“I—I’m sorry!” Adrian blurted out, waving his hands defensively. “I didn’t deliberately push myself! But a ferocious monster was right on the verge of overrunning a settlement, so I had no choice.”
He bumbled through his explanation with frantic hand gestures, painting a vivid picture of how a sudden beast surge had nearly wiped out a defenseless frontier village.
Sabina stared at him in unblinking silence for a long beat before firing off a dry counter. “So, in short, you did push yourself.”
Adrian immediately stiffened, his eyes darting away in an awkward arc. “W-Well… you could look at it that way, but then again, perhaps not?”
“…”
“I mean, it definitely wasn’t intentional—” He snuck a sideways glance at her, practically wearing the expression of a guilty puppy caught chewing on the furniture.
Despite herself, Sabina felt a faint twitch of amusement. He’s probably telling the truth.
There was no denying the gravity of the crisis. If Adrian hadn’t held the line at the cost of his own body, that village might well have been erased from the map. For all his reckless tendencies, Sabina knew deep down that Adrian possessed a genuinely good soul. He was the quintessential Hero—righteous, compassionate, and deeply protective of the weak.
Yet, precisely because he was so painfully good, folks like him tended to meet untimely ends…
Phew.
With a heavy, long-suffering exhale, Sabina softened her stance and motioned toward the sofa. “Fine. Sit over here.”
Adrian blinked in surprise. “…Are you actually pardoning me?”
“Well, you insist on creating endless overtime for me, Adrian. What other choice do I have?” Sabina murmured, offering a playful, resigned shrug. “When the client demands continuous labor, a humble practitioner must simply obey.”
“…”
Adrian’s shoulders drooped dramatically in defeat. Seeing him look so utterly crestfallen, the corner of Sabina’s mouth twitched upward into a small, triumphant smirk.
His forest-green eyes widened instantly. “Sabina? Did you just smile?”
“Pardon? I have no idea what hallucination you’re experiencing,” Sabina retorted, schooling her features back into an icy mask in a microsecond.
Unfortunately for her, I had been sitting quietly right beside them. I blinked my bright blue eyes and chimed in cheerfully, “Liars go to the bad place. You definitely smiled.”
“…”
Sabina shot me a look of pure betrayal. Seriously, May? Of all the moments to develop an absolute commitment to brutal honesty, why right now?!
A moment later, Sabina had Adrian settled comfortably on the living room couch.
“Hold out your arm,” she instructed, stepping closer.
Adrian obediently surrendered his wrist to her touch. As Sabina concentrated, a steady current of cooling mana flowed from her fingertips into his system, instantly smoothing away the harsh lines of tension etched across his face.
He let out a quiet, appreciative sigh. “You know, your talent is genuinely terrifying.”
“I need absolute focus, so quiet down,” Sabina snapped, knitting her brows together.
Yet, despite her prickly tone, the mana weaving through his veins felt remarkably tender. Adrian bit back a fond smile. For someone who acts like she’s about to strangle me, her touch is impossibly gentle.
The stream of energy moved with surgical precision, stitching together the micro-fractures in his Aura Heart and untangling his chaotic aura pathways.
An Aura Heart. Just as a high-ranking sorcerer like Sabina possessed a Mana Heart, a knight forged an Aura Heart. It required years—sometimes decades—of grueling physical and mental discipline to condense raw life-force into a crystalline core near the physical heart. Through this core, knights could perform miraculous feats, from cleaving boulders in two to generating shockwaves with a single swing.
Naturally, it was the most vulnerable and sacred part of any warrior’s existence.
I suppose I can’t entirely blame Sabina for being furious, Adrian reflected ruefully. From her perspective, he kept repeatedly shattering the exact organ she had just spent hours repairing.
Right then, Sabina paused. Her expression shifted into one of absolute, clinical seriousness.
“Take off your shirt.”
“…Pardon?”
For a split second, Adrian was certain his ears were playing tricks on him.
Did she seriously just say… what I think she said?
Across from him, Sabina suddenly registered the sheer magnitude of what had just slipped out of her mouth. A violent, brilliant flush rushed up her neck, painting her cheeks a fiery crimson.
“T-That isn’t what I meant! Get your mind out of the gutter!” Sabina sputtered, her voice pitching upward in sheer panic as her face burned hot enough to fry an egg. “The Aura Heart is anchored right next to the physical heart! Direct skin contact allows the mana to bridge the gap with maximum therapeutic efficiency!”
“Um, Sabina—”
“S-So this is strictly a medical directive! I harbor absolutely no ulterior motives whatsoever…!” she babbled frantically, digging her own grave with every passing syllable.
Watching her fluster so completely, Adrian found her reaction disarmingly endearing. A warm chuckle escaped his lips before he could stop it. “Oh, come now, Sabina. Why are you suddenly getting so flustered around me?”
With a teasing smirk, he casually unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it aside onto the cushion.
Ah.
Sabina instantly locked up. Her wide, crimson-tinted eyes were greeted with the undeniable reality of his sharply sculpted physique. Broad shoulders, a taut chest, and flawlessly defined abdominal muscles—Adrian looked like a living classical sculpture carved by a master’s hand. Even the subtle rise and fall of his torso with each breath held her gaze in a strange, hypnotic spell.
Sabina’s throat went entirely dry. She forced herself to swallow hard, throwing up every mental defense she had.
Get a grip. This is just standard medical procedure.
It wasn’t as though she had never seen him bare-chested before; back when she first rescued a half-dead Adrian from the wilderness, she’d had to strip away his ruined garments to bandage his extensive injuries. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, his presence felt infinitely more suffocating right now.
Why on earth is he looking at me with those soft eyes?!
His amused gaze had thrown her completely off balance, dragging her into an abyss of sudden, awkward tension.
Just as Sabina was biting her lower lip in mounting frustration—
“Sabina.”
“…”
“Sabina?”
Gasp.
Sabina snapped back to reality, jolting slightly as she realized Adrian was staring right into her eyes.
“Aren’t you going to start the treatment?” he asked softly.
“Y-Right. Of course.”
Desperately masking her internal panic, Sabina reached out. Her fingertips slightly trembling despite her best efforts—finally made direct contact with the warm skin of Adrian’s chest.
At that exact touch, Adrian’s jaw tightened sharply.
Okay, wait. Now I’m starting to get distracted too.
Honestly, he hadn’t thought twice about stripping off his shirt, but seeing Sabina—usually as unyielding and frigid as a winter storm—shivering under the weight of such intense nervousness made his own heart skip a wild beat.
“Um, Sabina?” he whispered.
“Hush,” she whispered back instantly, her voice taut. “I told you, I need to concentrate. Stay completely still.”