The Life, Death, and Relife of the Mushroom Mage

Chapter 18

Or Empress went unsaid, and Mally hummed.

"So if I were to fight, there would never be anything to concern myself with," Edwin continued, and Artesia blinked.

"Are you always so dispassionate about everything?" she asked, rather directly, but she was the Saint and could do that.

"No," he said. "I'm actually a very passionate person."

"He's just passionate about all the wrong things," the prince teased and bumped shoulders with Edwin. "Don't mind him. He's been like that since childhood. So stuck in his ways."

"I don't mind Edwin at all!" Artesia protested, despite the fact that she had just criticized him, and Mally took another bite of their skewer. It was sweet and tangy and exactly what they needed to quell their temper.

"Sure you don't," the prince teased with a laugh.

"I don't!"

"He's a bit too stodgy for a wonderful lady like yourself," the prince said, and Mally resisted the urge to roll their eyes.

"I'm not stodgy," Edwin muttered, and the prince smiled wickedly.

"I've known you since you were in diapers. You're stodgy," he said, and Mally watched the scene like a tennis match. Maybe they could get some amusement out of this.

"No, I'm not," Edwin said in irritation, and Mally wondered when they were going to start fighting in earnest.

"Remember when you fell in that lake and---"

"Let's not," Edwin bit out, and Jacques laughed brightly.

"Ah, you shouldn't be so easy to tease, Edwin," he said with a vicious twinkle in his eye.

"I'm not too easy to tease," Edwin said, in a tone that implied he was very easy to tease, and Artesia cleared her throat.

"Let's not fight," she said. "I heard the temple was putting on a puppet show. Should we go?"

"To the puppet show?" Jacques asked, and Mally finished their first skewer and got to work on their second one. These were really good.

"Yes! I want to go! I miss puppet shows!" Artesia said, and Mally wondered if she realized how transparent she was. Ah, well. It was fine. Puppet shows were popular all over the empire, so she could fly under the radar.

"Alright, then we will do as the lady says," Jacques said grandly. "Let's go get close to the stage."

"I wonder which story they're going to tell..." Artesia said wistfully, and Mally glanced at her. According to the manhwa, it was the story of the first Saint that fell in love and reached a tragic end as a result. If they recalled correctly, she had a panic attack about it, thinking it was a divine warning that she shouldn't carelessly pursue love, and Edwin comforted her. It was then revealed that it was Edwin and Artesia, and they spent the rest of the night awkwardly before she finally fled and disappeared into the crowd, leaving him alone.

They shouldn't contradict her, but they wanted to prevent a panic attack. They did, in fact, want to prevent a panic attack. What to do?

Ah, fuck it. The damn ML could comfort her. They weren't about to be a commoner and tell an Imperial, a Saint, and a duke's son no. They needed to be aware of their position here. There was no convincing lie they could come up with that wasn't utterly humiliating, anyways. Like they were scared of puppets or something. That would be embarrassing. That would be entirely too embarrassing.

Even though they were a little scared of puppets. It was something about the eyes. They freaked them out, especially the way they moved. They hadn't gone to a puppet show yet in this world.

Right. They had a goblin murdering quest tomorrow. That meant they could leave early and plead off by complaining they had to be up early. Supposedly, you were supposed to go with a party, but they thought they could handle some goblins. They had poison resistance, but Mally could just choke them out. It was fine.

Their brain spiraled with plans of what they were going to do, and they walked alongside Artesia with their head in the clouds.

"What are you thinking about so hard, huh?" Artesia asked, and they blinked at her.

"Oh, I have a quest to take out a nest of goblins tomorrow," they said, and her eyebrows shot up.

"Do you have a party already?" she asked, and why did she sound hurt?

"No. I was just going to handle it myself," they replied, and she looked at them, startled.

"You could get hurt!" she protested, and Mally smiled at her wryly.

"I'll be fine. I can handle a couple of goblins," they said, and she seized their hands.

"If you get hurt, make it back and come to me for healing," she said desperately, and Mally blinked at the sheer force of her feelings.

"Oh, uhm..." they said, not sure how to respond to that, and Edwin looked over his shoulder at their joined hands with a frown.

"Artesia," he said, and she let go of his hands as if she'd been burned. "We're nearly at the square. Keep up."

Artesia flushed deeply and turned to follow him, and Mally resisted the urge to shake out their hands. What was that about?

"Keep up, Mally!" Jacques called, and they hurried to catch up.

"Coming!" they called as their brain whirled with the possibilities of why she would want to do something like that.

She must be putting on a show for Edwin, they realized. She was practically begging him not to kill her. Honestly, this girl. Georgina was dead. There was literally no reason for her to be panicking. There was no reason whatsoever.

She could just live now, and Mally did not understand why she was stubbornly determined to be paranoid. Maybe Georgina's death had rattled her even more?

It briefly occurred to Mally that the insane conclusion she could jump to next was that she was the next target, despite having absolutely no evidence pointing in that direction. Oh. Actually, that sounded like something she'd do. Well. Mally had no intentions of assuaging her fears. That wasn't going to work for them.

They yawned loudly and stretched as they walked, and Edwin looked down at them.

"Do you want to go to the puppet show?" he asked, and Mally blinked up at him.

"Well, I don't have a reason not to go," they said.

"We didn't ask you for your opinion," he said, and they blinked up at him.

"What does my opinion matter?" they asked in amusement, and Edwin turned red.

"Your opinion matters very much," he said, and Mally grinned.

"Well, my opinion is we should keep Artesia happy," they said, even though this was not going to keep Artesia happy, but they were more invested in flying under the radar. "And have food after."

"Where do you put all the food you eat?" he asked bluntly, and they blinked.

"Huh?"

"You're so small," he mumbled, and then he reddened even more and deliberately looked away from him.

Huh. Weird.

"I have a high metabolism, and being an adventurer is very labor intensive," they said dryly, and he blinked, as though that hadn't occurred to him.

"Ah... Yes, I imagine it would be," he mumbled, and honestly, he went from hot to cold so easily. Teenage hormones, they thought dryly. His teenage hormones were a mess.

"Oh, there's the stage!" Artesia squealed and rushed forward, and Jacques's eyes widened as he realized she was about to plunge headlong into the crowd without a care in the world.

"Artesia!" he cried and ran after her, and Edwin sighed and strode forward to catch up with them, leaving Mally alone.

Well. They just had to get through this show and Artesia's panic attack, and then they would be able to go home.

Thank gods.