Chapter 7: Secluded Onsen Confessions
The ceasefire held for four days. It lived in the space between text messages that were no longer strictly logistical. Leona sent a photo of a bafflingly ornate dessert tray from a state banquet with the caption ‘More sculpted than your abs.’ Vil replied with a screenshot of a scathing review of a rival’s play, adding ‘This critic needs a hobby, or a hug.’ It was almost friendly. The conservatory outing photos had circulated, garnering approving headlines about the couple’s ‘refined, low-key connection.’ The pressure from Vil’s publicist and Leona’s family briefly eased into a satisfied hum.
The first crack in this fragile peace came not from the outside world, but from the past.
It was Epel who reached Vil first. The call came through late on a Tuesday, just as Vil was reviewing lines for an upcoming voiceover session.
“Vil? It’s Epel. We need to talk.”
The tone was all wrong. Flat. Not Epel’s usual bright, if sometimes strained, cheerfulness. It was the voice he used when he was genuinely upset but trying to sound mature about it.
“Epel? What’s wrong?” Vil set his script aside, a cold trickle of foreboding in his stomach.
“You tell me.” A sigh crackled down the line. “I had to hear it from my manager. Who heard it from a stylist. Who saw it on Celebrity Spy. You and Leona Kingscholar. For over a month. And you didn’t think to tell any of us?”
Vil’s breath hitched. He’d been so focused on the external performance, on managing Leona and the media, he had completely compartmentalized his personal life. His friends. The people who had known him before the platinum hair and the violet contacts, back in the crucible of Night Raven. They weren’t just audience members; they were former participants in his life. He had expertly lied by omission.
“Epel, it’s… complicated,” Vil began, falling back on the professional deflection. “It happened very fast. The public scrutiny was intense from the start, we had to control the narrative—”
“We’re not the public, Vil. We’re your friends. Rook is devastated. He’s been going on about ‘treason in the heart’ and ‘the hunter’s keen eye blinded by affection’ for two days. He thought you told him everything.”
A genuine lance of guilt pierced Vil’s carefully maintained composure. Rook. Of course. The one who saw through every performance. Or thought he did.
“And Jack?” Epel pressed, his voice tightening. “He trained with Leona for years. He looks up to him. He heard it from some alpha in his warrior gym who was joking about it. He felt like an idiot.”
Vil pinched the bridge of his nose. “It wasn’t meant to be a slight against any of you. It was a private matter that became public. We were just… managing it.”
“By not telling the people who actually know you?” Epel’s frustration finally broke through. “It feels fake, Vil. It feels like you’re acting for us, too. And that sucks.”
The line went dead.
Vil sat in the ringing silence, Epel’s final words etching themselves into his mind. It feels fake. From the person who’d seen him without his makeup after a brutal potion accident, who’d heard him rant about unfair professors in a thick, unpolished country accent. The performance had bled into a territory where it wasn't supposed to go.
His phone lit up again almost immediately. A group chat he hadn’t opened in weeks, labeled ‘NRC Chaos.’ Messages were flooding in.
Ruggie: sooooo. lion boy. care to explain why i had to get the celebrity gossip digest to know about your life? i’m hurt. deeply. my fragile heart.
Jack: Leona-senpai. This is… unexpected.
Rook: Ma belle étoile, to think the most dazzling performance was for the eyes of your oldest comrades… the curtain falls on a heart bereft of trust.
Ruggie: ^^^ what he said but in normal person words. we’re having a meet. you can’t skip this one. you owe us. both of you.
Rook: A gathering of the betrayed! A symposium of sorrow! We shall convene!
Epel: They’re right. We need to talk. All of us. In person.
Vil watched the messages pile up, a sense of impending doom settling over him. This wasn't a media storm to be weathered. This was a personal accountability meeting. He knew, with absolute certainty, that Leona’s phone was blowing up with the same coordinated assault.
He was right.
Thirty seconds later, his screen showed an incoming call from Leona. The avatar was a blurry, grumpy-looking lion cub someone had drawn on a napkin years ago. Vil answered.
