Chapter 6: After the Reunion… Am I Being Kept?

Erisburg was an ancient and legendary city.

Legend has it that 500 years ago, this castle was originally a stronghold for a powerful demon tribe.

Later, two heroes arrived, defeated the demon tribe, and one of them founded the present-day Erisburg here.

Yet now, in the square of this very Erisburg founded by a hero, I, Yuren Xing, was awkwardly embracing a young girl in front of tens of thousands of spectators.

“Aisilis… have you hugged enough… let me go… you’re making this… very awkward for me.”

“No~no~.”

In this current situation, even for someone like me who prides himself on being thick-skinned, hugging a young girl in front of so many people, a girl who wouldn’t stop acting coquettishly at that, was enough to make my face burn, no matter how thick my skin was.

Ah, it hurts… their gazes… they’re stabbing my heart, it hurts so much.

Lord God… please destroy this world now.

A world like this is not needed at all.

Just as I was secretly trying to figure out how to make everyone’s memories disappear and praying to Lord God to destroy the world, the Academy Head on the high platform tapped his scepter on the ground and said slowly:

“Then, let the ceremony continue, Bailey.”

Eh? You’re still going to continue after all this?

Read the room, will you!

After the Academy Head finished speaking, a handsome, golden-haired young man walked out from among the youths on the high platform.

With a charming smile on his face, he walked to the front of the platform, picked up the white sword that Aisilis had dropped on the ground, and continued solemnly:

“I, Aisi… Bailey Aileron, as a graduate of this class, will lead the Swordsman Academy to a more glorious future. I…”

Putting everything else aside, aren’t these the exact same lines Aisilis just said?

Even if you can’t think of anything better on the spot, you could at least change it up a bit.

You almost said the same name…

And in this situation, how could anyone possibly still care about the ceremony…

“Oh, as expected of the eldest son of the Aileron family, so reliable.”

“Yeah, I feel like we can leave everything to him.”

“Oh!! Lord Bailey…” “Lord Bailey…” “Lord Bailey…”

“…”

Slapped in the face… a blatant slap in the face.

The melon-eating crowd, who were petrified just a moment ago, were now cheering passionately for Lord Bailey on the high platform, completely ignoring us still hugging here…

What are you guys even doing? How thick are your nerves to be like this?

I completely don’t understand the thought process of you people from another world.

Then, after the Academy Head gave a speech, the ceremony ended just like that, and the people began to slowly disperse…

People kept walking past me… but they didn’t give us another glance, as if we didn’t exist at all…

After a while… everyone in the square was gone, leaving only us, still embracing.

“Um… Aisilis…”

“What is it, Yuren?”

“Everyone’s gone… let’s… let’s go too…”

“Hmm? Let’s hug a little longer~”

Although Aisilis said to hug for a little while, by the time she let go, it was already nighttime…

“Sigh.”

I’m now at Aisilis’s house.

Although the academy provides housing for students, Aisilis doesn’t seem to like living in the academy.

She bought a house for herself outside.

You heard that right, she bought a house, not rented…

As the top student in the academy, the monthly subsidy Aisilis receives is enough for an ordinary family to live an extremely luxurious life for a year.

Not to mention that Aisilis also receives various scholarships, and with her keen business sense, she seems to have bought several shops, and business appears to be booming.

By the way, it seems that the restaurant where I dined and dashed was one of Aisilis’s…

Aisilis herself doesn’t spend much money, which is evident from the furniture in her house.

Aisilis clearly doesn’t care much about these things; they are all very ordinary household items…

To be honest, I was worried I’d see something I shouldn’t when I entered this house…

But thankfully, after entering, it was just an ordinary three-bedroom, two-living-room apartment.

Wait, what’s with this slightly disappointed feeling…

So, to put it simply, after these few years, with the various scholarships from the academy and the income from her shops, Aisilis has become a wealthy person whose assets are not inferior to those of a major noble family, and she might even be richer than some nobles…

Mmm… I’m sorry to say this… because I’m feeling super uneasy right now…

Just now, Aisilis gave me a purple-gold card, saying it has no balance limit and I can use it as I please…

This… what’s with this strong feeling of being kept?

Have I become a pretty boy who lives off a woman?

Although I don’t mind being a pretty boy… but living off my little sister and living off another woman feel completely different…

Also, regarding the “little sister” part… Aisilis doesn’t seem to like me calling her that anymore, and she asked me to call her by her name directly, just as she now calls me by my name directly…

“Sigh, she’s really grown up. She doesn’t even call me ‘brother’ anymore, saying she’s only two years younger than me…”

I sighed and lay down on the bed. Oh, don’t get the wrong idea, it’s the bed in my own room.

