Is this really supposed to be a dinner party?
As I step up to the round table of milky-white stone, I can feel all my limbs going stiff from the tension.
“It kinda looks more like a military conference than a dinner party.”
In the room are the eldest and youngest brothers, both dressed matter-of-factly in uniforms. Since it’s true for Conrad, their military uniforms must be their formal dress too. But though each uniform has the same design, they’re different colors. Gwendal is in spotless viridian, while Wolfram is wearing a deep navy blue. There’re lots of cases where variations in color show differences in post, and they make it easy to distinguish between land, sea, and air.
A man carrying a tray, who appears to be the waiter, bows deeply to me. But there’s not even the first ‘g’ of a greeting forthcoming from the eldest and youngest brothers, who’re sitting with what look like champagne in their hands. Of course I’m the one who can’t stand the awkward atmosphere.
“Go-good evening.”
Wolfram snorts with laughter. Scorn from someone who’s good-looking makes it three times as offensive. Conrad enters chuckling and places his left hand on Gwendal’s back.
“Your Majesty, this is my older brother, Lord Gwendal von Voltaire. And this is—”
He’s shaken off with hostility as his hand slides through the glittering gold hair.
“—my younger brother Lord Wolfram von Bielefelt. Both of them were Their Highnesses until just a little while ago, Their Excellencies now. Of course, they are many ranks below Your Majesty, so you can feel free to call them by their names.”
“Don’t touch me!” Gwendal is silent, but the younger one yelps hysterically. “Didn’t I tell you not to touch me with those human hands?! I’ve never once thought of you as my brother.”
“Yes, yes, I got it, so don’t throw your drink at me. Unlike the both of you, I’m in white, so removing the stains would be quite a task.”
He really seems quite used to all of this. Conrad moves away from his brothers. The pretty boy is a wasted effort.
“I’ve explained that we have different fathers, yes? You have probably also already noticed that I am the only one here who is not of the Ten Aristocratic Houses. My father was a traveler, a man of unknown lineage who had nothing of worth other than his sword.”
There’s an annoyed expression on Wolfram’s face. Gwendal is apathetic.
“Then you’re a half-blood? Oh, I guess you don’t call it half or double here. So you have a Mazoku mother and a...”
“Human father. With light brown hair and eyes, and not a penny to his name.”
“And an exceedingly fine man.”
Everyone turns to the entrance at the same time. The Sexy Queen, looking so lascivious that it’s verging on a crime, smiles. She has on a tight black dress of some matted material that is open down to her navel, with a slit that completely exposes her long, beautiful legs. She’s wearing no adornments at all, as if she’s declaring that she herself is a jewel.
She’s emitting more pheromones now than when she was naked.
“Mother!”
“Mother?!”
I don’t know who among the three calls out, but she must be the mother of all three. Is it even decent for the mother of people who’re close to a hundred to look like she’s around thirty or so?
“Thirty...times five...a hundred fifty...she’s about a hundred and fifty??”
In other words, I was getting excited over a lady who’s a hundred and fifty years old? There is a limit even if you like older women.
Meanwhile, the mother has embraced her nearest son. Her golden ringlets fall elegantly down her back.
“It’s been a while, Conrart. You’ve become more and more the handsome man your father was in such a short time.”
“Mother, you are ever more beautiful, as always.”
“Oh my, I’m sure you say that to all the girls!”
Is this supposed to be a conversation between a mother and her son?
Though she hugs each of her sons tightly, the only time you can barely convince yourself that they’re parent and child is with her third child Wolfram; with her eldest son Gwendal, she looks like an older but coquettish girlfriend with her younger but composed boyfriend.
I secretly ask her second son, “Were any of you children brought by your fathers into a second marriage, maybe?”
“No, she did indeed give birth to all three of us.”
“Gwen, you’re wrinkling your forehead again. You’ll scare the girls away if you keep doing that! Aaah, Wolf! Wolf, let me take a good look at you. Oh my, you look just like me, as usual. I’ll bet the gentlemen are all over you.”
“...Mother, we saw each other just this morning. And it doesn’t make me happy to be liked by men.”
“Really? Is that how boys are like? I guess that’s why they say that it’s hard to understand the feelings of boys at this age. Aaaah, I wonder why I could never give birth to a girl. Boys are so crude—they distance themselves from their mothers so quickly.”
“I would never distance myself from you, Mother!”
“Oh? Really?”
“Of course!”
What a silly pair.
But the Queen immediately turns her assault on me.
“Your Majesty!”
