Three Weeks
Twelve days had passed — ten, and two more besides.
It was a stretch that might as well have been a temporary holiday, and Laura had spent it in calm, unruffled peace. Today, though, she left the dormitory wound tight with nerves and set out to find the address Perzen had given her.
Rosenberg did not lie so very far from the capital, but the curse called the Full-Moon Quirk made it impossible for Laura to go down to the domain.
Like it or not… for the time being, she was fated to remain bound to Perzen.
Here… is it?
On the outskirts of the capital she stood before a house so modest and small it made a mockery of Brutein's wealth, and reached out to knock.
Knock, knock.
I don't sense anyone…
On a whim she pressed her ear to the door, but when passersby began to stare at her oddly, Laura flushed and pulled her head away.
The door burst open.
"Ah…"
What appeared beyond it was her past life — Isabel Ron Pierre Genova, under enslavement.
"Close the door and come in."
"Y-yes…"
At the sound of Perzen's voice, Laura shut the door and stepped inside.
All the room held was a small bed and a table.
No — that was not quite all.
Because upon the bed, barely large enough for her to lie on…
"…"
…there lay a stout rope that looked as if it would never give, a ball gag, and a change of clothes and underwear.
"Um…"
The moment those things filled her eyes, the air of the room seemed to change, and for an instant Laura wanted to bolt back outside.
But the sunset was already sinking, and before long the full moon would rise.
If she were not at Perzen's side, she would become a pleasure-killer and prowl the streets, murdering innocent people.
"You don't need to be afraid. They're only tools, so we can get through tonight with less trouble. The clothes… I bought them by roughly guessing your size. The moment the quirk takes you, the pleasure it hands you will make things difficult anyway, won't it?"
"Th-that is t-true, but…"
"My arm is like this, so there's no help for it. The sun will set soon and the full moon will rise. Don't dawdle."
"…"
There was a great deal she wanted to say, but Laura gave in and walked slowly to the bed.
"Ah… before that, return the rosary. Your altar."
"H-here…"
Thorough to the last.
She took the rosary from around her neck, handed it to Perzen, hesitated a moment, and looked back.
"While I… ch-change, c-could you just step outside…"
"I'll keep my eyes closed so I don't look. I came in here to avoid people's eyes. If I go out and come back in after you've entered, it defeats the purpose, doesn't it?"
"Th-that… even so…"
"If you don't want to change, you don't have to. That's your choice."
"…"
Eyes shut, he offered nothing but perfectly reasonable words. Laura pouted and glared at him… but as the sunset outside deepened a little further, she had no choice but to turn her back and strip off her clothes.
Rustle…
And then Laura's naked body was laid bare, white as new snow.
Had her coloring been only a shade paler, it would have held not the white of snow but an unpleasant pallor. Laura was not like that.
Hers was a body that stirred a primal want — the desire to press one's footprints into a world where beautiful snow lay deep, and leave a mark behind.
"Ah…"
"What is it."
"N-nothing…"
The clothes hung loose, and yet the underwear fit her exactly, and an inexplicable shiver prickled over Laura's skin.
So she cracked her eyes open and stole a glance at Perzen…
His eyes were still closed.
That unperturbed, perfectly upright posture scolded the wrongful thought and the displeasure she had briefly harbored, and banished them at once.
"I… I'm d-dressed…"
She folded her original clothes neatly, hid them under the bed, and carefully called to him.
"Good. Then sit on the bed."
"Yes…"
When she sat on the bed, he — enslaving her past self — took up the rope and bound it tight around her waist.
"Hhk!"
"Is it very uncomfortable."
"Y-yes…"
He was not tying it with his own hands, and so, judging that he had made a mistake, Perzen loosened the rope a little and secured it to the leg of the bed.
"That…"
"I-I'll… d-do it myself."
When her past self, Isabel, moved to pick up the ball gag lying beside her, Laura quickly reached out, bit down on it herself, and finished putting it on.
…
If a third party saw this, it would leave a considerable stain on Perzen's reputation.
No. For someone of Brutein's standing…
People might just as easily say that a man too perfect had no humanity, and blame him for it instead.
In any case, whether it was her or Perzen, one thing was certain: nothing good would come of this scene being discovered.
"Hhh, b…!"
Saliva she could not swallow leaked through the small hole in the ball gag. Flustered, Laura wiped it away with her sleeve.
"Hhh, nn, hngh…!"
Then she tried, in a willful sign language of her own, to demand a handkerchief from Perzen…
"You'll be like this all night anyway. What point is there in wiping it."
It did not take in the slightest.
