, he might have gotten stuck in the window and had to call Xion to come save him.

Having escaped safely, Reinhild pulled a sack of mana stones out of the storeroom and, dragging the whole thing, headed for Rebecca’s house.

❖ ❖ ❖

Even the plan that Reinhild believed was perfect was, if you picked it apart piece by piece, full of holes.

The biggest hole among them was that he had failed to think ahead to the fact that if no sound of water came from the bathroom, it would be strange.

After waiting for quite a while, Xion finally opened the bathroom door to look for Reinhild, who didn’t answer when called.

Of course, the inside was empty.

What’s more, the bathroom window stood wide open.

Seeing the telltale signs that anyone could read—that someone had escaped outside through the bathroom window—Xion was at a loss for words.

When he went outside, he found what appeared to be Reinhild’s footprints stamped into the wet ground beneath the bathroom window.

After confirming that the storeroom door stood open and that the sack of mana stones had vanished, he understood the situation in an instant.

“…Rein.”

Sensing something, Xion spun around in a rush.

And he ran, following exactly the trail along which Reinhild had dragged the sack.