“Yeek!”
That captivating body presses against my fifteen-year-old average pubescent high-school-student body. Our faces are at the same level, and close enough to kiss. There’s a smile on the rose lips.
“We met in the bath—you’re His Majesty the new Maou, right?”
“R-right.”
“The nervousness is making you so stiff—it’s very sweet. I’ve always thought that it would be wonderful if someone like you could be the new king.”
“Er, right.” The stiffness is from the assets of her dynamite body pressing against my chest.
“So, King Yuuri. You’re called King Yuuri, right?”
“Er, right.” This is not the place to be answering like a guest on a talk show.
“Do you have a lover?”
“That is quite enough of that!”
“Aaaaw.” She makes strange sexy sounds as Günter pulls her off me. He forces his way through with neither shyness nor anger.
“Please stop falling in love with His Majesty the new Maou, Your Majesty the Prior Maou!”
“Aaaw, Günter. You sound like a cynical widow.”
“You can hate me and abuse me all you wish. But in any case, I would like to avert such an improper relationship as the former Maou becoming the mistress...excuse me, the lover of the new Maou.”
“The former Maou? Who? This...lady?”
So she’s not a Sexy Queen, but a real queen? The beautiful Mazoku (or maybe witch) wearing the black dress holds out her white hand to me with a smile.
“Welcome to Shinma Kingdom, King Yuuri. I am your predecessor, Cäcilie von Spitzweg. Your Majesty was called here when I announced that I would step down from the throne.”
“Then I’m here thanks to you, Lady Cäcilia? No? Li...e? Uuu...no, um...von Spitzweg?”
“Call me Cäli. Cä-li. My brother asked me to reconsider, but I’m fed up with a life that won’t even let me love as I want!”
Lady Cäli, because of a reason like that, I was told to become the Maou even though I’m still a minor, I lament, gripping the slender fingers in front of me. Oh, if only the owner of these beautiful ice fish fingers had stayed in power for the next hundred years or so, I would have lived the life of an ordinary person in Japan...and though unhappily my wife passed on before me, on one spring day in my latter years as I’m watching over my only son and daughter-in-law and their cute grandchildren, I can make a trip to the next world. Wait—what if the next world is this world? If that’s the case, then does that mean that right now at this moment, I’m dead...?
“What’s wrong, Your Majesty?”
The revolving lantern of my bright family planning goes out.
There’s a story that goes something like this:
At a banquet in a certain kingdom, one guest was so nervous that he mistakenly took a bowl of water meant for washing his fingers and drank it down in one gulp in front of the king and all his nobles. The nobles around him called him a ‘mannerless oaf’ and laughed coldly, and dipped their hands gracefully into their bowls. But only the princess nonchalantly drank all the water in her finger bowl. So that the guest would not be embarrassed.
A bowl is just a bowl, not the American Superbowl—that’s the way hospitality should be. Or so the heart-warming anecdote goes.
If I drink down all of this water, would anyone be the kind princess for me?
I breathe a secret sigh as I watch water being poured into the silver bowl.
This is pointless. I can get along with someone like Conrad, but the eldest and youngest sons are hopeless. I don’t know where Madam Cäli stands, but judging from her pretension of complete innocence, I’m guessing I’d better not test her.
I discretely dip both my hands into the small bowl. And...
“Huh?!”
Everyone else has taken up the bowl in their hands and drained the contents at a single gulp! Oh shoot, I never did read the book of morals seriously. Conrad has the waiter remove his bowl without drinking.
“You seem to know quite a lot about filth, cleansing yourself with the alcohol.”
Wolfram, sitting next to me, takes the straightforward malicious approach. So that was alcohol? Then it’s all good, since I don’t drink anyway. It’s not because of the law that I don’t drink alcohol or smoke, but because I want to keep my heart and body healthy.
Günter gives some instructions to the waiters from a small distance away from the round table. He can’t have a seat at the Shinou’s dinner because he’s not a close blood relative of the Maou. So only five people sit at the table. The seating order goes clockwise from youngest to oldest: me, the new king, His Majesty Yuuri; Wolfram, the former His Highness the Crown Prince; Conrad, the former His Highness the Crown Prince; Gwendal, the former His Highness the Crown Prince; and the previous Maou, Cäcilie, Her Prior Majesty.
That’s how I got caught between Wolfram, who hates me, and Queen Pheromone, who fidgets even while eating. I understand quite well that Wolfram hates me because he suddenly got demoted from the position of prince just recently. Though if they’d had some sort of safe inheritance system, they wouldn’t have ended up with a situation as messy as this.
