TBR CH78.1

Chapter 78: Extra (2) – I’ll Wait for You in the Future

A.

“You are…”

Edwin lowered his eyes, feeling as if his soul had been brutally torn in two. One half, stern and cold, berated him for his credulity, preventing words that might invite disaster from slipping from his tongue; the other half, on the verge of melting in the warm firelight, urged him to be bold and take the initiative, to try and hold onto a fleeting moment of beauty that had left him completely defenseless.

“You are a demon,” he finally said, quickly and softly, as if afraid of being burned by his own words. He then cautiously raised his gaze. He had only wanted to steal a glance at Tar’s expression, but the other’s eyes were too beautiful. The seven-year-old boy found it difficult to look away.

Tar was stunned for a moment, then a thin, bright smile spread across his glass-like pupils. “Even so, I can’t underestimate you, Edwin. Tell me, how did you guess?”

“I’ve read the reference books in the monastery about the characteristics of demons.” He didn’t seem angry at having his identity exposed. The gray-eyed boy answered cautiously, pointing to the floor beneath Tar’s feet. “You have no shadow, and your nails are sharper than an ordinary person’s. I… I just saw you use magic. Although it’s very different from what’s in the books, that’s because you’re too powerful. Upon closer observation, there are still similar characteristics…”

“Very clever.”

Tar clapped his hands. Edwin stopped speaking, his fingers twisting the hem of his clothes, standing rigidly in place. He was like a criminal on the gallows awaiting judgment, countless thoughts flashing through his mind in an instant, but none of them left a real impression against the blank background.

The powerful demon opposite him tilted his head. “Since you’ve guessed, aren’t you afraid? If I wanted to, I could easily take your life, or torture you with the cruelest methods. A devil doesn’t care about a human.”

This was exactly as described in the books.

Edwin didn’t know if he had made a good decision. For some reason, the devil’s threat to “kill him” sounded far less frightening than the “I don’t want you” answer he feared.

He opened his mouth to say something, but realized his vocal cords were trembling and the sound he would make would surely be unseemly. So he pursed his lips again and just shook his head firmly.

“Not afraid?” Tar said with great interest. “Then come a little closer to me.”

Edwin took a step forward.

Tar raised his hand. His knuckles were long and slender, his nails sharp, as if they could casually slice open human skin. The skin on the back of the boy’s neck tensed. The demon’s nails were about to touch it. With only a thin centimeter separating them, the air already felt like a sharp knife piercing his heart. Edwin’s breathing became rapid and ragged, but he resisted his body’s subconscious reaction to retreat from danger, like a lamb offering its neck to be slaughtered.

“Mmm…” At this point, the demon perversely stopped at the closest point and started asking questions again. “You guess you have a buyer. If you’re right, why should I give up the reward that’s within my grasp?”

“I will give you more.”

This question was obviously too difficult for a child who had nothing. Edwin knew that no matter what he said, it would seem empty and powerless. He had no capital. The only things that could prove his ability were the medals awarded by the monastery and his ability to use small-scale Light magic at a young age, but these were nothing in front of Tar.

He could only promise awkwardly, “You don’t have to give me anything. I just need a place to stay. You don’t have to handle any other matters. I can live on my own strength. This is an investment with a very small cost, and I will definitely do my best, using all means to reach the highest place. I will not go against your will. At that time, I will surely pay any reward you expect. Including my soul, if you need it…”

When he spoke like this, he was exactly the same as the future Great Archbishop Edwin of the Church of Light. His light gray eyes flickered with the flames of ambition and the belief that he wanted to control everything. He tried to make himself look more like an adult who could be responsible for his words.

But he was, no matter what, still too young, and had not completely washed away his vulnerable side.

His voice was trembling.

This is all a lie, Edwin thought. He didn’t want nothing at all. He had deliberately hidden the biggest condition, which was to stay by Tar’s side.

If he stayed, he could often be looked at with indulgence by those beautiful red pupils. If he stayed, the other might call his name intimately and gently. If he stayed, it seemed he could fill the void in his heart. When he woke up every night, clutching the bones and heart that had been chilled by the cold wind, he wanted a warm thought, and what had just happened had surpassed all his imagination.

