Professor Ferzen
Euphemia woke and slowly shook the haze from her mind.
"......"
Even when she fell asleep with distance kept between them, morning always found this man with her shut inside his arms. The arrangement had grown familiar enough that she no longer bothered to pull free. It was less that she had been tamed than that she had simply yielded.
And is there even a difference...
She breathed out a sigh salted with self-mockery and looked beyond the window. The sky was dark, as if rain were gathering. Dull storm clouds had swallowed the sun, and because of them the glass beside the bed reflected her more sharply than usual: a woman lying there, pathetic and wretched past all words, her wings torn off, shut inside a cage.
She did not want to look at it any longer. Euphemia closed her eyes and tried to nurse the faint coal of sleep still left in her, coaxing drowsiness back over her — but she could not fall under. Last night was rising, slow and creeping, to the surface.
...
It had not been a pleasant experience. To grow skilled, little by little, at something she had never wanted — was that not exactly like a slave? No. A slave would have been the kinder fate. Last night she had been like a whore.
Not even that...
Not a whore so much as a maid sold into the house, body and all. That seemed the truer likeness.
"Ah..."
Self-loathing was eating at her mind the way the clouds ate the sky when Ferzen opened his eyes. A large hand reached out and turned the body that had been showing him its back.
"Let... go of me...!"
Her face pressed into the firm plane of his chest, fine muscle drawn tight beneath the skin, and breathing grew difficult. Euphemia shoved at him with both hands and strained. His body did not move. It might as well have been a castle wall. As if the resistance amused him, he lowered his head, pushed his face against the nape of her neck, and closed his teeth there in a faint bite.
"Hhk...!"
It was only a light warning — a mother dog taking a pup that had forgotten its place by the scruff and hauling it home — but Euphemia went rigid, fear locking her still.
"I don't... want..."
When she had gone quiet, Ferzen lifted his head and moved to kiss her mouth. Euphemia turned her face aside. Anyone might have asked what the point was, now that their bodies had already been joined. And yet, looking back, she and Ferzen had never once kissed. There was a stubborn wish in her to keep, to the very end, at least one thing she had never given him.
"Ugh...!"
Ferzen reached out and turned her head back, sweeping the resistance aside as if it did not exist.
"Mmph...!"
Their lips met. Euphemia shut her mouth in a rush and barred his probing tongue with her teeth...
"Hah—!"
His hand slid lower and jabbed her navel, and her mouth opened despite her. His tongue swept every corner of her teeth, toying with her, making a mockery of her.
"!"
Euphemia bit his tongue on instinct.
"......"
Ferzen drew his head back a little. His crimson eyes narrowed.
"Hht... hhk..."
The moment she met that gaze, her breath failed her.
"Mmph!"
Unlike a moment before, he dropped his head at once and kissed her roughly. She did not even dream of resisting. Ferzen caught her tongue and bared his teeth.
"D-don't... don't..."
A bad feeling always comes true. That is the order of a life. Euphemia begged him through tears, the words clumsy and half-formed around the tongue he held.
Ferzen did not accept the plea. He bit down on her tongue as it was.
"——!"
The bright, biting pain startled her. Tears spilled as she tried to push his head away with both hands...
"Ah, hk... nnh...! Mmph!"
He caught both her hands and, only then, gave her a kiss of exceeding gentleness. It was not a thick exchange of saliva. It was a raw kiss, in which they traded blood and swallowed it.
"Kkh! Nnh...! Hk...!"
When the long kiss ended and Ferzen lifted his head, Euphemia covered her face with both hands and broke into sobs. He reached toward her as if to soothe her. She curled into a ball and refused his hands.
"I... truly cannot... understand you. Not at all..."
She forced the words out through tears she was holding down. Ferzen rose from the bed, set his clothes neatly in order, and spoke.
"......"
"And so why resist to no purpose... Euphemia. You are a woman remarkably incapable of learning."
He finished in a flat voice, opened the door, and went out.
The room was left to her alone. She wanted to cry again, but the tears she had pressed down did not leak out a second time.
Pit. Pit-pat.
Rain began beyond the window.
Then it roared down — a downpour so fierce she could not tell when it might end.
After I had bathed and changed, I skipped breakfast and set out for the Imperial Academy. She would need time for her feelings to settle. Better, then, to draft the lecture plans in my office in the main building.
A creak. I watched the rain cling to the window and run down in thin trails, and before I knew it the carriage had arrived at the Academy and parked with neat precision. I opened the door, raised my umbrella, and stepped into the main hall.
The fourth floor, was it...
Tracing a faint memory, I folded the umbrella and climbed.
