The Most Comfortable Place (2)
The moment I opened my eyes and was greeted by that revolting face, my mood soured in an instant. I'd seen it so many times by now that I'd memorized it against my will — that slimy, hateful mug — and the curse shot out of me on pure reflex.
"You damned bastard."
How long was he going to torment me before he was satisfied?
Of course, it wasn't as if that McHeath bastard actually had a way to torment me directly, which was why his face kept popping up in my dreams. It was just that I couldn't shake my vigilance toward him from the depths of my heart, and that lingering wariness was repeating this nightmare over and over.
He was someone entangled with the Demon Tribe, and I knew the full extent of McHeath's abilities. The unconscious certainty that he could barge into my bedchamber at any moment and drag me off had taken root somewhere deep inside me, and that unspeakable, bottomless fear was the reason my sleep had been gnawed to ribbons for days.
Damn it... I'm tied up again...
The instant I saw his face, my hand practically itched to drive a dagger into his throat — but just like in every dream before, my wrists were bound tight by something in the darkness and refused to move.
"It's no use. I've already caught you."
McHeath flashed that rotten smile at me with utter confidence as I struggled uselessly against my bonds.
And then that slimy voice I'd heard countless times began churning my stomach like it intended to turn it inside out.
"Do you have any idea how much effort I poured into capturing you? Honestly, how can a noble lady be so unruly — such a vicious little fighter."
"......"
"A commoner with no breeding, I suppose. That must be why you grew up so wild. There's simply no other explanation."
Calm down. Don't panic.
As long as I could firmly recognize that this situation was a dream, I could find some way to wake up.
McHeath's remark implying he knew I wasn't actually nobility, the fact that by any sensible timeline he couldn't have left me trussed up and abandoned like this. The dream world was riddled with inconsistencies if I just looked for them, and I had to keep hammering that truth into my skull to claw my way out of this nightmare.
But what if this isn't a dream... no. No, there's no way this situation isn't a dream.
At most, five people in this world knew I hadn't been born a noble. And not a single one of them was particularly close to McHeath, nor were any of them loose-lipped.
There were plenty of other signs too, plenty of reasons to know this world was a dream. To wake up, I simply had to keep engraving that fact into my mind, over and over.
These bizarrely vivid sensations, this strange sense of reality clinging to my body that wouldn't fade — all of it was nothing but an illusion cooked up by my brain. Being briefly dragged into McHeath's space and escaping had apparently been enough to seed dreams this realistic. That was all it was.
Honestly, it'd be easier if this were a proper dream where I couldn't even think straight.
Because I was stuck in the miserable middle ground — lucid enough to think, and lucid enough to feel this burning hatred for the bastard in front of me — everything hurt twice as much. And ever since I'd returned to the Blackwood Estate and started sleeping alone, I'd been having this exact dream every single night. No wonder my sanity was eroding.
McHeath's ambush had happened long before that, so it was possible I'd dreamed this earlier too — but even if I had, I probably would've woken, forgotten it instantly, and drifted right back to sleep.
At the Academy, I was always in the same bed, and feeling Ethan's warmth beside me let me relax. With him there, some part of me knew that even if something went wrong, he'd protect me in a heartbeat — and that let me sink back into sleep without fear.
Even in the infirmary at the Academy church, the bed was different, but I was sharing a room with Agnes, so while it wasn't quite the same as having Ethan there, I could still rest easy to some degree.
But for the three nights since we'd come to the Blackwood Estate, I'd lain in that bed alone, fallen asleep alone — which meant escaping this nightmare was something I had to manage entirely on my own.
"Well? Are you finally starting to feel like submitting to me?"
Don't engage. This is a dream. No need to take the bait.
"There's no way for you to escape me anyway. Now that I've sealed you in this space, you have no means of resisting."
Ignore him. Don't listen to a word. It's all nonsense anyway.
"Things got easier once that leech who was stuck to you finally disappeared. He nearly ruined that pretty body of yours, you know. Wouldn't you say?"
Please, wake up. Hurry. It's a dream, so wake up. Wakeupwakeupwakeup...
I forced myself to tune out McHeath as he shamelessly spouted the same lines I'd heard dozens of times, and poured everything into focusing my mind on breaking free of sleep.
My wrists and ankles were bound by his black grasp, so a repeat of last time — slashing my way out — was impossible.
This was inside his space, so naturally magic was out of the question too. Sure, you could argue that since this world was my dream, I ought to be able to use anything I could imagine — but I'd attempted exactly that dozens of times in previous dreams, and every single attempt had failed.
If this standoff dragged on, I knew exactly how it would end. So I tensed my whole body and directed every ounce of my consciousness toward tearing myself out of this dream.
Dream or not, there was no way in hell I was letting that McHeath bastard do anything twisted to me.
Dream or not, what I hated, I hated.
I had to erase McHeath's existence from my mind entirely and focus on nothing but waking. If even a blurry image of his face lingered in my head, escaping sleep would become that much more impossible...
