Chapter 500

“What…”

Elias froze, still holding out the bouquet. I had expected some playful remark along the lines of How could you say that?! but Elias was genuinely baffled. He’d prepared all this for Leo, expecting him to be happy, only for Leo to ask if he was being kicked out instead. Of course Elias found that ridiculous.

Realizing what was going on a moment too late, I narrowed my eyes and gave Leo a look. He was quick to catch on, and he immediately understood what I meant. Trying to keep his eyes from darting around, Leo forced a smile.

“Thank you. Really… I mean it.”

Leo took the bouquet, apparently unsure what he was supposed to do with it, and pointlessly sniffed the flowers. His eyes kept wandering in every direction, making his confusion painfully obvious. More than anything, he wasn’t someone with such a limited vocabulary, so the fact that this was the response he managed to come up with showed just how flustered he was.

Elias gripped the doorframe tightly with both hands and asked, “Hey. Aren’t you excited?”

“What? I am.”

Leo frowned at Elias, who was staring at him wide-eyed as if threatening him, and reluctantly answered while leaning his head back. He looked down at the mat of flower heads covering the floor, most of which was hidden behind Elias’s upper body. Even in that brief moment, he was already wondering how he was supposed to get past it. Elias was also still standing where he had been, leaning his body sideways and bracing one arm against the doorframe. Thankfully, Leo didn’t pull out his wand like I had. Maybe he simply hadn’t had time.

The next moment, Elias grabbed Leo by the collar.

“You don’t look excited at all! Uaaagh!”

Elias yanked him forward with sheer strength, throwing Leo off balance. Leo grabbed the doorframe, but only for a moment. Elias pulled hard again and slammed him onto the floor.

Compared to Elias, Leo was at a level where I had absolutely nothing to worry about when it came to fighting skills, at least. So instead, I found myself worrying about whether the crushed flowers underneath him would stain his clothes. There was nothing we could do about the vibrations carrying to the other floors, but I should probably put up a soundproofing spell too.

Leo hadn’t had his personal space invaded by Elias outside of a training hall very often, so whether he was flustered again or simply had no intention of fighting back, he just tried to get back to his feet.

“No, I was just surprised! You’re not the kind of person who does things like this!”

I had to agree with him. Elias wasn’t the kind of person who did this sort of thing. What had gotten into him that he would throw a welcome party for a friend he had literally just seen? And what was he planning to do with those stems? Of course, I could already guess the answer to both.

“Oh, I’m not? Now I’m curious. What did you think it was?”

Elias asked with his eyes exaggeratedly narrowed and his eyebrows raised as high as they could go. Normally, Leo would never bother responding to Elias’s pointless little remarks, but perhaps he could tell that things were different this time. There was a faint tension beneath his usual composure. After looking a little awkward for a moment, Leo met Elias’s eyes directly.

“So… right now, you’re not my Elias. You’re our Elias.”

I nearly laughed when a few lines from the past flashed through my mind.

‘My Elias’ and ‘our Elias’ might sound like awkward ways of putting it, but they were expressions they had come up with when they were children, so there was no helping that. They had gradually shortened the terms while Leo was trying to explain how Elias behaved so differently when he was with Leo compared to when he was around other people. When Leo said ‘our Elias,’ he literally meant every version of Elias other than ‘the Elias who is with me.’ And ‘our’ could mean anything—our community, our country, our classmates, whatever.

Elias was acting playfully now, the way he did when the four of us were fooling around together, or when he was playing around with our classmates. That was probably why Leo had put it that way. The Elias Leo knew could be loud and mischievous enough to wear a person out, but most of the time, he was simply quiet, staring off into space. During those moments, Elias was often lost in thought.

In a way, Leo’s ‘my Elias’ was the closest of all the different Eliases to my own ‘my Elias,’ though on average, he was a little calmer. They were mostly the same, except Elias was more likely to eat my hand than Leo’s. That was the slight difference I had sensed all along. Judging by what Leo was saying now, he seemed to see it the same way I did.

Apparently uninterested in tearing Leo’s head off, Elias shoved his hands into his pockets and stood up, speaking indifferently.

“Every Elias in front of you is ‘my Elias.’ You should be proud, buddy.”

