The Sweet Trap of a Black Cat
While she slept, Edgar found himself deep in thought. He wasn’t entirely sure what the candy’s effects were, but he was convinced one of them had to be a temporary regression of intelligence. Otherwise, there was no way to make sense of the situation unfolding right in front of him.
Edgar remained silent.
For a while now, Ariel had been glued to his side on the sofa, rubbing her face against his arm while making soft, cat-like sounds. With her naturally feline features, she looked to him like a particularly noble black cat. The fact that her eyes were red only added to the peculiar charm.
Meanwhile, Silvia sat across from them, watching the scene with an utterly dumbfounded expression.
‘Did I misunderstand the candy’s effects?’
Silvia turned the glass jar of candies this way and that, sinking into confusion. She had heard it would draw out words buried deep inside, but she never imagined it would change someone’s behavior this drastically. Perhaps this was the moment Ariel had been waiting for—an opportunity to finally unleash all the desires she had kept hidden until now. Either way, it was quite an entertaining sight for anyone watching.
“What on earth possessed you to bring something like that?”
“Sorry. I thought it would be fun, but the effect is stronger than I expected.”
“Haa……”
Watching Silvia scratch her cheek with an innocent smile, Edgar found himself at a loss for words. After Ariel had ended up like this, he had demanded an explanation from Silvia. According to her, the candy’s effect was to draw out words and actions that went against the user’s conscious will. In other words, it made someone crave affection even more from people they disliked, while pushing away those they actually liked.
Edgar still had his doubts about the explanation, but since the only two people who understood the candy were saying the same thing, he had no choice but to accept it.
“Looking at her like this, she really is just like a cat, isn’t she?”
“You might find it funny, but I don’t.”
When Silvia asked in a sly tone while watching Ariel cling to him like a cicada on a dead tree, Edgar let out a sigh and firmly waved his hand in refusal. If her entire appearance had actually turned into a cat, he might not have been so conscious of it. But for him right now, this situation was nothing short of hell. It was as if he was learning firsthand what it meant to reach the absolute limit of a man’s patience.
In any case, it was clear this was not a purely happy situation.
“Pfft. Still, isn’t it nice when a pretty girl like Ariel throws herself at you?”
“That’s……”
Edgar glanced at Ariel and quickly shut his mouth. Of course, the man named Edgar Bilhark might enjoy it on some level, but once he remembered that this wasn’t her true will, only emptiness remained. Even so, the soft sensation of her body pressing against him occasionally tested his sanity. It was truly torturous.
“Oh, did you know? Once the candy’s effect wears off, all the memories disappear.”
“Disappear… you mean the memories after eating the candy?”
“Yeah. Isn’t it fascinating?”
This unexpected additional effect came as welcome news to Edgar. He had been worrying about how he should act once Ariel returned to normal and how he should face her. But if the memories vanished cleanly, at least he could set those concerns aside for now.
Of course, the biggest issue was that he couldn’t fully trust anything Silvia said.
“What? You’re not doubting me, are you?”
Noticing the strange look in his eyes, Silvia asked cautiously. Edgar narrowed his eyes even further and shot back.
“…Would anyone not doubt you after you turned her into this?”
“Turned her into what? Anyone listening would think Ariel is your little sister or daughter.”
“……”
Even after causing all this trouble, Silvia still talked back without hesitation. Edgar had nothing to say in response. He simply pressed his lips together and carefully wrapped an arm around Ariel’s shoulder as she clung to him.
Little sister, huh.
The sudden jab made Edgar smile bitterly as he took a sip of the black tea in front of him. It wasn’t wrong, and he couldn’t think of any way to deny it. In fact, denying it would be the same as abandoning his conscience.
When he had first seen the girl named Ariel, he had already been an adult in mind. That was why, even though he was her childhood friend, he had always viewed her as a much younger sister. He had never felt that was wrong. Even if his heart felt that way, it hadn’t created any major cracks in their relationship as friends on the surface.
But it was only this year that he began to feel that feeling slowly twisting.
To think that being too pretty could be a flaw.
A small, wry chuckle escaped Edgar’s lips as he thought of something that would have earned him a scolding for sounding spoiled if anyone else had heard it. It was exactly as he thought. The girl named Ariel grew more beautiful with each passing day. She gradually acquired the noble grace befitting the Robeheim family’s heir, which inevitably transformed her into a captivating woman who could not help but draw men’s eyes.
