Pinned Beneath a Misunderstanding
This is bad. It's dangerous! Inside my head, warning bells started ringing like crazy. Dangerousdangerousdangerousdangerousdangerousdangerousdangerousdangerous. It's dangerous!!
If it's still at this point, it's okay. If it's still now…!
I rushed over to her, grabbed the collar of her shirt, and tried to fasten the undone buttons. I reached out, intending to fix the situation right away. That was genuinely all I had in mind.
But before I could even lay a hand on her, Lise bit her lip slightly, as if she'd steeled herself for something, then shoved my chest hard with both hands.
“Wh-whoa?!”
Caught completely off guard, I lost my balance and toppled backward helplessly. The soft give of the bed pressed against my back as my vision flipped upside down. And then, ironically, the dizzying scene that unfolded was Lise straddling me from above.
On the bed, an ash-gray-haired beauty pinning me down and looking at me from above. The enchanting sight nearly made me lose my mind. I was so flustered that my mouth just opened and closed without producing a single word.
Lise gazed down at me with half-lidded eyes and a seductive look. It was the kind of stare that seemed to crave something immediately. A dangerous, desperate gaze.
What the hell did she want?
Was she offering to gladly give her blood to a vampire—to her master? Or was she asking me to do something to her?
On top of that… the biggest problem staring me in the face was this: because she had pushed me so roughly, the shirt that already had two buttons undone was now gaping wide open. She leaned her upper body forward in that state, looking down at me. Her cascading hair tickled my face, revealing the line of her neck. Not only her deeply carved collarbone, but the curves continuing beneath it—curves of such extraordinary size that I couldn't tear my eyes away.
Unable to defy gravity, they hung downward, and their overwhelming scale left my mouth hanging open.
‘I'm really going to lose it.’
How on earth had those things even fit inside that shirt?
I desperately tried to turn my head away. Really, desperately. My reason screamed that I needed to close my eyes and escape immediately. At this rate, it felt like death flags were flickering right before my eyes.
But… this damned instinct of mine said something else. That those overwhelming, wondrous things were the true utopia humanity was meant to attain. That I must never look away. Look! The instinct every male should naturally possess was shouting.
Reason or instinct? The fierce tug-of-war continued. My eyes kept losing their way and drifting below her collarbone, only to snap back again in a frantic cycle. Every time my gaze wandered restlessly, the unique scent of her body would rush over me, brushing the tip of my nose.
She seemed hot too, sweating lightly. Thanks to that, her natural fragrance came through completely unfiltered. My heartbeat raced wildly and irregularly. It was getting hard to breathe.
Lise had clearly acted in a fit of anger. When I rejected her intention, she must have done it in the heat of the moment. She probably hadn't thought past that point, because now she sat on top of me not knowing what to do, lips fidgeting as her face burned crimson.
It was right then, as we felt each other's breath in that dizzying silence, that it happened.
I got hard.
“…?!”
Lise's shoulders jerked upward. Beneath her ash-gray hair, her ears flushed an even deeper shade of red. Of course they did. I was a healthy, virile man. How could I not react in a situation like this? If someone could, that person was either biologically defective or a eunuch.
She was positioned right above my navel, and through our tightly pressed lower bodies, the most honest and weighty instinct of the human animal was making itself known.
Lise's pupils shook violently, as if struck by an earthquake. I felt I'd reached the limit of my patience and thought, ‘Ah, screw it. I don't care anymore.’
As if in a trance, I slowly raised my hand toward her waist. The moment my fingertips were about to make contact—
“…!!”
Lise sprang away from me in a panic. She retreated as if tumbling off the bed, then backpedaled until her back hit the wall. Clutching her shirt tightly with both hands, she knelt, bowed her upper body, and apologized.
“F-for my rudeness…! I am truly, truly sorry!”
Without giving me any chance to respond, she flung the door open and bolted out like a shot.
Bang—!
I stared blankly at the door. Then I slowly clenched and unclenched my hands, which were still hovering uselessly in the air.
“…Haah.”
