Reunion with the Quick-Witted Scholar (4)
Dana and I walked shoulder to shoulder down the street.
“Sargadis is pretty quiet,” Dana said, staring ahead. To someone used to the bustle of Ainhir, the nighttime streets here probably felt downright desolate.
“Compared to a trade city, sure. But I actually prefer taking walks at night in a place like this.”
Cities with low foot traffic were usually like this. Dana just gave a small nod at my comment. I matched my pace to hers as we headed toward the research building.
She really didn’t book an inn in advance.
It might have been my own overinflated ego talking, but I suspected Dana had rushed here ahead of me under the excuse of preliminary fieldwork just to see me sooner. That would explain why she hadn’t secured lodging yet.
It’s been roughly thirty days since I left the university.
It took me about twenty days to finish my thesis here and get it delivered to Ainhir, where Carmine University was located. In other words, Dana had applied for the lab director’s transfer barely two or three weeks after we parted. If you subtracted the time she waited to finish her doctorate, that meant she’d made the decision after only a few days.
Once the silence between us had grown a little less awkward, Dana spoke.
“Do you remember the day we first met?”
“How could I forget? It was the first time I’d ever seen women’s underwear that didn’t belong to my mother.”
“Pffft.”
Dana let out a short laugh, clearly amused. Back then her face had turned tomato-red and she’d looked ready to die of embarrassment. Now, with time passed, she could joke about it.
“I thought you’d come to pick up your professor’s underwear. Who the hell would imagine a young woman throwing lace panties into the communal laundry for a slave to wash?”
“Good thing I noticed before they ended up on the drying rack. There was one pair missing from the underwear drawer. I tried to forget about it, but then the slave I’d met suddenly showed up in the lab wearing a researcher’s uniform. How was I supposed to ignore you after that?”
“That was your own damn fault. I figured you were trying to poison me or something.”
“For real? Shit, now that I think about it, you were the one who always brought the tea. Was that why?”
“You’re asking the obvious. You know how I strained the tea leaves for the first month? I was checking if you’d spiked it.”
“You crazy bastard. How would I even manage that in a pot everyone drinks from?”
Dana’s lips curved into a smirk. The gap between her usual rough demeanor and this softer, more feminine outfit somehow blended perfectly when she smiled like that.
“Ah, so that’s why our eyes kept meeting all the time? You were looking around like a wild horse grazing on the plains—left and right, left and right. Busy as hell.”
“In my hometown, there was a general who valued fine horses more than beautiful women. By the same logic, wouldn’t a wild stallion like me be worth more than some peerless pretty boy?”
“Haha. Yeah, that. I miss hearing your hometown stories. Back in our university days, sometimes the only reason I showed up for work was to listen to them.”
Dana exhaled, as if trying to see her breath. The autumn air wasn’t cold enough for it to fog, so the sigh simply melted into the night. Or maybe it had been a deep sigh from the very beginning.
“Hey. Did I ever tell you about my hometown?”
“Nope. Not once. I asked, but you brushed me off.”
“Sorry about that. I never told anyone else from the university either.”
Dana fidgeted with her own hands before pressing closer to my shoulder. The pale skin of her neck flushed red.
“I’m the same as you.”
“What do you mean?”
“The thesis system. That’s how I got my master’s.”
“...You were a foreigner?”
I was the actual otherworlder here, yet I couldn’t hide my surprise. I’d assumed she was a pure-blooded Brittanian. Her accent was completely local, after all.
“I crossed over to Britannia when I was twelve. Back in my hometown, if you want to be precise, my family belonged to the priestly class—Druids.”
“Druids? From Ulster?”
“Yeah. I’m from a branch family, so it’s pretty different from the main Ulster line.”
At those words, I found myself studying Dana’s purple curls again. The defining trait of Ulster folk was red hair. Purple was a shade that mixed with red, so maybe that was where her coloring came from.
“I was famous as a genius back home, you know? What normally takes ten years to learn, I mastered in three. I left before I could finish the rest, though.”
“Can I ask why?”
“Just... because? In my hometown, you weren’t allowed to ask ‘why.’”
Dana gazed up at the constellations in the night sky.
“Knowledge must be passed from mouth to mouth. It can’t be left in writing. When I asked why, they scolded me. Whenever I felt curious about anything they taught, the only answer was ‘don’t doubt, just learn.’”
