Chapter 10
The stars and moon still hung in the sky.
Around me, mana cast a pale blue glow through the wisps of rising steam.
The vibe was insanely good.
The water was just the right temperature for soaking.
Keeping a close eye on what was behind me, I stripped faster than I ever had since becoming Yuria.
“You bastard, don't tell me Swordmasters can sense what's behind them without even looking. If that's actually a thing, I'll tear you limb from limb.”
“……Don't be ridiculous. I can't see where you are, so let me know right away if you sense anything suspicious.”
Derek had stubbornly followed me.
He said he was worried I'd go to the hot spring alone and get attacked by a monster.
No, I understand your touching concern for your friend.
But you could've woken up some female knight and had her come with me instead of coming yourself.
It's reassuring to have him protecting me, but with him here, I can't help being self-conscious.
I don't think he has any weird ulterior motives.
If he did, he would've found some way to touch me by now, whether or not he turned around.
Other than jokingly pretending to let his hands wander when he massages my shoulders, nothing's happened.
That time I somehow ended up in his arms…… that was an accident, an accident.
Luckily, the hot spring water was cloudy, as if it contained sulfur.
When I submerged up to my neck, I could barely make out my own chest.
As I played around in the hot spring, vigorously stirring the water, Derek spoke to me.
“……Enjoying yourself?”
“Yeah, it's fucking great. You should get in later, too. ……No, hey! Not now! Are you insane, you son of a bitch?”
“You always react the most obviously to this kind of joke. You think I'd really bathe with you?”
“Fuck.”
Derek really hadn't turned around even once.
The more I think about it, this bastard isn't exactly normal either.
I turned my attention away in a huff, and all I could see were the bushes swaying in the cold winter breeze.
Sway, sway.
Sway, sway again.
Then Derek spoke again.
“Yuria.”
“If you're going to tease me again, just shut up.”
“No, I'm asking seriously.”
Derek let out a deep sigh.
Then he suddenly pitched me a hundred-mile fastball.
“You know perfectly well that you're in a woman's body, and yet you keep insisting you're a man.”
“……Yeah.”
“Then do you want to be in love with a woman?”
That came out of nowhere.
Of course I'm straight, and I like women.
But, hmm, I don't really understand what he's getting at.
It feels kind of out of the blue to me.
Is this bastard actually conscious of something right now?
Did he finally lose it because his beautiful, big-breasted childhood-friend maid—two years younger than him, always acting tough but really as delicate as can be—is bathing naked behind him?
That'd actually be kind of awkward.
Maybe I should tease him a little and see how he reacts.
“Who kno-o-ows? Why, would you prefer it if I loved a man?”
Then he'd probably get flustered at my uncharacteristic attitude.
But then—
“Of course. I'd like that.”
The voice I heard wasn't Derek's.
It was a clear, melodious woman's voice.
Yet there was something chillingly imposing about it, and it came from right beside me.
My body went rigid.
I froze on the spot, unable to even think of moving.
I barely managed to part my lips and call out to Derek.
“D-Derek……!”
“It's no use, young lady. That young man won't sense a thing.”
Fighting the fear that had taken hold of my whole body, I forced myself to turn my head. A beautiful woman with golden hair was sitting in the hot spring right beside me.
Her eyes were red as blood.
“W-who are you……?”
“Me? Hmm……”
The woman rose to her feet.
Her naked body, gleaming white in the moonlight, was beautiful to an almost impossible degree.
Splash, splash.
The woman parted the hot spring waters and stepped onto the bank, then walked straight toward Derek, still naked.
Derek didn't move.
At last, the woman reached him.
She wrapped her naked body around Derek from behind and gently ran a hand down his neck.
Watching her, I felt an inexplicable discomfort.
Why was she touching Derek?
But even as her white fingers traced the nape of his neck, Derek still didn't move.
“See? Right now, this young man can't sense a thing. He can't see or hear. And neither can anything else around us.”
Still wrapped around Derek with her naked body, the woman pointed at the bushes beside us.
The bushes weren't swaying.
Because there was no wind.
And in my four years here, I'd never known a winter day in the North without wind.
It was as if time itself had stopped.
As far as I knew, there was only one intelligent being in this world who could stop time.
“A dragon……”
“Hmm, I suppose that was a pretty decisive hint, wasn't it? Still, I'd much prefer it if you called me a Stellar Dragon rather than just a dragon.”
“……”
“Lumiere is fine, too, if you prefer. That's my human name. I could tell you my name in Dragon Tongue as well, but even if you knew it, you wouldn't be able to pronounce it.”
A Stellar Dragon.
In other words, the Master of the Stars.
A legendary being said to manage the world and correct phenomena that deviated from its natural order.
It was obvious why such a being was here now.
