Void Lord: My Revenge Is My Harem-Chapter 210 : The First semester XXXIII

---

Fizz took it and conducted a short parade consisting of himself, a polite breeze, and a boy who agreed to hum if tipped. Two new fans were recruited immediately: sisters in braid ribbons who asked very precise questions about office hours, club dues, and whether there would be snacks at meetings. Fizz swore on the honor of every pastry he had ever consumed that there would be snacks. He wrote their names carefully in a little notebook: Mina, Lila. Officers, in charge of chants and cupcake logistics.

Third, trinkets. The alley behind the fountain offered a curation of objects that had, at one time or another, almost been valuable. Fizz drifted from table to table like a moth with strong opinions. A brass spyglass missing a lens winked hopefully. A ring with a cracked blue stone told a story about a sailor and a promise and a sea that did not keep it. Fizz asked each item a quiet question with his paws, the way you can if you are something more than a spirit and less than a god.

"Any curses," he asked a hand mirror with unusual weight.

"Only the usual," the mirror failed to say, which is how you know Fizz was dealing with truthful wares.

He bought nothing. Today was for looking. He did, however, accept a free ribbon from a ribbon seller who explained, at extravagant length, the specific shade of red that best announces triumph without threatening a war. Fizz thanked her with the gravity due a foreign dignitary and tied the ribbon in a very small bow on his new pennant.

On the roof above the used-book arcade, he found the cat who had been pretending to be in charge of John’s story and presented his flag for inspection. The cat yawned and butted its head against his flank. Fizz took this as wholehearted endorsement. He sat with the cat and looked across the roofs at the place where the river bent, at the needle of the temple tower, at the squat dignity of the old library’s roofline. He let the wind comb his fur until it behaved less like a scandal and more like a manifesto.

On the way back toward the square, he paused in a cul-de-sac where Edda was supervising three boys hauling crates. She had swapped her street grin for a foreman’s squint and a scarf to keep her hair out of trouble. The boys were learning to answer to Edda faster than they had ever answered to decency.

"This goes to the back of the shop," she told one, tapping the top crate with a finger that had seen too many nights. "If you drop it, I will tell your future wife on the day you meet her that you cry in arguments."

Fizz cleared his throat. Edda turned, saw him, and did the formal little bow he had demanded as a joke and then kept because it felt good.

"My lord," she said dryly. "The city treats you kindly."

"It bends to my will and also has excellent buns," Fizz said. He flicked a paw at the crates. "Progress report."

"Your shop will smell like soap and smugness," she said. "The house inside and front I leave for our master’s hands. The living rooms are decent now. I scrubbed the walls until they remembered being younger. And I told a rat with too much confidence to find a different sermon."

"Excellent," Fizz said. He floated closer and dropped his voice. "Any tails today."

"One," she said. "Lost him in the olives. Might have been looking for someone else. Might have been looking for me. Either way, he learned nothing except that I can pretend to like olives."

Fizz’s eyes went small and bright. "If Aqua’s whelp is stamping around again, I will roast his ego until it shrinks to fit a normal head."

Edda’s mouth tilted. "Save your sparks," she said. "You promised romance a wide berth tonight."

Fizz remembered his promise to be invisible at critical moments and —because he was not a monster— obeyed. "I am a shadow," he declared. "A dignified, adorable shadow."

"Adorable is not shadow’s usual job," she said.

"It is now," he countered.

They parted with the understanding of agents who had begun, reluctantly, to believe in something like a cause. Fizz turned down the lane that led toward the little house. He stopped halfway, pulled one of his new professor ribbons from his bag, and tied it around one of the door handles across the way — the one that squeaked when you turned it.

"Protection charm," he told the ribbon gravely. "Not magical, but very pretty, which is a kind of magic."

He reached the corner where the house door showed itself modestly under its lintel. He did not go closer. Through the window, if he had chosen to be rude, he could have glimpsed two figures at a table, the tilt of two heads that knew each other enough to tilt. He did not look. He planted his flag on a nearby barrel instead, considered it, decided a flag was too loud for the moment, and tucked it away.

Then he climbed up onto the low wall opposite, curled his tail around his paws, and set himself as an informal sentry — eyes on the lane that led from the square, ears turned to the alley that led from the market, nose full of the city and sugar and a hint of tea.

A pair of passers-by glanced at the small creature sitting with the solemn dignity of a statue and smiled without knowing why. Fizz accepted the tribute and did not move.

