The Nerd Next Door Turned Out To Be The Magic Tower Master [Novel] Chapter 29

“CiCi!”

Cecilia turned her head toward the person who’d made such a noisy entrance.

Back at the Holy Temple at some point, Nox was waving his hand in a breezy little flutter.

“I heard you were in the middle of a ceremonial robe fitting, but you look pretty worn out.”

“Why are you here?”

Surely he hadn’t come all this way just to watch her suffer.

She scrunched her face at the uninvited guest and asked, and Nox tilted his head as though confused.

“Hm? You said you missed your brother and asked me to come.”

“As if I did.”

“But this kid……. Well, never mind.”

He flicked a glance at Riri before shrugging.

“Hmm, not happy to see me? Your big brother even brought snacks because he figured you’d be hungry.”

Nox grinned and rummaged through his pocket. When he finally extended his palm, two or three round brown candies sat on it.

“Here. Who else have you got but your brother?”

“…….”

For someone on a forced diet, sweet snacks were a powerful temptation. But Cecilia didn’t reach for the candy, only glared in silence.

‘As if I’d fall for that.’

The brother from the book, maybe. But there was no way that guy would look after his younger sister this willingly.

When she kept sending him looks of distrust, Nox let his shoulders droop with exaggerated dejection.

“This devoted brother was so worried his little sister might starve to death that he defied God’s will! Wracked with guilt! Snuck them in……. If you don’t need them, I’ll just take them back—”

“Give.”

“What was that? Too informal, couldn’t hear you.”

“……Please.”

Even though his ulterior motive was painfully obvious, the offering was too tempting to refuse.

Nox smirked and popped a round candy right into her mouth.

Cecilia rolled the candy around with her tongue, full of anticipation. But what spread across her palate wasn’t the sweetness of simple sugars — it was a bitter, earthy root flavor reminiscent of red ginseng candy.

Crunch.

Cecilia bit through the candy and swallowed it, then wordlessly gathered holy power around her hand.

Only when the blazing holy power was right in front of his face did Nox begin sweating profusely.

“CiCi, if that hits me I think I’ll actually die?”

“Yep.”

“……CiCi?”

He turned away from his half-unhinged sister and looked to the knight beside her instead.

“Miguel, would you mind stopping the saintess from committing murder?”

But the holy knight he’d been counting on just stood with his hands clasped behind his back, gazing at the distant mountains.

In the end, before that fist — devastating in power but utterly lacking in accuracy — could reach its target, Nox made his irritating escape.

Fueled by rage, she survived the rest of the ceremonial robe fitting and even the holy water ordeal, and was now trudging back to her room.

Cecilia spoke up listlessly.

“I’m sorry. I made quite a spectacle in multiple ways. As you know, Miguel, my brother’s personality is… like that.”

“You look well.”

“Pardon?”

Had the dictionary definition of “looking well” been revised?

Cecilia just blinked in bewilderment, and Miguel broke into a smile as clear as a boy’s.

“It seems like you smile much more than before, my lady.”

‘No, the one who looks good is you, sir.’

Cecilia swallowed the thoughtless words before they could escape.

More importantly—”more than before”?

The subtly charged atmosphere earlier, the excessive kindness — could it be that Miguel had actually been close with the ‘real Cecilia’?

But…….

[So, um…….]

[I’m Miguel, Vice-Commander of the Holy Knight Order.]

In the past, when they’d exchanged introductions, hadn’t he greeted her as though they were meeting for the very first time?

Concealing her confusion and questions behind composure, Cecilia slipped in a question.

“I must have been rather aloof before.”

“No, that’s not what I meant…… I only ever saw you from a distance on occasion, but you always seemed lost in thought…….”

Had the ‘real Cecilia’ been the quiet type? Judging by Nox’s attitude, that didn’t seem entirely the case.

Regardless, she needed to be a little more careful before inviting unnecessary suspicion. Ahem. Cecilia cleared her throat softly and steered the conversation away.

“Anyway, I have no idea what my brother even came here for. Surely it wasn’t just to hand out that ginseng — or whatever bizarre candy that was.”

“He probably came to visit your mother today.”

The unexpected answer stopped her in her tracks.

‘Nox’s mother — the Marchioness?’

She hadn’t been seen at the estate and was never mentioned, so Cecilia had assumed this was a single-parent household with the mother absent for some unspecified reason, like in any typical romance novel.

“My mother is here at the Grand Temple?”

The question left her mouth before she could think, and Cecilia hastily bit her lip. Wasn’t this far too strange a question for ‘Cecilia’ to ask?

“Oh, right, she is. Of course.”

She smiled awkwardly. Ha ha. Miguel nodded easily without a hint of suspicion.

“Yes. House Weberdin’s tombs have been interred at the Grand Temple for generations.”

‘……So it was the typical romance novel after all.’

No wonder there’d been so conspicuously no mention.

