The Breast Kneading Voucher
One hundred and twenty gold coins.
The moment she heard the price, it was a sum so staggering that Alec shot to his feet on the spot.
They called it 120 gold coins, but in truth that wasn't just "a few years of living" for a family of four — it was closer to a month's expenses for a genuinely respectable noble. The Viscount of Cartein, say, the lord of the very territory where Evian stood.
Running that estate of his cost roughly a hundred gold coins a month.
And that was the price of the magic being offered so Yona could return to being a man.
"No. Absolutely not. Do you even understand how much money 120 gold coins actually is?"
"I do. I understand perfectly."
Yona's eyes were wavering in a strangely unsettling way.
The moment Alec saw that look, a chill ran down his spine — those golden eyes burning with an obsession that bordered on the uncanny.
She had answered yes right then and there, as if bewitched, and Alec had nearly had a fit reining her in, clamping a hand over her mouth and begging her to think it over just a little longer — one more day — before they came back tomorrow. Only then had they finally made it back to their inn room.
"But if I can really, really go back… if I can go back to being a man, then I can invest as much gold as it takes."
"Invest? That's not an investment, you're being scammed. I'm telling you. Sure, the God of Matrimony supposedly did it, but that one was the Heavenly God's own daughter— no, son…? Daughter…? Whatever, that one was divine blood, that's why! What do you have? Nothing! Jack squat!"
"What does that matter? Escara said it herself, didn't she? That if I was definitely a man to begin with, I can go back. What exactly is the problem here? Do you just hate the idea of me becoming a man again?"
Yes. I do hate it.
Of course I hate it.
Alec bit the words back just before they left his mouth.
Because if she asked why, he had no answer he could give.
Because I like you. Because I love you, so please don't go back to being a man. Giving a hundred paces and granting that Yona really had once been a man — her old male self meant nothing to him, he didn't know that person — and right now she was a woman, and a woman whose tastes matched his so perfectly that he never wanted to let go, so breathtakingly attractive that he wanted to keep her at his side forever and never, ever let her turn back into a man—
He couldn't exactly say that, could he?
It was obvious how Yona would take it: this bald bastard's being selfish and trying to block me for his own greed.
Yona's thinking really was that simple.
"…It's not about wanting or not wanting. Think about how you actually earned that money for a second. You'd dump all of it at once on a spell you don't even know is real? And what happens if it fails?"
Alec's argument was perfectly reasonable, perfectly sensible.
When Yona had first set out on this journey, she'd had barely ten gold coins to her name.
And everything since then — every coin she'd scraped together through endless near-death ordeals, even at the cost of getting a demon bound to her arm.
"They said it's possible. If they say it's possible, why are you borrowing trouble? I've been saving money to become a man again. Spending money on your goal — what's wrong with that?"
That shut Alec up.
He knew exactly how desperately Yona had clawed that money together, coin by coin.
When he'd once asked why a healer kept taking such dangerous adventurer work — healers dropped dead within the year anyway, wouldn't running a clinic be easier — she'd snapped that she needed to save fast, and the competition at clinics was too cutthroat, adventurer work paid better.
Alec knew full well why she'd been saving.
And that was exactly why he couldn't bring himself to say another word now.
Was he really supposed to just let this happen?
Could he really do nothing but stand back and let her take the procedure?
"Anyway, I'm getting it done. No matter what anyone says, that's the whole point. I will go back to being a man, and I will go back to the world I came from."
Facing Yona as she declared it with burning eyes, Alec couldn't find a single word to answer.
It wasn't as if he didn't understand her longing.
He'd shared so many years of the road with her that he couldn't bear to bend her goal with nothing but his own feelings.
"It's fine, hey, Baldy. Even if I go back to being a man, what — you think I'm going to forget this friendship of ours? You don't need to worry your head about that."
Alec raised his own hand and pushed away the palm rubbing over his head.
The first refusal Yona had ever received from him. Not once, ever before.
At that touch, Yona's hand froze mid-motion.
