"Let review what we have learned." Varsas and Lufa sit down and drink tea.
"At first I thought it was nothing serious, but Vaine and Viola have disappeared."
And with that Lufa spits out her tea,
"What? How? How do you even know this?"
"I left for Mahaima in the night, I returned at around one in the morning."
Naturally Mahaima is a few days trip away, Varsas could use magic but he didn't bother to, the girl from Lan Sphere may detect it.
So saying, Varsas stares at that girl. Naturally since she is someone his adopted mother sent, he will accept her courteously, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know she has an agenda of her own. After all she just destroyed his lab a few days ago under the order of his own adopted mother.
"Something about this is afoot, I hope you al-"
"Oh Varsas?"
Varsas's mother comes into the room at that moment wearing a beautiful green dress. Without makeup she looks a bit older than usual, but her beauty is still great.
"We will talk about this later." He raises his cup and leaves it on the table.
"Yes, young master." Lufa stands up and bows, she walks pass his mother and leaves the room.
"You was drinking tea with that girl?" The woman inquires.
"Yes, she has an agreeable personality."
"My, you seem awfully sweet on her. But dear my sweet son, no! She is only a teenager." Even as she says that, she has a gleam in her eyes, for some reason she has been pushing for marriage a lot lately, even to the point of insinuating a relationship with an underage servant. Varsas honestly found it to be unreasonable.
...
"Ha. To be honest I'm quite bored lately, that husband of mine just keep to his room to read that book of his. It is at a point where I'm quite worry." The madam complains while fanning her face.
"I'm sure he will finish reading eventually."
"If you say so, and soooooooooooo that is why I have to go to my son instead of my husband to entertain me! Take me somewhere Varsas! Or tell me about your love life! One of the two."
"Uh..."
"How is your relationship with that girl from the Venir family? A little birdie tell me that it has progressed swimmingly."
"I have been keeping contact through letter with her. It is only through letter though."
And no new letters arrive in the last few week, Varsas can guess that he is not going to hear from her for a while. Margaret is about to enter the last phrase of her training.
"How about that servant girl, though it is unconventional, mama can bully your father until he agree to it."
The butler who is in the room at that moment has a distress face. He has been called to serve drink and food for the madame and Varsas, but who would have thought this would be the topic. As the head butler with the responsibility of watching over the servants, he is quite distress. A servant seducing the heir of the house? That is unheard of, and it would leave him in a bad situation. If the master ever heard of it, the head butler would be called first to explain how he allow the situation to degrade to that point.
But he can't help it, the atmosphere around Varsas and that girl is just too scary, it is as if they are in their own world every time they are in the same room. And he is also scared of approaching that servant girl Lufa alone. She seems dangerous somehow. He couldn't even complain about how shady her resume is.
"Don't even think about it. That girl is too much of a child for me."
In a corner, the butler breathes out a sigh of relief.
"Hah, but you are awfully close to that girl. For some reason, I have a feeling there are something that you can only talk to that girl, but not your mother."
If anything, Liana Gungnir is quite sharp when it comes to discerning people, let alone her own child she has been raising since birth.
"You have changed Varsas." It is a statement of truth, one that leaves Varsas silent. He simply cannot counter her because it is the truth.
"It started with that trip to Mahaima capital didn't it? We found you with wounds all over your body, though mama and papa tried to ask, it was something that you couldn't say."
She guessed correctly, though she doesn't know the whole truth. On that day Varsa was fighting an ancient Mahaima god alone in the future, after the fight he somehow found himself inexplicably in the past. A familiar face greets him as he woke up to further the confusion. His ex-girlfriend from the future was the magic healer in charge of him.
On that day, after reminiscing about the future, Varsas decided to not do anything about anything anymore and just live out the rest of his life quietly.
The last time he lived life vigorously, he ended up with his entire family killed, and no comrades to accompany him even as he was about to fight a life or death battle.
"It is not the secrecy I'm worry about, it is the apathy."
She moves closer and hugs her child tightly.
"You work out, manage the fief and for that I am happy. But your interpersonal relationship seems to have come to an end. It is as if you are doing thing just for the sake of doing it and not because of any happiness or anything. It is as if you have grown apathetic."
Varsas looks back on his action from start to end. It is true, though he manages the servant and has a good working relationship with them, he doesn't let them come near his heart.
Varsas has resigned that he is going to outlive most of them even perhaps their great grand children.
The effect is not showing yet, but as the years passed, it would show. He would live to see his parents grow old and die, and after that he will perhaps go and become a hermit. His mother was right about the apathy, he almost doesn't care about anything at all anymore.
"That's why I have been trying to set you up with some fine ladies." She laughs.