"Guard duty," he told the cat when it reappeared and sat beside him like a colleague. "Romance requires logistics."

The cat blinked once, which Fizz took as agreement. They sat like that while the last light slid off the roofs and the lamps found their voices, a round spirit and a thin cat keeping quiet council, making sure that the world remembered, for one evening at least, how to be kind.

The first star blinked awake above the rooftops. Fizz squinted up at it as if it had personally reminded him of something.

"Logistics," he muttered, tapping his own forehead. "Romance logistics includes dinner logistics. And John logistics. And snack logistics. I must secure provisions so the courting ritual may proceed without hunger-driven tragedy."

The cat made a small questioning chirp.

"Yes," Fizz told it, solemnly. "Baked goods are diplomacy."

He fluttered upright, tail curled like an exclamation mark, and pointed dramatically in the direction of the river district.

"To Bent Penny!"

The cat yawned and elected not to follow.

Fizz zipped down the lane with the swagger of a tiny duke on a pastry crusade. The city lamps were just beginning their nightly flirtation with dusk, one by one declaring their desire to be seen. Fizz darted through the glow like a spark that had applied for citizenship.

Bent Penny’s sign — a copper coin bent artistically into the shape of a smiling crescent — caught his eye from half a block away. Warm light spilled from the windows like soup steam with ambition. Laughter lived there. Pepper lived there. And Pim’s small apron probably still lived there against its will.

Fizz hovered to the door, smoothed his whiskers into presentable chaos, and pushed through.

"Ladies!" he announced, only to realize the room was half full of patrons who were not ladies. "And others who aspire to ladydom! Your favorite professor of snacks has returned!"

Pim looked up from behind the counter, where he was in the middle of negotiating with bread dough that clearly held a grudge. Penny peeked out from the kitchen pass window, copper curls escaping everywhere like they’d decided to unionize.

"Fizz?" Penny grinned. "Look what the sugar wind blew in."

Fizz executed a perfect midair pirouette. "I require your best dish! Something celebratory yet subtle. Romantic yet sensible. Large enough to share, small enough to hoard if priorities shift."

Penny laughed, the kind of sound that forgives your worst decisions and encourages your next ones. "Its been so many days. Sit. I’ll decide what you need."

Fizz obeyed with great dignity, choosing a chair instead of levitating simply because good manners impress kitchens. Pim brought him a plate of toasted almond bread with honey without being asked — Fizz gasped appropriately and kissed the air above the dish in gratitude.

They talked. Well — Fizz talked, then Penny talked, then Pim heckled them both. Stories spilled like cider in a tavern too happy to scold itself. They reminisced about John’s birthday disaster that had somehow turned into a triumph: the spilled cake, the dancing broom, the moment they all agreed that friends who nearly die together over dessert should maybe eat dinner more often.

Fizz added new tales from the jungle — edited for comedic effect and to remove any indication of bone-breaking that could be scary for Pim. Penny listened with eyes bright as oven fire, Pim with one eyebrow raised like a judge presiding over a pastry court.

Time did its usual trick.

Fizz promised himself — repeatedly — he would fly back to John in just one minute. That he would only finish this slice. And the next story. And this small experiment in whether cinnamon belonged on everything (it did). But minutes are sneaky creatures, especially around warmth like family.

The windows fogged. The tables emptied. The lamplighter outside hummed his last tune. Pim stacked chairs. Penny wiped down counters. Fizz, belly full and spirit louder than a parade, leaned back in his chair with the proud exhaustion of a knight who had defeated loneliness.

"Oh no," he murmured at last. "I was supposed to... romance logistics. John logistics. He is probably... probably fine. Definitely fine. Absolutely not waiting in a silent room staring at the wall like a poet in distress."

"Lord Fizz," Pim tossed him a small blanket leftover from winter. "You can sleep upstairs with me," he said. "You’re halfway to snoring anyway." 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

Fizz tried to protest. His protest came out as a soft, squeaky hum that suggested pastries were pillows now. Penny draped the blanket over him and booped his nose.

"We’ll walk you back in the morning," she promised.

Fizz curled up, tail over whiskers, and whispered into the blanket:

"It was important business... for love..."

And the little professor of snacks, guardian of romance logistics, slept — entirely unaware that somewhere across the city, John’s heart was discovering patience and Sera’s smile was teaching time how to behave.

The cat, sitting on the wall outside John’s place, would later swear he heard Fizz’s tiny snore from half a mile away.

But cats are known exaggerators.