The Coil
Not even thirty minutes had passed since the carriage left the royal palace behind.
And I was already certain this trip was going to be far more exhausting than I'd anticipated.
"……"
I leaned toward the window, pretending to gaze idly outside, then shifted only my eyes—just a little—to check the seat across from me.
Kael de Arcadia.
Black hair, crimson eyes, features sharp enough to command attention even from a distance, all of it stacked on top of the title of Crown Prince of the Empire.
And the lunatic currently steamrolling my country with his army.
That man had been staring at me for a while now, without saying a word.
Though "staring" didn't quite cover it.
…Wow.
Blatant.
It wasn't the natural momentary eye contact that happens mid-conversation, nor the quick once-over to confirm that the Elysia von Astrea he'd demanded had actually been delivered.
It was slower than that.
Meticulous.
Kael's gaze lingered on my face, and even when I deliberately tilted my head, it didn't flinch away. If anything, his eyes narrowed slightly, as if he'd been waiting for exactly that, and then began a slow descent downward.
Eyes.
Nose.
Lips.
Jaw.
It slid along the line of my throat for a while, then came to a stop near my collarbone, where it rose above the neckline of my dress.
…He's staring at my chest.
I turned my gaze back out the window, feigning complete obliviousness.
There was no need to confirm exactly where his eyes went next.
I already knew.
Maybe a person's stare really does register this vividly, or maybe I'd just grown hypersensitive since waking up in this body—either way, even though he hadn't laid a single fingertip on me, it felt like something was crawling slowly down my skin.
He's undressing me with his eyes.
Crude phrasing, I'll admit.
But there was no better way to put it.
That was precisely what Kael was doing.
I exhaled quietly and adjusted my posture—and even that split second of movement, his crimson eyes tracked without missing a beat.
I straightened my back, and they dropped to my waist.
I smoothed the hem of my dress, and they followed my fingertips.
I folded my arms, and they drifted right back up.
Then, a few seconds later, they'd return to my face as if nothing had happened at all.
That absolute bastard.
I swallowed the curse.
Hold it in.
I am a princess.
A princess. At least going by this body's station, she would have been drilled in etiquette and decorum and all the rest since childhood—and the man sitting across from me was a crown prince of another realm, no less.
Losing my temper here.
What are you looking at?
Got a problem with your eyes?
That wasn't an option.
…Honestly, though, couldn't I say it?
Come to think of it, we were already at war.
Diplomatic relations had thoroughly imploded, and this was the guy who'd marched his army all the way to my capital demanding they hand me over. Would my crude language really make things any worse between our nations at this point?
Probably not.
But there's no reason to poke the hornet's nest either.
I steadied myself and turned back to the window.
The capital was receding slowly beyond the carriage glass.
At first I could see the lavish buildings clustered densely around the royal palace, but before long the humbler homes of commoners began to appear among them, and when even those vanished, nothing remained but an endless sweep of fields and forest.
The road itself must have given way from well-laid stone to packed dirt, because the carriage began to jostle at steady intervals, and I could hear small stones clattering beneath the wheels.
This scene never existed in the game.
Or rather.
In a game, it would have taken seconds to get here.
Elysia resolves to leave Astrea.
She shares a tearful farewell with the King.
She boards the black carriage.
Then the screen fades to black.
[A few days later.]
One line of text.
The end.
Very efficient of you.
I'd never given it a second thought back then. From the player's perspective, there was no reason to sit through a detailed rendering of several days spent in a carriage traveling from kingdom to empire.
Frankly, if an eroge went so far as to animate that with full CG, that would be the weird one.
But now that I was the one making the journey, my perspective had shifted somewhat.
Skipped content.
For the person involved, it meant living through every second of it.
Several days inside a carriage.
With nothing to do.
With him.
I stole another glance across the cabin.
"……"
Still staring.
This time, our eyes actually met.
Any ordinary person would have realized at this point that they'd been gawking, and politely looked away. Kael showed no intention whatsoever of having such a reasonable reaction. Instead he met my gaze head-on and curled the corner of his mouth up, just a fraction.
And then.
Down again.
Slowly. Knowing full well I was watching him.
Wow.
I was, for a moment, speechless.
Look at this guy.
Caught red-handed, and not a shred of embarrassment.
If anything, he seemed to be doing it on purpose.
Yes, I'm looking at you. So what?
That was precisely his attitude.
