A Room for Two (2)
The awkward, silent meeting of eyes inside the bathroom, and the flustered reactions that followed.
It was only natural for Ethan to react that way. After all, he was standing there completely naked, showing himself off to me.
On autopilot, I had recalled how I prepared Ethan's baths back at the Blackwood estate, and had simply assumed there would be a changing room behind the door, with the bath beyond it.
I should have known better than to expect a cramped little inn like this one to separate the two.
Thankfully, he'd happened to be facing the door with his back turned, so from my angle nothing truly dangerous was visible.
…Honestly speaking, I had no intention of looking anyway.
Why on earth would I want to inspect another man's equipment? So I could compare it against my own from my past life?
While I stood there flustered by my own predicament, Ethan called out to me cautiously.
"M-Maid? You walked in by mistake, right?"
"…My apologies."
"N-No, it's fine. The layout's different from the estate. Anyone could make that mistake."
"…Excuse me, then. I'll leave your change of clothes in front of the door."
"Y-Yeah. Do be careful next time."
Fortunately, Ethan wasn't too bothered by my blunder, waving it off generously.
The moment I quietly began to retreat backward, grateful for his kindness, his bare and rather forlorn-looking back drifted into my field of view.
"……"
…Come to think of it, there are no long towels in this world that can reach around and scrub your own back.
Bath towels in this world amounted to nothing more than round, brush-like bundles made from a certain plant, dried and processed into shape.
To scrub your back properly, you needed someone else's help. That was simply how bathing worked here.
Lilith, of course, was naturally flexible enough to reach her own back, so it was never an issue for her — but Ethan in his current body was clearly going to struggle with it.
The more muscle a man puts on, the stiffer his body inevitably becomes, after all.
…Well, it wasn't as though I meant to, but I'd already seen his body anyway.
Call it an apology. Quietly slipping off my stockings, I stepped deeper into the bathroom to scrub his back for him.
Splash, splash.
"Young master."
"M-Maid?! You're still here?"
"It occurred to me that I have never once attended to your bath, young master."
"Wh-What?!"
"With that build, you would have difficulty reaching your back and waist yourself. So I shall attend to you in those areas at least."
With that, I picked up the round bath towel sitting beside the tub and brought it toward his back.
Startled by my actions, Ethan sat hunched in the bath, shoulders drawn in, glancing nervously at me.
"Th-There's no need for that, Maid. I can manage my own back just fine."
"And how exactly do you intend to bring your hand back to your own back with that imposing physique of yours, Ethan, young master?"
"…I-I can manage, that's all!"
"There's nothing to be embarrassed about, young master. I am merely fulfilling my duty as your personal maid."
"I-I said it's not necessary! Forget it, just get out!"
"……"
The instant my hand touched his back, Ethan twisted away in a full-body panic.
Watching this, there was no denying it — he genuinely, deeply did not welcome having my hand on his back.
…Somehow, that stings a little.
I'd understand if he'd switched genders or something, but he's a man too, and he's throwing a fit just because my hand grazed his back a little?
Now that I think about it — this same Ethan had his hands directly kneading my bare breasts just last night, didn't he?
So it's perfectly fine when he gropes my chest, but my hand on his back is beyond the pale?
Stung by his shameless double standard, I silently lowered the bath towel back where it had been.
I can't quite explain why, but in that moment, anger shot straight through me.
"Understood, young master. Since you so despise my hands touching your body, I suppose there's nothing to be done."
"N-No, wait. That's not what I meant. It's not that I mind your touch specifically—"
"I understand perfectly, sir. A man who kneads my breasts twice a month like clockwork simply cannot tolerate my hand so much as touching his back."
"M-Maid?"
"If you loathe my touch that much, then so be it. I shall refrain from such presumptuous services as bathing assistance in the future."
"……"
…I was trying to do something nice for him. He didn't have to recoil like I was offering to brand him.
You know what? Fine. Whether your back itches or not, whether you can reach it or not — sort yourself out.
I had already set his change of clothes in front of the bathroom door. I left him sitting there in the tub and turned to head back to the room — and that was when Ethan's voice came urgently from behind me.
"M-Maid!"
"…Yes?"
"Ah, no. It's just, well, that is…"
"……"
"…It's just that my back is a little itchy, so… could you perhaps wash that one spot for me, Maid?"
…There it is. Exactly as I predicted.
All that blustering, and the second his back starts itching, who does he call?
Well, I am his personal maid, and I still owed him an apology for catching a glimpse of him in the nude.
It fell to the magnanimous soul present here — me — to grant his request.
"If you insist, then there's nothing to be done, young master. I shall have to scrub it for you."
"Y-Yes. Please."
"You've only shown your back to your own personal maid. There's hardly any need to be so bashful."
