Chapter 6

Lord Valenti looked around briefly before spotting Emily. The next moment, he approached her directly.

Emily flinched at the sight of him striding towards her at a frightening speed, but before she could retreat from the window, he arrived in front of her.

By the time he reached the first-floor window, Emily was somewhat intimidated. She hadn’t intended to call out to him so loudly, and honestly felt embarrassed. After calling Lord Valenti over, she hesitated to speak first due to shyness when he arrived. Seeing her hesitation, Lord Valenti spoke first.

“Miss Emily.”

“Ah, hello, Lord Valenti.”

“Yes, hello to you too, Miss Emily.”

His face and neck were wet as he approached. Emily was standing at the first-floor window, so there wasn’t much height difference between her and Lord Valenti standing outside the building. Emily faced him while standing at the window.

With water dripping from his face after just washing it without drying, he was the epitome of a ‘handsome man drenched in water.’ His moist red lips, black hair darkened by water, and training uniform clinging to his body.

As his clear gray eyes, as if submerged in water, looked at her and came closer, Emily felt her breath catch.

Seemingly bothered by water constantly dripping from his hair to his eyes, Lord Valenti roughly wiped his face with his palm and swept his bangs back. At that moment, Emily, coming to her senses, took out the handkerchief she had kept in her pocket and handed it to him.

“Here. This is the handkerchief you lent me before. Thank you so much for that time.”

“…It’s nothing, Miss Emily.”

Valenti looked at Emily with his characteristically expressionless face, then lowered his gaze to the handkerchief she was offering. Due to their close proximity, Valenti’s eyes were more visible in detail.

His light gray eyes, which had lowered to look at the handkerchief Emily was holding out, had a pale blue tinge spreading like mist, and long black eyelashes cast shadows over them.

Captivated by this sight, Emily found it impossible to look away.

It felt as if her soul was being drawn out. A part of her mind knew she should look away from him immediately, but she simply couldn’t muster the will to do so.

And the next moment, his eyelashes fluttered slightly, and the gray eyes that had been looking down at the handkerchief moved to look up at Emily.

Flinch

As their eyes met again, Emily’s bright green eyes wavered slightly.

At the same time, Emily unconsciously stepped back. Valenti, who had been staring intently at her, followed her movement and took a step forward, but stopped when his foot hit the windowsill.

Only then did he seem to register the window, turning his gaze. Before Emily could feel a strange sense of relief at him stopping, he grasped the waist-high window railing with his right hand and lightly vaulted over into the building.

“…Huh?”

Startled by the suddenly closed distance, a dark shadow fell over Emily. This was because Lord Valenti, who was much taller than her, was now looking down at her with his back to the window.

As the shadow enveloped her, Emily instinctively tried to step back again.

However, before she could move, he reached out with his large hand and grasped the handkerchief she had offered.

“Thank you, Miss Emily. You’re truly kind to return this, though you didn’t have to.”

As Lord Valenti grasped the handkerchief almost in its entirety, Emily’s fingertips were lightly caught in his hand.

This prevented Emily from stepping back. With things in this state as he expressed his gratitude, she could hardly collect her thoughts.

“Pardon? Ah, yes. No, no. I should be thanking you.”

Emily’s fingers were caught along with the handkerchief, and his hot body temperature transmitted through her fingertips.

The moment she recognized this heat, Emily, startled, quickly withdrew her hand as if burned. Stammering her thanks to him, she wrapped the hand that had held the handkerchief with her other hand and stepped back two or three paces.

“Miss Emily…”

“Ah, I should… I just called out to give you the handkerchief…”

Valenti’s gaze, still holding the handkerchief, followed Emily as she stepped back.

“Miss Emily, just a moment…”

“I, I really appreciate it, Lord Valenti.”

As Valenti called out to Emily again, approaching her, Emily hurriedly bowed and walked away hastily. She knew it was extremely impolite to cut off the conversation so abruptly and disappear before it was finished, but she couldn’t help it.

When his shadow fell over Emily’s head, she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. She wanted to escape from his suffocating shadow immediately. No, she wanted to run away from that terrifyingly beautiful appearance.

Emily walked away at an almost running pace, then glanced back. Lord Valenti was still standing with his back to the window. His face, which seemed to be looking at her, was obscured by the backlight, but bright sunlight was streaming through the window behind him.

