It had been an hour since Ria forcibly locked Lucian and Kaiser in a room. The two of them stayed far apart.

At first, since their feelings were hurt, they kept their distance, but as time passed, the situation got boring and stifling, and their bodies started to itch with restlessness.

So the two of them kept sneaking glances at each other, gauging how to break this situation. Then their eyes met.

But the moment they met, both of them started, and without either of them meaning to, they turned their heads away. Still, that didn’t last long.

Kaiser spoke first.

“……What are you staring at.”

“……Who said I was staring.”

Their words wouldn’t come out nicely, and that made them sulk all over again. Both of them wore pouty expressions and turned their heads away.

“In the first place, if you’d just talked a little nicer, it would’ve been fine.”

“What? Are you saying this is my fault?”

“Yeah! Do you think it feels good to get cursed at every time? Did I ask for something big?”

During class, Lucian had held it in and in and finally said something.

He wasn’t even asking for praise—just not to say things in a way that made him feel bad.

In response, Kaiser had momentarily flared up, and because he thought he had to deliberately keep his distance from Lucian, there was no denying he’d been harsher on purpose.

Kaiser’s conscience prickled for no reason, and he stuck out his lips. Then he also complained about what he’d been upset over.

“And you—why do you call me by my name?”

“……What?”

“When did you call me hyung, and why are you just calling me Kaiser now?”

Kaiser, too, liked it better when Lucian called him hyung.

It felt like he’d gained a cute little brother, and it felt more friendly, too.

But now, with him calling his name so properly like they were being formal, it made him feel hurt.

Kaiser, who’d been grumbling to himself, stole a glance at Lucian. And in that moment, he panicked.

Lucian’s face was scrunched up, right on the verge of getting angry.

“You’re the one who started it…….”

“…….”

“You told me I was nothing first! So why should I call you hyung!”

“No, I…….”

Kaiser couldn’t continue. Lucian had already started sniffing, tears welling up drop by drop.

“Hngh, you were mean. When I was sick you didn’t show your face at all, you only said cruel things, and you said I was your little brother! You said I was nothinggg!”

Spilling out his resentment, Lucian couldn’t beat his emotions in the end and bawled.

“Waaah! Kaiser is the person I hate most in the world!”

He’d seen Lucian cry a few times, but it was the first time he’d seen him cry this miserably, like the whole world was unfair.

And thinking he was crying because of him made Kaiser utterly at a loss.

Waaah! Waaah!

Lucian stood there blankly and bawled, and Kaiser crept closer, checking his mood.

When he got close, Lucian, who’d been crying, glared daggers at him.

“You were mean!”

“……Sorry.”

“Stupid idiot!”

“……Sorry.”

“Stupid lizard!”

“Hey…… haa, I was wrong.”

Uuuuuh—

Lucian clamped his mouth shut and glared at Kaiser with all his might. Then his tears burst again with a pop.

Kaiser patted him with awkward hands, pulled him into his arms, and sat him on the sofa. Lucian rejected Kaiser’s arms and struggled.

“Let go! I don’t need a dragon who says he doesn’t like me either!”

“I said I’m sorry…….”

“If you’re sorry, you shouldn’t have done things you have to be sorry for!”

Yeah, you’re right about everything.

Kaiser reflected on himself for acting up for no reason. He was going to crumble to Lucian’s tears anyway—so why had he tried so hard to keep distance?

“Why did you do that to me.”

“…….”

Lucian looked up at him with tear-soaked golden eyes, and Kaiser’s lips twitched.

He fumbled out the words with difficulty.

“I was afraid I’d hurt you again…….”

Lucian kept staring at Kaiser, eyes still hard.

Kaiser continued, stammering, with great effort.

“I was scared that I might kill you again. ……You’re too weak, and you can die with just one flick of my hand.”

Even though he no longer felt the way those thoughts had dug through his head back then, he was still afraid that the same thing might happen again.

“I thought the answer was to cut it off before I got completely attached.”

“Then why didn’t you just leave? Why did you stay.”

“……Yeah.”

At the lifeless reply, Lucian’s lips eased in a little.

“Well, I was really scared too. That was the second scariest thing in my life.”

“What was the first?”

“……When I first came here.”

The first time he felt despair and fear was when he realized he had been abandoned by the family he’d waited for so long.

The one who appeared like a beam of light while he was only ever walking through an endlessly dark tunnel—that was Ria.

“Even now, when I think about the basement, my heart starts pounding, and whenever you act scary, it reminds me of that.”

Kaiser flinched and stiffened his face.

“Then it really is right for me to stay away…….”

“But even more than that, it was scarier when you said I was nothing.”

At Lucian’s words, Kaiser’s mouth opened. Lucian rubbed at his eyes, tears welling again.

“……I don’t want to grow distant from you, hyung.”

Lucian’s words pleased Kaiser’s heart. His eyes, too, reddened before he knew it.

Kaiser pulled Lucian into his arms.

“Me too…… I want to go back to how things were.”

“……Am I really nothing?”

“How could you be. You’re the first human I ever got attached to.”

“And you’re the first dragon I ever got attached to.”

Lucian hugged Kaiser’s back tightly too. Hearing the faint pulse and feeling the warm body heat, Kaiser finally cried.

Maybe acting harsher and spitting out words was his unconscious desire to be looked at more.

He didn’t want to be hated, and yet he had to be hated. That way Lucian could be safe.

Lucian felt something damp against his head, sniffled, and lifted his head. Kaiser was crying.

Lucian panicked, then grinned.

“Heh, you crybaby.”

“……You little punk. Who are you to talk.”

