The Nerd Next Door Turned Out To Be The Magic Tower Master - Chapter 14

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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 14
Lien was a Mage. Not a suspicion—a certainty.
Cecilia retraced the past methodically. The pain in her wound that vanished the moment his hand touched it, the Garden filled with Daisy flowers in a single day.
The latter might have been possible if several people had worked together to plant the flowers, but this wasn’t the season for flower merchants to visit the area.
And finally, that strange unease she’d felt in the Holy Temple. When he called her name, just for an instant, time seemed to slow.
No, it wasn’t an illusion. It definitely slowed.
None of it made sense unless he was a Mage.
Cecilia recalled the rest of her lesson with him.
“Which of the prominent Magic families remains?”
“The Chetwind, who have produced Tower Masters generation after generation. The Mage Tower is an institution divorced from politics, so they can be considered neutral, though it’s ambiguous.”
According to his explanation, not all Mages served the Emperor’s faction. But the conventional wisdom held that most Mages were at odds with the Holy Temple.
They believed in provable science rather than deities whose existence could not be proven, and pursued knowledge chasing infinite possibilities.
Come to think of it, that was a philosophy much like hers—someone who’d come from twenty-first century Korea.
So Lien concealing that he was a Mage from the Weberdine family, a sacred bloodline, and especially from her, who bore the title of Saint, wasn’t truly a grave matter. At least, that was what she believed.
But there was one problem she absolutely could not overlook.
“You’re the Tower Master, aren’t you?”
That he was hiding his strength—that he was the Tower Master. That was the problem.
Magic that manipulated time itself. And the Tower Master’s name printed in the newspaper.
“Asilien Chetwind.”
Using part of his name as an alias—the kind of cheap trick that would only fool those female protagonists in novels whose perception vanished entirely when it came to romance.
Normally, the moment an identity was exposed came well after the first meeting, meaning in a novel’s terms, one ought to be at least fifty chapters in.
The man who wasn’t adept at lying had dropped far too many clues for her to ignore.
When faced with her piercing question, Lien’s hand suddenly clenched into a fist. Like someone driven to the edge of a cliff, he wavered, then closed his eyes with devastating finality.
“…If I truly am that Tower Master, would you abandon me?”
He must know that by answering just now, he’d all but confessed his identity.
“Should I take that as a yes?”
“…I’m sorry.”
She’d never owned him in the first place. Cecilia studied him with an odd look as he fretted over being discarded.
“I never intended to mock you, though I did mean to deceive. Please believe me—I had no intention of making light of you.”
Truth be told, when she’d first caught on to his identity, Cecilia hadn’t been particularly shocked.
A man as handsome as that couldn’t possibly be a mere supporting character. She’d already suspected he might be a hidden prince caught in a power struggle who concealed his strength, some archduke somewhere hiding his true status to break a curse, or perhaps the Tower Master feigning foolishness while harboring sinister intent.
But learning he was actually the Tower Master had been somewhat unexpected.
The Tower Master was such a notorious figure that even she, only three months into this other world, had heard the rumors.
And not favorable ones either.
Previous Tower Masters, while not necessarily performing good deeds, had been individuals suited to the Mage Tower’s purpose of pursuing knowledge.
But the current Tower Master came with terrifying rumors—that he was a filial betrayer who’d slit his own teacher’s throat and usurped the position, a waste drowning in vice and debauchery with gambling, drugs, and women, a monster who murdered innocent people indiscriminately.
‘So I’d suspected Lien was a hidden illegitimate child of the imperial family.’
Such gloominess and low self-worth surely stemmed from some secret birth, an unfortunate past—something like that.
But the nerdy neighbor next door turned out to be ‘that’ Tower Master.
“I really am deeply sorry.”
Cecilia regarded the man who looked ready to burst into tears with cold assessment.
Either way, a Shadow Figure who concealed his true nature from his romantic partner was a failing grade. Masterminds were characters whose default setting was obsessive confinement, weren’t they?
Obsessive types might be enjoyable in fiction, but to someone from the twenty-first century, they were barely distinguishable from criminals.
She had no desire to experience human rights violations—being locked in a cage, having her legs broken, that sort of thing.
Cecilia, wincing at the mere thought, asked coldly.
“Are you a Shadow Figure?”
