A Position I Cannot Yield (5)
I yanked Ethan's wrist—the one still hesitating over my words—straight into my chest.
Into my chest, one of Lilith's most defining features and, since I'd become a woman, the single most inconvenient part of my new body.
If it came down to a contest of pure strength, I could never beat Ethan, which meant this moment of carelessness and confusion was my one and only chance to seize his hand.
And at the same time, it was my only opportunity to wield my own body as the most efficient negotiating tool there was.
-Squish.
“……!”
“Hah….”
The moment his right hand sank into my left breast, Ethan's face flushed red, panic written all over him.
It was working. Definitely working.
Well, of course it was. Even in the original story, Ethan was the first one to deflower Lilith in the end—so as long as he was a man, he couldn't help but feel desire for this body.
I had no intention of giving up my virginity, mind you. Not with the saintess's power I'd need to keep intact for my eventual awakening.
And I still wasn't entertaining any future in which I ended up pinned beneath a man, moaning my head off.
But if it meant keeping my position as Ethan's exclusive personal maid, my chest was a line I could, grudgingly, afford to concede.
They were just useless lumps of fat to begin with—good for nothing but tempting men. So honestly, putting them to practical use was the smarter choice.
Barely counted as losing my virginity, after all. No man was actually going inside me.
I couldn't claim it was entirely unpleasant, but if the person involved was Ethan, it hovered right on the edge of acceptable.
Of course, if Ethan pushed for anything more than this, I'd have no choice but to abandon the whole exclusive maid position—whereas if letting him touch my chest was enough to win it back, that was a reasonably rational compromise.
…At least, that's what I thought in that moment.
“W-wait a second…! Maid….”
-Squish.
“……!!”
When Ethan, flustered, reflexively tried to pull back, I tugged his hand a little deeper into my chest.
Considering the gap in our strength, there was no reason Ethan should have been dragged along just because I was pulling with both hands. Most likely, some hesitation was warring inside him, and he couldn't bring himself to wrench his hand away.
Even if Ethan had only the average sex drive of a boy his age, the feel of Lilith's breasts would be a temptation far too sweet to give up easily.
“…Young Master.”
“M-Maid….”
“Do you feel it? This chest—the one Isabel doesn't have, and only I do.”
“I-I know…. I get wh-what you're trying to say now….”
“I'm not talking about Isabel alone, either. Bring any maid in this mansion before you, and it would be the same, Young Master. This is the single most powerful advantage I possess.”
“I-I've known that for ages…!”
Isabel, Katharina, Ayria, Alicia—no other maid's chest in existence could measure up to Lilith's, which made it the most formidable weapon in this situation. Powerful enough, at the very least, to crush any future where Ethan considered replacing me with another maid.
Still flustered, he kept his hands resting on my breasts through the maid uniform, blushing and avoiding my gaze—while I, having now pulled his opposite hand in as well, planted that one on my chest too.
-Squish.
“M-Maid…!”
…When I touched them myself, I'd never felt anything special, so I hadn't imagined it would be strange to have Ethan's hands on me. But now that his palms were actually resting on my chest, an odd feeling began to stir.
It was just the unfamiliarity of someone else's hands, that was all. It certainly wasn't because a man was touching me, or because that man happened to be Ethan. No such feelings would be brewing. Obviously.
Even if they were, there was no stopping now that I'd come this far. Having already conceded my chest to Ethan, I intended to wring a firm, definitive answer out of him.
“Young Master Ethan.”
“Maid….”
“Squeeze. Go on—give them a squeeze.”
“Wh…?”
“I've gone so far as to offer you my chest, and you plan to stand there flustered, palms flat open like some blushing virgin?”
“…….”
At my words, Ethan froze, clearly at a loss for how to respond.
And yet he didn't seem to want to simply pull his hands away either, leaving them still resting atop my breasts.
I buried his hands deeper into the mounds of fat, then pressed the demand once more.
“Young Master. Do you intend to keep humiliating me?”
“N-no…! That's not it, it's just….”
“Or perhaps you mean to tell me that this much doesn't even come close?”
“Wh-what is that supposed to mean, Maid…?”
“If Young Master Ethan intends to keep me on as your exclusive maid from here on, then please—think nothing else, and do as I ask.”
“……All right.”
Ethan finally seemed to make up his mind, nodding with a serious expression as I held both his hands against my breasts, silently waiting for them to move.
As I waited—wondering, perhaps, whether my heartbeat might carry through my chest and into his palms—an indescribable, peculiar sensation bloomed from the lumps of fat hanging at my front.
Hands moving within my embrace. A strangely careful touch, as though afraid of hurting me.
…and then, for reasons I couldn't begin to explain, a girl-like moan burst out of my mouth.
