The Night the Full Moon Sets
The night the full moon had soaked through was passing, and a brilliant dawn was slowly driving the dark away, as if to announce that morning had come.
"Hn... ngh..."
Laura, stripped of reason and sunk in a state of extreme arousal, felt her submerged consciousness gradually lift, as though it were floating up toward the surface of the water.
"Charles."
Charles? Who was that? She didn't know. All she could faintly catch was that the voice just now had been considerably familiar.
She still lacked the leisure for anything like a whole thought, so Laura struggled first to reclaim a body that would not move as she wished. It was a wretched thrashing, the sort of desperate flailing with which someone pinned by sleep paralysis tries to twitch a finger, if only to stir flesh that will not budge.
"Ah..."
When her body at last began to heed the reins of reason, a faint joy touched her, and she hurried to grasp where she was. What she remembered, even roughly, went only so far as this: feeling the eyes of the men following her, she had turned into an alley on the outskirts of the capital.
So why, before her...
"P-Professor...?"
...was Perzen?
Saliva trickled.
"Hup—!"
It ran, vulgar, from the corner of her mouth. She tried to stop it, but the cloth clamped between her teeth like a gag let the spit stretch in a long strand down over the clothes she wore.
She had no time to be flustered by that. Laura saw the countless wounds carved into both of Perzen's arms, and her own two hands closed around his throat, and the color drained from her face.
Ah... She was an albino; as her complexion worsened further, blue veins stood out stark beneath the skin.
"Laura."
"Y-yes..."
"Have you come to your senses?"
She nodded. She hadn't the shamelessness to open her mouth and answer, so Laura only dipped her head and lowered the hands that had been clutching his throat.
This is bad. The memories in between did not exist, and from where Laura stood it was nothing but a headache. No—worse than a headache. It felt as if her skull might split.
She had passed through reincarnation into a body that did not carry the blood of House Genova, and still the Full-Moon Quirk had seized her. And in the midst of that seizure she had come face to face with Perzen, and this was the result. All of it closed around her windpipe.
Worse, while the quirk was on her—while she suffered that impulse and carried it out—she felt an extreme pleasure. Sitting on Perzen's knee now, her own thick womanly scent mingled with the smell of his body was shameful beyond bearing. No. To call it a woman's fragrance was being kind. It was the smell of a female. If anyone else stepped into this room and drew a breath, they would think a man and a woman had coupled, thick and lingering, and gone.
"Lift your head."
Laura shook hers.
Perzen leaned forward, undid the cloth bit between her lips like a gag, caught her chin, and forced her face up.
"Laura."
"Y-yes..."
"I never imagined Rosenberg carried the blood of the annihilated House Genova."
"Th-that's... ah..."
At a single sentence she had not expected in the least, Laura's crimson eyes went round, and the corner of her mouth trembled. Wouldn't a person normally think there was some strange sickness of the mind, or that she was a psychopath with a hidden habit of going about killing people?
"Judging by your reaction, it seems to be the truth. Only, you appear not to know the facts of the Full-Moon Quirk."
Her lips worked like a goldfish's. Laura clutched hard at the place where her heart was beating violently. That his guess had led him to House Genova was one thing. The Full-Moon Quirk ought to have been a fact known to her alone.
By what means... Even if he had the corpse of her previous life, Isabel, learning the truth of the quirk should have been impossible. To take Feedback on that portion, one would already have to possess knowledge of the Full-Moon Quirk. From a blank slate... It was not a realm one could approach by mere conjecture.
"Wh-what... are you s-saying..."
"The Full-Moon Quirk is a curse engraved in the blood of House Genova. The mother your father imprisoned so that she would bear you likely never told you this."
"..."
"The proof is simple as well. Have other black mages enslave Isabel's corpse, take their feedback, and it is finished. And if, on some full moon yet to come, you suffer the quirk once more, then the fact that Rosenberg carries the bloodline of House Genova—"
Unable to hear any more, Laura reached out and clamped a hand over his mouth.
The quirk that had frustrated her and driven her into despair across so many long years had seized her, and that alone was enough to make her feel she might go mad. On top of it, he was pressing her with the intimation that he could publish this truth and sweep away her parents and the whole of her house. Laura's head reeled. A vertigo, as if the world were spinning round and round. No—it truly was. A body innately short of stamina had fallen into an extreme arousal in which it felt neither fatigue nor pain, and had moved past its limits; that the side effects should come was perhaps only natural.
"Haa... ngh..."
Her stomach turned. She thought she might vomit. In a faint chill and a trembling, cold sweat ran down her brow. For a moment she even forgot that the arms around her were Perzen's. She caught his collar, gripped it tight, and—
"Hic... aah..."
—whimpered on and on, like a sickly puppy.
"Laura."
Perzen reached out, patted her back gently, and murmured at her ear.
