On Official Duty with My Tower Master Ex-Boyfriend - Chapter 2

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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 2
As I froze with my arm still extended, Cade let out a complicated sigh and accepted the bouquet.
“I’m sorry, Vivi.”
Without a proper excuse, he drove the final nail into the coffin of our relationship with those words.
‘Am I really being dumped…?’
Yes, I was. I had been dumped.
‘It’s not like we fought, and it wasn’t because we drifted apart.’
I was dumped without warning.
It was our first date in a long time after he had been too busy to properly see me.
‘I even prepared the bouquet he likes to cheer him up because he looked a bit tired the last time I saw him.’
Slowly lowering the arm that had been reaching out to him, I asked.
“Why all of a sudden? Did I do something wrong?”
“Of course not. It was always my problem.”
As Cade smiled bitterly, my bewilderment turned into anxiety. I had never seen that expression on his face before.
Frightened, I spoke cheerfully as if telling him to stop joking around.
“What do you mean? Did you get tired of me?”
“…!”
Startled, Cade opened his mouth to say something but quickly shut it tightly.
My heart dropped at that reaction, and I grabbed his arm blindly.
“N-No, right? Cade. Why aren’t you denying it?”
“….”
Silently casting his gaze downward, Cade gently pried my hand away.
“Thank you for everything. Take care.”
With those final words, he turned around.
Our quite serious two-year relationship came to an end just like that.
‘…It ends like this? He really got tired of me?’
I stared blankly at Cade’s retreating back. I couldn’t even reach out my hand toward his distant shoulders.
Another person’s back seemed to overlap with his retreating figure, making my stomach churn.
Unable to stand in that spot any longer, I forced my feet to move.
Even as I walked aimlessly, a flurry of questions I wanted to ask him flooded my mind.
‘Did you really get sick of me?’
‘Or did you find another woman and just needed an excuse?’
‘…Why did you take the bouquet? Are you seriously keeping a gift while breaking up?’
Walking in search of a place to be alone, I eventually reached a cliff far away from the pier.
Even though the cold wind scratched sharply against my cheeks, I felt like I couldn’t wake up from a dream. It was so sudden that it felt surreal.
Perhaps the fact that our meetings had become rarer because he was busy was all because he had grown tired of me.
‘I firmly believed that he loved me unchangingly. How could he do this?’
Embarrassed by the fact that I had been excited all by myself without realizing his feelings had changed, I buried my face in my palms and leaned against the railing.
At that moment, along with a loud cracking sound, the support behind my back vanished.
“Huh…?”
Before I could even grasp the situation, my body tilted over the cliff. The pitch-black sea stretched out beneath the dark sky.
“Whoa!”
I reached out my hand to grasp anything, but the only thing my fingertips caught was my fluttering skirt.
Splash! A tremendous impact slammed into my entire body.
“Gasp! H-Help…!”
Salty water rushed into my mouth, and heavy waves pressed me down.
I kept flailing to rise above the surface, but the pitch-black, freezing sea swallowed me whole.
Even as the breath bubbled out of my body, I thought of Cade. It was infuriating, but there was no one else to cling to.
‘Please save me, Cade. If you miraculously appear and save me, I’ll even forgive you for today…!’
Fumbling for the ring Cade had given me, I opened my eyes at a sudden hollow sensation while shouting a plea that wouldn’t reach him.
‘Huh?’
It wasn’t just my imagination; it really felt empty. The ring he had personally slipped onto my finger, which I had never taken off, was gone.
Remembering how Cade had held my hand during his final goodbye, my head throbbed.
‘Did he seriously take the ring back just because we broke up? …To resell it?’
Anger surged inside me suddenly. My freezing body began to move, fueled by pure rage.
‘What kind of bastard does that? I can’t die like this out of sheer spite. What if rumors spread that I made an extreme choice because I got dumped by that jerk!’
At that moment, I made a vow.
I would never be fooled by a handsome face again.
I would clean my slate without any lingering attachments and never, ever meet a guy like that again.
***
However, in the present. Unfortunately, life did not flow according to my wishes.
I miraculously survived the sea and became a civil servant for the Imperial Government, but unexpectedly encountered Cade at the Magic Tower.
‘Why is this bastard… here…?’
