The Knight Commander, Becoming an Exhibitionist?
"All right. Now lace both hands behind your head, please."
Nina said it without so much as lifting her eyes from the crystal plate.
"…Why?"
"Oh my, Commander. If you leave your arms down, the line of your side folds in like this, you see."
"It won't scan. So you'll have to raise them. All right?"
The tail of Nina's words dragged out, slick with amusement.
I clenched my teeth and set both hands behind my head. As my arms rose, my breasts lifted and thrust forward. It was a posture that left nothing at all to hide. The moment I realized it was the very stance I used to force on prisoners before I made them kneel, the inside of my throat burned bitter.
"Good. Turn slowly, just like that, one full circle. Ah—too fast. Again."
One turn, then another. Only on the third did Nina nod. As I turned, the three faces outside the circle swept past my eyes one after another, and not one of them looked away. Every time I turned my back I felt their gazes settle on my backside, and my steps grew stiffer and stiffer.
"The rear view is splendid too. I bet your knights ran their drills staring at this."
"Rita, write down the hip measurement. No, wait—turn once more. I want to see how it jiggles."
This time Rita didn't even try to hide it. She giggled outright.
"Scars: one sword cut on the left flank, one arrow mark on the inner right thigh. And a mole beneath the left breast."
Carmilla laughed softly.
"Commander, you had a mole in a place like that?"
"…Be quiet."
Carmilla only smiled with her eyes.
I hadn't known either. I had never looked that far into a mirror. A woman seeing me for the first time today was reading a body even I did not know.
"Next is the Movement Inscription."
"You'll have to swing a sword at the Commemoration, won't you? We need to capture the way the muscles move. Could you show us your swordsmanship, just once?"
Nina tossed a wooden sword into the circle. My hand answered before thought could, and caught it. Naked, I gripped the sword, spread my legs wide, and lowered my hips. It was a stance I had taken thousands of times, one I could find with my eyes closed. But the moment I settled into it without a single stitch of clothing, the air of the workshop struck straight between my parted thighs. That day I learned, for the first time, how shamefully exposed my family's sword art really was.
"Commander, you usually go much lower than that, don't you?" Carmilla said it teasingly, arms folded. "Why so modest today? Spread your knees farther out."
"Any more than this…"
"Like usual, Commander. Just like usual."
I spread my knees wider. My hips sank until they nearly brushed my heels. With the space between my legs laid wide open, I held, the point of the sword leveled forward. The insides of my weakened thighs were already pulling taut and sore.
"Wow, you look like a frog. Is the Sword Princess's family sword art really about squatting like a frog?"
At Nina's words, Rita buried her face in the ledger and shook.
A family stance I had drilled thousands of times had, with a single word—frog—become a ridiculous spectacle.
"Hold it just like that for one minute, please. The doll has to stand in this pose through the whole Commemoration."
"We need to know how long the Commander's legs last before they start to shake, so we can match the doll's legs exactly. Rita, note when the trembling starts."
If they cast the doll from these legs as they were now, the figure meant to stand on the festival stage would not last thirty seconds before its legs began to shake. On an ordinary day, my legs did not tremble at something like this. The words rose as far as my throat. But to explain them, I would have had to confess the blood I had spilled on the training ground at dawn. I kept my mouth shut.
Rita turned over a small hourglass. The sound of falling sand rang strangely loud. The first tremor came before even thirty seconds had passed. As if she had been waiting for it, Rita's pen scratched. The less sand remained, the worse the shaking grew, and the pen followed close behind.
"Shaking already? Were the Sword Princess's legs always this weak?"
"To think this is the lower body of the Commander of the Second Knight Order. What would her knights think if they knew, Carmilla?"
"Better they don't."
Carmilla laughed low.
That the Sword Princess's legs had failed to hold even thirty seconds before they shook would be written into that ledger, intact. With every page that turned, it felt as if my name were becoming a joke.
Only when the sand had all run out could I finally straighten my legs. A drop of sweat that had hung from the point of my chin fell to the floor at last.
"Set the sword down. This time, hands behind your head again."
"Chest forward, waist and hips pushed all the way out, knees spread nice and wide."
I took the pose as ordered. My chest thrust out, my pelvis jutted forward, and between my spread knees everything opened toward the front.
"Yes, yes. Sword Princess, this pose suits you best of all."
"So natural, as if your body remembers it."
At Nina's words Rita laughed out loud. Carmilla covered her mouth and shook her shoulders too. The laughter of the three of them sank into the silver circle as if falling, and I, at the center of it, could do nothing.
The light descended. Past my navel, past my lower belly, it stopped between my legs.
"And you'll need to spread it a little with your hands. The inner folds aren't reading."
My breath caught hard.
"You need even that? Why would a doll need down there…"
"Commander."