"I say this only so you won't fret needlessly. I haven't the slightest intention of making that fact public, so be at ease."
"L-lies..."
No one in the world sought to doubt the loyalty Brutein gave the imperial house. That loyalty was a thing long since carved into history. Genova blood did not run in her, and parts of his guess were wrong, but under the circumstances she could not deny him. House Genova had slain imperial blood. There was no chance he, Brutein's heir, would let this pass in silence.
"I am sincere. The Full-Moon Quirk that will come to you in its season—I will soothe it, so that nothing comes of it."
"Haa..."
"I don't say one thing and mean another, and I don't strike from behind. Such things are beneath me."
"Wh-what... do you w-want..."
Laura was no fool. If he meant not to publish the fact, then he surely wanted something of Rosenberg.
"Anything beyond this is a matter for the head of Rosenberg. You needn't sit at the table."
"I don't... want that..."
Her family had done nothing wrong. She did not want them bearing the weight. But Laura knew. Even if she wished to shoulder it alone, within her own means, she had no such ability.
"Don't you see this isn't a matter to wave off as a sulk?"
"I know. I-I know, but..."
She didn't know what to do. Rationally, logically, she could not believe she would ever persuade him, and so Laura only fussed and squirmed in his arms.
"I-I'll... do anything. A-anything."
"..."
"R-really... a-anything is f-fine, so...!"
She drew down the shoulder strap of the clothes she wore and bared skin so white it had gone pale. Perzen, dry and expressionless, caught the strap and set it neatly back in place.
"You can do nothing, and yet you say you can do anything. Isn't that a contradiction? I'm not so starved for lust as to desire that frail body of yours, so don't cross the line. It's unpleasant, rather."
He gathered her up, rose, went to the bed, and set her down with care. Then he drew a comb from subspace, set to rights the snow-white hair disordered into an unsightly mess, and went on.
"But it isn't that I fail to understand your heart. What if we did it this way?"
"Wh-what..."
"When I have need of Rosenberg, I'll tell you of the matter first. Persuade your father to help me of his own accord. The present head of Rosenberg is, whatever else, a fool for his daughter and cherishes you considerably. Ask him earnestly, and he may well listen."
"If I... f-fail..."
"You aren't so innocent of the world as to ask that back, point by point."
As if that were the end of it, Perzen set down the comb and took up his suit jacket, hung carelessly nearby. In that moment his wound-covered arm came into her sight again, and Laura said, very small:
"I-I'm... s-sorry..."
"The order's quite reversed. Before you grew greedy, you ought to have apologized."
He brushed the vivid blood-bruises along the deep tooth marks and let out a short breath of a laugh.
"W-wait... stay a m-moment..."
Laura tried to draw ointment from the subspace of the rosary at her throat. She bruised at the slightest knock, and wounds did not heal easily, so that subspace held medicines made from costly herbs.
"...?"
It wasn't there. It hadn't been. She fumbled over herself, wondering where on earth her altar—the rosary—had gone, and Perzen, before her eyes, let out a small sound.
"Ah..."
He took a silver rosary from his pocket and returned it.
"I was holding it for a moment."
"Th-thank... y-you..."
Laura ducked her head, received her altar back, drew the ointment from subspace, and sat him down on the bed.
"G-give me... your h-hand..."
Then, very gently, she spread the ointment over wounds she was certain she herself had carved while the Full-Moon Quirk had her. How much had she bitten him? By the time the salve covered every wound, it was used up. She pressed out the last of it, took up bandages, and wrapped them with careful devotion.
"I-it's done..."
She watched his face, cautious.
"...Laura."
Perzen glanced along the bandages covering the wounds, confirmed that nothing about them irritated him, and held a finger out.
"There's a wound here as well."
"Ah, that... th-there's no more o-ointment..."
Scab sat thick on it. The middle finger looked, perhaps, more serious than the wounds along his forearm, and Laura shrank in on herself.
"Is that so. Then it's fine."
As if it did not matter, he drew the rolled sleeve of his shirt down straight and rose from the bed.
"W-wait...!"
Laura caught the hem of his clothes in a rush and, head bowed low, said:
"P-personally... s-something I c-can do for you..."
"I don't need it."
He answered flatly. Even so, Laura did not let go of the hand on his hem. That he would not publish the Full-Moon Quirk could be set aside; he had already laid a condition on her for that. But for the wounds she had left on the body of Brutein's heir, he had demanded nothing at all, and she wanted, of her own accord, to make it up somehow. She did not want to carry a needless debt of the heart.
"Laura. It looks serious because the scabs have set thick. The wound itself would heal on its own if you only put spit on it."
"E-even so..."
She flinched at his words and still showed no sign of bending. Perzen sighed.
"...Fine. If you mean to keep so uncomfortable a feeling, then I need only let you settle it in some form."
He turned, faced her, and held out his wound-covered middle finger, tapping it once against her deep-red lips.