They both pouted at each other, and soon burst into laughter.

Then, as if they’d been waiting, they finally started talking, spilling without pretense everything they’d been upset about, everything they’d wanted to say.

Like that, without noticing time passing, the two of them talked.

Three hours later, Ria came up after preparing dinner to check on Kaiser and Lucian.

She undid the barrier and cautiously entered the room.

At first no one was in sight, and she panicked, but only after going in front of the sofa did she find them.

Ria burst into laughter.

[Ha-ha, when were you acting like sworn enemies?]

Kaiser was lying long on the sofa, and Lucian was sprawled on top of him as if crushing him, the two of them sleeping side by side.

Judging by the tear tracks and the reddened eye corners, they had definitely had an honest conversation.

With a satisfied smile, Ria recalled something and headed to her room.

Then she came down with parchment and a pencil, and left behind a drawing of the two of them.

In the future, Lucian and Kaiser would look at this drawing and remember it, laughing about how they were both crybabies.

But that was still a far-distant future story.

* * *

About two weeks had passed since Lucian and Kaiser made up.

In the meantime, James came by the mansion again to deliver supplies. Using that timing, the three of them ran an experiment on him.

Whether he could see her if he ate the food Ria made.

‘Mm, these cookies are good. Did you buy them in the village? Which shop’s cookies are these?’

To get to the conclusion first, he couldn’t see Ria.

Even when she paced back and forth in front of him several times, he didn’t blink even once.

It seems the condition to see her isn’t simply eating the food.

It had already been about four months since Lucian came here. And it was exactly one month since Kaiser stayed here.

Kaiser was still a hatchling who hadn’t yet undergone the adult dragon ceremony.

The maximum time he could come out into the human world without a guardian was one month.

When it came time to say goodbye to Kaiser, Lucian had no intention of leaving him starting from the morning.

[Lucian, that’s enough, come down. Kaiser has to go now.]

“……No.”

[If you keep doing that, Kaiser will get tired too.]

“It’s fine because of magic. It’s not heavy.”

Lucian grumbled and clung to Kaiser like a cicada.

Unlike Ria, who was at a loss, Kaiser smiled.

“You don’t want me to go?”

“…….”

Lucian nodded.

This was the first time Lucian had to part from someone he’d grown attached to, and it was terribly hard.

Kaiser understood Lucian’s heart well. It made him very happy, but time wasn’t infinite.

If he didn’t leave within today, his parents would forcibly summon him.

Kaiser tapped Lucian’s arms looped around his neck and lowered him.

Lucian was desperately holding back tears.

Kaiser matched his eye level.

“I’ll go and come back again. This isn’t forever.”

“Even so, you’ll come back late. Ria said you come once every four to five years…….”

“That’s only because Ria doesn’t mind it being like that. I’ll come back again in one year. Okay?”

“……Even one year is too long.”

When Lucian grabbed at Kaiser’s clothes again and clung, Ria went behind him and patted Lucian’s shoulder.

“Then I’ll come back as fast as I can. Hold out for five years. Once I become an adult dragon, I can come whenever I want.”

“In five years you’ll definitely come again, right?”

“Of course! Even if I can’t, I’ll come within one year!”

“……Uuuh.”

Even after Kaiser coaxed him, Lucian burst into tears in the end.

Ria and Kaiser looked at each other and smiled as they hugged Lucian tight.

“I guess we’ll have to call him the crybaby prince.”

[Seriously. What kind of prince has this many tears?]

“C’mon…… don’t tease me…….”

Saying it with snot hanging in a string only made him more teaseable. But teasing ended here, and they truly prepared to part with Kaiser.

Kaiser probably wouldn’t be able to come here for a year.

At most one month in a year. That was the time given to a hatchling in the human world.

It’s not like Kaiser wanted to be away for a year either.

He too looked reluctant, unable to easily move his feet. He looked at Lucian, who was sobbing, then recalled something and rummaged through pocket space.

“Here. Take this.”

“Sniff! Th-this, what is it……?”

It was a crystal orb about the size of a ball.

“You can contact me with this. Of course, only from my side, though.”

Because a dragon lair is covered in a massive barrier, unless it’s a verified communication network, it’s impossible to contact it from outside.

But it’s possible to send contact from inside to outside, so Kaiser would contact him through this whenever he had time.

“If you keep it, I’ll contact you whenever I have time. Got it?”

“You have to do it every day.”

“……I’ll do my best.”

Kaiser hugged Lucian tight.

“We’re different species, and our blood isn’t mixed, but we’re brothers. Remember that.”

“Yeah! Hyung and Ria are my family too!”

[Ha-ha, you’re including me too?]

When Ria beamed, Lucian and Kaiser laughed too.

The three of them had a tear-soaked farewell like that.

After Kaiser left via teleportation and Lucian cried for a long while, he would endure it well, since it wasn’t a complete separation.

“Ria…….”

[Yeah? What?]

“Ria, you can’t leave me.”

[Who’s leaving. Unless you leave me.]

“That will never happen, so Ria can’t ever leave me!”

Lucian buried his face in Ria’s chest. Because her body was transparent, his ugly face was plainly visible.

“If you leave, my world will collapse.”

[That sounds like you’re more upset than you are about Kaiser leaving?]

“……Hyung not being here is sad, but I can’t imagine you not being here. You’re my bride. So you have to stay by my side for my whole life.”

Saying it while covered in tears just made him look trivial and cute. She understood his anxious heart, but there was no worry more useless than this.

[Don’t worry. That will never happen.]

‘There will never be a time when I leave your side first.’