The Smut Novel Under the Pillow
Karin’s hand was still gripping one side of the blanket, leaving space for me to slip in.
“B-Butler? What are you doing here?”
I flinched backward in surprise, but Shepherd raised one hand with a solemn expression, blocking my path.
“Where do you think you’re going, Sir Veil?”
“Ah, Lady Karin said she wanted a quick shower before taking her medicine. I figured she’d be uncomfortable with me in the room, so I was just going to step out into the hallway for a bit…”
Before I could finish, he clamped down on my shoulder and shoved me back inside.
“You must not, Sir Veil. It would be extremely dangerous for you to come out.”
“Dangerous? What do you mean, dangerous?”
When I asked in disbelief, Shepherd launched into another round of his ridiculously plausible medical nonsense.
“Did I not explain earlier? Right now Lady Karin’s room is saturated with a potent cold. If you open the door and step outside… those dreadful germs could spread down the corridor and infect the entire estate.”
“Wait, earlier you said it only spreads to people from other regions! Everyone who works here is from the North—what does that matter?”
“If, by some remote chance, this plague should reach the young lady, will you take responsibility, Sir Veil?”
“……!”
Using a ten-year-old girl as a shield. How low can you go?
While I stood there speechless, Shepherd offered me a kindly smile and gripped the doorknob from the outside.
“Therefore, Sir Veil, you are not to take a single step outside this room tonight. Until Lady Karin’s fever has completely broken, the two of you will remain in this space… and fight the illness together with utmost devotion.”
Click.
Shepherd didn’t give me any chance to argue. He simply closed the guest-room door with ruthless finality.
I even heard the lock turn from the outside with a crisp snap.
“Hey!! Butler!! Aren’t you going to open this door?! Why are you locking a person inside?!”
I pounded on the door and shouted, but all I heard in return were Shepherd’s calm, retreating footsteps growing fainter down the hall.
“Goddamn it! This is insane!”
“……What is the matter, Sir Veil?”
Karin, who had been groaning as she tried to sit up in bed, asked in confusion at the commotion.
I forced down my anger and plastered on a fake smile.
“Haha… The butler is taking the quarantine rules very seriously. He told me not to come out. Said it can’t reach the young lady.”
“……What? Then you have to stay in this room the whole time I’m washing?”
I shrugged and clapped both hands over my eyes.
“What can we do? He locked the door from the outside. Once you go into the bathroom, I’ll just lie facing the wall and cover my ears. I swear I won’t even turn my head toward the door, so please go wash up already.”
Karin hesitated for a long time.
But the sticky discomfort of her feverish body eventually won out over her shame.
“……Understood. Absolutely… do not look back. I’m begging you…”
“Yes, yes. I got it, so hurry up.”
She staggered to her feet, grabbed a thin nightgown to change into, and slipped into the bathroom.
Click. Shhh—.
Soon the sound of warm water pouring down filled the room.
“Haa… How did it come to this…”
To keep my promise, I turned my back to the bathroom and dropped heavily onto the floor in the corner, facing the wall.
But in the quiet room, with only a thin door between us, the splash of a young woman showering kept reaching my ears.
…Just don’t think about it. She’s not a woman—she’s just my personal drill-sergeant demon instructor…
I desperately tried to control my mind and looked for something else to focus on.
That was when my eyes landed on the messy, tangled bed Karin had been lying in moments ago.
Right. I’ll tidy up those sweat-soaked sheets and pillow. It’d feel awful to climb into a damp bed after washing.
I created a task for myself to chase away useless thoughts and walked over to the bed.
I shook out the crumpled blanket, smoothed the damp sheet until it was tight, and finally picked up the flattened pillow to fluff it back into shape.
That was when it happened.
“……Hm?”
As I lifted the pillow, I felt something heavy and solid beneath it—an unfamiliar, firm texture where there should only have been softness.
Without thinking, I moved the pillow completely aside.
And there it was.
“………”
A thick book bound in plain brown leather, no title on the cover. A crude, unadorned volume.
It was the same smut novel I had accidentally opened on the desk in this room not long ago—the one that had made me scream at the sight of its explicit illustrations.
“………”
Why on earth does this woman sleep with that under her pillow? Does she read it every single night before bed? Is she trying to grind her own bones to dust?
I was stunned.
No matter how hard I tried to see Karin as nothing but a bloodless, tearless, tomboyish sword demon, that intense and obscene piece of evidence shattered every mental filter I had.
I stared blankly at the unholy book, then slowly shook my head toward the sound of running water in the bathroom behind me.
“Seriously… you really live with it tucked right against you. Your tastes are hardcore as hell.”
The moment I clicked my tongue and muttered to myself—
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaah—!!”
“……?!”
A piercing scream suddenly exploded from the bathroom, loud enough to rupture eardrums.
Before the water even stopped, there was a loud crash of something being knocked over, followed by—
Bang!
The bathroom door flew open so violently it looked like it might splinter.
“D-Don’t look—!!”
Karin burst out of the bathroom, face pale with horror.
She must have realized I might have found the smut novel she’d hidden under her pillow.
The problem was.
In her panic she hadn’t even dried herself properly or put on clothes…
She had simply wrapped a single large towel around herself, barely covering her chest and thighs, and come running out.
“……Huk!”
I froze on the spot, still holding the book.
Right in front of my eyes.
Skin flushed pink from the warm water.
Water droplets sliding down her hair and along the line of her shoulders.
And below the towel, the toned, dangerously curved body of a warrior—firm, trained, and utterly exposed.
“Ah… Aaa……”
No matter how desperately I had tried to view Karin as nothing more than a tomboy demon instructor, this was different.
