The Nerd Next Door Turned Out To Be The Magic Tower Master - Chapter 99

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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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Side Story Chapter 6
“……If it pains you so much, you need only stop listening, shouldn’t you?”
“If that were possible, I’d have done it long ago.”
Lien wiped his wet lips roughly against the back of his hand, the words tumbling out like something bitter he was chewing.
If only he could love her as a normal man would, if only he could want what a normal man wanted—he would have managed it long ago.
But years of repeated deprivation and longing had gnawed through him until it shattered him entirely.
In the end, unable to bear it any longer, Hiltain reminded him whether a Saint would truly be pleased to see him in such a state, and only then did Lien finally turn his feet toward home.
Once Hiltain had finished his report to a superior who was not in his right mind, he left wearing the face of a man who had just bitten into rotted meat.
Left alone, Lien turned over the day’s events in the darkness of his room.
[Lien. We cannot stay locked away together like this forever.]
She was right. If he could not confine her, then days like this would only continue.
So there had to be a way to make her choose to remain at his side of her own accord.
‘How can I do this?’
As he lay tormented by anxiety that would not settle, Cecilia returned from the Temple and sought him out without warning.
“Lien, you remember everything, don’t you?”
The scope of “everything” was something he could infer without her asking directly.
He nodded.
Between that winter and spring when he was twenty-two, he had come to remember both the original timeline and the altered one. When he confessed as much, Cecilia’s brow furrowed sharply.
“Now that I think about it, that’s infuriating. Why didn’t you tell me?”
The reason he had not told her was because he had dimly sensed that she, too, held all her memories intact.
Beyond that, even if she did not, he’d had no wish to stir up trouble or parade how far from sanity he had strayed.
Yet there was something sharp in the way Cecilia was looking at him.
Was she thinking he’d hidden a flaw, that he’d deceived her? He sank quickly into somber thoughts, but the complaint she voiced was something entirely different.
“You remember everything, and yet why did you treat me like a stranger?”
In that moment, his melancholy evaporated and he blinked stupidly. Then, for the first time that day, he laughed—a genuine, unguarded laugh.
It was moments like these that made him love her helplessly: when she said something that made his heavy heart and tangled thoughts feel like nothing at all, when she reached toward him so readily and shared her warmth, in every hour of her choosing to remain with him.
Cecilia placed her hands on his waist and, insisting that she couldn’t bear to let this grievance stand, climbed into his lap and kissed him repeatedly.
Now it felt as though his breath might stop for an entirely different reason. He had to exert every fiber of will to restrain the way his hands wanted to tighten, to not crush her.
The kiss he hoped would last forever ended sooner than he could bear. When she pulled away, she rested her head on his shoulder and told him things she had kept unspoken until now—stories about her true world.
About the real world she came from.
During the first iteration, she had left behind a comment that she was not truly Cecilia, so he had already grasped something of it.
But until now, fear had kept him from even thinking to unearth her true identity. If this woman who had come to him like a miracle were truly some being akin to a god from another world, she could abandon him and slip away whenever she wished.
But she told him she was only an ordinary person who had lived in a different world.
Family relations, living circumstances, the work she had done, the foods she had loved, how she had spent her days—she spoke of things she had treated as taboo, speaking softly and unhurried.
Knowing her as he had not known her before was deeply sweet. But at the same time, his heart plummeted.
The way she spoke of her world, it seemed she yearned for it so terribly. Fear gripped him, and he forced his stiff lips to move and ask the question:
“……Do you miss it?”
What he really wanted to ask was whether she regretted coming to him. But the question that barely escaped his lips was only this.
Cecilia’s eyes widened, and a bitter smile crossed her face.
“It would be a lie to say I don’t miss it.”
“…….”
“But if I had left you there, I would have regretted it even more. So for the rest of my life, you must see only me and love only me. Do you understand?”
For him, who had not wavered in his devotion through forty-three lifespans branching in two directions, this was something far too easy to promise.
He nodded obediently. Yet his mind never ceased its turning.
Cecilia had declared that this life was the last, so she would not rewind time again. But she had said she was a person from another world.
If regression had been possible, there was no guarantee she would not undergo reincarnation. If that happened, she would return to her own world in the next life.
He could not accept that.
To be honest, he was also deeply afraid that someday she would lose patience with how far from sane he truly was.
And so he made his resolve: he would find a way—a certain way—to bind her to him.
* * *
Lien dreamed of a day in the distant but perfectly clear past.
It was the second iteration of the original timeline.
Because he had rewound time, he thought all that remained was to be happy with her again. This time he would not push her away, would not make the fool’s mistake of recognizing his own heart so late. He sought her out with soaring hope, but what came back was only cold contempt.
