Starting Line
There are generally four ways a person falls ill.
Poor condition, poor nutrition, a filthy environment, or just plain bad luck.
Of course, it differs from person to person.
Some catch a cold from a cold shower, while others go a week without bathing or sleep, pull an all-nighter, and wake up fine after a single nap.
Magic users were much the same in the acquired sense.
Through self-discipline, the circulation of mana, magical tools, and spells, a mage might groan under poor eating habits, lifestyle, or quirks—yet they rarely fell truly sick.
But the world has its own sense of fairness.
Even those who seemed invincible, untouched by poison or disease, could catch a light cold and collapse into bed for days.
Sword Masters, archmages, druids, dark mages, necromancers, priests—anyone who wielded mana or divine power shared that fate.
Buried deep under the covers of the bed in her wind-ventilated laboratory, Catherine snuffled and wheezed through a laborious explanation. Karem’s reaction was simple.
“Can’t magic or magical tools just fix it?”
“Magic, tools, even holy arts—none of them work on a cold.”
“What?”
“Hih… hachoo!”
The blanket lump that was Catherine, only her head peeking out as if fused to the mattress, heaved.
“Ahem. The cold is the classic example of an illness that can’t be cured by magic, potions, or tools. Divine power’s the same. There are palliatives, but…”
“Then why not just take the palliative?”
“Once you’re already sick, it’s useless. Right now the only thing to do is eat well and rest thoroughly.”
With that, Karem scooped up a spoonful of the chicken soup he had been simmering on low heat since the night before. It had thickened nearly to porridge. He fed it to her.
Catherine accepted it like a baby bird waiting for its mother.
The thick broth slid past dry lips and tongue, down her throat; she let out an involuntary moan of relief.
Rich chicken-fat stock seeping into her body.
The savory crumble of tender meat.
The gentle sweetness of vegetables stewed until they fell apart.
Fuel restored, Catherine’s half-dreaming mind finally pieced together the events leading up to her collapse—and grasped her present situation.
Whether she minded or not, Karem cared more about her recovery. Swallowing his own embarrassment, he kept spooning soup into her mouth.
“Open up. You’ve only had a few bites.”
“W-wait! Hih… hachoo! Come to think of it, where’s Mary, and why are you here?”
“I was asked to do this too. She said she didn’t have enough hands to clean up the blast site and look after you at the same time.”
Together with Narke, Karem had tucked Catherine into the bed of her laboratory-cum-office. He had fallen asleep half-worried, half-relieved, and only the next morning got a look at the explosion site.
It was nothing like the usual Tower accidents.
Five rooms—including the private laboratory and storeroom—had collapsed.
The private laboratory that had been ground zero was completely incinerated.
Not a single trace remained.
All that was left was a black, sun-shaped scorch mark, as if a bomb had gone off.
Mary, who had been clearing the site with the other mages since the night before, was also handling Catherine’s nursing (she had learned of it through Narke the previous evening).
For an ordinary blast she could have managed alone, but the magical tools and materials buried in the rubble left her no choice.
Thus Karem inherited from Mary the morning duty of caring for a sniffling, wheezing Catherine.
What astonished him more was that Mary had already been changing her compresses and bedding in between jobs.
“What the hell have those insane sorcerers done…!”
Hearing the full report, Catherine clutched her head.
The heat-dried cloth on her forehead dropped away.
“Is it really enough to send the very pinnacle of those sorcerers—a Sage-class archmage—into a fit…?”
“Do I look like someone who wouldn’t throw a fit?! Hih, hachoo! Laboratory incinerated? Five rooms collapsed? Where’s the money to restore all that supposed to come from—hachoo!”
“Please calm down. You’ll collapse again.”
“Hachoo! Hi, hachoo! I—”
Catherine coughed and raged in turn, then abruptly quieted.
The coughing continued, of course.
That single word—“again”—had dragged last night’s events back into her mind.
Karem’s confession in the kitchen that had left her speechless.
Hatred, admiration, fury, loathing, shock, joy, temptation—she had faced countless waves of emotion in her life.
But something composed purely of affection was a first.
Even the cold reason and intellect that normally supplied answers in an instant could not settle on a clear reply.
Fondness? Among all the fondness she had ever felt, this was the strongest.