"I was afraid that if it goes on you would end up as the worst kind of cold hearted man. As the heir of the fief you are going to have to marry one day, and if you don't let anyone into your heart, you will end up marrying someone who you don't love. That is the worst fate for a man.
And the woman who married him."
The lady starts reminiscing. She remembers many of her friends, they were great young ladies once, but now they just waste away living a life one step from hell because of their marriage.
"That is when she came, the girl from the Venir family, you seem to be suitable for her."
Margaret Venir is a friend in the future, and is kinda sorta a friend in this time too. But at the same time, the issue remain, she comes close, but Varsas did not open his heart completely to her.
In the future she killed herself to apologize for the crime of her family. In the end while she was his friend, her family killed his family.
It was one of Varsas's biggest regret and source of hatred, there is no way he would let it go.
In this life they haven't done anything yet, so he didn't do anything to them, except for profiteering from their famine. The profit from the deal was great, but the old man of house Venir discovered it in the end.
"Also you seem to open your heart for that servant girl."
Lufa who is currently acting as a maid in the Gungnir house also appeared around that time. In truth she had been watching for a long time, trying to find a reason for why the timeline has changed without knowing that Varsas is from the future. She grew frustrated knowing that he was lame. He lived a life without any note even though he could have been a legend. She took matter into her own hand and arranged for him to meet his old friends. When Margaret's appearance did nothing, she tried attacking him mentally with the image of the future hoping he would rethink it.
It was at that moment the the woman Varsas considered a second mother in the future intervened.
She is the queen of Lan Sphere, the queen of Lufa's people, the people who watch over time.
She easily sedated Lufa with her authority, but because of the matter of time travel, she cannot meet Varsas no matter what. Because in Varsas's timeline the queen of time has already died he cannot meet her ever again, in any time period, unless it is for looking at her corpse.
So Lufa become a messenger for the queen, passing message back and forth between Varsas and his adopted mother.
"I wouldn't say we are close, more like victims of circumstances."
"And what the circumstances are, you haven't told me mister." His mother points at him, laughing mischievously.
She is not asking, if he wants to tell her, she is willing to listen, if he isn't telling she won't pry. Her boy is already grown up after all.
"Sigh. I just wanted you to find a girl." His mother says again, causing Varsas to feel like an awkward child even though he is already a 27 years old man in a 17 years old body.
"I can't promise that." However... Varsas smiles "But I can promise you, after one year, all of the problems I'm dealing with would be no more."
The tea runs cold again, this time, instead of the butler, Lufa comes in, having taken over the tea serving job forcefully without consents from the butler. She wanted to meet. Varsas signals her using his hand.
"Strategy discussion after this."
But right now, Varsas Gungnir is having some quality time with his own mother.
...
It was in the training yard of house Gungnir, Varsas went through the spear forms in a mechanical way, Lufa is standing, watching on the side.
"Even you coming back was weird in the first place, something is wrong with the timeline, it is not impossible for other people to have also come back. Though who and how many there are we don't even know about. Judging by the people I encountered in Lanton, they have to be from the future too."
Lufa is referencing about a current incident where a book was declared dangerous and banned from most places. Somehow that lead to her destroying Varsas's study and flying to the Lanton Empire on her lonesome.
In that place, she encountered an assassin and a strange scientist that almost killed her. The power of those people was absurd to go again someone like Lufa, that kind of power is almost unheard of in this time, and so she postulates that they are from the future like Varsas. She is almost right, however-
"Full disclosure, I was one of the people beating you up in that place. I was in my disguise. The other person is a surprise though."
"Wait what?!"
"I fake that horrible accent even though I can speak completely fluent Lantonian. It was so that no one recognize me. I also publish that book in secret."
Varsas slowly makes the "If I were to raise the dead." book appears in thin air.
"The fate of Lanton specifically was horrible, and I helped with that, but it is embarrassing to admit that I helped. So I took the role of one of the top scientist at that time, fixed all of the errors in his holes-ridden thesis and publish it."
Lufa can only open her mouth like a fish.
"But how? I was there, and you were- It is impossible, the strange scientist has been active for weeks before this. If you were to travel back and forth between here and Lanton, someone would have figured it out."
"It is a specific technique that I never managed to figure out in the future, but after coming back, I figured it out."
Lufa looks at him as if he has grown a second head.
They say write what you know, the book about the fictional hero's exploit, Varsas has not even written more than ten pages. "If I were to raise the dead" was written as a side thing, however it quickly spiraled out of control.
The reason Varsas knows that book is harmless is because he wrote it.
"That fight..." Lufa continues to open her mouth.
"I telegraphed it when that guy come. He seems to hate 'Varsas' so if I fought him seriously he would have probably figured out immediately."
Lufa screams wordlessly.