Ethan had only kneaded my chest two or three times before that sound escaped me—even I was taken aback by my own voice, and Ethan, more startled than I was, yanked his hands out of my grasp and froze his groping mid-motion.
“…….”
“…….”
Our eyes met, and an awkward silence stretched between us with no words to fill it.
Was that… enough? Had I done what I set out to do?
Surely Ethan had decided he'd felt enough and pulled away. That had to be it.
Because I, too, had no desire to let his hands linger on my chest any longer than necessary.
Somehow, I had a feeling that if he kept touching me like this, something unbearably strange would start welling up inside me.
“Do you… understand now?”
“…….”
“If you'll take me as your exclusive maid, Young Master Ethan… then this much, only once in a great while….”
“Maid, that's enough.”
“……Pardon?”
“It seems you're still misunderstanding something about the conversation Isabel and I had, so let's clear that part up first.”
“……Pardon?”
…A misunderstanding?
I was misunderstanding something?
“To cut straight to the conclusion before this goes any further sideways—I never proposed to Isabel that she become my exclusive maid.”
“…What? But when I heard it, Isabel was the one receiving the exclusive maid offer….”
“The offer I made to Isabel was a request for her to become your exclusive maid, Lilith.”
“…M-my exclusive maid…?”
Sensing something had gone profoundly wrong, I stayed rooted on the floor and listened to Ethan's explanation to the end—and only after hearing all of it did I finally grasp that I had been thoroughly, catastrophically mistaken about the entire situation from the very beginning.
What Ethan had originally proposed to Isabel was the position of exclusive maid to be attached to me—a minor noble now that I'd been granted the rank. And the role was meant as an assistant maid, someone to handle the duties I couldn't complete while enrolled at the Academy as a student.
“…Th-then… you weren't trying to cast me aside and make Isabel your exclusive maid…?”
“I told you from the start it was a misunderstanding, Maid. Why on earth would I choose any maid other than Lilith as my exclusive one?”
“But earlier, you made a proposal that humiliated my pride…!”
“I figured you'd be upset that having Isabel assist you felt like an insult to your pride as a maid. I worried it might look like I'd hired someone else because you couldn't handle your duties properly.”
“That's….”
“If Lilith would keep being my exclusive maid going forward, I'd be nothing but grateful. …Honestly, when you offered to remain my exclusive maid even after receiving the rank of baroness, I was genuinely happy about it.”
“…….”
“I'd actually been agonizing over whether your time serving as my exclusive maid at the Academy might work against you as a maid later…. And it turned out that very worry was what unsettled you.”
…It was all a misunderstanding?
Ethan trying to install Isabel as his exclusive maid.
My belief that I'd failed to properly do my maid's work for him these past three years.
Ethan watching for an opening to strip me of my position as exclusive maid—all of it, a misunderstanding?
‘…Then why, exactly, did I just make Ethan grope my chest?’
The moment I barged into his room, I dropped flat onto the floor apologizing for no reason.
Then I grabbed the wrist of the hand he'd reached out to try to clear things up, and dragged it into my chest.
And while holding it there, I told him to knead me. What was the reason for any of that…?
‘Forget exclusive maid—this is just a certified lunatic pervert—’
“AaAAAGH!”
“M-Maid?!”
“Haa, haa, haa, haa….”
With a scorching heat flooding my face, my heart began pounding furiously—for a completely different reason than before.
I couldn't even bring myself to look at the face I'd been staring into just moments ago.
Because I was so utterly ashamed of the me from mere seconds ago—the me who misunderstood everything, who spiraled off the rails all on her own, and who pitched her own bizarre, perverted scheme as the solution.
“Agh! AAAAAAGH!!”
“Maid! Calm down! I mean it—I can totally see how you might have gotten that impression!”
“P-please forget it….”
“…Huh?”
“Please forget it, Young Master Ethan…. If you can't forget this shameful past, then I—I can no longer serve as your exclusive maid….”
“Ah—yes! I'll forget it! Every single thing you did today, Lilith, I'll erase from my memory completely!”
“Haa, haa, haa, haa….”
…Easy to say. Impossible to actually do. If our positions were reversed, it would be a scene I could never, ever forget.
Your exclusive maid of over three years, suddenly prostrating herself before you, begging you not to cut her loose—offering up her chest on top of it.
Ethan was a man, and no man alive could erase a sight like that from his memory.
And yet, if I was going to survive this shame at all, I had no choice but to carry on as though he really had forgotten.
“Th-thank you….”
“You should rest for today, Maid! You need to calm your startled chest—ah, no, your startled heart first…!”
“Yes, sir….”
“Right. Go rest, Maid.”
“…I shall take my leave.”
And so, having single-handedly produced the worst black-mark memory of my entire life, I trudged away on leaden feet, forced to chew over one bitter lesson.
…When you're having a conversation, always—always—listen to the other person all the way to the end.