Chapter 100
Aysirel's date plan was as follows.
- Squeeze tight.
“Ngh.”
First, she'd put on a Master’s feat-of-strength show to keep herself going, then get Akion dead drunk,
use the excuse of needing to rest with Akion for a while to take him to an upscale lodging establishment,
where her main goal was to throw him onto the bed and have her way with him, ehehe, ah-heh.
If anyone heard her plan, they'd say she was rushing things way too much, but Aysirel was currently in her mid-thirties.
It was about time she started worrying about her marriage prospects if she wanted to wait for Akion.
She'd still be young and spry until her fifties because she was a Master. Anyway.
- Rub rub~!
“A-Akion.”
“Hm? What is it?”
That was why she had intended to make it official today, no matter what the women around Akion might say….
“Don't hold it like that!”
“What am I holding strangely?”
But Akion's innocent advance, his foxiness having increased lately, brought her plan to an abrupt halt.
“M-my hand!”
The “holding hands like lovers” that the Tower Master had shyly confessed about last time.
Aysirel had never imagined she'd be subjected to it herself…but now that she was, she felt embarrassed, and her chest tickled wildly.
So this was why the Tower Master had been quietly bragging about holding Akion's hand, and yet,
Aysirel frantically waved at the hand she had clasped with Akion.
Then Akion grew a little dejected,
“If you don't like it, you can let go.”
“W-what?!”
He tried to let go first.
- Squeeze tight…!
“Ow!”
“Don't let go!”
Akion had shamelessly toyed with her feelings, then tried to pull away first.
Unable to bear both her indignation and her pounding heart, Aysirel grabbed the fleeing Akion and held him tight.
“That hurts!!”
“Then who told you to let go?!!”
“I thought you didn't like me, so I was going to let go!”
“When did I ever say I didn't?!!”
“Jeez.”
To Akion, who had no idea what Aysirel was thinking, it was an utterly unfair response.
Even so, Aysirel's hand was honest.
When her rough hand took hold of his again, he could feel how careful she was.
“A-anyway, don't let go. Got it?”
“I wish you'd make it clear whether you dislike it or like it.”
Seeing her like this made a mischievous impulse surge through Akion.
So he threw out a shameless question,
but immediately afterward, Akion thought, “Oops!”
He wondered if Aysirel might twist his hand again.
“If I had to put it one way.”
- Squeeze tight….
Contrary to his fears, Aysirel carefully tightened her grip on his hand.
“I do like it. Yeah. My fiancé is being this forward, after all.”
Along with a faint blush on her face.
*
“Where should we go? You had something in mind, didn't you?”
But merely holding hands had reset Aysirel's mind completely.
And then there was Akion, who had taken her hand with the innocent thought, ‘I just feel like Big Sis will enjoy it!’
“Mm-hmm. I just want to walk around with you like this.”
“Then let's go somewhere with the idea of taking a walk.”
As a result, their date that day became entirely unplanned, and they ended up exploring various parts of the Academy wherever their feet took them.
They had already wandered all over the place with the Saintess on the first day…but in a way, the Academy festival was also a venue where Academy students conducted business and promoted themselves,
“Oh, look at that.”
“Looks like they used aura to imitate telekinetic magic.”
Since they held a different event every day for self-promotion, there was more to see than expected.
They bought snacks at a food stall run by other Faculty of Administration students,
competed against each other at a dart-like game,
and laughed their way through a comedy play put on by the Faculty of Arts.
- Squeeze.
For Aysirel, who had devoted more than thirty years to the North, this was an utterly unfamiliar kind of date.
Her life had been nothing but compliance: she had lived for her engagement and her family, without even knowing whether she had desires of her own.
“How about lunch here?”
“Shall we?”
And then came the turbulent few years after meeting the suddenly changed Akion.
- Slip.
“Ah.”
Aysirel regretted even that brief moment when she let go of Akion's hand….
- Grab!
“Eek. What, you didn't want to eat this?”
She had changed so much that she unconsciously reached out and took Akion's hand.
“N-no, it's not that. It just happened all of a sudden.”
“Oh…okay.”
At that moment, Aysirel realized what she had been thinking when she did it.
With her face bright red, Aysirel let go of Akion's hand again,
then opened and closed the hand that had held his.
“You eat a lot, so I'll order two.”
“When did I ever eat a lot?!”
“Heehee— Aah! The fiancée hit her evil fiancé!!”
She did give that hateful Akion one knock for publicly calling her a big eater. Anyway.
“If it weren't for you, I'd really have knocked your jaw sideways.”
“If you weren't my Big Sis, I wouldn't have teased you either.”
The two bought and ate simple sandwiches sold by students from the Faculty of Administration.
Apparently emboldened by teasing Aysirel, Akion continued provoking her.
“Oh? Then shall we see whether you keep teasing me in bed, too?”
“You're joking, right?”
“Does it sound like a joke?”
“My apologies.”
“Good.”
But when there was an overwhelming difference in strength, the weak had no choice but to bow their heads.
Faced with Aysirel's threat to make it official, Akion immediately buried his head like a well-ripened rice stalk.
“Since we're on the subject, what made you decide not to break off the engagement?”
“Akion, as you know, an engagement is one of the surest ways to form an alliance.”
