Chapter 52
"I love you, Yūka. Walk with me—now and always, even after this curse is broken."
...
......
.........Huh?
W-wait, what did he just say? That sounded dangerously close to a... proposal?
"A-Albert-sama...?"
"I’d planned to say this after everything was settled, but Mill and Ell warned me it’d be a ‘death flag.’ They insisted I tell you before the real fighting begins." He rubbed his neck, uncharacteristically flustered. "And well… this seemed like the right moment."
Death flag?! He knows about those?! Sure, "I’ll confess after this battle" is a classic death sentence in stories, but—wait, no, this isn’t the time to overanalyze tropes! My brain short-circuited.
"Eh—ah—uh—waah?!"
Pathetic. My language centers had fully crashed, leaving me a stuttering mess.
Cut me some slack! I’ve never been confessed to before! Sure, he’d said similar things when I was trapped in nightmares, but I assumed that was just the familiar bond talking. I knew he didn’t hate me, but love? This was new.
My face burned. My mouth went dry. My heart pounded like a war drum.
"W-why...?"
"Sorry for springing this on you." His usual composure cracked with a sheepish grin. "But I wanted to say it outright. Given how dense you were with Yanagi, I figured you’d never notice otherwise."
Ouch. A casual diss mid-confession. He wasn’t wrong—I’d completely missed Miyu’s crush on me. I had zero counterarguments.
As I teetered on the brink of system failure, Lumière and Noir threw me a lifeline (or perhaps tossed gasoline on the fire).
"Yūka-san! Hesitation is unbecoming of a woman! Courage is our creed!" Lumière declared, fists clenched.
"Postponing a once-in-a-lifetime confession is unacceptable," Noir added, smirking. "You must give him an answer."
No escape. Not that I wanted to run, but—just give me a second to reboot!
"I-I… I’ll stay by your side too… forever…"
The words tumbled out, utterly unpolished. A virgin with zero romance experience could only muster this much. (Sorry for being trash with a Love Stat of 5!)
"Yūka!!"
"Eeep!"
Albert-sama crushed me in a hug—nothing like his usual reserved embraces. This was fervent. His face burned scarlet; mine surely matched. Too close! I could feel his breath. I’d never been this hyperaware of him before.
"I love you! So much! More than anything!"
"O-okay, okay, I get it—!"
The usually stoic Albert-sama was barreling forward with terrifying intensity, leaving me a flustered wreck.
"Say it back, Yūka!"
No deflecting. Despite the embarrassment, I knew I had to respond. I dug through my scrambled thoughts for something coherent.
"I… I love you too, Albert-sama… Please… stay with me…"
"Yūkaaa~!!"
"Hyah~!!"
"I’ll never let you go!"
"My, my. Are we interrupting?" Lumière teased.
"They’ve entered their own world," Noir chuckled. "Best leave them be."
And so, we officially leveled up from "engaged in name" to "engaged in heart."
Meanwhile, in the Human World...
A silver-haired young woman with cascading waves of hair studied a letter, her partner leaning in beside her. In the next room, their children slept soundly—prompting hushed voices.
"Mina, look! Al’s finally proposing!"
"Huh. Didn’t peg him as the type." Mina smirked. "Guess love changes people."
"Like brother, like sister! ‘Charge boldly for love’—it’s practically family doctrine!"
"Since when did we have that? …Anyway, they’ll wait until that’s dealt with, right?"
"Mhm. Which means we should hurry up and crush it."
"Agreed. No one ruins my little brother’s big day."
Cecilia Rose Bergand and her husband, Minato Raika Bergand, exchanged grins.
Two of the most formidable demons in existence—"Inferno" and "Glacier"—had just set their sights on a target.
All for their precious family.
All for the family’s future.
Two days later, over half of the Demon God Sect’s branches would be annihilated by "unknown forces."
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