WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ I Pulled Out Excalibur

Chapter 407

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Interlude, Tea Party (3)

Some say honesty is a virtue, but that does not mean honesty is always beautiful. By its very nature, honesty is like a sharp blade. Depending on the situation, it can wound the person across from you.

Honesty, sincerity, truth, genuine feeling.

Few words are as slippery and ambiguous as those.

I am sincere. I am being honest with you. I have hidden nothing and laid myself bare. I have shown you my heart.

Easy enough to say. But proving it is another matter entirely. Unless the other person can read minds, there is no way to truly know what lies beneath the surface. So how does one prove that they have always been genuine?

Through the actions taken up to this point.

Through what the other person sees when they look at you.

In the end, words matter less for what they say than for who is saying them. Seen that way, Najin had already proven himself long ago.

"Do you have the right to even speak of honesty?"

If that question were put to him, Najin would nod. And the people who knew him would not disagree. He had lived as someone honest.

"Mm."

And so.

"I am not in a romantic relationship with Merlin, but it is true that I have done things that would only happen between people in one."

The moment Najin said it plainly, Yuel and Dieta went silent. Dieta watched him with narrowed eyes. It would be a lie to say she was not disappointed, but she still needed to hear him out to the end.

If the person sitting across from her had been some nobody, she would have shoved her chair back and left. But the one seated there was Najin.

Dieta gave a small nod, telling him to continue.

"The thing the two of you are imagining, to put it bluntly, the final line, I have not crossed it."

The two of them quietly breathed a sigh of relief as Najin went on.

"That said, I do feel as though I am straddling a line. I have been crossing back and forth over the boundaries that ought to be kept between a man and a woman."

It was not that Najin did not understand. He simply lacked romantic feeling. That did not mean he was short on common sense. That was precisely why he had always kept a certain distance from the women who approached him.

With Yuel. With Dieta. The same applied to both.

He had never permitted them past the line he had drawn. He knew that kind of relationship would do neither side any good. Which left only one question.

Why had he allowed Merlin that closeness?

Before answering, Najin exhaled briefly. Then he reached out and closed his fist around empty air. Excalibur appeared before him.

"There is something I should tell you first."

"Why are you suddenly bringing out Excalibur..."

"You have probably already guessed this, but I do tend to be unusually unresponsive, do I not?"

That kind of thing, why is this person going so far and getting no reaction at all? Is something wrong with him?

At Najin's blunt words, Dieta swallowed awkwardly. She had thought something like that before. Beauty is subjective, yes, but even by objective standards, Dieta was exceptionally attractive. Whenever the beauties of the Continent were counted, she was always among the top five.

Most men would look as though they had won the whole world from a single smile from her, or their minds would start wandering in a certain direction.

Najin alone had shown not the slightest sign of that. No matter how much she had pushed, he had stayed completely unresponsive.

"......"

Yuel, the Warden of the Sealed City, was thinking something similar. A man and a woman sharing the same space, spending years together in a warden's office that was not even particularly large, and yet nothing had ever happened between them.

Yuel and Dieta glanced at each other.

A strange sense of common ground formed between them. Najin gave a wry smile and pointed at Excalibur.

"It is not that I have no desires. I did have them once. But it is closer to say that I stopped feeling them."

What did that mean? Both women looked at him. Najin continued.

"This is something I only learned recently."

Najin shared what he had discovered without hesitation.

His upbringing in the Underground City, how that background had led him to judge desire as an unnecessary element in achieving his purpose. And the resulting suspicion that Excalibur may have erased that desire from him.

There was also evidence to support the suspicion.

The great hero Arthur had likewise been someone who felt no such desire. Arthur had left no descendants. These facts backed up what Najin was saying.

"As you can see, the result is this."

Merlin pressed herself against Najin's chest. Yuel and Dieta's expressions soured, but Najin's face did not shift even slightly. To Yuel's Transcendent eyes, there was not a single change in Najin's body.

"Even in a situation like this, I feel nothing in particular. Merlin knows that, which is why she acts so freely around me. I suspect part of it is her testing me, something like, 'still nothing? what about this?'"

Najin pressed his palm flat against Merlin's face and pushed. He shoved her aside, then let out a short breath.

"It is only natural that the two of you are disappointed in me. Because I cannot answer the feelings you have shown me, simply because I lack romantic feeling, time keeps passing and nothing changes. It makes sense that you would feel frustrated."

On top of that, something like this had happened. The unease, the irritation, all of it made sense. He had not understood at first, but tracing it back one piece at a time, it all fit together.

That was why Najin had laid bare his flaw.

Something awkward to tell others, something that genuinely deserved to be called a flaw, a part of him that was missing. He disclosed it without holding anything back. Being honest with others, facing things head-on: that was what it meant to Najin.

"......"

Dieta's lips had been moving silently before she finally spoke.

"You still do not feel any romantic feelings. That is what you are saying?"

Najin nodded, and Dieta let out a long sigh. The tension around her eyes eased a little.

"So you are not actually in a relationship with Merlin-nim. And it is not that you are acting on desire either."

The way Dieta saw it, Merlin pressing against Najin probably felt to him like a pet curling up against its owner, nothing more. The way he had pushed Merlin aside just a moment ago gave her a rough sense of that.

"You have not crossed the line. That much is true, right?"

