When Lancel opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was a silver-haired woman staring directly down at him.
Pale gray eyes met his the moment he cracked an eye slightly, just enough to be able to pretend he was still unconscious. She was leaning over him, close enough that her face filled most of his view.
And she was directly on top of him.
Right. Witches were crazy bitches.
Sometimes, Angelica would even take him outside for a stroll as if he were a dog. On several occasions, she had dragged him to her workplace, where other witches would ogle over him.
And once, to his everlasting humiliation, Angelica had even used him as a nude model for an art class. A room full of witches had sat around sketching while he stood there like some statue on display.
Compared to that, waking up to another witch leaning over him almost felt normal at this point.
'She'll go away anytime soon…'
Lancel kept his eyes shut anyway. If he stayed still long enough, maybe she would assume he was still asleep.
"I know you're awake."
Still, Lancel did not react.
He kept his body completely still, hoping she would lose interest and leave him alone.
After a year of dealing with Angelica, he had learned that sometimes the best strategy around witches was simply pretending to be less aware than you actually were.
A few seconds passed.
Then Faust sighed.
"You're a terrible actor."
Lancel remained motionless.
"…If you keep pretending, I'll just put you to sleep for good."
"Nnh… What time is it—Ah?!"
Faust was still there, close enough that when his vision focused, the first thing that caught his attention was her red, luscious lips.
For a moment, his brain struggled to catch up with the situation.
No matter how much he hated witches, he had to admit something rather unfortunate.
They were all beautiful.
Because of her posture, leaning over him, her curves became even more noticeable.
"…Could you move?"
Faust blinked once, then moved back.
"You're awake now. Good."
Lancel slowly pushed himself upright and looked around the room.
It was far more modest than Angelica's mansion.
It looked like an ordinary residence rather than the laboratory of a witch obsessed with experiments.
Still, that alone did little to calm him.
"Where am I?"
"My house. Don't worry. You're safe here."
Safe.
The word echoed in Lancel's mind, and it nearly made him laugh.
Alone in a room with a witch, there was nothing safe about this.
He had just escaped one captor only to wake up in the home of another. From his perspective, the situation did not look much different from before.
Faust had already refused his request to leave earlier. She had knocked him unconscious then brought him here.
If he looked at it logically, what exactly had changed?
Wasn't he simply trapped again, only in a different house?
"Calm down," Faust said. "I'm not going to do whatever it is you're imagining. Jeez. I already changed your shirt, and now you're drenched in sweat again."
Lancel blinked.
Only then did he notice the dampness on his skin. His shirt stuck to his back, and the chill of evaporating sweat ran along his neck.
He had been sweating far more than he realized.
The moment he woke up and saw Faust leaning over him, his body had reacted before his mind could catch up.
Even now, sitting upright on the bed, he could feel his heartbeat slowly settling from the spike it had reached moments earlier.
"For now, you should eat something. I made a meal for you."
Faust said it as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. She turned and gestured toward the small table near the window.
Lancel followed the motion with his eyes.
There, a bowl of warm stew was placed on the table. Beside it was a plate of bread and a simple cup of water.
Only then did he realize how hungry he actually was.
"It's not poisoned. Why would I even do that if I wanted to kill you?"
For all he knew, it could still be laced with aphrodisiac or some other stimulant for "improved results."
"If you won't eat, then go ahead and starve," Faust said. "But for the record, I'm not letting you leave just yet."
"…Yet?"
"I need information from you. And after meeting you, I realized how uncooperative you can be. So I'll simply make do with whatever you know about Angelica."
"What's your motive?" he asked. "What has Angelica done to you?"
"She killed my sister."
"...."
"Is that enough of a reason?"
Lancel stared at her, then turned his gaze to the bowl of stew on the table. After a long second, he slowly walked and held the spoon.
Whatever Faust's reasons were, they no longer mattered to him at the moment. His stomach had been empty for too long, and the smell of the stew immediately reminded him just how hungry he truly was.
For now, food came first.
After he finished eating, Lancel wiped the stain from his lips with the back of his hand and glanced toward Faust.
She had moved away from the table and was now tending to the garden inside the room.
A patch of grass was spread across the floor near the far wall, with small plants and herbs growing in arranged beds.
Witch stuff.
Faust knelt calmly beside the plants, trimming a few leaves as if the strange indoor garden were the most ordinary thing in the world.
Lancel leaned back in his chair.
"How did you know I was reported missing?" he asked. "Were you looking for me?"
Faust did not answer immediately.
She continued tending to the plants for another moment before brushing a bit of dirt from her hands and glancing back at him.
"And how did you come to the mansion?" Lancel continued. "How did you even know I was there?"
Before anything else, he needed to understand exactly what had happened.
First, he needed to get his facts straight.
"Merilda."
"…."
"She's an acquaintance of mine."
Merilda. That was a name he had not heard in a long time.
She had once been one of the adventurers he worked closely with back in Emadestrin. During those days, they had taken several contracts together, traveling the roads between cities while building their reputation in the guild.
At one point, their relationship had even grown… intimate.
"I was in Emadestrin about two months ago," Faust continued. "I had taken a tutoring job there for a local Baroness."
She stood up from the small indoor garden and brushed a bit of soil from her hands.
"That's when Merilda came looking for me."
Lancel remained silent, listening carefully.
"One thing led to another," Faust continued. "Eventually, I saw the missing person poster."
She met his gaze.
"Your poster."
Lancel frowned.
"Merilda asked if I could search for you in Riviere since I'm originally from here."
"But how did you know to look for Angelica?"
Faust looked at him as if the answer were obvious.
"Well, it's not exactly a secret," she said. "Do you know how popular you actually are in the academy?"
"…."
Lancel stared at her blankly.
He had no idea.
Angelica had taken him there many times over the past year, but never as a visitor.
He had been brought along like some kind of specimen, dragged into lecture halls and laboratories while witches gathered around to observe whatever experiment she decided to demonstrate that day.
To him, those visits had only ever been humiliating.
But in Riviere, the Witch Academy held a particular structure.
Witches were divided into several categories.
At the top were the Count Witches. These were the elites, witches whose influence and achievements placed them among the upper echelons of the city.
In many ways, they were treated like nobility within Riviere.
Below them were the Common Witches, the majority who practiced magic professionally but did not hold noble status.
And at the bottom were the Apprentice Witches, students still undergoing training while learning under more experienced mentors.
Angelica Eisenreich was at the top of that hierarchy.
She was a Count Witch.
And aside from her research, she also served as a mentor to Apprentice Witches during her spare time.
Which meant that Lancel had been displayed in front of a lot of people.
Over time, he had even become familiar with some of Angelica's apprentices.
As Lancel had come to understand, witches were utterly insane.
Whatever Angelica had done to him over the past year was not considered illegal in Riviere. In fact, within the Witch City, most of it barely raised an eyebrow.
In Riviere, the only true taboo was committing an offense against a Count Witch. Crossing one of them meant severe consequences.
Everything else was far more flexible.
Heck, even murder was completely permissible.
"I'll cooperate."
Faust glanced up at him.
"That's great. Then—"
"But I want to ask for a condition."
"Do you understand you're not really in a position to—"
"Teach me magic."
She was a mentor, too, right?
"Puhahaha!"
But Faust just laughed at him.