Icing on the Cake Chapter 32

“You were frowning. The sunlight’s strong, and I’ve been watching you drive without sunglasses this whole time. Let’s pick up a pair while we’re at the pharmacy. If you leave it alone, it’ll cause problems for your eyesight.”

The remark was so far from what Yuri had been expecting that he was caught off guard. The thought that this man worried about the strangest things came simultaneously with a wave of self-disgust at having had such bizarre fantasies about him—and an alpha, at that. It was almost as if something had gone wrong with his mind.

“Not necessary.”

“Not necessary, he says. Sunglasses are a daily essential. Your eyes will really start to hurt, you know.”

Yuri spent a moment deliberating how to shut the man up. Because of the request not to be frightening, he couldn’t very well reiterate what kind of person he was and threaten him again, so Yuri chose a different approach.

“Are you always this talkative? An alpha who never stops chattering isn’t particularly attractive—I’m surprised you’ve managed to find partners all this time.”

A jab like this should be fine. It wasn’t an insult or a personal attack, so he’d just have to endure it.

“Hold on.”

Was it working? Cheriot sat up from where he’d been lounging against his seat and leaned toward Yuri.

“That sounded to me like you’re saying I’d be more attractive if I shut up?”

Guess it wasn’t working.

“No, I was simply telling you to be quiet.”

“Am I that talkative? Hmm, I suppose I’m not on the quiet side. But I do have a public-facing image to maintain, so don’t worry—I don’t act this way with just anyone. When I set my mind to seducing someone, finding a partner is no trouble at all.”

There was no sign of him shutting up. Yuri swallowed a sigh and rebutted his nonsense.

“Judging by the clumsy move you pulled when we first met, I’m not so sure about that.”

“Even a man as skilled as I am tends to make boyish mistakes now and then when he meets someone he likes.”

Cheriot leaned back against his seat again, gave a faint, wistful smile, and turned his gaze outward.

“I’ve never really believed in love at first sight, but with you, something was different the moment I laid eyes on you.”

At the near-muttered monologue, Yuri stiffened in surprise. He couldn’t believe that the man who’d been grinning and flirting so glibly—so much so that Yuri had thought what the hell is wrong with this guy—had actually been half-serious about it. Yesterday it had seemed like a joke; today it was incomprehensible.

“So it’s a good thing you’re not the man I thought you were, really. If you had been, I have no idea what kind of foolishness I’d be up to today, trying to seduce you again.”

Fortunately, Cheriot changed the subject before Yuri could dwell on it any further. Soon he fell silent, and just as Yuri had wanted, the car was filled with stillness.

In the quiet air, Yuri thought—just as Cheriot had said—that it was a good thing he wasn’t a good man. He was far more accustomed to being ignored and trampled upon than to being carefully observed and cared for, and that was what felt comfortable to him.

∞ ∞ ∞

Listening to Cheriot’s nonsense, they’d drawn closer to their destination before they knew it. The navigation showed ten minutes remaining, and soon a large wooden sign with “BIG FOX” carved into it appeared on the right side of the highway. As Cheriot had said, there seemed little risk of being discovered around here. That made sense, because the number of buildings visible could literally be counted on one hand.

That was a good thing… but it was also ambiguous.

In a place this quiet, under normal circumstances there would be few people to run into, which wasn’t bad, but in a town with such a small population, restaurants and grocery stores were equally few, making unfamiliar outsiders especially noticeable. A man like Cheriot would be particularly easy to remember. Maybe he should dye his hair.

He considered it, but since Cheriot wasn’t a wanted man fleeing from the police, for now he decided not to go that far. After all, he could handle the grocery runs himself.

Yuri finished his brief deliberation. As he casually scanned their surroundings and turned his head back to the front, Cheriot, who had been keeping relatively quiet, suddenly spoke up.

“Hey, hey, hey—don’t make that face.”

“What?”

