Chapter 6
“Did you hear? Owen Summers apparently broke down crying during training.”
When Sylvia stopped by the knight order on business, the place was buzzing with an unusual kind of excitement. Unfortunately for her, it was over a topic that was wildly off the mark. Not the news of Heston’s engagement, which had so splendidly stolen the show the night before, and not the rumors about Sylvia bolting out in the middle of the Princess’s tea party.
No, it was about Owen Summers—about how he’d suddenly cut short afternoon training and stood in front of a wooden dummy, pouring tears down his face.
Since Summers had never shed even a single tear at any funeral, the uproar had been immense.
“He just stopped there like a madman and started bawling like it was raining from his face. The worst part was, his expression barely changed. You know how creepy it is when someone cries without looking like they’re crying? I thought the empire was finished.”
They said it had been so long since he’d last cried that he hadn’t even seemed to realize the wetness on his own face was tears, only lifting a hand to wipe it away in visible confusion. That, more than anything, had supposedly been terrifying.
“What, do you think he’s cursed?”
“Is there even a curse like that?”
While everyone traded theories about how nothing else could possibly explain it, Sylvia rolled her eyes guiltily.
Surely not. It can’t be because of me, right?
No, Owen wasn’t the sort of man who would care that a woman he’d spent the night with had vanished without a trace by morning.
Even if she had comforted him with all her heart the night before, even if it had been nothing more than a one-night thing begun purely out of kindness... even if the woman had run away without a word or even a note...
No...?
Just last night—no, even this morning—she’d been certain he wouldn’t give it a second thought. But hearing the unbelievable news that he’d been crying made it all feel, somehow, as though it had been her fault.
For all his absurd looks and that maddeningly unbothered personality of his, Owen Summers was still a person. Surely even he wouldn’t feel great waking up to an empty bed.
Maybe something personal had happened to him yesterday, something he’d needed comfort for. And then, when he woke to an empty bed, maybe the thought that even she had rejected him was enough to make him cry.
As she forced that oddly familiar narrative into place, Sylvia grew more and more uncomfortable.
And then one of the knights who spotted her had to go and confirm the story in a voice practically vibrating with excitement.
“Appleton! You heard too, right?”
When Sylvia gave an awkward nod, the knight—Allen—hooked an arm around her shoulder with a face so curious it might have killed him.
“What the hell did you do to him?”
“What do you mean, what did I do? I didn’t do anything!”
Sylvia jerked like a cat that had been stepped on, and Allen narrowed his brows.
“No, I’m saying Owen was crying while he kept muttering your name like some kind of ghost story. We all figured you must’ve done something terrible to him after drinking with him yesterday.”
“W-What terrible thing? I didn’t even see him! You know I hide when I drink!”
“Really?”
But there wasn’t a shred of trust in the face turned back toward her. Sylvia shrank in on herself, half convinced their little scandal would be exposed before the night was even out.
“I was with Rosaline yesterday!” she blurted, grabbing onto Allen as she lied through her teeth.
“Mm-hm.”
“I’m serious!”
“Sure, sure. I know, so why are you acting like this?”
They bickered as they walked, and then, around the corner, a man emerged with an aura so odd that even from a distance he looked deeply unsettling.
Blond hair. Red-rimmed eyes rubbed raw from crying. It was Owen Summers.
As Sylvia and Owen came face to face, he lifted his head in silence.
“...You.”
The word drifted out of him in a voice that sounded almost haunted.
Sylvia flushed like a rabbit in a panic and whirled around to run. It was a rather poor match for her earlier claim that she and Owen had never met, but she couldn’t help it.
Even just the fact that they’d spent the night together had been enough to make her incapable of showing her face to him for the next three years, and after what had happened at the tea party—after that... unspeakable, unbearably embarrassing incident—she was in no condition to face Owen, not even if she died for it.
“Haaah.”
Left behind, Owen let out a long sigh under the bewildered stares of his fellow knights.
It was the sigh of a man who had already foreseen the trials ahead.
* * *
After rushing home, Sylvia decided to take a few days off and hole up in the mansion.
She needed time to sort out her head, harden her face, and build up the strength to endure the hellish confrontation that was surely coming.
Fortunately, the visit to the imperial physician had proved useful.
He said her mana had become tangled up with “something else,” and asked whether she’d suffered any serious attack recently.