“What are you talking about? There are plenty of times when you’re not. And you didn’t used to do this sort of thing for me, either. What even is all this, anyway? Whenever you gave me flowers before, it was always one or two rare flowers you’d brought back from some cliff somewhere. Never anything like this. What are all these garden flowers?”

Because Leo had planted the flowers in soil instead of killing them, they had all multiplied in the gardens of Bavaria. Elias had brought them back partly so Leo could propagate them further. Elias generally only brought back plants that seemed scarce, based entirely on his own judgment. Naturally, since it was only his personal judgment, some of the plants he had brought back in the past had been fairly common. By now, though, Elias had gained enough experience to distinguish wildflowers, so he usually brought back species that seemed to need preserving.

Elias pointed at the sofa and dropped down onto it himself.

“I bought them because they hold Old Human parties here all the time. Flowers and booze—what else do you need for a party?”

“They don’t sell things like this. You actually bought them? Are you sure? You didn’t threaten one of the employees or something, did you?”

“I’m offended you’d think so little of me.”

“What else am I supposed to think? I know you took someone else’s clothes. You could’ve just used cognitive distortion magic to fix the way you looked.”

Leo said it with a sharp glint in his eyes. Elias answered nonchalantly, looking as though he couldn’t see what the problem was.

“Everyone was practically dying of exhaustion, so why use magic again? It’s not like magic grows out of the ground. We only use it when we have no choice, when things get dangerous. Besides, I had no authority to order those people around. You know perfectly well that, given their positions, they could’ve easily refused anything I said. I’m not even a member of the Bavarian Royal Family.”

“Right. And you didn’t pressure them into swapping your clothes either? Even if they could’ve refused, how could they have done that after knowing you since you were a child? Especially when you even used my name.”

“I have a lot to say about that, too. But then why did you insist on booking a hotel under the embassy’s name? Couldn’t you have had us stay somewhere reasonably run-down, so you could come in later without drawing attention? A place like this checks everyone who comes in, but some crumbling old place wouldn’t bother with that. Your Royal Highness, I’ve already apologized to them, and I’ll apologize again tomorrow, so don’t worry. But next time, please consider how your companions look before giving us instructions.”

I exchanged a glance with Narke. They were arguing, but I wasn’t worried in the slightest. It was obvious that before long, they’d both start saying ridiculous things again as if none of this had ever happened.

Leo looked at Elias with an unsteady gaze before slightly furrowing his brow and lowering his eyes.

“I stand out too much. Just as you thought the employees would remember how disheveled you looked, I didn’t want to walk into a building looking like someone who could be immediately identified. If I entered some run-down lodging, people would wonder why someone from a social class that belonged somewhere much better had come there, regardless of what I wanted. I thought it would be better to create an itinerary than attract suspicion and have the secret police follow me. Using a fake identity means most people wouldn’t know who you were. And even now, plenty of people come and go from this famous hotel.”

At that, Elias seemed ready to concede, but then his eyes widened. A teasing smile spread across his face as he cautiously said, “What about you is identifiable? Your face right now…”

Leo had initially widened his eyes and tried to listen seriously, but the moment he realized Elias was starting to tease him, he snapped.

“It’s because of my height! And where exactly am I supposed to find some old clothes right now?!”

“No! I mean, no, that’s not it—it is! Your face too. Looking like that and walking around in formal royal attire, what country do you think you could possibly be from? Ah~ I should tell His Highness. The whole of Europe is buzzing about the Wittelsbachs right now. You should be more! Much more proud of—”

Leo smacked Elias across the mouth, his face clearly irritated, and Elias quickly ran out of steam and turned his head away.

“Guys. Someone get him away from me.”

“Haha~”

Narke did nothing but laugh again. Looking like he hadn’t expected any help anyway, Leo pressed his fingertips against the corners of his eyes. Then he picked up the vase containing the bouquet and bundle of stems Elias had given him.

“So, why did you give me this bouquet, why is the room like this, and why did you give me these stems?”

“Don’t worry about the stems. They have nothing to do with this.”

Then why are they in my hands? Leo looked down at the bundle with an expression that made his thoughts obvious. His brow furrowed, as though he had already guessed what they were for, but Elias didn’t give him a chance to say anything.

“It’s nothing. No, actually, it is something.”

“What is it?”

