Unlike the brisk air outside, the inside of the barn was heavy and quiet. Ethan, holding a shovel, had locked the door with one hand, trapping a man inside.
The hem of a dark robe, the backlight pouring over sturdy shoulders.
The two men stared at each other without a word.
A heavy silence. But a palpable tension existed between them. Ethan was speaking with his gaze.
—That he wouldn't let this man be.
A few days ago, a silver bracelet had been delivered to Lynette’s house. Exquisite craftsmanship and an unknown pattern. The sender was never identified.
Even though the errand entrusted to the child had reportedly gone well, she hadn't come down to the village since that day, so he couldn't even confirm if she'd received it.
One man, made anxious by that fact.
Raphael Ignatius, cautiously climbing the hill at the edge of the village, wanted to confirm if that bracelet was properly fastened on her wrist.
That was all it was.
—Or so he repeated to himself dozens of times, but in truth, he might have just wanted to see her one more time.
But Raphael didn't know that the magical construct she'd made, ‘Lacrima’, would silently absorb any trace of magical power weaker than Lynette’s as soon as it was detected.
Unaware that the magical tool meant to hide his presence was failing, he hesitated quietly beyond the fence, thinking Lynette, though not visible inside the house, must be around.
And another thing. There was one more thing he had overlooked.
The fact that Lynette, after becoming pregnant, mostly stayed inside, while her husband was always working outside.
Ethan, who had been tending the vegetable garden, approached, still holding the shovel, upon noticing someone loitering beyond the fence.
“Who are you?”
At the quiet yet resolute voice, Raphael reflexively lifted his head. And at that moment, their gazes clashed head-on.
‘...What the.’
For a moment, Ethan froze.
Despite wearing a shabby robe, he gave an alien impression. His beauty lacked a sense of reality. From that unrealistically handsome face, like a mirage, Ethan understood at once.
It's this bastard.
The bastard who had tormented him days ago... the one who sent a bracelet to his wife. The unidentified culprit who had plagued him all this time.
And now this bastard was in front of his house?
“......”
The veins on the back of the hand gripping the shovel handle bulged. His heart was already boiling, but his reason clung to its last thread.
He desperately wanted to bury the man, but Lynette was inside the house. He couldn't let her see this scene.
He didn't know what family this bastard was from, and just looking at him was infuriating, but he calmed the heat rising up the nape of his neck and lowered his tone of voice as much as possible.
But the suppressed rage seeped out all over his voice.
“...There's a pregnant woman in the house, so receiving just any guest is... difficult. Will you follow me?”
Raphael nodded with a subtle expression at the offer that was somewhere between politeness and rudeness. In his gaze was not tension, but the quiet acceptance of one facing something familiar again.
He already knew Ethan. The last encounter with Lynette involved the very man who had walked past Raphael near the plaza and stood by Lynette's side.
Raphael silently followed Ethan towards the barn.
Perhaps it would have been better if things had simply ended outside the fence then.
Inside the barn, between the haystacks, the sunlight still lingered.
Ethan locked the door and turned around quietly. His sharp gaze was more pointed than the shovel in his hand.
"Who are you?"
The words were less a question than an interrogation. The air, devoid of warmth, was dry and hard. Within it, Ethan took another step toward him.
"Why were you spying on someone else's house in broad daylight?"
His words shot out roughly. All formality was gone. Suspicion had already turned to conviction, and conviction to hostility.
Raphael, quietly lowering the hood that veiled his face, swallowed. He knew any excuse in this situation would sound forced.
"...I apologize."
A low voice. Raphael slowly bowed his head.
"It is my fault. It must have looked like I was spying. I know it was rude."
He slowly raised his gaze to meet Ethan’s.
"...My name is Rab."
That handsome face again, an unfamiliar name. But the next part was even more irritating.
"I am an... acquaintance of Lynette."
At the introduction he had nothing good to gain from hearing, Ethan’s eye expression twisted openly.
"...Ha?"
