Timing (2)
The door clicked shut behind her. Clara knew exactly what she was doing.
That only made the confusion worse. She had made it into the room, but a rational thought flickered through her mind for a moment—did she really have to go this far?
But then—
Splash!
The sound of water pouring in the bathroom shattered what little reason she had left. The thought that Albrecht would soon step out of the bath let her emotions swallow her judgment whole.
Anxiety over what might happen once Erinn and the others arrived mixed with a far more indecent desire: she wanted to see Albrecht fresh from the bath.
Just as living together had made Albrecht gradually more aware of Clara, the reverse was true as well. At first she had truly meant it when she said she was fine with it. Once the cohabitation began, though, it was a different story.
Waking up and catching him completely unguarded always startled her. They slept in separate rooms, yet the simple fact of sharing a roof left her restless.
At first she told herself it was only because she was unused to living with a man. A few days were enough to teach her otherwise. The problem was not living with a man—it was living with Albrecht.
Once she realized that, she found herself wanting to do things for him, and jealousy slipped out before she could stop it.
The times she had fed him something delicious without caring who was watching, or told him to take her arm instead of Caesius’s—those had come from the same place.
And the moment she heard from a Forest Shadow operative that their companions would soon arrive here, the same thought rose unbidden.
“…I don’t… want them to take him.”
Clara murmured the words. Then she reached up, unfastened the shawl cape around her neck, and laid it on the bed. The smooth, rounded line of her shoulders and the deep, elegant curve of her collarbones came into view.
“….”
She set the cape aside, settled lightly onto the bed, and let out a soft breath as she waited for Albrecht to emerge.
Soon the hinges creaked, followed by the wet slap of bare feet. The soft rustle of a towel rubbing something dry reached her ears, but Clara could not bring herself to look that way.
“Hah…”
Albrecht, apparently unaware of her presence, shook the towel vigorously through his hair. Then, without thinking, he turned his head—and froze.
“……?”
For a moment his mind simply refused to process the scene.
He stared blankly at Clara sitting on the bed.
Only for a second. Then he went crashing down with a clatter. Startled, he had stepped backward, planted his foot on the towel he had been using to dry himself, and slipped.
“Argh!”
“…A-Albrecht?”
“Ugh… augh…”
Clara hurried over in alarm, but Albrecht only winced for a moment; he did not seem badly hurt. What registered more clearly was that he had come out of the bathroom wearing nothing but his underwear.
“…Th-that… ah…”
Clara instinctively knew this was a rarer sight than she had expected. Not because it was dirty or improper—because she herself was too embarrassed to look.
She had known he was solidly built, but seeing it in the flesh hit differently. The muscle forged by years of farming and hard labor was neither grotesque nor overdone; it was simply firm and well-defined.
In the end she could not bear the shame and turned her head away, then frantically began searching for something he could put on.
“Ow…”
While she did that, the pain eased enough for Albrecht to push himself slowly to his feet. Only then did his wits return, and he looked again at what he had just seen.
“…Clara, why are you in here?”
He asked the most basic question imaginable, completely forgetting he was still in nothing but his underwear.
“…A-Albrecht.”
“…Huh?”
“…Put this on first.”
When Clara held out clothes for him, Albrecht finally realized the state he was in. With a faintly flustered look he glanced back and forth between the clothes she offered and his own body, then accepted them in a sheepish voice.
“Uh…”
He ducked back into the bathroom for a moment and soon reappeared, dressed. The clothes she had given him were soft, almost like sleepwear, so he had been able to put them on quickly.
The awkward situation over, Albrecht tried once more to clear up the mystery.
“So… why were you in here, Clara?”
“….”
Clara simply stared at him without answering. Under her gaze Albrecht did not merely tilt his head—he looked faintly flustered.
That reaction gave her a little courage. She had not been the only one conscious of what was growing between them.
“…Albrecht.”
“Uh… yeah?”
“…Come closer.”
At her request Albrecht hesitated. After a brief internal struggle he swallowed dryly and stepped toward her.
Clara lightly patted the bed. Albrecht carefully sat down beside her.
A short silence settled. The whole situation left Albrecht confused and strained. He was the one who had just finished bathing, yet a pleasant scent kept drifting from the girl next to him.
Especially now that she had removed the shawl cape, the beautiful line running from her bare shoulder to her collarbone and up her throat was doing serious damage to his self-control.
If he did not say something, he was going to stop thinking rationally. So Albrecht spoke first.
“…Clara?”
Knock-knock.
At that exact moment someone rapped on a door outside—not the bedroom door, but the front entrance. Albrecht wondered who would visit at this hour; Clara’s eyes, however, went round.
As if she already knew who it was.
“Someone’s here?”
Albrecht started to rise, intending to check. He never got the chance.
“…Clara?”
Her slender hand had closed around his wrist.
“…I’m sorry.”
“Huh?”
“…I… I…”
At the same time the front door opened and voices drifted in. Caesius seemed to be dealing with the visitors.
While that was happening, Clara spoke in a slightly clumsy voice.
“…I don’t know how you’re supposed to say it at times like this… Maybe because I’m an idiot and never learned properly.”
“What are you—”
“…So……”
Clara stood, releasing his wrist. Then she placed both hands on the chest of the completely unprepared Albrecht and whispered,
“…This is the only way I can express it.”
His eyes went wide at her whisper. Clara gently closed her eyes and rose onto her tiptoes.
In that instant Albrecht’s mind went pure white. The soft, moist sensation against his lips alone left him unable to tell whether this was reality or a dream.