“Actually, Luka and I had a pretty long talk today. I can’t tell you what we talked about just yet, but anyway, we marveled at the mystery that brought people like us, who can connect so deeply with each other, together. Your name came up while we were talking about it, and so… I couldn’t help but think about how incredibly lucky I was to somehow end up with friends I get along with this well. I’ve never been more grateful to you and Luka.”

Leo nodded. Elias thought for a moment, then began idly playing with a blade of grass that had fallen onto the sofa.

“I still can’t forget the day you accepted me. Do you? I can still feel the wind that rose and twisted that day against my face. Even now, just thinking about the taste of that unripe green orange makes my nose sting and my mouth water. And of course, your soft mana is still lingering in my legs.”

Leo smiled. Since this was probably a subject Narke wouldn’t know anything about, I glanced at him. He was watching the two of them with the same calm expression as before. Elias continued.

“We even talked about what we admire about you. Do you know what the two of us truly admire about you? If you’re not upset that we talked about you when you weren’t there, I’d be happy to tell you.”

“Go ahead.”

“Don’t just say ‘go ahead,’ you know. Be a little more honest with me.”

“That’s not really something I should be hearing about. Even if you were talking about me, those words belong to the two of you. Just because I’m the subject doesn’t mean I have to hear every single thing you said. So if you’re sure I’d be okay with hearing it, then tell me.”

“I’m bringing it up because I’m sure. Anyway, look at this. This. He’s as soft as his own mana.”

Elias pointed at Leo and looked at me.

You’re probably the only person in the world who’d call Leo soft. I raised the corners of my mouth with that thought. Even though Elias was teasing Leo about the very mana Leo himself was so frustrated with, Leo could only smile awkwardly. The two of them knew better than anyone why the word soft could somehow be a compliment between them.

Leo brushed back the strand of hair that had fallen over his forehead and said, “Yeah. I want to hear it.”

“I said you were the kind of person no one could help but love. You don’t take the love you receive for granted. You know how to be genuinely happy about it, and you know how to give that love back to the world. I said you could do things I find unfamiliar as if they were the most natural thing in the world, too. You never hesitate to show what you feel. There’s none of that greedy pretense of trying to look better than what you actually have, nor any hiding that comes from being at odds with yourself. Your joy and gratitude toward everything in the world may grow deeper in your heart, but they never grow shallower. You always express everything that happens inside you exactly as you perceive it. That’s the first way you give the love you receive back to others.”

Elias lowered his eyes with a smile.

“…As though, if you didn’t say the gratitude that rises inside you right away, it would fester and fade away inside you. No. Maybe you never feared that it would fade in the first place. The negativity in my way of thinking probably comes from the fact that I’ve always had to look for the worst side of everything. So then, is this straightforwardness of yours something you were simply born with? That nature of yours that, even when you stray crooked, always tries to find its way back to the right place, and somehow makes you more upright than anyone else… Or is it the result of everything in the world working together to shape that good nature of yours into something even better? Whatever the case, it’s something I don’t have.”

Leo looked at Elias with concern written across his slightly troubled expression. He said nothing for his friend’s sake, but he was clearly ready to argue back against Elias’s words the moment he got the chance.

Elias looked out at the sea beyond the window and said, “I learned from you something I could never do by nature, and the moment I realized that, I wanted to give it back to you just the same. Honestly, today probably wasn’t the best time for it. You were genuinely caught off guard, after all, so in the end, my thank-you didn’t exactly go as planned. But even knowing that might happen, I decided to do it the way you would. If I waited, when would I ever get another chance to tell you I’m grateful that you became my friend? So… instead of waiting for a better opportunity someday, I wanted to thank you, even if it was only in this small way, as soon as we returned. I thought I absolutely had to do it tonight, before dawn. And then you came to Italy.”

When Elias said that last part, about Leo coming to Italy just when he had decided to do it, his eyes sparkled. Perhaps remembering his own reaction from earlier, Leo lowered his brows sheepishly. Elias noticed that Leo felt bad about it and chuckled.

“If you’d been in Bavaria and asleep when we got back, I would’ve broken into your bedroom and sung you a thank-you song or something. Of course, you—the person I take as my role model for expressing myself—would know how to choose the right time and place, so you wouldn’t have done something like that. Anyway… the reason I covered the place in flowers is because they said Old Human parties are held here pretty often. I came to one once a long time ago, and I remember them wasting flowers like crazy. So I thought, ah, they must have flowers ready here too. That’s why I asked for permission and picked them all. Even if you don’t necessarily love plants, when something joyful happens, people put flowers in party venues like this, don’t they?”