The waiter pours something (probably alcohol again) into my Edo-style faceted glass and leans down slightly like they do for in-flight meals to ask me, “Your Majesty, which would you like for the meat course: fowl or mammalian or reptile or amphibian?”
Which?! Well, of course I know that there were players on the old Yakult team who ate crocodiles, so I shouldn’t be surprised, but I guess the cuisine in this world is really different too. Even in Japan, the pit viper is a national specialty. Though most of the time it’s just eel even though they call it pit viper.
“We-well, since I’m a growing teenager, I’ll get mammal. No wait, hold on. What kind of wonderful things are in the mammal dish for tonight? Nothing like fresh monkey or just-born puppy, right?!”
Image visual: Chinese food market.
“It’s cow.” Oh good.
“A top-quality eight-stomach, five-horn specimen.”
“Five horn...gene manipulation or something, maybe...uuuuh, then I’ll take the cow.”
Rumen, reticulum, omasum, abomasum...darn, I can’t remember any more stomachs than that. The waiter carries in a soup which looks and smells like consommé, as well as a plate of what looks like hors d’oeuvres. I pick up the knife and the fork substitute: a polished, spotless silver—
“...This spork really brings back memories. Well, it does make sense.”
For my school lunch in elementary school, a single one of these served a dual purpose. Here you can use it for both the soup and the hors d’oeuvres.
“Your Majesty, what kind of a world did you grow up in? How is it different from our world?”
Cäcilie, her Prior Majesty the Former Maou, squeezes my right hand. The temperature of this former sports-oriented unpopular male high school student instantly rises two notches.
“Wh-what kind of a world? Uh, it’s not really anything special, kinda boring, actually. Oh, but it’s really different from this world. Nobody can use magic there, though it’s further along scientifically...”
“Science! I’ve heard of it. It’s a technique that allows people who don’t have any sort of magic to bring down their enemies from far away, right? The human countries are apparently doing research on it. It’s such a terrible thing, to have something that will allow you to attack further than bows and arrows. I wonder if the humans will keep to our truce then.”
The youngest son says to his mother with cold eyes, “I don’t think they’re capable of such morals.”
“Please don’t speak of such dreadful things, Wolfram. What would we do if something like that happened?”
"It’s simple. We’ll stop suppressing our Majutsu. The humans are getting cocky only because we’ve tried to be fair and fight them on equal footing.
“Wait wait wait, that’s not what science is for! I mean, er, um, it makes machines to take care of the troublesome things like sweeping and washing the laundry, and plowing the fields in one stretch. The point is, they make people’s lives more comfortable.”
Lady Cäli is adorably surprised.
“I’ve never thought of sweeping and washing the laundry as being troublesome. They’re the jobs of the sweepers and the laundresses, after all.”
I never thought of what a queen’s life would be like until now.
“S-so that’s why machines do those jobs instead of people.”
“But then there would be no jobs left for the servants to do, right?”
“Then those people can get jobs at the vacuum cleaner and washing machine factories...”
And now I have no idea if they really make people’s lives more comfortable or not.
“Then, Your Majesty, what about love? Is there love between different species? Of course obstacles and opposition make love even more passionate, right?”
Different species doesn’t translate very well. She’s probably hinting at Mazoku and humans, but how do you translate that into something a Japanese person would understand? International marriages? People already do that freely, so they don’t really need to yearn after it. Or maybe human and chimpanzee? I don’t think they fall in love with each other very often.
“But you seem to have come from a very distant world. I am so happy that you have taken the throne—I can finally leave the castle now. I’ve always wanted to go on a journey of free love. Don’t you think that’s wonderful?”
I nod, my fingers still in her grip. “Th-that is wonderful.”
Wonderful things are brought to the table. It’s the main meat course. In front of me is a piece of red steak that can’t be called anything but rare, and that only if you’re being generous. In front of the former queen are several round amphibian...no, it’s one grilled amphibian. I try a one-line haiku: With that face do you / eat a frog at this table / oh fair Sexy Queen.
“It must have made you very uneasy to be suddenly told that you’re now the king, wondering whether or not you’ll be able to do it. It was the same for me. One day a messenger suddenly arrived and told me: Your soul has been chosen as that of the next Maou by the word of the Shinou. But you know, Your Majesty, you mustn’t worry too much about it. All the difficult things will be taken care of by the people around you, and I’m sure my brother and children will all devote themselves to your service.”