Well, surely it wasn’t something as cliché as dying while giving birth to Cecilia the saintess.

“Would you like to visit as well, my lady?”

While she was trying to shake off that unpleasant guess, Miguel readily offered.

If she were ‘Cecilia,’ she would have gladly nodded. But she shook her head.

It wasn’t her real mother, she didn’t even know the woman’s face, and she couldn’t muster the feeling to pay respects. More than anything, doing so while wearing this woman’s daughter’s skin felt like deception.

Smiling bitterly, she silently looked away from the woman reflected in the carriage window — a face she’d grown all too used to by now.

They say humans are creatures of adaptation. In just one week, Cecilia had fully adjusted to a disciplined life of early rising and early sleeping.

Proof: despite being held hostage all morning by the ceremonial-robe-obsessed man for fitting torture, she was relatively intact.

That didn’t mean her spirit wasn’t exhausted, though, so the moment she was given free time she’d fled to her room and was now draped lifelessly across the sofa.

Collapsed in broad daylight like an unemployed shut-in, she drew the attention of Sena, who’d been orbiting her like a satellite, and the girl hesitantly spoke up.

“Um, are you very tired, my lady?”

“Yeah. I guess a diligent life just doesn’t agree with me.”

“Diligent?”

“Waking up early and getting crushed by work all day.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Hm?”

“The priests said being diligent makes you healthy in body and mind…… Doesn’t it?”

‘There it is. The cruel question of a child who’s never been ground down by a 52-hour work week.’

Instantly dead-eyed, Cecilia gave a vague affirmation.

“Ha ha, right. Being diligent is great.”

She’d simply been born an un-diligent human, that was all.

Cecilia buried that inconvenient truth. The child seemed to take the soulless reply as something positive, because her face brightened and she clapped her hands together.

“Oh, come to think of it, it’s already mealtime! I’ll run to the dining hall and be right back!”

Both motivation and appetite had evaporated entirely, but Sena didn’t wait for an answer and clattered out of the room.

Left alone, Cecilia became one with the sofa again.

The instant she laid her head down with fierce determination to do absolutely nothing, something cool and solid tapped against the underside of her chin.

The ‘something’ was the pendant of the necklace she’d been wearing hidden beneath her clothes.

Cecilia traced the mineral with her fingertips.

[If it’s not uncomfortable for you, I was hoping you might wear it even at the Holy Temple…….]

[So you mean, when I look at this necklace, think of Rien now and then?]

[Th-that’s, if just a little bit…….]

It was force majeure — the way his shy voice had grown faint, those violet eyes wavering like a ferryboat before a storm, those two cheeks flushed red in the evening glow.

“……I miss him.”

Cecilia flinched at her own murmur and rubbed her lips with the back of her hand.

‘What was that?’

This was just — like Charles — she’d developed a need for the visual of that man whose appearance alone was healing. No deeper meaning. Really.

She was just starting to feel heat rise to her face for no reason and was sitting up from her sprawl when—

Crash!

She whipped her head toward the sharp sound. Riri was standing rigid, holding an empty silver tray — apparently having dropped a glass while bringing water.

“I-I’m sorry!”

“Riri, stay right there. You could get hurt.”

She gave the flustered child a brief warning, then hurried to pick up the glass shards. By the time she’d cleared most of the large pieces, a trembling voice drifted down from beside her.

“Um, my lady. D-do you… treasure that necklace?”

Had the child overheard her talking to herself? Somehow the back of her neck felt prickly with embarrassment. Cecilia nodded without bothering to hide her sheepishness.

“Yeah. It’s precious to me.”

Of all the flashy jewelry filling the dresser drawers, she’d chosen to bring this one — was it because this necklace was the first gift ‘I’ received, not ‘Cecilia,’ since coming to this world?

She surprised even herself with how readily the answer came.

“……Is it because it was expensive?”

“I received it as a gift, so I’m not sure of the price. I mean, it does look expensive.”

Cecilia leaned toward the child and whispered playfully, as if sharing a secret.

“The truth is, it’s because the person who gave it to me is someone special.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie. It was a decision she’d made on her own, but Rien was the person who would become her male lead. On top of that, he had an appearance that purified body and soul just by looking at it. If she had to attach ‘special’ to anyone, it was rightfully his.

“……I see.”

The child’s murmur was thick and muffled, as though waterlogged.

The reaction was unlike the usual, and Cecilia tilted her head slightly. The chapel veil hid any expression, but the eartip peeking through seemed to have flushed a deep red.

“Um, may I step away for a moment? Something I need to do just came to mind…….”

Riri drew one small foot back hesitantly and asked with marked urgency.

‘Hm, not interested, I guess.’

“Of course. Take your time.”

The moment she readily agreed, feeling a bit sheepish, Riri left the room just like that.

Alone again, Cecilia dropped onto the sofa. She’d finally reclaimed some quiet. And yet somehow she felt more drained than before.