The Fury of Heartbreak
What am I supposed to do?
The little head of the vermilion-haired woman spun furiously.
Should she tell the virgin-obsessed Hero that she was no virgin herself?
If she confessed, how would Lucas’s attitude toward her change?
Would he still see her as a good woman? Or would he give up on her and settle for being a good friend? Or worse…
Surely he wouldn’t go that far…
An uneasy feeling welled up inside Darin. She didn’t think Lucas would treat her roughly—but then again, who could say how a man might turn? The sort of people who fixated pathologically on the idea of a “virgin” often found a non-virgin impossible to accept.
Of course, she wasn’t a member of Lucas’s harem. They hadn’t known each other since the old days, either. There was no reason she should feel ashamed of not being a virgin.
But from where Darin stood, it already looked as though the woman called “her” had been seated in the place of his lawful wife inside his head. He might refuse to accept it and take his anger out on her. After all, as the strongest being in this other world—answerable to no one—his own thoughts seemed to matter far more to him than anyone else’s opinion.
But then what? Do I say I’m a virgin? Lie again?
Originally, Darin was a woman who kept her distance from lies. Lately, though, because of Kael, she had found herself inventing stories that never happened for the people around her more and more often.
I don’t want to do that anymore…
She was neither a pathological liar nor someone who took pleasure in deceiving others. The accumulating karma of falsehood pressed heavily on her shoulders.
Wait. Maybe it would actually be better if Lucas were disappointed in me.
Darin thought it over. By bringing up the fact that she wasn’t a virgin, wouldn’t it be preferable if things grew awkward between her and the Hero?
If Lucas stopped seeing her as a woman—
And if their relationship grew strained on top of that—
Then she wouldn’t have to keep lying anymore.
It’s not that I’m denying he’s from the same hometown…
Darin didn’t want to drift apart from Lucas, either. If she were to speak the truth she hadn’t voiced, she even wanted to remain friends with him for a long time.
He might be her only comrade in this other world, after all.
But she had held that thought before she had shared her body with her own son.
It might have been a touch of self-importance, but if the Hero’s obsession with her intensified, he might harm Kael in order to take her. And in the process, there was the danger that the secret of their incest would be unearthed.
Besides, he was the Hero—the strongest being in the entire world-setting. No matter how exceptional Kael was, standing against cheat keys and divine authority was, for all practical purposes, nearly impossible.
I—I’ve been out of my mind. This was no time to be laughing so easily.
Only now did Darin realize just how carefree she had been, facing him and laughing along all this time.
This is no time for that.
In that case, given her circumstances—having already slept with her own son—the right move was to put as much distance between herself and Lucas as possible. It would be better, quite literally, if their relationship cooled. That being so, there was no longer any reason to hesitate about revealing that she was not a virgin.
In the end, Kael and I are sinners in the same boat…
A child’s sin is a parent’s sin. In the end, a woman like her had no choice but to shield the son she loved. Whether some commoner with no backing went to ruin was none of her concern—but her son was different, wasn’t he?
All right. At least this much, I’ll say honestly.
As if she had made up her mind, Darin’s amber eyes lit. Then, with a composed air, she met the Hero’s golden gaze and opened her mouth.
“Lucas, I think you’re laboring under a rather large misunderstanding.”
“About what, exactly?”
“……I’m not a virgin.”
“…Not a virgin, you say?”
“Yes.”
Until the very moment of his virgin-hunting, Lucas’s face had looked at ease. Now it crumpled savagely, as though he had taken a tremendous blow.
It was only natural. In his mind, Darin was already a virgin—and the companion of his life.
Lucas, who regarded women as little more than holes to fuck, had creampied countless of them raw without a condom and still never forgotten to cast contraceptive magic.
But with Darin, he had been thinking of building a proper, happy family…
And now she was saying what…?
That Darin wasn’t a virgin…?
“You’re not… lying, are you?”
“Is there any reason I’d need to lie to you about whether I’m a virgin or not, Lucas?”
“Well, no, but… a joke, perhaps.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not the sort of person who makes that kind of joke.”
“M-maybe you were playing with yourself and accidentally broke your hymen? In a way, you could still count that as—”
Lucas flung out question after question as if clutching at straws, but—
“No. I’ve never even masturbated.”
—the answers that came back from the vermilion-haired woman never wavered.
“I’ll say it clearly, Lucas. My purity was lost by sleeping with a man. That’s the truth.”
Thud.
The Hero felt as though he had been struck across the head with a blunt weapon.
Across both his past life and this one, this was the first time he had ever felt love at first sight.
And yet that woman had already been fucked by another man…? She had shamelessly spread her legs for some bastard who wasn’t him, moaning and whimpering?
It was said that men of means did not usually fuss over a woman’s purity.
