Let’s end it here.
That was what Vinny thought as he turned around and left without looking back.
And it was also at that mont that the Virtue panel sent a notification.
[Virtue 300]
[Current Virtue: 4437]
Right after that, whether it was because Vinny’s attention got caught by the Virtue prompt and he didn’t watch his step, or because he got tripped by sothing, or because his thoughts were too chaotic—
His foot slipped. His vision wobbled. In that dizzy, spinning whirl, he lost his balance and toppled downward.
He reflexively closed his eyes.
But it didn’t happen the way he imagined—he didn’t crash onto the cold ground the next second.
Not only that, that icy scent of roses and red roses that had been so distance away a mont ago now felt as if it were right in front of him.
“?!” Vinny snapped his eyes open and found an arm around his shoulder. Silver hair, smooth as satin, brushed across the tip of his nose, carrying a fragrance that made his mind go hazy.
Only then did Vinny realize that when his face was about to make intimate contact with the ground, Aesphyra had caught him in ti—wrapping an arm around his waist and pulling him against her.
And the soft place his head had ended up resting on was naturally—
“Y-you... let go of !” Vinny sprang up like he’d been electrocuted and hurriedly put distance between them.
A bashful flush covered his cheeks. Thinking back to the sensation that had co from behind his head, his whole body felt tingly and numb, like all the bones had been drawn out of him—he could barely even stand steady.
Th-this jerk.
Without her, he would’ve hit the ground just now. He would’ve kissed dirty soil and ended up covered in mud.
Aesphyra didn’t seem to care at all. More accurately, her gaze fell on the ground not far away. After only a brief pause, she walked over.
Watching this, Vinny suddenly realized sothing when he saw what she was looking at—then glanced at his own empty hands.
The chocolate he’d made... because he hadn’t been able to hold it tightly when he fell, and couldn’t spare the attention for it, had smashed hard against the ground, breaking into several pieces.
“Mm.” Seeing that, Vinny felt regret and a sting of pain. It was the first chocolate he’d ever made with his own hands. Sure, it looked awful, and the taste was probably... hard to describe, but it was still sothing he’d made himself. It had aning.
Besides—no kid thinks their mom is ugly, and no mom thinks her kid is ugly. Even if it was misshapen and looked like nothing, it was still his work, wasn’t it?
What a waste. It was smashed like this, and it had dirt on it. It was completely done for.
Just as Vinny was feeling that regret, he saw Aesphyra walk over, squat down, and do sothing that shocked him out of his mind.
Her pale, jade-white fingers picked up a piece of chocolate that even seed to have a bit of dirt on it. Without hesitation, she put it into her mouth and began chewing slowly.
It didn’t look like she was eating chocolate made by a beginner that had fallen on the ground and gotten dirty.
It looked more like she was carefully savoring so rare delicacy.
“?! You...?!” Vinny was so stunned he almost wondered if Aesphyra had been possessed.
This was too hard to wrap his head around.
Aesphyra—proud to the bone, with a severe cleanliness obsession, the destiny heroine who stood tall above everyone—actually squatted down and ate the piece of chocolate he made. The piece that looked like garbage, was rough and cheap, and had smashed on the ground and picked up dirt?!
Even if soone defeated her and demanded she eat sothing off the ground in exchange for sparing her life, with her pride she would’ve kicked it to pieces without a second thought.
In other words, behavior Aesphyra absolutely should not be capable of... was now happening right in front of Vinny.
The sight was so jaw-dropping that Vinny’s mouth fell slightly open, and he couldn’t say a single word.
“It tastes good. It’s delicious.” After eating several pieces, Aesphyra gathered the remaining fragnts into her hand and stood up. “For a beginner, Vinnia did very well. You’ve basically grasped the key points, and you even created your own unique style.”
“W-what are you doing?” Vinny watched her with a complicated expression.
