The Secret I'll Carry to the Grave
Having finished my conversation with my father, I returned to my own chambers.
I wanted to see Mary, but by now she'd surely be heavy with child, too far along to attend to a maid's duties. She was probably on leave, resting comfortably at her own home. Which meant the maid attending me today was one I'd never laid eyes on before.
「 Where are Duke Asis and his wife? 」
"They are with Lady Lapis. Allow me to escort you."
I changed my clothes and followed the maid into their chambers, where only the Duchess remained.
"Welcome, Prince Rohen!"
The Duchess of Asis greeted me with the warmest of expressions.
「 Where are Lapis and Duke Asis? 」
"Hehe. They're out enjoying a walk together."
Duke Asis was hopelessly devoted to his daughter, so I suppose it made sense. I took my seat.
"I heard from Lapis that you're making quite extensive preparations for the wedding?"
I nodded with an awkward smile. The ring and the dress went without saying. I was also planning to commission composers for a serenade written solely for her.
Three years at the longest. Whatever else happened in that time, the wedding would surely be the memory that endured most, so I was making my own efforts — though whether Lapis would actually be satisfied by them was another matter entirely.
And so, keeping the Duchess of Asis company in her solitude, exchanging a rather long conversation about the wedding, I only barely managed to extricate myself from her company.
……In any case, all I can do right now is prepare steadily for the Demonic Tree's revival.
The safest scenario was to repel the Demon King's army without incident using the strength we possessed now, but it didn't seem like it would be nearly that simple. And even if every magic stone in the Empire and the Allied Kingdoms were made permanent, the population would only keep growing — demand would eventually outpace supply. In the far future, permanent magic stones might even become the spark of a war…
All I could do was hope that technological progress would catch up before then.
"Hundred Demons' Night Parade."
When dusk had fallen, I left the Imperial Palace for the first time in a while and called forth the Hundred Ghosts.
White mist billowed thickly around me, and beyond it countless specters emerged, bowing their heads — a sight that, strangely, I still could never quite get used to.
"My lord, you grace us with your presence!"
It was Miho, her nine tails swaying, clinging to me the moment she appeared. Sadly, I hadn't summoned the ghosts to catch up on old times, so I gently peeled her off and got to the matter at hand.
The purpose of today's summoning was to see whether any yokai possessed an ability more efficient than the one born from Bathory's other inherited legacy — Nosophoros, the bearer of disease.
To found a religion that every nation in this world suppressed, and to sit at its very summit, I would need to wield enormous influence in a short span of time — which made certain achievements an absolute necessity.
In that regard, Bathory's unique power to spread disease paired wonderfully with my own gift of healing.
"Among the Hundred Ghosts, I am the only one with power over disease. Poison, perhaps, is another matter."
Ah. Right — the ghosts all share one another's memories, so such a definitive answer coming from Bathory's mouth was hardly surprising.
「 Then what kinds of diseases can you spread with your power, Bathory? 」
"The list itself isn't long."
And so Bathory's explanation began.
According to her, the diseases she could spread were limited to those from a long-distant past, before medical science had advanced — the kind people would swear, without question, were the work of witches or vampires when a plague swept through. More precisely, they were illnesses entangled with such legends.
Four diseases in all.
1. The Plague.
The epidemic that did a great deal to turn perfectly ordinary people into accusations of witchcraft and vampirism. In my previous life, it could be called the principal architect of feudalism's collapse. That a disease helped tear down an entire social order was, in a way, a monumental feat — after all, it dragged some sixty percent of Europe's population to their deaths.
True to the name Black Death, the afflicted suffered necrosis, their flesh blackening and dying. As for contagion, it spread even through a patient's coughs and phlegm, so no further explanation was needed. It was also, among epidemics, the one that killed fastest once symptoms began.
2. Cholera.
In terms of symptoms alone, the simplest disease imaginable — nothing but endless diarrhea draining the body's water until dehydration claimed the victim. Except cholera's diarrhea disrupted the body's electrolyte balance, and osmotic pressure kept pulling moisture out of the flesh without pause. Correct that imbalance of water and electrolytes, and recovery was swift; but facing it with foreknowledge and facing it blind were worlds apart. In the Middle Ages, mortality reached forty to seventy percent — an unambiguous catastrophe.
3. Typhoid fever.
The bacterium infiltrated through the intestines, but unlike cholera it brought no diarrhea — instead, loss of appetite, headache, lower back pain, and aching joints, followed by a raging fever. The records said it climbed to around forty degrees, and at that point rose-colored rashes bloomed across the skin.