From beneath the goggles pushed up on her forehead, Nina looked straight at me.
"I don't make half-finished goods. You're the one who asked me to make it exactly the same."
Carmilla nodded from outside the circle.
"Commander. Think of the knights."
The knights. The faces from this morning rose in my mind—faces that had looked up at me on the dais without understanding a thing. At that single sentence, the strength left my knees.
I lowered one of the hands I had raised behind my head. Trembling fingers slid down over my stomach. And with two fingers, I spread myself open.
The light pushed into the opened cleft like a tongue. What had been only lukewarm felt, in that one place, distinctly hot. The sensation of the inscription array reading the inner grain layer by layer was so vivid that I almost wished it were fingers prying me apart instead.
"You barely have any hair, Commander."
Carmilla snickered.
"A grown knight commander, and only this part is so bare. Smooth as a baby's."
"Pfft—it really is. So this was the Sword Princess's secret?"
Nina couldn't hold her laughter and ducked her head over the crystal plate. Rita had the ledger clutched to her chest and was laughing so hard she could barely breathe. Heat climbed all the way to the tips of my ears, but I could not lower my hands.
"Almost no hair. Clitoral size… Rita, write the measurement as it is."
"Uh, um… should I note that it's on the small side?"
"No. Be honest. Small, but standing up. We have to leave a record that it's standing, too."
At those words my breath stopped. The most secret place on my body was being taken apart in those two mouths and turned into numbers and jokes. I looked only at the ceiling. The hanging doll heads were looking down at me. They were empty sockets without eyes, and still I felt their gaze.
"Spread a little wider, please, Commander. And don't ease up on your fingers."
That was when it happened. Deep in my lower belly, an unfamiliar heat stirred.
…What is this?
At first I thought it was the light—that the inscription array's mana had only warmed my skin. But the heat was rising not from the skin, but from inside my body. Something slick touched the tips of the fingers holding me open. I was wet. No one had touched me, and yet my body had wet itself first.
"Oh my."
Carmilla covered her mouth with her hand.
"Commander, are you wet right now? Without anyone even touching you?"
"N-no, this is…"
"If it's this much without being touched, it seems being watched is the Sword Princess's taste."
At Carmilla's words my face burned as if it might burst. I wanted to deny it, but the gleam between my spread fingers was saying everything in my place.
"Wow, it really is. I can see it shining from here."
"Rita, write this down separately. 'Commander Valerion is an exhibitionist.' That's an important trait, isn't it?"
"Heh—heheh, yes, I wrote it."
Rita clamped her pen-hand over her mouth and shook her shoulders. The laughter stacked in my ears layer upon layer, and it felt as if the name Commander of the Second Knight Order were melting away from the tips of my toes.
"Nina, is that being recorded too, right now?"
Nina peered at the crystal plate. The answer came too fast.
"Surface moisture? It's all captured. Want me to reproduce it?"
"Wh-what…!"
"Do it."
Carmilla answered. She did not even wait for mine.
"Because it has to be perfectly the same. Right, Commander?"
I could not answer at all. I only bit my lip. Something—a single drop—ran from between my legs down the inside of my thigh, and fell, drop, onto the silver circle. As if the crystal pillar had read even that, it blinked once more.
"It fell on the floor. We'll have to wipe it up. That was the Sword Princess who dripped it, right?"
"Rita's the one who has to clean, so she'll be the one suffering. Won't you, Rita?"
"I-I'm fine…"
Rita flushed and laughed. Teasing and delight were mixed together in that laugh, and I wanted to close my eyes. But I thought the laughter would only grow clearer if I did, and in the end I could not shut them.
"This is the last one. Turn around, bend at the waist, and grab your backside with both hands and spread it. We have to capture all the way underneath."
Nina's voice rang distant, as if I were hearing it underwater.
Did everyone really do things like this? The nobles, too—and the people who entrusted them with the faces of their dead children. The thought crossed my mind, but I could not bring myself to ask. Because if I asked, I would have to hear the answer.
I turned slowly. I bent at the waist and, with both trembling hands, took hold of my backside and spread it to either side. All I could see before my eyes was the silver circle, and the single stain that had fallen upon it.
"Whoa… the Sword Princess is doing this to herself."
"Commander, you're really good at this. Even though it's your first time."
Carmilla's voice was gentle, and that made it all the more insulting. From behind me, the breathing of the three of them seemed to draw closer.
Wooong—
The crystal pillar thrummed low once more. In that interval, outside the circle, Carmilla and Nina met each other's eyes. Nina held up two fingers. The corner of Carmilla's mouth tilted, soundlessly, into a sneer.
Every pose I had taken tonight had been a sequence the two of them had arranged in advance. They were things this workshop never asked of anyone.
While I stood there with my backside spread open, I did not know.