Since she already knew Loki wanted to see her, Hestia didn't stay much longer.
Once Ryuu left, she stood up to go as well.
Sakura said she wanted to stay at the restaurant a little longer.
Hestia hesitated a moment before agreeing.
She felt tonight had been too rushed, if Loki hadn't been asking for her, she wouldn't have left so soon.
She could understand why Sakura wanted to stay.
Besides, her intuition told her it would be better not to bring Sakura along to meet Loki. She was worried it might be that matter.
After Hestia left, Sakura, who had been sitting there so calmly, suddenly looked as if she'd let out a breath she'd been holding.
Her small body loosened a little, and a hint of helplessness crossed her adorable face.
For such a tiny person, her expression and gestures were surprisingly looking like a grown-up.
Yuto laugh at the sight.
The small laugh slipped out, and the little girl puffed up her cheeks, feeling both embarrassed and a little angry.
"Boss Onii-chan, don't laugh."
The little girl's voice was soft and babyish.
The way she tried so hard to open her eyes wide and stare straight at him was especially cute—just like a little deer!
"Mm. Mm. Mm." Yuto hummed a few times, plainly in the tone of someone soothing a child.
Sakura shot him a look and then ignored him.
She was growing livelier by the day, and Hestia was probably a big part of the reason.
Spend too much time around a hopeless goddess like that, and you were bound to pick up a little of it.
"Ahem. Since Hestia has gone, perhaps we can begin the lesson." El-Melloi II drew a thick book out from somewhere, his face turning serious and focused as he looked at Sakura.
He looked every bit the strict teacher!
For all that El-Melloi II wasn't much in a fight, when it came to teaching he had always been one of the most popular instructors at the Clock Tower.
Once he was in teaching mode, he became very serious, and Sakura went stiff in front of him at once.
El-Melloi II caught her reaction right away, and his expression softened.
He realized he'd been a bit too severe.
Out of habit, he'd treated Sakura the way he treated his usual students, and for a moment he'd forgotten how young she was.
"Did I frighten you?"
"Eh? Ah, no!" His question sent Sakura scrambling, flustered as a startled squirrel.
Seeing that, El-Melloi II knew she was lying.
He adjusted himself and tried to make his face kinder—but against his usual precise, serious look, the attempt came off far too unnatural, and it left everyone, Sakura included, feeling awkward.
"I think your usual manner is fine. Sakura should be able to handle it," Yuto put in.
El-Melloi II was quiet for a moment.
He looked at Sakura, then nodded. Even so, his manner stayed much more relaxed than the stern face he'd started with.
"First, let me introduce myself. My name is El-Melloi II. Since you're to be my student, in daily life you can simply call me Teacher." He cleared his throat lightly and introduced himself.
Sakura nodded, then called him Teacher, and El-Melloi II nodded back.
After that he turned to Yuto.
"Boss, my original plan was to bring Tohsaka to my world for her lessons. But after thinking it over carefully, I decided that wouldn't work. She was born the daughter of the Tohsaka family and was later adopted into the Matou family.
By the original course of events, she should have gone on living as a daughter of the Matou. But that original course has already been thrown off by your and everyone else's involvement. If Tohsaka appears in my world, I believe it's quite possible someone would notice something wrong. So I'd like to ask a favor. May I teach Tohsaka here?"
He spoke with a serious, focused look.
The problem he raised was exactly the loose end left behind after Yuto had taken a large group to wipe out the Matou family last time.
The restaurant's mysterious power had corrected the history and the memories of El-Melloi II's world.
The Matou, a mage family that should have gone on existing, had been rewritten into a family that ended.
Only El-Melloi II knew the truth behind that change.
No one had noticed anything strange, but cautious as he was, he worried that if Sakura returned to the original world, it might set off some kind of shift.
That was why he asked.
"There's no problem teaching her here. The only thing is the setup might be a bit basic." Yuto smiled as he answered.
El-Melloi II shook his head. "I'm only teaching theory. As long as there's a place to sit, that's enough."
"Then it's fine." Yuto nodded. "There are plenty of empty rooms upstairs. You can teach Sakura there—it'll be more convenient."
Naturally, it wouldn't do for El-Melloi II to teach Sakura out in the dining hall; lessons needed a quiet spot after all.
And this way it would be easier to keep things from Hestia.
Even if she came back to the restaurant looking for Sakura, Yuto could simply say Sakura was upstairs.
"Thank you, Boss." El-Melloi II thanked him.
"Tohru, take them upstairs." Yuto gave the word, and Tohru led El-Melloi II and Sakura up.
As they climbed the stairs, you could still faintly hear all sorts of warnings from Tohru—things like, "Don't wake Kanna up. She's got a bad temper when she wakes," and, "If Kanna wakes up, she'll eat people," and so on.
Yuto felt a little puzzled.
Was Kanna really that frightening?
"Hmph. That man may be weak, but he's reliable enough. It's time I left as well." The Hero King crossed his arms, gave a snort, and stood up.
"You're not going to watch?" Yuto asked.
"No need. I'm a busy man.... How could I have time to keep an eye on every little thing?" Gilgamesh spoke with a touch of arrogance.
Yuto didn't know what to say.
So was the Hero King who'd awkwardly fussed over Sakura earlier just an act, then?
"The real reason is that we've stayed too long. Things are probably getting messy back on our side, so we need to go and check it." Enkidu spoke far more gently, and his warm smile put people at ease from the inside out.
That was the nature he'd been born with.
