Chapter 48
“……So it was just because of her trauma?”
“That’s what I’m telling you. I swear I never did anything like that. And that business about her first time… I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Could you tell me what that trauma is?”
“Yeah, it’s a rather sensitive subject…”
I see.
On the carriage bound for Baelogia, Prea and the Hero whispered to each other as they cleared up the misunderstanding.
They were speaking so quietly because Yubel, exhausted after getting excited over the news that the Saint had joined, was fast asleep.
“Heehee! Did you fight with Yubel too, Prea? When I first joined the Hero’s party, Yubel kept making it obvious she didn’t like me either! Especially when I tried to stick close to Se-on!”
“I-Is that so? But why would she…?”
“Yubel gets really jealous! Whenever we go to sleep, the spot next to Se-on always belongs to Yubel!”
“Ehhh…”
From Riella’s candid answer, Prea realized it was true.
‘It really was just a misunderstanding. Then, did Lady Yubel put on that act because she didn’t like me being close to Lord Se-on?’
Normally, people would get angry at Yubel for lying when they heard something like that.
But Prea saw it a little differently.
‘Come to think of it, there were children like that at the orphanage, too…’
The orphanage where Prea had lived since she was thirteen.
It was filled with children who had lost their parents when the kingdom fell to the Black Knight,
and because there were so many of them, they often fought over food or hurled vicious insults at one another.
So Yubel’s lie, born of jealousy,
seemed to Prea no different from a cute little girl throwing a tantrum.
‘Surely Lady Yubel wanted to keep Lord Se-on close, even if she had to resort to something like that…’
Prea revised her opinion of Yubel to ‘a pure, pitiful girl who gets jealous easily.’
That said, Prea had no intention of giving up on her feelings for Se-on.
Despite the little trouble, he was still the first person who had ever made her heart flutter.
‘All right! Now that we’ve put that unpleasant incident behind us, Lord Se-on and I can start over from zero!’
Prea cleared her throat.
As a Saint, she had plenty of experience hearing confessions, so as long as she didn’t make eye contact, she could hold a decent conversation.
Then Prea began thinking about what to talk about.
The first step was important.
If she thought it through carefully, she could get a good result.
However.
“U-Um… I need to pee…”
Sometimes, making a quick decision was important, too.
While Prea was thinking, Yubel woke up.
“Oh. Wait just a moment, Yubel. Driver! Could you stop here for a bit?”
Screeech—
At Se-on’s request, the carriage came to a halt.
Se-on stepped out to help Yubel, who needed to pee.
Then he took toilet paper made from Taratect thread out of his backpack.
It was an expensive product used mostly by royalty and nobles; since it naturally disappeared shortly after use, cleanup was easy, too.
Anyway, it was so expensive that most adventurers could only dream of owning it.
Before they set out on their adventure, Yubel had stood awkwardly in front of the toilet paper for quite a while, so Se-on had spent money he didn’t have and bought some for her.
All from his personal emergency fund.
Prea had watched the whole thing and was moved by how considerate Se-on was.
‘Few people would sacrifice this much for their companions… Lord Se-on really is a Hero.’
But there was one thing she found strange.
Se-on wasn’t handing the toilet paper to Yubel.
And then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world,
“Yubel, come this way. Let’s hurry up and get you to pee.”
“Mmm… This time, take them off quickly… Last time, I got a little on my panties…”
Se-on and Yubel got out of the carriage together.
“Huh?”
Prea doubted her own eyes.
A girl was going to pick flowers, so why was a man going along?
What’s more, he acted as though this were perfectly natural, without a hint of hesitation.
And from the context of their conversation, it sounded like he was going to take off her panties for her, too.
No matter how close they were, there were still proprieties between men and women.
Even at the orphanage, where chaos reigned, she had never seen such shameless behavior.
He was being far too considerate.
“W-What on earth is that… Lady Riella?”
“Hm? What’s wrong?”
“Why is Lord Se-on going with Lady Yubel to pick flowers…?”
Prea asked Riella cautiously.
What if—though surely such a thing couldn’t be happening—
Lord Se-on had coaxed innocent Lady Yubel into acting that way?
But the answer she received was somewhat different from what she’d expected.
“Oh, that? Yubel’s scared, you know! Se-on always goes with her!”
“Pardon?”
What kind of ridiculous answer was that?
Of course, she could be frightened in the grass, where monsters might appear.
Nothing was more dangerous than running into a monster while defenseless.
But…
“Couldn’t one of us go with her…?”
A perfectly reasonable question.
If Yubel was really scared,
wouldn’t it make more sense for another woman to go with her?
The party had one man and three women, so that wouldn’t be a problem.
Hearing Prea’s question, Riella fell into deep thought.
