小嫂子的味道

There was no use in playing dumb since he\'d caught me red-handed, and I didn\'t have time for doing that anyway. Thus I decided to go with the more direct approach. 

"When did you come in? No, rather I should ask how did you come in?" I asked, standing before him while also preparing myself in case he resorted to violence. 

"Hmmm? I didn\'t," Ryfin replied. 

There was a bit of silence in the room because I wasn\'t able to understand what he meant by \'I didn\'t.\' After seeing that he wasn\'t going to say anything else, I continued. 

"What do you mean?" I questioned. 

"I\'m saying that I didn\'t enter the room, I was always here standing in this corner," he said. "You were so busy making a mess out of my things that you didn\'t even notice."

Once those words left his mouth I kinda knew what had happened, and more or less right now I was more cautious of him than I\'d ever been. 

\'Is he speaking the truth?\' I asked Req just to clear my doubts although I already knew that it was all true. 

[Yeah… that\'s what I\'ve been trying to tell you.]

Of course, she had noticed. Ryfin was present in this room even before I entered— no, perhaps he was here even before I entered the building. All this while he kept his presence so low that I didn\'t even notice his existence. 

I looked at him and prepared myself to defend myself at any moment or escape if that was necessary. 

"What do you want?" I asked. 

"Hmmm? You\'re talking about me?" he said, pointing at his face with his index finger. "I don\'t want anything. However, it seems like you do want something after all."

A bead of sweat dripped from my forehead; this was getting bad. I wouldn\'t have had any problem fighting him before but I didn\'t know what his limits were and what he was capable of doing, and in the previous timeline I had seen him fend off the demon beasts pretty easily as well. 

Thus I wanted to avoid a fight if I could. 

"Oh? It seems like I\'ve got something in my left hand," he said as he raised it up. "Could it be that this is what you are looking for?"

There was a book in his hand. A pretty thick one with a crimson-red leather cover on it; there was a diagram of a circle made of gold at the center of its cover and it looked like a magic circle whose ends covered the entire book. 

It wouldn\'t be strange to think that this was the book I was looking for; the one with the magic circle for teleportation in it. 

"How did you know I was looking for it?" I questioned; still cautious. 

"Well, I just had this feeling that you might need this book. So I came here just to deliver it to you," he said, and then we stared at each other for a while. 

"Okay, yeah. Sorry, that was a bad one," he said while running his right hand through his hair. "I knew that this might be what you\'d be looking for because, well, there isn\'t anything worthy of any value in my room. This book is the only thing that might be of any use to you."

"Here, take it," saying that he tossed the book toward me. 

Instinctively, I hurled forward and caught it with both my hands. This was something many lives depended on, I couldn\'t let it fall just like that. 

After getting hold of the book I straightened up and put my guard up again which I\'d dropped for a second there. And now I realized how much of a deadly situation I was just in. While I was focused on catching the book Ryfin could\'ve attacked from anywhere, I was all open. 

However, for some reason, he didn\'t do that. 

"Why are you giving this to me so easily?" I asked. "Surely you aren\'t the merciful type, are you?" 

"How harsh of you to say that to your teacher," he said, making an expression as if he got hurt. Hah, as if…

"I am giving you this without any ulterior motives. I thought you might have some need for it, so as a good teacher and instructor, I am giving this book to you."

"And you expect me to believe that?" I muttered. 

This time he didn\'t reply, rather just looked straight into my eyes while a little smile covered his face. I was staring back and was conscious of each and every inch of my body. 

I went so focused that I could hear myself breathing and feel my heartbeat. I gripped the book tightly and the slight noise of my hand rubbing against the leather cover fell onto my ears. 

A gust of wind blew outside, tossing the leaves in the air and making them rustle. The curtains on the windows danced, and since the window was open a group of leaves came swimming inside. 

One of them flickered and jerked in the air as it moved forward. It was a clean brown leaf that had fallen from a tree somewhere near, or it was also possible that it came from miles away. 

It danced and swirled in the air, going in circles and various patterns. Slowly as it moved gently and without a care with the flow of the wind, the leave came between me and Ryfin. 

My eyes focused on it, however, it was only for a second. In that second I exhaled and relieved my lungs, in that second another bead of sweat dripped from my forehead, in that second I felt my heart pounding, and in that second I saw Ryfin completely vanish from his place. 

\'Shit—\'

Suddenly a burst of wind hit me from behind and forced me to take a few steps forward while my cloak swayed forward, all the leaves present in the room went all over the place. 

I instantly turned to look back and saw Ryfin standing behind me. Before I could say anything he grabbed my shoulder and forcefully pulled me toward him. 

I used [Foresight], the next first thing but that turned out to be a bad move. I was stunned at what I saw; the skill wasn\'t showing any future projections of him. There was only one him, that was living in the present. 

Then I tried to resist him by force but was surprised to see that I could do nothing at all. Pushing his hand off my shoulder felt like I was pushing a mountain. 

My heart stopped for a second, he was way too powerful than I\'d expected. 

\'I underestimated him.\'