On an ordinary wooden bed, at least by Little Garden standards...
After resting for one hour, Rin opened her eyes before sensing whether the defensive spell formation at the door had been triggered.
Then she looked down and saw "Kalki" sleeping peacefully like a baby.
She immediately smiled helplessly. "Your Highness, wake up."
Ryo blinked his eyes open and spoke slowly. "Honestly, Rin, you should have let me hug you while sleeping. I'd have slept much better."
The smile on Rin's face immediately froze.
Then her cheeks turned red.
Not from embarrassment. But from anger.
She puffed out her cheeks and reached over to pinch Ryo's face, pulling it from side to side. "How dare you say something like that to a girl? Looks like you've really learned some bad habits from that Yagami. You've only met him twice, so how did you manage to pick up his bad habits already?"
'You even know I've only met Kalki twice? Then why do you blame everything on me?' Ryo grumbled inwardly.
He planted both hands against the bed and pushed himself backward, putting some distance between them and freeing himself from her hands.
"To be honest, I'm starting to feel pretty guilty about keeping you in the dark. Personally, I believe people deserve to know why they're going to die. Unless I particularly hate someone, I generally don't like leaving people to die without knowing what happened."
"Huh?" Rin was completely bewildered.
The 'Kalki' standing before her wore a smile she had never seen on him before, and something about his tone made her instinctively uneasy.
For the first time, he felt completely unfamiliar.
Almost... Almost like he was a different person.
For a fleeting moment, Rin seemed to see another man's face overlapping his.
The face of the man who had casually threatened Kalki with her life.
Several seconds passed before Rin, breathing heavily, finally stared wide-eyed at the figure standing so close to her.
The spiritual aura concealing his identity had dispersed.
And the face before her was unmistakably...
"Impossible..."
She knew what she was seeing, yet some part of her mind still desperately insisted that this person was Kalki.
She nearly broke down on the spot.
"Surprised? Didn't see that coming?"
Ryo lifted his head, looking thoroughly satisfied.
Then he pointed at himself with his thumb and burst out laughing. "You didn't sleep with Kalki. You slept with me, Ryo Yagami! Zehahahaha!"
Rin froze.
Then her face cycled through every possible shade of red and black.
"You bastard!"
Furious, she lunged at Ryo.
But before she could reach him, he caught her wrist and pinned her hand against the bed.
"That's harsh..." Ryo put on a wounded expression. "You were trying to hit me just now, weren't you, Rin?"
The affectionate way he said her name made Rin shudder.
Tears immediately welled up in her eyes as she cried out in distress, "You bastard! Don't use His Highness's voice to say my name! It's disgusting!"
"Oh? That's what bothers you?"
Ryo looked genuinely surprised.
Then he released her, sprang backward, and easily dodged the kick she sent at him.
"Missed me!"
Watching Ryo grin at her like an absolute menace, Rin felt like her head was about to explode.
No wonder!
No wonder her intuition had kept telling her that Kalki had been corrupted by Ryo.
No wonder she had kept drawing all those strange conclusions.
So it turned out... The 'Kalki' standing in front of her wasn't actually her Kalki anymore!
Rin glared at Ryo, practically breathing fire. "You bastard! What did you do to His Highness?!"
"Him?" Ryo smiled pleasantly. "He's somewhere very safe."
Then, with a cheerful smile, he continued, "Compared with worrying about him, I think you should be more concerned about me. After all, the person the Heavenly Army has its eyes on is 'Kalki'!"
Rin's expression froze. She immediately forgot about being bullied moments ago. "The Heavenly Army is after His Highness? Stop joking around!"
"Oh? You denied it immediately?" Ryo regarded her with an amused look. "Could it be that no one from Ouroboros told you about this, so you've been feeling completely safe?"
He pulled out a black Gift Card and showed her the back, where the Ouroboros insignia was displayed.
"So what if I'm the person who was sent here to give you the warning?"
The moment she saw the Gift Card, Rin's eyes widened in disbelief. "A black Ouroboros card... The Second Alliance... How...?"
As an insider, and one specifically trained by Ouroboros, Rin naturally knew what a black Gift Card bearing the Ouroboros emblem represented.
What she found hardest to accept was that, as far as she knew, almost all of Ouroboros's intelligence operations were handled by the Second Alliance.
"Looks like you understand the situation now?" Ryo smiled at her.
"..."
Rin stared silently at him.
As Kalki's strategist, once she put aside her anger and started thinking rationally, she quickly pieced together most of what had happened.
Why Ryo had obtained Kalki's identity. Why he was impersonating him.
The conditions under which Ryo had joined Ouroboros.
She could guess most of it with reasonable certainty.
"The higher-ups..." Rin gritted her teeth.
Couldn't those damn Ouroboros high-ranking leaders have warned her beforehand?
It wasn't as though she could refuse to let Ryo take the heat for His Highness. If anything, she would have been more than happy to do it.
But they hadn't told her a single thing.
As a result, she'd just taken a huge loss without even having anyone to complain to.
It was infuriating.
"Got it now?" Ryo looked at her with a mischievous smile.
Rin's breathing caught.
Suppressing the urge to chop Ryo into pieces, she glared at him. "Pretending to be someone else's little brother just to pull something like this... I suppose I shouldn't expect anything less from the fourth God King of the Greek Pantheon. Guess the apple really doesn't fall far from the tree."
Ryo shrugged off her sarcasm. "Little brother? I guess you treat Kalki as more than that, huh?"
His smile became meaningful. "This young, and you can already agree to sleeping together? What about after a few years? Would you eat him~ hehe~"
"Don't assume everyone is as shameless as you are, or has a brain filled with these things. Only someone like you can be this disgusting and feel like it's the norm." Rin gave a cold laugh and glared viciously at him. "Since you've temporarily taken His Highness's identity, you should have some of his memories too, right? Take a good look and tell me who Kalki is to me."
Ryo paused. Then searched through Kalki's memories.
His expression immediately became strange. "Kalki is a divine child born through your mother's asexual reproduction? Your maternal half-brother... Wait, what?"
Rin gave him a cold smile. "Do you understand now? He IS my brother."
Ryo struggled to get the rest of his sentence out. "Then wouldn't that make it even more exciting?"
Rin: "...?"
Is there something wrong with this guy?
Wait. He's a god from the Greek Pantheon now.
So... That actually sounds pretty normal for them, doesn't it?
For the first time in her life, Rin discovered that there was apparently a moral baseline known as 'Greek'.
Just then, Ryo suddenly stepped closer.
His expression was full of meaning. "So... shouldn't we do something now?"
Rin immediately stumbled backward in alarm.
"What are you trying to do? Don't you dare! I'm warning you, Leticia is guarding the headquarters. If you try anything, I..."
Before she could finish, the door suddenly opened.
Leticia's voice came from outside. "Leader, were you calling for me?"
Rin froze.
Then she went completely blank.
She stared at Ryo in disbelief. "You actually told Leticia about us?!"
Ryo shrugged indifferently. "Of course. There was no way I could keep the fact that I'm impersonating Kalki from her."
At that moment, the door opened wider and Leticia poked her head inside.
She looked at Ryo.
Then she looked at Rin, who was pressed against the corner of the wall and visibly trembling.
Leticia stuck out her tongue playfully. "Ara~ Did I come at a bad time?"
Ryo smiled.
Under Rin's incredulous stare, he waved Leticia over. "No. You came at exactly the right time!"
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