At last, she came up with an answer.
“Oh! I said the same thing last time, but Yubel said it had to be Se-on!”
“Eh?”
Prea’s expression went blank.
The answer she’d gotten was that absurd.
Why did Lady Yubel insist it had to be Lord Se-on?
It was incomprehensible to an ordinary person.
Even so, Prea tried her best to understand.
After all, from now on she was a member of the Hero’s party, too.
‘Ah, now that I think about it, at the orphanage…’
At that moment,
Prea remembered the children at the orphanage who had become dependent on others.
The children who had lost their parents and clung to the nuns.
Such children didn’t easily open their hearts to anyone but the adults they trusted.
Was Lady Yubel like one of those children?
Somehow, the pieces fell into place.
‘B-But no matter how I think about it, that line…’
However.
She should have stopped there,
but Prea went one step further.
The dirty books the orphanage children had hidden away.
A novel about a pure, delicate girl being trained by a seemingly innocent young man.
She remembered the contents of that lewd book.
And Prea’s imagination fused the book with Yubel’s situation.
‘Yubel. What are you supposed to say when you need to pee?’
‘Hnn… Heeero. I’m a lowly, filthy sex slave… Hngh, please allow me to ta-take off my panties…’
‘…Good. You pass this time. I’ll take them off now, so stay still.’
‘Hehe, I did it… Hurry and take them off, Heeero…’
Rustle.
And so, Lady Yubel’s panties slowly slid down—
“Aaaaaaaah!!!!!!”
“Eek! Wh-What was that!?”
“Ah! I-I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to…”
Prea snapped out of her fantasy.
At the same time, an overwhelming sense of guilt washed over her.
Despite being a Saint, she had entertained such thoughts about a fellow party member, and she began to deeply regret it.
‘I-I’m crazy! But… after what happened a few days ago… I-I couldn’t help it!’
Her remorse vanished, replaced by self-justification.
While Prea was fighting with herself in her head,
Yubel and Se-on returned after taking care of business, and the carriage was already moving again.
And a little while later,
while fighting a group of goblins that appeared in front of the carriage, Yubel put on a show by lifting her skirt toward Se-on.
Prea witnessed it firsthand, of course, and leapt up in a frenzy before promptly collapsing, foaming at the mouth.
This was the Saint’s monumental first adventure after joining the Hero’s party.
***
As we rode along in the carriage, we spotted a small village.
We went straight to an inn and decided to spend the night there.
Finding a village was incredibly lucky, since we could stay in a proper bed instead of camping out during our adventure.
I thought I’d finally get a comfortable night’s sleep for once, but…
“Yubel, are you really going to sleep like this?”
“Yeah. Is there a problem? It’s already been decided.”
“No. There’s no problem, but…”
This was a problem.
Before I knew it, I’d ended up sharing a room with Yubel, just the two of us.
And that fact was driving me crazy.
This wasn’t a situation I’d deliberately brought about.
It was unavoidable, given the nature of a small inn.
‘Yeah, who could’ve seen this coming?’
When we entered the inn, there wasn’t a four-person room—or even a three-person room.
So we each took rooms for two, and then Yubel said this worked out perfectly and declared she’d sleep with me.
Naturally, Prea and Riella objected.
They probably thought they couldn’t let a man like me sleep with Yubel, even if one of them had to sleep on the floor.
This time, they also protested that they wanted to try sleeping next to me themselves.
Well, since we were all in the same party, and Yubel was always next to me whenever we slept, they probably wanted to try something different.
But Yubel asked what they were talking about, saying they were women and couldn’t be next to the Hero, and told them not to get any ideas.
Everyone except Yubel was dumbfounded by that.
‘Aren’t you a woman, too…?’
Anyway, we couldn’t keep causing a scene at the inn, so in the end Yubel got to sleep with me.
Up until then, I hadn’t thought much of it.
So what if I was sleeping with Yubel?
We’d always done that until now.
I was unpacking in the room when… I realized something.
I’d never slept with Yubel ‘alone together’ in a ‘locked room’ before.
When I first met Yubel, Riella was with us, and later in Edelia, we borrowed the elders’ room and slept with Hardrien.
After that, there was no need to say more.
Riella had always been with us.
‘Gulp…’
So this really was the first time.
When I thought about it, my hands and feet started trembling like crazy.
I swallowed nervously without realizing it.
‘I did get properly blessed, right? It’s okay for me to sleep with her like this, isn’t it?’
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
My heart was pounding hard.
Rustle.
I looked over at Yubel, who was already sitting on the double bed, getting ready for sleep.
She was still wearing that short chemise dress.
Maybe because the dress was so thin, the reddish light made Yubel’s figure stand out plainly.
