Interlude: No Pain, No Underwear
A receptionist's work did not end when the guild closed its doors. Once you had plowed through the mountain of paperwork, you still had to sort it all and file it away. Before you knew it, bedtime had arrived — and the moment you opened your eyes, you were heading back to the guild all over again.
Tina, the receptionist who had once been a Saintess, dragged her exhausted body home after work to the rented house she'd taken near the guild. The instant she opened the door and stepped inside, she collapsed spread-eagle on the floor and stared blankly at the ceiling.
"Haaah..."
She forced herself up and stood in front of the mirror. She unbuttoned her receptionist uniform and peeled the clothes off one by one. The uniforms the guild receptionists wore were neat and pretty, but they weren't exactly comfortable.
The truth was, she'd been wrestling with a particular problem lately. It had to do with her days as a Saintess — specifically, the loophole she'd used to dodge the Goddess's revelations by simply not wearing underwear. After going so long without it, her body had come to reject underwear entirely.
When she took off her receptionist uniform, Tina was completely naked underneath.
There was no reason to keep going without underwear now that she'd quit being a Saintess. So she'd tried putting it back on, more than once. But for some reason her skin would itch and feel so uncomfortable she simply couldn't get used to it.
"Why is this happening..."
Tina sighed, staring at the drawer where she'd folded her underwear and tucked it away. Even when she slept at home, she wore a loose, comfortable single-layer nightgown instead of anything underneath. She knew this wasn't normal. If anyone ever found out...
No. She couldn't go on living without underwear forever.
Tina made up her mind once more. A woman who secretly never wore underwear — didn't that make her sound like some kind of pervert, even to herself? This was a body that had served as a Saintess, even if she had rejected the role herself. She would force herself to endure the discomfort and wear underwear again. She would go back to the old days, when she could put on clothes like a normal person.
Tina pulled the underwear she hadn't worn in so long back out of the drawer. Tomorrow, she would go to work wearing it under her uniform. She swore it.
Morning came. Tina finally went to work with underwear on beneath her receptionist uniform.
"Ah! Meruru got here first today, so it is! Meruru wins, so it is!"
The moment she stepped into the guild, Meruru — the receptionist in charge of demi-humans — shouted with a delighted face. Tina was usually the first one in, but today she'd been a little late putting on the underwear. Meruru had a habit of turning their morning arrivals into a competition of her own invention, and winning for the first time in a while had her in high spirits.
"Ahaha... Good morning, Meruru."
"Hm? Something's different today, so it is."
"What?! Nothing's different at all. Meruru, you've finished your own work, haven't you?"
"Waaaaah! Meruru hasn't done a single thing, so it is!"
Meruru scrambled back to her desk. Tina patted her chest in relief and headed to the counter to start on the morning paperwork, a vaguely uneasy look on her face.
The underwear she was wearing for the first time in ages was, as expected, uncomfortable. Every time she moved, she could feel a foreign sensation under her arms and across her back, and something around her thighs itched and stung. But today's Tina had come to work with an iron resolve. This time, she would go back to the days when she could wear underwear again. The anxious, embarrassing days of going without would end today. It had started because she stopped wearing it, so if she started wearing it again, her body would eventually adapt. With that grim determination, she threw herself into her work.
"Ugh..."
But it was easier said than done. The unpleasant sensation of itching and stinging all over her body made it nearly impossible to concentrate on the paperwork. By this hour she would normally have finished already and been preparing for adventurer reception, but she wasn't making any progress at all.
Sting. Sting. Sting.
Itch. Itch. Itch.
Tina held the documents she needed to process in one hand and scratched her itching body with the other. No matter how much she scratched over her receptionist uniform, the itch wouldn't subside, and she was enduring the torment with everything she had.
Goddess... is this Your punishment for refusing to accept Your will? This is too much...
But the guild's workday had only just begun. An uneasy premonition that this was going to be a truly brutal day drew a sigh from her unbidden.
"Here. I'll leave these with you again today."
