Thwack!
Tyllian’s hand slammed onto the bed again.
Ash’s shoulders hitched, his guts shriveling, and his body temperature seemed to plummet.
He wished Master would get his face off his chest.
This situation probably wasn’t helping Tyllian’s mood.
His beloved Ash…
Ash didn’t want to argue with Tyllian, but some problems in the world just couldn’t be helped.
When someone acted so full of contradictions, didn’t it naturally lead to an argument?
“Exactly!”
“A knight should control their emotions… You shouldn’t threaten your master… should you?”
Ash tried to placate Tyllian. Since logic usually worked well with Tyllian, he hoped this would too.
“I’m already well aware that I’m disqualified as a knight.”
But then Tyllian suddenly became calm. Ash grew even more afraid.
“What are you talking about, Tyl? If you’re disqualified as a knight, then who is qualified?”
“Anyone but me, of course. I should have known I lost my qualification the moment I slept with you. It’s because I refuse to admit it that I’m suffering, isn’t it?”
‘What qualification?’
Ash could count over ten living knights who had slept with their masters.
If he looked through historical records, he could easily find over a hundred…
He tried to calm himself and said, “In my opinion, you don’t need to admit that. You already defeated your father last year and were called the ‘best knight in the dukedom,’ weren’t you? You’re more than qualified. Why do you think qualifications just appear and disappear? Isn’t that a narrow-minded way of thinking? Knights are, by nature, ‘lovers of nobles.’ They say in the imperial palace that knights who don’t receive a handkerchief aren’t even treated as proper knights. They can’t even accomplish that…”
Tyllian wasn’t listening.
“To Sir Ash, these actions must be nothing more than a game.”
‘You think this is a game?’
Ash was being tormented by his Master.
But if he said that, wouldn’t Tyllian kill Master?
He exercised immense patience, like a thousand pounds, and kept his mouth shut.
To be precise, he was just paying the price for a promise anyway…
Unaware of Ash’s aggrieved feelings, Tyllian said, “It was ridiculous for me to accompany you as your knight when I had already lost the qualification to protect you.”
“No! No? It’s not ridiculous at all. It’s amazing! You’re saying you’ll be loyal to your master without mixing in personal feelings. You’re the best knight.”
“No. My action of leaving the castle to follow you was purely out of personal feelings.”
“I simply couldn’t bear to have the person I adore resent me. I just wished you wouldn’t marry. It was all what I wanted. So, under the pretense of protecting you, I volunteered to be your escort.”
As Tyllian spoke with a pained expression, Ash listened quietly, keeping his mouth shut.
But he was still puzzled.
‘…What’s so bad about that?’
Ash couldn’t understand the knight’s psyche at all.
Tyllian seemed to pride himself on being a person of common sense, but Ash thought he was quite strange.
Had he gone mad with a sense of duty?
No other knight Ash knew tried so desperately to be “knightly.”
Tyllian had a strange illusion about the knightly class, despite having a father who didn’t seem to care about chivalry.
‘I shouldn’t say that.’ Ash chose his words carefully, using common sense.
“I… I liked you for that. I was grateful and happy that you followed me. Is that not enough? Can’t it be okay?”
Your master is happy.
I’m your master, aren’t I?
Didn’t you acknowledge that?
If a knight’s joy was their master’s joy, then Tyllian should be happy, shouldn’t he?
Ash unconsciously looked at him, gauging his reaction.
Tyllian seemed speechless.
‘Did it work?’
Seizing the opportunity, Ash pushed Master away with his foot. Master, who had been blankly sucking on Ash’s chest, couldn’t withstand the sudden pushing force and fell off.
However, the sucking motion was reflexive, so Master had no control over it.
Ash’s nipple was caught between his white teeth, and his chest stretched out with the suction.
‘Ouch!’
A tingling sensation ran down below.
Smack!
Ash gritted his teeth and pretended not to see Master’s lips detach with a strange sound.
He focused solely on Tyllian.
The problem was that Tyllian was watching Ash’s predicament…
The knight’s firm jaw clenched. He averted his gaze and said, “No. While your happiness pleases me, I cannot be satisfied with that. I have already abandoned my knightly duty, so your happiness can no longer be my complete happiness.”