But had it grown into love?
Even she could not be certain.
His cooking had satisfied an archmage’s curiosity, delighted a palate refined by countless delicacies, and he was the first “ordinary person” to approach her with genuine warmth—aside from Olivier and a few fellow adventurers of similar standing.
The absurd experience of someone who not only treated the curse on her hands as nothing but fretted more over the laundry bill from clothes dirtied worse than the curse itself… that was new.
Even Gordon had only been horrified after hearing Karem’s words, scolding him to take it easy.
Karem had simply walked up without ceremony and teased her.
He had flustered her with pointless things.
This is so awkward I could die.
When conversation cut off as abruptly as a broken radio, the awkwardness settled heavily over the office air.
Only the irregular crackle of sparks from the fireplace filled the silence, and she wanted to flee on the spot.
Karem ignored the stiffness that seized his body and simply moved to fulfill his duty.
He folded a compress chilled with divine power and laid it carefully on Catherine’s forehead. As the fever eased a little, reason began to churn productively through her mind again.
Hup. Chew. Swallow.
Hup. Chew. Swallow.
Hup. Chew. Swallow.
While her mind wrestled, her starving body instinctively accepted every spoonful of chicken soup that approached.
Three whole bowls.
Even if she had been concentrating hard enough to ignore her surroundings, she had eaten that much. Only someone with nerves of steel could have failed to notice.
“…I’ve been thinking, but what is this?”
“You only had a few glasses of mulled wine last night. Fill your stomach first.”
“Even while I’m fretting over the confession you made?”
“There’s nothing in it you’d be picky about.”
“Who said I was being picky?”
“Well, Gordon hates beans. I figured there might be at least one thing among the ingredients you’ve never tried.”
His tone carried the same playful lilt as always, as if the earlier flood of emotion had never happened.
Yet he still couldn’t meet her eyes, so he clearly felt the embarrassment too.
The awkwardness was a bonus.
Catherine let out a long breath.
She herself still couldn’t meet his gaze either.
“Ahhh… everything’s turned stupid.”
The hair that had blazed iron-red cooled as quickly as if dunked in still water, returning to its original color.
“I’m… new to this affection thing too.”
“Uh, at your age—”
The words left Karem’s mouth by reflex; he immediately regretted them.
Of all topics, a woman’s age was a one-way ticket to ruin.
“As if a proper mage has time to waste on feelings like that! Do you have any idea how busy I’ve been all this time?!”
So that was the direction her anger took?
“Does being an archmage look like a joke to you?! Even that damn old man who isn’t fit to be a master took centuries to reach archmage. I’m far younger than him—do you think I had spare time for that?!”
Battles with tentacled giant-pot chimeras, papers rejected countless times by Olivier, presentation halls bombarded with questions, the weight of research piled up on the road to archmage and the time spent weakening the curse.
A parade of hardships and setbacks flashed through her mind.
“On top of that I was cursed with this disgusting thing and poured everything into weakening it, so I—”
“Wait, Lady Atanitas! Calm down, please calm down.”
“Do I look like someone who can calm down?!”
“You’ll collapse again like yesterday!”
Catherine tried to sit bolt upright, then went limp and sank back down.
She buried herself in the blankets and pillows and drew long breaths in and out.
“But hih, hachoo! I am clearly feeling fondness.”
“Hooooooooooooooo—”
“Ahem. What? Did you catch a cold too?”
“No. The tension just drained out of me all at once.”
He had braced himself for outright rejection. With the tension gone, divine power nearly spilled out. Still mortified by the spectacle he had made the night before, Karem let out a sigh that seemed to sink into the floor.
Then he carefully set the bowl aside and covered his face with both hands.
As the tension left, he felt his face burn scarlet.
“What? After that earnest confession, now you’re embarrassed and anxious?”
“Not regretting it is one thing, but looking back… it’s mortifying.”
“How do you think I felt hearing all of that?”
“I’m truly sorry about that.”
He had made someone already exhausted, out of sorts, and coming down with a cold faint. Karem bowed his head without excuse.
Face still covered, of course.
Catherine gave a short cough like a cold-stricken hamster and lightly patted the blanket covering her.
“As I said. I can’t be sure this is love. Receiving a confession like this is a first for me as well.”
“Yes.”
