Whispers of Desire
Light Daily Life (5)
“What is ‘that,’ Philia?”
“Huh…? Well, of course it’s…”
Philia nearly answered without thinking, but her lips trembled before she pressed them shut. She stared at Marei, then awkwardly averted her gaze.
“What is it, Philia? Tell me.”
“……I don’t know.”
The very words Marei had been repeating slipped from Philia’s mouth. He took another step closer and caught her by the shoulders as she tried to look away. He was winning. A strange sense of triumph began to overtake him. He wanted to torment this vampire princess even more than she had teased him. The lovely young lady who acted so nonchalant while desperately trying to hide her embarrassment.
“I really don’t know. Please tell me. What is it? What do I think about every day?”
“Ah, you already know…. I’ll tell you everything when we’re alone. So, stop…”
“Do you know something, Philia?”
Philia kept her head turned, only her eyes flicking sideways to glance at him. Marei leaned in close to her ear, his voice dropping to a whisper like the flutter of wings.
“Whenever I think of you, I only think about ‘that.’ You’re so cute and lovely that I want to do ‘that’ with you every single day.”
“Eek…!”
“Whisper what it is, Philia. No one else will hear. Please?”
“S-stop already…”
Philia pushed lightly against Marei’s chest, but there was no strength behind it. It was nothing more than a weak, meaningless whimper.
“I want to do ‘that’ with you so much. All day in my room, all day on weekends. Every single day. I want to marry you and make lots of babies. You feel the same, don’t you? You want to do ‘that’ too, right?”
Having grown under his mother’s thorough (?) education (?), Marei felt no sense of strangeness as he pressed his desires upon the vampire princess.
“Pawen. Stop… Please… stop… Marei.”
Philia’s lips moved in tiny motions, whispering so only Marei could hear. Her body trembled at the boy’s breath against her ear, and without realizing it, she pressed her thighs tightly together, caught between an unknown fear and excitement.
“If you tell me, I’ll stop. Whisper it in my ear. Tell me what ‘that’ is—the thing I always do when I think of you. The ‘that’ I want to do with you so much. In my room, at school, right here—what I want to do to you right now. Quickly.”
“Aah… ugh…. S-sex… It’s sex… N-now stop…..”
Satisfied by the trembling voice that escaped the vampire lady’s lips, Marei quietly pulled her into an embrace. Seeing Philia on the verge of tears, shaking with fear, filled him with a strange sense of fulfillment and conquest. He pressed his now fully hardened length firmly against her lower abdomen.
He wanted to make her say the word “mating.” He wanted to see her utter vulgar words like Illien and the others. But unlike them, he wanted to see her face flushed crimson with shame, self-deprecating, yet filled with a strange thirst as she desired him.
He glanced around, but there was nowhere nearby to take this lovely noble lady. If his mother’s education (?) had been progressing at its usual pace lately, he would have already dragged Philia into a nearby motel. But the young boy still lacked that kind of boldness.
“I want to do it with you.”
“We’re outside…”
“Does it not matter if we’re inside? Want to go to my house? It’s not far.”
“T-that’s not what I meant!”
Philia shouted sharply. Startled, Marei released her from his arms. She roughly pushed him away. The gazes of passersby turned toward the arguing couple, but since it was a common sight among Valter’s youth, no one paid it much mind.
Seeing Philia reject him so harshly, Marei suddenly realized what he had just done. Shocked, he reached out for her, but she only took a step back.
“Do I look like such an easy woman to you, Pawen? Like I’d spread my legs whenever you want? Ha, so that’s what you thought of me. Really… really…”
“No, Philia. I was wrong.”
“…..I need to rethink our relationship. I’m leaving first.”
Philia’s expression hardened as she turned and strode away. Marei hurried after her and grabbed her.
“I really didn’t, Philia. Truly.”
“…..Enough. Let go of my hand.”
“I can’t.”
Philia frowned and seized Marei’s wrist, slowly applying pressure. It felt as if his wrist were being crushed. Even as sensation faded and pain began to throb, Marei never took his eyes off her.
“Let go, or you’ll get hurt.”
“I can’t. Never. I really was wrong, Lia.”
“…….Don’t call me that name… Haa.”
Philia bit her lip hard and squeezed her eyes shut.
“Fine, you were wrong. Haa…. You know you messed up, right?”
“Yes.”
Philia let out a long sigh and released Marei’s wrist. The imprint of her grip remained clearly on his pale, bloodless hand. She sighed several more times, as if unsure what to think. Marei still held onto her wrist, watching her.
“Then why did you do it?”
“I-I didn’t think you were easy or anything like that. It’s just… I wanted to be with you….”
Even Marei thought the excuse sounded ridiculous. But he had never once thought of her as easy. The beautiful girl who made his heart race whenever they were together. He was realizing just how poor his way with words was when it came to this feeling that might be called longing.
“…..Honestly. What exactly are you, Marei de Pawen?”
Philia’s eyes shone with melancholy. Marei could only stare back, unable to say a word.
“I wish you were just a bad guy. Then I could curse at you all I wanted and kick you out.”
Philia pursed her lips tightly before sighing again.
“You need to think about how your actions look to me. How they affect me. How I’ll take them. You just gave me an unbearable sense of humiliation and contempt. But do you know what’s even worse?”
Philia’s eyes trembled. Her wet gaze, on the verge of tears, stared straight at Marei.
“I’m sorry, Lia.”
“It’s that you have no awareness of what you are to me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“And what makes me even angrier is… how easily I find myself thinking I have to forgive you.”
Marei couldn’t fully understand her words, but he could feel the emotion behind them. Philia never shed a single tear. She only glared at him with bloodshot eyes, looking utterly furious.