"...?"
Laura blinked. She lifted those characteristic crimson eyes, uncomprehending.
"Didn't I say so earlier? The wound itself is of a sort that heals if you only apply spit."
"..."
"I want nothing from you personally, so the form of a punishment suits best."
At the particulars he added, Laura too came to understand, dimly, what he was asking. It would have been a lie to say she was not flustered. But if the price of wounding his body could be cleared with this, was it not an acceptable bargain?
She squeezed both eyes shut, took his large hand, spread the middle finger slightly, and put out her tongue. Clumsily, she licked.
A punishment—yes. If this was a punishment, it certainly seemed to be one. Unable to bear the embarrassment and the shame, Laura's face was flushed redder than ever. Presently she took the wound-covered finger into her mouth, wrapped it gently in the warm flesh of her tongue, and sucked, as though she were offering some careful service.
The wound... With the fishy scent of blood dissolving into saliva, the cut caught under her tongue proved deeper than she had thought. Laura opened her eyes a slit and studied Perzen's face. It showed nothing at all. Indifference itself, with no feeling accompanying it. The gouged, raked contours felt this naked, and yet how could it be a thing that healed from spit alone? Even pinching a finger in a crack of a door hurt like death. Let alone a wound dealt by a person's teeth.
"Is there something on my face?"
She flinched. Caught watching him through slitted eyes, Laura shook her head, squeezed both eyes shut again, and sucked. She fixed every scrap of her attention on the act before her—disinfection, as she had rationalized it.
"Puh... haa..."
Judging this much would do, she let his finger go and, with a handkerchief, meticulously wiped the middle finger glistening with her saliva.
Perzen, as if to make that care vain, held out the middle finger of the other hand.
"That..."
She hesitated, looking from the proffered finger to his face and back again. She knew she could not choose refusal. She parted her small lips and repeated the same disinfection once more. At the point where she thought, for her part, that this ought to be enough, she released the finger and lifted the handkerchief to wipe the saliva—
"Laura."
"Yes...?"
"Three minutes remain."
With a perfectly grave face, he held the finger forward again, as if to say she was to take it back into her mouth, and rubbed it against her lips. Laura's expression went thoroughly sour. From his side of it, she had held the middle finger of his left hand in her mouth for seven minutes, and he had wanted the middle finger of the right held there for seven minutes as well. From hers, she could not know that. The best she could manage was the guess that he meant to tease her further.
So that she would have no opening for needless words, she showed all the devotion she could, sucking his finger with a solicitude one might well have called indecent, and licking it besides.
"That will do."
Perzen, who had been watching the clock the whole while, withdrew the finger of his own accord. Laura fanned the heat from her body with her hand and used the handkerchief to wipe away the saliva glossing his skin.
"You may not be able to attend the lecture today. If you're ill, it won't be marked as an absence, so rest. In any case, the second week's material... if you stop by the Magic Society around two tomorrow afternoon, you'll be able to make it up."
He put on his suit jacket, left her there, and went out of the inn room.
Alone, Laura showered in a scramble in the bathroom off the room, then returned to the dormitory of the Imperial Academy—to her own room. Her body was tired and heavy, and she wanted to sleep at once, but there was the letter she had meant to send her father in Rosenberg. She would have to overturn what it said. Originally it had held only the score onto which she had copied Perzen's composition from that day, and a simple sending of regards. If she later asked her father to help Perzen, she would need enough groundwork laid beforehand that the request would not land as something far too sudden. So she filled the blank of a fresh sheet, dense, with talk of him.
Afterward she read the new letter through, by way of a last review. To anyone's eye it would have looked like a girl at the very age for love, shyly betraying a tender heart brimful of affection. Quietly, she folded it neat and slid it into an envelope.
What face would her father wear when he received it? Would he take it to mean that she wished to be bound to a man already married, even if only as a concubine? Yes. Better still if he read it that way. She would fold this feeling away cleanly, so couldn't he help him? Persuasion, in that form, might be comparatively simple.
Even so. A body of paltry strength, a black mage of no more than Kether. Even devoured by the Full-Moon Quirk, if a helper of higher rank was there as one had been this time, it seemed she could pass through without harm. If there was any fortune in it, this was the fortunate part. Of course it would be nothing more than a stopgap. In the end, even after reincarnation, she was fated to go on working at a problem whose right answer—the answer that would let her cast off this yoke—she could not know.
At the frustration and the despair of that, Laura let out a heavy sigh. Then, suddenly, a question came to her. The Full-Moon Quirk had manifested in a form unlike her previous life. Then perhaps the part of it that was said to show an outstanding talent, without fail, in some one field was remaining in a different form as well. A hidden gift, unbloomed, that nineteen years had not let her so much as sense. What on earth was it? She lay on the bed and turned it over carefully, and at some point, quite naturally, she slipped into sleep.