By Zephyria 
Leonardo’s eyes narrowed as he looked up at the sky. Setting aside the hot-air balloon that had suddenly appeared in the cloudless, clear sky, it was because a single dot had broken away from it.
The dot grew larger as it descended, bringing with it a faint, distant scream.
Accordingly, the shadow cast over Leonardo’s face grew larger. By the time he realized the identity of the object was a human with limbs,
“Captaaaain!”
A familiar echo struck his ears once more.
His gold eyes widened in surprise. He clearly saw deep purple lips, contrasting with transparent, water-colored eyes, curving upward in a pleasant smile. The other person opened their mouth wide and shouted something again.
“We’re herrrrre!!”
Leonardo knew that voice better than anyone. However, he had no time to be glad to see someone he hadn’t met in a long while.
“Hey, hey!”
Flustered by the extraordinary speed of the descent, he abandoned his Coordinate System and leaped from his spot. Stretching out both arms, he pulled Taylor—who had reached his immediate front—by the waist toward himself and rotated his body using the momentum. After spinning two and a half times in mid-air to absorb the impact, Leonardo barely managed to land on the ground. Until that moment, he had held her tightly, fearing the idiot who lunged at him would crack her head open.
As he looked down at the fool he had caught in his arms with a bewildered expression, Taylor, who was being held like a princess, couldn’t contain her joy and abruptly hugged Leonardo’s neck.
“Uwoong, Captain♡ Didn’t you miss me?”
“Is she actually crazy—.”
Unlike her, who expressed affection even with a nasal tone, Leonardo lifted his chin and looked disgusted, his face pale. Regardless, she was a master at startling people. There is a limit to lunging suddenly; who falls at full speed onto a passing person?
“Do you want to die? What would you have done if I hadn’t caught—.”
“Captain—!”
Just as he raised his voice, his heart still pounding, another large shadow cast over him. Leonardo, who had been struggling with Taylor alone, flinched and looked up. Two dots, backlit by the halo of light, were falling.
They were Nero, clutching five or six paper bags in both hands, and Finder, with his hands shoved in his pockets.
However, to Leonardo, whose vision was washed white by the direct sunlight, only their blurred afterimages were visible. The two slowed down as their feet touched the surface and landed lightly. But Nero was just as prone to lunging without regard for his surroundings.
Rushing over breathlessly, he saw the witch clinging to the Captain like a leech and demanded an explanation in shock.
“Ah, Senior! What are you doing right now? Since when do we jump the gun?”
“Finders keepers. Who told you to get distracted?”
“Who just jumps out like that! And the Captain is suffocating, stop it!”
At the sound of the two bickering, the confused gold eyes rolled left and right. Regardless, Taylor, her arms wrapped around the Captain’s neck, deliberately rubbed her cheek against him to flaunt their closeness.
“He’s not suffocating, he loves it. Right, Captain?”
“How could he love it! Ah, the lips are crossing the line—!”
Nero threw down the paper bag he was holding in one hand and tried to forcibly pull Taylor away, claiming that family shouldn’t act this way. However, Finder, who walked over leisurely, picked up the items fallen on the ground and asked nonchalantly.
“I know you’re glad to see each other, but is it okay for us to be like this?”
The two who had been snarling turned toward him. Leonardo, caught in the middle, was no exception.
“Hey, you too…”
Leonardo couldn’t finish his sentence. He couldn’t figure out exactly how many of them had swarmed in.
Turning his head stiffly as if it were in a cast, he spun in a circle on the spot while still carrying Taylor.
One, two, three. There were three Dark Silvers before his eyes right now. Including himself, that made four. And right in the middle of an open plaza.
‘These crazy bastards…’
Just then, people stopped in their tracks as if they had discovered a strange sight. Seeing the exceptionally noisy group, they whispered among themselves, assuming they must be from out of town.
“Where did they suddenly appear from?”
“They fell from the sky.”
“The sky? Did they jump from the clock tower?”
Startled by the eye contact, Leonardo immediately avoided the people’s gazes. While there weren’t a vast number of witnesses, it was enough to spread rumors in a quiet, secluded city. He adjusted Taylor in one arm and gripped Nero’s wrist tightly with his other hand. Then, glancing sideways and clenching his teeth, he muttered via ventriloquism.
“Stop talking and follow me.”
As soon as he finished speaking, they hurried across the plaza toward a corner behind a building. In the meantime, Taylor remained clung to him like a cicada on an old tree, and Nero, worried the Captain might be angry, followed anxiously with his captured arm extended.
Only Finder, left alone, walked ploddingly while gathering the fallen Coordinate System and paper bags. Once the four of them disappeared, the focused attention scattered in all directions as if it had never happened. The plaza regained its silence and peace.