“Even a branch family is still Ulster, huh. Ah, I don’t mean that in a bad way.”
“I think it’s bad, so you can curse all you want. If I’d thought it was good, I would’ve stayed there, gotten old predicting the weather, and died.”
Her words made me look up at the sky too. In a primitive society, reading the weather carried that much weight.
“After going abroad and learning a new language, it felt ridiculous. They call Druids the priests of Ulster, but I never learned which god they worshipped. No one back home knew either.”
“Because they only passed it down orally,” I answered.
In truth, it wasn’t just Ulster. Here in Britannia, there were almost no native deities worshipped. As evidenced by the religious orders established by the gods of Romania and Germania, Britannia—lacking what appeared to be an ancient civilization—had no chief deity passed down from the mythic age. Or if there had been one, it had vanished.
Dana looked at me and said, “There’s a fable from my hometown. A raccoon buried in the ground meets one of two endings. It either becomes a tree root or turns into a mole.”
“That’s extreme.”
“Right? If I’d stayed in my hometown without satisfying my curiosity, I probably would’ve become a root, stuck in place forever. After spending my childhood receiving no answers to my questions, the moment I learned how to resolve my own doubts, I knew I couldn’t become anything but a scholar.”
Our conversation carried us until the archaeology research building came into view. The carpenters had dispersed to the taverns, leaving the half-finished structure abandoned and forlorn, like a derelict house.
“That’s why talking with you was always fun.”
Our hands brushed against each other. But neither of us grabbed on or pulled away. We simply kept walking, feeling the occasional touch of fingers in rhythm with our steps, waiting for an answer.
“Don’t you think? Everything you said was stuff no one else knew. You’d casually translate weird expressions into foreign languages, and every time I asked about something, you’d smirk and go, ‘Well, in my hometown—’ Even though you were like that, you were competent, had a fun personality, and handled social stuff well. After you left, I’d unconsciously use words I learned from you and get looks like, ‘What the hell is that, you nerd?’ It felt like I’d been contaminated by you.”
“I am pretty impactful, aren’t I?”
“You’re something else, all right.”
Dana snorted and quickened her pace. She turned to look back at me and shouted.
“Yeah, fuck! That’s right! Your absence was huge! Once the other researchers started leaving the lab one by one, there was no one left who could keep up with the things I learned from you!”
She roughly tousled her neatly arranged hair with one hand.
“There was no one to tease me for swearing without thinking or acting stupid, no one to throw beans at me when I got cranky during drinks! Someone else sat at the desk you always used! They threw away the doodles you scribbled while working, so I rescued them and hid them in my diary! Your tidy inkwell got covered in ink blotches and I didn’t even want to touch it! No matter how I brew tea, it doesn’t taste like yours! You never even taught me the exact blending ratio of the tea leaves you used for me!!”
Anger rising, Dana clutched at her chest. She wasn’t crying, but her voice had grown thick and choked.
“You know what pisses me off the most?! After spending three whole years with you, I—I didn’t even realize until yesterday that I liked you this much!! I didn’t know that drinking without you would make the alcohol taste so fucking bland!!”
“...Dana.”
“Shut up. Just listen.”
When I stepped closer, she struck my chest in frustration. There was no strength behind it.
“I felt like I was going to disappear, sucked into the hole you left behind in the exact same lab from a month ago, but I didn’t understand why. When I saw Sargadis on the transfer list, my heart raced, but I never stopped to think about what that meant...”
Her hand dropped from my chest. Dana leaned her forehead against me.
“If things hadn’t turned out like this, I probably would’ve gone my whole life without saying anything. Fuck. Shit... I’ve had three years, but the girl you like has only been with you for thirty days. Does that make any sense? If I hadn’t been such an idiot, I could’ve received your confession ages ago. I wasted every single chance I had over three years. Who the hell can I blame for that? I’m the dumbass who did this. Who am I to blame anyone, to hate anyone...”
I patted Dana’s back as she leaned into my embrace. She grabbed my clothes and sniffled.
“It’s so frustrating and pathetic... If you’d stayed by my side, I wouldn’t have realized I liked you even after thirty years, let alone three.”