Ash wished he would speak more simply.
“You mean you don’t want me to sleep with Master, right? Okay, I won’t sleep with him anymore! I wasn’t going to. Master also says he doesn’t want to sleep with me. You don’t want to be a scoundrel, do you, Master? You’re a moral person, aren’t you?”
“But Ash, you agreed this isn’t sleeping, didn’t you?”
Master, who had been resting his cheek on Ash’s foot, retorted.
Ash properly informed him.
“This is sleeping.”
“Ash, you mustn’t twist your words to suit your convenience. No one will ever trust you. Magic is sensitive to language.”
Master, his voice drowsy, instructed his disciple.
Ash didn’t want to be lectured by a Master who was getting paid by sucking on his disciple’s chest!
“I see. I understand. I’ll tell you the truth. This was sleeping. Master, you’re already shameless!”
“This is problematic.”
Master seemed to have woken up. Suddenly, he too became serious.
“I swore to Ayla that I wouldn’t harm you. Is that true? Can you swear on everything you have that it’s true?”
‘No…’
He asked, his eyes wide and clear.
Ash was now afraid of Master too.
‘He swore to Mother?’
A wizard does not make promises or oaths lightly.
Because they can never be broken.
Especially an oath with a vague condition like ‘harming someone’ carries the risk of breaking it unknowingly.
Therefore, Master had said in class that it was the kind of oath one should never make.
He had told Ash more than once, so Ash remembered.
But he made such an oath to Mother?
Mother thought that of him?
That couldn’t be.
But Master wouldn’t lie.
Especially not about a wizard’s oath.
Ash realized that the moment he said “yes,” Master would lose all his magical abilities as a wizard.
That would be no different from killing Master.
Ash quickly corrected himself.
“No! Master, you’re not shameless. You didn’t harm me!”
“But didn’t you say I slept with you? Sleeping with a disciple, that seems like a bad teacher. It feels like an act that sufficiently harms a disciple.”
Master’s eyes were so clear and sharp that Ash’s heart sank.
“Not at all! What’s wrong with sleeping with a disciple? There’s nothing wrong with it. Master and I are close, and Master didn’t force me. Sleeping together isn’t an act that harms anyone either.”
“Oh?”
Master slumped back down.
His half-closed eyes gazed into space, blinking slowly.
He seemed lost in some strange thought.
It was Master’s usual self.
Ash felt relieved, but then Master tilted his head.
“Is that true? Or is it another lie to get out of the situation?”
“What is ‘that’…? No, do I look like someone who only lies?”
After all the trouble he went to for him.
He was a thankless person.
“Of course not. You don’t only lie. It’s just that a large part of what you say is lies.”
Ash thought for a second.
“You’re saying I’m a liar?!”
“You’ve gotten smarter, Ash.”
“Annoying!”
“You mustn’t use informal language with your Master.”
“It’s annoying!”
“Be a good boy. So, is insertion allowed or not?”
What is he talking about now?
Ash couldn’t make sense of it…
“Sir Ash.”
Meanwhile, Tyllian called out.
Ash instinctively lifted his head and then regretted it.
He shouldn’t have looked.
“Master has a good sense of humor. As you know, Tyl, Master has no interest in sexual matters at all.”
“Yes. If it weren’t for you, Ash, he would never have taken an interest.”
Ash closed his eyes.
This person truly doesn’t know who’s protecting him…
“Sir Ash.”
“Tyl…”
Tyllian’s calm voice was frightening.
“It’s fine. I didn’t expect Sir Ash to stop his night activities at all.”
Ash was not fine.
“You said you like me?”
Can you really declare someone you claim to like to be so beyond redemption?
“Yes. And night activities are Sir Ash’s favorite pastime.”
“From the moment I abandoned my duty as a knight and followed my impulses, I had to be prepared.”
“For what…?”
“The fact that I would have to watch you sleep with others and endure it.”
Tyllian’s gaze remained fixed on some point beyond Ash’s shoulder, as if he were staring at a distant, grim future.
His voice, though quiet, was infused with a deep, unsettling conviction. Ash felt a chill crawl up his spine.
The words hung in the air, heavy and inescapable.
