North x Northwest
Chapter 127

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“Wake up. Go lie down on your bed and sleep there.”

But the body, crumpled between the chair and the desk, remained motionless. It puzzled Lil how the guy even managed to close those green eyes of his in such an uncomfortable position. She shook her head and looked around the room.

‘Hm, his desk and bed aren’t that far apart… but it will still be a hassle to drag his body as he’s so tall, he’s even taller than Cesar…’

It wasn’t until her fingers that were scratching her head went down to her chin that she realised what had been going on.

‘Oh, this bothers me. Tall men like him need specifically designed beds. I’m not sure why he never told me that his one is too small…’

In the meantime, her other hand never stopped tapping Ed’s shoulder.

‘How tired must he have been to not wake up or even respond? It’s strange that a man who received swordsmanship training can be so unbothered while sleeping.’

“Are you sure you’re not just pretending to be asleep?”

“…”

Lil shook her head at the sound of her own voice. She hadn’t intended to ask it aloud, but it wasn’t a pointless question either.

‘A normal person would prefer to get back to their bed as soon as possible…’

Lil couldn’t suppress her yawn.

‘I was the one who fell asleep in his bed, so I should be the one who takes responsibility.’

“Wake up.”

“…”

However, Ed didn’t budge and only mumbled inaudibly. The situation did seem to irritate him, evidenced by the wrinkles between his brows. In the end, Lil was forced to wrap her arm around his torso. She had just awoken herself and wondered if she had enough strength to lift him. Fortunately, the distance wasn’t that far. Lil tightened the muscles in her abdomen and lifted Ed up. A grunting sound escaped from her lips. After dragging the giant barely close enough to the bed, she threw his body on it.

“…Ugh… You’re so heavy… Oh, come on.”

Because Lil failed to get his entire body onto the bed, she had to push his still dangling legs up. Looking back at her handiwork, it appeared that Ed wasn’t in a comfortable position as his head was bent unnaturally. Lil was about to give up when she noticed his frowning face and realised that the way his neck and legs were positioned was indeed incredibly uncomfortable.

“…But why aren’t you waking up?..”

Lil shrugged her shoulders while muttering the useless question again. Her motivation to fix Ed’s position began to wane, so she calmly raised her body, thinking she had done enough. But her gaze, which was slowly moving away from him, stopped at his forehead. Foul language slipped through her lips.

“Damn it. The wound on his forehead hasn’t healed yet.”

Brushing away his messy bangs, she could see the bruise that was initially covered by the cotton cloth he had whined so much about.

‘It’s unsettling to see wounds I’d inflicted on other people’s faces. What’s worse, when the wind blew, all the sailors who saw Ed’s forehead, asked him where he got such a hilarious injury. Of course, he couldn’t say it was actually caused by the teeth and lips of their very own Captain.’

That thought annoyed her even more.

‘I have to get rid of those marks as soon as possible.’

Lil reached under the bed in search of Ed’s medicine chest. At the same time, the string of questions continued to flow through her mind.

‘How the hell did I manage to make it look like that? It’s like I carved it out with my front teeth. In addition, it’s round and dark red, like I gave him a hickey!’

Lil found some ointment and approached him. Standing still and stretching out her hand, her finger carefully landed on the remote island in the middle of his forehead. She looked at him, hoping he wouldn’t wake up.

What she found rather strange was the fact that Ed’s sleeping face held no expression. He usually showed a wide range of emotions. Eyes full of curiosity, a grumpy childlike expression, or a mouth complaining about unfair treatment. At times it even made her dizzy due to her inability to keep up with his quickly changing expressions. This was the first time she was seeing him with such an expressionless face. Lil paused her finger and stared at him.

‘He doesn’t look any different from usual, but at the same time, he does…’

With his small nose, smooth face free of bumps and curves, and clean, spotless skin, Ed met all of the requirements of a handsome young man.

‘Perhaps that’s why I get a strange sense of freshness from him every now and then. But…’

Lil tilted her head a little.

‘…He’s definitely not young. I thought he was only about twenty years old at first, but as time passed, it became increasingly difficult to guess his age.’

Lil thought that Ed might be older than he appeared. Digging through her memories, sudden realisations dawned on her.