Letting out a long sigh, Alec rose from his chair.
Still perched on the edge of the bed, Yona could only stare blankly up at him as he stood.
"…I'm not worried about that. Get some sleep. I'm tired too — I'm heading to my room."
"Uh… o-okay? Then what about dinner?"
The sun had already slipped past its peak. They'd spent the day at the Wizard Tower, and somehow the hours had crept this far along.
"Eat by yourself. I've got no appetite."
"Oh…"
Leaving only those words behind, Alec turned away.
Yona just watched his back, mouth hanging open in a daze, staring after him as he stepped out of her room.
"Ugh."
Yona's face scrunched up instantly at the squishy texture between her teeth — and at the strange sweetness that bloomed across her tongue a heartbeat later.
She chewed, worked the offending sweetness around her mouth, and spat its identity out onto the table: a limp, orange-tinged carrot.
"Goddammit…"
Yona sat alone in the dining hall working through her dinner. One pot of stew, two slices of bread, a glass of milk.
Back when they'd been staying at the Moonlight Inn in Evian, the stew had simply appeared without her ordering it, so there had never been an issue — but ordering for herself like this, she'd botched the portioning completely. She hadn't realized one pot of stew held this much, and with Alec gone, every last bit of it was hers alone. Far too much.
Worse, why were there so many carrots and bell peppers in it? Yesterday's stew had clearly been piled with meat, but not tonight. Every spoonful came up brimming with carrots and peppers, and she wore herself out picking them out one by one.
What's got into him, anyway?
Mouth stuffed full of bread, Yona washed it down with milk.
One thing she'd learned in this world — milk here genuinely tasted good.
No refrigerated shipping existed, nothing like the world she'd come from, so any inn serving milk raised its own dairy cows. That gave it a faint gamey edge, but once you got used to it, it was honestly delicious.
Would he drink it if I brought him a glass?
She had never seen Alec like this before.
She couldn't speak for before they'd formed a party, but in all the time since they'd met and started traveling together, Alec had never once gotten angry at her or snapped at her.
He didn't exactly snap… but he did something worse, didn't he.
He'd pushed her hand away — the hand that had been ruffling his head.
Something he had never, not once, done before.
Pushed her hand off like he was telling her not to touch.
Don't touch…
…Huh?
Yona's thoughts stopped dead right there.
And suddenly, she thought she understood why Alec had been so upset.
The moment Alec returned to his room, he changed his clothes and flopped onto the bed.
It was a fairly pricey inn with decent facilities — no private shower like Yona's room had, true, but Alec wasn't fussy in the way she was, bathed in fresh water every single day. It made no difference to him.
Instead, he made a habit of washing his clothes whenever he got the chance, so even just changing into clean ones and lying down left him feeling reasonably refreshed.
…So she's really going to go back to being a man.
That mage, Escara or whatever her name was — honestly, he trusted her somewhat more than Alevian.
Alevian's laboratory always had some ambiguous, suspicious smell hanging in the air, and every time he stepped inside he found himself groping for solid footing. That mage's workspace looked a different breed entirely from the first glance.
A proud, imperious sorceress, one who commanded a respectable chamber of her own inside the Wizard Tower itself — it was hard to imagine her committing fraud over a handful of gold.
So this wasn't a question of trusting Escara. It was a question of trusting the magic she claimed she could perform.
If Yona really does turn back into a man… what am I supposed to do?
Alec was a thoroughly ordinary heterosexual man.
He'd never had the slightest interest in men.
Yona returning to manhood — honestly, he'd shrugged it off, since the idea was patently absurd, impossible in the first place. But now that the answer coming back was yes, it can be done, the whole thing had turned into a bad joke.
What do I do…
Rolling over with those thoughts circling in his head, Alec slipped, without realizing it, into a light sleep.
— Hey. Baldy.
At the voice outside his door, Alec's eyes snapped open.
As if he could possibly have mistaken that voice.
The instant he heard it, instinct answered: come in.
