Bath Peeping (2)
I was momentarily spellbound. Dana and Unia were pouring water over their naked bodies beneath the cool waterfall, and the sight was nothing short of breathtaking. Both women had full, beautifully shaped breasts. Unia’s size had been easy enough to guess from her usual attire, but Dana’s came as a surprise. I never imagined she possessed such large and exquisite breasts. Unia’s hips were pale and firm despite her age, her figure graceful, yet Dana possessed something even more remarkable. Youth truly was the best. From every angle—front, side, back—Dana radiated both sensuality and innocence. She looked like a goddess descended from the heavens. Sorry, Unia, but my eyes kept drifting back to Dana alone.
“I should’ve asked them to wash me earlier. Tsk.”
While I was smacking my lips in regret, Unia’s bright voice suddenly rang out.
“How about we go surprise the captain just like this? Men love this kind of thing.”
At her giggling suggestion, Dana’s eyes seemed to blaze with mischief, a wicked little smile tugging at her lips. Without hesitation, she nodded vigorously.
“Good. It’s decided! Let’s go, let’s go!”
The two women emerged from the water with excited expressions and began carefully picking their way down the rocky slope barefoot. I gasped and scrambled back to my original hiding spot. They arrived first, but I quickly changed into dry clothes in the forest and strolled out as if I had just been walking. The two women, still completely naked, hid behind a tree before leaping out to startle me.
“Rawr!”
“Good heavens!”
I feigned a dramatic fall into the water, and Dana and Unia burst into uproarious laughter at the sight. Even though I had let myself be caught on purpose, I had gotten quite the eyeful and felt rather pleased about it. After some playful banter, we set off once more in good spirits.
Around three in the afternoon, we finally reached Urogarbin Village. The moment we heard the news from the villagers, we stood frozen in shock. Bread’s younger sister and her boyfriend had been arrested for theft and were being transported to Nobern.
“What are we going to do now?” Unia asked in a drained voice. “Head straight back to the city?”
“No.” My answer was firm. It felt wasteful to have come all this way only to turn around empty-handed. Besides, it would soon be dark, so staying the night in the village and leaving early the next morning seemed wiser. “Let’s spend the night here. We can also ask the villagers how Bread’s sister and her boyfriend ended up arrested for theft.”
We secured lodgings at the village inn, then went out to look around the house where Bread’s sister lived. After speaking with the neighbors, we learned the details. The wealthy Fitzgerald family had suffered a theft several days earlier—their matriarch, Lady Manderly, had her prized jewelry box stolen. The entire village had been thrown into chaos. The Fitzgeralds were an old and prestigious house that contributed generously to agricultural projects and village development funds, giving them considerable influence. Soldiers had searched every home with the village chief and elders’ approval, and the jewelry box had been found in the house shared by Bread’s sister and her boyfriend. They were arrested on the spot for theft and had been taken away in a transport carriage just an hour before our arrival.
The villagers all assumed the couple had stolen the box to fund their upcoming wedding and new home. Yet the sister and her boyfriend had protested their innocence right up until they were dragged away, insisting they had never stolen anything.
“If the jewelry box was found inside their house, there’s no way around it. Let’s head back and rest. This matter is out of our hands now.”
Unia looked at me with a heavy expression. I stood motionless in front of the darkened house. My feet refused to move. Something didn’t add up. Bread was a renowned craftsman in Nobern with a solid income, and his sister’s house looked like a comfortable middle-class home—perfectly suitable as either a newlywed residence or a lifelong home. The couple even ran a bakery on the first floor while living on the upper levels, and business had been thriving. According to the neighbors, the sister had been planning to open a branch in Nobern soon. So why would they covet someone else’s property?
“Weddings cost money, but not enough to justify stealing a noblewoman’s jewelry box. Something feels off. Why take such a risk, especially when they were about to start fresh as newlyweds?”
“It is strange that they’d walk straight into a trap like that… Hmm…” Unia agreed, folding her arms and stroking her chin in thought. Dana simply gazed at my face in silence, one hand lightly clutching the hem of my shirt at the waist.
Darkness had fallen. Unia and I stood before the empty house, lost in thought.
“That’s it.” Unia snapped her fingers as if struck by inspiration. I looked at her.
“You thought of something?”
“If you’re still uneasy about leaving, we should go to the place where all the village’s dirty rumors gather and dig deeper.”
