Editing Sorcery Hacker:Volume4 Phase02 (section)

===Part 11===

A fountain was illuminated by the bright starlight while fireworks blossomed in the distance.

“…”

“…”

They were waiting for the parade to start.

To consider the issue from every angle, he needed more than surface level knowledge. Ideally, they would catch the attacker before Guardeleo began his speech, but that was unlikely at this point. Henrietta was running around the central square and Mamilis was with her.

So for now they could only wait.

Ayato and Teleria stood shoulder-to-shoulder, viewing the bright night scene.

They hadn’t had a quiet moment like this in a while.

Mamilis and Henrietta were not with them. They truly had this moment all to themselves.

“Ayato.”

Maybe they shouldn’t be doing this here.

A plot was afoot to assassinate the king.

That was about as bad as it could get. So maybe they should have been focusing exclusively on preventing the attack and catching those responsible.

But…

“…I have a secret.”

“Yeah.”

She couldn’t put it off any longer.

Ayato had burst in on her in the bath at the sky city, but he wouldn’t remember that.

She had been threatened with her secret back at Laguntreat, but she thought she had just barely managed to keep it hidden.

But it had caused real harm at the Academy Towers.

This wasn’t about her. Ayato had blatantly turned away from the optimal and most efficient choice, exposing himself to an unnecessary amount of harm, and he had fought the student council president over Teleria’s secret.

It wasn’t that staying silent would protect their relationship in the current situation.

She could no longer deny that her secret was harming him.

Taking this step scared her.

But if she didn’t do it, she knew the two of them could never move on.

“It’s a terribly big secret. But I want you to know it. I’m ready to say that now.”

The girl’s moonlit silhouette changed.

Or really, the part below her hips did.

“I want you to see this.”

She quietly revealed her secret.

This might mean the end of their journey together. It was a massive bombshell.

And faced with it, Ayato gave a plain response.

“Wait, that was supposed to be a secret?”

His head was cocked to the side. His face said, “is that all?”

Teleria forgot how to speak.

“Eh? Eh, ehhh!?”

“I mean…hm, how to put this? That’s really the secret you’ve been keeping for so long? Your middle name is Nereid. It was kind of obvious you weren’t just an ordinary person.”

The air seemed to solidify.

Time had frozen within Teleria Nereid Aquamarine.

“When you came to me with that grave expression, I was ready for you to confess you’d set fire to the royal museum full of priceless historical artifacts or something. Of course, I would’ve laughed and accepted that if you’d done it. Whew, you got me all worked up over nothing. That doesn’t even qualify as a secret. It was at best sexily hidden by a sheer veil. Hm? What’s the matter, Miss Teleria? Why are you hanging your head?”

The girl was trembling.

And…

“Gwahhhhhh!! What the hellllllllllllllllllllllllllll!!?”

She slapped him on the cheek.

Using the full strength of her mermaid tail fin.

Ayato was knocked to the ground and she prepared to make another attack, but it must have slipped her mind that her lower half was currently a fish tail. She pitched forward with both hands clenched into fists, falling right on top of him.

Ayato pulled her into a hug.

He did not reject her.

“…Honestly.”

Teleria gently pressed her forehead against his chest.

Her secret had melted away into nothing.

Just like sea foam on the beach.