This Is... a Delicacy (1)
"Haaaaaaahhhm..."
Another day had come to its peaceful end, and I headed for the library, yawning myself limp.
"I really do need to take up some kind of exercise... I'm just too tired for it, though."
Suggestion was a genuine double-edged axe.
No — fine, I knew. I knew perfectly well that being able to hypnotically brainwash a person for the price of a little mental power was an exchange rate worth prostrating yourself on the ground for.
I knew... and the problem was that I wasn't some idle freeloader with nothing better to do.
This was the Imperial Academy, the finest educational institution on the continent. Its purpose? To take the talented students gathered from every corner of the continent and hone them into shining gems. Which was exactly why actually graduating from the place was so damn hard.
Imperial nobles didn't have much trouble simply getting in, but even those admitted through the noble track found repeated years and academic warnings piling up in the blink of an eye the moment they fell below standard, until they were expelled outright.
I was one of the students enrolled at this institution. And not some ignorant sword-swinging brute, either — a Magic Department student, furnished with both intellect and insight. So if I didn't want to be expelled, a bottom-tier noble like me had no choice but to strive, tirelessly.
Strive I must... and yet using the Demonic Tool sucked away the very mental power I needed for that striving. Today had been no exception.
Seizing an unexpected opportunity — that much was all well and good. That girl Norah was so pretty it made your skin prickle, and with an eye to the future, it was better to get her trained up ahead of time.
But after enjoying everything there was to enjoy and finally sitting down to study, my mental power had hit rock bottom, and the lecture content simply refused to sink in.
'Not that I could exactly stop using the Demonic Tool I had...'
Giving up on the Academy I attended would have been an idiotic choice as well.
What, was I supposed to use the Demonic Tool to live as some capable woman's kept man and play the scheming mastermind instead?
This was a matter of dignity. Of pride.
So, well — a thirsty man digs his own well, and if you want to catch two rabbits at once, you'd better dig your traps in exactly the right spot.
Fortunately, I happened to have just the tool for it.
'Someday soon, I should make a move on a capable member of the faculty, too.'
Hypnotic taming is god, and I am invincible.
The academic issue, urgent as it wasn't, got shoved to the back burner, and today, too, I graciously swung open the library door in high spirits.
'Hmm. That girl's nowhere in sight today either, as expected?'
The moment I arrived I swept my gaze across the first-floor lobby, searching for Reya first — and, naturally, no such luck. Our Reya, who seemed physically incapable of staying put in one spot, was once again dutifully circling this vast library under the pretense of tidying the books.
Right up until yesterday I'd have been grumbling inwardly about how many years it took to find a single soul in this enormous building, but today the irritation didn't climb quite so high. More precisely: hunting her down through this sprawling library was still an annoying chore, but since she'd so willingly gone along with my new hobby, the fair way to put it would be that I magnanimously decided to forgive her.
Click.
After all, hiding behind a bookshelf a little ways off and secretly photographing her at work was plenty thrilling and exciting in itself — what possible reason was there not to forgive her?
'They say complaints about covert photography never stopped once portable cameras came out. Now I get why. It's not as if they got to keep all this fun to themselves, did they?'
The act of turning someone else's ordinary day into a keepsake that belonged to me alone, without their ever knowing.
But what if that keepsake included the erotic atmosphere and suggestive moments that seeped unconsciously — or carelessly — out of a person's daily life?
And what if it was a memory, a collection, belonging to me and me alone — something no one else in this world knew about, not even the person being photographed?
There was no way in hell that wouldn't be exciting.
Of course, I couldn't take photos that spicy just yet.
Click, click.
Reya at work kept being captured on the camera's film. Sometimes I poked the lens out from the edge of a shelf; sometimes I shot through the gap between two books.
Her working. Sneezing at book dust. Trudging from aisle to aisle. Nothing more than snapping those mundane moments and preserving them on film — and yet a sense of fulfillment, as if something hollow inside me was being filled in, and a bubbling joy rose up to fill my chest.
