Sun, Moon, and Stars (3)
And so.
"So this is how it ends up, in the end."
"I see."
Jeanne had finished interpreting the cards she'd drawn.
The Devil upright, Temperance reversed, The Emperor reversed...
All five cards coming up bad—that's quite a feat, honestly. She managed it.
"But don't worry about it. You know my readings never come true anyway, right?"
"Hmm..."
Yet she didn't answer.
She seemed lost in thought about something.
Lee Jun waited patiently for her to sort out her thoughts and speak again.
"......"
"......"
But Jeanne simply kept her mouth shut.
Was something bothering her?
Jeanne barely had personal likes and dislikes, though, so what could it be?
"Um... Jeanne?"
"Yes, Oppa."
"What are you thinking about?"
"I was thinking about the reading."
"Something about it is bothering you?"
"The content wasn't very good."
That was certainly true.
It had been the worst.
"So I was trying to remember when the upcoming gate raid was scheduled."
"When is it?"
"Next month. They say there are signs of a gate forming in Paris."
"That observation device thing?"
"Yes."
A gate-formation observation device under development in the United States.
For someone who knew the future, Lee Jun could guarantee this machine's performance without reservation.
After all, the Director of the Technology Bureau of the Korean Hunter Association had been dispatched as an advisory consultant when they were building it in the first place.
With that person's skill, there wasn't a shred of doubt.
"So your next raid is that one, then?"
"Yes."
"Hmm..."
Lee Jun knew that raid well.
A B-Class gate.
Jeanne could slice through it and come back on her own, no problem.
The monsters that appeared weren't individually powerful types either—they were the kind that pushed forward by sheer numbers.
Firepteros, if I remember right.
Firepteros—also a monster of the Ant Nest's third floor—took the form of burning pterosaurs.
Going by the name and description alone, they sounded practically S-Class monster material... but in reality, they were low-tier B-Class trash mobs.
Despite their intimidating appearance, their rank was so pitiful because each individual was extremely small.
"Hmm..."
No real cause for concern.
When it came to warfare of attrition, there was no one more efficient than Jeanne.
And in the original timeline, there had been no mention of Jeanne taking so much as a scratch during that raid.
But still, something nagged at him.
Her readings had almost never come true... yet he couldn't help worrying.
He shouldn't have let her read the cards in the first place.
With results that catastrophically bad coming out, the person who'd allowed the reading felt genuinely uneasy.
Besides, couldn't this reading itself end up changing the future?
What if the bad omen distracted her and she made a mistake in the field...
"...Nothing for it, then."
"Sorry?"
"Let's go somewhere tomorrow."
There was Kyle's hint to follow up on, and the tarot reading weighing on his mind.
They'd clear out a different dungeon, simple and quick—a ritual to overturn the omen.
"An omen-overturning run?"
"That's right."
"Doing things the way we always do, then."
Originally, Jeanne's next raid would have been the B-Class gate in Paris.
So they just needed to do one easy raid before that.
Then they could wave it off with something like, 'See, the reading was useless after all~'
{Does that actually work?}
Honestly, he had no idea whether the method had any real effect.
Of course not—the tarot itself had no power to begin with.
In truth, all of this was just to put their minds at ease.
It was fun as a game, too.
Though once a bad omen came up... it stopped being fun.
{You... really are superstitious, huh.}
"It's not superstition. Your readings do come true, Oppa."
{What? You just said they don't.}
"They only come true because you perform warding rituals like this every time. In reality, there've been quite a few near-disasters."
{...Hey, tell her to stop answering me.}
"But I can hear you, though?"
Shwaaak—
"J-just don't answer her!"
Fweep—
Having said her piece, Silhouette vanished again.
How to put it... she was remarkably pliant when it came to Jeanne.
Anyway.
Before Jeanne returned to France, he intended to run one quick raid.
And that purpose, combined with Kyle's hint, had become the plan to head straight to a dungeon tomorrow.
"Think of it as just stepping out for a drink—let's keep it light."
"I'd like that. But is there a gate that meets those conditions?"
Conditions, huh.