The demon said harsh words to scare him, but the young boy, for some reason, subconsciously felt that the person in front of him was worth entrusting all his trust to in a single desperate gamble.

Tar moved his fingers.

But no bloody scene appeared. On the contrary, the demon had a somewhat helpless smile on his face. His sharp nails silently retracted, and instead, he ruffled the boy’s hair. The young Edwin had a head of fluffy black curls, which felt fluffy and soft to the touch. The snowflakes that had fallen outside had been evaporated by the indoor heat, leaving the ends of his hair a little pitifully damp.

“I really don’t know what to do with you,” Tar said. “But you still guessed wrong, Edwin.”

“Guessed wrong…?” The boy stood with his back straight, his pale face flushing slightly from having his hair affectionately ruffled. He breathed a sigh of relief, then tensed up again because of Tar’s words. He had been confident in his observational skills, but Tar said he had guessed wrong, so it must be his problem.

Before hearing the next sentence, he subconsciously cast his searching gaze on the demon again, and on this room.

Tar was about to say something when the courtyard gate outside was suddenly knocked on.

So the master of the room got up to open the door.

The demon gently closed the door to the inner room. Edwin’s current appearance was best kept secret and should not be seen by any casual visitor. What’s more—he opened the door, and the color of his eyes turned into the dark red of a god, hiding power and the smell of rust. As expected, standing before him was a dejected, listless, and pitiful Adelaide.

“I was wrong.”

As soon as he saw Tar, he stood at attention and admitted his mistake, then cautiously cast his gaze into the courtyard, seemingly looking for the other figure he feared most. Adelaide’s gaze was quickly blocked by Tarksius.

The god lowered his eyes to look at him. “You don’t need to see him.”

Even the slow-witted black dragon noticed how protective Tarksius was. It finally stopped cautiously trying to peek at the mess it had made. Under the god’s impatient gaze, it shivered and quickly explained everything that had happened, with the focus on the solution.

Actually, it couldn’t be called a solution.

The disorder in time and space was originally caused by Adelaide’s not-fully-mastered time-space magic. But no matter how powerful time-space magic was, it couldn’t change past events. At this moment, the Bishop before the god was from a frozen moment in the past. When the disorder subsided, he would return to his original time and space, forget everything that had happened here, and re-experience what he was supposed to experience according to the past flow of time.

It was supposed to be an explanation of how to clean up the mess, but Adelaide became more and more unsure as he spoke. The black dragon looked up at the dark red-eyed Dark God with trepidation. “Soon the disorder will end, and everything will return to normal.”

“Mmm,” Tarksius rarely mocked him with sharp words, but was silent for a moment. “How much time does he have left?”

“Probably… until midnight tonight?”

Adelaide did not wait for Tarksius’s reply, only for the door to be slammed shut with a “bang,” right against the tip of his nose. The black dragon hesitated and stood in front of the door for a short while, but he didn’t feel wronged at all. After all, it was all because of the trouble he had caused.

Adelaide was now a dragon who could be responsible for his actions.

Then…

Without having time to think about whether Tarksius and the young Edwin were getting along well, he took a few steps back, flapped his wings, and the wind created by his wings was enough to distort space. A shimmering white hole appeared in front of him.

That was another party’s problem he needed to solve: a human that made Adelaide’s tail ache faintly just by thinking about him.

He ducked into the hole.

Before pushing the door open, Tar could already imagine little Edwin’s expression.

He had known from the beginning that all this was just a fleeting illusion, but Edwin didn’t. He had gone from being wary to letting down his guard, and then to desperately seeking Tar’s answer. The gray-eyed boy had so anxiously and expectantly wanted a turn of fate, had craved and cautiously begged for the warmth he had never received, but for him, it was ultimately impossible.

Even if Tar was careful not to let him know the truth of everything in advance. When he woke up the next morning, the warmth and promises he was now trying so hard to obtain would turn into the sands of time that had never happened. He would still be cold and scarred, with no one to rely on, desperately walking alone on a path full of thorns.

He would remember nothing.

Was this a reason to keep the truth silent now? Tar’s fingers touched the wooden door, and he hesitated for a rare moment.

