Chapter 33
“Hnggggh….”
I pinched and rubbed both nipples between my index fingers at once, caressing them. Frang, nestled in my arms, reached behind her head and gripped the back of my neck as though stroking it, enduring the unfamiliar sensation.
“N-Nord. This feels kind of strange….”
They say nipples are parts of the body that both men and women have difficulty taking pleasure from without prior stimulation. The sensation Frang was feeling was probably closer to a ticklish shiver than pleasure.
I decided there was no point obsessing over stimulating her nipples and moved my hand down to her stomach. Her lean belly let me feel the shape of her muscles beneath her navel.
They say the belly is a strategic crossroads from which one can proceed to either the breasts or the pussy. Since there was no reason to return to a place I had already conquered, our next destination was decided.
“Hngh, ah!”
Splash….
I scooped up water with the basket and poured it over her while scraping inside Frang’s vagina. Fuck, I’d forgotten to trim my fingernails. I carefully scraped out the semen remaining inside her without moving too violently.
Squelch, squelch.
The fluid coming off on my hand began to grow more viscous. Holding each other naked had aroused Frang too. Her cute clitoris and nipples had grown stiff as well.
─Trickle.
Astonishingly, even though nearly half a day had passed, semen was still remaining inside her vagina. I finally felt ready to ask what I hadn’t been able to ask that morning because of the mood.
“Frang. Was yesterday perhaps a dangerous day?”
“A dangerous day…?”
“…I mean, was it around your menstrual period?”
Frang shook her head. Surely she knew how pregnancy worked, right? I realized that I knew absolutely nothing about the state of sex education in this other world.
“You know you can get pregnant if it isn’t around your menstrual period, right?”
“Y-yeah. My mother taught me when I had my first period.”
It was a relief that she knew. Still, I could ask about her menstrual cycle later. That wasn’t something to bring up by interrupting things when we were already worked up.
“I see. We should have talked about this last night, too.”
“Ah, so when you said you wanted to do it, you meant… Ah!”
I stopped there and focused on moving my fingers instead of saying anything unnecessary. It seemed that almost all the semen that could be removed by hand had already come out. But stopping here would have been discourteous.
Squelch, squelch, squelch─!
─Pfft!!
“Hnggggggg!!”
Frang’s habit when she climaxed was arching her back. Rubbing her butt against my penis, she gushed fluid with a moan.
Pfft! Pshhhh…!
The arousal fluid she expelled with one final burst soaked my hand. Frang, who had been clinging to my jaw as though kissing it, met my eyes.
….”
Smack. Slurp. Mwah.
We pressed our lips together and intertwined our tongues. It was an obscene exchange of saliva, with none of the youthful innocence of an affectionate kiss.
“Hawm. Hyaa….”
I turned away from Frang as we kissed and pulled my lips away. A strand of saliva stretched between our lips before breaking. When the string of spit stuck to my neck, Frang wiped it away with her hand.
“…Nord. Aren’t you tired?”
Frang asked while touching my penis. Honestly, my dick was already on the verge of exploding. I took a deep breath and answered.
“Frang? Let’s do it just once.”
“…I’m sorry, Nord.”
As she said that, Frang stood up and presented her rear to me. Then she pulled one cheek aside with her left hand.
“Actually, since halfway through… I started looking forward to it.“
──Ah, fuck. I can’t hold back this.
I became a beast and inserted myself into her vagina.
“Hyaaah!!”
***
After finishing a short but intense round of sex, we sank into the bathtub together.
“Hwaaah…. My body is melting….”
Sitting on my crossed legs, Frang scooped hot water into her hands and murmured. I smiled because she looked so cute.
“You said you come to the bathhouse often, so why do you look like someone who’s here for the first time?”
“…Hmph. Maybe not for you, Nord, but the bath is too deep for me.”
“……? What does the depth of the bath have to do──ah.”
I stopped speaking when I realized what she meant.
Frang’s body was miraculous: under 160 centimeters tall, yet possessing the splendid proportions of an adult woman. Naturally, her sitting height was under eighty centimeters. In a public bath designed for adults, she would simply gurgle and drown if she sat on the floor.
“I washed myself here often enough, but I could never get into the hot-water bath. Standing made getting in pointless, while sitting made me look like some kind of diver. I was embarrassed when people nearby stared at me struggling, too.”
“I see. So that’s why you came into my arms today.”
“Hehe. I only let you hold me because I wanted to be held by you, though.”
Don’t say that with a smile. My dick was going to get violently erect.
“Are you going to keep turning me on? Behave yourself, you perverted dwarf.”
