I Wish You Well In Your Next Love, My Love

Sitting with his legs crossed, Gerard absentmindedly felt around his jacket.

Alvar quickly pulled out a cigarette and handed it to him.

Though he himself was a non-smoker, Gerard occasionally looked for cigarettes, so he always carried some.

“Do you earn more money if you work on Foundation Day?”

Gerard asked as he lit the cigarette. The smoke he had drawn in so deeply that his cheeks hollowed out was pushed back out with his breath. The smoke scattered beyond the wide-open window.

“I think it’s because it isn’t easy to find people willing to work on Foundation Day.”

“So, everyone’s making a fuss because they want to go have fun.”

Gerard clicked his tongue briefly.

“Exactly. It’s the first time I’ve seen someone volunteer to work on Foundation Day. An acquaintance of mine had a pretty hard time too because they couldn’t find any part-time workers for Foundation Day.”

“What kind of work?”

He hadn’t brought it up expecting any reaction, but Gerard was listening to what Alvar was saying with unexpected interest.

“It’s a fairly well-known dress shop around here.”

“That’s better than a greengrocer’s.”

“Yes?”

“Tell them to hire one short-term part-timer. I’ll cover the wages.”

It was as obvious as fire that the short-term part-timer meant that woman named Louize from just now.

Why was he so concerned about that woman?

After smoothing over the expression that had been about to twist, Alvar continued.

“Understood. But Commander, just in case, the wages can’t be too outrageous.”

Quick-witted as he was, Alvar knew that Louize felt burdened by Gerard’s attention.

If it came out that Gerard had pulled strings in getting her the part-time job, Louize would most certainly refuse.

So the pay had to be set higher than other shops, but not so high that it would arouse suspicion.

That was Alvar’s problem to handle.

At this point, he grew curious.

Just what had she done to melt their ice-cold commander like this?

And Gerard already had someone else he had given his heart to.

Ah, no way.

Suddenly, the words Gerard had once said in passing came back to him.

“Was that person just now the fourth-rank Purifier you mentioned before?”

Gerard ground out the cigarette in the ashtray and nodded.

Alvar was inwardly appalled.

Back then, he had thought that cunning fourth-rank Purifier was desperately trying to win Gerard’s favor by seizing an opportunity, but what he had seen today was completely different from what he had imagined.

If anything, didn’t it look like Gerard was the one desperate to win her interest?

“No… then Miss Odriann…”

The words that should have stayed in his head slipped out. He was that flustered.

“Why is Arvina coming into this?”

Gerard looked at him with an unreadable gaze.

“Wasn’t the deep contact purification you did with fourth-rank Miss Harper?”

“So what if I did?”

“Well, I mean…”

They were failing to understand each other.

‘Am I the strange one?’

Gerard’s face was so utterly confident that Alvar found himself reflecting on whether he had been too conservative.

But no, the strange one wasn’t him. It was the commander.

If an Awakened and a Purifier had lovers, they didn’t exchange deep contact purification with other people.

This was courtesy and respect toward their beloved.

As an exception, in a crisis where the rampage rate rose sharply, they might have no choice but to receive deep contact purification, but Gerard hadn’t even been going into the field lately, and his rampage rate wasn’t in a dangerous state either.

“If Miss Odriann finds out, she’ll be hurt. It would be best to keep what happened today a secret.”

“Is it such a terrible thing for an Awakened to receive purification from a Purifier with good compatibility?”

What kind of garbage thing was that to say? No matter that he was his superior, Alvar, who was sincere about romance in every respect, felt anger surge inside him.

Of course, he couldn’t actually lose his temper.

“Try thinking about it the other way around, Commander. Imagine Miss Odriann doing deep contact purification with some complete stranger of a male Awakened. How would that make you feel?”