Chapter Three Hundred and Seventeen: Market Date After a Year
“…So, did your secret conversation bear any fruit, Karen?”
“Somewhere between bearing fruit and not.”
Julius had slipped into the carriage without making a sound, and Karen answered him without missing a beat.
Karen had asked Julius not to follow her. She had wanted to have a conversation that might not have happened if Julius were present. In truth, even with just Karen alone, drawing the information out might have been difficult. However, she had told him she wouldn’t mind if he followed as long as he erased his presence completely and remained undetectable even to her.
Karen channeled magical power into the carriage’s counter-surveillance magical tool and spoke:
“Were you listening the whole time, Julius?”
“Yes. Your new little promoter has a technique similar to yours.”
“Similar to mine?”
Karen blinked, having expected the conversation to turn to the people without magical power—and Julius nodded with a thoughtful expression.
“The technique of erasing one’s presence by suppressing one’s magical power… whether it’s because having so little magical power makes it easier to hold back or simply to exhaust entirely, even I would have had difficulty detecting her presence without paying close attention.”
“Wow. Sounds like Teresa could become a good adventurer.”
It seemed that part of why Karen hadn’t sensed Teresa’s approach was that Teresa herself was skilled at concealing her presence. Adventurers had all kinds of work available to them. Fighting monsters and clearing dungeons was the mainstream—the goal most adventurers aimed for—but anything dungeon-related fell under an adventurer’s work.
If she had the skill to hide from monsters without being detected, she could certainly make a living as an adventurer.
The moment Karen felt a wave of relief wash over her, her stomach let out a low rumble.
“Feeling relieved made me hungry, somehow. Since we’re out anyway, want to grab something to eat at the New Year’s Festival market before we head back? Your treat, Julius.”
Teresa had emptied Karen’s purse completely. Karen pressed close to Julius as she said it, and Julius gave a quiet laugh.
“I’d be delighted to provide for you, Karen.”
“Ehehe, a market date after a whole year.”
When the carriage let them out at a good spot in the market, Karen immediately reached over and laced her fingers through Julius’s in a lover’s hold. Julius’s golden eyes went wide for just a moment in surprise, then he gave a small cough.
“I hope this isn’t presumptuous to ask, but—are you rather experienced with this sort of thing?”
“With Lyos? We never even held hands, let alone went out together. Oh, I mean, there were times when I helped him up when he collapsed or supported him when he fell over as a little kid—“
“What about further back than that, Karen?”
“Uh-oh…”
Before she’d even registered it, Julius was looking down at her with a bright, luminous smile—the still, serene smile of an angel deliberating over what verdict to deliver.
The topic of her past life, which had never been brought up between them, had been raised so easily, and Karen hesitated for a moment before conceding.
From the very beginning, this had been the heart of the secret. Her memories of a previous life, of another world, had never been the real issue. There was nothing about it that violated this world’s religious beliefs.
—The issue was that, depending on Julius’s particular standards of purity, everything might come to an end right here.
“Well, yes… yes. But—!”
“But what?”
“When we went on a date last year, my hands were so sweaty!”
“…Hm? Sweaty hands?”
“I was so nervous—my mouth went dry, my heart was pounding, I could barely breathe. Like a girl going on a date for the very first time in her life. And actually, for me, who was standing there right then—it was a first date.”
She hadn’t been like that on the first date with the last person she had dated in her previous life. There had been excitement and enjoyment, but also the familiarity of knowing, "This is what dating is like.”
And yet, it had been as though all of that experience had been wiped clean—
“In other words, the you of before and the you of now are different people?”
“Exactly!”
“—Come to think of it, your hand may indeed have been a little damp when we held hands last year. Ah—”
Karen went red and kicked Julius in the shin. Julius accepted it without flinching, but it was like kicking solid steel. Karen let out a groan.
“Ow—!”
“My mistake. I should have dodged after all.”
“No—even if it hurts, when I want to kick, I want to kick, so don’t dodge!”
Julius looked at her teary-eyed face and burst out laughing.
“Come to think of it, you’re right. The you who was nervous on our date last year was absolutely adorable!”
“Don’t say that so loudly—!”
They were squarely in the middle of the market, and the people around them were very obviously pricking up their ears.
“I am saying you were adorable, so what is wrong with that? And what did you think of me last year?”
“…I thought you were so impossibly handsome that there was no way someone like me could ever match up.”
“Hm?”
Julius’s brow furrowed ever so slightly. It hadn’t been the answer he was hoping for.
“But I didn’t want to give up… I felt like you were looking at me—at me, more than anything else. Like maybe I had a chance after all. Like maybe I didn’t have to give up.”
Julius, who had prepared those earrings—those gemstones in the color of his eyes. More than Ehlertt, more than her abilities, more than her usefulness or convenience—she had felt as though he might be seeing Karen herself. As if he already was…
“So… I fell for you.”
Julius’s eyes went wide, and he started to say something. But before he could, Karen’s face went scarlet, and she shouted, "Julius, I want to eat that skewered meat from that stall over there!"—and yanked him by the hand.
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