A stranger’s mouth calling his wife's name, and with ‘nim’ at that. This was the first time he'd received such treatment since Heinrich. Regardless of the reason, his wariness, the need to protect Lynette from her past, deepened.
Moreover, hearing this handsome young man, with those lips, call himself an acquaintance... it even created a strange sense of distance, as if they'd known each other for a long time.
His two hands instinctively clenched into fists. Ethan didn't bother asking indirectly anymore.
"The acquaintances I know aren't that kind of relationship."
Ethan’s forcefully lowered voice echoed low in the barn.
"A guy who sends weird gifts and the like to my wife who came here to live quietly, and now even spies on her, claims to be an acquaintance... Is there any bastard who would take that at face value?"
Rab—Raphael quietly swallowed that rage. Composing his breath, he faced Ethan without a single trace of evasion.
"...Everything you said is correct."
A calm voice, an attitude of accepting responsibility without denial or excuse.
"However, it is something that is absolutely necessary for the pregnant Lynette."
Raphael's sincere gaze did not waver.
"I dare to understand the feelings of a husband furious at an uninvited guest's arrival... but would you listen to my story, even for just a moment?"
No matter how torn up and bitter he felt inside, as her husband, he would never ignore Lynette's crisis, so Raphael was, on the contrary, desperate for this chance.
"For her sake..."
Because he had not the slightest intention of revealing his hidden emotions.
Ethan silently met his direct gaze. A dry, cracked silence, like a slap to the cheek, lingered between them for a moment.
“...Speak.”
In the end, that one word, Ethan opened his mouth as if forcibly tearing out his esophagus.
“If this is some foolish trick to take Lynette away, I don't care what kind of man you are, I won't let you off nicely. What is it?”
Raphael took a very brief breath to prepare to make the other man understand.
"Pregnancy... for a mage, is like embracing a jar of deadly poison that will soon break."
“......What did you say?”
Ethan's eyebrows shot up slightly. The answer was so far from what he'd expected. But despite his surprised expression, Raphael continued speaking.
“Since you are not a mage, the child could be born a non-mage, but a mage baby will naturally emit its uncontrollable magical power into the mother's body, causing the mother to die.”
"......"
Ethan couldn't interrupt, hearing this inconvenient truth for the first time. On the other hand, it was a fact that Raphael, a fellow non-mage who was once supposed to marry her, knew as a matter of course.
"...So, to prevent that, I sent a Magical Power Restraint via the child. That is the name of the bracelet that simultaneously limits the magical power of two lives..."
The sunlight slanting over the haystack colored one half of Raphael’s face. His expression did not waver.
"I intended to see Lynette and deliver it, but she refused to receive it from a remnant of the past, so I braved the disrespect to try and deliver it by such a method."
Raphael bowed his head before him.
"Therefore, I came today hoping to confirm its safe delivery. I once again deeply apologize for causing the husband concern with my less than honorable visit."
All of Raphael’s words were packed with sincerity and concern for her. Because of that, the rage that had been hanging like a leash around Ethan’s neck felt as if it had suddenly ‘snapped’.
This was not the image of the utterly shameless scoundrel preying on someone else's wife that he had initially imagined.
The man named Raphael before him was not some ruffian who had rudely invaded and was covetously eyeing his wife, but a man... who had come from her past, and was concerned about her death, which he hadn't known about.
‘...Damn it.’
His heart couldn't calm down. Ethan found himself taking a deep breath without realizing it.
If the danger he just spoke of was real.
Then—
“......”
The hand holding the shovel lowered heavily. It wasn't that his strength had left him, but that he no longer felt like smashing anything with it.
Ethan looked straight at Raphael.
His stomach still churned as he looked at that handsome face, but every one of his words carried an undeniable weight.
“......As one concerned for her safety, if you, the husband, would have pity on me, could you please tell me?”
Was this merely the trick of a three-inch tongue? That was a truth he would have to ask Lynette to know. A story from another world, not his daily life.
"Is Lynette... wearing it safely?”
At this moment, when it was difficult to judge for himself, this man was poking at his conscience.