Chapter 5: The Three-Day Absence
The third day after Erica left for the family estate.
The air in the inn room had grown so heavy and damp it felt almost impossible to breathe.
Those three days were not simple waiting to me, but a punishment that felt as though it were slowly flaying my soul to pieces.
Every time the ticking of the old clock hanging on the wall struck my eardrums, the anxiety and jealousy gnawing at my chest drove me half-mad.
During those three days, my mind never rested for a single instant. It kept conjuring cruel images, one after another, without mercy.
And the man at the center of it all was none other than Cayenne.
The man who had thoroughly trampled my childhood, treated my very existence like filth, and carved into me an insult that would never fade.
Erica had walked straight into the grasp of that arrogant, cruel half-brother of mine of her own free will.
By now, was she smiling before that man’s eyes?
Was that haughty gaze slowly sweeping over Erica’s pale skin?
My stomach twisted in revulsion, and yet… my filthy lower body showed no sign of calming for all three days, remaining grotesquely swollen and stubbornly hard.
The sacrilegious thrill that Erica might be being helplessly violated by the absolute predator that was Cayenne.
That nightmare-like chain of thoughts drove blood relentlessly into my warped desires.
It was agony, and yet… that atrocious catharsis numbed my brain.
Then it happened.
The inn room’s doorknob rattled with a loud, metallic click.
“Loser. Were you waiting for me by any chance…?♡”
The voice I had missed so desperately.
But the instant the door opened and I saw the massive silhouette following behind Erica, my heart froze solid.
It was Cayenne, dressed in a splendid noble uniform.
The condescending lift of his chin was exactly the same as it had always been.
“Haa… ahng…♡”
But what truly seized all my attention wasn’t Cayenne.
It was Erica’s condition, which was unmistakably strange.
“Erica… you….”
Her breathing was faintly ragged.
A deep flush, as though she had been scorched by some lingering heat, colored her white cheeks, and…
the buttons of her outerwear, which she usually fastened with such care, were sloppily misaligned by one or two.
The nape of her neck, visible through her transparent gold hair, had a reddish tint to it, and from the disheveled folds of her clothing drifted Erica’s own sweet body scent, mingled with something else.
“Hmm.”
Cayenne swept his gaze around the room once, then looked down at me, frozen stiff by the head of the bed, as though I were some insect.
“Oh? So this rat was still skulking around in this filthy little dump. The bastard shame of the Edelgard family is crawling along and somehow still keeping himself alive, I see.”
“...Cayenne.”
“Don’t you dare put my name in your filthy mouth, you lowborn worm. The very fact that you were clinging to the side of this young lady from a first-class magician family like a shadow is disgusting enough.”
Cayenne made a show of it, roughly seizing Erica’s slender shoulder right in front of me and drawing her against his chest.
“Ahh…♡”
Pressed close by Cayenne’s touch, Erica did not resist in the slightest. If anything, she trembled faintly and let out shallow, unsteady breaths.
“Lord Cayenne, just a moment. I still… haven’t gotten over the aftereffects from the carriage, and my heart is beating so hard…♡”
“Ha! I thought the family treasure would be proud and haughty, but you’re surprisingly obedient. A girl who knows how to take a hand to her.”
The blatant atmosphere unfolding before my eyes was ripping my heart apart.
I could feel my eyes turning red with jealousy, but…
the words “aftereffects from the carriage,” coming from Erica’s mouth, and the slightly disordered clothes around her, were driving my obscene imagination wild.
Just what sort of filthy conversation had the two of them been having to make her breathe so hard?
My cock swelled so violently inside my pants it felt ready to burst.
Erica noticed that my gaze had locked onto the loosened line of her neck and the heaving of her chest.
Something like ecstatic delight flickered through her crimson eyes.
Then Erica slipped away from Cayenne’s side and came toward me, leaning in until her breath was almost brushing my ear.
“Loser, your face is all stiff. Did you miss me that much while I was gone? I was so busy having a very ‘pleasant’ conversation with Lord Cayenne that I lost all track of time…♡”
“Erica… what the hell did you talk to that bastard about?”
“Hmm? What do you think we talked about? Lord Cayenne really was as rough as the rumors say…♡”
“...Ngh!”
