The next day, after breakfast, Ludger went to his room and began putting away his gear.
That felt wrong. Not dangerous wrong. Just… unpleasantly incomplete.
He set aside the pieces one by one, and the more of them he removed, the more aware he became of how used to them he had grown. The weight of his bracers. The familiar pressure of his forearm guards. The quiet readiness built into every strap and layer. There was something comforting about it, something steadying. Wearing them had become less about armor and more about habit, like part of his body had slowly expanded to include steel, leather, and reinforced cloth.
Without them, he felt lighter. Too light. Like he had forgotten something important and had not yet decided whether it was stupidity or instinct making him notice.
Still, if something happened, he would deal with it. He had magic. A lot of it.
If trouble showed up while he was dressed like an ordinary city fool, then he would simply have to magic the shit out of the situation and sort the details out afterward.
That settled that.
To help blend in, he had picked out clothes plain enough to make him look like Villager F wandering around the capital with no real importance attached to his existence. Nothing expensive enough to stand out. Nothing sharp enough to draw attention. Just the sort of clothing people’s eyes slid over without interest.
It was practical. Ugly, but practical. So when he stepped out and reached the gate, he was already mildly irritated by the whole exercise.
Then he saw Luna. And frowned.
She was waiting there in a simple dress, light enough for the day and just refined enough to remind him that even “simple” looked different on some people. It was not flashy, but it had a slight frill to it that softened the lines without making the outfit look fragile. Her hair was tied up neatly, held in place with a green ornament that caught the morning light in small, quiet flashes.
She was not wearing her maid outfit. That was what struck him first. It was odd.
Odd enough that for one brief second, he almost joked about it. He had nearly said that it looked weird on her, because the maid uniform had become so natural on Luna that it might as well have been her second skin at this point.
But he stopped himself before the words could come out. That would have sounded insensitive. Or just stupid. Probably both.
So instead, Ludger stood there with a thoughtful expression and one hand scratching lightly at his forehead while his mind adjusted to the image in front of him. Luna noticed immediately. Of course she did.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
Ludger dropped his hand.
“It’s nothing.”
Luna studied him for just a moment longer, then, either deciding to believe him or choosing not to press, simply said,
“Shall we go then?”
Ludger looked at her once more, then nodded.
“Yes.”
And with that, the two of them stepped out from the gate and into the capital, dressed like ordinary people and already feeling, to Ludger at least, suspiciously unlike them.
After walking for a while through the capital’s busy morning streets, Luna glanced at him and said, “You’re being strangely quiet.”
Ludger kept his eyes ahead.
The city was already alive around them, vendors opening stalls, servants hurrying through side streets, nobles pretending not to look rushed, commoners making enough noise to balance out everyone else’s false dignity, but even with all that movement around them, he had said very little since leaving the manor.
So he answered honestly enough.
“I’m getting to the age where a man starts thinking about his life more seriously.”
Luna looked at him from the side.
“Fifteen isn’t that old.”
Ludger’s mouth moved slightly.
“I feel like thirty-seven instead.”
That made Luna frown.
“Older than your own father?”
Ludger shrugged lightly. “Maybe.”
Luna kept looking at him for another second before saying, “Well… that somehow makes sense.”
He did not answer that. Because, yes, in a way, it did. Fifteen in body. Thirty-seven in mind. Or close enough to it that the difference between those numbers had long since stopped feeling theoretical and started feeling like a private irritation he carried around every day.
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Still, no one needed to know that.
So Ludger let the matter die there and shifted back to something more practical.
“How should we proceed with the investigation?”
Luna was quiet for a brief moment. Not long. Just enough that it looked like she was deciding how direct she wanted to be.
Then she said, “You should act naturally. Just relax.”
Ludger waited.
“I’ll do the job.”
That made him scratch the side of his head again. It was becoming a habit around her lately, which was probably a bad sign.
He looked at Luna walking beside him in her simple dress, calm as ever, already scanning the streets without seeming to do so, and for one deeply annoying moment his thoughts drifted in a direction he did not appreciate at all.
He was mentally thirty-seven. Not twelve. He was absolutely not supposed to be standing there asking himself, Does she like me? just because of the shape of this situation.
And yet the thought still appeared. Brief. Unwanted. Irritatingly persistent.
No. He refused.
There were foreign warriors in the capital. Unknown pieces moving under the surface. A suspiciously empty mansion. A missing Hroth. A regent with no past worth finding. He was not about to waste time spiraling into idiotic questions because Luna had decided to drag him into the city dressed like a normal person and tell him to relax while she handled things.
