IRHWSDD 39

Is It Natural for Men to Hold Hands?

Walking down the street lined with laboratories, they passed a building blackened from fire.

It was Fritz’s lab.

“Mr. Gale’s husband… in the end…”

Alchemists wearing gloves and masks were burning Fritz’s experiment logs and equipment.

Fritz’s desk, with its broken legs, had its drawers pulled out like a tongue and was waiting for the incineration process.

Unlike the upper drawers, stuffed with notes and miscellaneous items, the bottom drawer was filled with things that didn’t suit Fritz at all.

“Are those all dried dandelions?”

Flowers she had also seen on Mr. Gale’s desk.

For someone as sensitive to variables as Fritz, it was surprising that he could possess such sensibility.

When she turned her head, she saw Bolton standing with a complicated expression, evidently recalling Fritz as well.

“Let’s go, Bolton.”

Lukna linked her arm through Bolton’s, who looked sullen, and led him toward the dock.

Even though he could be lively, Bolton was easily discouraged by even small things, like a large child in a grown man’s body.

“I still don’t understand why senior did what he did. I’ll probably never know why he betrayed the master, and that makes me feel awful.”

“Should I sing a song for you?”

Having once won a street karaoke competition in her past life, Lukna was confident in her singing.

“Sure. Sing a line.”

Bolton chuckled and nodded, and Lukna hummed a tune.

Instead of the song she had planned, a melody she didn’t even consciously know slipped out naturally.

The familiar tune was reminiscent of what she had heard in a dream.

At that moment, a small lab door swung open, and a voice snapped, “Didn’t you see the ‘No Humming’ warning?”

Another door followed suit, with someone yelling, “You’re the loudest! Haven’t even written a dissertation yet, and you’re raising your voice?”—sparking a quarrel.

“I’m sorry,” Lukna bowed in apology, feeling the alchemists’ attachment to their experiments.

Then, a hand suddenly appeared and lifted Lukna’s head by touching her forehead.

Raising her gaze, she saw Martian silhouetted against the setting sun.

Though his student uniform was still spattered with blood, his face—washed somewhere along the way—looked cleaner than before.

“Your head is too light, Lukna.”

Martian, offering advice that didn’t quite feel like advice, took Lukna’s hand from Bolton’s arm, grabbed her wrist firmly, and strode forward.

“Hey! How long are you going to hold that idiot’s hand?”

Bolton, trailing behind, muttered in frustration.

He had expected Martian to release her eventually, but it seemed they were heading to the academy while still holding hands.

“That Martian’s funny. Is it normal for men to say someone’s pretty and hold hands like that?”

“Ah.”

Finally realizing, Martian let go of Lukna’s wrist.

He hadn’t intended to hold her hand, but seeing her linked arm with Bolton made him act impulsively.

Her pale skin was softer than lamb’s, and though he barely squeezed, a red mark remained.

“Geez, you really squeezed that idiot’s wrist. By tomorrow it’ll bruise.”

Bolton, grateful that Martian was a great alchemist, pulled out a small round ointment container from his pocket.

Martian intercepted it midair and said, “Thanks,” as he took it.

“What are you doing now?”

“Wasn’t it meant for you to apply it?”

Martian pointed to a long scar running along his neck. Clearly worse than the mark left on Lukna’s wrist.

“Huh? When did you get hurt? I didn’t notice with all the blood earlier. Did you do it on purpose?”

Embarrassed at not noticing his friend’s injury, Bolton cleared his throat awkwardly.

In fact, it was rare for Martian to get hurt in battle.

“The red eagle we missed at the end used a strange trick.”

“What kind?”

“Hallucinatory-type dark magic.”

Martian opened the ointment and rubbed it over the wound.

“Did that really work on you? What kind of hallucination made you falter?”

Bolton’s question went unanswered. Martian only glanced at Lukna briefly before looking away.