'Ahh. Now this is happiness.'
After losing myself in the hobby of covert photography for a good long while — just as I was thinking of easing into my next hobby, hypnotic taming — she abruptly began behaving differently than before.
Glancing around. And around.
The unmistakable air of someone checking whether anyone else was near. I stopped mid-step, tucked myself back behind the bookshelf, and watched to see what she would do.
Reya checked her surroundings again and again with a nervous air, pacing back and forth, wandering off and returning. Then at last she squeezed her eyes shut, hurried over to one particular shelf in quick little steps, slipped out a single book, and began to read it with the utmost care.
'Honestly, since when does reading a book call for that much tension...? Anyone watching would think it was some sealed grimoire.'
Watching Reya press her face so close to the pages it was practically buried in them, I gave a hollow laugh. Honestly, with all that dithering, I'd figured — fine, maybe not masturbating — but that she was at least about to make her exhibition-play debut or something?
But once it was all laid bare, the grand mystery act turned out to be... reading a book while standing.
Somehow the wind went right out of my sails.
Click.
Resigned, I focused the lens and pressed the shutter, then took a short break to review the photos I'd taken so far — from the look of her, Reya seemed set to keep standing there like that for a while.
That was the plan, anyway. Until, while flipping back through the most recent shots, something slightly off drifted into my field of view.
'Wait. Why is her face so red?'
Like a child who'd just walked in on their parents having sex — holding her breath, ears dyed crimson...
"Could it be...?"
Only then did I look at the sign on the shelf where Reya stood.
LITERATURE · ROMANCE · ADULT MATERIALS
'So all that dithering was over reading smut?'
Well, fair enough — if it was smut, that explained everything. Imagine getting caught reading smut by somebody else; how mortifying would that be? All the more so for someone who'd never shown any interest in this sort of thing.
I had no clue why a library would even have a corner like this, but either way, it was welcome news for me. It was no stretch to say I preferred my hypnotic taming slow and patient precisely because I wanted to watch a person transform like that.
Personally, watching her blush all on her own over an erotic novel made me — as the original architect of her suggestions — feel as though I'd given our shy Reya a gentle push between the shoulder blades so she could take one more step forward. And that, honestly, left me feeling rather proud.
Click. It was all for the memory, so I snapped one more shot for the record, then settled in to watch closely how she'd behave.
However deep her focus, Reya turned the pages at a ferocious clip. And in between, she murmured things like "Outdoors, of all places...!" or "Someone might see us..." in a hushed, breathless voice, even dissolving into flustered sputtering — you could tell at a glance she was devouring that erotic novel at one hundred and twenty percent immersion.
'Going by the muttering, it's an exhibitionism-themed erotica. A pleasant sight, this.'
As a librarian she presumably wasn't ignorant of matters of the flesh — and yet.
A literary girl reading erotica the way a child who'd only just learned masturbation existed might fumble through it — utterly at sea before unfamiliar desires and impulses that flared up without warning, her face flushing red with a guilt and shame she couldn't even name.
Now this is a delicacy.
Thump.
Roughly twenty minutes after Reya had pulled that book out and started reading — just as I sat there tapping at the corner of my eye in delight — she shut her beloved erotic novel with a thump. It didn't look like she'd quit partway, either; maybe it was the librarian in her, but she appeared to have polished off the whole thing at a monstrous speed.
She slid the book back into its slot and, without shifting her stance, stroked its side, sinking into a brief reverie. As if the erotica she'd just read were replaying behind her eyes, her free hand kept toying with the side of her skirt, and her small lips kept moving, worrying at nothing.
"Ha......"
But before long she shook her head, blew out a heavy sigh, and withdrew from the shelf.
A jolt. Her sigh had apparently carried farther than she'd realized, because she flinched and whipped her gaze around in a panic. Then, all at once, she seemed to register anew just how deserted this corner was — and her face flared scarlet, as though some fantasy or other had just surfaced in her head.
