Ruger sat in his chair, silently watching the Succubus scholar descend into hysteria. Ever since he had placed that note from old butler Izel before her, she had become like this. Perhaps she was giving him a lesson, demonstrating what pure, unadulterated hysteria looked like. It was all on display in her now—that near-madness with nowhere to vent, as though there was nothing to be angry at and no one to hate, yet the fire in her heart burned so fiercely it was ready to burst.
He swung his legs. Not because he wanted to—every chair in this room left his feet dangling above the floor whenever he sat on it.
As he pieced together the shredded note on the table bit by bit, he waited for the Succubus to finish going mad.
"Done venting?"
He kept his head lowered, fingers moving across the tabletop as he fitted together the final two scraps. The other side had already fallen quiet.
"Of course not," the Succubus replied, still smiling. "Three hundred years' worth of accumulation—how wasteful would it be to spend it all so easily?"
"Can we have a normal conversation, then?" He finally put the last piece in place.
"Of course."
The Succubus scholar's face had already regained yesterday's composed, sweet smile.
"Please disregard my loss of composure. For a moment, I simply didn't know who to vent it on. After all, even if I went and hated the world, it no longer exists, does it?" the Succubus said teasingly.
"I think you were wondering who caused all this," Ruger said, his legs swinging beneath the table. "Then you realized it wasn't this door, not old butler Izel, not the city lord who broke his appointment, nor that student you have never met. You even realized it wasn't the vanished