It was clear which line she meant. A kiss she could just barely let slide. Anything beyond that was clearly intentional.

"Yes."

"Alright. I believe you. You are not someone who lies. Then going forward, you also will not cross it? Meaning, until you are actually with someone."

It was not a situation where he wanted to cross it but could not. That was not what she was asking. Najin read Dieta's intent and nodded.

"My teacher warned me quite firmly that living like that would mean I would not die peacefully, so unless she is someone I am with, I have no intention of crossing any lines."

"What a fine teacher."

"I am not sure about fine, but a good teacher, yes."

Najin gave a small, dry smile. Dieta swept a hand across her face in a gesture of resigned disbelief. A sigh slipped out between her lips. Come to think of it, they were not even together, going through all of this point by point was almost funny.

Maybe it was exactly what Najin said. The frustration had built up.

When you show every sign you can and still get no reaction, you start to wonder. Am I really that unattractive? Without either of them fully realizing it, both Dieta and Yuel had taken a small hit to their pride.

Then to hear something like this on top of it, perhaps everything that had been accumulating had simply burst. That was how Dieta made sense of her own feelings.

"Still, it does feel better now that I have heard it."

Dieta gave a small laugh.

"It is not that I have no charm. It is that the Holy Sword Excalibur, of all things, has been suppressing your desires."

It was not that she lacked charm. Being recognized for that felt, absurdly, a little gratifying.

"Yes, exactly."

Najin sent Excalibur back into the air.

"When all of this is over, I will give you an answer then."

"Because you might be able to feel something real by then?"

Najin nodded, and Dieta laughed. Well, that was just the kind of person he had always been.

Someone who took the word sincerity seriously, who could be endlessly earnest even in the smallest things. That was what made him so appealing. The person Dieta had fallen for was exactly that.

"Alright. I understand."

She understood, but.

Dieta glanced at Yuel, who had stayed quiet throughout. As if sharing one thought, the two of them nodded at each other.

That was that and this was this.

Whatever Najin's lack of desire might be, Merlin's recent behavior still needed to be reined in. Fair competition required a proper agreement.

"Merlin-nim?"

"Hm? Me?"

"Let us have a word in private."

Yuel called Merlin over. Merlin was dragged away half-willingly by Dieta and Yuel, and when she finally returned, roughly an hour had passed.

2.

"I trust you will keep your promise, Merlin-nim."

"The Warden of the Sealed City says the same. Then, Najin, I will see you next time."

The two women left the office, with Merlin trudging back looking thoroughly worn out from whatever had been said to her. Both had dropped everything and rushed over, so they had their own affairs waiting.

Left alone in the office, Merlin dropped down beside Najin with a thud and sighed. Her expression was distinctly unhappy as she grumbled.

"Why are they bossing me around over something that's mine? Honestly, the nerve."

Still, she muttered.

"They're not wrong, either. I have been a bit of a nuisance to you lately."

"You were not particularly bothersome."

"...Is that right? No, wait. Be careful. Seriously. Sometimes the things you say are genuinely dangerous."

What did I even do.

"So."

Merlin glanced at him sideways.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"About what?"

"About my situation. You did not have to explain that you feel no desire or that something is off with you. If you had just talked about me, it would have solved the problem."

"That is true."

It was not wrong. If he had explained Merlin's circumstances, that she was unstable right now and needed someone to lean on, that something truly serious could happen if he pushed her away, the two of them would likely have understood without difficulty.

But Najin had said nothing about Merlin at all. When she asked him why, Najin looked at her as though she had asked a very strange question.

"That is not something you tell other people."

Najin said it plainly.

"That is Merlin's weakness, and something Merlin wants kept from others. Why would I tell anyone?"

"What you shared was also your weakness."

"It is a bit embarrassing, but so what? Those two were frustrated enough to come all this way."

They had confessed. They had shown their true feelings. Yet they had received no answer and could only wait. They had not forced a reply out of Najin, and they claimed to understand his situation, but the fact remained that one side had laid their feelings bare with nothing in return.

Then should not his side offer something equivalent to keep things balanced? That was how Najin saw it.

"...Regardless."

Merlin sighed.

"Picking out only the things that are impossible to hear and saying them straight, that is its own kind of talent."

"What do you mean by that..."

"Just. That."

Merlin lay down with her head on Najin's knee and looked up at him. Watching him read through his documents, she smiled softly.

I like you.

She did not say it aloud. She only mouthed the words. When Najin asked what did you just say, Merlin shook her head and played innocent.

"Nothing. I didn't say anything."

That was how that went.

3.

"Preparations are more or less done."

Najin rolled his shoulders, the Free Knight's coat draped over them.

"The things that needed doing on the Continent are finished. The reports are filed. Whether it is the Outland or the Continent, both sides are making their own preparations. So I think we can set out for the next destination now."

"Yeah, looks that way."

Everything on the Continent was done.

Everything that needed doing in the Outland was done as well.

That left one stage remaining.

"Shall we go."

Having traveled from the Continent to the Outland and experienced so much within it, Najin now took his first step toward the next stage. At the very edge of the Outland, standing before the Boundary Line that divided the Outland from Camlann, he steadied his breath.

"Onward."

Camlann, land of the Abyss.

That was where Najin was headed next.

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