Come to think of it, if they could decide on a raid this suddenly, it would have to be a gate under Lee Jun's own ownership.
Easy enough that no preparation was needed.
And if they were popping out for something light, it would need to be close enough to raid and return within a single day.
But a gate with such convenient conditions... naturally didn't exist.
However, if you stepped outside the category of "gates," there was exactly one place that did.
A place that checked every single one of those convenient boxes.
"It's not a gate."
"Sorry?"
Not a gate, but a place that could still be called a raid.
The Ant Nest.
"Look forward to it. We're heading to the very first dungeon ever discovered, after all."
"Look forward..."
Ah, right.
Jeanne didn't know what anticipation even was.
"Um, well, that means..."
"No, I'll try looking forward to it."
She made a gesture like clenching her fists in both hands.
At the same time, she attempted a learned expression to match.
That expression was probably meant to convey resolute determination.
It was awkward in a way, but still quite adorable.
"...Right. Do look forward to it, then."
"Yes."
Watching the two of them, the two dolls whispered to each other.
"Honestly, Hyung has no delicacy at all."
"Jun's always been like that."
"Still. In moments like that, you're supposed to sweep her up in a hug and say, 'Don't worry, Princess, I'll protect you~' Like that."
"...That would be a bit premature for Joanna."
"Premature? She's our age. She's an adult."
"Even so..."
What on earth were those two going on about?
"Quit the nonsense and just take good care of Jeanne."
"Of course. She's our adorable youngest."
"Don't worry. No matter what happens, we'll protect her."
There we go. Now they sounded dependable.
Those two doted on their little sister to distraction, after all.
Where Jeanne was concerned, they turned serious—so he could trust them with her.
'No, wait... shouldn't it be the other way around? They're the ones trusting me with her.'
Siara and Timothy were Jeanne's blood siblings.
Their births were mere minutes apart, but they were still her older brother and sister.
Of course it was those two, far more than Lee Jun, who thought of Jeanne and cherished her.
"Well then... shall we head out for now?"
"Yes, let's."
Jeanne's daily life could be left to the two of them.
They looked after her constantly, so even with the environment changed, she was unlikely to feel much discomfort.
That much, at least, needed no worrying.
With that thought, Lee Jun opened the door to guide Jeanne to her room.
And then.
Creeeak—
Thud—
"......"
"......"
"......"
As the door swung open, Seo Yoon and Choi Jeong-hyeon gently toppled forward, one over the other.
Apparently they'd been leaning in with their ears to the door when it opened, and had fallen over, completely defenseless.
If they hadn't even been able to react... they must have been even more absorbed in eavesdropping than he'd thought.
'And yet this happened...'
He found himself impressed all over again by the soundproofing design of this house.
Even with hunter-grade hearing, apparently they hadn't heard footsteps approaching the door.
"What... exactly are you two doing?"
"......"
"Ah, ahehehe..."
Seo Yoon lowered her eyes in silence, while Choi Jeong-hyeon laughed awkwardly.
"...I said we shouldn't do this."
"What?! You nodded your head! That makes you an accomplice!"
Hmm.
Still... the two of them. Weren't they getting pretty close at this point?
He showed Jeanne to the room that would be hers.
In just the past few days, two more rooms had filled up.
Jeanne was only staying temporarily, but having four occupied rooms in this building was no ordinary occurrence.
'Now that I think of it, it was four people when Evrah and Yelena visited, too.'
Somehow, ever since his regression, the house suddenly felt lively.
And this time it wasn't just the four rooms—there were Siara and Timothy as well.
Six people in total.
For the first time, this sprawling mansion felt like it was finally functioning as intended.
{Six? Count me in too.}
You're not a person, though.
Should you even be counted?
{You count the dolls but not me?!}
Are those two and you in any way comparable?
{...That's so mean.}
Mean or not, some things simply can't be helped.
The irreplaceable beings inside Lee Jun's heart.
That was Arcana.
{Tch.}
Silhouette looked sullen, but still—what was different was different.
Giving only half-hearted replies to her grumbling, Lee Jun flipped the egg in his pan with the spatula in his hand.
Truthfully, talking with Silhouette required care.
