My Husband Is Not the Magic Tower Master - Chapter 18

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 18

“…Your…”
“….”
“…Roze.”
“….”
“Roze Steinberg!”
My vision cleared, and not long after, a loud voice pulled my head up.
Beneath jet-black hair tilted at an angle, a man with crimson eyes.
With disheveled appearance, he was shaking my shoulder hard.
I had momentarily forgotten that he was Carlo, but I managed to recover the memory and replied.
“Ah… Carlo?”
“Are you all right now?”
“Why—what on earth just happened?”
My body was already lying on a bed with a pillow beneath my head.
I didn’t even know when the Lodging Camp had been set up.
Carlo was holding my wrist in one hand while his other moved between my forehead and beneath my nose, checking my breathing and body temperature.
As I looked around with confusion, he finally exhaled a relieved breath.
Seeing an urgent, desperate expression on his face—utterly unlike him—I couldn’t even bring myself to get up.
Not knowing how much time had passed like this, being pinned beneath Carlo felt absurd beyond measure.
What is this. What’s happening.
“How far did you go?”
“I’m sorry? Go where?”
“Didn’t you say the flow could twist in reverse? You suddenly lost consciousness, and I….”
Carlo couldn’t finish his words.
He only knelt beside the bed I lay on and buried his face in his hands.
Startled, I wanted to pull him away, but piecing together what he’d said, it seemed my carelessness had caused something to happen.
“I’m sorry. I forgot that I’m still clumsy with mana control in actual combat and let my guard down.”
Mana Fusion honestly wasn’t even in the Water Attribute field—it was more like a trick I used, a sleight of hand with magic.
It seemed I’d been caught up in Record Magic and traveled somewhere in a short span of time.
Somewhere far back, connected to Carlo.
“But, Carlo.”
“Yes?”
After getting up from the bed without issue, I was setting up the base camp according to the research plan from the first day.
Then I suddenly asked Carlo something.
“Have you ever saved someone in the past?”
“…Why are you asking that all of a sudden?”
“It’s nothing really.”
I laughed lightly, searching through my hazy memories.
“I’ve had a similar experience.”
* * *
We were certainly not acquaintances.
Our first meeting was still vivid in my mind.
Carlo.
Undoubtedly of high nobility, yet a Royal Family operative of unknown origin.
There were rumors that he, little known outside the Magic Tower, was actually the Crown Prince’s half-brother, or a hidden scion of the Royal Family.
But according to the more certain rumors circulating through the Magic Tower, everyone called him a demon born of the Special Management Division or an Overwork-Bound Spirit.
Beyond that, there were names like research murderer, severe workaholic, professional team killer, cold-blooded heartbreaker—and so on.
Carlo’s nicknames were as numerous and distinctive as his stats were exceptional.
Especially last spring, on the day the Security Department announced a special mage recruitment, he transferred out of the Management Division and requested a move to Security.
It was incomprehensible. He’d dropped two levels from the Special Management Division, which offered the best treatment. And by his own choice.
For a while, all the main divisions of the Magic Tower buzzed with gossip about the incident.
How could the fire attribute mage whose skill matched the Crown Prince’s, the ace favored by the Crown Prince himself, possibly want anything more?
Some said he’d been expelled from the elite direct line, while others spouted nonsense about how he’d volunteered for Security on purpose.
But until now, none of the truth had ever properly come to light.
I simply happened to become well-acquainted with Carlo, the subject of those rumors, during that time.
‘The most pitiful person here is me. Me.’
At the enthusiastic urging of a close friend, I ended up taking a job at the Magic Tower almost by accident, only to meet there the worst kind of Workaholic and a hopeless Team Killer colleague in the same department.
Worse still, on my very first day, I got so lost finding my way around that I didn’t even realize Carlo and I were the same cohort in the same division.
I’d simply missed my way and barely managed to find the exclusive elevator that went up past the 50th floor—that was my only crime.
When I glanced to the side, there was some unkempt-looking man staring down at me with hollow eyes.
Looking back on it now, it was honestly a bit eerie.
“Are you heading to the 88th Floor?”
“Yes.”
It was rare to find someone with the courtesy to ask directly where you were going and even press the button for you.
On top of that, the warm, cozy fragrance wafting from beside me made me unconsciously watch closely the shirtsleeves he’d rolled up.
It felt like I’d encountered a scent like that somewhere before.
But that couldn’t have been right, and just as I was about to dismiss the thought, he handed me a Handkerchief.
Then he murmured a few words while pointing at my bangs, which were damp with sweat.
“If you need it, please use it.”
It sounded like he was telling me to wipe the sweat away. I took the Handkerchief he offered and my eyes lit up.
The sky-blue flower pattern drawn on the cloth matched my taste perfectly.
“May I keep it?”
“It’s something I treasure. Once you’re done with it, please return it to me.”
“That’s unfortunate. But you’re quite kind, aren’t you.”
“This time you found your way here correctly, so I’m going to be nice to you.”
“Sorry? Yes.”
What was he talking about? Should I be thanking him?
‘Does he really see that I’m directionally challenged….’
I had no idea why he was suddenly complimenting me. At the time, it was the kind of remark that left the listener quite bewildered.
Though we’d only just met minutes before, Carlo at that moment seemed like quite an odd person.
With his tousled, thick hair and those heavy, chunky-framed glasses that could cover half his face.
He looked like some eccentric who’d been holed up in a damp laboratory somewhere, room and board included.
Ding.

Not long after, when we stepped out on the same floor and stood side by side in front of the Security Department….
We each placed a hand on the same door handle and only then spoke to each other.
“…Are you my cohort?”
“Probably around the same time.”
“You don’t look like you’re junior to me.”
“Junior….”
In that instant, his eyebrows twitched between the black strands of his hair.
Because his eyebrows were thick and dark, Carlo usually seemed blunt and expressionless, but he made quite a few expressions that I caught on to readily.
Even back half a year ago, through all those everyday moments in between.
“Just now you were thinking this report is garbage, weren’t you.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Then why are you interlacing your fingers on the table? You’re doing that to hide the way your lips are hardening, aren’t you.”
“I don’t do that.”
“And you brought Strawberry Juice for encouragement again. I can see it all hidden behind your back.”
“…It’s meant as encouragement.”
“You mean to tell me to work late? Wait, what about the sandwich you’re holding in your other hand….”
He’d brought me a Bacon Sandwich—the only thing I actually like in the Security Department.
Carlo sometimes knew me far too well.
“Please hang in there.”
“Yes.”
“You must hang in there.”
“Yes, yes.”
“I’ll escort you all the way to the Lodging Camp.”
“…What? Why?”
From three months in, to six months in.
From six months to nearly nine months in.
“The night roads are dangerous.”
Just the Strawberry Juice and Sandwich I’d received from him had already filled an entire research lab.
“It’s basically just the building next door anyway.”
“Isn’t it dark?”
“Yeah.”
“And there’s that bad habit of yours—stumbling when you run away scared.”
“Ah.”
Just as I’d forgotten about it only to have him spot that expression on his face again and again, it seemed he knew far more about me than I’d given him credit for.
My tastes, my nature, the way I thought.
Carlo saw through me with startling precision—occasionally, in unguarded moments.
Whether he’d discovered these things or had always known them, I couldn’t tell.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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