4. Measles.
The early symptoms resembled a common cold, but its distinguishing feature was small white spots spreading slowly inside the mouth, then rising body heat, then red rashes breaking out across the whole body. Unlike the others, its mortality rate was low — but left untreated, complications set in. And low lethality notwithstanding, measles' advantage as a pathogen was its overwhelming contagiousness: nine out of ten people near an infected person would catch it. Did it need any more explanation? One catch — once survived, reinfection was impossible, which was why in my previous life's modern era it had vanished behind vaccines and inoculations.
……The answer's already decided.
Of the diseases transmittable through Bathory's other name as a vampire — Nosferatu — honestly, measles was the only one I could choose. The disease with the lowest fatality rate and the highest contagion.
With the others, the streets would be littered with corpses before I ever lifted a finger.
Some might sneer that I was a hypocrite dispensing poison and cure in the same breath — but with the Demonic Tree's revival looming before my very eyes, what did it matter what kind of play my selfishness, dressed up as the greater good, would stage? And frankly, for one individual's selfishness, wasn't this altruistic enough?
Is that self-rationalization too? Either way, the scenario is sufficient.
Spread measles through Bathory, then carry the power of Utterance through my healing — wide-range, absolute — and cure the sickness outright. My deeds, distorted and embellished though they'd be, would gather their own momentum.
This is a secret I'll have to carry alone to my grave.
My parents, Lapis, Aria — even they might come to despise the very existence I was. Though on the flip side, it might earn me a massive influx of Awe and Faith, of consonants and vowels, all at once.
A secret play staged upon the world itself.
Resolved to see it through flawlessly to the final curtain, I belatedly exchanged greetings with the gathered ghosts.
Two generous months remained before my return to the Academy — a month and a half, if I counted the journey back.
"My lord?"
「 Been well? 」
"I never dreamed I'd find you here."
Seeing Dana's startled face, I closed the door behind me.
「 Are you learning well from my father's officers? 」
"The beginning was… quite difficult, I'll admit."
Scratching her cheek, Dana walked me through everything that had happened. However much I had taken her in, she was still the daughter of a house that had fallen for treason. My father's officers had hardly looked upon her kindly at first, she said — but in the end her talent and skill won recognition, and only recently had her instruction truly begun.
「 If things ever get hard, you can lean on me. 」
Looking back on it all, I realized the people around me had always been remarkably reluctant to rely on me. Aria, with her forceful personality. Lapis, passive by contrast. Neither had ever once asked for my help directly.
Dana was no different. I'd acknowledge it if my interference accomplished nothing — but I have more than enough power to meaningfully improve her situation.
"If even her first steps must be aided, can she truly be called an officer? Perhaps, my lord, while you gave me the seat of one — you're still looking at me as one of the young ladies of noble birth."
Why was it so twisted up for a sovereign to worry over his own vassal?
「 Frankly, the one inventing lofty meanings seems to be the strange one here. 」
There was a touch of sophistry in Dana's logic too, and when I pressed on that point, she flinched, fidgeted with her red hair, and turned her back on me. Watching her squirm, I let out a light laugh and made my way toward Lapis's chambers.
「 Is Lapis inside? 」
"Yes. She seems quite worn down — she hasn't stepped outside at all today, and has already gone to bed."
Hearing this from the maid stationed at the door, I slipped quietly inside. There was Lapis upon the wide bed, breathing soft and even in an afternoon nap.
I sat down carefully beside her and smoothed away the hair that sleep had tangled — and as she leaned her head toward that faint warmth, a gentle smile found my lips before I knew it.
So much time had passed since I arrived at the palace, unable to be at her side. Today, just sitting here like this for a while — that wouldn't be so bad.
"……Rohen?"
When I slipped beneath the covers, the bed creaked without complaint, and Lapis stirred awake, gazing at me through bleary eyes. I stopped her before she could try to sit up, drew her into my arms from beside her, and lent the weight of Utterance to my words.
"We haven't been together lately. Let's spend tonight like this."
"Have you finished all your work, then?"
Her face was full of worry.
"If you came here midway because of me, you really don't have to."
"I finished everything. That's why I'm here — because I knew you'd say exactly that. Sometimes I want to see a Lapis who's greedier than that. A selfish Lapis."
"……"
I hadn't meant much by it. But Lapis, turning her head to study me steadily, looked terribly serious. Then she caught the shoulder strap of the négligée she wore over her nightclothes and slid it slowly down.
Her chest, far fuller than Aria's, needed only that slight loosening of fabric to present its luscious shape to the open air.
"My selfishness is far uglier than you imagine, Rohen. Even with our wedding before us… I can't hold back my wantonness — I try to let it out…"
"……"
"I want to see the moment your reason crumbles before me — before the pure desire of the woman named Lapis — the walls of ideals, of propriety, of common sense, all coming down."