He himself might not mind, but everything Silhouette said could definitely be heard by Jeanne.
And there was no telling whether even his own thoughts might reach her—so he kept his responses to a minimum.
'Jeanne... I can never tell what she's thinking.'
Even now, he could feel her gaze from behind.
As if committing this entire scene to memory, she studied his every movement in meticulous detail.
Lifting the pot and setting it down, spinning the frying pan, raising the ladle, stirring with chopsticks.
She stared unblinkingly at each of those motions.
"Um, Jeanne?"
"Yes, Oppa."
"Why don't you... take Siara and Timothy out for a walk or something?"
"Wouldn't it be a problem if we were spotted and photographed while wandering around outside?"
"No one can even come near this area anyway."
Jeanne's sudden entry into the country had been an exclusive scoop to begin with.
No matter how hard they tried to block the articles... the storm had already broken.
It seemed every journalist in the country had swarmed in—the number of media personnel loitering around the neighborhood was easily three or four times the usual.
But there was no cause for worry.
"There do seem to be a great many things surrounding the area."
"Word is, people with strong mana sensitivity find it a little suffocating. But it's absolute at keeping outsiders out."
The 'Lee Jun's House Anti-Intruder Barrier MK.43 Really-Really-Final ver' installed by the Director of the Technology Bureau, Sisela's ward for repelling living creatures, the barrier formation Shao Yongliu had designed long ago—the list went on.
On top of all that, when Yelena had visited recently, he'd even asked her to lay down a fresh recognition-obscuring field.
In other words, this house was packed to the rafters with every technology ever devised for driving people away.
Unless you were one of the few who knew the building's true identity and location, you couldn't get anywhere near it.
Thanks to that, Lee Jun's house sat on the outskirts of Seoul as an isolated estate where not a single soul passed by.
You could just about call it a castle built atop a cliff, straight out of a fairy tale.
"You had to walk from a ways out too, didn't you?"
"Even the navigation couldn't find the road."
"That's also the Technology Bureau Director's handiwork. Every electrical signal is in the palm of that person's hand."
Few people knew about this place at all.
Setting aside his former comrades, Seo Yoon, and Choi Jeong-hyeon, it was basically just Go Seok-gu and Freya.
So under normal circumstances, no one could come here.
"I see. I thought that might be the case."
But Jeanne spoke as if none of that mattered in the slightest.
She didn't care what this house was like, what the roads were like, what the articles said.
She'd always been that way.
From the very first moment he met her, Jeanne had taken little interest in anyone beyond the circle immediately around her.
For a girl whose emotions themselves ran thin... there simply wasn't enough of anything to spare for people outside her own fence.
It was this girl who asked, in a mineral-flat tone:
"Are you still unable to call me by my name?"
Jeanne.
Jeanne d'Arc Bernadotte.
By the name Timothy and Siara used—Joanna.
That was what Lee Jun had called her once, too.
But since Arcana's dissolution, he could no longer say it properly, so it was Jeanne now.
"......"
Lee Jun didn't answer.
"......"
Neither did she.
They simply looked at each other.
Within that gaze, a faint trace of regret.
Sorrow, concern, sympathy.
Those things...
Yes, those, too, must be learned behavior.
This child was, at her core, something like a plant.
"Phew..."
Somehow, a corner of his chest ached.
Lee Jun was the one who worried over everyone.
Because the limits of his mana meant he could never bear great physical burdens, he had taken charge of the team's head instead—all the more so for it.
And the role he'd claimed alongside that was... the counselor.
Worrying over everyone, looking after them.
That came naturally to him.
Which was exactly why the reverse was so unfamiliar.
Everyone worrying over Lee Jun.
So purely, so innocently.
Lee Jun was unused to all of it—unused to bearing that weight.
And that was why.
Things had been awkward with all of them.
"......"
"......"
Tap—
Carrying the dishes over, Lee Jun quietly began setting the table.
Through that eternity of a moment... not a word was spoken.
In a kitchen that was somehow both spacious and cramped, only the clinking of dishes echoed.
A person without emotions, and a person unable to express them.
The air those two created was suffocating.