The door opened, and — of course — Yona. Her nun's habit seemed to flutter oddly in the hallway draft as she slipped in quietly and hurried to lock the door behind her.
"…What are you doing?"
"Well, see, I've been racking my brain over why you were so worked up, Baldy, and I'm pretty sure it's because of that. So."
Without waiting for Alec's answer, Yona crossed the room and plopped down on the edge of the bed.
Alec, who had already sat up the moment she entered, swallowed hard at the sight of her facing him.
Yona's face was inexplicably flushed. Her breathing came ragged and uneven, and together with that burning red it painted a strangely, dangerously sensual picture.
"You figured out why I was upset?"
"Yup. Hey, relax your hands."
Yona reached out and took Alec's hands in hers. One in each of hers, she slowly lifted his arms.
Told to relax, he did; lifted, his arms rose with hers.
"Yap."
So that's why her habit kept fluttering.
Still holding his hands, Yona — without a moment's hesitation — guided them inside the loosened front of her habit, one to either side—
"H-hey, hey, what are you—?!"
Alec couldn't finish the sentence.
The fullness that filled his palms to overflowing — the softness, the weight of it — might as well have stuffed his mouth shut; he could only gape like a landed fish.
"I-I know this is… huh? Really embarrassing, but… if not now, then… there'll never be another chance like this…"
Yona kept gasping between words, her voice catching again and again. The flush on her face deepened and deepened until it blazed scarlet, and Alec, hands still full of her chest, could do nothing but open and close his mouth like a goldfish.
"Wh-what are you waiting for. Go on and touch."
A strange heat had stolen into the room somewhere along the way.
His hands buried in the open front of her habit, Alec — even though Yona had by now let go of his wrists — couldn't for the life of him think about pulling them back out.
Knead, knead…
Every movement of his hands sent that flesh rippling, and it felt like it burned his mind clean white. Even the once-flattened peaks of her breasts had risen now like the tiniest buds, a feather-fine brush against his palms with each slow motion.
"Hh, hhhk, hahh…"
Yona's lips trembled faintly, spilling little sounds she couldn't hold back. Then — a startled "ah!" — she clapped a hand over her own mouth. And even as she did, she raised her other arm high to keep it out of Alec's way as he worked, and to Alec the sight was unbearably, devastatingly lovely.
The air had gone furnace-hot, to the point where anything could happen next and nothing about it would be surprising.
For Yona, the world was swimming. Every time Alec's hands moved, a sensation she had never once felt in either of her lives shot through her whole body like a live wire.
His palms, rough and callused from years of sword and shield, were already stimulus enough in themselves.
A creeping heat gathering low in her belly left Yona squirming, unable to keep still. Something was rising in her — every knead and press against her chest brought up a feeling she had never experienced before, and it was starting to crush her whole body under its weight.
"S-stop…! Stop it!"
It was frightening.
She was afraid.
A sensation she'd never known in her life — as if it were stealing her body away from her, seizing every inch of her whole self. The terror that if this went on, all of her reason would simply short out and vanish beneath it.
Recoiling from that sensation bearing down on her, shuddering, Yona bolted upright—
"E-EEP—?!"
—lost her balance, and toppled clean off the bed.
But before she could hit the floor, Alec moved faster, catching her up into his arms.
In the space of a breath, they were face to face.
Yona half-reclined, and Alec holding her, one arm braced along her back and waist.
Their eyes met—
"…Th-thanks!"
Yona frantically tugged her clothes straight and fled his room as fast as her legs could carry her.
There was a small incident in the process involving the locked door and a fumbling few seconds, but that was a trivial matter.
Only after the door slammed did Alec stare blankly at it.
Then it cracked open again, just a sliver, and Yona's head poked through to peer at him.
"G-good night! See you tomorrow!"
And the door slammed shut once more.
Watching her go, Alec could only let out a breathless, helpless laugh.
There was nothing to be done.
Truly, absolutely nothing to be done.