After seeing off the blushing Ritsuka, the room fell silent once more.
Steve stretched, and his bones creaked faintly.
He had only just returned from a billion-year spacetime journey, but for him—who was accustomed to using various higher-dimensional technologies—it had been nothing more than a slightly longer drive.
"…Well, today's duties are complete."
He yawned and walked toward the bed.
"Time to sleep… Tomorrow I have to deal with Leonardo da Vinci's 100,000 questions about the energy system…"
But the moment his fingers touched the edge of the blanket…
Knock knock, knock knock, BOOM—
A series of urgent knocks, clearly filled with malice, echoed through the room like a death knell at midnight.
Steve's movement stopped.
He glanced at the wall clock—it was 12:30 AM.
At this hour, unless it was an alchemist with energy to spare, no one should be knocking on his door.
"…The door wasn't locked."
He sighed and turned around resignedly.
Suddenly, the door was pushed open.
More accurately, it was pried apart by an invisible ethereal force.
Standing at the door was Sion.
She was still wearing the Atlas Academy uniform. Her long purple hair was slightly disheveled, and her usually rational eyes burned with flames of jealousy and suspicion behind her glasses…
"Good evening, Master."
Steve forced a perfect business smile. "You're still up so late? Did Trismegistus bring more bad news?"
"…Stop grinning, Archer."
Sion strode into the room and slammed the door shut behind her.
She approached Steve, crossed her arms, and stared at his face with a gaze as sharp as a knife.
"According to Chaldea's internal environmental monitoring system, Fujimaru Ritsuka stayed in your room for over thirty minutes."
She pushed up her glasses, and white light flashed across the lenses. "And just now when she left, her heart rate had risen to 140, her body temperature had increased by 2.5 degrees, and the capillaries in her face were extremely dilated—the so-called blushing state."
Sion took a deep breath, leaned forward slightly, and exuded an oppressively suffocating aura.
"Steve, could you please explain from a logical and physical perspective? What exactly kind of high-intensity exercise were the two of you performing alone in this room for those thirty minutes? And what caused such physiological reactions?"
"Well…"
Steve blinked. Countless excuses raced through his mind, but he ultimately rejected them all.
Ordinary lies wouldn't work on the geniuses of Atlas Academy.
"Actually… if I said we traveled to the future—one billion years from now—and saw the sights, would you believe me?"
"Huh?!"
A clear anger mark appeared on Sion's forehead. "Do you think I'm a three-year-old? Or that my IQ is so low I'd believe such baseless sci-fi? One billion years? Just say you went on a honeymoon to the edge of the universe!"
"Well, strictly speaking, it was indeed a honeymoon… wait, no, it was a school trip…"
"Steve!"
Sion finally exploded.
Several blue ethereal fibers shot out from behind her like angry tentacles, weaving a large net in the air and enveloping Steve.
"Uwaah! Let's talk this out! Stop only using fiber bundles! What the heck is this?!"
While letting out strange cries, Steve wriggled like an eel, performing difficult evasive maneuvers in the narrow room.
"This is education in honesty!"
Sion manipulated the optical fibers to surround and block him while gritting her teeth. "You are my servant… clearly contracted with me… yet on Valentine's Day, in a room with another person… inside the room…"
At that moment, her voice suddenly faltered, and the speed of her attack slowed.
Steve sharply noticed the slight change.
He stopped and looked at the panting girl before him. Her eyes were slightly red.
The usually calm, rational Sion—who treated everything as calculated data—now looked weak and hurt like an ordinary girl.
"Idiot."
Sion lowered her head and tightly gripped the hem of her clothes. "You… are an idiot who doesn't understand people's feelings."
She raised her face. Her purple eyes were moist with tears, yet they also burned with strong determination.
"At times like this, logic and calculations become meaningless."
Sion took a deep breath, as if pouring every ounce of courage she possessed in life into this moment.
She walked toward Steve step by step until the distance between them was less than ten centimeters.
"Steve, listen carefully. I…"
"I know this violates Atlas Academy's rules, and I know these feelings are logically wrong."
"But… I can't do anything about it."
"Just as Trismegistus couldn't calculate the value of love, I can't calculate my feelings for you…"
At that instant, the air around them became incredibly heavy and damp.
It felt as if the surroundings were filled with pink bubbles, and even time flowed slowly during this moment of confession.