“Mother!” Wolfram, cutting into his fowl with a knife, protests. “I have no intention of serving him. We don’t even know for certain if this guy deserves to be the next Maou or not, and I can’t consent to it.”
“My. Then will you take the throne, Wolfram?”
He then scoops up some white thing that looks like a potato and places it on his plate as he shakes his head.
“Of course not. It would be far and away more appropriate for my brother to take the throne. He’d teach those stupid cowardly humans a thing or two.”
Then he picks up a glass of some wine-like liquid.
Conrad, next to him, raises some fish to his mouth as if he has not heard. To the youngest child, apparently, his taciturn eldest brother is his only brother.
“Don’t you think so, Gwendal?”
He cuts into the chicken again in regular sequence. The former queen inclines her head adorably.
“But, Wolfram, you too should know what consequences befall the king who disobeys the Shinou’s words.”
Apparently if you don’t act according to those words from on high, something terrible will happen. So if I refuse to become the Maou, will the terrible thing befall this country and its people, or it will befall me the newcomer?
“Of course, that includes you as well, Your Majesty.”
“Huuuuh?!”
I guess Conrad’s seen right through me.
“What’s with that! I’ve never thought or wanted or asked to become a king. I mean, this is pretty much like coercion.”
“...I thought so.”
Next up is the potato—I’m shooting quick side glances at Wolfram’s spoon, so Gwendal’s muttered retort catches me off-guard. That short phrase drips with contempt.
“You never intended to become the king in the first place,” Gwendal continues, holding the glass that looks too stout for drinking wine, not even looking at me. There is no reflection of the cowardly Japanese in his frozen blue eyes.
“I don’t care if he has the Twin Black or if he’s the one holds the Darkness. He can’t become the Maou. He was never prepared for it in the first place. Is that not true, Visitor From Another World?”
“Um...er, I guess...”
Conrad interrupts my unintentionally affirmative reply.
“He has only been in this world for two days. His Majesty is still confused. Are such rude speculations not somewhat too arrogant, Lord von Voltaire?”
"But this is a reality we cannot escape from. You should know it better than anyone, how many sacrifices a head of state who has no intention of fulfilling his responsibilities will make of the people? Your Majesty, if, as I said, you are not prepared to live as a king, then please return to your own world immediately.
This man who looks like he would have been suited for the position of Maou turns his cold smile on me for the first time.
“I make this request as the representative of the Mazoku. Vanish from our gaze before you raise the people’s hopes too much.”
“I...”
—Want to go back if you can send me back—something that even I don’t really understand chokes the words in my throat before they make it out; something like obstinacy or pride or a show of courage, perhaps.
I turn to my red beef to try and pull myself together. At the table the bashing of the new Maou continues.
Gwen and Wolf are on the offense, Lady Cäli is neutral, and Conrad appears to be fighting this battle alone.
“I don’t know if he really holds the soul of the Maou or not, and neither do I have any special desire to check. He’ll be gone soon, in any case. It would be wise to search for a substitute.”
“He is the real thing, Gwen.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Only the rare steak lies within my field of vision, but I can see Conrad’s tiny smile. And seeing it, I realize something. That even when I didn’t know anything of him but his back and the top of his head, I knew that I had seen his smile before.
“I would never mistake anyone else for Yuuri.”
Wolfram immediately flares up impetuously. “What kind of evidence is that? If words were always adequate, then we’d never be deceived, right?! He’s probably dyed his hair, and his eyes...probably have colored glass in them—there are countless ways to fake his appearance.”
“Unfortunately, I have no proof to show you that will convince you.”
“Then don’t say that with so much certainty! In any case, even if he is the owner of the Maou’s soul, in the end he’s still just a lowborn little punk who was raised among humans. We can’t let someone like him run the country. It would be a blemish on the history of the Great Mazoku.”
“Wolfram, a person’s worth is not decided at birth. It’s something that is determined by how he lives his life. But if you’re so obsessed about it, I’ll tell you this: His Majesty’s soul was given into the guardianship of the Maou of that world, who chose the proper custodian from among his subordinates. That was His Majesty’s father, through whom the blood of the Mazoku unquestioningly flows, though he is not of this world.”
“Huh?! No way—my dad’s a demon?!”
Not demon: Mazoku. Bankers were called ogres and demons when Japan collapsed into its record-setting slump. But, I mean, my dad’s really Mazoku?! How am I supposed to act around him after this?
“How am I supposed to face him now? Now that I know my dad’s Mazoku?”
