"Your grandfather? Hahaha."
Listening to Mash, the expression on Merlin's face grew slightly strange. He looked... caught between laughter and tears?
"There really are some things I shouldn't tell you, Mash. Given Ritsuka's connection with him, they might run into each other again someday. It would be terrible if he heard my assessment of him."
"After all, when it comes to that man, whether in a good sense or a bad one, I don't really want to evaluate him."
Merlin slumped onto the table, his voice somewhat listless.
"Well, as for Grandfather..."
Mash scratched her cheek, looking slightly awkward.
Come to think of it, Grandfather and Mr. Merlin really did have an extremely complicated relationship.
"If he truly needed an evaluation, then the words I carved on his tombstone would be enough." Merlin perked back up and pushed himself off the table, looking teasingly at Fujimaru Ritsuka. "Shouldn't the topic of conversation be Ritsuka now?"
"Ah?"
Fujimaru Ritsuka pointed at himself, looking baffled.
The words on Mr. Anno's tombstone? I'm a little curious.
I'll ask Mash later.
"The reason I care about you, Ritsuka, is because you are actually people like me." Merlin waggled a finger as he spoke with a smile.
"You travel through countless stories, travelers between the pages just like me. Yet you are also different from me."
"Unlike me, who merely watches, you always create and save stories in ways that take me by surprise, weaving ending after ending that is better than the original."
"From Orleans all the way to Mesopotamia, you have always done that."
Merlin folded his hands beneath his chin and gazed at Fujimaru Ritsuka with a beaming smile. That look made Fujimaru Ritsuka feel a little uneasy.
"Your determination and your deeds—aside from yourselves, only I can know of them."
Merlin