“Hyaa….”
When I said that while hugging her voluptuous body tightly, Frang trembled in my arms.
Anyway, while we hugged and cuddled, my dick showed no sign of going down. Feeling it rub lightly against her waist, Frang glanced back at it.
“It’s still standing. Don’t men get sore too? I was a little sore this morning after doing it several times yesterday.”
“That’s probably because I pounced on you too recklessly yesterday. Men get sore if they stay erect too long or ejaculate too much. I was like that until recently, too.”
“Until recently?”
“Yeah.”
Frang detected something strange in my words. I confirmed the unease she had sensed.
I had rented this bath so I could reveal the secrets I had been hiding from Frang.
From today onward, we were officially lovers. That was different from how things had been before last night, when we had been nothing more than close friends at best.
So it was only natural that I should reveal some of my secrets as well.
‘And this is a bath made for exactly that purpose.’
They must have soundproofed it thoroughly so the users’ “noise” wouldn’t spread to the other baths. It was an appropriate place for a secret conversation.
I began to speak.
“Frang. To tell you the truth, I didn’t come to Sargadis to make a living as an adventurer.”
“Huh? What? Is this a secret?”
Frang looked into my face at my words.
“Hehe. After asking whether I was of noble birth, are you actually the prince of some distant country or something?”
“I’m not a prince, but someday I plan to pamper my girlfriend no less than a prince’s wife.”
“I’m happy you say that. But don’t overdo it, okay?”
“Of course. Anyway, what I mean is─.”
I thought about where to begin, then started with the introduction.
“─Frang, have you heard of Carmine University?”
“Of course. Isn’t it a hugely famous school in this country?”
“That’s right. And until a year ago… I was that university’s translation slave and research student.”
Other people’s stories about the past could easily become boring to the listener.
So I unpacked the story of what I had experienced over the past three years as concisely and accurately as possible.
─A mistake in my method of entering the country led to my arrest as an illegal resident and a sentence of three years of slavery.
─I met Yerna Gracier, a professor of archaeology, at a slave market and became a slave owned by Carmine University.
─After my abilities were recognized there, I helped the university professors with their work while engaging in translation and archaeological research.
─After three years, I was freed from slavery, but Yerna stole the thesis I had written to obtain my degree.
─With a newly written thesis, I obtained a master’s-equivalent degree and became a field archaeologist.
─I came to Sargadis to build up my abilities in two fields: adventuring and scholarship.
─I wanted to marry several wives so I could establish a firm position both as a scholar and as a head of household, without becoming entangled by a noble or anyone else.
And finally── all of this was a process I had to go through to obtain the spatial-transference technology that was my dream.
That was the story I told.
I left out the part about coming from another planet or world called Earth. I wanted to tell her that, too, but whether she believed me or not, it would only become a headache.
If I continued working toward my goal, I would eventually get a rough understanding of the relationship between this other world and Earth. I could reveal it again when the time came.
“──.”
Frang listened to my story without a word from somewhere in the middle onward. Her wet bangs covered her eyes, so I couldn’t tell what expression she was making.
“─Given all that, my exact status is a field archaeologist with a master’s-equivalent degree affiliated with Carmine University. You know the rest, right? Both requests I’ve undertaken were ones I did with you, Frang.”
I finished my story while feeling slightly anxious at Frang’s silence. With that, I had revealed eighty percent of my backstory—apart from the fact that I was from another world.
Frang, who had kept her mouth shut all that time, finally asked in a low voice.
“…That person named Yerna?”
“Yerna?”
Her first question was different from what I had expected. I answered while dredging up my memories.
“She probably… took off to a university in Germania, right? Ruins from the mythological age before ancient civilization are frequently excavated there──”
“That’s not what I mean!”
Splash!!
Frang suddenly stood up, violently splashing the water. She turned toward me as I stared in surprise, pushed back her bangs, and shouted while looking straight into my eyes.
“You said she stole your thesis!! The one Nord worked so hard on for three years!! Then why are you talking so calmly?! Are you doing this to make it easier for me to listen?! Don’t!! You should be angry!! You have every right to be!!!”
Wow, sparks were practically flying from her eyes. Blue flames were blazing fiercely within them. Frang shouted, huffing furiously.
“You need to get revenge on that elf named Yerna!! Find her and beat the hell out of her while asking why she did such a terrible thing!! Make her apologize to everyone for stealing your thesis!!! Make the whole world know that the research that even won an award was actually made by Nord!!!!!!!!!!!”