"Besides, even if that dim-witted young master had actually been at your side, the outcome wouldn't have changed much. A man who couldn't even become a Sword Master is hardly qualified to face me."
Excuse me, what did you just say?
"Excuse me, what did you just say?"
— Shiiiing.
...Oh no.
Damn it, why did he have to go and bring up Ethan of all people, out of nowhere?
I'd been one heartbeat away from concentrating hard enough to break free — and this bastard's sudden mention of Ethan, not me, had shattered my focus completely.
And McHeath, catching my reaction immediately, wore that revolting grin and closed the distance without a moment's hesitation. That single remark had cost me my one chance of escape, entirely.
"My, such a filthy mouth."
"......"
"A young lady who never even learned basic manners... I suppose I'll simply have to educate you from the very beginning."
With those final words, McHeath reached out and pushed his hand toward my chest.
I squeezed my eyes shut and deliberately stared ahead, doing my damnedest to deny what was about to happen next.
Dream or not, I had absolutely no intention of giving my body to a creature like that. If I was ever going to give this body to a man, then it would be Ethan and Ethan alone—
— Shnk!
Then came the sound of a single blade cutting through the air.
More precisely, the sound of something soft and fleshy being sliced off by an edge.
For a split second, the thought flashed through my mind — had the dream-McHeath wounded my body? — but I felt no pain whatsoever anywhere on me.
"AAAAGH!!"
The scream that followed wasn't mine either. It came from that bastard who had been leering and pressing in on me until just moments ago.
And with it, a strange flutter of hope bloomed in my chest. When I cautiously opened my eyes once more, what stood before me wasn't McHeath — it was the reassuring back of someone else's head.
"What the hell do you think you're doing to my Lilith?"
"H-how did you..."
"Even if this is a dream, I won't surrender Lilith to you for a single instant. Not one."
...Had any of my dreams ever gone like this before?
My sleep pattern until now had always been the same: wake up by force just before McHeath's hands touched my body, fall asleep again, thrash awake for the same reason, repeat until I was too terrified to sleep at all and ended up pacing the whole night through.
Failing to escape this damned dream was bad enough — but Ethan appearing out of nowhere to rescue me was a future I hadn't seen coming at all.
...You know, that's actually pretty reassuring.
I'd leaned on that broad back of his a few times in the real world, but who'd have thought I'd get rescued by it inside a dream too?
It was an absurd situation, but honestly, I didn't care. Anything was better than lying there helpless at the mercy of that McHeath bastard.
— Shnk!
"AAAGH!"
— Shluk!
"Ugh, AAAAAAGH!!"
I wasn't the only one blindsided by Ethan's entrance, apparently — the McHeath of my subconscious was being mercilessly carved apart by every swing of Ethan's blade.
"Y-you son of a biiiitch!!"
— Shlck!
"Agh, AAAAAAAAGH!!"
...It felt almost too overwhelmingly one-sided, but I decided to just roll with it. Nightmare or not, this was still my dream, so however it worked, things were probably playing out exactly the way I wanted them to. No matter how unrealistic it looked, anything beat watching Ethan lose.
So it went — McHeath was split into Mac-Hea-Th chunks under the sudden violence of Ethan's assault, then cleaved again into as many pieces as there were consonants and vowels in his name, and only then did the bastard finally breathe his last. And in that same instant, I felt the black grasp binding my limbs dissolve and fall away.
— Thump.
"Lilith, are you alright?"
"......"
"Let's go inside and rest for a bit. It seems like exhaustion just built up all at once over the past few days..."
...Strangely enough, a voice that felt overwhelmingly, unmistakably real was suddenly ringing in my ears. And the sensation in my body — it felt exactly as if I were truly being held in Ethan's arms.
Dream or not, the man really does play the prince on a white horse to perfection, doesn't he? Showing up out of nowhere to save me from the villain wasn't enough — he had to finish with a princess carry, too.
Normally, dream or no dream, I'd have been mortified by a move this shameless. But right now, some part of me simply didn't care. At least being cradled in Ethan's arms like this was easier on the heart than a recurring nightmare of nearly being violated by McHeath over and over, night after night.
Oh, right — when this happens, I owe him a reward...
Dream or not, I'd accepted his aid, so it was only right to pay Ethan back the way I always did.
My head was still foggy and my thoughts refused to sort themselves out, but even so, I remembered perfectly well what needed doing at a moment like this.
Ethan likes skinship, so giving him something along those lines would make a proper thank-you. Though in this position, even if touching my chest were allowed, it'd be physically impossible...
Following that chain of thought, I looped both arms around Ethan's neck and let a little of my weight settle against his nape.
— Swish.
"...Lilith?"
Then, raising my upper body slightly, I brought my lips to his.
— Mwah.
"......?!?!"
It was supposed to be just a kiss inside a dream — and yet somehow, this one sensation felt as soft and real as any kiss we'd shared in the waking world.
Warm. Tender. Exactly like the feeling of being held in Ethan's arms.