“Look at it from his point of view: his son is the Maou, after all, so it’s all good.”
The second son looks completely nonchalant. That’s true, I guess. That’s awful.
“But Conrad, how do you know about my dad...?”
“Even if his father is Mazoku! His mother’s still human, isn’t she?!”
Apparently he’s not about to give up the attack so easily. Wolfram gulps down the contents of his cup, his beauty making the glare he sends my way all the fiercer.
“The blood that flows through your body is no more than half Mazoku. It’s no wonder you and Conrart agree so well—‘cause both of you are ’psuedo’! The other half is the filthy flesh and blood of humans, some mongrel bitch, some harlot from somewhere. And a guy like you...”
Oh shit. But it’s already too late when that thought enters my head. Regret never comes first. When I stopped playing baseball after ten years, it was also because of this quick temper flaring up. The instant in which I cannot check that middle class sense of justice. It’s a lethal flaw in a catcher. Also something of an extremely bad disadvantage in life.
I’ve slapped this beautiful face in front of me with a pak.
It was a great pak. The sound and angle were both quite good. It was a solid hit that would’ve gone beyond a single base, but the damage to the enemy is immeasurable. As evidence of that, he’s staring at me in dumbfounded surprise. He’s not even preparing for a counterattack. It’s become so quiet around us that you could’ve heard a pin drop, and Wolfram’s left cheek is reddening where I hit him. And not just his left cheek, but the right one as well—and his forehead, his eyes...
Conrad stands so quickly that his chair crashes over. Now his face is changing color.
“Your Majesty, take it back—please take that back immediate—”
“No way!”
Lady Cäli sets her knife slowly down on her plate. Günter almost topples forward as he comes running.
“I’m not gonna take it back and I’m not gonna apologize! He said and did something he shouldn’t have! He can make a fool of me and abuse me all he likes—I don’t care about that! But calling someone’s mother, someone he hasn’t even met, a harlot?! Mongrel bitch? What the hell is with that? Can a dog and a person give birth to a kid? My mom’s human! She’s human however you look at her. A human with what you call filthy blood running through her! Who the hell do you think you are? What the hell do you mean by humans being dirty? If I talked like that about your mother, how would you feel? No way, I’m totally not apologizing!”
This is the way my temper-tantrums always are: BayStar wave-like machine-gun objections. I continue, overriding Günter, “I am absolutely not taking that back! And I even held myself back and slapped him instead of punching him because he has a pretty face!”
“So you’re absolutely not taking it back?” When I nod determinedly, Lady Cäli claps her hands in delight. “How wonderful! Then the match1 is established!
Match?
The kind that you strike against a rock and use to light a campfire with?
“There, see, Wolfram? I told you, didn’t I? That you’re so beautiful that the gentlemen can’t leave you alone.”
The tips of her fingers are pressed together in delight—she seems ready to dance for joy.
By gentlemen she means...me?!
“Though His Majesty is so cute that I’m just a bit jealous. But I guess it can’t be helped, since it’s for the sake of my beloved son.”
“Wait a minute, calm down, I mean, someone calm me down. Can somebody tell me what’s going on here? Have I breached some kind of etiquette again? Can somebody explain to me in words of one syllable?”
My favorite tutor hangs his head, looking completely crestfallen as if to say “Oh dear...”
“...You have not breached any etiquette. On the contrary, you have invoked an ancient, elegant tradition that is no longer in use even among the nobles. Your Majesty has just proposed to him.”
“Proposed? Not—”
“An offer of marriage.”
Marriage?! You’re not allowed to get married to a girl before you’re eighteen, Japanese boy. There’s no problem with an engagement, but Wolfram isn’t even a girl!
“Ma-ma-ma-marriage?! A man with a man? And I’m the one who proposed? When the hell did I do that?”
“To hit someone’s left cheek with the palm of your hand is a proposal of marriage among nobles. And if that person presents their right cheek, then they have accepted.”
“Uwah, that’s insane! A-and we’re both guys. We’re both guys!”
“It is not so unusual.”
Holy crap, I just proposed to the guy who insulted my mother?! So it’s not a matchstick or tinder that’s being ignited, but the love of a celebrity couple?2 Or is it the birth of a royal couple rather than a celebrity couple?
Günter is sobbing. I don’t want to consider if they’re tears of joy or something else.
“Yo-Your Majesty, I am struck speechless. Your sudden proposal of marriage is...no, I should be delighted. Now Your Majesty will surely settle in as king of this country...”
“Someone, tell me that doing this between guys is weird!”