He could take the young Edwin on an unprecedentedly beautiful dream, tell him not to worry anymore, that he would always be by his side, and then use magic to let him fall into a deep sleep in a soft, rose-scented quilt, embracing the promise, before midnight arrived.

All of this was fake, but he would never know.

Tar pushed the door open, but saw Edwin just lowering his hand from his cheek. The young boy gave him a nervous and forced smile, but the demon clearly saw the tear stains on his face that hadn’t had time to be wiped dry, and his light gray eyes, which had been full of expectation and longing until just now, had suddenly dimmed.

For a moment, Tar almost thought Edwin had secretly overheard his conversation with Adelaide.

Edwin’s gray eyes dimmed, like the damp mist hidden in a cape after the lights of the docks had all gone out. He barely managed a smile at Tar. It was the first time Tar knew a smile could be so sharp, cutting his heart, and his whole heart ached with a strange and unstoppable pain. This time, it was the god who became anxious.

“Edwin,” Tar reached out his hand, but it was not immediately taken. “What’s wrong?”

“I…” The boy bit his lip. Before Tar had left, he had told him “he had guessed wrong,” but had not said anything more specific, so he had only reluctantly moved his gaze away from the other a few minutes ago and had carefully observed the things in the room.

However, he had suddenly realized how foolish he had been, not even realizing this: “I shouldn’t have been so wishful, not even noticing that you don’t…” Edwin paused, believing his guess was correct. “Not even noticing that you don’t live alone.”

Many things in the room were in pairs: for example, the two identical cups next to the teapot, a pair of soft pillows on the bed, an office wooden chair by the table, and next to the wooden chair, a comfortable-looking soft sofa, for single use, clearly belonging to two completely different owners.

The young boy had grown up in a monastery with a group of other orphans. Sometimes, a kind-hearted person would want to adopt one of them, but would end up giving up the idea because of their partner’s criticism.

Other times, single fathers and mothers who had abandoned their children due to poverty would come to visit again, full of guilt, with a large sum of money. But it was not until the abandoned children had hope again that they would understand that when their relatives planned to start a new family, their new partners would absolutely not allow a child with an improper identity to enter their love nest.

Was this the reason Tar hadn’t agreed to him?

He had a lover, and they must love each other very much. He had no right to stay by Tar’s side, and his lover would surely not allow a third person’s trace in their space for two.

Although Edwin just wanted a place outside the Holy See that he could call home.

This was normal. Edwin thought, trying hard not to show too ugly an expression. But he really started to feel jealous. He twisted the hem of his clothes tightly, telling himself that a moment of light was much better than none, and he should be grateful. He had to do this to restrain the feeling of grievance that had come from nowhere, and because of this, he did not take the hand Tar had extended to him.

The demon with red pupils did not wait for a response, and finally withdrew his hand.

In an instant, Edwin began to regret it again.

His hands began to feel cold in the warm room, and Tar was clearly disappointed by his unreasonable behavior. The demon turned away silently. For a moment, a thousand sentences of apology were about to escape Edwin’s tongue. He bit his tongue and did not utter a single word.

The demon was disappointed in him, so he could no longer complete the so-called transaction. All dreams were shattered in the face of cruel reality. Edwin thought again of the parish bishop’s prophecy for him: “You will get nothing, and you will never be able to escape the curse of your bloodline for the rest of your life.”

“Edwin,” he heard a soft sigh. Tar had somehow walked in front of him again. A hand fell on his hair. The owner of the hand lowered his eyes, staring at him intently, and saw his wet eyelashes stained with tears.

Tar half-knelt down and stuffed something into his hand.

“Don’t worry,” the hand stroking his hair moved down from the fluffy touch to his moist eyes. Tar helped him wipe away the tears, but instead of telling him not to cry, he said, “I think it’s also a good thing for you to cry it out. It’s okay. You can cry as long as you want here. I won’t think you’re pitiful, nor will I think you’re weak, but my heart aches for you, Edwin. You are a very good child.”

A good child clearly shouldn’t lose control of his emotions like him. Edwin thought so, but his tears flowed even more uncontrollably. He sobbed and grabbed the thing in his hand, only vaguely aware that it was in the shape of a book.