He wanted to retort, to deny, to scream that Tyllian misunderstood everything, but the sheer weight of Tyllian’s self-sacrifice, however misguided it seemed to Ash, rendered him speechless.
“You believe that being a knight means a complete abandonment of personal desire, don’t you?”
Ash finally managed to ask, his voice barely a whisper.
He was trying to grasp the labyrinthine logic that drove Tyllian, a logic that seemed to twist and contort every simple truth into a complex burden of duty and self-denial.
Tyllian turned his head slowly, his eyes finally meeting Ash’s.
There was no anger, no accusation, only a profound weariness.
“A knight’s purpose is to protect their liege. To serve. Anything that deviates from that path, anything that introduces personal gain or gratification, taints the purity of the oath.”
He paused, then continued, “When I—when we—crossed that line, I became unfit. My actions were no longer solely for your protection, but for my own selfish wants.”
Ash almost laughed, a hysterical bubble of air that caught in his throat.
Selfish wants?
Tyllian’s “selfish wants” were to be close to Ash, to follow him, to not have Ash marry someone else.
Ash had seen countless knights, older and younger, engage in far more self-serving behaviors, all while proclaiming their unwavering loyalty.
He had seen knights gamble away fortunes, embezzle funds, and even betray confidences, all under the guise of their “duty.”
Tyllian, by comparison, was a saint.
A very, very confused saint.
“But what if what you want, what you desire… aligns with what I need?”
Ash pressed, desperate to find a crack in Tyllian’s unyielding armor of duty.
“What if your ‘selfish wants’ are precisely what makes me happy? If your presence, your loyalty, even your… your confusion over this ‘qualification’… brings me joy, how can that be a bad thing? Isn’t a master’s happiness also part of a knight’s duty?”
Tyllian’s eyes flickered, a momentary ripple disturbing the calm surface of his self-imposed conviction.
“My happiness cannot be your complete happiness, Sir Ash. Because my happiness now is rooted in a transgression of my duty. It is a corrupted happiness.”
Ash threw his hands up in exasperation.
“Corrupted! What is corrupted about it? We like each other, Tyllian! We have a connection. You’re the best knight I know, and you followed me because you cared about me. How is that ‘corrupted’?”
He wanted to shake Tyllian, to jolt him out of this self-flagellating spiral.
Tyllian seemed determined to find fault where there was none, to twist affection into a betrayal.
“Because,” Tyllian said, his voice dropping to a near whisper, “a knight must be a shield, unblemished by personal entanglement. My emotions have compromised my objectivity. How can I truly protect you if my judgment is clouded by my own… affections?”
He looked away again, his gaze fixed on the wall as if it held the answers to his internal torment.
“I have become a liability, not a protector. And a knight who cannot protect their master is no knight at all.”
Ash’s mind raced, trying to find an argument, a phrase, anything that could penetrate Tyllian’s stubborn self-condemnation.
He thought of all the legends, the tales of knights who loved their ladies, their lords, often leading to acts of greater courage and devotion, not less.
The very idea of a knight being an emotionless automaton seemed utterly contrary to everything Ash understood about chivalry.
Chivalry, to Ash, was about passion, devotion, honor, and yes, love.
“That’s absurd, Tyllian,” Ash stated firmly, trying to inject some of his own pragmatic common sense into the situation.
“Love doesn’t make you a worse knight; it makes you a better one! It gives you something more to fight for, more to protect. Do you think the legendary knights of old fought only out of cold, detached duty? They fought for their homes, their families, their lords, and yes, their lovers! That’s what gave them strength, not weakness!”
Tyllian shook his head slowly, the movement almost imperceptible.
“Those were different times, Sir Ash. Or perhaps, those were idealized tales, not the reality of a knight’s burden. The reality is that personal feelings create vulnerabilities. They cloud judgment. They lead to… actions like mine, leaving the castle, putting my own desires above the structured protection of the dukedom.”
Ash scoffed.
“So, you’re saying your father, who barely knows what ‘duty’ means half the time, is a better knight because he doesn’t care about anyone? Is that your standard? Because if it is, then the world is full of ‘qualified’ knights who are utterly useless!”
He immediately regretted bringing up Tyllian’s father, but the words were out.
