The Tower That Stretches to the Depths (1)
The morning after my first night with Dana. We woke to the sound of carpenters arriving for work.
“Ugh, fuck! Goddamn it. Hey! Dee! Didn’t I tell you to organize the equipment properly yesterday? I nearly tripped over that shit!”
“It wasn’t me! I cleaned everything up yesterday!”
“Uung……”
Dana rubbed her eyes as she rose from the bed. Our noona, who always ran on low blood pressure in the mornings, had been half-asleep and groggy until the construction noise startled her upright.
“—Hyaa?! W-what time is it right now?!”
“No idea. Looks like it’s past noon?”
My bio-stopwatch of a belly button clock was telling me so, so it had to be right. Dana searched for a clock and immediately started panicking.
“Th-this is bad, this is really bad!! Fuck, the workers are going to come report that they’re starting the job. What the hell do we do?!”
A naked Dana in full panic mode. She was still leaking my cum from between her legs, so she was in no condition to greet anyone. My load had been especially heavy last night. There was no way she could pull on underwear or pants like that. The kiss marks I’d left on her neck could be hidden with a high-collared shirt, but even if she wiped herself down, the scent of semen would still cling to her.
“Stay put. I’ll go out.”
I got up in her place, but my cock—which had run at full throttle all night—had completely revived after a short nap. It wasn’t as bad as Dana’s situation, but my dick was still coated in thick, sticky white semen. Fucking hell. I needed to clean myself up too.
“Dana. Don’t you have any water or towels around here?”
“Towels? Ah, there should be some left somewhere……”
Still completely naked, Dana rummaged around the room at my question. The sight of her crouched backside made my cock twitch hard. After digging through her bag, she scratched her head and clicked her tongue.
“Ah, fuck. Looks like the last towel was the one I used yesterday.”
Classic rookie living-alone syndrome: laundry piling up like crazy. Since our noona hadn’t been independent for long, she apparently hadn’t washed the towels ahead of time either. I sat on the bed and yawned.
“Do you really have to go talk to the workers?”
“I don’t know. I heard that’s how they do it in Sargadis. Shit, what now? Want to wipe with the bedsheet? Or should I give you something I wore?”
“That works. Oh, this is perfect.”
I picked up a piece of cloth from beside the bed. It was black underwear—Dana’s panties that I had stripped off her the night before.
“Ugh……”
Dana watched with a trembling expression as I wiped my fully erect cock with her panties. Her eyes clearly asked why the hell I was using that, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud.
I turned the black fabric white with a few quick swipes, then pulled on my own underwear and clothes. Touching my neck, I chuckled.
“Hey. Some doctor left a kiss mark on my neck. What do we do about this? Those old worker uncles are all going to notice immediately.”
“Damn it, you’re right. We’re screwed. Come here. I’ll tie a scarf on you.”
Dana pulled out a wool scarf she must have brought for winter. The autumn morning was chilly, but wrapping that thing around my neck would be too hot. Still, there weren’t any better options.
With serious focus, Dana wrapped the scarf around my neck. Doing so while completely naked with cum still dripping down her thighs was insanely arousing.
“……Why. What? Why are you staring like that?”
Dana pouted, noticing me grinning. Even her tsundere attitude was cute. I pulled her into a hug from the front and kissed her cheek.
“Hehe. Why do you think? Because you’re adorable. I’ll go talk to them, so get changed while I’m gone.”
“Fuck. You’re just buttering me up because you don’t have anything else to say……”
Even with your mouth grinning ear to ear, that excuse has zero credibility, noona. Looking like she was dying from happiness, Dana handed me her ID card.
“Hey. Take this and tell them I sent you. Don’t say anything weird.”
“Got it.”
I went out wearing the scarf and gave the workers permission to start. After leaving the muscular old men—and the handful of women mixed in for some reason—to their tasks, I returned to find Dana wiping her body with water she had prepared in the bathroom.
“Agh, it still feels like something’s left inside……”
“Hehe. Won’t you get used to it if we do it often?”
“You crazy bastard, that’s terrifying in its own way, you know? Anyway, did you see anything outside? Get out. This is embarrassing.”
“Too bad.”
I got chased out while trying to watch her clean up. What a waste. I was planning to let her enjoy the shower head like yesterday.