‘…The alienation I feel from him whenever he’s lost in thought, his detached eyes that look at me as if he knows everything, or whenever he uses sentences more befitting for an old man…’

In addition, Ed never told Lil he was twenty. It was just a wild guess on her part. In fact, she knew nothing about him.

Lil proceeded with smearing the ointment on the wound with her finger.

‘I don’t need to know, I shouldn’t even be curious.’

After putting more pressure on her fingertip, she drew circles around Ed’s wound. Since a while ago, Ed’s brows appeared to be twitching occasionally. Lil dismissed it as a trick of the light, so she gathered the leftover ointment, which had been pushed to the edge of Ed’s brow, and spread it in circles once more.

‘His nostrils seemed to have flared once… No way…’

“Pfft…”

There was a crack of laughter coming from somewhere. Lil’s suspicious eyes slowly made their way down his face. Ed’s facial muscles were subtly distorted as if he was in the middle of holding himself back. When Lil paused her actions, his mouth composedly relaxed again. The process of returning to his peacefully sleeping face was so unbelievably natural, that it looked more like a well-executed play.

And just like that, Lil rotated her finger once more…

“Phwahahaha! Haha, hahaha…”

“…”

Lil looked blankly at the laughing face. What Ed was laughing about was apparently so funny, that he grabbed his stomach and rolled over. By the end of his laughing fit, he was gasping for air. Lil was so embarrassed that she was at a loss for words. Instead of yelling, she yanked the pillow that was being pushed into the corner of the bed and squeezed it. When her shaking shoulders finally calmed down, she looked back at Ed, who had turned around again. Ed’s smiling face was flushed red. He then started to shout, blaming Lil for his outburst.

“Oh, really! Who the hell taught you that?”

“That…”

“Do you really think it’s necessary to draw circles with the ointment? Huh? Ever since the last time…”

“That’s how I saw others do it!”

Lil whipped up the pillow and exclaimed with a flushed red face.

“Who taught you to do such perverted things?”

“What?!”

Instead of waiting for the moment the pillow would be flying towards his head, Ed simply pulled it away with his overwhelming strength. There was a clear difference in their power because he had been awake the entire time, whereas Lil had only gotten up. He grumbled as he threw the pillow over his shoulder.

“What? Are you gonna throw medicine bottles at me again? Is that your new hobby?”

“Ugh!”

Due to being forcefully robbed from the pillow, Lil lost her balance and fell forward. To avoid falling on Ed again, she stretched out her arms in a panic. Her body stopped just before she was about to touch him. She had saved herself in time by propping up her arms on the bed. But although she managed to stop herself from fully falling on him, she was caught by surprise at the closeness of their faces. While her hair fell around and covered his face, Ed muttered, forcing his eyes shut.

“I want you to be a little gentler this time.”

Lil hurriedly stepped back.

“What?!”

“Weren’t you gonna slam into me again?”

Ed sat up slowly and pointed to his forehead. He had that savvy look on his face she hadn’t seen in a long time. Lil came to her senses belatedly and straightened her shoulders, thereby finally blocking the few into her cleavage.

“Why did you pretend to be asleep?”

“Well, I lost the momentum, so at some point I couldn’t get up anymore because it would have been embarrassing. And it probably made the Captain even more embarrassed.”

“Are you high or something? You were already awake on your desk?!”

“You’re the one who fell asleep in someone else’s cabin and occupied their bed?”

When he said it like that, Lil had nothing more to say. With her weakness stabbed, she could only bite her lip.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“Would you have woken up if I tried to? You didn’t even open your eyes once when you were shaking your head like this…”

Ed imitated Lil by making grotesque movements of snapping his neck back and forth and left to right. Lil reflexively denied it.

“You’re just making fun of me…”

“I’m sorry, it’s just my first time seeing someone who didn’t wake up even after nodding their head like that. You looked like someone who laid down after a night of heavy drinking.”

“Wait. Did I do that? Me? I slept that deep?”

“Think back for yourself. You know that, don’t you?”

Lil tried to remember, but nothing came to mind. It felt like she had been to another world after falling soundly asleep, completely cut off from reality. And she was certain she had never woken up in the midst of it…

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