A flicker of something akin to pain crossed Tyllian’s face.
“My father’s methods are… his own. But he understands the fundamental truth of the knightly order: that it is a position of sacrifice. He simply chooses to interpret that sacrifice differently. I… I allowed myself to be swayed.”
Ash felt a wave of frustration wash over him, mixed with a profound sense of sadness for Tyllian.
It was clear that Tyllian was genuinely suffering under the weight of his own rigid ideals.
He was punishing himself for something Ash saw as a blessing.
“Tyllian,” Ash said, his voice softening, a plea now mixed with his usual exasperation.
“You are the kindest, most honorable person I know. You embody everything a knight should be, even if you don’t see it yourself. Your concern for me, your desire to protect me, it comes from a place of genuine care. That’s not a weakness; it’s your greatest strength.”
He reached out, hesitantly, and gently placed his hand on Tyllian’s clenched fist.
Tyllian’s hand was cold, taut with tension.
Tyllian didn’t pull away, but his jaw remained set.
“A strength that led me to abandon my post, to follow my whims, to engage in activities that are, by your own admission, inappropriate for a knight and their master.”
He gestured vaguely towards Master, who had, in the interim, fallen asleep again, his head resting on Ash’s foot, a faint snore escaping his lips.
Ash rolled his eyes at Master’s opportune unconsciousness.
“Master is… Master. And you didn’t abandon your post, you came to protect me! You volunteered! You’re literally doing your duty right now, albeit with a slightly… complicated personal element.”
Ash squeezed Tyllian’s hand gently.
“Can’t you just… accept that you’re a good knight, a qualified knight, and that your feelings for me don’t diminish that?”
Tyllian finally turned his hand, his fingers brushing against Ash’s.
His gaze was still distant, but there was a hint of something fragile in his eyes.
“My feelings… they are a part of me, Sir Ash. And I cannot deny that they influence my actions. To be a true knight, I should be able to separate the two. To serve with detached impartiality.”
“But that’s not what makes you you, Tyllian!”
Ash insisted, his voice rising slightly.
“That’s not what makes you the ‘best knight in the dukedom.’ It’s precisely because you do have feelings, because you do care, that you’re so exceptional. A knight without a heart is just a mercenary. You’re more than that.”
Tyllian closed his eyes, a faint tremor running through his body.
“Perhaps. Perhaps I am too caught in a romanticized ideal. But the very thought of failing you, of my personal desires leading to your harm… it is unbearable.”
He opened his eyes, and they were clouded with a deep-seated anguish.
“And so, I must endure. I must witness your choices, even those that pain me, because my duty now is to accept the consequences of my… my lapse in judgment.”
Ash felt a pang of despair. It was like talking to a wall built of duty and self-sacrifice.
Tyllian was so deeply entrenched in this idea of his own disqualification that no amount of logical argument or emotional appeal seemed to reach him.
He was a knight on a personal crusade of penance, and Ash, inadvertently, was the object of that penance.
“So you’re saying you’re just going to… watch?”
Ash asked, the implications of Tyllian’s last statement sinking in.
The idea of Tyllian, this fiercely devoted, overly principled man, simply standing by while Ash engaged in “night activities” – a euphemism that currently only involved Master, but could, in theory, extend to others – was almost more painful than Tyllian’s earlier anger.
It spoke of a deep, internal suffering that Ash felt powerless to alleviate.
Tyllian’s gaze finally, fully, settled on Ash.
His eyes, though still troubled, held a peculiar resolve.
“Yes, Sir Ash. I must. For I am still your knight, however disqualified I may feel. My duty, even if flawed by my own nature, is to remain by your side. To protect you, even from the consequences of my own actions.”
He paused, and then, his voice barely audible, he added, “And to endure the sight of your happiness, even if it is a happiness I feel I no longer deserve to share.”
Ash stared at him, speechless.
The weight of Tyllian’s devotion, coupled with his self-torment, pressed down on Ash, making it difficult to breathe.
He wanted to shout, to cry, to embrace Tyllian and tell him he was wrong, that he was more than worthy.
But for now, all he could do was stare into the troubled depths of Tyllian’s knightly soul, a soul so utterly devoted yet so tragically misunderstood, even by itself.