WeTried Translations

Translator: Botanica

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◈ Academy's Pure Love Dark Knight ◈

Chapter 119

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Episode 119. We Fight, But We Also Love.

* * *

White Wolf, Shadow Fang worked just as well as it had back at the grade exam.

"Phine, it's just the two of us again, like last time."

"..."

Darkness enveloping everything around.

A void no one else could reach, my own inner world, itself.

I'd thought about this before, what kind of life would I have lived if not for my Phine?

Would my heart have broken and snapped long ago, would I have died out like a fading flame in a cold world with no hope in sight?

"You remember, right? No one outside can see in here."

If Phine hadn't been consumed by wrath, if she'd still been rational, she might have been able to block my attack.

But I'd grown a lot stronger too, from fighting Head with my life on the line.

"Not going to answer me? That's a little sad."

I had a feeling that if I fought the current Phine, I might actually be able to win. But if we really did fight, I'd let her win.

Pride was something I could throw away as many times as it took for a warm, cozy feeling like love.

After all, in love, the one who loves more is the one who loses.

'Her main-heroine assets are seriously bi-…. no, they're downright ferocious.'

Watching Phine, wearing nothing but her glass helmet, I tried to find my composure again, but even so, she kept dragging my eyes right back to her.

Maybe it's because I've got a poster of Phine as the Saintess up on my wall back in reality. This is way too stimulating. Turns out it's true what they say, the taste you already know is the scariest kind.

'I never even glance twice at other female characters normally, but I guess Phine really is the exception.'

I'd already fallen in love with a game character, and kept my distance from real women because of it.

When there was someone inside my monitor who loved even my burn scars, why would I ever bother with reality?

I had a wife inside my computer, and imaginary kids besides.

Last time, just from her body, I hadn't realized it was my Phine. To begin with, she was from a different point in time than the her I knew.

At minimum five to ten years. That's the gap in time between <Knight Heart> and <Black Heart>.

Going by the imperial calendar, that's probably about right.

"Remember? You called me a pervert right here, once."

Because I'd memorized her measurements from back when she was the Saintess, I'd been buried under my own preconceptions and failed to recognize her.

That she'd have gotten bigger than that to begin with just didn't make sense to me.

Honestly, anyone but me probably wouldn't have recognized her either. Ah, I think I'm about to get another nosebleed. Damn it.

"This time too, huh, only the helmet's left…."

Phine Gransia, wearing only her glass helmet, was walking steadily toward me, footsteps echoing.

Her wolf eyes had turned as red as blood.

Probably from the apostle's ability doing that to her.

They'd been something like the mid-bosses I had to get through on the way to the Heroic Cult's Demon Kings, so I already had some idea of their abilities.

This was exactly why I'd told her to be careful. Guess she's got a stubborn streak like mine, refusing to listen to anyone no matter what.

The kind of personality that thinks and acts entirely on its own, arbitrary and self-righteous.

"Phine, even so, putting up dozens of glass walls all over the palace was a bit much."

The slight resemblance between us made me laugh, unbidden. Even if it's a bad trait, having something in common with the person you love isn't so bad.

Plenty of people fall out of love over the smallest things. Compared to that, this counted as a reward.

Even using Old Thought in my room, dozens of glass walls had surrounded the place and blocked my escape, which was why I was late. She really had been thorough about keeping me locked up.

"A captive pure love has its charms, but I'll always get out, Phine."

"..."

We shared a mana circuit, so I could sense her location instinctively. Our lives weren't linked, but we were close enough to share a heartbeat.

"If you're angry, let's fight it out and talk it through."

"Licht.."

No matter how much the white wolf sulked and raged, it was only ever cute. There was nothing more to it than that.

"That's the answer I've settled on, Phine."

Back when she was the Nameless Saintess, I could love her freely,

since she was, in the end, nothing more than a game character. There was no harm in pouring my feelings out one-sidedly.

But now, because I'd come into the game myself, it was hard to think of her as just a fictional person anymore.

I hated the idea of someone being mocked for marrying or dating a guy like me, with these severe burn scars, and I thought this had been the best way to handle it.