Yunoa stopped by the guild as usual and picked out a few Silver Rank request forms, handing them to Tina. She thought he was a remarkably diligent person, never missing a day of taking on requests at the guild. When they'd first met, she never would have imagined he'd become such a solid adventurer. Back when she was Saintess Sistina, she'd only reached out to a beggar to maintain the Saintess's image — and yet that connection had lasted all the way until now. It was remarkable.
Yunoa's performance on the Belle Epoque Mansion request not long ago had been especially impressive. Tina even found herself wondering, vaguely, whether he might become someone even greater than she'd imagined.
"Um... Tina? Are you feeling all right?"
She was processing the request forms he'd handed her, lost in thought, when he suddenly asked. Tina's face flushed crimson in an instant.
"What?! No?! Uncomfortable? Not at all! Nothing of the— sort!"
Startled by Yunoa's sudden question, Tina answered in a cadence that was bizarre by anyone's standards. Her hair standing on end, she froze stiff and rolled her eyes, watching his face. The reason she'd been so startled was that Yunoa was the only person who had ever known about her underwear situation. At the time, he'd said he'd learned she didn't wear underwear through a prophetic dream, and now that she'd left the Church those dreams had supposedly stopped — but she couldn't help being anxious.
Don't tell me... he knows?
Tina was intensely conscious of the way Yunoa was looking at her. Could this man still be having prophetic dreams? Did he know she didn't wear underwear? And had he noticed that today, of all days, she'd put it on for the first time in ages? Was that why he'd asked? If so, she wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear from sheer embarrassment.
"That... really doesn't seem right. You're not sick, are you?"
Yunoa said, looking worried at Tina's overreaction. Of course, he had only asked because he was genuinely concerned about her. The Tina he saw every day was a tired person, worn down by receptionist work, dark circles hanging under her eyes. But the more Yunoa asked, the more flustered Tina became.
"What!? Sick? I'm not! The! Request forms! Are done!"
Tina couldn't calm down, to a degree that even she found alarming. The more flustered she got, the itchier her body seemed to become because of the underwear. The world started spinning before her eyes. Yunoa watched her quietly for a moment, then spoke.
"You'll wear yourself out if you push too hard."
"What!? W-wear what?!"
What was that supposed to mean? That pushing herself too hard to wear underwear was bad for her body? This man definitely knew something.
"Don't receptionists get to leave early? Your face is all red, and the way you're talking is weird... you look like you might be in trouble."
What on earth was he saying? Was he telling her to go home early and take the underwear off? He definitely knew something!
"I— that's— I mean— I'm... I'm fine, so! Ah..."
As Tina stammered, at a complete loss, the other adventurers in the guild started looking their way.
"Hm? The receptionist looks a little off."
"What's going on? Her ears and face are bright red. Does she have a fever?"
"Hey, miss receptionist! You all right?"
The adventurers each chimed in. Yunoa was looking at Tina with a completely bewildered expression.
I just want to... become dust... I want to become dust and blow away on the wind...
In the end, Tina covered her face with both hands and sank to the floor.
The guild work, packed with embarrassment and hardship, was finally over. On the way home, Tina trudged through Kubel's night streets with a face several times more exhausted than usual. The places where the underwear touched her still stung and itched. She'd been so distracted by it that she hadn't even been able to do her work properly at the guild. The paperwork that had piled up today would be entirely tomorrow's Tina's problem.
Was underwear really worth this much suffering? Tina sighed, filled with doubt. Right now, all she wanted was to get home and peel off this suffocating underwear.
The moment she stepped inside, Tina stripped first thing. She took off her receptionist uniform, then the underwear, and flung it all aside.
"......!"
Then came a liberation so profound she could hardly believe it. The heavy thing that had been pressing down on her body vanished in an instant. It felt as though she had broken free of shackles that had bound her for years, and become a truly free being.
"Haaah... I'm... done for..."
Tina sank to the floor of her room and hung her head. She didn't want to admit it, but her body was honest. She had come to prefer not wearing underwear. She had no choice but to accept it now.
"Goddess... I've become a pervert..."
Tina lay spread-eagle, staring at the ceiling as she muttered. Tomorrow, she would gather up all the underwear she owned and throw it away. She would accept a life without underwear.
And so Tina never wore underwear again.