"…"
And so, as Laura's saliva began to drip through the ball gag like sand through an hourglass, full darkness settled outside.
Above a clear night sky without a single cloud, a lucid full moon rose.
"Nn, hhh…! Buhh…!"
At the same moment, as naturally as breathing, Laura — taken by its influence — lost every shred of reason like a werewolf out of legend and thrashed, trying to kill the Perzen before her eyes.
As expected…
Her altar had been taken, and the only corpse nearby that could be enslaved was Isabel, so Laura immediately poured out all her mana and tried to seize control by force.
But when every other factor was equal, if there was an essential difference in the quantity and quality of mana…
No matter how she struggled, seizure was impossible.
"Hhh, hbuhh…"
Trailing a long string of saliva, Laura, sunk into mana exhaustion, rose unsteadily from the bed and came toward him.
"Hbuh… kehk—!"
The rope at her waist pulled taut and brought her up short. In a full temper, Laura tried somehow to undo it.
Judging that this was about enough, Perzen opened his mouth to see whether the keyword he had engraved in Laura during the last Full-Moon Quirk was truly taking hold.
"Charles."
"Hhh, buhh…"
Laura, who had been desperately working to undo the rope bound tight at her waist, stopped and stared blankly at him.
"Charles."
When he spoke the keyword once more, she rolled naturally onto her belly on the floor and clapped her hands over and over, as if begging to be petted.
"Haha…"
It was a sight that could only drag a laugh out of him. Perzen let out a hollow chuckle and rose.
He had wondered whether she would need to be trained again, but it did not seem so.
"You really are a child who listens well."
He drew near and sat on the bed, and Laura rose happily, reached out, and squeezed his neck in a steady, kneading press.
Whether she was taking pleasure from the act of trying to kill him, her crimson eyes curved prettily, and the saliva at her lips stretched a little longer.
He had already resigned himself to his clothes being soaked through, and so Perzen calmly accepted the strangling — no different from a cat's kneading — of someone trying to kill him.
And the corpse of Laura's past life, Isabel Ron Pierre Genova, stood rather close at his side, in case she should raise her nails.
"Nn, hnnng…!"
"Yes. The harder you press the windpipe at the center, the harder it is to suffocate someone. Even without your reason, you pick these things up well enough."
"Buh, hbuhh…"
The choking grew a little more practiced, but her innately feeble strength left Perzen uncomfortable, and no more than that. Bearable.
And so the night of the full moon slowly deepened.
"…"
Come morning, Perzen might have been unbothered, but Laura showed every bit of the awkwardness and discomfort of a woman who had fallen into bed on a drunken impulse.
"I'll close my eyes again."
A nod.
She nodded without a word and drew out her original clothes from where she had hidden them under the bed.
Fatigue was creeping over her, but the aftereffects were nothing like the first time she had met the Full-Moon Quirk.
"Ah…"
She peeled off the clothes stained with the saliva that had run through the night.
When she lowered her underwear — her panties…
Sticky.
"…"
A faint, shameful sound carried through the room. Laura changed in a rush and shoved the garments into her subspace.
"Then the smell will soak into everything in there."
"I-i-it w-won't…!"
She denied it, but at the thick female scent filling the room Laura's face crumpled, and she trembled.
"Um…"
"…"
"The c-clothes… I'll p-pay you b-back for them…"
The stains sunk deep into both of Perzen's knees — surely she herself, seated upon him, had pressed them there vividly through the night.
Not only his trousers. His shirt was in a sorry state as well.
"I wore these out already prepared to throw them away. There's no need to compensate me. Then, while it's still early, this place…"
Before Perzen could finish, a faint violet radiance unfurled and wrapped the room in a drowsy haze.
And those currents, as if caught up in a dance, began to billow slowly and play a single piece of music.
"…"
The melody was White Out — the piece Perzen had once played before Laura.
Its completeness was nearly flawless.
This was the blessing of the Five Blessing Gods of this world — of the god who governs art.
Truly, it was beautiful music.
A heavenly voice, enough to captivate whoever heard it in an instant, left a small reply… and vanished.
"Y-you really… r-received the b-blessing…"
"Laura."
"B-back then, I p-put the s-score in a l-letter and s-sent it. P-probably my f-father, to the t-temple…"
"You did something completely pointless—!"
Perzen pressed a hand to his brow.
Some place rose in his mind. It pointed to the piano in the music room of Dormitory A.
"…"
He owned no instrument of his own, and so the god who governed art had laid a blessing on the piano Perzen had used the first time he played that piece, so that it would not break until the day he died.
Enough to drive a man mad…
An instrument that had received that blessing could sound its tone for the player alone, and so he would have no choice but to move it to his mansion in the capital.
