Each Their Own Thoughts (2)
The morning after McHart's execution and the conclusion of the council regarding the saintess qualifications I possessed.
For the first time in a long while, I had slept alone—and woken without a nightmare. I rose slowly from the bed, feeling wonderfully refreshed.
It's really been ages since I slept this deeply, even by myself.
Nine times out of ten, my nightmares had been McHart's doing, so the moment his existence was wiped from the world, even my sleep had started reaping the benefits. After the campaign to take him down, I'd actually caught myself worrying I might no longer be able to sleep without sharing a bed with Ethan—but thankfully, that didn't seem to be the case. Though at the Academy, like it or not, we'd had no choice but to share one anyway.
Announcing that you want to share a bed with Ethan even in a place like this would have been mortifyingly embarrassing.
Gehmajoshigi-gwat and Serista aside, I couldn't help but fret over how Seraphin and Agnes might look at me. If I tried to explain that we only ever shared the bed and nothing more, I doubt a word of it would have landed.
"Ah, now that I think of it…."
So last night, I'd apparently fallen asleep without even changing properly out of my clothes.
The fact that I'd gone to bed still wearing the corset squeezing my waist meant I must have been exhausted beyond measure. No wonder my solar plexus had been aching the moment I woke up.
In that respect, maid uniforms had the advantage of lacking these bothersome accessories—once you actually got them on, they were honestly easier to live in. Garter belts and the like were a hassle to put on and take off, but they didn't really interfere with daily life in any meaningful way. They were garments designed for ease of movement on the job in the first place, so good mobility was only natural.
First things first—wash up and change into something else.
Laundry was a matter solved in a single stroke with Clean magic, but the prospect of simply putting these same clothes back on was unappealing. With that thought, I peeled off each garment one by one, cast Clean magic as I went, and folded each piece neatly into a tidy pile at the foot of the bed.
However I dressed while staying at the Imperial Annex, these were the clothes I'd have to wear on the way home. And strictly speaking, they belonged to the Blackwood family, not to me at all.
-Ssssshhhhh.
Hot water cascaded down over my head as I stepped into the bathroom attached to the guest room, and while quietly giving thanks from the bottom of my heart for a hot-water plumbing system most unbecoming of a medieval world, I ran a rough estimate of the schedule ahead.
About four days here at the Annex, I'd guess?
The place Gehmajoshigi-gwat would likely take us was probably one of the events that unfold during the second-year summer break—and this summer's event was due to begin before long, as it happened.
As far as I could recall, there were two major events remaining around this point in time, and departing roughly four days from now would line our arrival up with either of them quite neatly.
First, there was the 'Lara's Secret' event, set in the Witch's Forest in the Empire's southwest, where you solved the problem surrounding the alchemist witch Lara and walked away with a unique item and her affection.
And then there was the 'Liria's Land' event, unfolding on the Northeastern Great Plains, where you intervened in a territorial dispute between the barbarians and a noble house, protected the Barbarakus tribe, and earned Liria's affection.
The two events ran almost simultaneously, so in the game you could only ever choose one—and choosing 'Lara's Secret' was the accepted standard route in Luminor Academy.
After all, Lara's side simply had more crumbs to glean between the two.
It wasn't as though Liria lacked appeal as a heroine, mind you. The spear-wielding girl, brimming with wild ferocity and wholesome, athletic beauty, enjoyed her own cult following.
It was simply that the gap in the value of the end-of-event rewards was far too wide—even players who preferred Liria over Lara generally picked 'Lara's Secret' when it came to this event alone.
For one thing, completing Lara's event granted the unique item known as the Witch's Pendant, an accessory that conferred immunity to mental attacks—an absurdly overpowered item in the late game.
Furthermore, Lara doubled as Luminor Academy's resident apothecary, and if you raised her affection through this event, every item you bought from her afterward came at half price. A benefit so broken it bordered on criminal.
And then there remained, in a certain sense, the most important crumb of all: the moment you cleared the event, Lara's 'scene collection' began immediately.
By the standards of the original world's terminology, Lara was a brooding, menhera-flavored character through and through. Resolve her 'Lara's Secret' business, and she fell for the protagonist on the spot—so head over heels that she'd come barging into his bedroom stark naked that very night.
That said, she wasn't the type to give her body away to just anyone. At least in every proper romance scene I'd seen in the game, Lara was undeniably a virgin.
If she'd been a true heroine, she would have blown most of the other girls' popularity out of the water.
Lara's greatest flaw as a heroine was that she had so many devoted fanatics people joked she wasn't actually a heroine. And, quite literally, not being a heroine was precisely the problem.
In point of fact, outside of this single event, Lara had next to no other personal events in Luminor Academy. She even lived out her days as a witch at the endgame without any regard for the protagonist—a perfectly unromanceable character.
