The Nerd Next Door Turned Out To Be The Magic Tower Master [Novel] Chapter 44

Rien still looked unstable — like glass that would shatter at the slightest touch.

His hands clenched with anxious tension, his chest rising and falling in deep, labored breaths, his jaw rigid and both cheeks stiff. And that gaze, straining to read something from her face… or perhaps straining not to.

She could not understand any of it — why he was this shaken, why some corner of her own heart felt uneasy, as though she were the one caught in an affair.

More precisely, she was trying not to understand.

But her avoidance was never thorough, as always, and Rien continued behaving in ways that made it impossible.

“Your hand is red.”

He had been staring blankly down at the back of her hand — the one he’d been gripping like a lifeline — when the murmur slipped out.

The delicate skin had flushed crimson from his repeated rubbing.

“You’re the one who did this, Rien.”

The belated sting hardly mattered. The real problem was the cause, she said, her tone carrying a mild reproach — but he stepped forward as though he’d been waiting for exactly those words.

“It’s my fault, so allow me to treat it.”

“No, you really don’t need to go that far…”

Disbelief crashed over her like a tidal wave.

Rien bowed his head over the back of her hand like a puppy, pressed his soft lips down against it, and licked up along the reddened skin.

“Rien!”

Startled, Cecilia frantically checked their surroundings.

Mercifully, no servants were passing by. Even if there had been, his robe would have hidden everything — it would only look as though he were examining her hand up close.

‘Even so, this is a bit…’

At the festival too — she knew by now that this was Rien’s method of treatment. But wouldn’t it be better, in many respects, to just use a potion from now on?

She’d been about to say exactly that.

But what slipped from between Cecilia’s lips was not a sentence — just a short, breathless gasp.

Apparently the treatment wasn’t finished yet. His lips traveled past the back of her hand, drifting gradually down to her fingers.

“Cecilia?”

At the slightly garbled pronunciation, she lowered her gaze — and her mind went blank.

Between lips redder than any rose, the soft tongue within, pressed down firmly by her own straight finger.

And yet the picture-perfect face gazing innocently up at her.

Those details registered one after another, and her heart plummeted.

What an outrageously brazen sight. Considering that her fingers hadn’t even been injured in the first place, this was genuinely indecent.

Feeling as though she were committing something sinful, she snatched her hand away.

“M-my fingers aren’t even hurt!”

“Disinfection has to go all the way to the fingertips.”

He usually acted like a man made half of shyness, yet he answered without a flicker of shame, the corners of his eyes curving in a graceful arc. The same smile as always — so why did it look obscene?

Now it wasn’t just where his lips had touched; her entire face felt like it was burning.

‘Is this really the time to fall for a honey trap?’

She wanted to smack herself in the head, but composure refused to come easily.

Only after a long while did the heat finally cool enough for Cecilia to force herself calm.

He was acting this strangely because the scene he’d witnessed earlier must have been a shock.

If that was the case, she just had to clear up the misunderstanding.

Hiding her hands — flushed now for an entirely different reason — behind her back, Cecilia explained the situation in a gentle, soothing tone, as if coaxing a child.

“Rien. Is this because I asked Sir Miguel to be my partner?”

“…”

“You know that as long as you’re the Magic Tower Master, it would be difficult for you to enter alongside a Saintess like me. That’s why I asked Sir Miguel. That’s all.”

The Magic Tower Master and the Saintess entering together. She didn’t even want to imagine what kind of uproar that would cause.

Perhaps her visible shudder conveyed sincerity, because Rien finally let his shoulders drop the way they usually did and began to hesitate.

“It’s only because I’m the Magic Tower Master that it won’t work…?”

“Of course.”

“Then if I quit being Tower Master…”

“Rien!”

She snapped at the absurd suggestion, and he clamped his mouth shut like a sulking child.

Then, shortly after, he let out a thin sigh.

True to the intellect that both the Academy and the Magic Tower boasted of, he seemed to have finally recovered his reason and accepted the logic.