I had been halfway back to the bedroom, but I crouched down behind Ethan once more, picked the bath towel back up, and carefully scrubbed the places his hands couldn't reach against the back he was now gingerly presenting to me.
Turns out bath service isn't so bad once you actually do it.
Dusk had settled, and even the moonlight no longer touched the night sky as the small hours drew on, black and still.
And so the first night on the Isle of Knowledge passed for Ethan and Lilith — a day that had begun with their departure from the estate and packed itself full of one tribulation after another.
Lying in bed, weary bodies seeking their rest, Ethan Richard Blackwood sank quietly into his own thoughts.
"Snore… Snore…"
"……"
He was gazing at his personal maid, Lilith Blackwood… Rosewood, slumbering beside him with the most blissfully peaceful face in the world.
…Sleeping like a log, aren't you.
While he himself lay there, heart pounding, utterly unable to drift off, his maid had been deep asleep from the moment her head hit the pillow.
Granted, as his personal maid she had risen a day's work earlier than he had, and above all she'd spent the entire day waiting on him hand and foot — so perhaps it was only natural that she'd passed out so easily.
But watching her, while he himself couldn't slip into sleep even two hours after lying down, he couldn't help feeling a tiny, flickering resentment.
"……"
He was this tense, this unable to close his eyes, from merely sharing a room with her.
Meanwhile, she carried on as if sharing the same bed, the same blanket, meant nothing whatsoever. And that composure planted a peculiar dissatisfaction in Ethan's chest.
Because he simply could not fathom where he stood in Lilith's heart.
And all the more so, recalling what had happened between them in the bathroom earlier today.
Does she not see me as a man at all — is that why she walked right into the bathroom while I was bathing without a second's hesitation? Or did she truly want to scrub my back, and my refusal genuinely made her angry?
Lilith was always like this with Ethan.
At times she treated him with such breezy indifference that it seemed she didn't register him as a man at all, and at other times she acted with a strangeness that suggested she truly did hold some feeling for him.
Their relationship had certainly grown far closer than it had been back when she first became his personal maid — but he had no way whatsoever of gauging just how close they'd become.
His own plan, once upon a time, had been to move forward carefully, confirming their feelings bit by bit. At some point, that plan had flipped entirely on its head.
True, it had started as an act born of misunderstanding — but he had ended up groping Lilith's breasts in the heat of the moment.
And watching him fall to pieces afterward, she had reluctantly permitted everything that followed.
No matter how he turned it over, their current relationship seemed to place physical connection before emotional connection, and Ethan perpetually agonized over whether he ought to view this positively or not.
People say the heart follows the body. Even so, Ethan wished his heart could reach her first.
He had even tried sharing his feelings mid-act, hoping to turn the physical into genuine, heartfelt love — but that strategy, too, never worked out the way he'd imagined.
Quite the opposite: the more he attempted it, the sourer Lilith's mood seemed to be the next day. Whenever he caught that shift in her, he could only offer up careful, hesitant apologies.
…If only once — if only I could peek inside her heart.
Even the barest glimpse of what she truly felt for him would let him decide what to do next.
Should he maintain the status quo and inch forward slowly? Or close the distance faster, before he lost her altogether?
Or — should he accept that there was no hope at all, and set her free before it was too late?
…For now, it's a question without an answer.
Since the right answer was unknowable, all he could do was keep trying, harder and harder.
If she already loved him, wonderful.
And even if she didn't, love was a feeling that could still be changed through effort.
Besides, agonizing over an unsolvable riddle while nursing it against his heart all night was precisely the surest way to ruin his body.
Hoping for at least a somewhat deeper sleep, Ethan hurriedly shut his eyes and readied himself to surrender to slumber.
The Academy's swordsmanship exam was the day after tomorrow. In other words, he had the whole of tomorrow still free.
A rare day with nothing on the schedule — spending it strolling the Isle of Knowledge with Lilith, on a secret little date, sounded like a fine idea.
Imagining himself wandering the island around Luminor Academy with her at his side, Ethan was just beginning to drift toward sleep when—
Two soft, yielding sensations began pressing against his forearm from above and below.
Squish.
…Squish?
At that familiar, warm sensation, he cracked an eye open and glanced to his side — where Lilith lay fast asleep, facing him.
Her two breasts were clamped snugly over and under his forearm, the very arm those soft sensations had come from.
Ethan just barely strangled the shriek that nearly burst out of him with one hand.
"…!!"
He had handled those breasts countless times by now — but never once had his forearm been trapped between them.
Worried she might wake and be mortified, Ethan hurriedly tried to pull his arm free.
But the moment he tugged it, Lilith only clamped down tighter in her sleep, and Ethan had to suppress yet another strangled cry.
Sniff…
"……"
Squeeze!
"…!!!"
The first night at the run-down inn on the edge of the Isle of Knowledge.
Ethan's sleepless night was fated to stretch a little longer still.