To put it another way, she carried no lingering sense of obligation about taking her first time, no demands that you take responsibility afterward. From a player's perspective, the 'Lara's Secret' episode was a lovely breather event, free of any tedious conditions to satisfy.
Even Gehmajoshigi-gwat, champion of the virgin playthrough, would find this one event hard to pass up. How could anyone resist no-strings-attached, brooding, big-breasted menhera virgin witch sex?
Lara, with her mountain of jackpot rewards and even the risqué event that followed, stood in stark contrast to Liria, whose rewards were bland and whose event conclusion was nothing to write home about.
To be fair, finishing Liria's storyline did award the 'Necklace of the Barbarians' as a prize—but that item's performance was, at best, a strictly inferior downgrade of the Witch's Pendant.
Liria's affection did rise, yes, but there was no bonus like Lara's shop discount, and since Liria wasn't a menhera in the slightest, no 'scene collection' moment existed for her either, naturally.
For efficiency runs and for lewd events alike, Lara's event was the categorically superior choice—so in roughly four days' time, I figured, all of us would likely be boarding carriages bound for the Witch's Forest in the southwest.
I should buy some Insect Repellent Perfume when the chance comes up.
After years of maid work, bugs didn't particularly gross me out anymore—but that hardly meant I wanted to be bitten by Adidas-striped mosquitoes and deadly ticks in a summer forest.
With those thoughts, I finished my shower and rummaged through the wardrobe in search of something to wear. Seraphin had said I was free to use anything in the room, so surely anything would do.
Maid uniform, maid uniform….
As usual, I searched the guest room's wardrobe for my maid uniform—only to find that the annex closet held no maid uniform at all, not even an apron or a headpiece. The only garments on offer were noble young lady's dresses.
What on earth? Why wasn't there a maid uniform? I'd assumed at least one would be provided.
Had the possibility of a maid lodging here simply never been considered? As the thought crossed my mind, I had to admit it probably hadn't.
No one could have anticipated the scenario of a maid staying in a chamber as prestigious as this. When servants accompanied their masters to imperial palaces and annexes, the standard convention was for them to lodge in the servants' waiting room on the ground floor, sharing quarters with the household's other staff.
"Trekking down to the servants' waiting room to change, dressed like this… far too much of a bother."
But neither could I go down there as I was, in nothing but my undergarments and garter belt.
As I stood there agonizing over what to do, my eyes drifted to the door beside the wardrobe—the one that seemed to connect to the neighboring room.
"…Could this be a private servants' waiting room?"
If it were a servants' waiting room, maybe there'd be a maid uniform in there. Thinking nothing of it, I turned the handle and pushed the door open—and what greeted my eyes was a bedroom considerably too spacious to be any servants' waiting room.
"…Huh?"
Since when did the Imperial Annex give its servants' waiting rooms this much room? I suppose when you're an imperial palace, even the staff get facilities like these?
Except the main palace had never had anything of the sort, as far as I could tell.
I'd played through twenty-five runs; if a waiting room this luxurious existed, I should have laid eyes on it at least once. And yet this room looked less like a servants' waiting room and more like just another guest chamber.
As I stood there, mind gone briefly blank, puzzling over the room's purpose, the door on the opposite side of the neighboring room swung open, and a familiar figure appeared before my eyes.
-Bang.
"Whewww…."
"………"
A man stepping out through the door of a room still thick with billowing steam.
Ethan emerged in nothing but his bare skin, and my brain briefly ceased all function. I simply stared, dazed, at the sight of him—and it was only moments later, as he rubbed his hair with a towel, that Ethan noticed me standing across the way.
"………"
"…Hold on—Lilith?!"
"…Y-yes?"
"W-why are you suddenly coming out of there, Lilith?! And dressed in nothing but your underwear…?"
"Then might I ask what you are doing here, young master…? In nothing but your birthday suit…?"
"Because I just got out of the bath, obviously…."
"And I merely opened a door that seemed to lead next door, wondering if it might be the servants' waiting room, and… oh."
Only after the words had left my mouth did I grasp the function of the door I was holding—and a beat too late, I finally understood that what lay beyond it was no servants' waiting room at all, but simply 'the room next door.'
"I-I beg your pardon, Master Ethan!"
-SLAM!
No—damn it all. If the rooms are built with a layout like this, someone ought to have explained it to me in advance!
Never in my wildest imagination had I expected there to be a door connecting one guest chamber directly to another. Was the whole Annex built like this?
Now that I think of it—this is where McHart held his gatherings every time a noble social season rolled around, isn't it.
It wasn't hard to guess how this door had been put to use until now. Knowing those debauched aristocrats, it certainly hadn't served any noble purpose.
"Hah, hah, hah, hah, hah…."
And so, having not only shown Ethan my underwear-clad state first thing in the morning but also borne witness to his naked form fresh from the bath, I found myself needing just a little more time to calm the feelings that had been needlessly set ablaze before the day had even properly begun.