But when the attachment and obsession toward that particular woman ran deep, it was an element one could not help but care about.
And Lucas was, among such men, the pathological type who hunted for something brand-new—so the shock was anything but ordinary.
“…Lucas?”
As the silence stretched on, it was the girl who grew flustered. Darin carefully called the name of the Hero, who still had his head bowed.
“Who is it?”
“Pardon?”
Something was wrong. She had been certain that a man who prized virginity would lose most of his interest in her—yet the eyes fixed on her were glowing even more unnervingly than before.
“The man who stole Darin’s virginity. Who the hell is he?”
The wording was polite. The tone was anything but. Even as he cursed the man who had taken the purity of the woman he desired, he was resenting Darin as well.
“And Darin—why did you give your virginity to that man? You’re mine…”
“……”
The crushing pressure of a Hero she could not possibly handle bore down on the girl. Darin broke out in a cold sweat and could only watch him warily, unable to speak.
She had meant to say, quite naturally, that she had spent a night with Kael—but the Hero was reacting far more sensitively than she had expected, and she had no idea how to respond.
“You won’t answer?”
“W-why are you so angry? Please calm down, Lucas. And what do you mean, ‘you’re mine’? Why would you say something like that to me…?”
“I don’t know. I know it’s strange to be this angry… I know that kind of talk is inappropriate…”
Lucas’s gaze raked swiftly over Darin’s entire body. Her full, ripe breasts and the soft swell of her hips; the faint scent of tangerines mingled with her sweet body fragrance—she was a lovely woman in every way. On top of that, her personality was perfect. He had never doubted that she was the woman meant to be his companion.
Which was precisely why the fact that another man had tasted this woman before him was so utterly devastating.
A man who had always been the one stealing other men’s women had, for the first time, been forced to feel what it was like to be the loser on the receiving end of NTR.
“I must have liked Darin more than I imagined. No—I may already have been thinking of you as my woman. In any case, I would appreciate it if you simply answered the question.”
The look in Lucas’s eyes as he watched her felt familiar to Darin.
Why—why is he looking at me like that?
That was the gaze of a man demanding to know why his lover had cheated on him.
She was past incredulous and well into the realm of the absurd. She wasn’t even his woman to begin with. Kael had worn that same look the first time they had sex. Darin was thoroughly sick of the entire male species.
“…I don’t even need to ask, do I. Akael Bayern. It’s that bastard, isn’t it?”
“……”
Where was the Hero’s rage pointed now? She had confessed that she wasn’t a virgin, thinking it was the choice that would protect her son—but had it been a disastrous move instead? Darin needed to speak the name of the man she had been with, yet fear kept her mouth from opening easily.
“Haa. Then I’ll ask only this. Did Kael force himself on you, Darin?”
“…Absolutely not.”
“Are you playing games with me? Just a moment ago you said you didn’t love Kael as a man, didn’t you?”
“That’s true. But it really wasn’t forced. I told you just now, didn’t I? I have a duty to repay the Bayorn family’s kindness.”
The conversation flowed on of its own accord. The man who had stolen the virginity of the pure woman named Darin had become Akael Bayern.
In truth, that account was only half true—but Darin had no grounds left here for further explanation. All she could do was defend him as best she could, insisting that Kael had behaved like a gentleman.
“So that bastard was only putting on a lofty act on the outside. Taking a noblewoman’s purity without even being married.”
“D-don’t criticize Kael. I was the one who suggested it first.”
“Ha! You suggested it first? Do you think I’ll believe that? It’s not as if I don’t understand the position of a ward.”
“……”
“And why are you shielding that guy so hard, Darin?”
“…One way or another, Kael is like a little brother to me. We’ve always been together since we were small—isn’t it only natural to grow attached?”
Crunch. Several veins stood out savagely across the Hero’s face. He wanted to vent this rage on Akael Bayern, and Darin’s insistence on protecting him sat very poorly with him.
It was also puzzling. He hadn’t spoken with Darin all that much, but Lucas was a Casanova who had handled any number of women. Instinctively, he could tell she was a remarkably chaste sort of woman. Women of that temperament did not usually open their arms so freely unless a man approached them first…
Whirr.
When Lucas raised a hand into the empty air, a subspace opened and an oddly shaped artifact sprang out. If one had to compare it to something, it resembled a traffic light—except that it had only a red light and a blue light, with no amber. The design was simple, but from Darin’s perspective, seeing it for the first time, its purpose was difficult to grasp.
“Darin. Say it one more time.”
The Hero left the thing floating in midair and asked her again.
“Were you raped by Akael Bayern?”
“I—I already said no!”
Darin shouted with all the force she could muster, desperate to deny it—
Beeeep.
—and the bizarrely shaped artifact flared with a red light and vibrated.