A Date? (2)
A weekend outing with Ethan had suddenly materialized out of nowhere.
The beginning of it, in truth, was nothing more than a natural extension of our ordinary routine.
Harold's magic swordsmanship lessons, held once a week.
Having gone nearly three weeks since our last bout before I got another chance to face him, I took my previous defeat as a lesson and challenged him once more.
And as obvious as it should have been, this bout ended in failure as well, without any notable results to show for it.
When Harold remarked that I had squandered the cards in my hand far too carelessly, I tried responding this time by conserving my three daggers as much as possible — but a Sword Master was simply not someone I could face while holding back at my level.
The result was that I got broken far more brutally than in our previous match. And yet, for some reason, Harold did offer me a rather curious compliment once the bout was over.
Still, I'd need some entirely different approach if I wanted to stand against him. Not that I had even the faintest idea what that different approach might be at the moment.
After a handful of students, myself included, had been thoroughly demolished by Harold, the usual sparring between him and the top-ranked students began as always.
Having spent everything I had just to survive against Harold, I quietly watched the bouts between him and the upper echelon — Ethan among them — and offered a silent round of applause to Ethan, who conceded one of the two matches but took the other, ending his bout with Harold in a draw.
Since Ethan won, I'll have to change into my uniform a little late tonight, won't I.
Better not leave my underwear inside my uniform this time. There was once when I'd taken my undergarments off in advance, only to be met with the misunderstanding that I'd come to school wearing nothing underneath at all.
Besides, Ethan seemed to have developed a taste for doing the undressing himself, so there was no need to spoil his fun.
And so that Ethan could quietly tend to his own desires as well, I'd linger a bit longer in the bath afterward, and then I too would quietly, all by myself—
Hold on. Wait a second.
A wave of embarrassment washed over me at the string of thoughts that had sprung up unbidden in my head.
The moment I saw Ethan win, my mind had drifted, far too naturally, to the sequence of that nightly "service" — and something about that felt deeply off.
Because honestly, that reaction made it seem like some part of me was oddly enjoying the fact that my chest had just been touched by Ethan.
...Could it be.
Could it be that, separate from Ethan refraining from doing anything 'too severe' to me, Lilith's body — my body — had, at some point, become tame to his touch?
No, surely not. Even in the original game, Lilith was a heroine who gave herself to the protagonist after being rescued, wasn't she?
And if you really broke it down, all the degradation she suffered at that degenerate villain's hands before then only grew worse precisely because she never gave him her heart.
So the truth was simply that I no longer felt any resistance around Ethan, and could accept the touch on my chest as pure, unadulterated pleasure...
Strictly speaking, that's actually the more troubling version, isn't it.
Feeling pleasure from a man's hand on my chest — that was hardly a normal way of thinking on this end either.
The man I used to be taking joy in being touched by Ethan simply made no sense on its face.
If you compared the raw number of years lived, my past life and my years spent as Lilith here had grown nearly equal — and yet I still carried a lingering aversion to crossing that line with a man.
If I had realized I'd transmigrated back in early childhood, things might have turned out differently. But I'd only come to understand it a mere five or six years ago.
That sliver of time was nowhere near enough, no matter how decent a guy Ethan might be — those were simply two separate matters.
"Lilith?"
"...Ah, yes. Is something the matter, Master Ethan?"
"You seemed lost in thought. Is something worrying you?"
"...No. Nothing important enough to warrant your concern, Master Ethan."
"...Hm."
It seemed I'd been so tangled in my own confusion that I hadn't even registered Ethan finishing his bout and returning to my side.
By then, the match between Nathalie and Harold was already in full swing before my eyes.
Focus. However chaotic my mind might be, right now I was Ethan's exclusive maid, and when it came to my duties, giving anything less than my all was simply not an option.
"Lilith."
"Yes, Master Ethan."
"Don't tell me you were so deep in your own head that you missed the bout Father and I just had?"