“An attack?”
“Yes. An attack, or involvement with another person’s magic... Ah, perhaps with Lord Heston and—”
The imperial physician lowered his voice with extreme caution, and Sylvia had to lean in just to hear him properly.
“When was the last time you carried out a mission?”
“Two months ago. It was a short one, so I didn’t use much support magic.”
“I see.”
“Oh. Come to think of it, I did receive magic from Eurrent a few days ago.”
Since the doctor had pushed his slipping glasses up his nose and looked interested, Sylvia told him about the letter she’d received from her older brother a few days earlier.
It had been nothing more than one of his usual pranks. Eurrent was their father’s only hope, a brilliant mage—and an enormous idiot.
He hadn’t been able to attend the Princess’s engagement ceremony, so he’d sent a congratulatory letter instead. One for Sylvia, one for the Princess.
The letter sent to Sylvia contained that one short line, along with a spell that scattered flower pollen everywhere. The instant she opened it, she had to endure the whole thing dumping over her head.
But she hadn’t been surprised. Sylvia could read magic circles, so she’d known before opening the envelope that something like that had been woven into it.
The real problem was the letter sent to the Princess.
At least two spells had been laid over it, and somehow they’d been stacked in exactly the same place, making them nearly impossible to distinguish. On top of that, the way they’d been knotted together so they couldn’t be separated was, frankly, genius.
Maniac.
How much effort did he put into this tiny little letter?
Since Sylvia couldn’t allow Eurrent to keep tormenting the Princess, she had no choice but to open the letter.
She’d assumed it would be something like the magic in her own letter, but the moment she opened it, the mana twisted everything in her head and in her stomach inside out. Sylvia had immediately bolted for the bathroom, bent over, and vomited everything she had in her system.
Once her stomach settled a little, she’d opened the letter again just to wonder whether that bastard had truly lost his mind.
Inside were two pieces of paper: one formal congratulatory letter addressed to the Princess, and one small note mocking Sylvia.
Sylvia crumpled the note and threw it away.
When she described the incident without the profanity, the doctor tilted his head as though something about it didn’t fit the symptoms he’d expected, but in the end he seemed to accept it.
“Your mana is tangled, so be careful. Rest a little. You’ll feel much better.”
So Sylvia rested. Rosaline even stopped by midway through with delicious desserts and reported that the Princess hadn’t been angry at all, just genuinely worried about her, which eased Sylvia’s mind.
But after a day had passed, Sylvia suddenly sensed something wrong. Without any reason at all, the same thing had begun happening again, just as it had during the tea party.
Alone in her room.
Once more, Owen’s groans echoed in her ears, and all Sylvia could do was clamp her legs together and endure the rising heat.
She refused all meals and hardly moved from her room. Because of something she’d said to Mrs. Blunk the previous evening, people assumed she was simply feeling down.
But in truth Sylvia stood in her room, gripping the bedpost, breathing hard.
Am I really cursed?
She hadn’t even touched herself, and yet a third small climax had already come, so there was no other conclusion she could reach.
Unless she’d gone insane, how could this possibly be happening? And with Owen, of all people. There wasn’t even excitement in her heart now—only a miserable, guilty sense of transgression.
“Hngh.”
It felt as though someone had pried her legs apart and was rolling a bead between them. Sylvia bit back a groan and tipped her head back. Her eyes were already wet, red-rimmed and shining.
With both hands clenched around the bedpost, Sylvia swore to God she would never lower these hands, yet at the same time her waist trembled irregularly with unwanted pleasure, jerking as though it wanted something from her.
“Nn... please.”
I can’t possibly sink any lower as a person. So please, just let me off.
She didn’t even know what she was pleading to. Still, she kept muttering the words inside her head.
But the lower she went, the worse the itch became, and the more her head swam, until reason itself began to slip away. Her experience was far too meager to withstand this tiny, boiling excitement.
Her legs finally gave out, and she collapsed face-first onto the bed, clutching at her skirt.
The thin inner dress wrinkled beyond saving, and white thighs were bared. Her hand, clenched so hard the knuckles had gone pale, slowly worked its way toward the inside of her thigh—but Sylvia couldn’t stop it.
Rather, she could feel the anticipation making everything inside her twitch.
Have you never done this alone?