Vol 2 Chapter 21 – Epilogue — A Story of Peaceful Days, All the Same~【Vol 2 — Youth in the Midst of Calamity】

A brilliant shaft of sunlight swept through the window and seared my eyelids.

“…Mmph.”

My consciousness was drawn up toward waking, like being lifted from the bottom of the ocean, and I opened my eyes.
My thoughts were still hazy and unfocused as I absently tried to push myself upright.
But something heavy and clinging was wrapped around my body, and the confusion made me take stock of exactly what situation I’d been sleeping in.

“…”

I was lying flat on my back at the center of a very large bed, and Aria, Sophia, and Elena were all pressed against me from every side, holding on tight.
The three of them were still asleep, but their grip was strong enough to be stifling — warm and breathless.
I took in the pale skin peeking out from their disheveled nightclothes and the soft give of their bodies against mine, then settled back down.

“…Oh, right.”

A low, satisfied murmur slipped out.

I remembered — this was Sophia’s house. After everything — and I do mean a genuinely absurd amount of everything — it had been decided that the four of us would live here together from now on.

— I’d actually done it.

◯

“Oh, oh! There’s something cool over there!”

Elena dashed through the bustling crowd along the main boulevard, weaving between people with boundless energy. Her pretty face was lit up with a smile so genuine it could only be real.

“Goodness, Elena-chan, you’ll trip if you run like that!”
“Come on, Will? Let’s go!”

Sophia and Aria hurried after Elena, who was already charging ahead on her own. I followed along behind, hand in hand with Aria.
Their faces, too, were bright with genuine excitement — not a trace of pretense anywhere.

This was the royal capital’s main street shopping district.
The four of us had come to stock up on everything we’d need for our new life together.
Sophia’s teleportation magic had gotten us here in an instant. An absolute godsend.

Swallowed up in the lively, noisy crowd, I walked alongside Aria, Sophia, and Elena.

I hung back just half a step, watching the three of them.

“Doesn’t this one look like it’d suit Aria-chan?”
“You think? I think it’d look better on Sophia-chan.”
“Nooo, something this cute would never work on me.”
“Elena thinks this one’s cuter! Look, look — Onee-chan! Aria-chan!”

I watched the three of them laugh and fuss together, and I still couldn’t quite believe it was real.
Because just the other day, they’d been going at each other with everything they had. Not that I had any right to say so, being the root cause of the whole mess.
But this — this was something to celebrate. This was exactly the sight I’d wished for from the bottom of my heart.
The view I’d wanted to see.

Like lifelong best friends, they laughed and carried on, their smiles wide and unguarded.
No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find a shred of dishonesty in any of it.

And yet — after what I’d been through. Even wanting to believe in them, a sliver of doubt crept in somewhere.

“Will-kun, Will-kun, Will-kun! Onii-chan, look look look — does this suit Elena? Is it cute?”

At a clothes stall lined with hanging garments, Elena held a dress up against herself and turned to me, beaming.
That face — bright and unguarded, pure in the way only someone her age could be — smiled straight at me.
Every single thing about her was genuinely adorable.

“Yeah, it looks great on you, Elena. Really, really cute.”

I ruffled her light brown hair — and Elena let out a pleased little “Ehehe~” and threw her arms around my waist. The dress she’d been holding crumpled in the process, and the stall owner, an older woman, winced visibly.
Sorry, ma’am. We’ll buy it.

“Ehehe… cute… Elena’s cute…”

Elena melted against me with a goofy grin, arms locked tight around my waist and showing no sign of letting go.

At that, Aria and Sophia — watching from just beside us — suddenly raised their voices.

“W-Will! What about me?! What do you think about mine?! Is it cute?!”
“Will-kun, Will-kun — look — I think your Onee-chan looks pretty cute too, you know~!”

Aria, a little desperate; Sophia, stealing heated glances at me from the corner of her eye.
Both of them — needless to say — were utterly irresistible.
I’d never want to share either of them with anyone.

Then a thought crossed my mind.

Is it really okay for things to be going this well?

◯

I got separated.

