City ​​of Witches 318

Chapter 318 – #71_Gehenna’S Host Bar

#316

1.
Eloa, with a serene expression, watched Siwoo sleeping peacefully and gulped down the remaining half-bottle of whiskey.
The beautiful, rose-tinted liquor flowed down her throat, bringing a fiery warmth.

“……”

With a light magic touch, Eloa erased the traces of their intimacy.
The bodily fluids on the sheets, the fluids on their bodies.
The collected impurities vanished cleanly under the purifying flames.
Finally, she redressed Siwoo.

With this, all traces were gone.
As if nothing had happened.

“In reality, it’s not much different.”

No matter how happy a moment is, it is bound to be buried in the past once it passes.
If a warm memory belongs to two people, it remains in both of their hearts.
If that is called a memory, then tonight’s happiness would be a half-memory.

Eloa would never forget it,
while Siwoo would never recall it.

Eloa briefly wondered if she could consider it a ‘shared memory.’
Soon, she realized it was a pointless thought and dismissed it.
It was something she had resolved the moment she allowed Siwoo to touch her.
It was pathetic to feel regret or sadness now.

“Siwoo…”

Sitting by Siwoo’s head, who was fast asleep, she stroked his hair.
Eloa used the three strokes of her contract to erase Siwoo’s memories.

Having used self-magic on a body that already needed ample rest, his body couldn’t possibly be normal.
Her fingertips had lost sensation, as if she had just been electrocuted, and her heart was beating irregularly, protesting.
Yet, his body temperature was felt as clearly as if it was a precious thing.

“It was meant to be, it was destined…”

In truth, Eloa’s not-so-skilled memory manipulation would easily be blocked by any decent ‘self-defense’ mechanism.
From the start, mental manipulation magic doesn’t work on witches with high mental power.

However, even though Siwoo possessed self-magic of about the 16th or 17th rank, he had no self-defense mechanism.
Eloa had aimed for that and, as you can see, succeeded easily.

She erased the entire hot memory of them being drunk and intimate tonight, as well as the memory of them being together in the rain tunnel in the past.
She also filled his mind with other memories, in case he felt a sense of incongruity and tried to regain his memories after realizing the cause and effect of the events were twisted.
For Siwoo, the memory of ‘having been intimate with his teacher, Eloa’ had completely disappeared.

It was an unauthorized act, but it was a teacher’s duty to correct a wayward student.
It was something that should not have been allowed to happen in the first place.

As a result of Eloa taking the lead, everything returned to normal.
The incident that had put Siwoo to the test, and that had allowed Eloa to leave endless room for possibility, had disappeared.
The first experience in the rain tunnel where the boundaries between teacher and student had collapsed.

Anything is difficult the first time, but easier from the second time onwards.
In fact, Eloa had also begun to see Siwoo as a man after that, and had ended up committing an act that abandoned all morality.

“…Sniff.”

Eloa felt a stinging sensation at the tip of her nose.
The teacher who couldn’t sternly scold the student who adored her.
The teacher who had fallen in love with her student and allowed him to touch her was now gone.

She should be happy, but.
Eloa felt a throbbing behind her eyes and wiped her blurred vision with her sleeve.
Before she knew it, hot tears were threatening to flow.

“Siwoo…”

She knew it was something she shouldn’t do.

But she couldn’t help but love him, the one who had guided Eloa, who was lost after losing Lapi, the one who had become her reason to live, the one who had shown her a world she didn’t know.

“I’m sorry. For acting on my own. I’m always causing you trouble.”

That’s why she had indulged in him to her heart’s content today, to put an end to everything.
She had let Siwoo do everything he wanted, and she had done everything she wanted to do.
He wouldn’t remember, but Eloa would never forget.

“……”

Eloa, leaning down towards Siwoo’s lips, who was fast asleep without any response, kissed him lightly.
This was truly the last time.
She straightened his disheveled collar, stroked his hair one last time, and quietly left the carriage.

2.
Early in the morning.
The twins, who had woken up refreshed, discovered an anomaly.

“……”
“……”

The picnic basket that had been piled up in the living room.
The ‘Sweet Potion’ that should have been sleeping peacefully inside was about half gone.

“Odette, did you drink it in your sleep?”
“Sister, did you drink it in your sleep?”
“I didn’t wake up once all night.”
“Me neither.”

The Odile and Odette sisters reflexively interrogated the most likely suspect.
However, they quickly concluded from each other’s reactions that it couldn’t be either of them.
Then another question arose.

““Then who drank it?””

The most important issue was to figure out what variable had occurred while the twins were sleeping.
The people in this luxurious mansion were the twins, the assistant, and Sharon.
Of course, the twins, who had slept soundly all night, were excluded from the list of suspects.
That meant that Sharon or the assistant had drunk about half of the tea.

“T-This is a big problem, isn’t it?”
“If Sharon drank it, it’ll be fine.”

Odile felt cold sweat pouring down her back.
If Sharon had drunk it, it would have no effect.
Because this potion was only effective on ‘men.’

“But what if the assistant drank it?”

However, if Siwoo had drunk it, the situation would be different.
Since Sharon was the only person the twins would face when they woke up, the target of the ‘love’ effect was obvious.

