Guiding the Male Lead out of His Trauma - Chapter 38.1
Unconsciously, I took a step back at the sight of what Acteon was wearing.
Under a simple coat, he wore a shirt so loose at the chest it was almost open. And, incongruously, a mask covering his chin.
“You… What were you doing?”
Instead of answering, he averted his gaze.
“Why won’t you look at me? Come here. Don’t just sneak away.”
“…I’m not sneaking away. Really.”
As if.
Anyone could see he was screaming ‘I’m guilty’ with his whole body.
I stubbornly stuck to him, following his shifting gaze, and before I knew it, he’d let go of my arm and instead cautiously took my shoulder.
“S-Senior. Please, enough…”
“Enough what? Just tell me, where were you headed?”
“I, I was just going for a walk.”
“A walk? Is it the sort of walk you don’t want anyone to see you on?”
Pressing him for answers, I became the upperclassman bullying an innocent underclassman.
Having too much fun teasing him, I leaned in even closer.
It was really bothering me.
“And why are you wearing this?”
“Uh, well, I thought I should be in disguise…”
“You go for walks in disguise?”
“……”
I could see the heat rising in the skin not covered by the cloth.
I promptly snatched away Acteon’s mask, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
“You don’t have to wear stuff like this at night. It just makes you look even more suspicious.”
“In that case… I guess I’ll take it off.”
With a reddened face, he stared at me in silence.
He looked just like an awkward rookie assassin who’d failed at a disguise, and I felt oddly embarrassed by his gaze.
Well, I’m not really in a position to criticize his outfit, either.
“I look better than you, at least. My clothes don’t stand out, and I could pass for anyone you’d see on the street.”
“Ah.”
“‘Ah’, what? And now, fess up. Where were you actually going?”
Acteon, as if telling me to calm down, set me aside, then covered his now-unmasked mouth with his hand.
Through his fingers came a mumbled excuse.
“There was someone I needed to follow. Though you caught me first, Senior…”
Well, that means our targets must’ve overlapped.
“Honestly, you should be glad I caught you first.”
“……”
Acteon’s silence made him look all the more crestfallen.
Come to think of it, maybe I… actually find him kind of cute?
I tied the cloth he’d used as a mask around his wrist.
“It’s important not to show your face too clearly, but covering up too obviously is no good, either.”
“…You know a lot about this.”
“Well, I used to pick pockets and run cons. You have to blend in, but if your face gets seen, you’re done for.”
At my openly admitted past, Acteon paused for a moment.
“Just so you know. Anyway, I’m a cadet now, so I get a steady salary every month. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
As he fidgeted with the cloth I’d tied, he asked,
“Sometimes, I wonder how you can be so unaffected by everything, Senior.”
“What?”
“Like the day before yesterday, when we met the crown prince.”
He usually never showed his true feelings, but now Acteon spoke honestly.
“I was furious, down to my bones. In my heart, I wanted to tear them apart right then and there.”
It was a harsh thing to say with a smile.
But for someone who had felt such intense emotions, he’d really endured it impressively well.
“But I thought to myself, even if I did that, what then? Would anything change?”
“Right, killing them on the spot wouldn’t solve the underlying problem.”
“On the contrary, it would only justify even tighter control over Manifesters like us. If I did anything, it’d only serve as proof of how dangerous mana manipulation can be.”
He’d wrestled with some pretty heavy dilemmas in a short time.
Feeling an urge to praise him, I instead took his hand and led him out of the mansion.
As I mulled over what to say, I found myself spouting something terribly cliché without even realizing it.
“I’m not completely unaffected either. But after getting through a major crisis, I realized something. Nothing stays the same forever. I just think of myself as preparing for when things do change.”
He seemed to chew over my words, trying to accept them. Seeing that, I thought of Acteon and the duchess.
Acteon and the duchess were maintaining a sort of alliance.
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