He applied the ointment to Lukna’s red-marked wrist. Seeing this, Bolton couldn’t help but exclaim.

“You know? This is the first time you’ve shown concern over someone else’s injuries since enrollment. You’re really acting strange lately, you know?”

“Likewise, you suit it too, Bolton.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your new eye.”

Martian chuckled and pointed at Bolton’s prosthetic eye.

“You—just now noticed that?”

Bolton blushed fiercely again, snorting.

‘Bolton always reacts like this whenever someone is even half as good-looking as him.’

Lukna, still holding out her wrist, clicked her tongue.

“You already noticed my injury, so what’s with that?”

“That’s why you pretended not to notice my prosthetic earlier?”

“Not really.”

Martian answered ambiguously and finished applying the ointment to Lukna’s wrist.

Even with the warmth of the ointment seeping into her skin, the sensation along his fingers was embarrassingly intimate.

Lukna relaxed her fingers into a loose fist and thanked him.

“Th-thank you.”

Then she hurried ahead of Martian.

By the river, other students were sitting and enjoying a break.

Chad, who had behaved suspiciously throughout the muster, lay flat on a rock, napping comfortably.

Passing by, the students nudged Lukna.

“Hey, Lukna Golden. I heard you saved the Great Sage? Didn’t expect you to be so capable.”

“Why’s your face so red? Did you see a mermaid you liked on the way?”

Lukna gave a brief nod in response to the teasing question and found a quiet spot.

Her heart still raced. To calm it, she picked up a pebble from the ground and carved her name into a large rock, the dust from each letter helping her embarrassment dissipate little by little.

When Martian arrived, the students surrounded him.

“Martian, heard your last feat was incredible? Covered in blood, is that true?”

“While we were cleaning the central tower, that happened?”

“Is that wound from the dark magic cast by the Red Eagle officer? Not that it’s pleasant, but it’s the first time I’ve seen you injured, so it’s interesting.”

The students bombarded Martian with questions.

He answered each politely while his blue eyes scanned the surroundings.

Immediately, he spotted Lukna standing by the river.

Through her round head and platinum hair peeked small ears, bright red, resembling ripe harvest fruits…

“I wonder what they’d taste like if I bit them.”

Distracted by the students’ questions, he spoke before realizing it.

“Uh? You tasted them through the dark magic?”

“Oh, sorry. My mind wandered for a moment. What was the question again?”

Martian attentively listened to the students, yet his gaze never left Lukna, carving her name into the rock.

Gale, the academy’s health teacher, rented a small one-room apartment near the school.

Though her salary allowed for a better place, Gale loved this tiny room that fit her body perfectly.

Supporting herself with her staff, she arrived early at the clinic, drew back the curtains, and opened the window.

The squeaky, old hinge swung outward, letting in a fresh morning breeze that cleared the room of the sharp smell of chemicals.

“By now, it should be over.”

She felt the wind on her face and thought of her husband.

“Fritz… what choice did you make?”

Gale fiddled with the head of her staff, where the Philosopher’s Stone was set, then sat on a small chair.

She closed her eyes, embarrassed to face the rising sun, even though she couldn’t see much with her eyes shut.

Born a mermaid, Gale had always been alone.

There was no particular reason she settled on the Isle of Wisdom after drifting with the currents—just a whim—and she became an alchemist.

Her talent was extraordinary.

She grew so rapidly that alchemists once considered her worthy to succeed Kuran as the Great Sage.

Her flawless growth began to falter only after repeated failures in producing the Golden Elixir.

“If I keep this up, I might even ruin the Philosopher’s Stone Kuran entrusted me with.”

The Philosopher’s Stone was a rare item that could only be used with the Great Sage’s permission and helped greatly in transmuting materials by seeing their essence.

“I can’t believe something so precious was entrusted to me… I’m hopeless.”

Desperate, Gale shut herself in her lab, isolated from the world.

It was then that she met Fritz, the human alchemist.