Vol 1 Chapter 7 – Whispering Love in My Ear Every Time You Dodge an Attack, or Something【Vol 1 – Ten Years Later, the Male Disciple I Reunited With Had Somehow Turned Into a Succubus】

And so, the day after Shion and I reunited for the first time in ten years.

We met up in front of the same fountain as yesterday, and when Shion told me, “I really want to show Master around!”, the place she brought me to turned out to be the royal castle.

“Um, Shion, hey…?”
“Come on, Master, this way! Hurry, hurry!”

Watching Shion stride proudly down the exact middle of the castle’s main central corridor, I couldn’t help but think, so she really is a princess, huh, in this weirdly detached way.

That aside, I’m not a noble or anything, so of course I feel completely out of place.

How should it be put… every single person we pass stares right at us.

In other words, all those eyes hurt.

That said, doing what Shion did at the fountain yesterday and erasing my presence would be… questionable.

Sure, if I erased my presence, getting people to stop looking at me alone would be easy.

But that only works if it’s just me.

The moment there’s a dress-wearing princess knight walking right in front of me, turning back every few seconds to talk, there’s just no way for us not to stand out.

“Hey, Shion. I don’t know where we’re headed, but couldn’t we at least take a less conspicuous route…?”
“Understood. Then I will use the top-secret passage reserved for the royal family.”
“How is that not obviously a bad idea?!”
“It’s perfectly fine, Master. ‘Reserved for the royal family’ is just what they call it; in reality, the chancellor and the head of the House of Lords use it too. In that case, there’s no reason Master shouldn’t be allowed.”
“If anything, there’s nothing but reasons I shouldn’t be allowed!?”

And so the place we finally arrived at was, of all things, the audience chamber—the single most extravagantly decorated room in the entire castle.

And there, I was in for an even bigger shock.

Waiting for us were the king himself, seated on the throne, and the kingdom’s chancellor standing at his side.

What’s more, when I started to bow my head, the king stopped me, rose from his seat,

and together with the chancellor beside him, bent deeply at the waist.

Then, out of nowhere, they apologized to me──!

“We are truly, deeply sorry for what we have done up until now…!”
“Ehhhhhh!?”

I had absolutely no idea what they were apologizing for, and I could not, for the life of me, think of anything these two—whom I was meeting for the first time—needed to apologize to me for.

As I stood there baffled, Shion, who had also bowed deeply, began to explain.

In short, when it came to the matter of sealing away the evil god, the king and chancellor had spread the story to the public without ever mentioning my name, as if Shion alone had sealed the evil god, and they were now apologizing profusely for that.

I honestly didn’t mind at all, though.

Given the situation ten years ago when I vanished into subspace, turning Shion into a hero had probably been the quickest way to calm a populace terrified of the evil god’s revival.

When I said as much, Shion solemnly shook her head.

“But Master. As grateful as we are for your understanding and generosity, the fact remains that someone like me ended up stealing Master’s achievements.”
“No, no, you really don’t need to worry about that—”
“Which is why, even now, we should immediately spread the truth of Master’s exploits throughout the land, and pay you appropriate reparations—”
“There’s absolutely no need to spread my name around now, okay!? And also, all of you, please raise your heads already!”
“No. In light of how rudely we treated Master, the only proper response would be to prostrate ourselves—”
“There was nothing rude about it at all, okay!?”

I frantically shot that down.

It made me happy that Shion and the king and the others were so considerate of me, but that very consideration was so heavy it kind of hurt.

In times like this, there’s only one solution: forcibly change the subject.

“S–speaking of which. Shion, yesterday you said you’re a succubus, right…?”
“Yes, Master. There’s a reason for that, and it ties into how this kingdom came to be.”
“Huh, really?”
“The first king who founded this country was a descendent of succubi.”
“A succubus…?”
“Yes, from the now-extinct original succubus race. It seems that in my case, that succubus blood manifested very strongly in a sort of throwback…”
“But, succubus or not, I never realized you were a girl at all back then, you know?”
“That’s the strange part. If the succubus blood is too strong, it seems that in childhood, you actually end up looking more like a boy. The original succubi must have been the same way.”
“Huh, really?”
“…According to the legends, only after meeting someone they feel they could give their entire being to, and experiencing a bittersweet, adult romance where they end up parting ways, do they truly awaken as real succubi…”
“Hohhh.”

As expected of the mysterious succubus race—needing to experience a love that knows both the sour and the sweet before they can grow is seriously rough.

…But if that’s the case, that means Shion also went through some bittersweet romance like that.

As her Master, that makes me extremely curious who the other party was.

＊＊＊＊

After that, the king and the others finally raised their heads, and we were able to actually talk.

I was relieved; if they had stayed like that, the awkwardness would have been unbearable.

At first, the conversation was stiff—an exchange of apologies and my attempts to deflect them—but the king is Shion’s father, and I’m Shion’s Master.

Once the topic became our shared interest, Shion, the conversation quickly grew lively.

“—I see, I see. So before she became my disciple, Shion beat up pretty much every knight in the kingdom when she was little, then ran away from home saying she was off to find someone stronger than her…?”
“Indeed. She sends letters from time to time, but every single one of them is just about how strong and cool her Master is, and how she wants to train by your side for the rest of her life…”
“Father!? You didn’t have to tell him that!”
“And so I’ve always been extremely curious to see just how strong the man is who became my daughter’s Master. —Oh! If you don’t mind, would you perhaps be willing to demonstrate a mock battle with my daughter here and now?”
“F–F–Father!! Absolutely not! That would be a huge bother for Master!”
“I mean, I don’t mind at all…”

Why was Shion so dead set against it?

When I looked over at her, silently asking what was going on, she pulled a guilty face.

“…If I did a mock battle with Master, I’d just get beaten to a pulp in front of Father…!”
“Hey now. Even I wouldn’t go that far in front of my disciple’s parents, you know?”
“Having Master blatantly hold back is just as bad in a different way.”
“Then what exactly do you want me to do?”
“—I don’t want Father to see me get beaten without being able to lay a finger on you, but having you hold back also rubs me the wrong way. So I was thinking you could at least train me the same way you do during our usual master–disciple practice, and then make some kind of considerate adjustment.”
“Okaaay, and how am I supposed to do that, specifically?”
“Let’s see… F–for example, every time you dodge one of my attacks, you could lean in and whisper words of love in my ear…!”
“There is no way I’m doing that!?”
“T–that’s not true at all! And it’s pure, wholesome teacher–student love we’re talking about here, so it should be totally doable—!”
“Before any of that, can we take a step back and notice how many things are fundamentally wrong with the premise!?”

At that point, the whole thing started feeling like a giant hassle, so during the mock battle that followed, I opted not to dodge any of her attacks, nullified them all, and then proceeded to utterly pound Shion into the ground one-sidedly.

The king did look pretty taken aback, but I just hand-waved it with some line about how “training should always be carried out seriously.”

And right after the mock battle ended, Shion, now looking like a ragged old cloth, fainted away with a strangely blissful expression on her face.