The stimulus was too strong.
“P-Put that book down!! I told you not to look under the pillow!!”
Face burning with shame and rage, Karin charged at me on wet bare feet.
“I-It’s already too late! I already saw everything!!”
“You son of a— I’ll kill you!!”
“Then at least put some clothes on before you kill me!! I don’t know where to look!!”
I couldn’t face her dazzling bare skin head-on, so I flipped open the thick brown book and used it to cover my eyes and face.
The novel’s explicit illustrations were right in front of my nose, but the reality before me was far more raw and stimulating.
“Ack! Get away!! Please go back in and put some clothes on!!”
Still covering my face with the book, I flailed one hand blindly and shoved at Karin’s wet shoulder as she rushed toward me.
“Move! Give me back my book!!”
“Put some clothes on, you crazy woman!!”
In the middle of the guest room, a half-naked patient wearing only a towel wrestled with a man who was shielding his face with a smut novel.
Every time Karin’s hot, damp skin brushed my arm, I flinched violently and shoved her backward like I was pushing away a stubborn sack of rice.
“Get back in there!! Come on!!”
Finally, overpowered by my brute strength, Karin stumbled back, tripped over the bathroom threshold, and was shoved inside.
Bang!!
I seized the moment and slammed the bathroom door shut, then pounded the doorknob with the smut novel in my hand as I yelled.
“Don’t come out until you’re fully dressed!”
“Haa… haa……!”
From beyond the door came only the sound of Karin’s ragged breathing, thick with humiliation and shame.
I leaned my back against the closed bathroom door and slid down to the floor.
The unholy book was still in my hand, and my heart was pounding like a war drum.
“Haa…… haa……”
Bang!
With my back pressed against the firmly closed bathroom door, I spent a long time trying to steady my ragged breathing.
My head was filled with the dazzling image of Karin’s bare body that had just bombarded my eyes.
“Haa… This is actually driving me crazy.”
I rubbed my flushed cheeks with both hands, trying to cool the heat.
How much time had passed?
I heard rustling inside the bathroom, then finally the sound of the doorknob turning.
Click—.
“………”
The door opened, and this time Karin emerged completely dry, neatly dressed in a thin, modest nightgown.
Her face was blazing red—whether from the fever or the horrific embarrassment from earlier, I couldn’t tell.
I didn’t know where to look either, so I stared awkwardly into empty air.
“………”
Karin toweled her wet hair as she walked up to me, head bowed low. Without lifting her gaze, she pointed toward the bathroom.
“This time… you wash.”
“Huh? Me?”
I asked, bewildered.
“I already washed thoroughly after dinner earlier.”
“Wash.”
“I really don’t need to. Do I smell like sweat or something?”
When I refused again, Karin suddenly lifted her head, glared at me, and shouted.
“Just go wash!! Having you standing there staring blankly… makes me want to crawl into a mouse hole and die from embarrassment!!”
Ah.
Not only had I discovered that she slept with a smut novel under her pillow, I had also seen her completely naked.
She needed some time alone to process the shame and regain control of her mind.
“Ah… Yes. I’ll go wash.”
I nodded without argument.
In truth, I desperately needed cold water to wash away the stimulating afterimages burned into my brain.
“Take your time washing. I’ll lie down first and rest.”
When I turned toward the bathroom, Karin shoved my back with both hands and practically stuffed me inside.
Bang!
The door closed once more, and this time I was the one left alone in the bathroom.
The air was still warm with lingering steam.
The faint scent of the soap Karin had just used lingered heavily in the air.
“……Haa.”
I turned on the cold water full blast and stuck my head under the faucet.
The icy stream beat against my scalp, but the heat boiling inside my body refused to subside easily.
Get a grip. She’s a patient. A flu patient.
I slapped my own cheeks repeatedly, desperately clinging to reason.
Only after a long session of cold-water friction and straightening my clothes did I finally regain my composure and open the bathroom door.
Creak—.
“Lady Karin, I’m done washi—”
I couldn’t finish my sentence.
All the candles in the room had been extinguished. Only the northern moonlight, blue and faint, slipped through the window to illuminate the space.
And on the large bed in the center of the room.
Karin lay there obediently, the thick blanket pulled all the way up past her neck and halfway over her face. Only her eyes peeked out.
When I approached, the eyes buried in the blanket darted around, watching me nervously.
“……You came out.”
“Yes. The water was nice and cold.”
I scratched the back of my neck awkwardly and stood a short distance from the bed.
Silence settled over us.
Eventually, Karin’s muffled voice came from beneath the blanket.
“……Sir Veil.”
“Yes.”
“Where… how will you sleep?”
At her question I glanced around. The narrow guest room on the third floor contained only the bed Karin was lying in and the backless stool I had sat on earlier while wringing out the towel.
“How? I’ll just spread a blanket on the floor and sleep there. I used to sleep on bare ground at the barrier all the time. It’s nothing.”
I answered casually and started to look toward the floor.
Rustle—.
The sound of the blanket shifting came from the bed.
When I turned my head, Karin had lifted one edge of the wide blanket she was using.
Without quite meeting my eyes, she whispered in a small, trembling voice.
“……You can come over here… if you want.”
“……Pardon?”
I doubted my own ears.
“What did you just say?”
“T-This bed… is wide enough for two people. The floor is cold, so… if you don’t want to catch a cold… you can sleep here. That’s what I said.”
Even in the moonlight, I could clearly see Karin’s cheeks burning red.
Her hand was still holding up one side of the blanket, leaving space for me to slip in.