"And there's a large pile of government work to deal with tomorrow. The king should rest early too." Siduri added, smiling.
The Hero King scoffed. "Government work is nothing. Leave it to me! However much there is, I'll handle it flawlessly!"
With that, he strode out of the restaurant.
Enkidu and Siduri each said goodbye to Yuto and followed him.
Yuto watched the three of them go and sighed to himself.
Being a king really wasn't easy.
The Three Goddess Alliance, the demonic beast attacks, all sorts of tangled affairs at home—Gilgamesh had so much to handle.
Would he work himself to death? Probably not.
(Yeah right lmao)
...
Before anyone quite noticed, midnight had already come and gone.
Inside the little restaurant, Yuto, Tohru, Erina, and Hisako sat together and talked.
At a table not far off, the three-person gaming squad was still lost in their game, with no sign of surfacing.
Upstairs, Sakura had been studying with El-Melloi II for over half an hour now, and all the magecraft theory was starting to make the little girl's head ache.
Kanna was sleeping soundly in another room.
The summer night was especially calm and still. The cicadas outside mixed with the faint footsteps of people walking along Ichinose Street.
The bright moon lay quietly in the sky, and the clouds that drifted past now and then were like blankets for it.
Moonlight filled the restaurant's back courtyard, as if a layer of silver gauze had been spread over the little yard.
The light slipping in through the window was quiet too.
No one looked at it.
Erina and Hisako were asking about the strange stories of the restaurant's customers—things they'd never been able to touch back when they lived as ordinary people.
Everyone had their share of curiosity, especially about things beyond ordinary understanding.
While Yuto was telling the two of them these stories, the restaurant door opened.
He stopped and looked toward the entrance.
After midnight, the number of customers usually dropped.
But there was one difference from the hours before midnight: after midnight, the odds of meeting a new customer were often higher.
"Welcome." Yuto spoke calmly to the newcomer.
This was a new face.
Just from his appearance, it was all too easy to picture some cold, delinquent young man off the streets.
He was very tall and solidly built, at least around 190 centimeters.
He wore a long, heavy black coat with none of the upper buttons fastened, so the strong build beneath his shirt showed clearly.
The strangest part of the coat was near the collar, by his cheek, where a golden chain hung down.
Every link was thick, and they all looked real—not some cheap plastic decoration.
That made it surprising, since by rights the coat should have been dragged out of shape by the weight of the chain, yet on him nothing looked wrong at all.
Black pants.
Good leather shoes.
And that hat.
The tall man wore a hat of a rather unusual design, and his face sat slightly in shadow beneath it.
Even so, Yuto saw him clearly.
If you called him handsome, he really could be called handsome.
But beyond the good looks, what stood out most was the cold, ruthless air he gave off.
His features were sharp and firm, which made him seem all the more commanding.
"Hm? This place is..." The man glanced around, careful, his eyes moving over Yuto and the others and then over the layout of the restaurant.
His posture was like a wary animal ready to move at any second.
But in the next moment, he paused, as if something had cut him off.
Then he laid a hand on the brim of his hat and pressed it down, and his expression eased a little.
"Yare yare daze..." There was a note of helplessness in his voice.
Then he walked toward the counter. "Going by the message in my head, this is a place to eat, right?"
His voice was flat and cold.
Because of how tall he was, he didn't sit while he spoke.
Standing in front of Yuto and the others, he gave off a faint sense of looking down at them.
"Yes. What would you like to eat?" Yuto smiled calmly.
The man was silent for a few seconds before he sat.
"I'll say this up front. I'm the kind of man who won't pay if the food's bad. I might even teach the owner a lesson over it." His voice was perfectly calm, but the words were incredibly rude—as if he were simply stating something obvious!
The words didn't make Yuto angry or stir any other feeling.
If anything, he found the man in front of him rather interesting.
Tohru, beside him, couldn't take it so easily, though.
The dragon girl clenched her fist, her eyes turning dangerous as she looked at him.
"Hey. You'd better watch your mouth! Or I'll let you feel a dragon's fist."
By the end she was smiling sweetly—but there was no warmth in it at all, nothing but threat and chill.
She even waved her rather cute-looking fist in the air on purpose.
An ordinary person watching it wouldn't have been scared, they'd only have thought it was cute!
The seated man's expression changed sharply at the threat.
The moment his brows drew together, something seemed ready to burst out of him.
It happened in an instant.
The thing hidden inside the man surfaced for only a split second before vanishing just as fast, almost like a trick of the eye.
But Yuto and Tohru both saw it—a humanlike figure that flashed out from the man's back and disappeared.
It had purple skin, a cold expression, and wind-tossed hair, and the sight of it alone put a person on edge.
It was hiding inside the man's body..... almost like a possession.
"Don't push me. Or something scary might happen." The man's eyes went colder still.
He looked at Tohru, and a faint sheen of cold sweat appeared on his face.
Tohru, of course, wasn't impressed.
Who was she? She was the princess of the Chaos Faction, the daughter of the Emperor of Demise, a nightmare to countless humans and angels, a disaster, destruction itself!
Her dragon eyes had seen the thing that rose from the man's body, and she didn't think that phantom was any match for her.
She had felt its power, true—but it was still far too weak.
Just as she was about to speak again, Yuto stopped her. "Tohru, did you forget the rules?"
The dragon girl's aura softened at once.
"Oh..." she answered meekly.
Then Yuto looked at the man again.
"I'm sorry about that. My employee was rude. To make up for it, your meal tonight is on the house! Please, tell me what you'd like to eat." He smiled calmly.
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