Emily turned her head forward again and quickened her pace, and when she came to her senses, she was already running. Her face was flushed red.

“…”

Valenti, who had been silently standing and watching Emily walk away, remained in that spot for a long time. When she was no longer visible, he looked down at the handkerchief in his hand.

They were very white and slender fingers. He exerted effort to relax his fingertips, feeling as if they might break if he gripped even slightly harder. But the moment their fingertips touched had been truly fleeting.

Valenti, releasing the tight grip on the handkerchief, turned around and went back out through the window. Even though it was outside the window, being on the first floor meant there was only a difference of about two steps in height.

Thanks to this, her eye level had been similar to his just moments ago, allowing him to look more closely into those clear green eyes. Not the moist eyes he had seen in the infirmary, but eyes filled with dazzling sunlight. Once again, Valenti found himself unable to look away from her eyes.

Then, as she stepped back a couple of paces, the building’s shadow fell over her face. As that beautiful green eyes became obscured by the shadow, Valenti unconsciously climbed through the window to follow her.

As he approached her, drawn as if by magnetism, there was a light and warm scent like a spring breeze. The moment he inhaled that fragrance, a corner deep inside his chest began to tingle.

It was an unfamiliar emotion he had never experienced before.

In fact, last Friday was the first time Valenti had directly faced Miss Emily. Being naturally uninterested in his surroundings, he hadn’t paid close attention to anyone before.

Regarding Miss Emily, he had only thought of her as a young lady standing inconspicuously next to Miss Kira, whom Prince Lucas had been visiting daily lately.

Then, during training, at the request of a Magic Department teacher, he was searching for a lost student in the forest behind the Academy when he unexpectedly encountered her.

He was honestly a bit surprised to see Miss Emily perched atop a broken stone monument in her somewhat disheveled uniform. Small cotton-like creatures were swarming around her, as if she had been chased by Renchits.

‘Ah, yes… Hello, Lord Valenti.’

He seemed to have been just as flustered as Miss Emily, who looked down at him with a startled expression.

Meeting her round eyes with slightly drooping ends, long brown hair, fair skin, and bright green eyes like peridot, Valenti found it somehow difficult to look away from her.

It felt as if vivid colors had been painted onto a faint shadow.

Drip

A water droplet fell from his wet bangs to the corner of his eye, and Valenti unconsciously closed and opened his eyes. However, instead of using the handkerchief in his hand, he wiped the moisture away with his other hand.

“Hey, Eden. I was wondering why you weren’t coming back, so you were here?”

William Chaser, who had spotted him first as he was returning to the training ground, was walking towards him from a distance. It seemed he had come looking for Valenti when he hadn’t returned long after the training had ended and the break time had passed. Sweating from the heat, William raised his hand to Valenti as he approached.

“Class is about to start soon, what were you doing?”

William, who had been walking leisurely while chiding him, involuntarily whistled as the distance between them closed and he could see Valenti’s face clearly.

“Your looks are insane. A handsome man drenched in water, even my legs are shaking.”

“Nonsense.”

When William spoke to him dramatically with wide eyes, Valenti ignored him and walked past.

“Hey, Eden. Don’t you have a handkerchief? Can I borrow one?”

William followed him, searching for a handkerchief in his pocket, when he noticed Valenti holding one.

“Huh? Isn’t that a handkerchief in your hand? What’s this, you have a handkerchief but you’re not wiping your face?”

At this, Valenti silently put the handkerchief he was holding into his breast pocket. Looking incredulously at his sharp jawline still dripping with water, William had a sudden realization.

“You bastard, did you wet yourself on purpose? Fan service? Hey, stop it. Everyone will drop their swords when they see your face and cut their feet. There’s a limit to fan service. This is too much. Here, use mine at least.”

Seeing that Valenti seemed unlikely to wipe his face until the end, William finally found a handkerchief in his back pocket and offered it as if doing him a favor.

At this, Valenti, who had been walking briskly without even looking at him, suddenly stopped, snatched William’s handkerchief, and roughly wiped the moisture from his face and hair.

“Well, I’ll never understand you. Was it that precious to use your own?”

William remarked exasperatedly at this sight, and Valenti threw the used handkerchief back to him and resumed walking.

“Ah, shit! Hey, Eden! At least wash it before returning it! How dirty!”

The bright spring sunlight shone down, as if chasing after the two figures retreating towards the training ground.