His gaze slid past my jaw to the base of my throat, slowed briefly between the edge of my dress and my collarbone, then traced the curves of my body even lower.
I instinctively almost crossed my arms—and immediately stopped myself.
Why should I cover up?
Covering up would feel like admitting the staring bothered me.
Which annoyed me too.
Keeping my expression perfectly indifferent, I deliberately lifted my chin a little.
And Kael's eyes changed, ever so slightly.
Amused.
Was he always like this in the original?
I began replaying the game's opening act in my head.
The setting itself—Kael coveting Elysia—was accurate. But this was a man who'd started an entire war over a princess of another country whose face he'd never once seen properly, so calling it ordinary attraction was a stretch.
Whenever the community discussed the Kael route, the takes flew fast and furious.
Complete lunatic.
Obsessive stalker.
The crown prince is scarier than the emperor ever was.
Everything under the sun.
I'd chimed in with one or two myself.
But had he been this far gone from the very first meeting?
There were hints that he enjoyed watching Elysia squirm, sure, but he hadn't crossed lines this openly right out of the gate.
Then why now?
I looked at Kael again.
Kael was looking right back at me.
This time it wasn't even an admiring once-over of my face. The instant I shifted my legs slightly, his eyes followed them down—and lingered for an absurdly long stretch over the area my dress concealed, which he couldn't see at all.
Then, very slowly, back up.
Once.
Twice.
At this point, pretending it was my imagination required real commitment.
I raised one eyebrow, just a hair.
Kael met my eyes without missing a step.
"……"
"……"
Neither of us said anything for several seconds.
Only the carriage wheels rolled on over the dirt road in steady rhythm.
Clatter.
Clatter.
Through all of it, Kael didn't so much as turn his head.
He seemed to be waiting for me to react first.
Hold it in.
I looked back out the window.
A tree went by.
A big tree.
A small tree.
Some unidentifiable grass.
Another tree.
Nothing else to look at.
And yet even with my back to him, I could feel Kael's gaze on me.
My back.
The nape of my neck.
My profile.
I couldn't tell exactly where those eyes were, but the sheer fact that they were still on me kept piling irritation on top of irritation.
Eventually, I turned my head, slowly.
"Excuse me."
"Yes."
Instant reply.
As if he'd been waiting for me to open my mouth from the very beginning. That was somehow even more infuriating.
"You've been staring at me this whole time."
"I have."
"……Have you, now."
"Yes."
What.
What was with this shamelessness.
I studied Kael's face for a moment. He sat there with his chin propped on one hand, perfectly composed, the faintest smile playing at his lips—as though the fact that I'd finally spoken to him amused him.
He's doing this on purpose.
Only now did it click for certain.
He wasn't staring blankly because he liked my looks. He was watching to see how long I'd hold my tongue.
What a filthy personality.
The moment that realization landed, my own willingness to play nice evaporated.
I crossed my arms and leaned back against the seat.
And just as predicted.
Kael's gaze dropped.
Completely naturally.
Too long to be called a flicker, too leisurely to be called a glare. Then his eyes climbed right back up to my face.
…
Yep.
Confirmed.
I curled the corner of my mouth up, just slightly.
"You're being awfully blatant, don't you think?"
I struck.
Head-on.
A brief silence followed the words, and then the carriage hit a stone and lurched hard.
Kael's eyebrow rose, a fraction of a hair's width.
I held his gaze without backing down.
Well?
Was I wrong?
After spending the better part of an hour practically stripping me with his eyes, acting oblivious now would be the funnier crime.
Of course, my opponent was the Crown Prince. The next emperor of an empire many times the size of my kingdom. The very man currently pinning my country down with sheer military force.
Reasoning it out coldly, smiling and letting it slide would have been the wiser play.
But.
After nearly an hour of this, he's had more than enough grace from me.
The corner of Kael's mouth lifted.
At first, only barely.
And as I refused to look away, it widened into something unmistakable.
"Blatant, you say."
"Am I imagining things?"
"Hmm."
"So you intend to keep looking like that, then."
This time, Kael laughed—a short one. Not aloud, exactly, but I could see his shoulders shift, just slightly.
"What, you don't like it?"
"Not exactly something to be flattered about."
"Oh, come on. It's barely anything."
"……I beg your pardon?"
With those words, Kael straightened up.
I blinked reflexively.
Wait a moment.