With a crowd this size moving in every direction, I suppose it was inevitable.
There was some kind of street performance going on partway down the main boulevard, and I got swept up in the cluster of spectators gathered around it. By the time I surfaced, the girls were gone.

They were probably turning the city inside out looking for me right now.
I could picture it clearly.
Because they had made a promise — no more Surveillance Magic. No more eavesdropping and watching me without my knowledge.
In a crowd this chaotic, once you lost someone, finding them again wouldn’t be easy.

I pressed toward the edge of the street and called out as loudly as I could.

“Aria! Sophia! Elena!”

Even my shouts were swallowed up by the layers of noise around me, barely making a dent.
Great… what do I do now?
No better ideas came to mind, so I kept calling their names and scanning the crowd as I made my way along the edge of the boulevard.

Then at some point, I thought I caught one of their voices — and I went still and listened.
Almost immediately, I realized the sound was coming not from the lively main street, but from a dim alley running off to the side.

“…?”

Something felt off, but with no better lead to follow, I headed into the alley.
The contrast was jarring — the noise of the shopping district dropped away like it had never existed, replaced by shadow and stillness. The distant sounds of the crowd still drifted over, but they felt like they belonged to another world entirely.
Nobody around.

With each step I took, the voice grew clearer — and I realized something.

“…That’s not right.”

The voice was definitely a woman’s. But it didn’t belong to any of the three — not Aria, not Sophia, not Elena.
And there wasn’t just one voice — a man’s voice was mixed in too, low and casual.

“Come on… it’s fine, yeah? You’d be better off just giving up already.”
“No…! Please, stop!”
“All I’m asking is for you to come with me for a bit. That’s it, right?”
“I keep telling you, I’ve been saying no this whole time —”
“Hey, hey, hey. Keep pushing back like that, and you’re seriously gonna get hurt, you hear me?”

I peeked around the corner.
There was a young man — clearly full of himself — with a girl pinned against the wall, a slow smirk plastered across his face.
The girl, at first glance, had the kind of refined, clean-cut beauty that nine out of ten people would call stunning.
The guy, at first glance, was the kind of punk who’d clearly never been told no.
What was happening needed no explanation.

“…”

I hesitated for just a beat.
Turning around and walking away here — that’s not something a decent person does.

Honestly, I’m pretty scared. But I’ll probably be okay.
I can use magic. The girls around me are so absurdly powerful that my sense of scale has been completely warped, but objectively, being able to actually wield magic already puts me well above average by normal standards. At least, that’s how it should work.

“Enough, just hold still —”
“Please — !”

The man finally lost patience and moved to force the issue. The girl’s eyes filled with tears, and she cried out in fear.

I stepped in.

“Hold it.”

I grabbed the man’s arm and spun him toward me.

“The hell?! Who do you think you are, just barging in like that?!”

He grabbed my collar and yanked me off the ground. My feet left the earth.
Breath squeezed out of my lungs.

“…”
“Hey — say something. What’s your deal? You really think you can —”

He didn’t get to finish that sentence.

A custom-crafted boulder — woven from mana and held suspended in the air beforehand — dropped directly onto the top of his head.

Thud.

The man crumpled to the ground. Still. Out cold.

“…I win.”

I honestly didn’t expect it to go that smoothly. I had backup plans ready and everything.
How were you planning to force yourself on someone when you go down that easy? If you’d picked any one of those three girls, you’d be dead.

I turned to the trembling girl beside me.

“Uh — you okay? Glad I got here in time.”

The girl’s round eyes went wide, darting back and forth between the collapsed man and me.
The next instant, she threw her arms around me.

“— !”
“I was so scared… I was so, so scared…!”
“O-okay. I get it. Just — take a breath, okay?”
“Waaah… uuu…! Thank you… so much…! I — I —”

She was crying, holding on tighter and tighter.

Wait wait wait wait wait — stop — this is bad. This is really bad. This is bad on so many levels.