“Hey, are you guys sane?”
A path behind an alley crowded with abandoned shops. As soon as they entered the start of the path leading to the forest, Leonardo set Taylor’s feet on the ground and barked coldly.
“Even if this place is sparsely populated, a city is still a city. Didn’t you see the people in the plaza earlier? And you make such a scene in front of them?”
He took off his hat and swept back his blonde hair, which was soaked with cold sweat. Had his nerves ever been this frayed recently?
“What’s the point of jamming the trackers if rumors spread through human mouths? Do you even realize you’re soldiers?”
It sounded as if he were a Captain scolding immature subordinates for their rash behavior, but in reality, it was the statement of a coward worried that this meeting might be their last.
“Coming in a whole pack, and why are you riding things like that? Seriously, the discipline has become damn lax…”
“Captain…”
Amidst the continuous threats, Taylor, who had been acting boisterously, called him in a subdued voice. She was someone who never lost her spirit, yet she pouted her lips and gently gripped the Captain’s sleeve. It was a sort of ultimate move.
“I wanted to look for you from a high place to see if the Captain was there. And I cast Illusion magic, so it’s fine. To other people, it would have looked different from reality.”
Hearing this, Leonardo paused. He then squeezed his eyes shut, turned his head, and irritably ruffled the back of his hair.
Right, these guys couldn’t be that stupid. Perhaps because worry had overtaken him, he hadn’t asked for the circumstances and his words hadn’t come out kindly. He had regretted not being able to give a proper, kind word when he hurriedly sent Nero away from the Peninsula, and here he was repeating the same mistake.
It was a chronic illness of someone who had lived a life on the run for the past few years.
“…Captain.”
Following that, Nero, who had been watching his reaction from two steps away, called him in a shrinking voice. The two of them stared at Leonardo with eyes as pitiful as small animals drenched in rain.
“I was the one who suggested going up, thinking it would be less likely we’d be caught if we were floating in the air. Of course, Senior Taylor jumping out suddenly was a bit of a lacking move…”
“Do you want to die?”
“It’s the truth.”
“Hey.”
Leonardo stopped the two of them with a single word, even as they bickered while being scolded. The mindless chatter that failed to read the room ceased immediately, but he couldn’t stop a low sigh from escaping. It was because he was deeply worried.
Because this was a place where the magnetic field was so distorted that compasses lost their function, it was possible to neutralize the military’s surveillance network to some extent, much like Celestia. Knowing this, he had set the meeting place here months ago, but he hadn’t expected four people to gather for a secret meeting he thought would at most be two. Honestly, it was a very dangerous situation.
‘Still, the fact that Taylor came means she judged it to be safe…’
After pondering in silence, Leonardo gently pushed away the hands holding onto him and leisurely turned and walked away. As if he intended to go on this schedule alone.
At that, a visibly frozen Taylor and Nero looked at each other.
Although the Captain usually let minor things slide, he was always sharp when it came to important matters or when he was angry.
“Captaaaain…”
They chorused in pleading voices, chasing after the Captain’s back. Asking if he was really going to leave them like this, or if he hadn’t missed them. The plea not to leave them was embedded in those words.
Just as the signs of anxiety reached him from behind, Leonardo, stepping on the grass, stopped. Looking down at his feet, he saw a pile of fallen leaves that had accumulated softly, as no one had cleared them for years.
Spring was in full bloom in this region, and the vegetation was quite lush, making the ground soft and fertile. This should be enough; Leonardo suddenly whipped around. Then, he lowered his posture and spread his arms wide.
Unable to suppress a leaking laugh, he suddenly screamed like a madman, his voice echoing through the forest.
“Aaaaaah!”
Mountain birds, startled by the untimely threat, fluttered away. His comrades were equally flustered. But that was only for a moment; soon, the corners of their mouths began to curl up. Taylor and Nero, who had locked eyes for a moment, let out similar screams and lunged at the Captain.
“Yaaaah!”
“Kyaaaaah—!”
When two full-grown adults threw their entire bodies with all their might, no matter how strong Leonardo was, the two legs he had braced firmly gave way, and he fell backward. The tangled bodies of the three crashed onto the fallen leaves. Like a flurry of snow, accumulated petals and leaves floated above their heads.
“Hey, how is it that you guys still act exactly the same?”
Even after hearing that, they laughed out loud as if it were the best thing in the world, lying on the ground like the “lacking people” Nero described, as if they had returned to childhood.
Finder, who had been observing the scene while leaning against a tree trunk, straightened his upper body and touched the nape of his neck.
“What, wasn’t it lecture time?”
He was unpredictable, but what did it matter? He, too, who had been lounging, jumped into the midst of the fools without hesitation.