And of course, Edgar was included in that category of “men.”
Besides, he was neither a corpse with dead emotions nor a cripple who had lost his masculinity. He might have been a foolish man who had wrapped his subconscious in the label of “she’s like a little sister” and desperately suppressed any glances he wanted to give her, but that was all.
It’s complicated.
Edgar was caught between two conflicting emotions. One was the feeling he had developed toward the girl named Ariel. The other was the feeling Ariel held toward him. He was rather slow when it came to his own emotions, but not so slow that he remained unaware even after years of accumulation. However, if asked whether he was sharp enough to thoroughly dissect a girl’s feelings, the answer was no.
Was the emotion she kept in her heart friendship? Or was it love? The way she smiled at him, the way she reached out first, the way she always acted without any defenses. Couldn’t all of that simply be because they were comfortable childhood friends?
In the past, he wouldn’t have had any reason to worry about this. Because the way he had looked at her had always been one of friendship between childhood friends, there had been no need to speculate wildly about what her feelings might be.
As Ariel grew older and became more honest with her emotions and gained a mature mind, Edgar had gone in the opposite direction. Rather than viewing the world with the calm perspective he once had, he found himself developing a consciousness closer to that of a boy with each passing day. He was clumsy with other people’s feelings, ignorant of his own, and lost in the kind of worries that boys his age sometimes had.
Just as Ariel had been gradually changed by being around Edgar, Edgar had also been gradually changed by being around Ariel. That was all there was to it.
I never saw this coming.
Overwhelmed by a sudden wave of emptiness, Edgar let out a soft laugh. He took off the coat he had draped over Ariel, who had fallen asleep beside him at some point, and gently covered her with it. He truly had never imagined he would come to see Ariel as a member of the opposite sex—neither as a little sister nor even simply as a friend.
But now that he thought about it, perhaps this had been inevitable. He had always known she was the most beautiful girl in the world. He had always known she was more charming than any other woman. The moment he recognized that, the winner of this tug-of-war had already been decided.
If he truly hadn’t wanted to harbor these feelings, he should have looked away. But he had met the girl named Ariel. He had often looked at her with eyes more sincere than those he gave his own family. From that point on, he had already begun a battle whose defeat was all but certain.
“She must have worn herself out and fallen asleep.”
“…Seems that way.”
Silvia gazed at Ariel with warm eyes. The girl was now breathing softly, her angelic face peaceful in sleep. Edgar had reached out to tidy her messy hair out of habit, but he stopped midway. With a bitter smile, he withdrew his hand.
It seemed that once a person’s thoughts and feelings changed, even such simple actions became difficult to perform freely. Was this what they meant by a thief’s guilty conscience?
“Edgar, there’s something I’ve been curious about for a while.”
“What is it?”
“What do you want to be to Ariel? Just a close friend? Or a lover?”
“I don’t know. At first I thought that was the case, but now that I think about it, even that feels uncertain.”
Sometimes people fail to recognize the feelings or thoughts they held at the time, only realizing them much later. Edgar felt he could say with a self-mocking smile that he was exactly that kind of person. The fact that he had followed her all the way to Hespania. The way he had rationalized it as helping a lonely friend and sneaked into her room every night. The determination he had confessed to her on the night of the ball. When he looked back on all those actions he had once believed came from friendship, he now wondered if they had truly been born purely from friendship.
Edgar reached out again with the hand he had withdrawn and gently brushed Ariel’s hair into place. Then he adjusted her head, which had been resting in an uncomfortable position, so that it leaned against his shoulder. That small gesture seemed to reveal the change in his heart so clearly that Silvia couldn’t help but smile with quiet satisfaction.
“…Still, one thing is certain. She’s so pretty it almost feels unfair.”
“Pfft. Is that so? Then that’s answer enough.”
Silvia closed her eyes and leaned deeply into the sofa. She wondered what her sleeping friend would have said if she had heard those words. Well, it was no longer something she needed to worry about. She had simply wanted to lay down one more stepping stone. In the end, the conclusion of this story was something only the two of them could reach.
As she thought of her lover’s face, which she suddenly missed, Silvia took another sip of black tea. Strangely, even though there was nothing particularly sweet in her mouth, she felt an overwhelming sweetness.