Chapter 8
“I like you too!”
The way the brave win the beauty.
Originally, I’d planned to meet her on the surface and simply return her handkerchief—but since things had turned out this way, we might as well go on a date. My toes curled with embarrassment, but I barely managed to endure it.
“Let’s go on a date!”
Aaaah, I don’t know.
This is at least a hundred years’ worth of blanket-kicking material.
“……”
After hearing my answer, Adis fell silent for a moment.
Perhaps overwhelmed, embarrassed, or shy, he buried his face in his hands. Even so, the tips of his ears, flushed a deep red, were clearly visible.
I twirled a lock of my hair around my finger for no reason, fidgeted with the wrinkled hem of my skirt, then asked—seeking a definitive answer.
“We’re… going to meet again next time, right……?”
Silence flowed by, a single second stretching out like an entire hour.
Then, quietly—very softly—Adis replied.
—
Hades gazed at a soul that shone brightly in the perpetually dark underworld.
The sparkling soul laughed again and again.
Ah, beautiful.
“It’s a promise.”
The small goddess spoke as if admonishing a child.
“On the day the asphodel blooms in full and reaches all the way to the surface, we’ll meet on the daffodil hill of Naxos Island!”
The goddess, emphasizing her words again and again, looked exactly like a tiny baby rabbit.
Adorable.
Hades’s pair of deep navy-blue eyes sank low. They resembled the deepest ocean—so profound and dark that no one could dare measure their end.
He watched her closely, savoring each minute, delicate movement she made.
I don’t want to part like this.
I want to take her to my palace right now.
…Restrain yourself.
Restrain it.
Grinding his teeth in secret, he suppressed the nameless desire surging within him.
Blocking the sudden torrent of emotions required far more patience than he had expected.
“I never break a promise once I make it. So return to your body now, Leuke.”
No matter how much vitality she had regained, staying in the underworld for too long was dangerous.
“What if your soul gets bound to the underworld?”
“That wouldn’t be so bad. I’d get to see Adis for a long time.”
Leuke grinned. In that instant, her smile was so beautiful it left his mind blank.
“……”
A joke, right.
It had to be a joke. Who would actually like coming to the underworld?
That was why he had hidden his identity. Afraid she might run away if she learned who he truly was. Just a little longer—just one step closer to you.
Because he had concealed his face with a cloak at their first meeting, Leuke hadn’t realized who he was.
Fortunately, the acting hadn’t been difficult. Deceiving the dead had long been one of his hobbies.
“So I just follow this life thread, right?”
“……Ah, yes. If you climb up along the life thread, you’ll return to your body at some point.”
“Hm, I see.”
Leuke looked down at her life thread stretching up from her ankle and nodded. Her soft, round cheeks swayed gently in the air.
I want to bite them.
To bite and lick her entire body, to stain her completely with my mark.
But he endured it. Again and again. Because he wanted to see her for longer.
“Then I’ll see you next time, Adis! Thank you for saving me today.”
“Return safely, Liri.”
“Liri?”
She tilted her head in confusion. Her eyes, like flecks of gold dust, widened round. She looked like a rabbit left bewildered after forgetting its carrot while gathering hay.
“It’s a nickname. Like how Liri calls me Adis. A nickname we call each other. How about it?”
When he asked, deliberately awkward in his movements, as though earnestly seeking permission, Leuke nodded repeatedly. Then she began to walk away.
“I’ll see you then!”
As she followed her life thread, Leuke waved again and again. When the distance grew, she raised both arms high and swung them wildly back and forth.
So adorable that Hades let out a laugh without realizing it.
Before long, Leuke’s soul returned to her body on the surface.
Hades left the place with the himation she had been wearing still clutched in his hand.
He stopped at the entrance to the River Acheron, where the dead waited to board Charon’s boat.
Just as Hades was burying his face in the himation, still scented with her presence—
“Hm? Who’s over there?”
Creak, creak. An old ferry approached, pushing through the mist.
“Today’s not a day for taking the dead. Come back tomorrow—unless you want to become Cerberus’s feed, stay right where you are.”
Charon, ferryman of the underworld.
With his long beard and emaciated frame, he looked prickly and temperamental—and in truth, he was exactly that.
“Wait a moment. That face looks familiar somehow……”
“To think there’s a servant who can’t even recognize his own lord.”
“Y–Your Ma—”
“So can you truly tell the living from the dead well enough to ferry them?”
“Your Majesty!”
Charon hastily bowed, throwing aside the oar he treated like a lover.
“You tease me over the smallest joke.”
Hades spoke lazily as he boarded the boat. The image of the green, awkward youth flustered by Leuke vanished like a mirage.
“Why are you here, Your Majesty?”
Charon slowly began to row. The ferry glided smoothly through the pitch-black water.
“I was enjoying a brief walk. I also met someone interesting.”
“Were you deceiving the dead again?”
“One of my few hobbies, isn’t it?”
He often introduced himself to newly arrived souls not as Hades, king of the underworld, but as a minor god—Aidoneus.
He even used honorific speech to perfect the act, grew close to them, then vanished casually. Later, from his palace, he would appear with a flourish and reveal his true identity.
The sight of those souls breaking into cold sweats, flustered and panicked, provided Hades with a bit of amusement.
This time, though, it hadn’t been amusement.
Charon sighed in lament.
“I worry it may tarnish Your Majesty’s reputation.”
“If we’re talking about reputation, Zeus’s and Poseidon’s would have been ground into the dirt long ago.”
“How could you compare Your Majesty to those lecherous brothers?”
Compared to the Twelve Olympians, Hades and the underworld gods had truly wholesome and trivial hobbies.
“Just yesterday, the dead came pouring in—it was absolute chaos! Turns out it was that brute Ares again. Good grief, we suffered terribly.”
Charon let out a deep sigh. His already pallid face seemed especially colorless today.
Most of the underworld gods, Charon included, didn’t much care for the Olympians.
“Oh, what would Lady Nyx say if she saw this!”
Nyx, ruler of Tartarus, always taught that gods should take responsibility for their domains and fulfill their duties. Thus, the diligent underworld gods and the pleasure-seeking Olympians were incompatible in many ways.
“You’ve done well. I’ll give him a warning.”
“I doubt that ruffian would listen, even if it were Your Majesty speaking. He doesn’t even heed his parents.”
“At least he listens to Hera.”
“That’s a relief, at least.”
“Children never do exactly as you want.”
“For someone without a wife to say that, you’re awfully confident.”
“……Ahem.”
Struck right at the mark, Hades cleared his throat.
He’d wondered why Charon hadn’t brought up marriage for a while. The man who sang about weddings every time he saw him.
“They say humans now use ‘Hades’ as a synonym for old bachelor!”
“……”
“Our lord lacks nothing compared to his brothers, so why is he still unmarried? Honestly!”
“……”
“When will we finally welcome a queen? Hm?”
“……”
“To see Your Majesty’s adorable children before I die is this loyal servant’s lifelong wish. Won’t you grant me this one wish?”
“……Row the boat.”