'GYAAAAH!!!'
Watching every bit of this, my heart was being roasted to a crisp, a groan bordering on a scream threatening to burst out of me of its own accord. As if she might do something, anything, at any second — a woman who would never in a hundred years have done such a thing, suddenly helpless after one day of losing to an impulse called curiosity!
And that, too, was a delicacy!
It fed the sinister urge in me to be the one, no matter what, to stain that blank-white page of a virgin — and holding onto my sanity was getting genuinely difficult.
'GYAAAAAAH!!!'
All right, all right — there was a slight commotion just now. Now relax. Deep breaths.
Having barely reeled my sanity back in, I smoothed my expression into place and stepped out from behind the bookshelf.
'Her ladyship is still at it.'
In the time it had taken me to unleash a silent chorus of wails and gather myself all over again, Reya was still glancing about with a face full of embarrassment, sneaking the occasional peek at the bookshelf — clutching the hem of her skirt, fidgeting. Judging by the darting eyes and wriggling fingers, she wanted the next volume badly. By that point it almost seemed like she'd had a thing for exhibition play all along, which cracked me up a little.
Of course, I was the one who'd nudged her that far in the first place.
Tap, tap. I walked openly, making no attempt to muffle my footsteps, and my stride echoed softly through the silent library. Naturally, our adorable Reya — still red-faced and flustered — jolted alert at the sound and turned her head my way.
"Uuooouuoo!?!?"
Like a golem crashed on an error and stuck buffering, Reya went rigid with that bizarre scream, staring at me. Watching her anxious gaze ping-pong between me and her bookshelf made me want to needle her — something like, 'I've been watching you this whole time, you know. What exactly were you about to do?' — but this time, too, I exercised patience and held my tongue.
Why was it that ever since I'd gotten my hands on this hypnotic Demonic Tool, life kept demanding more patience out of me?
"Wow, talk about luck. I was lost and in a real spot of trouble, and who do I run into but you, Reya~"
Flinch.
"If you're not busy, would you help me out?"
Flinch.
"Sorry to interrupt your work, but I do have a favor to ask~"
Flinch, flinch.
My whole bearing said, I haven't the faintest idea~
At my performance, Reya trembled and flinched, her eyes rolling every which way. Inside her head she was surely chanting things like, Did he see? He couldn't have, right?! and That's right — I was just working. I only ended up standing here because of work!
"Y-ye-es...! I'll show you the way...!"
Having sorted her thoughts at a speed that was quick by her standards and glacial by mine, Reya — as if the duty had been entrusted to her — grabbed a book cart and forged ahead of me.
"..."
At that lightning response, with the realization that I hadn't even told her where I needed to go still on my tongue, I followed in her wake. One step. Two. Three — before she'd covered ten paces, Reya stopped and turned back toward me, looking awkward.
"Um... th-that is... what book, were you looking for...?"
It must have embarrassed even her, because Reya went red to the throat and buried her chin. Snickering inwardly, I kept a straight face and explained that I'd never tracked down the book I'd been after yesterday — would she guide me to it?
"Ah, if it's that one..."
Shivering with embarrassment, Reya nonetheless guided me with perfect diligence. The book I'd asked for lived a fair walk away, so we traded some idle small talk on the way — mostly the shape of me teasing Reya and Reya quivering in response, but even so, I felt we'd closed a little of the distance from before.
Maybe even without hypnosis, if we kept stacking up little moments like this, we could become friends the perfectly ordinary way? It didn't have to be romance, even.
Our conversations careened off into nothing or cut out mid-sentence at the oddest moments, but she was a peculiar, entertaining person to talk to, and I got my own fun out of it regardless.
[ Reya Bennett is entering a trance state. ]
But, h-honestly... I think hypnotic taming is more fun than becoming friends the normal way...