“This chocolate is broken. If Vinny tried to give it to the person he wants to give it to, that person probably wouldn’t accept it either. Instead of wasting food, it’s better to let benefit.” Aesphyra took out a handkerchief and gently wiped the corner of her mouth—unclear whether it was chocolate or dirt.
“You...” Vinny lightly bit his lower lip, staring at the elegant, proper silver-haired girl in front of him. Her image didn’t match at all with the act of squatting on the ground to pick up broken chocolate and eat it. It was hard to believe soone like her would do that.
And she even praised it as delicious? He made that chocolate himself—did he not know what it tasted like??
Why... why did this jerk have to do things like this every ti he finally made up his mind??
Vinny lowered his head, staying silent, quietly clenching his fists.
“Then I’ll take the rest too~?” Aesphyra smiled. “But since I ate Vinny’s chocolate, I should give Vinnia so compensation. Here—then I’ll give Vinnia the chocolate I made.” As she spoke, Aesphyra took out the carefully prepared chocolate from earlier and offered it to Vinny.
“......” Vinny stayed silent, head down, blue bangs blocking his eyes.
“What do you think, Vinny?” Aesphyra tilted her head.
“Heh.” The blue-haired girl suddenly let out a cold laugh, then lifted her deep blue eyes. “Pretty damn high and mighty.”
“What?”
“Aesphyra... you really are soone who only ever thinks about yourself.”
“Isn’t that true??” Vinny stared straight into Aesphyra’s eyes, enunciating each word.
“When you’re in a bad mood, you co over to tease and ss with like I’m entertainnt. When you’ve played enough, when you’re tired of it, you can just neglect , ignore , whenever you want.”
“Like I’m so soulless doll. When it’s novel, you pick it up and play with it. When you’re not interested anymore, you toss it aside and never look at it again.” Vinny looked into those agate-bright violet eyes, speaking word by word.
“Doesn’t that count as high and mighty?!” Vinny gritted his teeth. “If you’re already not interested in , then why do things that make people misunderstand?!”
“Aesphyra—what the hell do you want?!”
Aesphyra didn’t speak.
She hated being questioned, but this ti was completely different.
She could feel it—Vinny’s voice held less indignation than helpless confusion, and fear of losing sothing. So unnad emotion had him completely unsettled.
Aesphyra fell silent, her gaze shifting slightly.
Hadn’t she been the sa?
When she saw Isatia pull Vinny away, even she had been frightened by her own feelings in that mont. She didn’t know what was wrong with her.
But that had nothing to do with Milian. With Aesphyra’s intelligence, she could tell at a glance Milian was a complete idiot. And with what she knew about Vinny, it wasn’t hard to guess it was a misunderstanding. She truly hadn’t taken that day to heart at all.
It was strange—when Isatia or Mirexia interacted with Vinny, her emotions would fluctuate. But with Milian and Shicodale, they wouldn’t, even though Shicodale was the closest to Vinny.
Maybe it was because those two were... small-minded in a way that didn’t really understand the world?
“Even if... even if I did sothing wrong, if I did sothing that made you unhappy—if there’s a misunderstanding—can’t you just say it?” Vinny pressed his lips together and suddenly lowered his head.
For so reason, through this entire conversation with Aesphyra, he was using a disguised voice—Vinnia’s voice.
Maybe because this way, he didn’t have to say these words as Vinny—he could say them wearing soone else’s face, soone else’s voice.
“Why... why do you have to use this kind of cold violence.” Vinny’s voice trembled a little. Clearly, with his personality, forcing himself to say all this out loud was already extrely difficult.
“Hot and cold—treating soone like that—do you think it’s fun?!”
.........
Aesphyra watched the blue-haired girl in silence. Head lowered, hands lightly clenched—she looked exactly like a wronged girl.
[Virtue 150]
[Current Virtue: 4587]
She wasn’t ignoring him on purpose.
Because lately, she had things she couldn’t figure out herself.
It really was unbelievable. Even Aesphyra found it unbelievable. But it still happened.
