Sister, Your Way of Using Holes Is Quite Unique
What the hell is this…? It doesn't make any sense.
Then again… in a romance-fantasy world like this, is there even any point debating what should or shouldn't be possible?
Leard is just a goddamn talent monster, that's all.
At this rate, Linea might actually lose to him next time.
No… before that, Leon might end up snatching the top spot in the Combat Techniques Department.
After watching over Leard's training for a while, I decided to call it there for the day and promised to look at the rest next time.
Then I left the training grounds and headed for the cathedral in the northeastern corner of the academy grounds—specifically, for its confessional.
"Father. I have sinned."
"It's all right. The Lord will forgive anything. Brother, simply set your heart at ease, lay everything down today, and make your confession. Tell me—what sin have you committed?"
Ugh… C-Commander Kyle of the Holy Knights…?
On the other side of the thin wall sat a woman listening to a believer's confession. Selepia Bloomlein, her long pink cherry-blossom hair cascading down her back, startled at the voice coming through the partition.
"As a professor… I spent the night with a student."
"Th-that… i-it's fine… Even so, the Lord… Aeltir, the main god of our Lumiere Holy Order… will generously forgive everything through today's confession."
O-oh… I only stepped into the confessional today for a light, end-of-day wind-down…!
Even after all those rumors about Kyle, I never truly believed he would actually…
Because… back then, the person named as his scandal partner in the Order was me…
It had been utterly absurd…
Kyle and I had never even dated, let alone slept together, and yet some completely baseless rumor had suddenly spread…
But Archbishop Mordian, who had been visiting the Order at the time, told me not to step forward and just stay quiet, so in the end…
If I had known Kyle would fall this far, I would have spoken up back then…
But he slept with a student…? Really…?
"She was a student I was looking after carefully as my teaching assistant… Then one day, after this and that happened between us, our relationship advanced all at once over just a few days—completely unintentionally."
"……."
I knew it. He's not the type to carelessly lay hands on a student!
But if it's a teaching assistant… I know he has two—Erina and Linea… Could it be…
N-no. It has to be Linea, right…?
"I'm listening. Please continue."
Hearing the voice from beyond the wall, Kyle decided to keep talking even though he felt a little uneasy. After all, he had nowhere else to unload this stifling feeling.
"…But starting one day, the effectiveness of that student's sacred arts improved dramatically."
"Is that so…. But isn't an increase in the potency of sacred arts a good thing…?"
"At first I praised her too, telling her she must have worked hard for her healing arts to get stronger."
H-healing sacred arts… Th-then that really locks it in as E… um, Erina, doesn't it…?
"Is there some kind of problem…?"
But Bloomlein couldn't exactly show her hand, so she had no choice but to keep listening to Kyle's story.
After what felt like a longer pause for thought, Kyle continued.
"But the efficacy of that student's sacred arts… rose more and more noticeably by the day—exponentially, almost vertically."
"……."
"Looking back, I can't help wondering if it was because she kept coming into contact with my bodily fluids, and most recently… she took it all the way to the end and received it as deeply inside her body as possible."
"Th-that's impossible!"
Bang!
Bloomlein slammed her hand down on the desk and shot to her feet, the loud noise briefly stirring a commotion.
"…What?!"
…Oops.
I got too worked up and let it slip…
"Th-that can't be. Brother, isn't that a little… self-absorbed?"
"…Sister? What on earth is—"
"Everything is the will of God. Brother, please do not link the birth of a Saintess to your own misdeeds."
"……So you figured it all out ages ago. Bloomlein."
Ah, damn it.
I wasn't worried.
A confession is, after all, not something you make to the priest sitting on the other side of the wall, but an act of confessing your sins to God and receiving forgiveness.
The priest is merely God's proxy, sitting in that place on His behalf.
Which means that no matter how grave a wrong you confess, what the priest hears will never leak outside for the rest of their life.
And even without invoking God's name—if people got arrested every time they confessed plans of murder or terrorism, who would ever come to confession?
A priest might urge you to stop sinning or turn yourself in, but going any further than that would be crossing the line as a priest.
Anyway… I'd come here once out of sheer frustration with nowhere else to vent, but maybe it was the right call…
I felt a little better, somehow cleaner.
Unloading a secret felt this good.
"You already knew as well… Commander of the Holy Knights."
"We're colleagues working as professors together. What is there not to know?"
The voice, the small window—or rather, the little hole—through which it carried, the faint cherry-blossom scent that drifted through, and several other distinctive traits unique to Bloomlein had given her away.
"That aside… how long are you going to keep calling me Commander of the Holy Knights?"