“Did you think that I’ll allow you to humiliate me like this?!” Wolfram, who seems to have finally come back to himself, shouts. He doesn’t look like he has any intention of offering his right cheek.
“It’s not like I could help it! No one explained to me that I should make a fist when I hit people!”
“Shut up! This is the first time in my life that I’ve been so humiliated!”
“Huh, really. You must’ve had a really charmed life, then. There was the time the junior who stole my position told me to wash my socks, and the time I was designated the slowest stealer on the team—that was much more humiliating! You’ve lived for eighty years, and you won’t even forgive one mistake by someone else?”
Wolfram, still excited by the marriage proposal, maybe, sweeps his hand across the table. Plates and cups fall to the floor, and a silver knife lands at my feet.
“Uwah, that was really dangerous! Stop attacking the dinner!”
“Your Majesty, don’t pick—”
I squat and pick up the knife, greasy with chicken fat.
“So you picked it up, huh?”
Eh?
I look around from my crouched position. Conrad and Günter are holding their heads, looking like they’re at their wits’ end, while the pretty boy who dropped the knife in the first place gives me a faint smile, still twitching with rage.
“So you picked it up. Fine, the time will be noon tomorrow, weapons and arena of your choice. If you won’t even step onto the battlefield, then you’re a coward who can’t even ride a horse properly. But do at least wear good armor so you’ll present some challenge.”
“Wh-what?”
“Prepare yourself—I’m going to tear you apart.”
Then he smiles cruelly and makes his exit after apologizing to his mother and eldest brother for walking out in the middle of a meal. The mostly useless tutor sighs as his shoulders slump.
“You accept a challenge to a duel immediately after proposing. Your Majesty, oh Your Majesty, I cannot follow your shifts in mood!”
“Challenged? To a duel? I was?”
“Purposely dropping a knife is a silent challenge to a duel, and if the one who is challenged picks it up, it means that he has accepted.”
“Duel?! So, then if I lose—and I’ll probably lose—wi-will I die?! Is he going to beat me up and kill me just for politely, carelessly, inadvertently picking up a knife?”
My spindly powers of imagination can only call up a scene from a spaghetti Western, of quick-draw gunmen walking ten paces away from each other in the western wilds in a cloud of dancing sand, then turning and shooting at each other.
It’s all right, people rarely take each other’s life in duels nowadays; why don’t you pick an odd weapon that Wolfram would never imagine to surprise him; how about dressing up in some really cute costume that will instantly deprive him of his will to fight? As I look at the two who are in “my faction” quarreling and consoling the new king, Gwendal and Madame Cäli, who have been completely silently up until now, begin talking as they finish their drinks.
“I’ve always thought of him as someone who has trouble controlling his emotions...but I didn’t think that he would be so impulsive.”
“That’s true, I would never have imagined that he would propose a duel.”
As soon as I calm down a bit, I realized that they’re treating the marriage proposal quite casually. Since I was raised in another world, I’m a returnee who doesn’t even know his right from his left yet. I don’t think they’ll expect me to know Mazoku (nobility, even) traditions.
“But not all of the fault is his.”
“What do you mean?” Gwen asks with a side glance at me.
I have a bad feeling about this. When mothers giggle like that, they’re usually hiding something.
“Well, actually, teeheehe, I could smell my orchid perfume from His Majesty’s hair. I left some of it in the bathroom, blended with shampoo. He must have washed his hair with it, not knowing its effects.”
“And those effects are...?”
“I asked a potions master to make it for me—it’s a precious substance that only works on Mazoku. If you bear even a tiny bit of good will towards the person wearing it, it’ll make you become much more daringly passionate.”
“So it’s something like an aphrodisiac or a love potion?”
“Aww, that’s such a crude way of putting it.”
A person bearing good will becomes more daring. Then what of someone bearing ill will?
Gwendal’s brows crease a bit as he signals a waiter to pour more wine. “The person who hates you will become even more aggressive...meaning that it threw Wolfram into a frenzy. Mother, you should have told us something like this sooner.”
“Oh, but why? Wolfram’s angry face is so cute. Is there any mother who doesn’t want to see their children at their more adorable?”
“...No.”
“Of course! Why don’t you test it out when you’re with Anissina too?”
“...I still value my life...”
I listen dumbfounded to their conversation in the same way I would listen to a stream of English coming out of a radio.
The person bearing ill will becomes more aggressive. The person bearing good will becomes more daring.
I get it, so that’s why Günter’s been tearing up.