“But fondness beyond simple friendliness is definitely there.”
“Then the possibility isn’t zero.”
What. Caught off-guard by the sudden strike, Catherine lifted her head without thinking.
His eyes, as full of turmoil as the embarrassed face that had spoken the words, still looked straight at her.
“I don’t know what will happen from here, but my feelings won’t change first.”
So—
“I’ll do my best.”
“After all that, that’s what you come out with?!”
“But you haven’t fully accepted it yet. Starting with demands would be a bit much, wouldn’t it?”
“You already said everything. Too late! After that passionate confession in the kitchen? And that—”
There had also been someone who saw the whole thing from the start.
That cheeky elf, Narke Escarna?
Catherine shot upright as if she had just realized something terribly wrong.
“You little brat! Narke! That sneaky spy who hid and watched everything last night!”
“Narke?”
Karem recalled the moment they had laid Catherine in bed the night before.
‘K-Karem. You’re not planning to give up on those feelings, are you?’
‘That’s up to Lady Atanitas now.’
‘I-if she says she’ll reject the confession…?’
‘Unless I’m flatly turned down, I’ll keep trying. Damn, saying it out loud is kind of embarrassing.’
‘Th-then as your senior in that department, should I put in a word?’
‘Huh? Senior?’
‘Never give up on those feelings.’
Before leaving, Narke had neither stammered nor spoken in her usual timid voice.
A quiet, serious face free of worry or hesitation.
Only a faint bitterness lingered as she walked away.
But that was not what Catherine wanted to hear right now.
“She never said I had to keep it to myself.”
“…Really?”
“And I’m not a little kid anymore. You heard, right? Counting my past life, I’m already an adult. An adult.”
Karem grumbled with a touch of protest.
Catherine absently smacked her own forehead. With her head cooler, the events of the previous day returned one by one in sharp detail.
Many things had caused her to faint, but the decisive blow had been the shame of someone watching from start to finish—and the shocking revelation that he was a reincarnator.
Either one alone was staggering; both together?
No wonder she had collapsed in her current state.
“Maybe when I was still little, but I’m fully grown now, aren’t I?”
“Nonsense! You haven’t even had a coming-of-age ceremony, and you’ve lived less than half my years. What would a brat like you know? Do you think you’re the only reincarnator in the world?!”
“What?”
“In all this long time and this wide world, reincarnators may be rare, but do you really think you’re the only one?”
Put that way, Karem had nothing to say. Thinking about it, she was right.
This was a world with gods, magic, Sword Masters, undead, and ghosts.
“Right now the hero Fitzgerald who defeated the Demon King is recorded as a reincarnator who remembers his past life. Don’t go thinking you’re the only one with past-life memories. Among mages there are even reincarnators who swap bodies.”
“Seriously?”
“Very rare, but more common than past-life reincarnators.”
Of course, as she had said, their numbers were small.
Only a handful across the long history of Europa.
Body-swapping reincarnators were more numerous, yet still few.
Karem froze for a moment at the fresh yet shocking fact, then barely pulled himself together.
“…So does that mean you’ll stop calling me a little kid?”
“Not a chance. That mercenary bastard is still ‘mercenary bastard.’”
“Tough crowd.”
“Not a chance, so come sit here.”
Catherine weakly patted the bed.
Anyone could see she meant for him to come closer.
“Right. I can finally fulfill one of the things I’ve dreamed of since long ago.”
“A dream?”
“Yes. Tell me about your past life. The place you lived?”
“Uh… Earth? The Asian continent?”
“Earth? Was that naming sense a feature of your past life?”
With an excited, glowing expression, Catherine fired off endless questions about new knowledge and curiosities.
Politics, geography, nations, then clothing, cuisine, and other culture.
Karem’s knowledge was only the shallow bits gathered from novels, internet surfing, and personal experience—and a tiny fraction of that—but Catherine seemed delighted even so.
Naturally the topic drifted into history and military power.
“…What is that? You killed each other on that scale against your own kind? You people sound more like the Demon King’s army. The gentleman’s agreement is… what? That’s all you did? And the world is still fine? Why?”
Catherine was aghast.
“…Now that you mention it, yeah.”
Karem could not deny it.
Attached Materials
A picture drawn by ChatGPT.