The Saint Is Lowly, Indeed (4)
Kim Isabel reached orgasm with ease from the touch alone, just as she had last time.
Seated in the chair across from me, leaning forward, the stream of her climax had soaked her lower half thoroughly, glistening where she sat.
"Isabel, are you okay?"
"Mmnhhh, hah, y-yes, yes…. I'm, I'm fine…."
I put on an exaggerated show of being flustered, watching over her condition with worried eyes.
*—Squish.*
"Mmmgh, ahh…?!"
While taking advantage of her dazed confusion to knead her breasts at intervals, gradually ramping up the stimulation — can't forget that part.
"…You look about the same as last time. It happened because it felt good again, yeah?"
"Ye-yes…. Your, your hands, Seonho…. It, it just felt so good…."
"It doesn't hurt anywhere, or wear you out?"
"No…. It's, it's nothing like that, so I'm okay…."
Kim Isabel hurriedly straightened herself up, as if not wanting to worry me, and wrapped her Holy Power around her lower half.
Her drenched lower body and the chair beneath her were dried up with nothing more than a couple of holy incantations, as if nothing had ever happened.
"Hooo, hooooo…"
A saint who uses her Holy Power to clean up after lewd acts. This generation's saint really is a base, worldly creature after all.
Well, I'm the one who deliberately made her that way. Androphobia is only hard to breach at the very beginning — once the wall in her heart opens, the fall is instantaneous.
And it's not like using Holy Power for something like this actually causes any problems. If it did, that bitch Hong Rachel — whose tally of men she's taken from behind already climbing into two digits in order to skirt the Church's purity precepts — would have been excommunicated long ago.
"Whew… I'm sorry, Seonho. I showed you an embarrassing sight again."
"Don't be. It's a natural part of getting used to men. And… it was incredibly beautiful, so you really don't need to be embarrassed."
"…I was beautiful?"
"Yeah. Gorgeous."
"……."
Apparently she hadn't expected to be complimented on the face she made while coming — Kim Isabel carefully lowered her head, avoiding my gaze.
Honestly, even if we stopped here, we'd already gone much further than last time… but if we're doing this anyway, I might as well push her all the way to the finish today.
I need to make as much progress as possible before the 'Field Survival Practicum' at the end of this semester. Kim Isabel, of course — and Han Sora too, without exception.
"Anyway, this means we've each shown each other something embarrassing now."
"Th-that's true. We've each shown the other once, so it's fair now, right?"
"Right. It's just training in the first place, so there's no need to read that much meaning into it. Not for the way I touched your chest through your clothes, and not for the time you saw and touched my thing directly."
"Th-that's right…. My chest being touched through my clothes, and… touching your, your thing directly… and…."
Hearing that deliberately emphasized last remark, Kim Isabel faltered mid-sentence, carefully chewing it over.
By now, she was probably starting to feel the discrepancy. In words, we'd each shown the other something embarrassing exactly once — but in reality, nothing about this was fair at all.
One side had only been touched through her clothes. The other had stripped naked and been shown everything, then touched directly.
Even if she hadn't been conscious of it until now, the moment that thought entered her head even once, Kim Isabel would be unable to stop feeling guilty.
*'And then she'll try to make it fair somehow. Even if it means taking the loss herself.'*
That's simply how Kim Isabel's mind works.
Of course, it's not exactly a "loss" for her to show me her bare chest and have it touched directly — but details.
"Um, um, Seonho!"
"Yes, Isabel?"
"I've been thinking it over, and I, I really do think this is unfair."
"…Well, I suppose. Men and women are just differently sensitive, physically. So from now on, I really shouldn't touch your chest, or…"
"Not like that!"
"Hm?"
"…It's not, it's not me — it's *you* who's losing out, Seonho. I got to see and touch your thing directly, but you only ever touched me through my clothes…."
"…What?"
"To, to make it fair, you should at least see and touch my chest directly too. Obviously."
"……."
Kim Isabel, confessing what was in her heart after working up the courage with great difficulty.
I had a rough idea of what must have been running through her head.
She couldn't shake off her own conviction that things must be "fair" between us, even at the risk of looking like a strange woman. She still thought that showing her bare chest directly was a little embarrassing, all the same. And she was probably imagining just how much better it would feel to be touched skin-to-skin, when even through her clothes it had felt this good.
But if I openly accepted here and now, my hand would be showing. It was necessary to play reluctant at least once.
"Isabel."
"Yes, Seonho. I'm ready, so…"
"A girl shouldn't say things like that so carelessly."
"…Pardon?"
Kim Isabel's movements — which had carried the momentum of a girl about to strip on the spot — froze. Undone by the totally unexpected words out of my mouth.
Coming from a man who'd already had his fill of groping her chest, it might well seem absurd. But that absurdity exists only in the eyes of a third party.
Judging from everything I'd said and done for Kim Isabel until now, this remark would only deepen her trust in me all the more.