"Come here, I'll hold you tight. No matter how much you hurt me."

I couldn't let my own shallow feelings about love decide who she was for her, or strip away the color that made her who she was.

What was pure love, anyway, to begin with? I matched my pace to hers and stepped forward.

"I can put up with plenty of your whining, Phine."

The Black Knight and the White Knight.

Shadow and glass.

Even if we were bundled up in traits so opposite you could call us polar opposites, even if our stations, commoner and princess, couldn't have been more different,

even if Erasure of Knowledge stole our memories and the time we'd shared together was forgotten,

wasn't being able to love again, despite all that, what pure love really meant?

"..."

"It'll feel a little suffocating, but you'll have to bear with it."

I pulled Phine into a tight embrace, pressing down hard enough that she couldn't struggle free. Even after I'd caught her, she was still using her glass magic, and

"..Ngh."

she cut into my back with shards of glass. I felt the flesh-tearing pain and the lukewarm warmth of my own blood.

'The Apostle of Wrath's ability has a time limit.'

It was better than Phine attacking someone else, or bringing the cave down. She had such a soft heart, this would definitely hurt her once it was over.

I'm a Black Knight. A pure-love Black Knight, no less.

Not some extraordinary hero, just a knight who'd do anything for Phine Gransia's happiness.

If someone had to get hurt, at least let it be me.

"L, Licht.. let go.."

"No thanks. Naughty little wolf."

Why was she so calm even in the grip of wrath? I'd expected her to scream or lash out more. It seemed her heart really was empty inside, after all.

"Why do you always.. do this.."

"Because I'm your Black Knight, and no one else's, Phine."

Could I really win over the hollowed-out heart of the platinum wolf? Probably not easily. But like the motto I always went around repeating,

"Just stay still like this for a little while."

I'd do my best. Even if I couldn't love her, I could at least stay by her side and protect her.

Without loosening my arms from around her, I pulled our bodies even closer together.

"Licht.. I.. I'm just so angry.."

"Why are you angry?"

Just in case, so Phine wouldn't get hurt by any stray magic, I was fine with letting my back take however many wounds it needed to. I owed her that much, as payback for not recognizing her last time.

Our breaths mingled at a distance close enough to touch. Our body heat, hot enough to feel like we'd become one.

"Because Licht.. didn't kiss me last time…."

She'd started bringing up something shocking. Was it her anger making the feelings she'd bottled up come spilling out?

"I read it in a book…. In the book, that's all it took…."

"..."

Phine was letting loose feelings she'd kept bottled up, bristling like a hedgehog with its quills up. Just how much did she trust romance novels as gospel? They say the whole point of knowledge is putting it into practice, but this was taking it way too far.

"They all gave in.. they all treated her so carefully.."

Clink. The glass swords cutting into my back shattered. It seemed the attack had stopped. I no longer felt anything like the searing pain of being branded by fire.

"Licht was bad.. the princess.. is angry.."

Hmph. She even let out a little huff, showing off just how cute she could be. Even though it was hardly the moment for it, the corners of my mouth curled up anyway.

"Let's do it just once.. I want to know if it really tastes like lemon…."

My heart started pounding hard enough to feel like an engine turning over, so loud I couldn't tell if it was mine anymore.

"I'm curious.. Licht."

The wolf's eyes shifted from red back to gold, and even with her glass helmet still on, she rubbed its mouthpiece against me, trying to kiss me.

* * *

There was a topic that gigolo bastard and I once argued over until dawn.

'If you love someone, can you love even their bad sides?'

A topic that had set the game community on fire. A poll thread even sprang up over it, racking up hundreds of comments, and

"This is still going strong. Didn't think it'd stay hot for this long."

Countless players had cited their own successful routes as examples, some even writing out long explanations.

"I'm against it. How could you love even someone's bad side?"

"What? Isn't that obviously right, though? Loving someone's bad side too is what pure love is, Gi-seok."

Kwon Gi-seok, thoroughly calculating as always, took the opposing side. Bad habits ought to be fixed from the start, he said, and that was what real love looked like.

"So you're saying I should gratefully eat whatever poison our lady duchess hands me? Lee Suhyun?"