“This is your fault,” Leona growled, no greeting, no preamble. The lazy charm was gone, stripped raw by pure aggravation.
“My fault? How is our shared social circle my fault?”
“You’re the one who wanted ‘mundane authenticity.’ Well, congratulations. The authentically annoying people from our past have noticed. Ruggie is demanding free meals as ‘emotional reparations.’ Jack sent me a three-paragraph text that reads like a formal declaration of disappointed loyalty.”
“Epel hung up on me,” Vil said flatly. “Rook is composing sonnets of lament.”
A beat of shared, miserable silence passed between them, the kind that only exists in the face of a mutually created disaster.
“We have to go,” Leona stated, voice grim. “If we don’t, they’ll just show up. Rook would find a way into my private chambers to dramatically faint across the threshold. Ruggie would sell the story of my ‘heartless betrayal’ to the highest bidder.”
Vil closed his eyes. “I know. Where?”
“My place. Tomorrow night. It’s more secure than a restaurant. Less chance of eavesdropping.” Leona’s tone was that of a general planning a tactical retreat into a fortified bunker.
“Fine. I’ll bring wine. A lot of it.”
“Bring something stronger,” Leona muttered. “I forgot our friends would notice.”
The irony was bitter. In crafting a believable lie for the world, they had created an unbelievable truth for the people who mattered. Vil ended the call and sank back into his sofa, the script for his voiceover suddenly incomprehensible. The lines between performance and reality, which he had always drawn with such precise, unwavering skill, had just been violently smudged.
Leona’s apartment wasn't what Vil expected. It was a penthouse, predictably, with a staggering view of the city’s skyline. But it wasn't the opulent, cold museum he’d imagined. It was clean, modern, but lived-in. A massive, well-worn leather sofa dominated the living room. Shelves were lined with a mix of political treatises, historical biographies, and well-kept but clearly used gaming consoles. A driftwood sculpture from the Afterglow Savanna sat on the coffee table, looking profoundly out of place and deeply cherished. It was a space of controlled comfort, a den for a solitary predator.
Vil arrived first, armed with two expensive bottles of red and a bottle of premium whiskey. Leona took the whiskey without comment, his expression stoic. He was dressed down again, in grey sweats and a loose shirt, his hair even more unruly than usual. He looked like he was preparing for a physical ordeal.
“They’re going to be relentless,” Vil said, placing the wine on the counter.
“Obviously.” Leona poured himself two fingers of whiskey, neat. “Rook will try to psychoanalyze every micro-expression. Ruggie will mine for blackmail material. Jack will sit there judging us with his big, disappointed puppy eyes. Epel will just glare.”
“Your optimism is inspiring.”
The doorbell rang. It wasn't a chime, but a harsh, buzzing sound. Leona drained his glass. “Showtime.”
It was a united front. Ruggie, Jack, Rook, and Epel all stood in the hallway, a palpable wave of accusation rolling off them. They filed in, their usual dynamic muted by a shared sense of grievance.
The living room felt suddenly small. Jack stood stiffly by the window, arms crossed, his tall frame tense. Epel took an armchair, his usually cheerful face set in a stern line. Ruggie made a beeline for the kitchen, snooping in the refrigerator with a critic’s eye. Rook, however, went straight to Vil. He took Vil’s hands in his own, his dramatic eyes wide and sorrowful.
“To be kept in the dark, while the world basks in the light of your romance… it is a cruelty most exquisite,” Rook murmured, his voice trembling with performative pain that nonetheless held a kernel of real hurt.
“Rook, please, let’s all sit down,” Vil said, extracting his hands with a practiced, gentle firmness.
They congregated in the living room, an awkward circle of tension. Leona leaned against the archway to the kitchen, maintaining a distance. Vil sat on the edge of the sofa, back straight.
“Okay,” Ruggie said, plopping down and helping himself to a handful of premium crackers from a bowl Leona hadn’t set out. “Start talking. From the beginning. And don’t give us the media-friendly version. We can smell that crap a mile away.”
Leona and Vil shared a glance. It was a silent, frantic negotiation that lasted less than a second. How much do we tell them? The original, cynical pact felt too crude to voice here. The evolving, confusing reality was impossible to explain.