In other words, it was more than just giving Sharon the porridge they had cooked…

“It’s like we’ve served her a nine-course meal!”
“Odette! This is a disaster! A disaster!”
“Sister! What do we do! What do we do!”

The twins were in a state of chaos, as if they had stirred up a hornet’s nest.
It was true that they had vowed to compete fairly, but it didn’t mean they would give support to an already dominant rival.

“Haaam…. What are you doing from the morning?”

At that moment, Sharon, with her hair all messed up, appeared in her pajamas, shuffling along.
The twins, who had been flustered, focused their gaze on Sharon.

“W-What is it?”
“……”
“……”

Odile and Odette scanned Sharon’s condition, while Sharon was flustered.

Clues.
Disheveled pajamas and hair, dragging slippers, a long yawn.
At least on the surface, there were no signs of passionate love.
For example, no kiss marks on her neck or handprints on her wrists.
But this wasn’t enough to determine anything.

“Good morning.”
“Did you sleep well?”
“Yeah, I slept well. Uh? Where are you going?”

The twins brushed past Sharon and ran off.

“Excuse us!”
“We’ll just take a quick look!”

-Bang!

They immediately opened the door to Sharon’s room and checked the bed.

“Bed, all clear.”
“Assistant’s scent, all clear.”

Odile ran to check the bed, while Odette buried her nose in it, sniffing like a tracking dog.

“Y-You, what are you doing!”

Sharon’s face flushed red at the twins’ strange behavior, and she jumped up.
Even though she had provided them with accommodation, it was rude to enter and rummage through someone else’s room without permission.
Sharon, who was quite upset, approached the twins and flicked their foreheads.

“Ouch!”
“That hurts…”
“Ugh! Why are you all so out of it from the morning!”

Odile and Odette humbly accepted their forehead flick punishment, but also breathed a sigh of relief.
If the assistant had drunk the tea, there was no way the room would be this tidy.
Still, they asked to confirm.

“Sharon, did you happen to drink the tea in this bottle last night?”
“It’s black tea, you know?”
“Huh? No?”

The twins’ faces, which had been strangely relieved, stiffened again.
Then it must have been the assistant who drank it.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Ah, nothing.”

Just then, the twins heard the bell on the front door ringing and rushed out.
Sharon, who had been sighing at their sky-high energy from the morning, also moved to see Siwoo’s face.

3.
“Where the hell am I now?”

When he opened his eyes, he was in the twins’ carriage.
He looked around, wondering what was going on, but there was no one else.
It seemed he had drunk alone and crawled all the way here.

“I blacked out because I drank all of this by myself.”

Siwoo made a disgusted face when he saw that the whiskey bottle was completely empty.
It seemed that the fact that he only lost his memory and didn’t have a worse hangover was thanks to his spirit body’s excellence.
Anyway, after tidying up roughly, he was greeted by the twins as soon as he returned to the villa.

Odette, with wide eyes, asked.

“Assistant! Assistant! Did you drink this?”

He readily admitted to drinking the pretty black tea in the pretty bottle.
Hadn’t he drunk it last night while cleaning because his throat was dry?

“Yes, I drank it while cleaning last night.”
“……”

Siwoo felt uneasy at the twins’ sudden silence.

“Were you perhaps planning to drink it together? I’m sorry.”
“Ah, no… it was a failure, so we were going to throw it away.”
“That’s right! But… were you with anyone last night?”

With anyone?

Siwoo pondered, finding the twins’ sudden question strange.
He remembered drinking alone and crawling into the carriage…
After that, it was as if everything was cut off, and he couldn’t remember anything.

“With Sharon…”

The twins’ faces looked like the sky was falling.

“With Odile and Odette. Why? Did something happen?”

The twins sighed in relief at his following words.

“It’s nothing!”
“It’s nothing.”

Anyway, after settling the noisy twins from the morning and finishing breakfast, the four of them prepared to leave.
The twins went ahead, and Sharon helped Siwoo carry the luggage.

“Odile and Odette… aren’t they a bit strange?”
“Really? Did something happen last night?”
“Nothing happened, that’s why I’m saying they’re strange. I just slept soundly.”

While Siwoo tilted his head, Sharon felt a sense of unease.
Siwoo, who suddenly said he had slept in the carriage, was also suspicious, and the twins, who were making a fuss and asking who he had been with, were also suspicious.
A woman’s intuition was telling her that something had happened last night.

In fact, it didn’t matter who Siwoo had been with.
Hadn’t she already made up her mind?
That she wouldn’t care who Siwoo met as long as he came back.

But…

“You really just drank alone in the carriage and slept?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“…Okay.”

Sharon’s eyes were on the sandy beach.
Besides the two pairs of footprints left by the twins, there were also large footprints that seemed to have been left by Siwoo last night.

“You’re not lying, are you?”
“Why would I lie? I was really alone.”
“…Okay.”

And next to them, some were swept away by the waves, and some seemed to have been erased by the wind, but they were definitely there.
Footprints that were neither the twins’ nor Siwoo’s, ‘someone else’s footprints,’ remained.
As if they had walked to the carriage side by side with Siwoo.

Suddenly.
She felt a little suffocated.
Because Siwoo had lied.