I agreed with that to some extent. But there was one difference,

"To some extent."

"You're seriously crazier than me. Why the hell would you even eat it?"

I think you fight because you love someone. Real life isn't a fairy tale, after all. It can't just be an endless string of happy days.

"Well, if the person you like almost collapses from eating poison, wouldn't even that ice-cold duchess of yours reconsider? You gigolo bastard."

That's exactly why you can't force your own idea of what's ideal onto someone else. Everyone has their flaws, and pure love means loving even those.

Just like Phine Gransia had, you could go so far as to lock someone up. Whether that counted as pure love or not was a separate question entirely.

"Is it really okay to change someone however you like just because you like them?"

"If it's a bad trait, then yeah, you should change it, Suhyun."

Changing someone unconditionally isn't the right answer. At the very least, you have to respect the opinion of the person you love.

"But what if that person doesn't want to change?"

I cast my vote on the thread for the side saying 'you should love even the bad sides' and kept talking.

"That's what I think, Kwon Gi-seok."

The number ticked up by one, and I'd taken the exact opposite stance from Northern Grand Duchess's Husband. If you love someone, you have to love who they truly are.

"If the person you love is stuck in the dark, saving them and pulling them toward the light isn't a bad thing either."

That was something I'd realized thanks to that stalemate of his. Guess this guy just thinks differently from me. Can't seem to shake that ice-cold personality of his.

"But…. I think looking for the light switch together, while you're still down there in the dark, is closer to what pure love really is."

People say pure love means being happy, but more than that, isn't pure love loving even your partner's faults and trying to fix them together?

"You get angry sometimes because you don't line up, you fight sometimes too. That's probably what the feeling of love is."

If there were no feelings between two people to begin with, there'd be nothing to fight over. Indifference is always the scariest thing of all.

I finished my point with a thumbs-up emote.

* * *

It seemed like her wrath had eased for a moment, so I let go of the embrace, and now my Phine had even taken off her helmet.

"Licht.."

I hadn't seen this coming. The white wolf slowly closed the distance between us again.

"Treat me.. as someone precious, someone special.. differently from everyone else."

The movements of a hunter stalking a kiss. If I got caught again like this, her sheer strength would make it impossible to break free.

Think. Think. I couldn't just let myself kiss her like this.

'If we're going to do this, it has to be with a clear head.'

The right way was to raise the affection level to 50 percent, get formal permission to date, and do it after that. At a low number like 2 percent, this just wasn't something that should happen.

It was right to do it only once she truly understood the feeling of love. Right now, she was confusing obsession with love.

If that was the case….

"Phine, bear with just this for now."

If a kiss was what she wanted, then all I had to do was satisfy that much. I quickly flipped up my visor, exposing my face.

I pressed my own thumb against my lips like a stamp,

"Ah.. nn."

Press. Then pressed the same thumb against Phine's lower lip. It was too vague to even call an indirect kiss, really. I'd just touched both our lips with a finger, nothing more.

"This.. is a kiss..?"

Honestly, no. Any kid passing by would say it wasn't even a peck. But there was nothing else I could do. I'm hopeless when it comes to relationships, practically a eunuch about it.

A coward who couldn't even manage a proper kiss with any atmosphere, unlike Dennis or Baek-Mokryeon.

"Tingly."

I felt the same thing, like a jolt of electricity shooting up from my thumb, and the soft, plush sensation traveling up through my fingertip.

So this is how soft a woman's lips are. For a moment, it felt like time had stopped, and

This wasn't even a real kiss, so why was my face burning up like this? The faint scent of roses spreading through the air stirred up my whole brain.

"..Licht did it."

All we'd done was touch each other's lips with a finger. But with those words, Phine swayed and collapsed.

"Phine?"

I couldn't help but panic. It wasn't even like I'd stolen her first kiss, not really. Was the shock really that big a deal?

"Phine?! Snap out of it!!"

I barely managed to catch the white-haired girl before she fell backward. Thankfully unhurt, a single wolf who knew nothing of love fit neatly into my arms.

"Heheh.. Liiicht.."

She was even talking in her sleep, as if she were having some pleasant dream.

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