That would be pathetic.
So instead he said, “That sounds like a convenient excuse to make me useless.”
Luna’s expression did not change.
“It sounds like the most efficient use of both of us.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It is right now.”
Ludger sighed through his nose. Annoyingly enough, she was probably right.
If he tried too hard to search, he would stand out. If he wandered around acting like he was hunting something, then all the effort of leaving his gear behind and dressing like a forgettable capital nobody would become pointless.
Luna, on the other hand, could observe people while appearing to do almost nothing at all.
Which meant, for once, his best contribution might actually be to stop contributing so aggressively. That realization did not improve his mood.
Still, he nodded once. “Fine.”
Luna gave a small nod in return, as if that had already been settled before he opened his mouth.
Then the two of them kept walking side by side through the swelling streets of the capital, Luna quietly working, Ludger trying to look natural, and his own thoughts proving, once again, that being mentally older did absolutely nothing to prevent certain kinds of stupidity from showing up anyway.
After another stretch of walking, Luna suddenly slowed and said, “Here.”
Ludger followed her gaze.
The place she had chosen looked like some capital version of an open café, clean front, polished windows, tasteful sign, and just enough refinement to attract people with money without making commoners feel entirely unwelcome. More importantly, it had a second floor with open view overlooking a busy section of the street and several connecting roads.
Luna looked at it once, then said, “We can watch a lot of people from there without looking strange.”
Ludger studied the building for a second, then nodded. That made sense.
A second-floor position gave them elevation, clear sightlines, and an excuse to stay still for a long time without attracting attention. Better yet, people inside such places tended to look outward while pretending not to stare, which made observation feel natural instead of deliberate.
So he followed her in.
The inside was warm, carrying the mixed scent of roasted beans, sugar, butter, and baked dough. Conversation murmured softly through the room, cut now and then by the clink of cups and dishes. The place had the polished calm of a business that knew exactly how to sell comfort to people who wanted to feel slightly refined while drinking something hot.
They made their way upstairs.
The second floor was even better than it had looked from outside. Good angles. Enough spacing between tables to keep voices from carrying too easily. From there, they could watch not only the street below but also the flow of people moving through two nearby intersections, a market lane, and part of a wider square farther off.
Ludger had to admit it was a smart choice. When someone came to take their order, he asked for a coffee. Luna asked for a dessert. That made him glance at her for a second.
Not because it was particularly strange, but because it reminded him of something unexpectedly specific, his mother eating something like that with the twins during Lucius’ birthday a few years ago. He could still vaguely picture the scene. Elaine calm as ever, the twins happy, sweets disappearing faster than they should have.
Ludger did not comment on it. There was no reason to. So he let the thought pass and followed Luna to a table near the balcony.
Once they sat down, he let his eyes scan the surroundings. First the street. Then the people moving below. Then, after only a few seconds, the café itself.
And that was when a realization settled in. This was clearly a dating spot. Not officially, perhaps. But in practice? Absolutely. There were already couples there. Several of them.
A young noble pair pretending not to hold hands while very obviously doing so beneath the table. A merchant-looking man smiling too hard at a woman in a pale dress while trying to appear wealthier than he probably was. Another couple sitting a little farther away in the sort of silence that only came from either comfort or mild resentment. Everywhere Ludger looked, there was some variation of the same thing, two people seated across from each other, drinks between them, soft conversation, and the general atmosphere of private interest wrapped in public politeness.
He sat still. Then slowly turned his eyes toward Luna. She looked perfectly calm. That only made things worse.
For one long moment, Ludger genuinely wondered whether he should just come clean and ask her directly.
The other option was to keep pretending he did not notice anything and let a girl of eighteen treat him like he was fifteen…
When he was mentally thirty-seven. Neither option seemed especially good for him. One risked making him sound like an idiot who had imagined something that was not there.
The other risked making him feel even more ridiculous if this truly was what it looked like and he kept sitting there acting oblivious while Luna quietly ran circles around him.
Ludger reached for the cup once it arrived, more to give himself something to do than out of any real need for coffee. The heat pressed against his fingers.
He stared into the dark surface for a second, then looked out the window again as if the street below might offer some answer. It did not.
The capital kept moving in all directions beneath them, nobles, servants, guards, merchants, workers, visitors, foreign guests, noise, color, motion.
And above all of that, at a neatly placed table in a café full of couples, Ludger sat beside Luna and realized that for once, fighting unknown warriors sounded much simpler than deciding how to handle the person next to him.
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