I was the one who had strayed from the world's natural order.
“You don't have to be so afraid. I didn't come here to kill you.”
……Was it that obvious?
“Even though I was granted the authority to stop time, I'm no omnipotent god. I'm just an administrator. Stopping time like this isn't easy for me, either.”
“……Th-then why did you come to see me……?”
“Now, now. You know why, don't you, Siwoo?”
Her blood-red eyes pierced through me.
So she did know who I really was.
“You may not have known, Siwoo, but I've been watching you this whole time. Do you know how much of a fuss the Stellar Dragon in the neighboring realm made over one of their souls going missing?”
“……Do I have to be transferred again?”
Back to being Lee Siwoo, not Yuria?
I don't want that.
It's not that I want to live as a woman.
I just don't want to leave this comfortable place and go back to the hell I was in, where I was desperate to die.
I like following Derek around and waiting on him.
“Hmm, so it's the same for you, too?”
“The same, how?”
“Haaaah. Ordinary humans often mistakenly think dragons are omnipotent beings. Even the highest-ranking Stellar Dragons are only administrators.”
She can stop time, and yet she's not omnipotent.
Hmm, so even a Stellar Dragon can't send me back to my original world.
……Then can she turn me back into a man?
“I don't know how you came from there to here. I don't know how to send you back, either. I don't even have the authority to restore your original appearance. Honestly, those higher-ups are absolutely hopeless at handling things.”
“Dragon…… Do you have higher-ups, too?”
“Of course. I'm in charge of a star, so above me there's someone in charge of the star system, then the galaxy, and above that…… I'm just a bottom-rung nobody, that's all.”
Oh…… Suddenly, she seemed incredibly lowly.
“Anyway, I was keeping an eye on you to see if you'd cause any trouble, and then I came across something really interesting!”
In an instant, the dragon disappeared from my sight, and before I knew it, I heard water splashing behind me.
Then hands began roaming over my body.
Starting with my chest, then my waist, butt, and inner thighs.
“Haaah, your appearance is just perfect. This is my first time seeing something like this, but the laws that govern the universe really can't be ignored.”
“Ex……cuse me?”
Ignoring my reaction, the dragon began fondling my breasts this way and that.
For some reason, I was suddenly glad the dragon had a woman's body.
Or should I say a female body……?
“Say, Siwoo. Aren't you curious why I suddenly appeared in front of you?”
“Uh…… because I'm an existence outside the natural order……?”
“That's about five percent of the reason. The other ninety-five percent is this.”
So said the female dragon, enthusiastically fondling my chest.
I mean, even if yours are on the small side, why are you……?
“I feel like you're thinking something a little rude.”
“……I'm sorry.”
“It's fine. More importantly, try to remember when I first started staying by your side.”
Come to think of it.
When did she first come to be by my side?
I glanced at Derek.
He was still frozen in the same pose.
Then I remembered the fastball Derek had thrown me moments ago.
‘Do you want to be in love with a woman?’
The one thing I knew for sure was that this question had prompted her to reveal herself, even going so far as to stop time.
That's it.
“Um…… a moment ago, you said you'd been watching me for the past four years, right?”
“That's right. I wasn't glued to your side, but there are ways to watch from a distance.”
“Then I don't think when you first started watching me is all that important. What's important is why you suddenly appeared.”
The dragon took her hands off my chest, which she'd been fondling for quite a while.
Then she wrote something on my bare back with her finger.
-That's right.
Before I realized it, the dragon was back in front of my eyes.
Astonishingly, one of the dragon's arms had vanished.
No, let me correct that. It looked as if she'd put it ‘somewhere.’
Frowning as if she were fishing something out from the depths of a bag, the dragon waved the remaining part of her missing arm around, then finally pulled something out of thin air.
“Here. This is why I became so interested in you.”
It was a book.
It was clearly a different kind of book from anything you could find in this world.
In other words, it looked like one of those officially published fantasy novels I'd read back on Earth.
More importantly, I could read the title.
Because the letters were familiar to me.
And when I saw the first two letters of the title, my face stiffened.
“TS……?”
“Exactly! Maybe it's because you're the subject, but you reacted right away! This is cutting-edge culture I learned from the Stellar Dragon in your neighborhood, and I can't sleep well these days without it.”
……Suddenly, I felt deflated.
The being before me seemed incredibly insignificant.
“No, look. A ridiculously hot TS situation happened for the first time in my domain. But I just couldn't tell whether the subject was going to go for the female route. Then the subject finally started setting that route in motion.”
In other words, fuck, this dragon is a total fucking TS pervert, and she happened to notice me, someone who'd been TS'd?
I suddenly started having serious doubts about the very nature of this world.
This is the Master of the Stars?