Swish.
I straightened my bent knees and slowly rose to my feet.
It was simply the motion of standing up.
But that single, simple act weighed heavily on the air inside the restaurant.
A massive shadow rising steadily.
Over the dining table.
Over the chairs.
Over Kara.
Finally reaching Kairon, the overwhelming mass engulfing the young master’s entire body.
“......!”
Kairon’s gaze traveled from my waist to my chest, then climbed much higher before reaching the tip of my chin.
Eyes that only met mine when he tilted his head back far enough to strain his neck.
My shoulders were broad enough to block Kairon’s vision, and my downward gaze was as cold as perpetual snow on a mountain peak.
An oppressive pressure, as though a colossal mountain range had risen before his eyes.
“Th-that sav— no, that member of the revered tribe...!”
The escort knights tensed up, instinctively placing their hands on their sword hilts.
Even then, Count Eisen did not forget caution.
Truly the young master’s direct guards.
Their training showed.
Cold sweat began to trickle down Kairon’s cheeks.
I scratched the back of my neck as I looked down at him.
My gaze fixed on the crown of the boy’s head, far below me.
‘From this angle... he’s really small.’
Kairon was seventeen.
Considering he was still in his growing years, he might have been average for his age.
It only seemed that way because he was being compared to Kara, who happened to be on the taller side even by the original story’s setting.
Moreover, he was supposed to be on the taller side after finishing his growth.
‘But I grew too big.’
A height approaching two meters.
And a body that grew even more massive when my blood boiled.
At age three, I had beheaded a wolf with an axe.
‘Of course, even I don’t know how I did it, looking back now.’
At age eight, I had beheaded a snow bear together with a wolf.
Before adulthood, I had sprinted across a snowfield with deep, sinking snow, arrows lodged in my body, while carrying my father—who was even bigger than me—in a princess carry.
After that, I had fought life-and-death battles against barbarians like myself in the war against the Blood Fang Tribe.
And this unrealistic, muscular giant—having survived and been forged, no, refined—made any tall person look like a small child before him.
How much more so for a young master who still had growing left to do?
I didn’t feel the need to exert any force at all.
Simply by standing there, I was already making the boy before me feel an “insurmountable wall.”
Kairon’s red pupils shook violently.
A chaotic gaze mixing fear, bewilderment, and the misery of his own puniness.
Watching him like that, my lips trembled like crazy.
‘No. If I laugh here, it won’t look cool.’
To hide my trembling lips, I whipped my head around and bit down hard.
At that, Kairon flinched, his shoulders trembling.
He seemed to take my action as disregard or contempt.
“......Let’s go.”
Kairon’s voice trembled slightly.
The young master could no longer look at me, or at Kara.
He simply ran out of the restaurant as if fleeing.
“Y-Young Master! Please wait for us!”
The flustered escort knights scrambled after him.
*Bang!*
The restaurant door closed, and silence flowed again.
In the spot where a minor commotion had swept through.
I heard the footsteps fading beyond the closed door and let out a snicker.
It was then.
“Ah, my mask.”
Kara muttered flatly.
Her gaze was no longer on Kairon’s vanished back or on me.
It was scanning the empty floor.
“The one Granny Baba gave me as a gift... where did it go?”
I had definitely taken it off and given it to him when he coughed earlier.
I didn’t get it back.
To be exact, Kairon had taken it and left.
Clutching it tightly and preciously, as if claiming spoils of war.
‘Would you look at this guy?’
I clicked my tongue inwardly.
Was he trying to take some trace of the woman he fell for at first sight?
Or did he panic and run off clutching it on impulse?
Either way, Kara didn’t care.
“What, the little brat took it? What a waste.”
Kara shrugged without regret and turned her head to look up at me.
There wasn’t a speck of curiosity or regret regarding another man in those eyes.
They were filled only with worry and affection for me, her husband.
The original story’s “fated love” was nothing but Kairon’s delusion and a tragic one-sided love.
I could reconfirm that Kara had not a shred of romantic feeling for Kairon in the original story or now.
“Barg, are you okay?”
“Huh?”
“You bit your lip hard because you were angry earlier. It’s bleeding.”
Kara carefully reached out and traced my lips.
I must have bitten too hard trying to hold back my laughter.
A red drop of blood formed on the tip of her white finger.
“......”
Kara gazed at the blood drop for a moment, then brought it to her own lips with a strange expression.
*Smooch.*
She licked my blood and applied it to her lips.
Like lipstick, my red trace stained her lips.
“......Kara?”
When I called out in surprise, she smiled bashfully and wrapped her arms around my neck.
“It tastes like blood.”
She stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips between my cheek and ear.
*Smooch.*
A soft and warm sensation.
And a low voice whispering by my ear.
“You don’t need to be jealous. Don’t worry. Noona only has eyes for our Barg.”
My heart dropped with a thud.
That was my wife for you.
Kara had already noticed that though I acted calm on the outside, I was bothered inside by the brat’s appearance.
So she was confirming it through her actions.
I pulled Kara’s waist tight and whispered in her ear.
“I know. It’s the same for me.”
We stood like that for a moment, feeling each other’s body heat.
I couldn’t feel the gazes inside the restaurant at all.
In this moment, it felt like we were the only two people in the world.
“Ahem, ahem!”
Of course, that was before the tactless sound of a dry cough.
I let out a sigh of relief and sat down.