I cleaned up the traces of last night’s activities in Dana’s room. Soon enough, Dana emerged after washing herself. She was back in her lab-slave-slash-research-director outfit. The ruined dress had apparently been tossed into the laundry bin.
“……Now you’re going to see your wife, right?”
Dana, who had finished buttoning her skirt, spoke with clear tension. I nodded.
“Yeah. I should greet her properly. Starting today, we’re one family.”
Even I thought it sounded shameless coming from my own mouth, but it seemed to land well with our noona. With the kind of nervous energy that felt like a formal family introduction, Dana clenched her fists and rummaged through the table.
“Hey, should I—should I put on perfume? No, that might look like I’m trying too hard. What about my hair? Is the messy bedhead better, or should I comb it?”
“Do whatever feels comfortable. First impressions matter, but once we start living together, any forced appearance will peel away quickly anyway.”
It was an unanswerable question, so I didn’t know what to say. I just have to mediate well in the middle. What even is a harem? Isn’t it when a capable man takes multiple women as wives through his charm and ability? Becoming the bridge between the wives is the job of a professional playboy! With firm resolve, I headed to the inn Spring’s Shelter with a dressed-up Dana.
People say silence is golden. That statement was fucking 140% correct. There’s also a saying that one word can repay a thousand-gold debt, but how often does running your mouth actually make things go smoothly? Staying quiet at least keeps you in the middle. This is exactly why civil servants train in Taekwondo-style rhetoric and repeat “Ah, that’s not under our jurisdiction~” three, four, five times over.
──But let’s consider our situation. Silence is gold. In other words, a massive amount of silence equals a massive amount of gold. And when ordinary people see a massive amount of gold, their bodies stiffen up thinking, What the hell is all this? That was the reason.
…………………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………………….
The reason I was keeping my mouth so firmly shut.
……Holy goddamn shit.
The silence was so heavy it reminded me of that moment in a movie theater when the previous film’s protagonist died three minutes into the opening. I swallowed hard inside the room where no words were being exchanged.
Franc. And Dana. Between the two women who would become my wives in the future, there was nothing but an extremely awkward, suffocating silence.
Was Franc angry? No way. Our Franc wasn’t the type to easily take back her words. From the moment she let me into her room on our first night and we drank together, she must have known a day like this would come.
So the true nature of this atmosphere was pure awkwardness. Let me repeat myself—our Franc is the type with stranger anxiety. Of course, if the situation is urgent or the other person actively engages her, it’s a different story. In those cases she warms up quickly. It was the same with Larilura!
But Dana’s basically an introvert too.
Considering the backlash I might get, I’ll dare to say it. A woman who earned her doctorate in her twenties cannot possibly be a social butterfly. Our noona is twenty-eight this year. Next year she’ll be twenty-nine. Only pedophiles or actual teenagers would call twenty-nine “old.” A scholar earning a PhD at twenty is fucking—no, extremely fucking—young. Dana looks like a fresh, bouncy beauty who could still get carded at a convenience store. And her actual age matches that youthful appearance.
Which means she devoted seventy percent of her social life to research.
No exaggeration—Dana had probably spent more than half her life inside a lab. Asking someone like that to casually chat with a stranger she was meeting for the first time was simply too much. That was why the room Franc and I stayed in had become so deathly quiet you could hear the wind outside.
“F-Francesca Aitrynen.”
“D-Dana Berbeia.”
An awkward atmosphere and an equally awkward introduction. The one who broke the suffocating silence first was Dana.
“Um…… first of all, I wanted to say thank you.”
Dana bowed her head, using polite honorifics.
“Thank you so much. For allowing this guy to take in another wife—to take me in.”
“Huh? Oh, no, it’s not like that. I already knew about it. Even before I started dating Nord.”
“Even so. If, by any chance, Francesca had told Nord that she would absolutely never accept another wife, this guy would never have brought me here.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. I started to open my mouth but wisely closed it again. No matter what I said, it was a topic I couldn’t win.
Even in a world where polygamy was common, if our Franc had cried and begged Nord not to take another wife? It probably would have gone exactly as Dana said. I might have searched for a way to live quietly with Franc, avoiding entanglement with other nobles.
At those words, Franc’s face hardened. She spoke with crisp certainty.