According to Aisilis, the things here were prepared shortly after she arrived in Erisburg.

She had originally planned for me to move in with her, but because I went on a trip first, this room has been empty all this time.

“Yuren? Do you want to take a bath? I’m done.”

Aisilis called out to me from outside.

“Coming.”

I answered and walked out of the room.

I saw Aisilis with only a towel wrapped around her body.

Her hair was not yet dry from the bath, hanging wetly over her shoulders.

Water droplets at the tips of her hair sparkled translucently under the light.

Looking at the hibiscus-like Aisilis emerging from the water, I couldn’t help but be a little dazed.

When my gaze moved to her chest… a flat and broad expanse like an airport runway…

The girl before me was indeed a rare beauty, but her chest was just like it was 8 years ago.

“Aisilis is still Aisilis, after all.”

I accidentally said what I was thinking out loud…

“I’m not sure what you mean by that, Yuren, but I’m suddenly feeling a bit ticked off.”

“Ahhh~~”

Soaking in the bath, I let out a shameful, groan-like sound. Luckily, I’m the only one here.

Soaking in the wooden tub, I saw the sky outside through the window on the wall. The stars in the sky were twinkling endlessly…

A window? Wait, why is there a window in the bathroom? If someone were to peek from there, wouldn’t they see everything?

I don’t know if it was just my imagination playing tricks on me, but I thought I saw a dark figure flash past the window…

It was probably just my eyes playing tricks on me.

Thinking this, I got out of the tub, dried myself off, and put on my pajamas…

Let me explain first. Pajamas, as the name suggests, are clothes for sleeping…

Wait… I know that’s not what you want to ask, but what I want to clarify is that these are my own pajamas…

Although I had never bought any pajamas before coming here… the ones I’m wearing are definitely not Aisilis’s.

Although she’s not unrelated to them, these are definitely my own, that’s for sure…

Looking at the closet in the room, filled with clothes of all sizes, I covered my face with my hand…

According to Aisilis, after she came here, she would go shopping with the thought: ‘Yuren would definitely look good in this.’

She bought them with that feeling.

Because she didn’t know when she would see me again, she would buy some clothes suitable for my age at the time every month…

“Sigh.”

A helpless sigh was followed by a wave of endless fatigue.

That makes sense. After all, Aisilis and I stood there hugging for a whole day, and I didn’t sleep at all last night…

I should get to sleep early…

Dragging my exhausted body, I lay down on the bed, counting in my head: 1… 2… 3…

I fell asleep…

In another room, a beam of light emanated from the bed in the darkness.

The light clearly revealed that the surrounding walls were completely covered with portraits, without a single blank space.

And all the portraits were of one person… Yuren Xing…

To be precise, the Yuren Xing from 8 years ago.

And right now, Aisilis was lying on the bed, hugging a life-sized body pillow with Yuren Xing’s image printed on it.

In her right hand, she held a white, palm-sized crystal, her eyes fixed on it…

And what the crystal displayed was the already sleeping Yuren Xing…

“Yuren~ Yuren~ Nngh~ Yuren❤… I like you so much, I like Yuren so much❤… I love you so much, Yuren❤.”

Watching the sleeping Yuren Xing, Aisilis squeezed her right hand tightly, and the scene in the crystal began to slowly change…

It was a live feed of Yuren Xing taking a bath.

And based on the angle, it was definitely from the bathroom window.

That’s right… while Yuren Xing was bathing, Aisilis was peeping from outside the window the entire time, and used this recording crystal to capture the whole process…

As the image froze on the moment Yuren Xing stepped out of the wooden tub…

Aisilis squeezed the body pillow tightly with her legs and began to slowly rub a certain unmentionable part…

“Yuren❤… Nngh~ Ah~… Yuren~ My dear❤… Yuren❤… I like you so much… so much… Yuren❤… You’re mine… my Yuren, all to myself❤… We have to… mmm~~~ be together… forever… always by my side… you can’t, nngh ah~~, go anywhere… You belong only to me… become the Yuren who belongs only to me❤…”

With a strange flush on her face, panting heavily, and a trickle of glistening saliva occasionally dripping from the corner of her mouth, Aisilis muttered words that were troubling in every sense of the word…

“No… it’s not enough at all…”

Panting heavily, Aisilis made a dangerous declaration as she climbed out of bed… and walked towards the door…

I feel like I’m gonna be a goner soon.