"...No. I watched that part properly, so please don't worry, Master Ethan. I even confirmed how you split your matches with our lord one apiece to bring it to a draw."
"...Right. Well, that's a relief."
Judging by that word — relief — my bedtime tonight was going to be delayed a little as well.
Lately Isabel had taken to quietly slipping off to the servants' waiting room early on nights like this, so I suspected she had at least some inkling of what went on between Ethan and me.
Well, with only a single door between us while we were moaning into the night, it would have been stranger if she hadn't caught on long ago.
If anything, the remarkable one was Isabel — knowing full well what Ethan and I were up to, yet never betraying a hint of it in how she treated us.
"Lilith."
"Yes, Master Ethan. If you wish, I'll have your reward prepared again tonight as well."
"Th-the, um, about that reward... Actually, there's something else I'd like to ask for instead..."
"...I beg your pardon?"
At Ethan's mention of asking for something 'else,' my mind went ice-cold in an instant.
Asking to replace the chest-touching reward with something else — surely he wasn't saying he wanted to advance to the next stage?
We were already at the point where my chest was being handled every single night. If 'the next stage' meant anything, did he want permission to touch somewhere lower this time?
No — no, it wouldn't even stop there. If it came after the chest, there was every chance he'd skip straight to the real prize and pounce on my first time entirely.
That, of all things, is absolutely not happening...?
Granted, I wasn't currently able to use any of my saintess powers, but that hardly put me in a position to toss my chastity away at will.
Unlocking a saintess's power required a formal Consecration at the main Aurelia Church — a condition not easily met — but just because I couldn't use it right now didn't mean I could hand over the potential I carried so cheaply.
Ruining a saintess's latent potential on the grounds of relieving the lust of a boy barely past puberty? Absurd on its face.
The real problem was that if Ethan truly set his mind to forcing himself on me, I lacked the standing to rebuff him cleanly on the spot.
My chest had been touched by him no fewer than a dozen times already; putting on airs of virtue now would carry no weight whatsoever.
Worse, he already held an overwhelming physical advantage — if he ever decided to take me by force, I wouldn't be able to mount any real resistance at all...
"E-E-E-Ethan, Master Ethan. I, I fully acknowledge that your skills have improved tremendously, but, ev-, even so, taking our relationship any further is, in my, my opinion, som-, somewhat indecorous—"
"N-no, Lilith! I-I'm not asking for anything lewd, I swear!"
"...I beg your pardon?"
"What I mean by 'something else' isn't asking for what we usually do at night — it's just a perfectly ordinary, completely un-lewd request..."
"......"
"The student council is about to start, and once it does the weekends will get busy too. So before that happens, I was going to ask if you'd like to go out of the Academy together the morning after tomorrow — for the first time in a while. Is... is that kind of request not allowed?"
"......"
...So. That's what this was about, then.
In other words, Ethan had never once intended to ask me for anything lewd from the very start.
And I had gone and panicked all by myself, assuming of course that his request would be of the lewd variety, and solemnly racking my brain inside my own skull over refusal scripts and countermeasures for if he forced himself on me.
A familiar, mortifying feeling came flooding back all at once, and I couldn't help lowering my head in silence.
Because I did not want Ethan catching the red heat rising to my face.
"I—I understand, Master Ethan. If that is what you wish, then of course I will oblige."
"Great. Thanks, Lilith."
"Besides, for a request like that, there was never any need to frame it as an exchange at all. Serving as your exclusive maid and following where you lead is simply my duty, Master Ethan—"
"Right. And since we're on the subject, I think we should settle one more thing about it right now."
"Yes?"
"For that one day, the day after tomorrow, I don't want my exclusive maid by my side. I want you to spend the day with me simply as Lilith — an ordinary noble daughter of a baronet's house. That's the whole of my request, Lilith."
"...I beg your pardon?"
And here I'd thought I'd spent long enough watching this boy grow up that I had him mostly figured out.
Watching him come out with something this incomprehensible, I was reminded once more that the hearts of men remained unknowable, however long you lived alongside them.