Vil took the lead. “We reconnected at the Orion Galleries fundraiser last month. The press was there, speculating wildly about both of us being single. We… found ourselves cornered by the narrative before we’d even had a proper conversation.” It was truth, adjacent. A polished version of the first stone tossed into the pond.
“So you just… decided to date? For real?” Jack’s voice was low, skeptical. “You, Leona-senpai, who always said romantic entanglements were ‘a drain on strategic resources’?”
Leona’s jaw tightened. “Circumstances change.”
“What circumstances?” Epel asked, his gaze fixed on Vil. “You’ve always been so private. Then you’re suddenly all over magazines with him? It doesn’t add up, Vil. It feels like a business deal.”
The accuracy of the guess was jarring. Rook’s eyes, sharp and missing nothing, flickered between them. “The synchrony is off,” he mused, his theatrical sorrow shifting into analytical precision. “The public kisses are in perfect harmony, yes. But the stories you tell… Leona speaks of managing perceptions. Vil speaks of a rekindled connection. Two melodies, not a duet.”
“It’s not a rekindled connection,” Leona snapped, the words coming out too harsh, too defensive. “We didn’t have a connection to rekindle. We had a problem. We found a mutually beneficial solution.”
The room went very still. Ruggie stopped chewing. Jack’s brows drew together. Epel’s eyes widened.
Vil felt a flush of hot panic. “Leona.”
“What?” Leona pushed off the wall, his green eyes flashing with frustrated defiance. “They wanted the truth. That’s the truth. It was a transaction. A performance. A temporary, strategic alliance to get my family and the vultures off our backs. Vil gets paid to be convincing. He’s very good at it.” He gestured vaguely at Vil, as if presenting evidence.
The words, laid bare in this room, among these people, were brutally ugly. They stripped the glittering facade off everything—the conservatory, the texts, the ceasefire—and revealed the cold, mercenary engine underneath.
Vil’s professionalism evaporated. The hurt was too personal, too sharp. It wasn't the facts that wounded him; it was the crass, unvarnished way Leona had chosen to reveal them to their friends, as if Vil’s feelings—whatever they were—were irrelevant collateral.
“Is that all it is?” Epel whispered, looking at Vil, not Leona. The betrayal in his eyes was now mixed with a dawning pity.
“Of course it’s not,” Vil said, the words automatic, defensive. But they rang hollow. What was it, then? He didn’t know.
Rook stood slowly. “A performance,” he repeated, his voice quiet and utterly devoid of its usual flourish. He looked at Vil not as a betrayed fan, but as a fellow actor who had broken the only sacred rule: he’d stopped being able to tell when the scene ended. “You let us believe. You let us celebrate for you. You let me worry for you, about the pressures of a royal match. All the while, it was a… a contract.”
The weight of it, the sheer awkwardness of the exposed lie, settled over the room like dust. Jack looked down, shaking his head. Ruggie let out a long, slow whistle. “Wow. Okay. So it’s not even a messy, real relationship drama. It’s just… a job. And we’re the idiots who bought front-row tickets.”
“Get out,” Leona said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble.
No one argued. The friends—because they still were, somehow, beneath the hurt—filed out in a silence far worse than any outburst. Epel gave Vil one last, devastated look before closing the door softly behind him.
The silence they left behind was seismic.
Vil didn’t move. He stared at the driftwood sculpture on the coffee table, its twists and burns suddenly looking like a map of this catastrophic evening.
Leona poured another whiskey. The clink of the glass against the bottle was violently loud. “They were going to figure it out eventually,” he said, but the defiant edge was gone, replaced by a hollow justification.
“There’s figuring it out,” Vil said, his voice dangerously calm, “and then there you are, throwing the truth at them like a grenade because you were uncomfortable. You couldn’t stand them thinking you were capable of something real, could you? You had to make sure they knew it was all just a clever scheme. That the great Leona Kingscholar isn’t soft enough to actually feel anything.”
Leona turned, his eyes blazing. “It is a scheme! That’s what we agreed on! What, you wanted to give them a sweet, romantic story? Lie to them more? For what?”
