The Emergence of New Possibilities

I clenched my fists at the cringe-inducing nickname. Come to think of it, Abel was the one who had gone around the Magic Tower blabbing about me being a “fairy” or whatever. There was no way he would have stayed quiet at the Academy. At least when I encountered that nonsense at the Tower, I was still a child. Hearing it as a full-grown adult was ten times more embarrassing.

Lux cleared his throat, straightened his posture, and suddenly extended a hand for a handshake.

“Lux Blane. This shop is, ahem. It’s not exactly mine… well, I do own it, but this isn’t my only pursuit. I’m just managing it temporarily to help with the family business…”

His voice was now polite and gentle, a far cry from his earlier tone. Even a passing dog could tell Lux was hitting on me. Since this was a first for me, I hesitated, and Abel immediately stepped in between us.

“By the way, Hans.”

The name had already reverted to Hans.

“Uh… yes?”

“You remember that I’m bad with names, so why don’t you remember anything else?”

By this point, even Lux seemed to realize Abel was losing his temper and stopped staring at me blankly. Abel let out a loud, ringing laugh—“Ahaha!” Then, he cut the laughter short, leaving an unsettling silence, and whispered chillingly:

“Turn your eyes away. Before I gouge them out. And don’t act like we’re close; it’s annoying.”

Lux shut his mouth, unable to even utter a response. While I felt a pang of pity for how publicly he’d been humiliated, my primary thought was that we could finally leave this spot.

His piece said, Abel turned back to me with a smile. His face was so radiant it was hard to believe he was the same person who had just spat out such a terrifying threat.

Abel suggested that since his mood was ruined, we should find a proper restaurant this time, and took the lead again. Following him as he hummed a tune, I couldn’t stop a sigh from escaping. I got through it this time, but if I walked around with this face, things like this would happen constantly. I had joked with Erkel about Llewelyn’s reputation for seducing men with her pinky toe, but it was always just a joke. I never imagined I’d encounter this kind of “interest” in reality.

“…Maybe I should just cover my face.”

“What are you talking about, Llewelyn?”

Abel’s brows drooped into a pained expression as he pulled my head toward him. I obediently lowered my head. Soon, I felt his lips lightly touch the top of my hair. Utterly indifferent to the fact that we were in the middle of the street, Abel whispered softly.

“Don’t worry too much. The magic I’m preparing is almost finished.”

“Magic?”

“Yeah. It’s a spell where anyone who looks at your face for more than a certain amount of time will have their vision temporarily restricted. I’m modifying it so it activates automatically without you even having to think about it. I just need to get past the enchantment stage.”

That’s… a bit much. No, not a bit, a lot.

The concept sounded more like a curse than a spell. Seeing Abel smiling with such an innocent face as if he didn’t see the problem made my head throb. If I left him to his own devices, he might actually cast it on me without my knowledge. Given how “off” he’d been acting lately, I was certain of it.

“Isn’t that… illegal?”

“More spells than you’d think were illegal at first. They received certification from the Tower once their utility was proven. They even ruled that collecting evidence through tracking spells without the target’s consent is permissible, so something like this is nothing…”

His violet eyes, so similar to Llewelyn’s, shimmered. I swallowed the remark that there would be far too many victims if he went through with it. Regardless, I’d be meeting Cedric Klein soon; I wanted to believe that if I pressured him, he’d have a solution.

It seemed Abel held a massive grudge over the fact that his tracking magic had been broken the day I left.

Abel, who had sobbed until my shoulder was soaked on the day I returned, had ground his teeth, saying that if his tracking magic hadn’t been dismantled, he wouldn’t have just sat idly by until my return. A few days later, he had produced a brand-new tracking spell.

The way he smiled while explaining that it would persist even through teleportation circles was sweet, yet there was something undeniably sinister beneath it. It was during that conversation that I discovered he’d had a spell on me since I was a child—a minor “episode” in our history. Suddenly, the mystery of why Spellman had taken several short trips through teleportation circles immediately after getting off the train was solved.

Theoretically, teleportation using magic stones doesn’t completely erase the travel distance; it moves you between your current location and the destination at extreme speeds. That’s why magic stone gates are usually located on high ground, and if there’s a massive building in the way, relay stones are installed to bypass it.

Consequently, a method of movement that passes through many points in a short time is the natural enemy of tracking magic, which reads the target’s coordinates. If you move multiple times in a short window, the coordinates are input explosively, eventually causing a surcharge that breaks the connection.