I couldn’t bring myself to say I was sorry for not noticing. Even if I had realized her feelings before she did, it wouldn’t have changed anything. So the only words left to me were the obvious ones.
“...It must have been hard. I should have done better.”
“Stop. I don’t even deserve your comfort. What did you do wrong? It’s all my fault. What kind of scholar doesn’t even understand her own feelings?”
“Don’t beat yourself up. It’s not your fault either.”
“Then what is it...? Bad luck? I hate that. I’d rather be a stupid idiot who made a mistake.”
Sniffling, Dana wiped her nose with her sleeve and turned her face away, trying to hide how wrecked she looked. Then she pulled out a key.
“Sorry for getting angry. I look pathetic. I’m really sorry for showing you this messy side of me. That’s all I wanted to say. Go back to your wife now. There’s nothing more to talk about.”
“Wait.”
I grabbed Dana’s shoulder as she tried to turn away. She quickly hid her startled expression. I forcibly removed her hand. In terms of raw strength she was probably my equal, but her arm fell limply.
I gently wiped away her tears and said, “I still have things to tell you.”
No, “still have” wasn’t quite right. A conversation wasn’t one person pouring everything out and ending it. Our honest heart-to-heart was only just beginning.
“...Come in.”
Dana led me into a room where she hadn’t even finished unpacking. It was a simple space containing only a bed and some luggage. Staying here would probably be less comfortable than an inn. Still, the room was quite clean. There was a faintly sweet scent too—the aroma of candles mixed with a woman’s natural fragrance. When I glanced around, I spotted an unlit scented candle on the table.
“...So, what did you want to tell me?”
Dana, who had washed her face with the water she’d prepared, asked while sniffling. She pressed a towel to her bloodshot eyes, then sat on the bed. I drank the water she’d offered me, moistening my dry throat before speaking.
“Dana. Do you remember when I told you about my dream?”
“Dream? Oh, yeah.”
“It wasn’t a lie, but I cleverly hid the real reason. It was the kind of story that would sound absurd to others or that they might try to exploit.”
“...If you’re thinking of telling me, don’t.”
Dana bit her lip and looked away.
“Only tell that kind of thing to people you can trust, you idiot. I won’t even be by your side forever, so what’s the point of me knowing?”
“I won’t tell you if you don’t want me to.”
“...Me?”
I stepped closer to Dana, who clearly didn’t understand what I meant. Her eyes widened.
“My dream is a foolish thing. Anyone would say that once you learn the truth, you should give up and find a way to live well here. That’s why I tried not to see you as a woman. If I suddenly dropped dead, I’d be leaving behind family that loved me in ‘both worlds.’ I wasn’t fully prepared for that.”
“Hey, hey! Wait, what are you doing! Your face! Your face is too close!”
Pressed against the wall, Dana frantically pushed at my chest. The force was much stronger than I expected. I held my ground, even drawing on mana to resist. I gripped her shoulders firmly.
“I may not have been able to love you until now, but I never stopped liking you. I wasn’t the only one who enjoyed our time together.”
“Ugh...!!”
“And you want me to just end it here and leave? So the next time we meet, we avoid each other’s eyes, exchange awkward businesslike words, and carry lifelong regret in our hearts?”
This was my selfishness. This was me fully turning on isekai-harem-protagonist mode. Flames blazed in my eyes. Any bastard who could say ‘Oh, I see. Take care’ and walk away here might as well cut off his own dick. He’d probably never use it again anyway.
Yeah. Fuck. When I think about it, I was the idiot.
Why had I been thinking according to 21st-century standards while trying to build a harem? Did I really plan to take a second and third wife while leaving that adorable Franc behind, without even the resolve to be cursed for it? Was I after praise from people with overflowing ethics?
No!! That wasn’t it!!
If I listened to this story and trudged away like an idiot, Franc, Dana, and I would all be left with a lingering, gloomy aftertaste!! In that case, even if I became a total bastard, I had to act like a proper isekai harem protagonist here!!! Because an isekai harem protagonist follows the rules of this world!!!!
“Dana. I’ve made up my mind. Now it’s your turn to choose.”
“H-huh?”
With both hands captured, Dana shrank back from my gaze. I didn’t ask for permission. I simply declared:
“If you don’t want this, dodge.”
I pressed my lips to Dana’s. She didn’t pull away.