"No matter how fair it might look, men and women are different, Isabel. Just because I showed you my bare body doesn't mean you need to hold yourself to that same standard."
"…B-but."
"Besides, the training we do was never meant to be fair to begin with. I started all this because I wanted you to get comfortable around men and be free of your phobia — that's all. Not because I wanted to do lewd things with you."
"I-I wasn't suggesting it in that sense either…."
"And you're already pushing yourself as it is. If you can barely hold back from feeling this good just from being touched *through* your clothes, how are you supposed to endure it with bare hands?"
"Th-that's not lewd, and I'm not, I'm not pushing myself at all!"
"……."
"I-I truly do need to learn how to get used to men, that, that's the only reason I said it! A-and in the process, just as I got to touch your body, Seonho, it would be f-far, far faster for me to be touched in return, that's all I meant!"
"…Isabel?"
"Pl-please don't misunderstand my sincerity! I'm, I'm really not trying to do anything lewd, I just, I just want to focus on the training!"
"……."
"I-I'm sorry! I never meant to raise my voice at you, Seonho, it's, it's just…."
…Shouting back a rebuttal like that is a bit of a surprise. With Kim Isabel, I'd expected the conversation to drag on and on, her denying everything to the very end in that timid little voice.
More importantly, from her reaction, she had apparently come to believe completely that the training we did together was 'earnest, selfless training.'
Because that's the only way everything she'd done until now could be justified. Groping a man's body, touching his thing, moaning her way to orgasm with her chest being fondled — all of it.
The moment she admitted that these weren't 'training' but simply lewd acts, she'd become a sinner who called a man to her dormitory room to commit them. Worse, it would mean that a priestess who wielded Holy Power had *proposed* lewd acts to a man first.
To avoid falling into that contradiction, she'd chosen her path: she wasn't the lewd one — the training itself was simply not lewd.
*'Coming this far, there's no need to keep playing the gentleman.'*
Because from this moment on, Kim Isabel was incapable of thinking anything I said was anything but 'right.'
She could no longer stop herself. So now I would simply pick up the progress I'd shelved and push it forward, fast.
"I-I'm sorry, Seonho. I didn't mean to snap at you…"
"No, I'm the one who's sorry, Isabel. You're right — I think I was misunderstanding for no reason."
"No, no, you did nothing wrong, Seonho…."
"I thought I was keeping any personal motives out of the androphobia training… but maybe I'm the one, unlike you, who was thinking of it in a somewhat improper sense."
"……."
"From now on, I'll be serious about it. I'll treat the healing of your androphobia with the importance it deserves."
With those words, I put on a grave expression and met Kim Isabel's eyes.
While making sure to remind her, one last time, that *she* was the one who had chosen this situation for herself.
"First — would you lift up that dress for me?"
"First — would you lift up that dress for me?"
"……."
The look in Seonho's eyes as he gazed at me had grown that much more serious.
Of course, Seonho had always been earnest with me. But the Seonho before me now — I suppose I'd say there was something in his eyes that carried a deeper resolve.
The way he declared that he would keep any selfishness out of my training… somehow felt more trustworthy than ever before.
*'Although, if I'm honest… I wish he'd allow himself just a little selfishness.'*
What Seonho and I do together is not a lewd act — it is earnest training. And yet, in a situation like this, where my chest is being touched, it does feel slightly sad that he should feel nothing at all.
…Because merely imagining showing Seonho my bare chest and being touched there makes my heart pound like this already.
"Isabel?"
"Ah — yes!"
At the hint of urging in Seonho's voice, I hurriedly took hold of the hem of my dress and cautiously raised it up.
My bare skin beneath the dress — something I had never once shown to any other man.
For someone like me, who hides even her face behind a veil for fear of it being seen, it was truly mortifying… but there was nothing to be done.
This was nothing more than training. It is letting impure feelings into training that is wrong — yes, that's right.
"Hah, haaa…. Hoo…"
"……."
"…Sh-should I lift it higher, Seonho? Or…."
"……."
"…Seonho?"
For some reason, he wasn't answering.
I had turned my gaze away for a moment, too embarrassed to meet his eyes — so when I stole a careful glance back, Seonho's face came into view.
"……."
Quietly, with his attention fixed entirely on the bare body within my dress.
His expression looked quite serious… but in truth, he was simply staring holes through my body.
Seeing that, I couldn't help realizing once more that Seonho, too, was a man after all.
He said he would approach the training in earnest — but as long as he was a man, that was never going to be easy for him, I suppose.
Ordinarily, being on the receiving end of such a blatant gaze from a man should make a woman feel uncomfortable, even frightened. And yet…
*'What a relief. So even Seonho has some selfishness left in him after all.'*
Far from discomfort, I found myself feeling reassured by his honest reaction.
…Because it meant that I was not, at the very least, the only one whose heart was racing.
(The illustration above, shown without the veil.)