However spacious this carriage was for royal use, it was ultimately a box built for people. Even seated across from each other there hadn't been room to slip a person between our knees—and the instant Kael leaned his upper body forward, what little distance remained shrank to nothing.
Instinctively, I recoiled.
My back hit the plush seat.
Nowhere left to go.
"What do you think you're—"
Before I could finish, Kael's hand shot out.
I wrenched my arm back on pure instinct.
Too late.
He caught my wrist.
"Let go."
I immediately strained against his grip, but even with only a few fingers wrapped around me, my arm barely budged.
Far stronger than I'd expected.
Not that it was surprising. By the game's own settings, Kael ranked among the very top swordsmen in the Empire—there was even a dedicated event of him swinging a blade on an actual battlefield. If a princess who'd spent her life in palace dresses tested strength against a man like that, the outcome was written in stone.
Still felt terrible, though.
"Release me."
Kael asked, perfectly calm.
"And if I don't?"
"……"
Ah.
That line.
I used to love that line. When a bad dialogue pick sent Kael's obsession meter climbing, dialogue like this showed up constantly, and I'd sit there behind the screen thinking, great character work.
Hearing it firsthand, though.
It's so goddamn infuriating.
I shoved at Kael's arm with my free hand.
In that instant, his other hand moved.
Got it.
He caught that one too.
"……"
Both my wrists, in one hand.
I stared down at it, momentarily dumbfounded.
I knew my wrists were slender.
But I never wanted to find out like this.
"Your Highness, the Crown Prince."
I addressed him as evenly as I could manage.
"What."
"You do realize you are committing an extremely rude act right now?"
"I do."
"……"
Not a single hesitation.
A bitter laugh nearly escaped me.
Talking to this man is pointless.
In which case, I'd have to solve this physically.
I resolved to move my knee at once.
What I was aiming for needed no explanation. Knowledge carried over from my past life as a man. Whether the target held the rank of crown prince or emperor—
A solid hit to the vitals makes all men equal.
But before I could so much as tense my body, Kael's crimson eyes flicked downward for the briefest moment.
Then back to me.
"Don't."
His mouth was still smiling.
…He saw it coming.
The next instant, my body was pushed backward.
"Ugh."
My back pressed deep into the seat, and both my captured hands were drawn upward. My arms rose above my head, my shoulders stretching open of their own accord. I twisted sideways, trying to slip free, but the grip around my wrists didn't loosen by even a hair.
Only then did something other than irritation begin to seep into my head.
This situation.
Is a lot more dangerous than it looks.
Kael's face was close.
Not close enough for his breath to touch my skin, but unmistakably past any distance a person could call comfortable.
I narrowed my eyes and looked up at him.
Crimson eyes.
A smiling mouth.
And still.
That gaze.
Unlike before, when he'd surveyed me from across the cabin, there was no space left to hide—yet Kael made no effort whatsoever to disguise it. His eyes traveled unhurriedly from my face to my throat, from my throat downward, then back up again.
At this point it wasn't appreciation. It was an open spectacle.
"……"
Absurdity briefly robbed me of words.
This son of a—
He ties a person up so he can look at her more comfortably?
He's several times crazier than the game ever let on.
"……What exactly is so fascinating to look at."
My voice dropped a register.
Kael didn't answer right away.
Instead, his eyes curved faintly, as though my question delighted him, and he pressed my captured wrists a little higher still.
"I've been curious from the start."
"About what."
"Whether you were worth going to war over."
"……"
Hold on.
I turned that sentence over in my head once.
And then.
"You're insane."
This time, it came out loud.
Kael smiled.
Grin.
His face looked far more delighted than it had a moment ago.
"Now that's an answer I like."
"Well, I don't like any of this."
"That's a shame."
Click.
In that instant, something cold closed around my wrists.
I looked up immediately.
"……What is this?"
I couldn't tell when he'd produced it, but a slender black restraint now encircled both my wrists. It looked like cord, but the moment I strained against it, it hardened rigid, a faint sheen of light drifting across its surface.
A magical artifact.
I flexed my arms at once.
Not a twitch.
"Wait—"
I pulled again.
Click.
It only tightened.
"Hold on a second—"
Kael, still gripping my bound wrists in one hand, pinned them above my head and looked down at me.
And he smiled—deeply, unmistakably satisfied.
"Much better."
"What could possibly be better about this."
"This."
Huh? Why is he reaching out his hand—
Squelch.