“That’s nonsense. If it meant interfering with the dreams of the person I love, I would have hidden my feelings for Nord from the very beginning.”
Franc lightly bit her lip and placed a hand over her heart.
“Objectively speaking—I don’t think I’m very attractive as a spouse.”
“……Huh?”
At the absurd self-deprecation, Dana alternated her gaze between Franc’s chest and face, knowing full well it was rude. Fuck, I was doing the exact same thing. With breasts that large and a face that pretty, how could she claim she had no charm? I would have shielded Franc even if she went around cursing Odin, but this time I couldn’t come up with a single defense. All I could do was take the stones others might throw at her.
Franc, as if realizing how her words sounded, waved her hands.
“Ah, no. I don’t mean in terms of appearance. I mean family background, assets, ability—that sort of thing.”
“Ah, I see. Yes.”
“The truth is, I’m not much help toward Nord’s dreams. I don’t have the wealth of knowledge that Dana does. I’m not good at fighting either, so Nord had to help me awaken my mana. I don’t have money either. If Nord truly saw marriage as a tool for social climbing, he could have rejected my love, waited for his own value to rise, then married a noble’s daughter.”
“Wait, hold on, Franc. That’s really nonsense.”
This time I couldn’t let it slide no matter what. Sorry for cutting in, but there were too many points to refute. When I jumped into the conversation, Franc shook her head.
“I know. I know Nord isn’t that kind of person, and that he wouldn’t think of me that way.”
“Then why?”
“……But still, if someone several times more charming and incredible than me became Nord’s wife, I feel like I would end up just waiting at home for him to return.”
Franc’s words made me recall events from the past. At Hotulusil’s farm, Franc had been in danger until I came running. Even after I helped her, she had to wait quietly. With Tabula there was even less to say. Given the circumstances, even if I could have taken her with me, I had planned to go alone. It was probably after that incident that Franc started actively asking me for things. When I thought about it, the camouflage mask, mana awakening, and learning enchantment magic were all ways for her to fight alongside me.
Having said that, Franc gently stroked the mithril ring on her left ring finger.
“That’s why I cried when I heard Nord’s heart. Because I grew up in a family where the marriage vows made with dreams of happiness had grown cold.”
Her downturned lips and hazy eyes were classic signs that Franc was remembering the past. Then she looked at my face and her expression brightened with happiness.
“I believe that if it’s Nord—if it’s Nord and the people who love him—it won’t turn out that way. Nord is a fool who can’t take being loved for granted. So I just need to keep liking him. Because Nord will definitely respond to my heart.”
“……Yeah.”
Her pure declaration of love made my face burn red all the way to my neck. Half of me wondered how a guy like me could receive such love, while the other half resolved to answer that heart properly.
“……It’s admirable. I’ve never thought about love as deeply as Francesca has.”
Dana lowered her eyes as if dazzled by Franc. That was only natural. Our noona had only recently come to understand her own feelings properly.
Franc lowered her ringed hand beneath the table and asked.
“That’s absolutely not true. The reason I’m saying this…… it might sound a bit arrogant.”
“What does it matter? It’s the truth.”
Franc spoke awkwardly and Dana held back a sigh. What if Dana had realized her feelings and confessed to me before I left Carmine University? There was a chance I never would have gone to Sargadis, and Franc might have lost her life to goblins or dark mages. But as the old sages said, in history—
“—‘There are no what-ifs in history.’ That’s something this guy once said in passing.”
Dana changed the mood with a bitter smile.
Had I really said that? It felt like she had read my mind.
“……That’s a profound statement.”
“Right? When I asked who said it, he claimed he didn’t even know.”
Fuck. That was because I couldn’t talk about Earth stuff. ……Well, I really don’t know the exact source. The only historical quote I know the origin of is Martin Luther King God Emperor’s line from his speech: “Don’t live on your knees. Stand up and die.”
Franc glanced at me and spoke.
“Dana. Of course you already know this, but Nord isn’t the type to rank his wives by order or status. That’s what I wanted to say.”
“I know that well. I’ve watched this guy for a long time.”
Dana closed her dark-circle-shadowed eyes, then opened them again. Smiling, she continued.
“May I tell you? The reason I fell so hard for this guy.”