“It was hard at first, but… in the end, I spent three days and nights doing all sorts of delightful things without stopping once…♡”
“S-stop it… don’t say any more…!”
When I finally shouted, unable to take it anymore, Cayenne let out a snort from behind her.
“The rat’s barking. Erica, there’s no need to waste any more time on this vulgar trash. Before we go to the imperial banquet, we should finish the ‘conversation’ we were having earlier, wouldn’t you say?”
“Kuhuhu…♡”
At those words, Erica turned lightly toward Cayenne with a swaying motion of her body.
She brushed his lapel with the tips of her fingers and, with a flushed face, whispered sweetly,
“Yes, Lord Cayenne…♡ Later, when we’re in a quiet room… I’ll finish what you asked for in the carriage earlier…♡ just the way you want…♡”
“Ha ha ha! Good girl. I like that. Let’s go.”
“Loser…♡ Then see you later, okay?♡”
Cayenne left the inn room with an arrogant smile, as though he were carrying off some great trophy.
Erica followed after him.
Just before she stepped out the door, she turned her head slightly at an angle where Cayenne couldn’t see her and looked back at me.
“...You’re cute when you get jealous.♡”
Her eyes narrowed into crescent moons.
With the tip of her tongue slipping out to moisten her lips, Erica looked over the front of my pants, which were swelling as though they might split open, with open, delighted fascination.
Bang.
The door shut, and silence returned to the room.
“Ngh…!”
I collapsed onto the floor, clutching my violently erect cock so hard it felt like my pants might tear.
The vicious disgust I felt toward myself for getting aroused like a madman by the sight of my childhood friend returning as though she’d been subjected to all manner of filthy things by my half-brother—and the accompanying sense of sacrilege—dragged me down into an endless abyss.
How much time passed?
Just as I was tearing myself apart in that hellish imagination, the closed door opened softly once more.
“Haa… finally gone. Keeping a buggy little insect happy is exhausting, you know.♡”
Erica, after seeing Cayenne off, walked back into the room alone.
Her voice was as lively as ever, with none of the frailty she’d shown a moment ago.
But the Erica reflected in my eyes still retained her loosened buttons and flushed cheeks.
“Erica….”
“Heeey, what are you doing crouched down there?”
My mind had already lost all rational judgment, thanks to three days of absence and whatever the two of them had just said to each other.
Erica slowly approached where I sat with my head lowered on the floor.
She straightened her skirt for a moment, then crouched down to bring herself level with my eyes.
Her pale, soft fingers tipped my chin upward.
“Hnn.”
Her red eyes were overflowing with sadistic, affectionate mischief.
Once she had fully confirmed the bulging, near-bursting presence at my waistband, a wicked curve formed on Erica’s lips.
“Loser…♡ Don’t you want to know what happened between me and Lord Cayenne for the past three days…?♡”
“No… I don’t want to know.”
“How mean. Don’t just get all worked up by yourself in the dark like that—look at me, Eric. I mean it… I’ve got so many stories to tell my precious loser…♡”
Erica deliberately cupped her own delicate chin with both hands and gave me a smile that was both pained and secretive.
“Aaah… my jaw hurts…♡ He kept making such unreasonable demands that I could barely keep my mouth closed for three whole days…?♡”
“...Erica, you really—!”
“It still feels like the inside of my skirt is burning…♡ Eric, you know better than anyone how bizarre noblemen’s tastes can be, don’t you? Do you know what he tried to do to me inside the carriage…?♡”
“Please, please stop…!”
“Why are you shaking so much? Even while I was crying in a terrible mess under that man… I was thinking about you the whole time…♡ I kept wondering, ‘Ahh, what kind of filthy thing is my loser swordsman imagining all alone while his cock swells up?’…♡”
Erica pressed her red lips close to my ear and breathed out vividly, raw breath.
“I’ll tell you everything in detail about how I was trained in that short span of time…♡ How that man looked at me inside that cramped carriage, where he reached out to touch me, what he tried to make me do… I’ll tell you each and every thing, very, very carefully…♡”
Her sweet breath tickled my cheek mercilessly.