Then Akion brought up the somewhat taboo subject he had been curious about: their engagement.
It wasn't exactly taboo, but it was an awkward subject to bring up… and since the opportunity had arisen, he wanted to ask at least once.
“All the new buildings we've put up in the North are Akion Workshop products, and if your side handles their maintenance while we give you the mining development rights as well, there's plenty for us to gain.”
And Aysirel rattled off a list of calculations for her family's benefit, speaking as the duke's daughter.
No matter what they did, Volkov would gain far more by getting in the same boat with Enerisis, she said.
Akion noticed there wasn't a speck of personal feeling in her opinion.
“Then…what do you personally think, Big Sis?”
So he asked.
Whether she liked being engaged to him.
Even with the values of his past life, Akion was now a noble young master who knew what he was doing.
He knew well that personal feelings came second in an engagement, but he still wanted to be considerate of Aysirel.
“Who knows? Even if I die, I’ll still be a Volkov lady.”
Aysirel answered with, “Because I'm a Volkov.”
It meant her own wishes did not matter in the slightest.
“I have to follow the Duke of Volkov's orders. Besides, you seem to like me too, my fiancé.”
“Do you think so?”
“Why? Would you like me to like you?”
In fact, Aysirel had already begun to like Akion to some extent.
She saw him as more than merely an all-right man—she even listed off the same good qualities the Saintess had rattled off in front of the Saint and Pope before.
But saying that outright would be a little much, wouldn't it?
So she'd planned to make it official first and fall in love afterward, something relatively common among engaged couples.
“Yes.”
“Huh?”
“If possible, it’s better for people who like each other to get married, right?”
But she hadn't expected Akion to come at her so directly.
Of course, Akion had only been sharing his personal opinion about engagements,
but to Aysirel….
I like you as a woman.
“H-hey, what are you saying…!”
was what it sounded like.
Aysirel covered her suddenly burning face with both hands and rubbed it furiously…trying to sort out the confusion in her head.
As the Duke's daughter, Aysirel had heard words like that from men before,
but this was the first time she'd heard them from a man she found quite attractive….
“What do you mean, ‘what am I saying’?”
“Shut up. I want to drag you to an inn right now.”
“Gasp.”
That day, Aysirel was swept by the urge to abduct Akion throughout their entire date.
The urge to hug him tight, take him to an inn where the other women wouldn't find out, and throw him onto the bed….
- Squeeze tight…!
“Big Sis. My hand hurts.”
She pressed down hard by squeezing Akion's hand tightly.
Honestly, just holding his hand made Aysirel incredibly, incredibly happy.
“Don't be bratty, you sly little thing.”
“Eek.”
But Aysirel was the one who kept him in line.
Trembling at the date violence(?), Akion was dragged around by Aysirel.
* * *
That said, Akion's chastity had not actually been in danger,
“Why didn't you pounce on him?”
They had simply gone around the Academy together, holding hands and teasing each other.
Goldie knew what kind of underwear Aysirel had been wearing the day before…so, honestly, she had been prepared for trouble, expecting her to do something.
“You were prepared for it, Big Sis. You said you were in a hurry because you're already in your mid-thirties— waaaah!”
“I’m a Master, so I’m still young until my fifties, you know?”
And as the price for delivering that fact-based verbal assault, Goldie got her cheeks stretched by Aysirel.
With Goldie sobbing beside her, Aysirel let out a deep sigh and looked out the window.
“I don't know. At that moment, I didn't want Akion to hate me.”
To be hated by someone you had begun to like?
Aysirel had realized just how frightening that could be the day before.
“Heehee. You're a total novice at romance.”
“You're a beginner too.”
“But I was by Young Master's side longer— Eek, no pinching!”
“I won't pinch you if you stop being obnoxious.”
A beastkin maid and a Master duke's daughter, both claiming they were dating the same man.
“Big Sis, Big Sis. Do you think Young Master will be all right?”
“Who knows? Akion knows how to conduct himself, so I don't think there'll be a problem.”
Today, those two were guarding the research lab.
The shop had been outsourced anyway, so that didn't matter…and the only people there were Hermione and Astera, who were in the middle of research, and Juan, who had stopped by for a little while.
“Even if he's in front of a dragon.”
As for where Akion, the Saintess, the Tower Master, and Flare had gone….
*
“So you’re Akion Enerisis?”
“And beside you…that must be Flare. Hmm. Your dragon blood is strong. So it really is true that you're close to us.”
Akion and Flare were standing before dragons roughly the size of ten-story buildings.
“Guh.”
“Hek.”
- Rumble…!
“I heard it from that girl who runs the Tower. They say you're the genius who revived magi-engineering?”
“Hoho, but that was lost in my grandfather's time, I hear….”
“It brings back memories. Fighting with the riffraff who occupied the former Clifford throne…ah, those were the days.”
They were dragons showing their true bodies rather than human forms, with each scale alone as large as Akion and Flare.
Akion had followed along without a second thought because the Tower Master said she needed him, but….
“Now, show off that knowledge of yours! I shall judge whether it truly contains a powerful revelation capable of shaking the earth!”
“Hyeek.”
Akion learned painfully that he shouldn't follow even people he knew without asking where they were going.