It was the first time the words asked for permission had ever sounded so ominous. Leo seemed to pause at the same part, too, but he still looked at Elias as though he genuinely hadn’t expected him to do something like this. Taking advantage of the opening, Elias wrapped both hands around Leo’s.

“And there’s one more thing. Let’s make a jungle.”

Silence fell. Everyone in the room stared at Elias. Leo finally returned to his usual expression, looked around at all of us, and asked incredulously, “How am I supposed to react to this?”

“Make me a jungle. Let’s cover all four walls and the furniture in this room with green.”

Elias said it with complete seriousness. Leo frowned as he looked at the bundles of stems Elias had cut from the flowers.

“Ah, I knew this was coming. I was wondering why you gave me those stems!”

“Isn’t this everyone’s dream? Isn’t covering a room in plants and filling it with water something everyone dreams of? There’s a sea outside, so let’s turn this place into a forest!”

“I guess I’m not included in ‘everyone.’”

Leo replied with a hollow smile. Elias gestured as if to say You know what I mean and said, “At least when I was eight, I wanted to fill the Imperial Palace with water and swim in it. I actually managed to fill my room up to my ankles.”

“Yeah. You got an earful from your father for that.”

“Water’s too much trouble to clean up afterward, so cover the whole place in plants instead. I even cut the stems. We can use both the flower buds and the stems! When we check out, I’ll take care of all the pollen and leaves left behind and blow them away with mana.”

Apparently, Elias had been envisioning growing new stems from the flower buds and stretching out the cut stems into vines. Leo seemed to picture the same thing, because he grabbed the bundle of stems and gave him a look of clear disapproval.

“What’s the point of cutting the stems off the flower buds? They don’t have roots.”

“That’s true… But you can do it. If they really need roots, I’ll bring over a basin of water and we can put them in there until they grow some. No soil, though. It’ll make a mess of the room.”

Elias patted Leo on the shoulder. Leo covered his face with one hand and sighed.

“Guys. Why did none of you stop him?”

“I wanted to stop him too.”

I answered in sympathy. True to his years of being Elias’s childhood friend, Leo quickly pulled himself together and firmly scolded him.

“No. This isn’t your house. What is this, some kind of outdoor education class? You can’t do this here. Even if you remove all the plants afterward, don’t you think the cleaners are going to wonder why a perfectly normal room smells like grass?”

Elias, who had been saying the most ridiculous things this entire time, frowned as though he genuinely couldn’t understand what Leo was talking about.

“But… isn’t that a good thing? People literally make gardens because they want to smell grass. And if we really need to get rid of the smell, we can just use mana to make some wind and blow it out toward the terrace.”

“Even if you do that, people might start wondering why the furniture is all crooked. It could be a problem if the plants grow and knock something like a picture frame off the wall.”

Elias shot to his feet and clapped his hands.

“Hey! Guys, get up! We can’t sit on the sofa! The furniture can’t get moved out of place! Hurry! Hur-ry! Get up!”

“Hey… I hadn’t even thought of that, we’re in trouble.”

I started to get up after him and moved the cushion from one side of the sofa. Elias immediately let out a roar of despair. I carefully put the cushion back exactly where it had been, and only then did Elias stop shouting. Leo, apparently aware that his own reasons for refusing were starting to run thin, rubbed a hand over his eyes and let out a hollow laugh.

“No, guys… Lukas!”

“What?”

“You can’t do this.”

“Yeah. Honestly, I can’t take Elias’s side this time either. Do we really have to grow grass in the hotel room, too? And more importantly, thanks to you, Leo, I’ve developed a serious aversion to rooms made of grass. The outdoor tents and hammocks were useful, but this is too much.”

Leo only smiled at the last remark, looking like he couldn’t care less. Elias stared blankly, clutching both his cheeks. Narke nodded, taking Leo’s side as well.

“I don’t think I would’ve done it either. I don’t really see the need to turn a room into a forest.”

“Yeah, everyone except Elias…”

“But if you really think about it, it would be fun. Sitting on furniture wrapped in grass would be quite something~”

“…….”