Across from me, Count Eisen was sighing with a troubled expression.
“Whew... I suppose my little joke went too far.”
“You deliberately delayed the introduction, didn’t you? Realizing I wanted to mess with him.”
As I seated Kara and then sat down myself, asking as if pressing him, Count Eisen adjusted his glasses and smiled thinly.
“Did I get caught?”
“......”
“I’ve served him since he was young... so sometimes I feel like teasing him. It was my first time seeing him so flustered, so I just couldn’t help myself.”
Mischief played at the corners of his eyes.
A stiff administrator.
Of course, we had already seen each other’s unsightly sides in the carriage, but I had thought he was at least a strict nobleman who valued etiquette above all else.
He unexpectedly had a human side.
‘This guy, he secretly enjoys this kind of thing.’
I snickered and resumed my meal.
But a corner of my heart wasn’t entirely at ease.
I asked casually.
“But will it be alright? He’s the young master of a grand duke’s house; won’t there be repercussions for sending him off like that?”
“It will be fine.”
Count Eisen calmly took a spoonful of stew.
“I was the one in charge of the young master’s education. No one can find fault with my teaching methods. And... sometimes, a shock like that is necessary.”
Deep pride seeped from the teacher’s voice.
Confidence in the disciple he had taught.
But my expression hardened bitterly.
‘...So it was pride.’
Memories of the original story flashed by.
Despite receiving Eisen’s pride-filled education, Kairon had eventually fallen into the swamp of inferiority, jealousy, and obsession, abusing Kara and transforming into a monster.
And the end result was.
Eisen’s tragic end, taking an assassin’s blade meant for him while cleaning up the atrocities committed by the monster he had created and mending relations with his enemies.
I stared at the empty space where Kairon had vanished.
‘The disciple you made ended up killing you.’
Of course, the future was changing now because I was involved, but the brat’s nature itself probably hadn’t changed.
When my expression darkened, Kara, who was beside me, scooped plenty of meat onto her spoon and held it to my lips.
“Say ah. The meat’s getting cold.”
“......Huh?”
I snapped back to my senses and reflexively ate the meat.
The warm, juicy taste of meat spread through my mouth, washing away the bitterness.
Kara was looking at me with worried eyes.
‘Right. The original story is just the original story.’
This time is different.
I’m here.
Kara is here, smiling.
I chewed the meat in my mouth noisily and grinned.
‘Well, if he charges at me without getting his head on straight at the academy too... then I’ll have to properly show him the bitter taste of adulthood. Since he’s still an unripe brat, I’ll let it slide for now.’
* * *
At the same time.
In a corner of the alley outside the restaurant.
In a space where the escort knights had formed a human wall to block outside gazes.
Inside, Kairon was crouched down, roughly wiping his reddened eyes with his sleeve.
“Hic... Damn it...!”
The young master shedding tears on a main street.
And unable to hide the sounds, at that.
Was it simply because his first love was a married woman?
Of course, that reason was also correct.
But a more fundamental and desperate despair had overwhelmed him.
The object of his admiration.
Since childhood, Kairon had admired the strong warriors of the north, especially the legendary chieftain “Gorgon.”
The man who had come closest to being the “Khan” that Count Eisen, his teacher since childhood, had always praised tirelessly.
That man from the heroic tales he had heard from Count Eisen.
A mountainous physique.
Strength to shatter rocks.
Overwhelming might.
That was the completed form of the man Kairon dreamed of becoming.
But what about the reality of himself?
Though similar in height to his peers, no matter how much he moved his body, his slender frame refused to build muscle.
He was born with sword talent, but it was far from the “destructive strength” he desired.
But that man he had just seen, Barg.
He was the very image of “Gorgon’s youth” that Kairon had only ever imagined, having never seen it in reality.
Overwhelming physique.
A wild spirit that could be felt with every breath.
And beside him was Kara, the very ideal woman he had fallen for at first sight.
It was a double blow.
“Damn it...!”
The “ideal man” he had so desperately wanted to become had already claimed the “ideal woman” he had fallen for at first sight.
A perfect sense of defeat.
The helplessness and inferiority he felt when comparing Barg’s massive body to his own puny frame clawed at his chest.
“Just you wait...”
Kairon wiped away his tears and raised his head.
Fierce resolve settled in his red eyes.
Was it jealousy?
No.
It was the survival instinct, the fighting spirit of a male.
An instinct humans possessed even before they could use their two hands.
“I... I’ll grow stronger.”
Kairon clenched his fist.
So tightly his nails dug into his flesh.
“And I’ll prove it. Whether that man called Barg... is truly a man worthy of her. Or if he’s just a big empty husk.”
And whether he was truly the man close to that ideal he had felt in that moment.
The boy’s eyes changed.
From the eyes of an immature young master to the eyes of a beast that had found its mark.
This day’s sense of defeat would become the most potent venom and driving force that would later make him grow into the “youngest Sword Master” in the empire’s history.
The same fate of “youngest Sword Master” as in the original story.
Of course, in that process, he would suffer countless crushing defeats at Barg’s hands.
And Barg couldn’t become a Sword Master with an axe.
And Kara, his rival who also wielded a sword, wouldn’t be able to participate in the event to claim the “Sword Master” title this year because she was pregnant.
In any case, the fate of becoming the “youngest Sword Master” had begun to flow just like in the original story, starting from today’s turning point.