Incidentally, I heard that the “legalization of tracking magic without consent” Abel mentioned was the result of the Edwill family throwing their weight around.

I grabbed the hand of the man who looked ready to cast a curse at any moment. The villainous shadow on his face vanished, replaced instantly by the cheerful expression of my third brother. If I had brought Leo or Cale, could they have stopped him effectively? I quickly abandoned that hope. They likely would have cheered him on.

While I was coaxing the increasingly volatile Abel to just go somewhere else, I looked up, feeling a strange gaze. Despite the crowd, my eyes locked onto him instantly. The owner of the gaze was wearing glasses, but the light reflected off the lenses, making his face hard to see.

Where have I seen him before?

He looked hauntingly familiar, yet nothing came to mind. As he turned away, the impression he left washed away like receding water. A lingering image of something long and fluttering flashed in my mind, but a moment later, I couldn’t even remember what that “something” was.

I’d had a bizarre experience like this before. When I saw the Crown Prince using ‘The Shadow’s Left Foot,’ his impression had become blurred. Come to think of it, it could have been that same artifact, but I ran into the practical problem: there was no way the Crown Prince was here. A confidant, perhaps? Someone he could trust. Someone like Kisar Tessa might even be able to borrow a myth-era relic. However, unlike ‘The Shadow’s Left Foot,’ which was a mask covering half the face, the man just now was wearing glasses.

“What’s wrong? Is there something over there?”

“No. It’s nothing. Let’s go.”

I even linked arms with Abel to prevent him from overthinking. Even if I looked back, the man had already vanished into the crowd. Left with no choice, I tried to burn the remaining image into my memory before I forgot. By the time we reached the next restaurant, I froze.

The long, fluttering thing behind the man… was white hair.

Elliot, who had turned back and left me earlier, finally showed his face the next morning. He had actually arrived yesterday but sipped his tea with a cheeky attitude, telling me he simply didn’t feel like visiting early. He also made sure to show up the moment I managed to cajole Abel into leaving—convincing him that even if he found it annoying, he should at least go greet the professors.

“Let’s go straight to the Academy. The visitor period started yesterday, so there should be quite a crowd today.”

“Well, sure…”

To top it off, he acted perfectly innocent even though he knew I was annoyed. Seeing me pout, Elliot finally furrowed his brows.

“Don’t act like that when you know how intense Abel’s obsession is. If I had stayed on that train with you, I would have had to spend the whole journey explaining when and whom I plan to get engaged to just to prove I have zero interest in you.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong. I bit my lip, unable to argue.

I had let most things slide because of the guilt I felt, but the time to start saying “no” was approaching. The water level was rising without end, lapping dangerously at the limit. Behaviors that should have been called obsession rather than protection were no longer at the level of “Our sweet, cute, lovely youngest sibling!” like they were in the past.

In the midst of that, a theory I had discarded long ago flickered back to life. What if… Erkel left a hidden ‘incest route’ open when she wrote this damn novel?

Just imagining the possibility made my heart race and my head spin, like reaching the peak of a roller coaster. Dealing with the four main leads was hard enough. I didn’t want to add the family members I thought I could trust to that list.

Elliot clicked his tongue at the sight of me.

“Just so you know, your brothers aren’t the only ones who are over the top.”

I had no comeback for that. I quickly changed the subject.

“But what’s this about an engagement? Is that already being discussed?”

“Talks are just beginning; nothing is set in stone. It’s the biggest transaction that can happen between families, after all.”

Engagements between nobles rarely break. Since most of the exchanges between the houses are finalized beforehand, barring a catastrophe, they usually lead straight to marriage. An extreme example was Orion Dylan, who had been engaged to Isabel Rosebel; he was stripped of his position as heir for breaking the engagement to marry a bourgeois man of the same s*x.

Still, this was the person he’d spend his life with. Elliot’s attitude toward the topic was beyond calm—it was indifferent. I wasn’t exactly expecting romance from him, but it felt a bit sad. He was only eighteen. Even if he’d been an adult for a year under imperial law, in modern terms, he was just a college student. There was no need to drive himself into such a bleak corner so soon.

Since my own love life was a wreck, I gave Elliot a nudge, driven by the useless meddling of wanting those around me to do better.

“Still, it’s better if it’s someone you actually like.”

When I told him not to just weigh the benefits, Elliot looked at me for a moment and curled the corner of his lip.

“I’ll take that to heart.”

Though his face didn’t look like he was taking it to heart at all.