“For a paradise, it’s not much to look at—that was the face, wasn’t it? Am I right?”

He hadn’t been thinking that at all, but hearing it, he supposed there was some truth to it. Unlike the expectations that the word “paradise” carried, the scene immediately before him was hardly different from what they’d seen along the highway. But Yuri was a man without imagination, and he placed no significance on the paradise Cheriot spoke of.

Paradise is called paradise because it doesn’t exist.

A place without hardship or sorrow cannot exist on earth; it’s possible only in the world after death. But Yuri was a man who would fall into hell even after death, so he would never be able to reach paradise.

Therefore, no matter how beautiful or magnificent a place might be, it could never be paradise for Yuri. He played along with Cheriot’s grandstanding, giving a suitably half-hearted response.

“Think whatever you like.”

“But that look of disappointment is about to change in about eight minutes.”

Cheriot announced it in the tone of an emcee, and Yuri twisted only one corner of his mouth upward. Having been stuck with him for nearly a full day, he was starting to grow accustomed to his verbosity—the nonsense didn’t feel as disorienting as it had at first. Guess you can build a tolerance to bullshit, he was thinking, when Cheriot launched into another round of hype.

“That face says you’re quite enjoying my joke right now, doesn’t it?”

“No.”

“Don’t ‘no’ me—you just smiled.”

Bold bastard. Yuri chuckled inwardly at Cheriot’s audacity in standing up to him. Back in Saratov, no one would have dared to joke with him like this.

Men of similar rank would occasionally toss around vulgar jokes, but when they picked a fight that way, Yuri never let it slide. Testing the waters with playful taps to the head and the like—among trash like them, it was a way of establishing hierarchy, and if left unchecked, they’d arbitrarily decide the pecking order.

And ordinary people were afraid of him, so they never approached him first.

Unlike Alexei, who had a mischievous side, Yuri was unsmiling and austere, barely able to mix with ordinary folk.

After moving to Vancouver, things had certainly changed, but Yuri never went anywhere he might meet people, so he hadn’t encountered such situations. A man like him had no business being among normal people.

Instead of definitively denying Cheriot’s words, Yuri kept his mouth shut. In any case, the more at ease Cheriot felt, the better, and Yuri decided to let a certain degree of misunderstanding slide for the sake of the frightened young man. Whether he’d actually smiled or not wasn’t a particularly important thing to deny anyway.

Trading jokes that weren’t quite jokes, they finally exited the highway. Following the signs, they wound around a curving road until the forest swallowed the car. It felt like entering Stanley Park—driving beneath the towering trees that crowded both sides of the road, a fresh breeze blew through the open windows.

The smell of earth. The scent of wet bark. The sound of leaves just sprouting and gleaming green.

At the end of the path guided by the sensations entering through his nose and ears, Yuri came face to face with a vast, brilliantly shining river. It was a deep blue river.

Along the rippling waves, the shimmering sunlight sparkled dazzlingly like powdered sugar. Whether because of the sunlit ripples on the water, the blue river appeared almost warm, and surrounding it stood tall spruce trees with beautiful cottages nestled between them.

Soon Yuri realized this wasn’t a river but a lake. Canadian lakes are so immense that they often look like rivers or even seas, but the terrain told him it wasn’t a river. Still, it felt like a river—the end was nowhere in sight, making the village feel like a small sea enclosed within.

“Welcome to Big Fox.”

Cheriot, who had been letting Yuri take in the magnificent view before him, whispered quietly from beside him. The village, true to its name, was as serene and beautiful as if red-furred foxes might come bounding through the forest. It was a place where the metaphor of paradise began to make some sense.

“…Yeah.”

Yuri replied in a voice that caught in his throat, then forced his gaze away from the river—no, the lake—that kept drawing his eyes.

“But this place looks more like a resort than it did from outside. It’s July now, so it seems like the kind of place a lot of tourists would come to visit.”