房客(糙汉)何璐程曜坤

"But of course. I am not an idiot and remember our first meeting very well. I like the oxygen now and would like it to stay in the air that I am breathing."

"It makes me glad to hear that we understand each other so well."

The neon-pink-haired girl reluctantly nodded her head to which the dark-haired girl responded with a graceful and benevolent smile.

"You are not going to ask me do I know what is going on with Mirienne?"

Roiso glanced at Zoemi, making sure that he doesn\'t hear it, and asked.

"No. I found out on my own."

Miriette expression darkened for a moment and she shook her head while clenching her fist.

"Alright. I\'m just glad that you cared for her that much. She would be overjoyed to learn that."

Roiso breathed out in relief and patted Miriette\'s shoulder.

"Hmph... If you say so. That said, Zoei said something about someone who was calling themselves Demon lord Mirienne, do you know anything about it?"

"Only that Zoemi mentioned them a few times, something about encouraging him to move forward and not losing hope because you were waiting for him. Honestly, sounds like our Mirienne, but apparently, they looked too different to match her."

Miriette scoffed under her breath before glancing over at Zoemi and Roiso answered with a sigh.

While that part of the table was occupied with the conversation, the other one had a rather different mood.

"Are you proud of yourself?"

Ehmi was making a strict expression while glaring at her younger brother.

"B-But...!"

"I asked if you are proud of yourself. Our parents and I barely managed to patch up things with her and her family and you just go ahead and remind her of what that fool said! Go ahead and cast a fireball in her face while you are at it!"

Grazio fidgetted and stuttered but Ehmi didn\'t give him a chance to explain himself and just continued the scolding.

"I thought that you were smarter than this, Grazio. She called him her knight, and our father mentioned that he learned that she requested her parents to make him her attendant in the future. What did you imagine would happen if you suddenly tried to make him the bad guy? You need to stop looking down on people or you will give our family trouble!"

The crimson-haired girl shook her head and fumed angrily at the apologetically cowering red-haired boy.

"I\'m sorry..."

"That\'s not something you should be saying to me."

Grazio said but his older sister shrugged her shoulders and pouted.

"And just to be clear – you should forget about apologizing to Miri today, she already showed how she feels. If you try to go to her room after the meal, she will slam the door in your face if you are lucky, and straight up choke you out if she will be pissed off enough. Do you know what you should do? Since both you and that boy start the knight training tomorrow, you should try having a healthy rivalry with him. If Miri will see you treating him normally with no prejudice or ill will, then she should allow you to apologize to her."

"...I understand..."

Ehmi advised and Grazio agreed, lowering his voice just enough to not make his grumpiness obvious.

The siblings ended their conversation just in time for Zoemi to be seated again and the meal could begin.

"...Zoemi...?"

By the end of it, Roiso put down the dessert fork and tugged on Zoemi\'s sleeve making him lean towards her.

"Yes?"

The black-haired boy asked curiously.

"Are you sure that the treacherous charred slut doesn\'t remember the past timeline?"

Roiso whispered in a bothered voice.

"Miriette is sure of it, and I believe her."

Zoemi shrugged his shoulders and pointed out without a shred of hesitation.

"Yeah... Well, fuck me, am I right?"

Roiso frowned and returned to her dessert all grumpy.

"That\'s not what I meant. Could you tell me what bothers you about Ehmi?"

Zoemi closed his eyes so that Roiso would not see him roll them, and then he was the one to lean towards the neon-pink-haired girl and ask.

"...hmph... She keeps looking your way kind of longingly. I learned that before betraying our side and getting chummy with Cherro she had a thing for you."

Roiso scoffed a bit but ended up revealing what she noticed, causing Zoemi to raise his brows.

"She is doing that...? How odd... before we started eating I heard her scold Grazio about being openly aggressive against me, but it didn\'t sound like she had other motives besides the good of the Victureo family..."

"Wait, you were listening in to their conversation?!"

Zoemi furrowed his brows and wondered to which Rosio gasped turning to him wide-eyed.

"Yeah, with the help of the law of Sagittarius. You know I use it all the time because it takes ages to level up and I want to get it to at least tenth star level."

The black-haired boy nodded while exposing one of his ears to the stunned neon-pink-haired girl.

"!!!"

"...?"

As Zoemi did so, he ended up looking towards Ehmi and caught her red-handed of doing exactly what Roiso have accused her of – gazing at him kind of longingly.

The moment she was spotted, she blushed and hurriedly looked away with no intention of owning up to her deeds.

Still, all in all, she wasn\'t doing anything inappropriate or illegal so Zoemi simply didn\'t pursue the matter in any way.

"Whose man does she think she is ogling...?"

"...!"

Enhanced by the law of Sagittarius or not, Zoemi\'s hearing was far better than an average person, so when Miriette murmured furiously under her breath, the black-haired boy heard and looked at her in surprise.

"Zoemi, due to the restrictions of our current physical forms I cannot be as close to you as I want, but I demand that you at least will act as if you were my officially appointed attendant whenever we can\'t show how close we are in public."

The dark-haired girl noticed his look but did not feel bothered by it in the slightest and just casually added, finishing her dessert and reaching out he hand towards him.

"And now I require you to lead me back to my room."

She demanded not even attempting to make it an illusion of choice - a choice that Zoemi didn\'t even want in the first place.