"Ahaha…. In my heart… no, that's not it… Professor Kyle ended up coming here essentially because of me, after all…."
The words coming through the window held a more unexpected story than I'd anticipated.
Yeah. That's right…
What fault did Bloomlein have?
The fault lay with Archbishop Mordian, who painted me—no, Kyle—as some woman-crazed maniac and drove him out.
"Don't take it so hard. We weren't anything to each other anyway."
"Pardon? Ah, yes…. Um, but…"
"Yes. Go ahead, Professor Bloomlein."
"About what you said just now… that thing…."
"…Ah."
She meant what happened with Erina…
The aftertaste was bitter.
Even so, knowing that someone I was acquainted with was privy to my private secrets still felt a little off.
There was no risk of it leaking—she'd take it to the grave—but still.
"Please keep that story a secret…."
"O-of course…. But… so it really was true…."
"Yes, well… one thing led to another and it just… happened that way."
Of all the countless priests, it had to be Bloomlein. Tch.
Then again, maybe it was fortunate that it was Bloomlein. Hmm.
I should try looking on the bright side.
"…Professor?"
In the middle of that, Bloomlein called out to me.
"Yes?"
"Hearing your story… your situation seems rather pitiful…"
"…Pitiful?"
"Mm… yes."
"Ah, right. Well…."
"If you don't mind, since we're already here, I'd like to listen a little longer."
I heard the soft sound of her settling back into her seat; she seemed to mean it.
"Well… it is a bit of a worry… As you heard, Erina is supposed to stand before people as a Saintess in a few days."
"Yes…"
"I heard it was you who summoned the Archbishop, Professor Bloomlein."
"…Ah, haha…. W-well. Erina's… Holy Power was simply too extraordinary… I felt this was not something that could just be brushed aside…."
Certainly, the Holy Power I'd seen from Erina earlier was nothing ordinary.
"If that happens, Erina's status will essentially make her my superior, and she's still young."
I'd left the Order, but my status was still that of a believer of the Lumiere Holy Order. Strictly speaking it had been more of a demotion than an excommunication.
"That's true… And at that age, once a child's curiosity is awakened, you can't ignore it."
"Exactly…."
Ha… Originally I hadn't planned on dodging things this hard anymore.
Life really is a bitch sometimes. Fucking hell.
"Is there even a method…"
"Pardon? There… is a method?"
"Professor, even as a fully grown adult, I can see that you're… quite handsome."
"Excuse me??"
What the hell was she talking about all of a sudden.
"How do you think the students feel?"
"Hmm…."
"And you've already gone and done the deed."
"So then?"
"You'll have to push her away, Professor."
"Hmm…."
Easier said than done.
Erina was quietly stubborn—once she decided she wanted something, she was the type to force it through no matter what…
"So I was thinking."
"Yes."
"When you meet Erina—who's about to become a Saintess—if you meet her after completely exhausting your sexual desire first… wouldn't that solve the problem?"
"Excuse me???"
What is this…?
Is she telling me to jerk off before work or something…?
"Professor Bloomlein, that's a little…."
"Well… I'm not trying to be cruel to you, Professor Kyle… As a man, dealing with that seething lust alone must be quite difficult."
"???"
As I sat there listening, wondering where this conversation was going…
"I'll take care of it for you. If I sacrifice this body of mine so that you can meet Erina—no, the Saintess—with your desire completely drained, wouldn't refusing her be a little easier?"
"Professor, what are you even… That goes too far no matter how you look at it."
Ethically it felt off, didn't it?
And more than that, it wasn't something a priest or believer of the Order should be saying out loud.
Whether believer or priest, they were still people first, so the Lumiere Holy Order didn't demand sexual abstinence. That applied to Saintesses as well—chastity wasn't strictly enforced…
But living a completely unrestrained, filthy, and lewd life was another problem entirely.
In other words, you just had to keep your conduct roughly at the level of an ordinary person so nothing could be held against you.
And yet Archbishop Mordian had somehow painted Kyle as such a woman-obsessed maniac that he managed to get him banished.
Fuck.
Anyway, what Bloomlein had just said felt increasingly ominous.
"What's so difficult about it? Let's start today."
"Pardon? Wait a moment, Professor Bloomlein?"
Then came a clatter and a dragging scrape across the floor.
Shff.
The cloth that had been blocking the view through the hole in front of me was pulled aside.
And suddenly, a mouth appeared on the other side of the hole.
Literally a person's mouth—more precisely, Bloomlein's mouth and tongue.
"Now! Please insert your cock through here, Professor."
…Why the hell is this conversation going this way.