[You, Dilan She, love me? Ah, please, spare me such revolting words. As long as you are Dilan She, no matter what you do, I will never love you.]
[I can endure your hatred. Just, let me stay by your side.]
Otherwise he would lose her again. Trembling with fear, he fell to his knees and begged, but Cecilia did not blink.
[You still want to remain at my side? Then die. Perhaps if you were a corpse, I could bear to keep you.]
Could she mean it? Would she accept him if he died? But if he died, there would be no way to undo it when she died.
He contemplated such things with bewildered despair. And then he broke.
Only now did he truly grasp how miraculous it had been that she came to find him first, that she had cherished him.
And in that moment, he grasped the terrifying truth: he might never seize that Miracle, no matter how desperately he reached for it.
It wasn’t until he’d conjured up the memory again and again—the drowning desperation, the searing pain of that moment—that he finally clawed his way free from the nightmare.
Lien’s eyes fluttered open with difficulty. His blurred vision sharpened by degrees, and then the face he’d longed to see came into focus.
“Are you all right?”
But Cecilia, asking after his condition, looked far worse than he felt.
He took in the wet cloth placed near his pillow, the small basin, the empty potion bottles—and reality crashed into him.
While he lay collapsed from the Magical Backlash, she had been nursing him.
There was no time to sink into that overwhelming gratitude. Cecilia pressed him at once.
“What happened? Do you have any idea how frightened I was when I found you like that? Divine Power did nothing, and when I called for Sena and your men, you still wouldn’t wake up…….”
Her face crumpled with anguish.
But if it pleased him to see that worried expression—would she scold him for admitting it? He hesitated, then offered an awkward lie.
“……I made a mistake while researching a magical formula the Magic Tower needed. I’m sorry for the trouble.”
Yet there was one thing he’d overlooked: while he watched her, she had been watching him too.
Cecilia saw through the deception at once, her voice turning cold.
“I told you I hate lies.”
He still remembered vividly how angry she’d been when he’d become a desperate liar, all to avoid being hated.
He flinched, then finally surrendered the truth.
“I-I grew anxious, so I was researching a spell to bind our souls together. And then I failed, and…….”
“……What is wrong with you? Should I really have to beat some sense into you?”
Cecilia sighed deeply as she gazed down at the bowed man.
“If you keep doing this, I won’t be able to help you anymore.”
His heart plummeted at those resigned words.
Had she finally grown tired of him? Disillusioned? Was she regretting that he’d returned to her side? Was she going to abandon him?
It couldn’t end that way.
‘Rather than that, I’d…….’
His eyes were sinking into darkness when small hands cupped both his cheeks, and something soft and warm descended upon his lips.
With a small sound, her lips withdrew.
Stunned speechless by this unexpected reward, doubt crept in—was this also just a dream? But Cecilia spoke again.
“I’ll have to keep you with me twenty-four hours a day.”
“……What?”
“Let’s marry, you and I.”
‘Marry. Marriage.’
Was she using the word in the conventional sense he knew? The binding of man and woman in social contract, a promise to walk together for life, becoming true family?
The development was too sweet to be real, so he was certain: this had to be a dream.
He was still wandering in the delirium wrought by the Magical Backlash.
Yet Cecilia continued to offer him words so intoxicating he’d never wish to wake.
“Since you’re worried about backlash from binding our souls, we can think about that later. Wouldn’t it ease your mind if we at least bound ourselves legally?”
“I, I…….”
“I honestly don’t understand why you’re so anxious. Can’t you feel how much I love you? I’ve set aside my family, my friends, my entire career for you. I’ve never believed in eternal love, never even wanted to—and yet here I am.”
“…….”
“So what I’m trying to say is, I love you too, Lien. Far more than you think.”
Tears spilled from his eyes before he could stop them.
She wiped away the endless stream with her small hand.
“Are you crying again? You’re a crybaby.”
Cecilia pressed her lips to his wet eyes again, her tone playful and tender.
“To be honest, I quite like the sight of you crying.”
He laughed—a real, unreserved laugh—watching her with dazed wonder.
His limit had been reached. Like a wanderer broken not by rain but by sunshine, he surrendered to warmth and comfort instead of heavy, clinging sorrow, and gave himself over to her entirely.
“That’s not enough. Love me more. Even more.”
Without restraint or fear, he pulled her close. And his Miracle laughed—clear, bright, radiant—and held him so tightly he could barely breathe.
So that his anxiety would ebb away with the tide, leaving no trace behind.
With all the devotion he desired, gladly.
She whispered softly against his ear.
Now, what filled that hollow place was only the joy that pressed full and aching against his heart.
-Side Story End-

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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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