“I’ll pretend today never happened. But listen. If you really care about me, carve what happened today into your heart. And don’t forget it. Can you do that?”
“...I’m sorry.”
Philia nodded as if accepting his apology. Seeing Marei still rooted to the spot, she bit her lip hard and gently pushed him away.
“…..And if you’re going to seduce me, do it the normal way. Set the mood properly. Got it?”
“Yeees….”
“Think about a girl’s heart!”
With Philia’s hands patting his back, Marei couldn’t bring himself to look at her face, overwhelmed by a strange mix of guilt and fear.
Concentration was impossible. Marei stared blankly at the books and notebooks spread out before him. He couldn’t tell what he needed to study more, what he already knew, or what he didn’t. He could solve problems and write essays, but he had no way to check if he was doing it correctly. He found himself envying the countless university students attending the Imperial University.
To Marei, a library had always been a place filled with the scent of old books that made him dizzy the moment he opened the door, yet somehow helped him focus once he got used to it. But Valter Academy’s library was on an entirely different scale from the neighborhood library he imagined—so vast it was overwhelming, complete with private study rooms and countless group study spaces. It was a whole new world.
Just the books that seemed useful for Idrien’s “Basic Elemental Magic” lecture filled more than a dozen shelves, and picking out three readable ones took over thirty minutes. He had started out enthusiastically comparing and trying to understand multiple books at once, but the explanations differed in subtle ways, making him feel like the amount of new material had doubled. On top of that, the incident with Philia around lunchtime kept replaying in his head, so focus was out of the question.
Marei let out a long sigh at the problem that refused to be solved and looked around. Soft murmurs of conversation drifted through the air, just barely audible, while the irregular sound of pages turning echoed from various corners. Pressing his palms against his eyes, he muttered “focus, focus” a few times before picking up his pen again—only to lift his head at the sudden, chilling silence where even the sound of turning pages had vanished.
“I-Idrien…. Professor?”
“You’re working hard.”
Idrien was sitting across from him, chin resting on her hand, smiling. Marei nearly jumped to his feet in surprise, but the sight of the relaxed female professor left him staring blankly at her instead.
Her long platinum hair shimmered behind the chair back, pulled by gravity, while her playful green eyes watched him with keen interest. Only then did Marei realize that the sudden silence in the library was because of the young, beautiful elf professor sitting right in front of him. Everyone was watching Idrien. Or rather, they were too busy staring at her to even call it “watching.”
Idrien seemed accustomed to the attention and paid it no mind, her gaze fixed solely on the young boy before her—as if the entire world consisted only of herself and the child in front of her.
“I thought you’d be too busy to study, but you’ve been squeezing it in whenever you can? Good job. I’m proud of you. Hehehe.”
Idrien looked as delighted as Labella when she found Marei studying at home. Her affectionate gesture of slowly stroking his hair with an outstretched hand drew everyone’s attention not just to her, but to Marei as well. Under the prickling weight of so many stares, he ducked his head low.
“That’s not how you solve it. You should approach it like this. Watch.”
Even though she was sitting across from him, Idrien neatly wrote out the solution in the correct orientation for Marei to read. He nodded in understanding.
“Your first attempt was good, but you made a calculation error here. Still a bit lacking, I see.”
Idrien smiled faintly as usual while showing him, but the people around them let out gasps at the smile of the woman known as the “Masked Beauty.”
“Is it here?”
“A little lower. Focus. And even if you calculated correctly, why did you suddenly switch to white magic formulas here? Don’t just get used to solving problems—think about the concepts. The concepts. Valter kids are smart, but they’re so obsessed with grades that they only focus on problem-solving…. My precious disciple knows better than to do that, right?”
Idrien tugged lightly at Marei’s cheek with her fingertip before releasing it, repeating the motion. He nodded at her affectionate touch. She leaned in closer and whispered quietly into his ear.
“….Do you know something?”
“Yes?”
Marei answered in an equally soft voice, barely audible even to Idrien.
“How does it feel to study next to a beauty like me? Everyone seems jealous of you. The stares we’ve been getting since earlier are enough to give you chills.”
“Ah…?!”
Snapping back to his senses at Idrien’s whisper, Marei frantically looked around. Under the barrage of sidelong glances that made him feel like the center of the library, he flushed crimson and lowered his head.
“There, all solved. Look, how’s this?”
Idrien proudly presented her notebook, now filled with writing. The neat, ruler-straight handwriting had nothing to do with the problem he had been solving—it was just a list of words.
-Want to have sex?
That was written at the very top.
-Look here, Marei. Can’t you see your personal meat toilet is getting impatient?
After reading the second line, Marei swallowed hard. Glancing sideways, he saw Idrien resting her chin on her hand, smiling only at him. She pointed at the notebook again with her slender chin, as if urging him to keep reading.
-Your personal suction cup wants to be sucked dry too. Ah, I’m getting excited. I’m already wet. I guess I’m a perverted meat toilet just like my sister.
It was the kind of content that shouldn’t make him laugh, yet strangely aroused a wry chuckle. When Marei let out a small laugh, Idrien seemed pleased and pressed closer, almost hugging him, before writing more on the notebook.
“Eek…!”
A hand had slipped under the desk and was now carefully stroking over his pants. Marei tried to pull back, but Idrien’s persistent touch didn’t stop.
-We have to be quiet in the library, Marei.
“I-Idrien.”
-Write it properly. Do you like it here?
Faced with Idrien’s bold seduction in a public place without the slightest hesitation, Marei could only nervously glance around at the surrounding eyes.