HPV 10

It was a quiet but flawless room. Even though this was the royal palace, it was remarkably still. Fitting for a place where secret envoys stayed in secret.

All three members of the hero’s party were gathered here, along with one extra piece of baggage—me.

“Hi.”

As soon as he saw me, Paronai greeted me with a strangely flushed face. I raised one eyebrow in response, but didn’t answer.

Banwes had not come of his own will. I’d practically dragged him here. He was wearing a plain black mask—I’d secretly thrown the monster hide into the trash, and Banwes had wanted to skin my face and use it instead—and stood nearest to the door.

‘In the game, Yurichen used a sacred object to cast a binding spell that kept him from going too far. So Banwes had no choice but to follow.’

Compared to that, just provoking him a little and having him follow me out of irritation was maybe the better alternative.

Paronai also spoke to Banwes. “We meet again, friend.” But Banwes acted like Paronai didn’t even exist. Just a while ago, they’d shared knowing glances as if I were their common enemy.

Eventually, Paronai awkwardly sat down in the center. Despite being the leader, he still had a long way to go.

‘It’s a pitiful sight now, but the game’s story has changes in store later.’

Just then, Yurichen entered and shut the door himself. He didn’t sit at the table but walked a few steps in and stood.

Banwes, by the door, was completely ignored—as if he didn’t exist. But the fact that Yurichen had turned his back to him was already a huge step forward.

Paronai and I fell silent without needing to be told. A nineteen-year-old swordsman and a twenty-year-old burden. Neither of us had the presence to interrupt Yurichen’s speech. Banwes hadn’t said a word to begin with.

“In an hour, we’ll be going to the place where the mage is. Circumstances require us to move. It’s a prison.”

Paronai tensed up immediately. He asked, clearly worried, what kind of person the mage was.

“No. He’s not dangerous. Not antisocial, hasn’t harmed anyone, not hostile toward humans.”

As he said this, Yurichen looked straight at Banwes. The gaze was clearly intentional.

“But in a way, he may be the most dangerous to you.”

Then he turned to me. Maybe it was the mage’s very existence that exhausted Yurichen—his sigh made him look exactly his age.

“He’s the capital’s number one connoisseur of beauty.”

Ah. So this is how it unfolds. I calmly made the most reasonable objection I could in this situation.

“But I’m a man?”

“If the mage cared about gender, I would’ve called him a womanizer.”

In short, if you’re pretty, he doesn’t care whether you’re male or female.

Truthfully, I already knew. At least that much about the mage. It wasn’t until Yurichen said it out loud that the reality of my involvement finally hit me.

Still, it was better than Prince Dodio, who outright mistook me for a woman.

“Huh?”

Paronai’s puzzled exclamation broke the silence.

He mouthed silently for a bit while staring at me, then suddenly blushed and looked away.

That was it. No chance for forgiveness. I glared at him like I’d just been sucker punched and barked,

“Don’t tell me—you too? Can’t even tell if I’m a guy or a girl? Where are your eyes even looking?”

“Haha, I guess I’m not the only idiot… I mean, I just haven’t really seen many women in my life.”

“You think that’s a valid excuse?”

The game’s main character mistaking me for a woman! I was hit by a sudden, powerful urge to take off my clothes and confirm the state of my lower half right then and there.

Yurichen shot a chilly glare at us from behind his veil. We shut our mouths without needing to be told. The topic returned to the mage.

“He’s not technically imprisoned. It’s more of a scare tactic—trying to break his spirit before delivering the oracle.”

“What? You think it’s okay to lock someone up in a dark underground cell like that?”

Justice-loving Paronai raised an objection. A brief wave of complicated emotions swept over me—but it didn’t last long.

“Anyway, that mage has racked up plenty of minor offenses. Getting caught trying to dig up someone else’s grave, being arrested for stalking after following a woman, tossing a fog spell bomb into the street, and so on.”

Yurichen lifted his chin arrogantly and rattled them off. Paronai, unfamiliar with anything illegal, began to breathe fast as if he’d just heard tales of the Demon King or a devil. Banwes went without saying, and as for me—none of it stirred any emotion. It was all just part of his backstory.

In short, the mage had been put in prison, but he wasn’t exactly a criminal. So, no magical restraints or suppressors had been installed to block his spells.

“So I more or less expected this…”

By the time we arrived at the prison, Yurichen picked up the conversation as if it had never paused.

“I figured he’d have escaped by now.”

—

The mage had untied the ropes and vanished. The lock hadn’t even been opened—just the person had disappeared. A couple of tired-looking guards were pacing around the cell in confusion.

“He liked graves, right…? The royal cemetery?”

Paronai guessed where the mage might have gone. A reasonable deduction, but it wasn’t like the man had nine lives—he wouldn’t actually go to the tombs of royalty, surely. Hearing something like this made it clear Paronai wasn’t just an ordinary guy, either.

“We can find him easily.”

Yurichen spoke with surprising confidence.

I was a little thrown by the unfamiliar development. The mage’s escape was only briefly mentioned in the game, but Yurichen never had that kind of line.

And the reason for this slight change in the story was… of course, me.

“Riarun. Go aboveground and walk around town.”

And so I became the worm on the hook, and the fish to catch was the kingdom’s youngest 6th-circle archmage.

Worried I might run into Prince Dodio again, I chose the opposite side of the city for the baiting. I wandered the streets aimlessly. I spent twenty minutes mesmerized by the fountain. I squatted by the roadside to admire the wildflowers.

And before I knew it, someone was beside me—silent, but present. An artificial, oddly foreign scent wafted in.

“A flower, admiring a flower.”

I turned my head and saw a mage crouching beside me with a grin.

His face was eerie in how unremarkable it was. A stranger might say he had a plain, average face—not handsome, not ugly.

But I knew the game. I knew what lay behind that face.

“I actually prefer pretty men.”

It was a creepy line, but oddly enough, it didn’t make a bad impression. At the very least, he knew I was a man right away.

“If it’s between guys, this much touching’s fine, right? Even sniffing. Maybe a little taxidermy, or making a mold?”

No need to be tense. I knew that about 70% of what he said was just talk. The other 30%… who knows.

He gently stroked my hand. I was uncomfortable, so I slapped it away—but his touch had been soft, and honestly, it hadn’t felt that bad.

At that moment, a chilling shadow fell over us. Someone holding a fishing rod was standing there.

“I could never forget that heart-freezing face. I missed you, Yuri.”

The mage, Penzey, looked up without a trace of surprise and said it with ease. Yurichen could’ve ripped into him for just those two sentences, but chose to ignore him.

The baiting mission was a success. We returned to the meeting room from earlier. Yurichen wore a veil, but as the bait, I still had my face exposed. Penzey trailed me like a predator chasing a dangling piece of meat.

“Where’s your veil?”

Right then, a voice like stone scraping against stone rumbled from behind.

I turned to see Banwes. After a brief pause, he added,

“…Your face bothers me.”

Without a word, I pulled out a hat with an attached veil from my coat and put it on. It was a bit crumpled, so I flattened the veil with my hands. I shrugged in Banwes’s direction, as if to say, “Happy now?”

There was no special reason why I obeyed his commanding tone. It was just that… those were the first words Banwes had spoken all day.