“C-calm down! Frang! Why are you so worked up, unlike yourself?”
“I’m getting angry on your behalf because you aren’t angry at all!!!!!!!!!”
Oh. I see.
I first tried to restrain Frang, who had grabbed me by the shoulders.
“No, of course I plan to get revenge someday. But I don’t have any good means of doing that right now, so first I need to establish my position and──.”
“Then why did you talk about it so casually earlier?! It’s so unfair and infuriating!!!!!”
Frang shouted, tears appearing in her eyes.
“Nord has every right to be angrier than anyone else right now!!!!! It must be so hard and painful that you can laugh off the hardships I went through as nothing by comparison, so why aren’t you losing your temper even once?! You’re the one acting unlike yourself right now, Nord!!!”
“That’s because I combined the Hatred-Weathering Theory proposed by a certain eminent professor of the Kurta people with the Runaway Ninja-style Hatred Accumulation Training Method and my own real-life experience into the Nord-style Method of Emotional Regulation─.”
“Shut your mouth!!!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I shut my mouth.
“Huff… huff….”
Frang, who had been shouting her heart out, sank down in the bath as tears streamed from her eyes.
Drip… drip….
The tears running down her pale cheeks fell into the bath and sent ripples across the water.
“…Sorry, Nord.”
Frang said that without even blinking as tears overflowed from her long eyelashes.
“I guess I got a little worked up. It may be true that, as someone who’s merely your lover, I don’t have the right to tell you what to think.”
“No, that’s not it! It absolutely isn’t?!”
Fuck, why should our Frang have to suffer because of that fucking elf bitch Yerna?! At the sight of her dejected expression, I felt as though every inch of my skin were turning inside out!!
That fucking Yerna’s life wasn’t worth a single one of Frang’s eyelashes!!
“Frang, you couldn’t be more right!! And anyway, are we just ordinary lovers?!”
“…Then what kind of lovers are we?”
Was she really asking me that? I summoned all the words that had flashed through my mind and condensed them into a single sentence with the wisdom of the ages!!
“Frang!! You are the person I love most in the world!!”
“…Even though you’re going to make other women your wives?”
…Nord, the otherworldly macho man, step forward.
You fucking bastard, you’re dead.
This was a fucking no-win question!!! What the fuck was I supposed to do!!!! Aaaagh!!!!
“…Hehe. I’m joking.”
Only then did Frang smile bashfully and speak.
“I fell for you knowing all that, Nord, and I want to get along with your other wives too, you know? As long as you don’t abandon me, that’s all I need.”
“Why would I abandon you? I’d save you even at the cost of my life, Frang.”
“Hehe. Thanks. It makes me really happy, even if they’re only words.”
─Hug.
Frang nestled into my arms and quietly embraced me. We were both in the hot water of the bath, but I could feel Frang’s body heat as clearly as if I were holding it in my hands.
“…Nord. Do you like me?”
“Yeah. I love you more than anyone in the world.”
“Enough to marry me?”
“Of course.”
I stroked Frang’s lovely hair. With her face buried against my chest, Frang murmured.
“Then tell me you love me. Promise that you’ll take me with you wherever you go, Nord.”
“…What about your dream? You said you were going to become a receptionist.”
“That isn’t a dream. It’s something I decided by letting myself drift with the current, like a reed. And a dream you give up on only becomes a memory.”
Frang moved slightly away from me and stared straight into my eyes.
“You said it yourself, Nord. Do what you want to do.
──I want to help you, Nord.
It had been an incredibly long time since I had wanted to do something from the bottom of my heart. It was also the first time in my life that I had thought someone was amazing.
That was when I realized it.
I wanted to stand by Nord, watch him work hard, and help him.
Nord, you can simply live for your dream as you have until now. You can take revenge, or you can give up on everything; I don’t mind.
But I absolutely hate the idea of living alone, thinking of Nord somewhere you aren’t.
Frang said that without blinking her blue eyes.
“When my mother was dying, she told me that regretting losing your first love was more bitter than ending up mistaking a momentary emotion for love.”
─Smile.
Frang asked with a smile so lovely on her small face that it was hard to believe such an endearing expression could fit there.
“But Nord… you’ll make sure I don’t regret it, right?”
“…Of course.”
Definitely.
There could only be one answer to those words, even if I searched the whole world from end to end.
“─I love you, Francesca.”
“─I love you too, Nord.”
And so we embraced each other and whispered words of love.
For us, this kind of communion suited us far better than a hundred awkward words.
It was a time when I understood why everyone went mad trying to live for love, unable to die for it─