* * *
Driven by curiosity, Ranshel dove into the passage eagerly.
“The flower… speaks.”
“It doesn’t. That’s a negative sentence.”
“The flower… doesn’t speak. It just… smells.”
“It spreads fragrance. Don’t reword it with easier words.”
Urgh.
Under the watchful eyes of his tiger-like teacher, Ranshel recited the text aloud with effort.
Then, it hit him.
“That’s different.”
“What is?”
“What you wrote on my hand earlier. It’s different from this.”
“…What is?”
“I mean, before—”
Scrape.
Zavad suddenly pushed back his chair and stood up.
“If you’ve got the energy to get distracted, I guess you’re doing just fine. From the next page onward, copy everything by hand and turn it in tonight.”
“Wait—what?!”
Ranshel was stunned by the sudden homework.
Zavad, with his training sword strapped to his waist, left without even glancing back.
Ranshel stared out the window, where dawn hadn’t fully broken yet, and groaned from the weight of his academic suffering.
Fortunately, before Ranshel lost his mind entirely, the Spartan-style dawn lessons came to a pause.
The time had come for him to finish his training and finally receive his certification.
Zavad, on the other hand, still had one semester left and remained a knight-in-training.
They would now, for the first time, physically part ways.
Not that they’d be far—both the Grand Temple and Seminary were in Lima, the capital—but still, things would change.
There’d be no more daily treks to attend to Zavad, and with that, the early-morning training sessions at his dorm came to an end.
Ranshel tried not to look too pleased.
“Master, even if I’m not around, you mustn’t skip meals, all right?”
“I am eating.”
“That’s a lie. You haven’t been eating at the dorm cafeteria at all.”
“The food there’s too sweet and salty. Fresh meat and vegetables are enough.”
“Please, we’ve talked about this…”
Ranshel held his forehead.
Zavad, always reckless with meals and picky with food, had only gotten worse after becoming a trainee knight.
He’d never had a sweet tooth, but now he avoided sugar completely.
The noble custom of afternoon tea had been replaced with post-meal workouts.
He rejected the provided meal plans entirely, eating meat from special suppliers without even a pinch of salt.
The salad?
No dressing.
‘Did I raise him wrong…?’
Every time Ranshel watched Zavad eat plain meat and raw vegetables like livestock feed, his heart ached.
He refused to consider such things proper meals.
How could anyone eat like that while still growing?
In Ranshel’s eyes, Zavad might as well be starving.
Worse, Zavad practiced intermittent fasting and often ate just once a day.
He claimed it kept his body light for training, but to Ranshel, it was painful to watch.
If only Zavad were thin or underdeveloped, Ranshel might have felt justified in intervening—but he was… thriving.
He had surpassed Ranshel in height, with broad shoulders and a thick chest.
Compared to Ranshel—who was agile by nature and struggled to put on weight—Zavad looked like someone carved from stone.
‘And he’s still not even an adult?’
He’d come of age in a year, but it still felt surreal.
How had he grown this much?
Ranshel already knew what Zavad would look like after growing up—he’d been spoiled by the game.
And yet… seeing it happen in front of him felt completely different.
Illustrations on a screen could never prepare him for this.
A flat image was nothing like a real person standing right in front of you, where you could see them from every angle, where their presence was inescapable.
“…Master.”
“What?”
He answered when called.
Turned his gaze when spoken to.
He was real.
This boy who used to fit inside a cabinet had always been by Ranshel’s side.
When Zavad couldn’t sleep, Ranshel would pat his blankets.
After a bath, he’d dry his hair and rub in fragrant oils.
His cheeks, once chubby with baby fat, had been so warm.
His long, slender hands—so soft.
None of that could be replicated through a screen.
Ranshel had spent years right beside this boy.
A strange melancholy settled over him.
Just earlier, he’d been so happy to finally get a break from Zavad’s brutal dawn training.
And yet now…
Maybe it was a premonition.
One day, when he’d wake up in a room still dark with early morning shadows… open a familiar door and be scolded for being late… stumble over words as he read the writing Zavad tapped out on a page—
One day, he would miss those moments with a painful, overwhelming longing.
It had taken a long time, but receiving the certification had been well worth it.
After submitting their documents at the entrance, Ranshel and Danie were soon officially hired as temple assistants and allowed entry into the sacred interior.
The temple steward greeted them with a bright smile.
The Grand Temple in Lima received countless visitors each day, but due to strict hiring standards, it constantly suffered from a staff shortage.
They were both immediately assigned to assist monks.
Danie supported female monks, so they were placed in completely different areas—which was actually for the best.
Gathering intel from multiple places was important, after all.
Ranshel changed out of his usual attire into the temple robe and followed his assigned guide.
As he walked past whitewashed walls, a serene chamber soon came into view, with an altar at its center.
Monks clad in garments embroidered with golden thread were deep in prayer—so unlike Ranshel, whose robe was little more than a plain white cloth.
“….”
Ranshel instinctively began to greet the others beside him but stopped.
Unlike the cheerful atmosphere outside—full of devout followers—the temple’s inner sanctum was stiflingly silent.
“Once you’ve washed your hands and feet with the purified water, you may begin your duties.”
Ranshel began his work immediately after receiving instructions from the disciple who had guided him to the sanctuary.
In truth, assisting the monks mostly amounted to menial labor, not much different from what he used to do at Pomel Castle.
The only real difference was this: whenever the bell at the central altar rang, everyone had to stop what they were doing and pray in unison.
While slicing bread for the monks, Ranshel would drop to his knees and blank out whenever the bell rang, then rise again with everyone else and continue slicing.
Even when mending a torn robe and threading a needle, the moment the bell chimed, he’d kneel, zone out again… and repeat.
That’s what the work was like—endless repetition.
“This is seriously annoying.”
Ranshel found himself missing Zavad just a little.
Sure, Zavad was demanding, sharp-tongued, and had no qualms about working his servants to the bone from dawn till night—but somehow, that still felt… preferable?
“…I probably shouldn’t be missing him.”
He’d just gotten used to it after being there so long.
Being Zavad’s personal attendant was never an easy role.
It’s just that Zavad was so pretty, Ranshel kept forgetting how grueling the labor really was.
“……”
Ranshel shook his head side to side and focused on his work again.
But once he’d grown fully accustomed to the routine and his hands moved on their own, a new concern emerged.
‘The sanctuary is too quiet.’
From his days working at Pomel Castle to his time in the academy dorms, Ranshel had always been someone who interacted freely with others.
Gaining useful information required at least a bit of rapport to get people talking.
* * *