“Okay, if it’s Clara and Albrecht they should be in—”
The door burst open. Not the front door this time—Albrecht’s bedroom door.
“—here… hm?”
“….”
“Ah… ah……”
“Cl…ara……?”
The faces that appeared in the doorway were ones he had missed more than he realized. Every one of their expressions, however, had gone rigidly blank.
“Pwah!”
All except one—the elf princess who had just taken a long pull from her bottle and only now grasped the situation.
“What the? They’re kissing!”
With Agresia’s help, Erinn’s party had reached Parvata and immediately set out to find Albrecht’s house.
Parvata, however, was the heart of the Shah Zar Kingdom. The sheer number of households packed into the residential districts alone was more than anyone could search in a single day.
There was no guarantee he even lived in a residential district. Trying to comb the entire city for him would feel like hunting for a needle buried in desert sand.
“What do we do? There are too many houses—we can’t find it.”
“At this rate we won’t find him even if we spend days…”
They were right. Waiting on a main street in broad daylight for Albrecht to walk by might actually have been faster.
Erinn and the others fretted over how to proceed. The one person they needed for a job like this—Clara—was no longer with them.
Or rather, there was one person who could fill that role…
“…Aria.”
“Pwah! What?”
The problem was that she was drinking. In that state, tracking anyone was out of the question; simply not getting lost would be an achievement.
They could hardly scold her for it, though. Ser-Aria was the one who had brought them the information that Albrecht had headed for the Red Magic Tower.
So instead of reprimanding her, Erinn pressed for a solution.
“Isn’t there some way?”
“Hmm… hang on a sec?”
Ser-Aria raised a finger as if she had an idea, then pursed her lips and gave a short whistle. A moment later a blue bird came fluttering toward them with tiny wingbeats.
“Contact the Forest Shadow operatives. Ask if they know where Albrecht’s house is.”
“Cheep!”
The bird chirped once and flapped away. It was a traditional elven method of communication.
“Just wait a little and we’ll get an answer!”
About twenty minutes later the blue bird returned, a small note tied to its leg.
“Oh, it’s here.”
Ser-Aria opened the note at once and announced the contents in her usual lively voice to the waiting party members.
“Residential District, Street Ten.”
“Street Ten…!”
“That way!”
The moment they headed for Street Ten, Erinn and Letisia could tell exactly where he was.
The powerful mana of the dragon Caesius was radiating strongly from the house at the far end of the street.
“…There.”
When Erinn said it, Freya looked at her with a faintly tense expression. Erinn spoke briefly.
“Let’s not make a nuisance of ourselves. Just ask what we came to ask. If his heart’s already left us… then there’s nothing we can do.”
“…Yes.”
“…Understood.”
Yet neither Erinn, who had said it, nor Letisia and Freya, who had agreed, looked like people who would give up easily.
Setting that thought aside for the moment, they walked slowly toward Albrecht’s house. Then, more tense than she realized, Erinn knocked firmly on the front door.
A presence stirred inside. The mana she had been sensing grew stronger, and Erinn knew who was coming.
The door creaked open, and a beautiful woman with light-blue hair cascading down appeared.
“So this body was not mistaken. What business brings you here?”
It was Caesius. Seeing her with their own eyes, Erinn and the others felt a small measure of relief and answered her question.
“…There’s something we absolutely have to ask Albrecht.”
“Hm? What is it?”
“That’s…”
“It’s something we have to ask Albrecht himself, so it’s hard to tell anyone else.”
Letisia’s timely reply earned Erinn’s silent gratitude. Hearing them, Caesius spoke without suspicion.
“Is that so? Albrecht is bathing at the moment, though. You will have to wait a little.”
“…Bathing?”
“B-bathing? Why?”
“Why else? He was about to go to sleep…”
“Then where’s Clara?”
Freya asked about the missing Clara. Caesius answered as if it were nothing.
“Clara went into Albrecht’s room.”
“…What?”
“…What did you say?”
That casual remark hit the three of them like a thunderbolt, but Caesius remained oblivious as she continued.
“She came back a short while ago and went straight in. Looked like she had something to say to him.”
“And… Albrecht is bathing right now…”
“Hm? He is.”
“…Sorry, but may we come in?”
Erinn was asking permission to enter the house—more precisely, to open that bedroom door. Caesius answered,
“Do as you like.”
Even a watchdog would have shown more caution, yet she had no intention of stopping them. She even walked ahead to the bedroom door herself and opened it for them.
“Here—if it’s Albrecht and Clara they should be—”
Then Caesius had no choice but to freeze. Even a dragon who struggled to grasp human emotions could not keep babbling in the face of this scene.
Only someone thoroughly drunk could have managed it.
Because inside the room, Clara and Albrecht were pressed together like lovers.
Clara was leaning against Albrecht’s chest, up on her tiptoes, her lips meeting his.
It was the kind of sight that could give even the densest person a sudden dose of social awareness.
“What the? They’re kissing!”
Ser-Aria’s completely tone-deaf remark was the finishing blow. At that single line, Albrecht and Clara hastily turned their heads to see who had arrived.
“….”
“….”
“….”
When their wide eyes met, Caesius hurriedly slammed the bedroom door shut.
Bang.
A brief silence followed, but it did not last. Erinn, Letisia, and Freya all shouted at once in frantic voices and wrenched the door open again.
“Wh-what are you doing?!?!”
“C-Clara, how could you…!!”
“G-get away from each other, you perverts!”