[Alcmene soon hears of your wish. As a mother, she does not find the idea of you going to study under that great sage especially hard to accept.]
[At the same time, because this is your first real journey far from home, she naturally expresses how much she will miss you.]
[She is not like traditional parents who insist their child must remain by their side, nor does she grow irritated if that child stays nearby with nothing much to do.]
[She tells you that if you are going to Mount Pelion, you should remember to bring some gifts for your teacher.]
[Alcmene believes that to love someone means respecting their wishes. If her child wishes to do this, then she will support him to the very end. Even if it does not succeed, she will still wait for your return in Thebes.]
[She hugs you and tells you that, if possible, you should send some messages back by carrier pigeon.]
[The lonely mother will miss you until the end of the world.]
[You leave Alcmene's room, and some of your thoughts about Human Order Correction become firmer.]
[You silently swear to yourself that you will never destroy this world.]
[You return to your room. That bucket of diluted demigod blood is still sitting where it was.]
[You think about Chiron's preferences, and decide you do not intend to depart immediately.]
[You feel you should remain in the palace for a few more days and continue studying with the Gemini siblings for a while longer.]
[Of course, the main reason is still your lack of polish in technique.]
[During these few days, you intend to squeeze every last drop of skill out of them and absorb it all.]
Tia sat at the edge of the bed. At his feet was the iron bucket left over from the earlier ritual, nearly half full of blood.
He was thinking about what should be done with it.
Should he pour it out somewhere in the wild where no one would ever find it, or drink it himself? If it fell into the hands of someone with ulterior motives, the gods might only end up using it to toy with him again.
Heracles' life was never a happy one.
Tragic heroism ran through the whole of it.
And the things Athena had told Tia—he could not pretend they meant nothing to him.
That line—"In all the choices you make in the future, you must always give the answer that earns full marks in my eyes"—felt, to Tia, more like a warning than anything else.
[You decide to leave the bucket of blood where it is. You think of Galan, who had been by your side since childhood. Even after your foster father decreed that neither animals nor assassins were allowed inside, she still managed to visit you once every few months.]
[A large part of your childhood joy came from her, so before leaving, you decide to leave behind both a letter and this bucket of blood from your own body.]
[You do not know whether, now that she has become an animal, she can still understand writing. But divine blood would have an absurdly powerful effect on her animal form.]
[Let this be a parting gift.]
[You drape the lion skin over yourself and head toward Pollux's room.]
[Your footsteps are quiet as a snake's as you stop outside her door and knock.]
[You want to continue the training from the morning. There are still many things you want to ask the two of them about boxing and swordsmanship.]
At the sound of the knock, a burst of frantic noise came from inside—as if someone had hit the edge of a table, then hurriedly covered their mouth to stop themselves from making a sound.
Tia waited patiently.
At last, the door opened a crack, revealing a single gray eye.
"...You?"
Pollux's voice was muffled, as though she had not quite processed things yet.
But when her gaze landed on Tia—on the tall, handsome young man standing in the doorway, white-haired, red-eyed, draped in lion skin—that one eye widened abruptly.
The door slammed shut again with a bang.
More flustered noise followed from inside, mixed with the rustle of cloth and stifled cries of surprise.
A moment later, the door opened again.
Pollux had already changed into a clean dress, though it was obvious her hair had only been hastily combed and was still a little messy.
She had intended to take a short rest after that morning's training, only to be jolted awake by his knock.
As she hurried into her dress, the bronze mirror had reflected the redness rising in her cheeks—and even she could not tell whether it came from rushing too fast, or from the man standing outside her door.
Pollux's face was burning a little, but she forced herself to lean coolly against the frame with her arms crossed. Unfortunately, that only made her line of sight fall directly across Tia's chest.
She quickly looked away and fixed her eyes on one of the corridor pillars instead.
"W-why are you here?!"
"Mmm. It's about saying goodbye."
Pollux's lashes trembled. At last she dragged her gaze back and met those red eyes again.
"...Mount Pelion?"
"Castor told you?"
"He did."
A short silence followed.
Pollux bit her lower lip, seeming as though she wanted to say something, then swallowed it back down.
Her fingers unconsciously twisted at the hem of her dress, wrinkling the fine linen.
"Sorry," Tia said.
"It's actually fine."
Pollux suddenly lifted her head and forced out a smile.
But under the firelight that smile looked strained somehow—like the moon veiled in dust.
"Once the training ended, we were always destined to part anyway."
She paused, then lowered her eyes.
"...We'll probably meet again in two years, right?"
"Mm."
[As a transmigrator, you know perfectly well that you do not belong to this world. You cannot return these feelings.]
[Even if it is a simple, cliché case of a hero saving a beauty, and even if the gods were meddling behind the scenes, you still do not want to treat it so casually.]
[At that moment, the two of you seem to understand each other's thoughts. Pollux, however, does not mind.]
[She drags you to the next room, finds Castor, hauls her still-dozing brother out of bed, and decides to continue the morning's training.]
[You are very strong, but your technique is frankly terrible, and before you depart in a few days, she decides to hammer the fundamentals thoroughly into place.]
[On the first day, your swordsmanship and boxing improve dramatically.]
[On the second day, you are already nearly able to fight Castor to a draw in swordsmanship, while boxing for you becomes a matter mostly of power generation and range of motion.]
[On the third day, although you still cannot quite gain the upper hand, you are nearly able to fight both of them to a standstill in both swordsmanship and boxing.]
[This is largely thanks to Pollux's almost sleepless instruction over those three days, forcing the usual daily training into an extreme compressed schedule.]
[Of course, your own physique also has much to do with it. You can evade certain moves through pure reaction speed that normal people would never be able to dodge, so there is still quite a lot of padding in those results.]
[You are deeply grateful to the two of them.]
[By now, enough time has passed, and all the preparations that needed to be made over those three days are basically complete.]
[From that earlier bucket of divine blood, you keep a small sample tucked away in your pocket. After all, if you are going to Mount Pelion to ask Chiron questions, you cannot exactly do so without a specimen for testing.]
[Your foster father and your unfortunate brother know nothing of your true intentions. You only told your mother, and the two siblings.]
[That night, you quietly leave on your own.]
[The journey to Mount Pelion is not especially far. Once you cross the whole of Mount Cithaeron, you will be able to see it.]
[You set out.]
-------
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