Strangely enough, in this she resembled Aria so closely that for an instant the two women overlapped in my mind. But only for an instant. The colors of the woman called Lapis were so vivid that Aria's image was wiped away in a heartbeat.
"Is it… too shameless?"
"Not at all."
As if to erase her hesitation, I reached out and took her breast in my hand. Then I lowered my head, clung to her like a child, and bit down on the swell of her ample chest, taking as much of her into my mouth as I could.
"Ah…"
Lapis shuddered and pulled my head tightly against her. The faintly sharp scent of her skin blooming at the tip of my nose was dreadfully bewitching. Her calm, tranquil body-scent clumsily attempting to seduce me — that alone stirred a strange, exquisite thrill. Watching a blank white page reach for the ink itself, longing to be stained — witnessing the decorum of a woman awakening to her own lewdness — a conquest-lust beyond words welled up in me.
Perhaps because of that, I straightened up, shed my trousers, sat at the edge of the bed, and took hold of the shoulders of Lapis as she rose awkwardly to follow.
She didn't resist the pull — instead, arching like a cat stretching into a yawn, she raised her hips and buried her face between my legs.
She had wanted to see me without restraint. And I, too, wanted to watch her dyed in my colors with my own two eyes — so what reason was there to refuse desire's pull?
"Hah…!"
I tapped the ridge of her nose, where my shamelessly stiffened manhood stood gazing at her from point-blank range. For all her posture, she was a bashful cat in heat. Like a creature terrified of the fish set before its very eyes — hardly a novel sight.
Before long she took me in hand and slowly pressed her soft lips to my tip, flustered, parting them awkwardly. I shifted my hips, nudged past that small mouth, and pushed in slow — until I felt the brush of her throat against the crown.
"Urk! Kgh…!"
With a short gag she convulsed, and the white panties beneath the fallen hem of her négligée came into view all at once. Perhaps I'd been too greedy. But Lapis, wearing an expression that said it was fine, glided her palms gently down my thighs and began moving her head on her own, taking me deeper still.
Wet. Wet sounds.
Unlike her slack lips, the inner depths of her throat clamped tight around me, and a line of cold, piercing pleasure shot up my spine — a hot breath tore out of me. Her face, buried entirely against my groin, eyes brimming with tears as she looked up at me, so at odds with her chaste appearance — it roused even a sadism I'd never felt before.
"Hnngh…! Kk…! Hnk!"
And sure enough, each time I drove my hips and violated that stuffed throat, Lapis panted out animal sounds beneath me. I wound her blue hair around my hand, using it as a grip to work out my need — and she showed not a flicker of displeasure. Only obedience. As if whispering: don't trouble yourself, not even a little, over where my lust for her may cross the line.
When I pressed down on the back of her head and buried myself to the root, leaning my upper body forward, Lapis curled her dainty toes tight and trembled all over. Instinct screamed to pull free from the unbearable strain — but I felt my release cresting, and instead I wrenched the gathered blue hair hard and shuddered once, violently.
"Ugh! Hah…"
Spilling over in pulses, I filled her throat and mouth to the brim. The relief that followed brought a vertigo like a corner of my mind being burned white.
"Kgh…! Cough…! Cough…!"
By the time I came back to myself, Lapis was coughing again and again, spilling the scent of a man from her bewitching lips. Saliva stretched in long threads with what she couldn't swallow, trailing down her chin. Her nape, mottled with cold sweat, tangled with her wantonly disheveled hair, draping her chaste beauty in a decadence that didn't belong to her.
I fetched a white cloth lying nearby and wiped her lips carefully, and she slumped against me, spent.
"It's… been a while. Since you've been awkward with me."
I tried to say I was sorry, but my stammering mouth refused to form the words. Lapis, though, seemed to understand it all; she stroked my cheek gently and gave me a bashful smile.
"It's a bit frank, but… I once read a psychology paper about this."
"……"
"About why men with families go out of their way to visit brothels, or seek other women's beds."
Well, it did get published, apparently.
"Sometimes the heart has already wandered elsewhere. But in most cases, it's because they can't release the desires they carry. And if they confessed those honestly to their wives, they fear they'd be despised for it… so they turn to women they needn't guard their hands around."
"……"
"Of course, that may be nothing but the flimsy self-justification of cheating men. But if that paper holds any truth… then I don't want a Rohen who suppresses his desires for nothing."
Your love. Your whims. Your lust. Lapis was saying she would accept them all, whatever shape they took — and in truth, that was no different from any other confession, only differently dressed. I laid my hand on her shoulder and pulled her tight into my chest.
Truly, I thought — I might never find my way out from beneath the hem of her skirt.