And because it could not break, making the number of keys seventy-two was impossible as well.
A piano of seventy-three keys that would never break, not until its owner died.
It wasn't even funny.
It was a warning not to play games.
Where in the world did an object so inhuman, so loathsome, exist?
"Laura."
"Y-yes…?"
"Rosenberg is the holy land of art and culture."
"Y-yes…"
"Yes. So I will offer the blessed piano to Rosenberg."
"What?"
"I won't accept a refusal. You will have that piano removed from the capital and transported to Rosenberg. Do you understand?"
"…"
Laura was thrown into confusion.
Honestly, she had thought he would be pleased…
For him to hate it this much left her nothing but bewildered.
Setting like and dislike aside, the worth of an instrument blessed by a god was beyond imagining, and he meant to offer it up.
"If I do this, then later, when they grant the demand I want, Rosenberg will have less to complain about."
"…"
"And now that I think of it, it's time again."
"What?"
"Are you only going to ask again? If you show no progress this time either, I'll take it that you made no effort, and I'll strike your backside."
When Perzen's ice-cold red eyes turned on her, Laura's hands moved of their own accord to shield her bottom.
"V-violence is…"
"It isn't violence. It's discipline. And if you show progress, there's nothing to be scolded for. If you've made an effort, if your conscience is clear, there's nothing to shrink from."
"Ah, aah…!"
Her past self — Isabel — drew her toward the bed, and Laura, laid face-down across a knee, thrashed this way and that. But the aftereffects of having been forced to move in that state of compulsory awakening were setting in, and strength would hardly enter her limbs.
"The mutt-house piggy oinks even while it barks, and the piggy-house mutt barks even while it oinks. Now… recite it."
Perzen, seated right before her, tipped up her chin, and Laura barely opened her trembling lips.
"M-m-mutt, mutt…"
She was far too tense. Laura stammered worse than usual and looked at Perzen with a pitiful gaze.
Smack!
"Hic—!"
"It's nearly four weeks now, and still there's no progress."
Smack!
"Hk! I-it hurts…"
Laura sniffled and reached out with both hands to clutch the hem of his clothes.
But Perzen simply could not forgive her — Laura, who had brought that damned dog of a piano into the world…
No. The laziness of showing not even progress on the task he had set her.
He found it hard to forgive.
"S-stop… p-please st-stop! St-stoppp…!"
Smack!
"Kyagh—!"
Even her desperate cry seemed not to reach him.
And so Laura was released only after taking no fewer than six blows across the backside from her past self.
The holy land of art and culture, Rosenberg.
"Madam, say again what you said then."
"…"
"You said it plainly, did you not — that even if we cannot trust our daughter, we can trust Brutein! Then what is the meaning of this!"
A week later, looking upon the piano in which a god's blessing dwelled, newly arrived at Rosenberg, Baden — Laura's father, and the present head of Rosenberg — could not contain his shock.
That shock had begun the moment he first received Laura's letter, and the deep romantic feeling toward Perzen written inside it. His wife, though, had told him that a trueborn son of Brutein, already married, would not lay a hand on her so carelessly.
She had said so, and he had let himself be reassured!
"Look at this! This is clearly a betrothal gift — he means to take Laura as a concubine! Otherwise, would he offer up, free of charge, an instrument blessed by a god? Now that I think of it, her failure to come down to Rosenberg during this time was suspicious from the start! Th-they must have had a secret tryst! And so this…!"
"Darling—!"
"…"
At his wife's sharp cry that she could bear to hear no more, Baden, lord of Rosenberg, shut his mouth tight.
"Suspecting people with no proof at all… isn't good. The wedding of House Claudia and House Alfred will soon be held at the cathedral in the capital. We received an invitation, so I'll go myself and speak with Laura."
"And how can you be so calm, madam…? Are you pleased that Laura should become not a wife, but a concubine?"
"Honestly… that depends on who the other person is, doesn't it."
"Wh-what! A-absolutely not! I cannot accept it! Even if the man is Brutein's second son! I will not acknowledge a concubine!"
"Well… his wife is only the young lady of a frontier like Ruerug, isn't she. I don't know why a man who is Brutein's second son married a young lady like that, but if her station is so low, being the wife hardly means anything. Even if Laura enters as a concubine…"
"No—!"
"You're hurting my ears. Fine. You win…"
He was a husband who had doted on Laura, frail of body since she was small, and so she supposed she understood. The lady of Rosenberg sighed and shook her head.
In any case, it was still no more than speculation. The twenty-seventh of April.
A matter she could settle by going down herself, and seeing.