Every alarm bell in my head was screaming at full volume. Screaming at me to peel this girl off right now and get out of here.
This situation is genuinely dangerous.
The odds of the girls showing up in this back alley at this exact moment were basically zero. Especially without their Surveillance Magic.
…Probably.
…Definitely not impossible, though.
This is bad. This is really, truly bad.

I tried to place my hands on her shoulders and push her back —
— wait, why is she this strong? I’m starting to lose confidence in myself as a man.

A tearful, beautiful face was right there in front of mine.

She’s — cute —!

That’s not the point right now!!

I was in the middle of delivering the harshest internal scolding of my entire life when —

“— !”

“D… don’t… you dare…”

The man who should have been unconscious was staggering back to his feet, glaring at me over the girl’s shoulder.
The girl hadn’t noticed.

One hand pressed to his head, he closed the distance between us and drew back his fist.
Needless to say, with the girl clinging to me with the grip of a vice, I had nowhere to go.

If nothing intervened, that fist was going to connect directly.

I stared him down and yelled with everything I had.

“You absolute idiot — run, now!”

“— Huh?”

In that instant, the man was launched — literally — and vanished from my field of vision. He didn’t even have time to scream.

“…………”

Oh no… was that too much? Is he still breathing?
I thought that while staring at Aria, Sophia, and Elena, who had apparently appeared in front of me at some point without my noticing.

They were wearing the most radiant, wholesome smiles — watching me get hugged by a beautiful girl.

— I prepared myself to die.

◯

Same alley as before.
Just me, Aria, Sophia, and Elena.
I was seated in seiza on the hard ground, looking up at the three of them standing in a ring around me.

The girl I’d rescued was gone. She’d fled just moments ago.
Not the quiet sniffling she’d done while clinging to me — open, full-throated screaming. She’d run like something terrible was chasing her.
Whatever had taken place in the interim… reconstructing it precisely would be a little awkward, so I’ll leave that here.

Regardless, I’d dropped into seiza on pure reflex, and now I waited for them to speak.

“…”

My heart hurts. It feels like it might split open. Honestly, I kind of want to run screaming too.

“Will —”

The first to break the silence was Aria.
I lifted my face and looked at them.

“—…”

The expressions on their faces were nothing like what I’d braced for.
They looked… sad. A little lonely.

“Will told us he loves us, right?”
“…Y-Yeah.”

I nodded.

“That wasn’t — you know, saying it for our sake, right? It wasn’t because you felt like you had to?”
“…Wait, what?”

What on earth is she talking about?

While I was tilting my head in confusion, Sophia spoke up.

“The thing is, Will-kun… we’ve been thinking about it. After everything we put you through — do you really, honestly not hold any of that against us? Do you really still think of us as people you love?”

Sophia said it with a look of genuine worry.

And in that moment — I understood.

…Oh. They felt it too.

I’d been carrying this small, nagging sense that things were going too smoothly. Too neatly. Something just a little off.
They’d been feeling the exact same thing.

The moment I realized that, something that had been quietly swirling in my chest simply dissolved.

Yeah. It’s going to be okay.

So I met their eyes — steady and certain — and spoke.

“None of that matters. I love Aria, Sophia, and Elena — I love you three because I love you. By now there’s no changing that. So don’t worry.”

They blinked, just slightly — and then, quietly, they smiled.
Elena was the first to move. She wrapped her arms around me without hesitation.

“Uuu… uuu…! Onii-chan… I love you so much…!”

I caught her and stroked her hair.
When I looked up, Aria and Sophia were both smiling warmly.

“Mm. I love you too, Will. But… I’d really rather not see what happened back there again.”

“You really are kind, Will-kun. Genuinely, truly kind. So — because you’re that kind, and because I honestly don’t know what I’d do if I saw some other girl clinging to you like that again… just be careful, okay?”

The cheerful, sunny smiles on both their faces sent a cold shiver straight through me, body and soul.

Right. Some things don’t change that easily.

— No matter what happens. No matter what. I will never, ever cheat.

With that resolution forged in the absolute depths of my heart, I let my thoughts drift toward the harem life I’d worked so hard for — one that was somehow bright and ominous in equal measure, and whose true nature I still couldn’t quite pin down.