“For dignity!” Vil shot to his feet. “For the basic decency of not making the people who care about us feel like fools! For keeping something, one thing, that wasn't a calculated move on a chessboard!” He was breathing hard, his perfect composure shattered. “You paid me to be convincing. I did my job. But you… you just convinced everyone, including maybe yourself, that you’re incapable of anything except cold, hard transactions. Congratulations. The performance is a masterpiece. You’re the most convincing emotionally stinted alpha on the planet.”
He grabbed his coat, not looking at Leona. The warm truce from the conservatory was ashes.
“Where are you going?” Leona’s question was stripped of its usual command. It sounded almost lost.
“Home. To deal with the fallout you so eloquently created with my friends.” Vil paused at the door, his hand on the knob. He didn’t turn. “Deposit the next payment whenever you like. The performance will continue as contracted. But we’re done with the ceasefires.”
He left, closing the door with a quiet, final click that echoed in the vast, empty space of Leona’s apartment. Leona stood alone, the whiskey untouched in his hand, staring at the door. The truth was out. It had broken the one thing he hadn’t realized was holding the entire fragile experiment together: Vil’s willingness to pretend it could be anything else. The victory felt like swallowing glass.
The victory felt like swallowing glass. It shredded his throat on the way down, leaving a bloody, hollow ache in his chest. Leona stood in the silent aftermath of the detonation he’d triggered, the whiskey glass cold in his hand. He didn’t move for a long time, listening to the aggressive absence of sound. The driftwood sculpture seemed to accuse him. Performance is a masterpiece. Vil’s final words echoed, sharper than any councilman’s critique.
He slept fitfully, the image of Epel’s pity and Rook’s profound disappointment replaying behind his eyelids. The city lights through his floor-to-ceiling windows, usually a peaceful, distant galaxy, felt invasive. His phone was a silent, guilty weight. No texts from Ruggie demanding payment. No overly formal wellness check from Jack. Nothing from Vil. The ceasefire wasn't just over; the entire theater had burned down, and he had lit the match just to feel a moment’s heat.
Two days passed in a sterile, irritable blur. Council meetings were a drone of voices he ignored. Reports were unread. He found himself staring at his phone, thumb hovering over Vil’s contact. He never pressed call. Apologies were not in his lexicon; they were admissions of error, and errors were weaknesses to be analyzed, not mourned. Yet the hollow feeling persisted, gnawing at the edges of his concentration.
On the morning of the third day, his phone finally vibrated with Vil’s name. Leona’s chest tightened oddly. He let it ring twice, steeling himself, before answering.
“What.”
“We’re going to fix this.” Vil’s voice was clear, professional, but stripped of the warmth from their text exchanges about burnt toast and bad perfume. It was the voice of a director stating a necessary, unpleasant plan.
“Fix what? The truth is out. Problem solved.” Leona leaned back in his desk chair, staring at a complex irrigation schematic for the northern plateau without seeing it.
“The problem is we handled it like tactless brutes and hurt people we care about.” A measured breath came down the line. “I am inviting them to my apartment tonight. You are going to be here. We are going to apologize, together, and explain the situation properly. Without you detonating it.”
Leona’s instinct was to refuse, to cite a prior, invented engagement. The words died before they reached his tongue. He saw Epel’s face again. Heard Rook’s stripped-raw tone. A contract. “Fine. But I’m not groveling.”
“I don’t expect you to know how.” The line clicked off.
Vil’s apartment was a study in curated serenity, all soft lighting, plush carpets, and the faint scent of iris and sandalwood. It felt like the antithesis of the chaotic confrontation in Leona’s space. Their friends arrived again, their wariness a tangible entity in the room. They sat, a silent semicircle on the large sectional sofa. The offered wine was accepted but not yet touched.
Vil stood beside Leona, who remained stubbornly on his feet, a sentinel of discomfort. Vil spoke first, his gaze including everyone. “We owe you all a profound apology. Not for the arrangement itself, but for how you found out. We were short-sighted and selfish. You deserved honesty from us, not from a tabloid or a leaked rumor.”
