Daddy Long Legs

He swept a hand back through his hair out of habit — and bolted upright. His eyes went wide at the sight of black strands falling all the way down to his face.

The pink-haired woman before him asked, worry written across her features, “Are you all right? Are you feeling unwell anywhere?”

“…….”

Black hair. The name Rio. Between those two clues, Blasion pieced together his situation in seconds.

This was a garden inside the royal palace of the Kingdom of Crimina. The time was seven hundred years ago — back when he still went by the name ‘Rio.’

Blasion — no, ‘Rio’ — sprang to his feet and bowed with perfect formality.

“Please forgive me, Your Highness, for letting you witness such an unseemly sight.”

“Oh, don't apologize. Training must have worn you out. I shouldn't have woken you.”

Her face was blurred, impossible to make out. The only thing he could tell was that she was blushing.

It was never a good sign when a kingdom's princess took a liking to a mere bodyguard. Rio bowed his head lower still, doubling down on formality.

“I shall escort you to your chambers. Prince Itrang will be paying a visit shortly, so it would be best to prepare.”

Bringing up the name of her betrothed while the two of them stood alone together — that was the kindest refusal Rio could manage.

The princess's face darkened visibly. Without another word, she turned sharply away.

“I'll walk alone.”

“But, Your Highness—”

“I said I'm fine! Don't follow me. That's an order.”

She stomped off in great strides, then suddenly stopped and looked back over her shoulder.

“Rio. You are my sworn guardian, aren't you?”

“I am, Your Highness.”

“Then you'll protect me whenever I need it, won't you?”

It was a question with only one possible answer. Rio inclined his head in affirmation.

“Always, Your Highness — until the day this life of mine runs out.”

He didn't know then.

He didn't know that the day his life ran out would never come — not even after seven hundred more years.

He didn't know that the woman he'd once pitied with all his heart would become the object of a hatred that burned for seven centuries and beyond.

He truly, honestly didn't know.

By the time Blasion opened his eyes again, the room had already gone dark.

Everlein, who had been hunched in the shadows, stepped toward the bed. “Everlein. How long was I asleep?”

“Four and a half hours, precisely.”

“……And the doctor?”

“She is lying beneath your bed.”

He looked down to find Lionel snoring away on the spare mattress on the floor. Apparently she'd knocked out cold the moment she'd finished watching over him, same as her patient.

Everlein asked, “Shall I wake her?”

“No. Leave her be.”

“Very well. The good doctor has been run ragged with one task after another lately — she's earned the rest.”

Blasion wasn't sure whether those counted as duties or errands, but he agreed with his subordinate all the same. She had examined every last servant in the manor, drawn up a customized meal plan for each of them, and somehow still found time to pop in and out of the kitchen whipping up her accelerated-aging cuisine.

After the most grueling two weeks anyone could remember, it was little wonder Lionel had collapsed into a dead sleep in a darkened room.

You acted like you could run forever — turns out you're human after all.

As he watched her shoulders rise and fall in her sleep, Everlein spoke up. “Your first long rest in a long while. How do you feel?”

“…….”

Blasion had never liked sleeping. It wasn't sleep itself he despised — it was the dreams that sometimes came with it.

Over the long centuries, so many people had died. They visited his dreams in a hundred different shapes, each one a fresh torment.

And of them all, the cruelest by far was the dream of the princess.

He knew perfectly well that she was dead and gone, that the dream was nothing but memory wearing her face.

And yet every time, it hurt. Once she appeared in a dream, he would deliberately avoid sleep for as long as he could afterward. His insomnia had only grown worse over the years.

And yet.

Today, miraculously, none of that seething irritation had surfaced. A first in his immortal life.

“I feel good.”

“How wonderful to hear. Now, you should be on your way.”

With that, Everlein opened the door, and Blasion, conceding the point, climbed out of bed.

Just before leaving the room, he tucked the blanket he'd been sleeping under over Lionel. The woman who'd been snoring peacefully a second earlier fused with the blanket in an instant, curling up like a snail.

“……Hah.”

He'd had a bad dream — and yet he didn't feel bad. Why?

Maybe, just maybe, he had an idea.

“Everlein. Could we purchase one more chair like the one in my study?”

“I believe Kaylen is handling the furniture inventory. Is there somewhere in particular you need it?”

“Buy an identical one and put it in this examination room.”