Something about this… was way too sexy.
“Hey, what are you doing? Hurry up and lie down here.”
Pat, pat.
Yubel patted the spot next to her and called me over.
“O-Okay! I was just coming!”
Oh no. My voice cracked a little.
It was the voice of someone who was obviously nervous.
Yubel tilted her head, wearing ‘that expression’ she always made when looking at me.
Then she climbed into the inner side of the bed, against the wall, and lay down.
I went over to the bed, too.
Plop.
I lay down on the bed.
Then the bed sank under my weight.
Maybe the bed here was made with different materials.
“Eek! What’s wrong with this…? Mmm? I-I’m suddenly sleepy…”
Thanks to that, Yubel rolled toward me and snuggled into my arms.
Maybe because of her thin dress, I could feel her soft skin all over my body.
A scent like lavender, the smell of her skin, tickled the tip of my nose.
‘This is insane…! I have to push her away!’
Roll, roll.
I pushed Yubel, who was all woozy from [Pheromones], back into the corner.
I almost lost my reason.
But then.
“Koo…”
“H-Huh?”
Yubel, pushed into the corner, pulled up the blanket and fell asleep with a cute little sound.
[Pheromones] seemed to be an excellent cure for insomnia, too.
I stared blankly at the sleeping Yubel.
“She’s already asleep…”
Somehow, it felt hollow.
Like an event in a game had ended the moment it began.
That emptiness lingered.
Maybe this was my chance to gain the upper hand in the contest with the demon.
Thinking that made me regret it even more.
‘Sigh…’
I knew it, too.
If I kept acting this sluggish, Yubel would never see me as a man.
I thought I needed to change, starting now.
‘Right. Let’s start by holding her hand.’
First, I decided to increase our physical contact.
But if I suddenly held her hand, it would be awkward.
So, as practice, I decided to secretly hold Yubel’s hand while she was asleep.
It might look perverted, but I couldn’t afford to be choosy about my methods.
I had no idea what move the demon might make next.
“First, I’ll lift the blanket… Mmm!?”
I lifted the blanket to find her hand.
And then I saw Yubel’s body, wearing nothing but panties.
It had happened because when you sleep in a one-piece dress, it inevitably rolls up at some point.
“Ah, ngh…”
For a moment, I was so shocked that my body froze.
And I couldn’t take my eyes off the sight.
Because ugly desires were coming over me.
And before I knew it, those desires had used [Undress] to take off Yubel’s panties, just like last time.
And the whispers continued.
They told me to pounce on her right then, that she was sleeping deeply and wouldn’t know, that this was self-defense…
‘No…!’
My reason and instincts began a fierce tug-of-war.
Two choices hovered in the air: hold back or give in.
My heart was pounding hard, as if I’d used Adrenaline.
Squeeze—!
“Ugh!”
I pinched my thigh hard to resist.
The pain brought a little of my reason back.
I needed pain intense enough to make me bleed.
‘Two, three, five, seven…’
Then I drove the evil thoughts from my head by listing prime numbers.
My eyes were fixed on Yubel’s lower body, but for some reason, my mind was growing calmer.
‘Eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen…’
I kept working my brain without stopping.
Until the whispers in my head stopped.
***
Five minutes passed like that.
A long time if you counted it as long, a short time if you counted it as short.
But to me, it was excruciatingly long.
“I-I did it!”
I cheered!
The damn whispers had finally stopped.
I’d overcome my desire by my own strength!
Even with Yubel naked in front of me, I felt completely calm.
How incredible was that?
“Phew, thank goodness I held back…”
I sighed in relief, catching my breath.
Really.
Thank goodness.
When I came to my senses, I was naked, too.
If I’d made even the slightest mistake, I might have given Yubel a wound that would never heal.
Could anything be more horrible than being raped in her sleep by a trusted companion?
I certainly couldn’t think of anything.
Carefully, I picked up the black panties I’d removed with [Undress].
Now all I had to do was put them back on Yubel, pull down her raised dress, and cover her with the blanket. Then everything would be fine.
I moved down toward Yubel’s lower body and was holding the sides of her panties, ready to put them on.
But then.
Fwoosh—
“……?”
Suddenly, I felt the blood drain cold from my body.
A sense of despair washed over me.
It was as if bleach had washed my brain clean.
And then…
I felt an intense gaze.
‘D-Don’t tell me…’
I slowly rolled my eyes.
Toward the direction I felt the gaze coming from.
And then, in my field of vision,
“Ah.”
I saw Yubel, her eyes brimming with tears.
Drip, drip……
“……Pervert.”
Her voice trembled violently.
It came from Yubel, who was naked.
And I was naked, too.
“Ah…”
I’m so screwed.