The Unfilial Daughter (1)
Inside the Viscountess’s private suite lay a single, expansive bathroom.
It was narrower than the central baths reserved for the direct bloodline of Bayorn, yet the Viscount’s particular devotion to his wife had ensured the space was anything but modest. What might have been a simple bathing room rivaled an ordinary public bathhouse in scale. The antique orange motifs that adorned every surface were his quiet declaration of love for her.
Evening had already swallowed the sun. A white bear—the emblem of House Bayorn—gaped open-mouthed, pouring a cascade of water into the tub below.
In the great bath filled with steaming water, a woman with vermilion hair let the strands float freely around her. She wriggled her fingers and parted her lips in idle chatter.
“Piel, listen to this.”
The Viscountess was sharing confidences with her daughter. It had been far too long since they last bathed together, and she seemed genuinely delighted.
“Your father, well… yesterday he said…”
The daughter’s ears tilted toward her mother’s gentle voice. Mother and daughter bathing side by side had been a common ritual since Piel’s childhood.
Her older brother Kael had stopped looking upon their mother’s bare body the moment he reached his teens. But Piel was a girl. Even now, facing her mother’s nakedness was no hardship.
“Do you know what he told me yesterday? I said I wanted a short outing, and he answered that sending only servants would make him anxious—that unless the whole family went, I was absolutely forbidden to leave. As if your mother were still a child. Don’t you think the overprotectiveness is a bit much? Honestly, no matter how old he gets, your father never changes.”
Complaint after complaint against her husband spilled from the Viscountess’s small, chattering mouth. She clearly resented the way the Viscount of Bayorn still wrapped her—a woman grown for years—in the coddling of a child.
He had always treated his clever, spirited wife like a little girl. Perhaps it was simply a habit formed in their youth.
Piel watched her mother with a faint smile. Airings of grievance against her husband were part of Darin’s daily routine; there was no need to take them seriously.
When no reply came, Darin blinked several times and studied her child’s form. Balanced muscle lay across Piel’s body like elegant embroidery—beautiful enough to make a mother proud, and just a little envious.
“If Mama had been as strong as you, Piel, I wouldn’t have been treated like this. No—maybe I would have taken revenge on your father…”
She clenched one small fist that could not even properly grasp a ripe orange, trembling with mock fury. Far from threatening, she looked only as adorable as an angry rabbit.
“But Mother.”
“Hm?”
Yet the feelings her daughter harbored were not so simple. Sacrilegiously, Piel sometimes saw her mother as a coquettish girl playing at innocence—or worse, as a wanton who pretended reluctance while thoroughly enjoying her husband’s body.
“You say you hate it, but…”
Then why, in bed, do you stick out your tongue like a whore and savor his cock so deliciously?
Piel pressed her lips shut. When the truth threatened to spill out, silence was the only safe choice.
Two years had passed since she first witnessed her parents’ coupling. With her brother often away, Piel spent far more time with their mother. The more hours they shared, the larger her feelings grew—and the more monstrous her interest became.
Especially the sexual kind.
A daughter could never voice such things aloud. So she spent entire days with her legs spread, fingers thrusting into the tight entrance of her own flesh, soothing loneliness while imagining those slender maternal fingers in their place.
I know watching my parents have sex is abnormal…
Reason understood. Instinct did not. Once the reins had slipped, stopping the voyeurism became impossible.
Piel tried to endure. She slapped her own cheeks in self-reproach. Yet her gaze always drifted back to the marital bedchamber.
The vermilion-haired woman she saw in daily life and the woman who received her husband in bed were two utterly different creatures. The gulf between them filled Piel with such dissonance that she began to scold her mother in secret.
—You claim to hate your husband, so why do you drip wet down there?
—You wrinkle your nose at the smell of sweat after an outing, yet you put that fishy cock in your mouth?
—You say it’s irritating how he clings like a child no matter how old he gets, so why don’t you resist when he suckles your breasts?
This is truly not normal…
As a child she constantly reminded herself how vile these thoughts were. Whatever form her parents’ intimacy took, it was no daughter’s place to interfere. Raising such absurd objections was itself a sign of madness.
She thought of her brother. The last thing she wanted was to become like that insane bastard, so she shook her head and fought the filthy desire.
“You say you hate it, but what?”
“Just… something I was thinking out loud.”
“What is it? Tell Mama.”
“…I must have mixed it up with another topic.”
“What…? Honestly…”
Even when her mother pressed, Piel answered with a calm smile. She was not her mother’s lover; what good would scolding do? Such foolishness would only wound the mother who loved her so completely.
Darin looked deflated and began nibbling the sweets arranged on a nearby plate. Nobles often enjoyed light fare while soaking.
In moments like this she really does look like a pure young girl… or maybe I’ve simply idolized Mama too much…
The way she puffed her cheeks like a squirrel while eating cookies was pure, untouched innocence. And the emotion Piel felt toward her mother was, on the surface, no different.
To her, Darin was the cleanest, most chaste lady in the world. Because she did not even like her husband, Piel had expected her to resist during sex and show only the blandest reactions. That was why the sight of her mother with legs spread and body melted open had been so disappointing.