“Understood. I'll look into it.”

Everlein agreed without a word of protest.

He had no idea what his lord was thinking.

But whatever it was, Everlein figured that a man wearing a face that refreshed deserved a chair or two.

At that very moment, in a second-floor bedroom of the Dorset Viscounty, Viscount Dorset was railing at his son, who hadn't set foot outside his blankets in days.

“You useless fool! Who told you to march all the way to the Duke's estate and throw that whole tantrum, hmm? Do you have any idea how much damage you've done to our business? Your mother is out shoveling manure on the farm as we speak!”

The Dorset Viscounty's lifeblood was its fruit orchards. Its peaches and grapes had earned quite a reputation — but a reputation could only survive as long as there were enough hands to work the harvest.

Lately the Viscount had been tearing his hair out over the farmers quitting and walking away. Beating the money out of his laborers to fund his illegal gambling had been a fine bit of fun, but even that had lost its appeal as more and more days were lost to actual farm work.

And then, not long ago, he learned the truth: the Carseido Dukedom was poaching his farmers with outrageously generous offers.

“Same work for double the pay — why would anyone stay here? Slaving dawn to dusk for pocket lint?”

“And word is that new personal doctor of theirs takes beautiful care of the meals, they say. Even writes out proper employment contracts for everyone, they do.”

Why would the famous Dukedom bother stealing his farmers? The answer hadn't been hard to find. The rumor that Adrian had marched over there, raised hell, and been thoroughly humiliated had already spread like wildfire through high society.

“Worthless boy. What's one bastard girl supposed to be, anyway……. I should have told Lavienne to get rid of her ages ago. Ugh, it makes me sick!”

The Viscount slammed the door behind him with a bang.

Until the footsteps faded into silence, Adrian trembled under his blanket. All around him lay the wreckage of his feasting — half-eaten pastries, fruit, and bread strewn across the floor.

“H-how……. how unfair. This is unfair. Lionel, was there nothing you could do either? Was it you all along — the kind of woman who drools her way past anyone with a pretty shell?”

He liked to think of himself as a rather attractive man, but the three males he'd met at the Carseido estate had been males of an entirely different order. The Duke in particular was so perfect that men like Adrian weren't even permitted to look at him. The moment Adrian laid eyes on him, he'd been hit with a crushing, suffocating sense of inferiority.

“Mean girl……. When you used to smile at me, and now this. Mean girl……”

Adrian crunched his way through the bowl of popcorn, then dumped the rest into his mouth in one go. Still unsatisfied, he crammed cake in after it. His hands and the area around his mouth were filthy in seconds.

And still, he could not stop.

His whole body hungered for food. It was already climbing back up his throat; he genuinely felt about to vomit — and his hand reached for more anyway.

I want to eat more. I want to eat more……. More, more, more……!!

“What a pathetic sight you make, Adrian Dorset.”

“Gyaaah!!”

Adrian toppled over backward in fright, and the peanuts he'd been clutching scattered into the air like snow.

He scrambled up and gaped at his uninvited guest. Out on the balcony beyond the window, someone was leaning against the railing.

“Wh-who's there?!”

“Me? Let's see…… call me Daddy Long Legs. I've come to grant your heart's wish.”

The stranger was tall, draped in a loose robe that hid his face — but his voice and bearing carried an unmistakable air of nobility.

“You want to marry Lionel Frencia, don't you?”

“……!”

“I know you've taken a fancy to her. And I know you went to the Duke's estate, too.”

The man was plainly suspicious, but a brain running on nothing but eat-and-sleep wasn't in any condition to judge. Adrian stared at him with blank, glazed eyes.

“Can I…… have her?”

“No, no. Oh, Adrian. You foolish boy.”

The man's refusal was firm.

“You mustn't think that way. Speaking of people as things to be had or refused — that's terribly rude. It's no different from treating her as an object.”

“Then…… what do I do to make Lionel accept my heart?”

The suspicious man answered without a moment's hesitation.

“Get thin.”

“……I beg your pardon?”

“Lose the weight. Get slender, so you might look appealing to her. But that won't be easy, will it? Which is why I've brought you something wonderful.”

The man drew something from within his robe: a glass vial, about a hand-span tall, sealed with a stopper.

He gave it a gentle shake and said, “This elixir will be of tremendous help. Of that, I assure you.”