But didn’t the other wizards just call Cade the ‘Tower Master’?
The Cade I knew was definitely an ordinary library clerk. He was a regular man who didn’t even know the first thing about magic, let alone being the Tower Master.
Because Cade had wrapped his arm around my waist, his face was right in front of my nose, but I didn’t even have the leeway to question that.
I stared at him blankly in disbelief, and he gazed back at me with the same incredulous eyes. The wizards stirred in collective shock.
“W-What’s going on? Why is the Tower Master suddenly acting like that?”
“Did he almost accidentally kill her?”
“Could it be that those two know each other?”
As the whispering of the wizards continued, Cade snapped out of it and raised his head.
He then looked around at the wizards, frowning, and spoke in a bothersome tone.
“I’m tired of intimidating civil servants now. Everyone, get back to work.”
The moment those words ended, my field of vision shifted abruptly.
“Ugh….”
Squeezing my eyes shut at a sensation I had never experienced before, I tightly gripped whatever my hand could reach.
I felt a dizzying sensation, exactly like dreaming of falling from a high place or losing my footing on the stairs and stumbling.
When a large hand awkwardly patted my shoulder, I carefully opened my eyes.
Noticing the completely changed surroundings, I realized that I had just used Teleportation.
Looking up, I saw that I was gripping his clothes tightly like a lifeline, and Cade was looking down at me with a serious expression while holding me as if embracing me.
We were too close.
“…!”
Startled out of my wits, I pushed against his chest and scrambled out of his arms.
It probably wasn’t a very strong force to him, but he stepped back obediently.
Even looking from a distance, it was definitely Cade. There was no way I could mistake that face.
“You, mgh!”
The moment I opened my mouth to say something, he covered it with his hand.
I glared at him contrastingly and tried to push his hand away, but he didn’t budge and only flicked his other hand slightly.
In an instant, a white light flashed, and an intangible force enveloped me before vanishing.
At the same time, the large hand blocking my mouth dropped away.
“You can speak now.”
“W-What was that?”
Wiping my lips with the sleeve of my uniform, I took a step back. I didn’t know what it was, but he had definitely used magic on me.
“I was checking to see if you brought anything with you. You’ve always had a bit of a naive side since the past.”
“…What?”
“What kind of place do you think this is to come here?”
Provoked by his interrogating tone, I clenched my fists tightly. What did I do wrong?
If anyone heard him, they would think I chased him all the way here.
“Do you think I came here because I wanted to? I’m a public official dispatched through proper legal procedures. I came here to work!”
“That’s why I’m asking why you…!”
Cade raised his voice, then gritted his teeth, snatched my bag, and pulled out the official document without permission.
“Hey!”
“It doesn’t seem to be forged. And that outfit looks like a real civil servant uniform. Who sent you?”
“What have you been talking about since earlier—”
“Vivi. Who is the person that sent you here of all places?”
“….”
Absurd, shocking, ridiculous…. A mixture of various emotions welled up, and an agitated voice burst out.
“Don’t call me that!”
I snapped sharply at him for casually uttering an affectionate nickname with such a cold demeanor.
“My name is Vivian Solling. It’s unpleasant for someone who is nothing to me to call me by a nickname.”
Cade muttered as if realizing a novel fact.
“Nothing to you…. Right.”
Still unable to understand this situation, I glared at him intently.
‘I knew the relationship between the Magic Tower and the Imperial Government was bad, but is this really something to interrogate me over?’
The reason he felt unfamiliar after meeting him for the first time in a while wasn’t just because he was wearing a wizard robe.
What on earth happened over the past year? He was too different from the Cade I used to know.
Even though he was clearly flustered, his expression and tone were as cold as if he were angry.
Eyes that were dark yet sharp to the point of causing a sense of incompatibility.
An unstable and dangerous atmosphere, to the extent that it seemed impossible for him to harbor affection for anyone.
‘Is this really Cade?’
Instead of reuniting with an ex-lover, it felt like I had encountered a beast with whom communication was impossible.
‘The Cade I knew was a gentle person, even if he was a bit sensitive and peculiar….’
Rolling my eyes, I scanned the messily cluttered space.
The place he had brought me to looked like a study or a warehouse, but it suited Cade in his robe perfectly.
As if this place had been his rightful spot from the very beginning.

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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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