Mother must have resisted Father for quite a long time. Maybe she’s simply given up and accepted it now.
What fault was hers, after all? A woman married to a nobleman had to receive a man whether she wished it or not.
She had been taken in a bridal abduction; her grievances were not lies. And even if, over time, she had come to enjoy sex itself, that would not be strange.
Any woman, no matter how averse to the act, would learn to take some pleasure after more than twenty years of married life. Her mother was not a block of wood; she was a living person. It was only natural.
Yes… this must be right. Why was I resenting Mama in the first place…
Thinking this way, Piel began to feel convinced—at least in her head. Her body still refused to understand. Resentment toward her mother would surge again, and absurd ideas would surface: that bloodless father had touched her body, so why couldn’t her own daughter? Still, organizing her thoughts made her feel somewhat better than before.
Her gaze drifted, unguarded, to the open space between her mother’s thighs. She had not meant to look; instinct simply pulled her eyes there. Because it was her daughter, Darin’s guard seemed completely down.
The slit of her sex, lightly veiled by sparse hair, was tightly closed and demure. Darin did not grow thick thatch like most grown women, so the delicate, lewd sight was poorly hidden.
Ah… ngh, fuck…
She felt her lower body slowly growing wet and wanted to scream. Looking at the plump outer lips of the vermilion-haired woman, a strange appetite exploded. She wanted to suck them into her mouth and gently chew. She wanted to know whether the juices that would spill tasted of oranges, just like her mother’s scent.
The breasts that had grown so lushly, so at odds with that pure face, also looked soft. The pair was nearly identical in size—neither too high nor too low—natural and pleasing to the eye. The nipples were cuter and more mischievous than a virgin’s.
While the daughter seethed with lust, the Viscountess placidly watched her daughter’s white hair floating on the water’s surface. Something she had been holding back finally slipped free.
“Our Piel has been strange lately. It’s like you’re trying to keep distance from Mama.”
At the faintly aggrieved tone, Piel—who had been staring downward—lifted her head. She was still busy quelling the rising heat; her mind was a little scattered. Her innocent mother, of course, had no idea and simply continued.
“This bath, too. It’s been almost half a year, hasn’t it?”
Family members of the same sex bathing together was a way of deepening bonds. For nobles who could freely enjoy hot water, it was even more so. Yet as time passed, occasions for mother and daughter to share a bath had grown rare.
“You always called me Mama, then suddenly started saying ‘Mother’ late in the game… that feels strange too…”
The correction of her rough speech was also puzzling. In Darin’s eyes, her daughter would have kept calling “Mama!” in that free-and-easy way for the rest of her life. Yet without any special reason she had begun saying “Mother,” and it felt awkward.
“Mama’s been feeling left out by you in all sorts of ways lately.”
Refusing shared baths and polishing her speech were not the whole of it. The overall time they spent close had simply dwindled.
“When I offered to embroider something for you last time, you said no…”
After a year, then two, after repeated rejections right up to Piel’s twentieth birthday, a mother could not help sensing the emotional distance. She had even wondered whether she herself had done something wrong.
“When I suggested a private outing just the two of us around Bayorn territory, you refused… When I said I’d prepare new armor for you, you said you didn’t need it, and then again…”
A hint of drowsiness colored her voice. Soaking in the hot water must have left her languid. Of course—she had tangled with her husband that very morning.
Darin leaned against the rim of the tub, still eating oranges, cookies, and various other snacks. Even while chewing and spacing her words, she never forgot to voice her grievances toward her daughter.
“And as if that weren’t enough, your brother is away on campaign, so I’m lonely…”
She might seem a little excessive, yet for a woman whose children were her entire world, feeling hurt was only natural. She even found herself resenting the daughter who always deflected when asked for a reason.
She did not ask for much from Piel. She did not demand filial piety. She simply wanted to spend time together now and then before her daughter married.
—Gulp.
Even while her mother poured out pure-hearted complaints, the daughter was busy devouring her mother’s body with her eyes.
No lipstick, yet her lips were vivid red. Moistened by fruit juice, they looked even more edible. Watching them, Piel unconsciously licked her own lips.
Unable to endure the thirst any longer, she finally reached out.
“…Piel?”
Startled by the sudden motion, her mother stopped speaking and tilted her head. Piel had not touched her sex or her breasts—only fretted at her lips—so Darin was more puzzled than shocked. Just a mother wondering what her child was doing.
“Mother, why are your lips so moist?”
“What? Pfft!”
The daughter’s slightly stiff voice echoed through the bathroom. The tomboy who had always snapped in casual speech now used honorifics because she had “grown up.”
Yet Darin only smiled her foolish, fond smile at the abrupt words. Watching those blue eyes chase her face with blind intensity, she was reminded of the days when this girl had been a baby, and the sight simply felt adorable.
“And your breasts are so big and soft…”
Perhaps the affection she felt for her mother had finally exceeded the limits of restraint…
“Why is your waist so slender?”
The words leaving the daughter’s mouth had nothing to do with cuteness.
“Is it because it’s always being shaken?”
With those inappropriate phrases, the atmosphere began to turn strange.