“We’re here.”

At those words, he looked properly ahead and saw a clearing far smaller than Vincent’s room. Vincent, who had not known such a place existed in this neighborhood, let his eyes sparkle as though he had discovered a secret hideout.

Adele set Vincent down on the ground the way one would set down a piece of luggage.

“Th, thank you.”

“You’ve memorized the whole route, right? From now on, run here every day.”

“What?”

Adele looked up at the bewildered Vincent with an expression that seemed to say, easy, isn’t it?

“The goal is to make it here in 10 minutes while carrying me on your back. It’ll probably take 15 years, but……”

The rest of her words trailed off, but they reached Vincent’s ears clearly. Yet perhaps because the wall was too high, Vincent did not feel his pride wounded at all. His heart simply pounded with anticipation for what lay ahead.

Adele had found this place purely by chance.

She would never have discovered it if she had not been running around doing physical training near the construction site where she worked.

She watched Vincent moving about and taking in the training ground, and thought to herself.

‘This is hopeless.’

How on earth had someone who right now looked incapable of even properly lifting a wooden sword grown into such a skilled swordsman in the future?

Were it not for the clothes he wore and his well-groomed hair, it would have been hard to believe Vincent was the only son of a noble family. He was that frail.

His scrawny limbs and hunched shoulders said as much. It meant he had not been eating well and had spent his days walking on eggshells.

The arrogance particular to children of nobility was ingrained throughout his bearing, yet there was a clumsiness to it, as though he were simply imitating his father.

Should she find food and bring it to him? Adele fell into thought as she looked at Vincent’s bony frame.

When in reality, the one struggling with hardship was Adele herself. Or more precisely, the nameless sorcerer who was temporarily looking after her.

“Don’t they feed you at home?”

At Adele’s question, Vincent’s face flushed red. It had only been a guess, but it seemed it was true.

“Steal something from the kitchen then.”

“What?”

“If you’re that thin, you’ll collapse during training.”

Vincent nodded at Adele’s sincere advice. Unlike when he was fully grown, he had not yet become completely insufferable, which was a relief.

Adele got to the point with her pupil, who was waiting for her next words.

“The first thing you’ll learn is concealment.”

“Concealment?”

Adele let out a sigh at the harrowing situation from just moments ago.

She had gone to the trouble of thinking about raising a villain into a decent adult, and now his father of all people was threatening to ruin everything.

‘If our villain ends up going down the wrong path, are you going to take responsibility for it!’

That said, she could not exactly do away with Vincent’s father.

If a child lost their guardian, the shock could be even greater and send them further astray. And it was not right, emotionally speaking, to teach the small child to strike first before getting hit.

So there was no choice but to make him hide.

“When something dangerous happens, you need to hide. Now, watch me carefully.”

Adele closed her eyes. Then she cleared her mind and began to align the power surrounding her with her environment. Just as she felt as though she and the world were becoming one, something astonishing happened before Vincent’s eyes.

“H, huh?”

Adele was clearly present in front of Vincent. Yet unless one focused hard and looked carefully, her presence was so faint it was easy to miss.

Even as Adele walked right beside him, he could not immediately catch her movements.

“It’s a technique for erasing my presence. With this, you can hide well and run away well.”

Before he knew it, Adele was speaking from behind Vincent. Startled by the voice suddenly coming from behind him, Vincent spun around. There stood Adele with her hands clasped behind her back, having revealed herself at some point without him noticing.

For a brief moment, the air of an adult in their thirties seemed to emanate from her, and Vincent rubbed his eyes and looked again.

Before Vincent stood nothing but a chubby-cheeked little child.

“……Where on earth did you learn something like that, and what do you even use it for?”

“Hmm, hide-and-seek?”

Vincent chuckled at the thought that this small child played hide-and-seek too. He had thought she had no interest in such things. She might be more innocent than he had assumed.

The catch being that it was hide-and-seek with enemies whose lives were on the line. Vincent, who had not the faintest clue of the truth, looked at the cute child before him and steeled his resolve.

“Alright! I’m going to do it no matter what!”

– – –

“Layla, the kingdom will fall soon. Come to me.”

“Vincent. Please don’t say such things. I cannot abandon Rohide.”

Adele stood far from the secret meeting place, listening to the two of them talk, and thought to herself.

‘They’re having a grand time.’

When in the end, the ones dying in their fight are the enemy soldiers and our own soldiers alike. Adele sneered inwardly like that and kept tapping the ground with her foot.

It was absurd that no one paid any attention to what actually mattered.

If she said this to the queen, she would shed tears and apologize over and over again. In truth, whether she apologized or cried or did neither made little difference to Adele. Because there was nothing she could do about it.

The problem was the king.

The probability that the king, who held the queen dear, would immediately have Adele’s head was close to 100%.

She was an absolutely necessary person for victory in the war against the enemy nation, yet the king behaved like a man consumed by ‘love.’ If he found out that the queen was secretly meeting Vincent in a place like this, he would have Adele executed without a second thought for the kingdom being put in danger.

He repaid anyone who touched his woman with death. In some circles, people spoke of the king’s attitude as impressive and thrilling.

Adele did not.

Was it right for a king to wield power in such a way? Whether he was a wonderful lover…… she was not even sure about that, but he was certainly far from being an admirable king.

Adele had always thought so. It seemed she had not always been this way, that she had once harbored the foolish dream of conquering the world, but having tasted too much of the world’s bitterness, she had let it all go.

She leaned against a tree and sighed.

If the king found out about this meeting, he would surely feel deeply betrayed by the queen. It was obvious he would lock himself in his spacious room alone and set the mood with strong whiskey. If he smashed the bottle and acted violently as though seized by madness, it would only be the maidservants who suffered.

The king would throw the atmosphere of the court into chaos and sink into deep anguish over whether he should confine the queen so she could not go anywhere. Once this deep anguish came to an end, something would follow. Namely, cutting off Adele’s head.

If this meeting were discovered, the maidservants, Adele, and perhaps even the castle gatekeeper who had let the queen out would all suffer.

“They really are having a grand time.”

How sorrowful it was to have no power. Adele’s death would be used as a wake-up call to make the queen more cautious……

As Adele thought that far and was clicking her tongue inwardly, Vincent’s voice reached her again.

“What is there to like about such a worthless fellow?”

It was a wretched, pathetic thing to say, dripping with jealousy.

Yet Adele found herself nodding without realizing it. As he said, King Rohide was a worthless fellow. Because he was someone who had every possibility of cutting off the head of a knight dragged along by orders against her will.

She briefly wondered whether it was all right to sympathize with the king of an enemy nation, but what did it matter. This meeting today was a secret rendezvous. Once the two parted, what had happened now would be as though it never occurred.

So Adele’s inward sympathy would likewise be as though it never occurred.

Adele glanced back. She was far enough away that she could only catch fragments of their conversation, so she could not see their faces clearly.

Even so, the man standing in the moonlight looked quite beautiful.

Queen Layla in tears, pleading with Vincent to stop, and him wiping away those tears. In a way, the two of them almost looked like lovers.

Did Queen Layla know? That her careless actions had Adele’s life hanging in the balance. And that she was fanning the flames of Vincent’s hope.

With her head in the clouds, she would never know. Not before, not now, not after.

Never.

Then what of that man?

Perhaps because Adele was staring so openly, Vincent raised his head and directed his gaze toward her. His eyes were sending a signal telling her to stop looking.

But Adele met his gaze with an insolent stare that said, ‘And what exactly are you going to do about it?’

In the middle of the night, the strange battle of wills between the two continued for some time.

– – –