“…!”
Reinhild jumped in surprise, but even so, he was still in Xion’s arms.
So that was why he picked me up! Reinhild was at a loss for words at Xion’s thoroughness.
“I-I… I…”
Beloved Reinhild.
Trying to fool someone without even shamelessly insisting it wasn’t so.
Xion pulled the struggling Reinhild tighter and peppered his cheeks and lips with kisses.
Even Reinhild, who had been flailing as wildly as his pounding heart, calmed down in the face of Xion’s composed demeanor.
“How did you know?”
“I can read everything you’re thinking.”
“Really? Do you know what I’m thinking right now too?”
“You’re thinking you love me.”
“…So it was a lie, after all.”
After a brief hesitation, Reinhild cautiously asked again,
“Since when did you know?”
“From the moment you said you wanted to go look at the snow with me.”
If it was then, that was when Xion had grabbed Reinhild and kissed him like a man who’d lost his reason.
Only then did Reinhild realize why Xion had acted that way, and his eyes went round.
He had noticed that the one who wanted to spend time with Xion wasn’t “Rein,” who had forgotten the past and didn’t know Xion’s identity, but Reinhild, who remembered everything and had walked into Xion’s arms of his own accord… and he couldn’t keep his composure.
Xion had wanted to play along as much as possible with Reinhild’s pretense of amnesia, but he couldn’t hold back.
Xion didn’t want the Rein hiding his identity, he wanted to make truly his own the Demon King Reinhild in his intact state.
“Was it Ainel’s doing?”
“Huh?”
Reinhild frowned as if he didn’t understand what Xion meant.
It wasn’t that he was trying to cover for Ainel, who had cooperated in deceiving Xion. He seemed not to know the name “Ainel” at all.
“Was it a sorcerer with dragon’s blood who helped you and brought you here?”
“Yeah.”
“Haa.”
Sensing the general situation, Xion hugged Reinhild tight and pressed his head to his shoulder.
After a moment’s hesitation, Reinhild patted Xion’s head as if to soothe him.
“Will you tell me what happened?”
“Well…”
So, what did happen?
Reinhild thought back to when he’d had a big fight with Xion and used magic to run away.
❖ ❖ ❖
After regaining all his past memories. Reinhild, having hurled harsh words at Xion and even forced magic to escape, collapsed right where he was the moment he teleported.
“Hahh, hff… ngh…”
The immense mana consumed by the teleportation spell battered Reinhild’s body mercilessly, as if it were a cracked vessel on the verge of shattering.
The price of wringing his heart to use magic without any preparation was steep.
Reinhild felt the pain of all the blood in his body flowing backward and spat blood.
“Khak!”
Dark red blood ran down Reinhild’s lips and soaked the ground.
It felt like his heart would explode.
“Ghh, h- Xio… ngh…”
It hurt so much he couldn’t even scream.
Even as he coughed blood and wept, Reinhild called for Xion.
I’m going to die.
Help me.
Xion. I want to see you.
Even as he crawled across the ground in pain, clawing at the bare earth with his fingernails, in his head he sought Xion.
He’d walked away from his side on his own, and yet how long had it even been since they separated that he was already crying out that he wanted to see Xion. He himself found it laughable.
He couldn’t stand the sight of Xion… and still, he wanted to see him.
“Come…”
Up to the very last moment, calling for Xion, Reinhild closed his eyes.
Was he going to die like this?
He’d finally survived, only for it to end like this?
It felt unfair. And he regretted it.
If only, at the very end, he could have seen Xion’s smiling face.
At that thought, the thing that had hazily veiled the memories of five hundred years ago lifted away completely.
Unlike just before, when only the feeling of having been deceived and betrayed by Xion came to mind, the scene from then resurfaced a little more vividly.
What surfaced in the last instant before he lost consciousness was Xion, lifting the hero’s sword toward him with a cold face.
In that face, at the moment he thrust the sword into Reinhild’s heart—for a very brief instant—there flashed an emotion more desolate than anything in the world.
The look in Xion’s eyes then seemed sadder than that of Reinhild, who met his death.
“Xion…”
You loved me too.
Thank goodness.
With that, Reinhild lost consciousness completely.
❖ ❖ ❖
Reinhild, who had lain as if dead for quite a while, opened his eyes half a day later.
He stretched like a man waking from a long sleep and sat up.