Tar must have wanted him to see something, but he just kept crying, as if he wanted to use up all his chances to cry in this lifetime here. In the end, his tears soaked the demon’s expensive-looking lapel. Edwin reached out his arms and hugged him, as if desperately trying to grab something.

Tar let him hug him, reaching out a hand to pat the boy’s back comfortingly, until the stiff person in his arms finally let down all his guard, and opened a pair of gray eyes washed clean by tears, like a clean and bright sky. The outburst of emotion had come quickly, but when the sudden burst of emotion was soothed, the desperate struggle and the silent cry of wanting to destroy himself suddenly subsided.

“Tar…” The first syllable he uttered still carried a sob. He quickly stopped trembling. “I’m not troublesome. I can stay outside by myself most of the time. I’m probably just such a greedy child, not wanting to give up just like that. If only I could be allowed to meet your partner, at least give me a chance to prove myself.”

Before reaching a desperate situation, Edwin had shown a determination not to give up since he was a child. The boy was always ready to stand on a high platform and sell himself as a commodity. An obedient child, a talented apprentice, a loyal believer. He wanted to hold the opportunity that was so close tightly in his hand. For this, he could lie and pretend.

“Edwin, it’s not like that.” However, Tar gently bent down, his fingers touching Edwin’s hand. The boy subconsciously spread his knuckles, and the thing the devil had just stuffed into his hand—a delicate notebook—was finally seen clearly by him. “I really, really want to agree to you, and I also really want to give you happiness and promises. But I once promised you one thing, which is to be absolutely honest with you, without any concealment. Even if you will forget everything, I must be serious with the current you. Now, Edwin, open this notebook.”

What was he talking about?

The gray-eyed boy was confused by this, and even felt a momentary anger, because Tar had once again bypassed his request to stay and had just lightly changed the subject. He scoffed at his own thought internally—was he so stupid as to not hear that this was a gentle rejection? But the folded corner of the notebook in his hand pressed hard against his palm.

He opened the notebook, and what came into view was the signature on the title page: Edwin.

—What?

Suddenly, all emotions turned into confusion. Edwin once again cast his gaze on the line of words on the notebook. That’s right, it was his name. Even the handwriting, for some reason, was extremely familiar. Edwin was used to drawing a short, almost imperceptible horizontal line after signing his name. This was a small mark, in case he was sold one day by a forged line of handwriting. However, this was by no means an effective defense.

The notebook in his hand was heavy, and there were many parts with handwriting.

A date was recorded every few pages, but not all dates were complete. So when Edwin saw a time stamp twenty years in the future, his hand froze on the spot, and he looked up at Tar with a pleading gaze.

Tar smiled at him comfortingly and motioned for him to continue. This indeed made him feel at ease.

So Edwin continued to flip backwards. He definitely didn’t remember writing such a notebook. The owner of the notebook used it most of the time to record the daily official business. He looked at it with a half-understanding, and words like “Holy See,” “income and expenditure,” and “cooperation” jumped before him, fragrant and charming, with the smell of sulfur produced after the burning of power. But what he cared about most were the one or two lines of things other than work that were occasionally mixed in the records:

“Tar said he wants a very soft sofa. I need to keep that in mind.”

“I heard the roses in the Holy See are blooming well. Perhaps I can go see them with Tar sometime.”

“…I know you will open my diary, Tar, but actually that doesn’t matter.”

The young boy hurriedly moved his gaze away from the slightly intimate words, as if he had been burned. But he could no longer understand everything before him at all. The owner of the notebook had the same name as him, had the same writing habits, and even the tone of narration was somewhat similar. Most importantly, no one would mark a date decades in the future in their diary…

Edwin raised his eyes again. His smart, light gray eyes now turned hesitantly and uncertainly. He clutched the notebook in his hand, seeming to want to ask a question, but for a moment suffered from aphasia.

The demon before him looked at him with a frank and gentle gaze. Tar reached out his hand to him, and the boy hesitantly passed his hand over. The warmth of their skin was transmitted through the point of contact. “Welcome to the future.”

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