A Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation

Stretching under the sunlight, my vision spun and a wave of dizziness hit.

My sight flickered white, but I somehow managed not to stagger. I stopped, worried I’d be unable to walk straight, and found Gill looking at me with exasperation. Eleven’s hand on my back, steadying me, was a blessing.

“The sun hurts my eyes.”

“Well, you seriously holed yourself up, y’know.”

“Serves you right. You used to at least go out once in a while, but this time you didn’t take a single step outside.”

A whole week spent venting the reading urge that had built up.

Meals were sandwiches in my room with a book in one hand; aside from the bare minimum—showers and such—I devoted every other moment to reading. Pressing my throbbing temples with my fingers, I gave a wry smile.

I felt oddly refreshed, and even my own smile seemed purer, almost radiant compared to usual.

Gill shaded my eyes with his large palm and looked down at me, finally out of my room and returning to being an adventurer. Book nuts are scary when they go that far.

“Maybe you really should call it off for today.”

“I’ll be fine. I wasn’t planning on taking any requests that required a lot of running around, to begin with.”

Once my eyes had mostly adjusted, I thanked Gill and the shade of his palm withdrew.

My temple twinged for an instant, but the pain began to fade little by little. I should be all right.

For someone who’d even forgotten his sense of time, realizing that an entire week had passed was a shock, and I hadn’t imagined that barely moving from my room for a whole week would have this kind of effect.

I might look like I’m always sitting quietly, but I actually move around a fair bit. Smiling at this first-time experience, thinking that the ideal reading life isn’t without its hardships, I started walking.

“By the way, while you were holed up that noble sent an invitation.”

“From the viscount? You could have told me.”

“I did.”

He cut me down with one stroke, and I apologized with a quiet “I’m sorry.”

Incidentally, when I’d been told about it, I had answered with a vague “I see.”

Gill had decided on his own that this was hopeless and turned the viscount down as the messenger. A wise decision. In that state, nothing could’ve taken priority over books.

“I’ve done something rude, haven’t I. He probably wanted to hear about the great invasion.”

“That noble’s not the type to force you into anything anyway, so it’s fine.”

“I hope so. By the way, who came to fetch me?”

“That damn uptight chief military police officer.”

At Gill’s words, I nodded in understanding, while Eleven snorted “Serves him right.”

I doubted the chief military police officer had ever imagined there’d be an adventurer who would outright refuse a summons from a viscount. And knowing how dutiful he was, there was no way he’d simply nod and go home satisfied.

When I voiced my doubt, Gill frowned slightly, as if recalling the scene.

He wasn’t in a bad mood; he was just digging up the memory. But those watching him flinched and quickly averted their eyes.

“Once he saw you, that was it. He put on this solemn face and went back.”

“I was just reading.”

“Buried in books.”

He chuckled in his throat, and I very deliberately turned my gaze away.

I was basically bad at tidying up. Not just bad—if I got focused on something, I’d forget the very concept of putting things away. I wasn’t the type to make a dirty mess, but I didn’t put away what I used, so things just piled up.

In my original world, I’d had attendants, so it never turned into a catastrophe. Here, things were different.

Instead of storing the books I’d finished in spatial magic, I stacked them. Sitting on the bed, I piled them on the sideboard. When that stack got too high, I started stacking them on the bed. Once I ran out of surfaces there, I stacked them on the floor.

If there was a flat surface, I’d put something on it—that textbook case of someone who can’t tidy.

“It was crazy around the Leader. Big Brother ended up using your room for the whole week.”