“Wahh, I thought I was going to die!”
No, that’s not it. Maybe he had died and come to the afterlife. Otherwise, how could he be this fine?
Reinhild felt over his body to check his condition.
Scratches here and there, torn clothes, clots of blood hardened together with dirt.
However he looked at it, it seemed certain he’d collapsed and then come to.
“What is going on?”
Reinhild’s condition was better than he could have imagined.
Not just “less painful than expected”, he actually felt better than before.
He stood and looked around.
A forest of unknown location.
He couldn’t tell how far this was from Root, whether there was a human settlement nearby… nothing.
Reinhild simply walked toward the sound of water.
“Brr, cold.”
Fortunately, there was a river nearby.
His body shivered, so he didn’t go in, but he judged that this would still help him sense the flow of mana and sat on the bank.
When he closed his eyes and focused, he could feel the gentle movement of mana.
With each breath he drew, mana seeped into his body through nose and mouth, coursed along the mana circuits through every part of him, and settled in his heart.
“That’s strange.”
In the midst of focusing on the circulation of his mana, Reinhild kept feeling puzzled.
His heart was in perfect condition.
Of course, compared to five hundred years ago, when he could have been called perfection itself, it was so shabby as not even to deserve the word “poor.” But given how it had been a tangled wreck, the fact that it had recovered enough to function didn’t make sense.
Reinhild repeated circulating his mana and cocking his head several times.
Then, all at once, he realized it.
His heart was being protected.
By a properly balanced mixture of demonic energy (magi) and holy power.
“Holy power… had that kind of effect?”
Only then did Reinhild understand.
That the reason Xion poured holy power into him was to save him.
If he hadn’t, then at the moment Reinhild drew up magi to cast the teleportation spell, the small amount of holy power pooled at the very bottom of his heart would have run rampant.
Because the holy power would have thrashed not to be overwhelmed by the magi, the spell would have tangled; before he even transferred properly, his body would have gone, pop.
As Reinhild recovered his mana and magi accumulated in his body accordingly, Xion injected an equal amount of holy power.
If one repeated that over centuries, eventually only pure mana, with neither magi nor holy power, would remain in Reinhild’s body.
Xion had intended to protect Reinhild by the safest method over a long span of time.
Realizing that, Reinhild’s chest tightened.
“Xion…”
He wanted to see Xion to the point of madness.
If only he could go back to yesterday and stop himself from leaving Xion, make himself stay.
But what use was regret now? Xion wasn’t by his side.
Will he… hate me?
What if, because I ran off on my own without even hearing him out properly, he’s come to dislike me?
What if I go to him and he, with a cold face, tells me to go back?
I resented him and told him not to come near me. I ignored him telling me not to go and forced my way out. Even Xion would lose all affection for me.
Even if not that, maybe he’s decided to give up on Reinhild and is moving on to seek a new future.
Just thinking that much made tears drip down.
Clink.
As Reinhild sat there shedding tears and raised a hand to wipe them, something rattled in his pocket.
He took out what was inside.
It was a magic stone he’d secretly taken just in case the day before.
So it’s thanks to this stone that the spell succeeded.
At last, the situation made precise sense.
Reinhild stared for a long time at the stone, whose color had gone cloudy and pale with not a speck of mana left.
He pictured Xion, every night, pouring his power into a magic stone and hanging it around Reinhild’s neck.
At that, he felt a faint holy power from his heart.
Holy power that, though equal in amount, was almost never perceptible because it was buried under the stronger aura of magi. It was Xion’s aura.
“It’s too early to give up yet.”
There’s no way Xion would have given up on me. Of course not.
He was probably still waiting for Reinhild to come back even now.
No, by now, perhaps he couldn’t wait and had gone looking first.
In that case, what if Reinhild returned to Root first and waited at the house?
When Xion, disappointed at not finding him, came home, if Reinhild opened the door and came out to greet him, he’d surely be happy.
He hadn’t yet fully understood everything that had happened five hundred years ago, but that could be solved by meeting Xion again, talking things through one by one, and clearing the misunderstandings.
For now, it was fine that he didn’t know anything.
There was one thing he was absolutely certain of: Xion liked him.
“All right, let’s go back to Root.”
Reinhild stood up and started forward.
And in less than a minute, he stopped.
“This is bad. Which way is Root?”
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