Leo rubbed his face and smiled. Whether Narke was trying to defend Elias or simply reacting to Elias staring blankly at him, he added, “If we can keep the room exactly as it was before and after using the Special Ability, wouldn’t it be fine as far as the rules are concerned? As long as we don’t smash any picture frames, damage the chandelier, or create gaps in the floorboards like Leo is worried about… well. People smoke in here, too. Compared to that, this would probably be better. If you’re worried about allergies, I can clean it all up with divine power.”

There weren’t really any restrictions against smoking inside hotel rooms, so the people who had stayed in this room before had probably done the same. At the mention of allergies, Leo tilted his head.

“You really thought that far ahead. But you’re actually asking me to do it?”

“Yeah!”

That was Elias’s answer. Leo had been leaning his head back over the sofa, letting out a long, deep sigh. At that, he slowly turned his head. His eyes scanned the spacious room.

“…Not the ceiling. And not the part of the wall with the picture frames over there. Anyway, anywhere with something that could get damaged is off-limits.”

“Ah, this is nice.”

Elias lay sprawled across the woven stems covering the bed, waving his arms and legs around.

“It’s like sleeping on a lawn with the sea breeze blowing over you. It’s even softer than a lawn.”

“Of course it’s soft. It’s a bed. Your goal was to cover the bed, wasn’t it?”

At Leo’s cold question, Elias answered casually, “Ah~ So nice. I’ll be asking you to do this often during midsummer this year, too.”

“Don’t.”

“Come on, let’s help each other out.”

Leo had been scowling the entire time, but at that, he could only laugh in disbelief. He sat down on the edge of the bed and said to Elias, “You said earlier that you prepared all this because you wanted to express your gratitude to me right away. That you wanted to do for me what you’d learned from me—in other words… based on all the praise you gave me, you wanted to return the feelings that come with receiving love right away.”

“That’s right. I wanted to express my gratitude for your existence to you, too. But my friend comes here and immediately asks if I’m telling him not to come inside!”

He’d been calm and composed, like a well-bred student of the 19th century, until about halfway through, but his voice gradually grew louder. I kept drinking my wine to hold back my laughter. No one responded, and the only sound was the steady rhythm of the waves. With dawn slowly breaking over the sea, Leo spoke.

“You’re the kind of person who becomes a light just by existing, rather than someone who sets aside a day to welcome people like this. Sometimes you disappear for months as if you don’t even have me or your other friends in mind… and when you come back, you act as though we saw each other just yesterday, making all my worrying seem pointless. That’s why I never expected something like this. You’re always thinking, always looking far ahead. You don’t keep your eyes on friends like me for long because you know we don’t need your help. You know how to walk alone despite the pain, and sometimes you even choose to do so deliberately. So I know that the fact you keep me by your side even though I’m not where your future is headed—that’s your way of being my friend. I’m often heartbroken by the fact that you’re the kind of friend who thinks with eyes like fire, without even knowing whether the sun has risen or set, and by the circumstances that made you this way. And yet, I’m prouder of the current you than any other version of you. That’s why, when you did something I’d never imagined you doing, I thought it was just a joke meant to tease me. Now that I know it wasn’t, I’m truly happy.”

Elias had started listening from the bed with his eyes only half open, but by the time Leo finished, they were wide open. None of us said a word. Silence settled over the room. I’d read so many of their lines and monologues before, but I’d never imagined I’d actually hear even a small part of something like this in person, in a situation like this. I had no idea how I was supposed to react, so my eyes wandered aimlessly. While all of us froze in bewilderment, only Leo looked completely sincere. From Leo’s perspective, perhaps it wasn’t all that surprising. Given the circumstances, he hadn’t even said everything he’d been thinking. He’d simply let the words come as they would. Elias slowly sat up.

“…Ah~ So this is what it feels like. I really shouldn’t do things I normally wouldn’t.”

Elias had been perfectly comfortable telling Leo exactly what he thought earlier, but now that that sincerity had come back to him in return, he seemed almost creeped out by it. He turned away from Leo and shuddered. Even so, he was grinning to himself, clearly delighted, and only Narke and I could see the expression on his face.

“What? What is it? Is it that bad?”

Leo looked at Elias, only now seeming embarrassed himself. Elias turned his head to look at Leo’s expression, then burst out laughing and shook his head vigorously.

“No way. This is exactly the you I admire.”

Elias sat where he could see all three of his friends at once and smiled happily.

“See? This is why we’re friends with him.”