Especially since the other party was a boy. It completely overturned Aesphyra’s understanding of herself. For the first ti, she realized maybe she didn’t know herself as well as she thought.
And besides, the one she should like was obviously... or was it that she really was, like Vinny said, promiscuous?
She couldn’t understand it. They were clearly two completely different people.
She’d suspected a possibility long ago, and because of that she’d done many tests—including observing behavior during the school-beauty ranking contest, along with a series of observations and probes.
The result was that she found many tiny habits were different between the two, and those kinds of subtle habits were ford in everyday life. They couldn’t be changed on purpose. He wouldn’t even notice them enough to deliberately disguise them.
But if they were different people, why did they feel so similar to her?
Her intuition told her they might be the sa person, but her rational mind told her they couldn’t possibly be the sa person.
On top of that, she didn’t understand what was wrong with her at all. Her orientation had always been normal.
Yeah—crooked in a perfectly normal way.
But now...
Why?
This was perhaps the most painful, most baffling question Aesphyra had faced across two lives.
She couldn’t understand how she’d beco like this, what it was about him that attracted her.
Yet when she asked herself, Aesphyra realized there were too many answers.
She didn’t hate his stubbornness and sharp tongue. She didn’t hate his tsundere nature and how easy he was to read. She didn’t hate how he was always bickering with her. She didn’t hate how he kept claiming he was evil and vicious, yet his heart was pure. She didn’t hate how he stayed kind even when the world maligned and sared him. She didn’t hate how he was timid most of the ti, yet always stepped forward at critical monts. She didn’t hate how he spoke harshly to her on the surface, saying aningless cruel lines, but secretly cared about her...
She didn’t hate...
Too much.
He was the complete opposite of the people who acted like they cared about her on the surface while not caring at all—just putting on a show. He would say “I hate her more than anyone in the world,” but behind the scenes, for her safety, he had thought through every possible thod, running around and wearing himself out.
In daily life he acted like a hedgehog, pretending to be so villainous young master, but once you actually got close, you’d realize he was easier to understand than anyone. That posture was just a hard shell he wore to protect himself.
Aesphyra realized in shock that at so point, every feeling she had toward Vinny had turned positive. The mont she asked herself why she didn’t hate him, she could list a mountain of reasons—including the small, adorable things in everyday life.
Human feelings were the one thing you couldn’t lie to yourself about.
After realizing all that, Aesphyra fell completely silent. She didn’t know what face to use when confronting Vinny anymore. Those days, even soone as “all-purpose” as her didn’t know how to face him.
But she only understood today—
He was just as lost as she was.
No—he was even more lost than she was.
Because he was soone who had always been afraid of losing.
“Still not saying anything.” Seeing Aesphyra’s reaction, Vinny pressed his lips together and let out a dry laugh. “As expected—this was just you running into a doll you found kind of interesting, passing the ti.”
As he spoke, Vinny turned around, forcibly calming his trembling voice—because if he faced Aesphyra again, she’d see it.
How pathetic.
He actually still...
Whatever. The one crying was Vinnia. What did that have to do with him, Vinny?
“Take your hot-and-cold attitude and go use it to rinse tripe! This Young Mas—this young lady is sick of it!” After saying that, Vinny lifted his foot to leave, but his hand was grabbed again.
And this ti, the grip was clearly more domineering. It yanked him around in one swift motion.
When he turned, he saw that moonlit, dreamlike, transcendent face right up close.
“Y-you—” Vinny was caught completely off guard and hurriedly raised a hand to wipe at his eyes, but before he could do anything, Aesphyra lightly pinched his chin.
“Vinnia... you want to know my feelings, don’t you?”
“Then I’ll tell you right now.” As she spoke, Aesphyra’s face kept drawing closer, her voice saturated with seduction and ambiguity. “With action.”
Aesphyra was much shorter than Vinny, but the gap in their presence made it feel like Vinny was the small one being suppressed.
“Eh... eh—?!” Vinny’s brain instantly crashed.
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