Leona forced himself to meet their eyes, one by one. Jack’s steady gaze, Epel’s cautious one, Ruggie’s analytical squint, Rook’s expectant silence. “He’s right,” Leona said, the words grating. “I was… an ass. About it. You didn’t deserve that.”
“So, let’s be honest now,” Vil continued, his posture perfectly composed but his fingers flexing slightly at his side. “This is a mutual favor. A performance. Leona needed the intense pressure from his family to relent, to get them off his back about a political mating. I benefit from the sustained, high-profile publicity. It’s a transaction. But.” He paused, and the careful composure softened, just at the edges. “You are our friends. We do care about you. And we care about each other, even if it’s not… romantic. We should have trusted you with that much.”
The clarification hung in the scented air. It was the truth, but it was a truth offered with respect, not hurled as a weapon. The difference was seismic.
Ruggie was the first to break the tension. He let out a long, exaggerated sigh and finally picked up his wine glass. “Alright, alright. You’re both gigantic idiots. But, I mean, it makes a twisted kind of sense.” He took a sip, eyeing Leona over the rim. “Honestly, I’m surprised it’s not real. I was sure you had a crush on him back at NRC, Leona. All that lazy, ‘I-can’t-be-bothered’ attention you paid whenever he was doing a Pomefiore demonstration? Yeah. Not subtle.”
A flicker of something—alarm, embarrassment—crossed Leona’s face before he smoothed it into a scowl. “You’re hallucinating.”
“I am not,” Jack added quietly, his stern expression finally easing. He looked at Leona with a kind of relieved understanding. “You always knew his competition scores before anyone else. You’d grumble about him ‘showing off,’ but you never missed it.”
Rook’s dramatic gasp filled the room, but this time it was tinged with delight, not betrayal. He clasped his hands to his chest. “The pieces align! My beautiful Vil, you spoke of Leona’s ‘untamed strategic mind’ with such frequency after every joint Spelldrive tournament! The analysis was meticulous! I noted it as professional admiration, but the fervor!”
Vil felt a flush creep up his neck. “I was analyzing a competitor. It was research.”
“You researched his favorite sandwich from the school cafeteria,” Epel chimed in, a small, knowing smile finally breaking through. His gaze shifted between them, the hurt melting into something more familiar: exasperated affection. “And you know what? This actually explains a lot. Back then, sometimes it felt like you were both… I dunno, parentally disappointed in me. In unison. Like a weird, scary team.”
A startled laugh escaped Vil, short and genuine. The image was absurd. Leona made a dismissive tch sound, but the rigid line of his shoulders had dropped an inch.
The air in the room changed. The heaviness lifted, replaced by the gentle, incredulous humor of shared history. They began talking over each other, teasing, pulling up other old, half-forgotten moments that now seemed tinted with new meaning. The wine was drunk. Ruggie commandeered Vil’s kitchen to make a shockingly good snack platter with whatever he found.
Leona found himself on the sofa, listening to Rook elaborate on a theory about ‘competitive synergy masquerading as antagonism.’ He wasn't contributing much, but the defensive coil in his gut had unwound. Vil sat diagonally across from him, one leg tucked beneath him, explaining the specific publicity benefits of the arrangement to a nodding Jack. He caught Leona’s eye.
Vil didn’t smile, not exactly. But the sharp, wounded frost from the other night was gone. His violet eyes held a question, a tentative offering. It was a look that acknowledged the mess, accepted the blunt, ugly truth of their transaction, but also saw the space around it—the friends now laughing in the room, the shared history, the bizarre, non-romantic care they had just confessed to.
Leona held his gaze for a moment, then gave a single, almost imperceptible nod. It wasn't an apology. It was an acknowledgment of the offering. A peace treaty, different from the ceasefire. This one was built on excavated truth, not convenient pretense.
The conversation flowed around them, lighter, full of old inside jokes and easier laughter. The performance was over, for this audience at least. What remained in its place felt fragile, exposed, and strangely real. Leona took a sip of his wine, the bitter aftertaste of glass finally gone.