Though reason and emotion were apparently separate matters, given how unnecessarily glum he’d become.

“I know. That I’m… not good enough to stand beside you, Cecilia. So I respect your decision.”

“Rien.”

“I’m sorry for making a fuss. Actually, I came looking for you for the same reason.”

“What? What do you mean…”

“I came to tell you that I probably won’t be able to accompany you to the banquet.”

“W-wait. If you couldn’t accompany me anyway, then why were you so angry earlier?”

Dumbfounded, Cecilia glared at him sharply.

Avoiding her fierce gaze, he made his excuse in a voice shrunk as small as it could go.

“When I thought about that knight sticking to your side like a leech… I just couldn’t help myself…”

Somehow an even more absurd reason.

“And besides, he kissed you without permission.”

“That was just a greeting showing respect!”

“What if it wasn’t simply respect?”

“Stop imagining things.”

“…Okay.”

She wanted nothing more than to smack him on the head, but the face gazing at her so pitifully was so impossibly pretty that it drove her crazy.

In the end she couldn’t raise her clenched fist, and just raked her fingers roughly through her hair.

“Fine. Then the banquet discussion is over. Don’t go back on it later. …And don’t act like you did earlier.”

“…I’ll try.”

Cecilia studied the man who acquiesced without protest.

The dark things that had cloaked and shaken him had already diluted to something pale and clear.

Before she knew it, Rien had returned to the man who would tremble as he held out a single wildflower, who often hid beneath his robe claiming he was too shy, who would smile with joy at the mere meeting of their eyes.

Relieved in secret, she tossed out a belated question.

“But you really can’t come to the venue at all?”

Even while she didn’t quite trust him, ridiculous as it was, she’d been privately curious about how he’d look in formal attire. At a banquet where all manner of nobles gathered, surely he’d shed that dreary robe and dress up.

But Rien shook his head without leaving the slightest room for hope.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to attend. I’ve been away too long, and the work has piled up.”

“…Then there’s nothing to be done.”

“I’ll arrange someone else to assist you at the venue, so please don’t worry.”

Misreading Cecilia’s disappointment as mere concern, he offered that consolation.

‘I thought I’d at least be able to see him from a distance, even if we couldn’t acknowledge each other.’

Had she, without realizing it, come to see him as something like a stand-in chaperone and relied on him? Or had she wanted to observe him before the Imperial family, hoping to catch some clue — whether of innocence or guilt?

Neither answer was welcome. She swallowed a bitter smile.

“Um, Cecilia.”

As though he had more to say, Rien called her name and opened his mouth several times, only to close it again. He wavered for a long while before words finally came.

“There’s something I absolutely must tell you before the banquet.”

“What is it?”

“Well… I am the head of the Magic Tower.”

“Yes, I know.”

For all that buildup, it was hardly news.

The suspicious Magic Tower Master who moved in next door one day. That was Rien, wasn’t it?

“And I am Rien, but I am not Rien.”

“What?”

Even more out of nowhere.

‘Is he talking about an alias?’

But hadn’t it already been revealed that Rien was ‘Acirien’?

When she looked at him quizzically, Rien’s face drained steadily to white.

“I’m, I’m what I mean is…”

“What you mean is?”

His agitation was so severe that his hands — his whole body — trembled like an aspen, and his breathing grew ragged.

“…No. It’s nothing.”

In the end, Rien swallowed the sentence pooled at his lips without letting it out.

In that instant, what brushed past her was a groundless foreboding. That whatever he’d kept hidden was one of his countless secrets — and that it was something she absolutely needed to know.

Cecilia frowned without meaning to and was just about to speak.

“My lady! Are you here?”

From not very far away came Melanie’s voice.

“The seamstress brought the dress — she says you need to try it on!”

Melanie called out desperately as she searched, but Cecilia deliberately gave no answer.

Someone barging in at a crucial moment and derailing the conversation — once or twice was enough.

A dress could wait. The conversation with him was more urgent.

But when she turned her head back, Rien had already vanished without a trace.