Looking at the familiar yet somehow unfamiliar face before him and the eyes filled with sincere emotion, Steve momentarily lost his sense of direction.
That was Sion Atlasia.
But it wasn't the Sion he remembered.
In the timeline he had lived through, the wife who had stood by him for thousands of years until the end of the world was also a vampire named Sion.
They were similar in appearance and personality, and even their soul wavelengths were very alike.
In a typical romance novel, this would be a story of love transcending time and space—a deeply moving tale of reunion.
However…
Steve… with extraordinary wisdom, a man who had wandered the universe for countless years, had thought processes completely different from the ordinary male protagonists in romance novels.
"…Stop!"
Just as Sion was about to utter the crucial word love, Steve suddenly raised his hand in a halt gesture.
"Huh?"
Sion was stunned.
The emotions she had bottled up for so long deflated like a punctured balloon.
"Sion, calm down first… Before you say something irreversible, I think I need to be honest with you about something."
Steve looked at her with a serious expression, as if delivering a speech on the survival of humanity.
"Wh-what is it?"
Sion asked involuntarily. An ominous premonition rose in her heart.
"It's about my Fetish."
"Huh?!"
Sion's glasses nearly slid off.
Steve turned his back to Sion, placed both hands behind him, looked up at the ceiling at a 45-degree angle, and adopted a deeply melancholic posture.
"Sion, you really are a good girl… truly."
"You're smart, beautiful, have an excellent figure, and you're a genius alchemist."
"To anyone's eyes, you are a perfect partner."
"…However, that's the problem."
He suddenly turned around, his gaze fixing first on Sion's chest—then moving to her face.
"You're too much of a girl! And… that area is too big!"
"…Eh?"
Sion was completely dumbfounded.
"Listen carefully, Sion—"
Steve waved his finger in the air. "In my previous life… in that timeline, I had a wife who looked a lot like you."
"We fell in love, got married, and lived a happy life together."
"That experience was truly wonderful…"
"But! Precisely because I experienced it once—precisely because I already experienced the scenario of romance between an adult woman and a girl—in this second life as a Servant, I long for something completely new, something I've never experienced before, something that can fill the great void deep in my soul!"
Steve took a deep breath and shouted a declaration that would shock all of Chaldea's Servants.
"It was—
Maternal loli!!"
"Huh?!?!"
Sion let out the loudest scream of her life.
"That's right! Maternal loli!"
Steve completely ignored Sion's panic and grew even more fervent, his eyes shining with fanatical light. "What I seek isn't a maiden who soothes, takes care of me, or plays romance games!"
"Instead, she should have a small, cute appearance yet possess an endlessly tolerant heart. She would gently stroke my head and say 'You worked hard,' unconditionally accepting my weaknesses and selfishness… just like a mother!"
He pointed at Sion with deep sorrow.
"And Sion! Look at yourself!"
"You certainly have an excellent figure and large breasts, but… you don't have maternal instincts!"
"Your personality is a mix of tsundere girl and rational mature woman! It's the complete opposite of my tastes!"
"In my second life, I don't want this kind of jealousy-driven conflict! What I want is to be held in my mom's arms and act cute! What I want is a woman who will become my mom!"
"So… I'm sorry, Sion."
"You are very outstanding, but our fetish don't match."
Complete silence.
The room was enveloped in a deathly hush.
Steve panted, feeling refreshed after finally voicing the words he had kept locked inside for so long.
However, when he looked at Sion again, she was looking down, her bangs covering her eyes so her expression was hidden.
But… the air around her seemed frozen.
The drooping ethereal fibers rose one by one, beginning to emit a heart-stopping red light.
"…Fetish?"
Sion's voice was extremely low, as if echoing from the depths of hell.
"…Maternal loli?"
"…You don't want to repeat the same girl?"
She slowly raised her head.
Her purple eyes no longer held tears or embarrassment.
Instead, there was the precursor phenomenon to a nuclear explosion of extreme humiliation, powerful enough to destroy the world.
"Steve… you vulgar bastard!"
Sion let out a deafening roar. "You… incurable perverted lolicon!!! Die!!!"
BOOM—!!!
Countless red ethereal fibers poured down like a torrential rain, instantly drowning out Steve's terrified screams.
"Wait, wait! Sion! Have you turned into Haman?!"
That night, the anguished cries of a certain savior echoed through the corridors of New Chaldea and lingered for a long time…
…
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