Red Eyelashes
Was she embarrassed by how deeply she’d immersed herself? Rydia remained frozen, eyes shut tight. Well… I’d just been over-immersed in a character I’d only just created myself, so I could hardly blame her. I decided to wait quietly until the shame passed.
But then…
“Um, Lady Rydia? How long are you planning to stay like that?”
“……”
No matter how much time passed, Rydia didn’t open her eyes. Wondering if she’d fallen asleep, I gave her arm a shake, but she was so tense she didn’t budge an inch. Clearly wide awake.
“Lady Rydia?”
“……”
“Lady Rydia? Lady Rydia? Lady Rydia?”
“……”
I circled her three times, calling her name like I was trying to summon a demon, yet she didn’t so much as twitch. Huh? An opportunity?
I took the chance to observe Rydia up close.
The first thing that caught my eye was, naturally, her enormous chest. Its sheer mass was impressive, but that alone wasn’t enough to hold my gaze. To be blunt, women’s chests were ridiculously common on this continent. In summer you could see this level of exposure everywhere. The bigger they were, the more proudly they were shown off. Of course, I’d never seen anyone as large as Rydia before… but the point was, I wasn’t so starved for breasts that I’d obsess over them this much.
So what was it about her that made me so enthusiastic? I decided to analyze it piece by piece.
Aside from her chest, the first thing you noticed about Rydia was how small she was. She was bigger than me, who hadn’t fully grown yet, but she was short and slight. Yeah. Objectively speaking, her frame was quite petite. That was probably why she’d once gone on and on with sparkling eyes about how a rookie adventurer could make up for lacking specs with weapons. Back in her early days, Rydia must have been much weaker than the other women.
But that didn’t mean she looked weak now. People who awakened Aura had bodies optimized for combat. In other words, they became lean and toned, without an ounce of excess fat. From a distance, Rydia looked slender, but up close you could see the dense muscle packed beneath her skin. The contours weren’t overly pronounced. Whether it was due to her natural constitution, her level, or simply what suited her style, I couldn’t say… but aside from my own heavenly abs, you wouldn’t notice the muscle unless you looked or touched very carefully.
Next were the long crimson locks that fell past her waist to her hips. On such a small frame, the flowing hair alone drew attention, but what stood out even more was the vivid red color. In a fantasy world, hair colors came in all varieties. I myself had pink hair, after all. Red hair was common too. …But none had saturation as high as Rydia’s. A red so striking it would catch the eye anywhere. It felt like she’d painted an extra layer over the world itself. The sight of her swinging that long hair around… yeah. It reminded me of flickering flames. Her eyes, still closed now, were the same.
Only after taking all that in did my gaze reach Rydia’s face. She looked young overall, with a gentle, docile impression. A 7:3 blend of beauty and cuteness, maybe. Her constant blank expression was a shame, but lately, now that I could read her expressions a little, that had become part of her charm. Thinking back, I’d probably never looked at her face properly because my eyes kept drifting to her chest.
Nodding to myself, I stood on tiptoe. From this closer distance, I examined Rydia’s features one by one from below. Her tightly pressed crimson lips. A bit of baby fat still lingered on her cheeks. Her nose wasn’t particularly high, but it was refined enough to be called straight. Finally, my eyes landed on her still-closed eyes. Softly shut lids and the long lashes that followed. Naturally, the lashes were the same red as her hair. Humans were born with monochromatic body hair. In other words, the color of your hair and the hair elsewhere on your body was always the same. So red lashes weren’t strange… but the problem was that this realization made me involuntarily imagine the color of her other hair.
Whether it was because she wore bikini armor or because she groomed regularly, her armpits were at least smooth. I forced my gaze to stay put even as it tried to drift lower.
“Haa…”
Of all times, Rydia chose that moment to start moving again. Her eyelids slowly lifted. The crimson eyes that had been hidden stared straight at me.
…From a distance so close my face was reflected in her pupils.
“Kyaaaaah!”
“Hyaah…!”
I screamed because I’d been caught, and Rydia screamed because she was startled. We reflexively scrambled apart and turned our backs on each other, but our hearts were still pounding like broken clocks.
“Why did you suddenly open your eyes?!”
“What were you trying to do, Yona?! Don’t tell me…”
With our backs turned, we both shrieked. It sounded sweet and innocent when put into words, but in reality it was so awkward and embarrassing I wanted to die.
I let out a long sigh.
“…We’ve already gone past the point of no return anyway.”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“The problem is that you caught me staring at you and thinking your red eyelashes were pretty and wondering if the rest of your hair was the same color!”
“You were thinking that…?”
Rydia, who had somehow put five steps between us in an instant, shot me a horrified look. The way she reacted made it seem like she was staring at some troublesome man she’d rather not get involved with. A little hurtful, honestly.
We stood there in awkward silence for a while, but we couldn’t stay like this in the middle of a labyrinth forever. As the more mature one, I decided to extend the olive branch first.
“Ahem. Well, we’re both at that age, so these things happen, right?”
“…Shouldn’t I be the one saying that? Now I understand why Senior Elly calls you a shameless brat.”
“Come on! Details don’t matter! What matters is that it’s time for Lady Rydia to keep her promise!”
“Promise? Ah, the hide.”
Rydia nodded, then looked back and forth between the greatsword in her hand and me.
“Just in case, about that oath from earlier…”
“Ah, that? Obviously a joke. The mood just got to me. I’m not going to hold you to it or anything!”
No matter how you looked at it, turning a role-play into reality felt wrong. It was no different from failing to distinguish between fiction and reality.
Huh? Then what did that make me, who’d possessed my own novel?
While I tilted my head in confusion, Rydia trembled with a look of utter shock.
“A joke…? My first time… was a joke… a mistake made because the mood got to us… something that never happened…”
“…Lady Rydia? Why do you sound like someone who thought they’d found fated love only to be told it was a one-night stand?”
“How can you say something like that…!”
“Did I really do something that terrible?!”
I recoiled at the sight of Rydia glaring at me with fire in her eyes, but the only response I got was a face filled with loss.
“Yeah. I get it. It can’t be undone anymore…”
“Uhh. Lady Rydia? You’re really okay, right? Right?”
At my cautious question, Rydia shook her head with an expression that was obviously forced.
“…It’s nothing. I just had a passing thought.”
“That is not the face of someone who’s completely fine.”
“More importantly, right now it’s about the hide. You asked me to cut it with Aura, didn’t you?”
“Oh! That’s right! Will you do it?”
“A promise is a promise.”
Rydia nodded and stepped in front of the abandoned Iron Wolf corpse, raising her greatsword. A low hum rang out as a crimson haze rose along the silver blade. At the same time, the killing intent radiating from the sword intensified.
Aura really was something else when you saw it up close. I could understand Aura Blades that materialized energy and sliced through anything, but the idea that simply wrapping it in mist made it sharper was absurd. It was natural in a novel, but seeing it in reality made the alien nature of the power hit home. Even if it had become commonplace, it was still undeniably a miracle of the gods.
“Hup!”
After drawing a single breath, Rydia swung. A crimson arc split the air and streaked toward the Iron Wolf’s body. It was nothing more than a passing slash. Yet that was enough. With a wet shlick, the thick hide was sliced open in one stroke, spilling its innards. Rydia burned away the few drops of blood on her blade with Aura and sheathed the sword without a word.
“There. Do the rest yourself.”
“Thank you, Lady Rydia! You know I really love you, right?!”
“Confessions. Inappropriate.”
Rydia, now back to her usual self, leaned against a nearby tree and began to rest comfortably, hugging her greatsword like a precious treasure.