“…Pardon?”
“Do you plan to commit treason if the situation calls for it? Do you kill your subordinates when you’re in a bad mood? Do you think the world belongs beneath your feet and wouldn’t mind if it collapsed? Is that it?”
“What?! Are there people so cruel in this world?”
‘You’re describing yourself.’
As she fixed him with that pointed stare, Lien’s face went pale. He was so desperate that his head and hands began shaking violently.
“I-I know my reputation isn’t good, and it’s true my personality was poor in childhood, but that’s not who I am now! Please believe me!”
Yet she couldn’t simply nod in agreement—there was far too much he was keeping hidden. And his lies came frequently.
Without letting her guard down, Cecilia pressed forward with interrogation-like questions.
“If someone you liked loved another person, what would you do?”
“…Do you have someone you like?”
Wait. Wasn’t that basically a confession just now?
For a moment she was flustered, but his eyes remained utterly innocent.
‘Is this another trick to disarm me?’
But she wouldn’t be fooled again. Unfazed by his handsome face or his obvious charms, Cecilia answered firmly.
“I’m asking you to imagine such a scenario.”
“I would simply… ask to be allowed to stay by your side.”
‘Not imprisonment?’
The unexpected answer left her momentarily speechless.
‘Is this really the infamously ruthless Tower Master?’
Cecilia barely managed to shore up her crumbling wariness and struck back once more.
“And if I refuse that as well?”
“Then……”
Abruptly, the man bit his lip hard.
‘So it is imprisonment after all!’
“……I think I might cry.”
His violet eyes—the colour of wisteria blossoms—glistened at the mere thought of it, his voice trembling with genuine distress.
‘Passed.’
Cecilia held his gaze unflinchingly, watching this man hold his breath like a prisoner awaiting sentence.
Truth and falsehood were always difficult to distinguish. Yet Cecilia made a deliberate choice to believe in him—in everything he had shown her so far, in every emotion he had displayed, in every word he had spoken just now.
It wasn’t because his voice cut deeper into her chest than usual, or because those anxious eyes were beautiful in the way of purple magnolias. It certainly wasn’t because that trembling face and pitiful answer aligned so perfectly with her taste.
……In any case, it was none of those things.
Cecilia deliberately relaxed the stern set of her eyes and asked, as if sighing.
“I’ll believe that Lien is different from what people say about you. But I’d like you to explain why you tried to deceive me.”
It was a matter that touched on trust itself. No matter how transparent his intentions might seem, if he made a habit of lying, the day would inevitably come when she would be deeply, genuinely disappointed.
She pressed for an answer through her silence. He, who had been breathing heavily as if his throat were constricted, finally parted his lips.
“Because you are Weberdine and a Saint, I was afraid you would despise me if you learned I was a Mage.”
“So that’s why you tried to pass yourself off as a gardener?”
“……Yes.”
He clasped his hands together anxiously. Cecilia gazed down at the back of his hands, where veins stood prominent. He was gripping them so tightly that the overlapping flesh was already draining of colour.
For a moment, she considered that the real Cecilia Weberdine might well have reacted that way.
She might have suspected a Mage who had come from the Capital, and especially one who was a Tower Master. She might have harboured resentment, and ultimately kept her distance.
Much like the head of the Weberdine household, who had made his hatred plain.
“You must have concealed your identity from my father as well.”
It was a realization that struck her suddenly.
Had the Marquess of Weberdine known that Lien was a Tower Master—or even merely learned that he was a Mage—he would never have agreed to let him become Cecilia’s tutor.
“So when you said you were a professor……”
“I never lied about my qualifications! Only—the history specialization listed on my resume wasn’t my actual field. I majored in theoretical Magic.”
That was true. A man with enough skill to become Tower Master at such a young age would indeed hold the title of Academy professor legitimately.
But that wasn’t the real problem.
The question was why a man in such an important position would hide his identity here. That was what mattered.
“What brings a Tower Master who has even served as an Academy professor to Weberdine? And of all places, to the house right next to the Weberdine Residence?”
His hunched shoulders shook violently. The man who had been desperately offering excuses fell silent this time, unable to answer readily.
But the confession was not yet finished. The guilty man bowed his head once more and spoke the delayed truth.
“That’s……”

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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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