I confirmed that my plate hung there, opened the door, and found an office of extreme plainness. Only the barest furnishings. Anything beyond that, it seemed, one was expected to pay for oneself. I preferred it this way. Clutter would only provoke one of my compulsive fits.
"......"
I was about to step inside when curiosity turned my head. Whose office stood beside mine?
"Hm..."
I wondered whether someone had arranged it on purpose. It hardly mattered. It did not matter, and yet...
404...
I wanted it rather badly. 403 was not uncomfortable. Still, I could not help preferring 404.
I flung the door open. A red carpet lay within, and several bottles of fresh flowers stood by the window and on the desk. Uriel must have stopped by yesterday and set a few things out in haste.
Moving them shouldn't be much trouble.
In truth, from the moment I began to weigh the question, my mind had already tipped. I swapped Uriel's nameplate with mine, then carried over, one after another, everything that had been in her office.
"Hm-hm..."
Uriel bent the flow of air around her so the rain never touched her skin, entered the main building, and climbed to the fourth floor. She took hold of her office door and turned the handle.
The door banged open.
"...?"
What met her inside was Ferzen, seated in perfect composure at his work. Uriel could only be thrown off balance.
"Hey."
"Do you not know how to knock."
"...I didn't knock because it's my office."
"The nameplate outside is hardly hung there for ornament."
Now that she thought of it, if this were her office, the things that ought to be visible were nowhere to be seen. She stepped back and checked the plate beyond the door.
What...
Whether it had been Room 403 or Room 404 was hazy, but of one thing Uriel was certain: she had gone into the office on the right.
"If you have nothing to say, you may as well leave."
"......"
It never occurred to her that he might have pettily exchanged the plates and moved what was inside. She simply could not picture such a thing. Then was it wiser to call this a third party's deliberate attempt to drive Alfred and Brutein apart?
No...
Alfred and Brutein were already on poor terms before the world. No one needed to sow discord between them.
Then was it someone who simply dislikes me?
Among those newly appointed as professors, if she narrowed the list, a few names did surface. Pinning it to a single person was another matter. Nearly everyone knew that yesterday Ferzen had never come to his office at all, and had gone straight home.
"Uriel. Do you intend to keep standing there."
"I'm leaving now, so don't rush me."
"......"
He frowned without a word, and Uriel quickly turned and stepped out into the corridor. She had left the door unlocked because she had left nothing important behind. From today on, she would lock it without fail.
It seemed to have passed well enough. I lowered my eyes to the desk again and took up the pen.
From entrance to graduation the Academy ran three years, each year divided into a first term and a second — close enough to the shape of a modern university.
Theory lectures in black magic have their limits. I'll set a direction for them, and wherever I can, I'll arrange cooperation outside and send them out for as much practical experience as possible.
Shaping that framework little by little, I sat in the office chair and did not move until late afternoon.
The world of Survive at All Costs measured years, months, and days exactly as Earth did, so February held only twenty-eight days and was over almost before it began. March arrived at once.
"Stop touching me..."
Through her last fertile days I had spent inside her every night but one, and still Euphemia had bled. The disappointment would not leave me. Today was the third of March, and before I left for work I passed the time with a hand on her belly.
"I recently gave separate orders to procure foods that aid implantation. When I return I will take a report from each of the maids, so you will eat them steadily."
"Hmph... Your noble seed must not care to take root in my vulgar womb. Don't go shifting the blame onto me."
"......"
At her words I turned over those nights — three days, or four. She had said she didn't want it with a slack tongue and crawled away on hands and knees. I had caught her from behind, and after I finished in her three or four times she had collapsed flat, murmuring that the strength had left her waist, trembling in fits and starts...
True enough. I had emptied that much into her. If she still was not with child, the fault might truly be mine. I refused to believe the author would have been cruel enough to write azoospermia into Ferzen.
"Euphemia."
"What..."
"I will be back. If you grow bored, think of a name for the child we will have one day. If not that, you may finish the problems you failed to solve then. For each one you solve, I will grant not a prize but a wish. Asking to go up to Ruerug, or the right to refuse me at night — those will not be allowed."
"......"
"Ah... speaking of Ruerug, a letter came down from there. A detailed report on how the domain is progressing. Read it, if you are curious."
I held out the letter I had kept against me. A keen light gathered in Euphemia's eyes, and she reached for it in a hurry and took it away.
"Then I shall see you later."
"Go on."
She did not so much as meet my eyes, busy with the letter, and I did not bother to remark on it.
The third of March. Today was the Academy's entrance ceremony. Afraid of so much as a crease, I glanced once into the mirror, climbed into the carriage, and set out.