"Young lady, my knowledge may be limited, but I'm not an idiot. One look at this bath's setup tells me you're no ordinary miss. Your household must have plenty of guards. Yet after all that noise just now, no one barged in. I doubt that's because no one noticed."
Still facing away from the girl, Sawada Tsunayoshi glanced toward the bath's door.
"If I'd made any wrong move, someone would've rushed in and taken my head off already, wouldn't they?"
From the very start, he'd felt the pulsing of his veins—as if warning him not to make the wrong choice.
He didn't know why his body's instincts were screaming, but he heeded them.
"Oh? Your crisis sense isn't bad at all."
The girl sounded genuinely impressed, then raised her voice toward the hallway:
"We're fine here, Finn. Stand down. Keep everyone away from my side."
"Loki, explain yourself properly when this is over."
A young, boyish voice drifted in from beyond the door, thin with fatigue—clearly the result of her orders.
Tsunayoshi heard no footsteps retreating, but the pounding in his veins eased; at the very least, the immediate danger seemed to have passed.
Just as he exhaled in relief—and before he could wonder why she'd relaxed security so quickly—he felt her presence come up behind him, her voice practically at his ear.
"Hehe~ Surprised I called them off so fast? If you moved on me right now, you could probably restrain me with ease, couldn't you?"
"Then why do it?"
Her cheerful tone held not an ounce of fear. If anything, he heard a spark of eagerness.
That only deepened his confusion. He couldn't help asking, "Why?"
"Why? Because your actions tell me you've got a higher moral standard."
He fell silent for a beat.
"If you were dangerous, you wouldn't have spun away the moment you saw me—you'd have rushed in to take a hostage. What you did was pure reflex, a natural, subconscious act shaped by your own moral baseline."
Her warm breath at his ear made it tickle, but what truly caught his attention was her ability to read him from his behavior.
This girl wasn't ordinary.
"A traveler from another world, with a certain moral floor. Your upbringing built a high wall—and even now, in this situation, it still restrains you."
Tsunayoshi drew a long breath. She wasn't wrong; he had been raised that way—and bound by it.
Even so, realizing he was surrounded made his shoulders sag.
"So I'm that easy to read, huh."
"Shall we talk properly now?"
He hesitated, then let his eyes flick around the room.
"Here?"
"Mmm~ Here is fine. Of course, if you want to face me and talk, I won't stop you."
Me? Face her? His cheek twitched. He shook his head decisively.
"Like this is fine."
"Good. Since that's settled, let's introduce ourselves. I'll go first. My name is Loki."
Loki? So this is a Western-style world…? Tsunayoshi made a mental note.
"Sawada Tsunayoshi."
"Mm, now that I have your name, we're acquainted. Let's move on."
She leaned closer, her voice dropping.
"So—can you go back?"
He paused.
"Loki-san, if I could go back, I would have already."
"Oho~ You're lying."
How did you—? He almost turned on instinct.
"Thinking 'how do I know,' are you? Ah—your reactions are even more amusing than I expected~"
Her voice brimmed with delight, mischief practically overflowing.
"But you did lie."
"My question was, 'can you go back?' You emphasized 'already,' which means you can't go back only for now, isn't that right?"
Her tone didn't change, but Tsunayoshi's nerves tightened.
And her clean dissection of his words left him silent.
He knew he couldn't outmaneuver Loki in a battle of wits. She'd read his replies and reactions like an open book.
And that lie-detecting knack… it reminded him of the Vongola's Hyper Intuition. Perhaps she had something similar.
"I don't know if I can. What I want is to find a way."
"Mm. That wasn't a lie."
So it really is something like that, huh. He felt certain now.
He hadn't lied—just spoken his current judgment—and she had cleanly judged it truth. That was unmistakably a truth-sensing ability.
"So, right now you can't return and you'll need time to solve that problem. But you're in another world. Even if you can scrape by alone, can you do it stably? This world has all sorts of… complications."
Her tone was all carrot-and-stick; even without turning around, he could picture "Come with me" written across her face.
"Loki-san, don't you already have enough guards?"
"Finn and the others are strong enough—but not special like you. I've always had a special interest in special people. Mm, and I want to see whether you can find your way home. And what you're hiding."
"Also, if you walk out of here now, the moment any troublesome type catches wind of how unusual you are, do you really think they'd be safer than me? Every last one of them would be far more dangerous."
She was smiling; he could hear it. But the warning inside that smile was real. Tsunayoshi weighed his options.
New world. No intel. A girl called Loki at his back. The frame looked Western, but that was all he knew.
This world likely had many dangerous individuals—and leaving Loki's household might itself be risky. His pounding veins had been telling him as much since the moment he'd entertained the idea of bolting.
Which left him with only one real choice.
Tsunayoshi drew a deep breath.
"May I state a few conditions?"
(End of Chapter)
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