It was an exquisitely unpleasant, sticky feeling—like something had been cut off midway. A wave of futility and emptiness washed over me. I rubbed my face with both hands and let out one deep sigh after another. Only then did shame and self-loathing come crashing in.
“She's really driving me insane.”
Caught between deep regret and desolation, I buried my face in the pillow, irritation boiling over.
The next morning I opened my eyes, washed my face, and brushed my teeth like always. Then, as usual, I waited for the breakfast Lise was preparing.
Lise moved like a broken wind-up doll, all creaks and stiffness. The clatter of dishes on the table was louder than normal, and her hands trembled as she set down the teacups. She kept stealing glances at me.
I stared at the steaming teacup and did my best to act like nothing was wrong. But Lise kept creaking in my peripheral vision, scraping at my nerves. She was clearly trying with all her might to behave like her usual self, yet the furtive looks and the embarrassment she couldn't hide were plain to see. Beneath it all lingered a strangely twisted sense of shame.
Every time our eyes met, her pale cheeks would flush with a faint red, proving she remembered every single detail of what had happened on the bed last night. She would then hurriedly avert her gaze to the floor.
Honestly, I wanted to say it out loud.
‘You’re the one who seduced me!!!!’
You were the one who whipped me into this state. Words that only criminals would say floated through my mind. Fortunately it hadn't actually gone that far, but I wondered if explaining that I'd only been momentarily excited would improve the situation even a little. I didn't know.
Yet if I did nothing, I'd have to keep enduring this suffocating atmosphere. More than anything, the biggest problem was that I could no longer see her as merely a maid. The confusion that realization brought was overwhelming.
“M-Master, it is almost time for your major course.”
Lise's tiny, shrinking voice pulled me out of my thoughts.
“Ah, right. We should go.”
I cleared my throat once, quickly pulled on my uniform jacket, and left the room. Not a single word passed between us as we walked down the hallway to the fork that split toward the martial arts and magic departments. Even though we maintained our usual distance, every single one of her regular footsteps behind me felt unusually loud.
Only after Lise turned toward the martial arts building did I finally let out the sigh I'd been holding back.
I arrived at the magic department lecture hall and took my seat, but my mind was still completely occupied by last night's events. Up on the podium, an elderly professor was passionately lecturing about the correlation between mana flow and spatial coordinate designation. It was genuinely useful information that I absolutely needed to memorize, yet it simply slid through my ears and scattered.
…Haah.
The hair that had kept obscuring my vision kept floating into my thoughts, along with what I'd seen between the gaping shirt.
It was then that the professor spoke again.
“Everyone, please pay attention.”
Several students who had been nodding off jerked upright in surprise. The professor closed his notebook, cleared his throat, and scanned the room.
“That will be all for today’s theory lecture. I have one announcement to make.”
An announcement. I figured it would just be something about next week’s midterm evaluation or the basic magic demonstration test schedule, and was about to stretch indifferently when—
“As you all know, a mage’s talent truly blossoms when faced with extreme situations. However, most people hit their limit and vanish without being able to use any power when that moment actually arrives.”
…The conversation was taking a strange turn.
Normally there should only be the academy’s standard schedule at this point.
“Therefore, following the dean’s instructions, exactly one month from now—”
The professor pushed up his glasses and spoke in a grave voice.
“Class B of the magic department will conduct a joint dungeon practice in the forested area on the academy outskirts. You will form groups of four together with students from Class A and the martial arts department. Although the location is strictly managed, this will be a harsh training tantamount to real combat. Prepare thoroughly with your respective party members.”
Wait, Professor. What the hell are you talking about?
Why was this sudden joint practice talk assaulting my ears?
Whether I glared at him with resentment or not, the professor handed the list to the student at the front and told everyone to pass it around and look. And when that list finally reached me, I doubted my own eyes.
This academy had roughly a thousand students. About three hundred in the magic department and seven hundred in the martial arts department. Out of all those countless students, the names written on the party list that included mine were… purely by cruel coincidence, all people I knew very well.
Joint Dungeon Practice — Group 12
Eros Brioche
Lise
Eisen Einhardt
Elteumia de Lethe
My head throbbed. I could only look up at the ceiling and let out a hollow laugh.