“The place where dirty rumors gather…?”
Unia smiled and winked. “Where else but the tavern?”
Unia borrowed a dress from the innkeeper—one with a deeply plunging neckline that left her shoulders completely bare. Then we headed to the most famous tavern in the village. She approached several men, seducing them with sultry glances as though offering a night together, drinking the alcohol they bought her while extracting every scrap of gossip about the sister, her boyfriend, and the Fitzgerald family. However…
“Darling, you’re here? Come have a drink with me. Hic! Oh dear~ My lovely Hyunwoo~”
Unia’s drunkenness was unexpected. After downing drinks from the men, she had become completely intoxicated. When I rushed in to rescue her, she mistook me for her late ex-husband and planted a deep kiss on my cheek that left a visible mark.
“Unia. It’s me. Hyunwoo.”
“Ah, my new husband? Ehehe. Hic! Oh my, my new husband~ No matter how many times I look, you’re so handsome. Tonight you’ll spread my legs for me, right? Hmm? Answer me. If you don’t, I’ll kiss you again.”
Chu~
Somehow her sincerity felt genuine, so I deliberately stayed silent. As I helped the heavily drunk Unia out of the tavern, she kept planting mischievous kisses on my cheeks. The men who had given her information and wasted their money glared at me with bitter, jealous eyes.
After bringing her back to the inn and letting her sleep for about an hour, Unia finally sobered up.
“Haa, I’m dying. I’m so tired I could die. Ughhh…”
She managed to sit up on the bed, drained a glass of cold water, then gathered herself and spoke.
“There was a guy who kept obsessively following the sister—Cableini, was it?”
“Someone other than her boyfriend?”
“Her boyfriend’s name is Mild. Besides him, there’s a guy named Hans who’s been stalking Cableini since they were kids. She even reported him to the guards once. And that Hans’s family is the Fitzgeralds. Lady Manderly, the matriarch whose jewelry was stolen, is Hans’s mother.”
“So if we summarize what’s on the surface, it’s ‘Cableini stole the jewelry box belonging to her stalker and former friend’s mother.’”
Just from those few sentences, a rough picture formed in my mind. Perhaps a romantic entanglement was involved in the theft.
“Some of the guys at the tavern were convinced this whole thing was Hans’s doing. They think he did it out of spite after hearing that Cableini, his childhood crush, was about to marry Mild. In other words, it wasn’t Cableini who stole the box—Hans had someone plant it there.”
“We’ve already got the answer.” I chuckled.
Unia cautioned me. “Without solid evidence, it could just be the tavern drunks’ wild speculation.”
“Evidence is something we can gather from now on.”
“How?”
“Unia. I used to be a thief.”
After putting the hungover Unia back to bed and entrusting her to Dana, I prepared to leave.
“I’ll handle the rest. You and Unia stay at the inn and head back to Nobern tomorrow morning.”
“I’m going with you.”
“Dana.” I grabbed her shoulders as she tried to follow me outside and looked her straight in the eye. “If you leave too, there’ll be no one to look after Unia. Someone has to stay and protect her.”
“I like being with Hyunwoo.”
When she kept insisting, I took drastic measures. “Will you listen to me if I do this?”
I pressed a light kiss to her forehead. There was no distance between us anymore, and the gesture felt natural given our growing closeness. Honestly, the way she clung only to me, excluding everyone else, made her feel like a girlfriend. Because of that, I found myself growing bolder with physical affection. I liked her too, after all.
“……”
When our eyes met again, her cheeks flushed pink and she gave a shy smile. Cute. If it meant seeing that expression again, I had a feeling I’d be doing this more often.
“You’ll stay, right?”
“Yes… It’s sad, but since it’s what Hyunwoo wants.”
Leaving Unia in Dana’s care, I left the inn alone and headed straight for the Fitzgerald mansion. My goal was to search Hans’s room and other areas for clues. It was eleven at night. I skillfully scaled the outer wall and slipped inside. After wandering through every corner of the estate as if it were my own backyard, I slipped back out past midnight.
“This should be enough.”
In my right hand, clutched as I walked away from the mansion, was something satisfying. I mounted my horse and quickly left the village behind. The transport carriage that had departed in the afternoon had not yet reached Nobern. I intended to catch up before it was too late.