Please Don't Scold Me
"Please don't scold me."
The moment Layla got home, she made straight for her room. Walking on a body still flushed and feverish was harder than it looked—her stride was thoroughly off.
At this rate, am I going to start some weird rumor around the neighborhood?
She knew perfectly well that no one paid her any mind anyway, but a habit of watching other people's eyes never really went anywhere. Worse still, she hated the thought of her family taking the fall because of her. No one else was home, yet she shut the door tight all the same. She had an experiment to run. A very important one.
"When Shasha hit me the first time it just hurt, so why did it start feeling good later?"
It had been the same person hitting her.
"It's weird. It's not like it was random."
Layla planted herself before the mirror with a grim, resolute face, drew in a deep breath, and—smack!—slapped her own cheek with an open palm.
"Hiek…"
Stars swam in front of her eyes. She clutched her cheek.
"That hurts…… hnn."
Pleasure? Please. It just hurt like hell. Worried she might have left a mark, she leaned toward the mirror, and one side of her face was already flushed red.
"……I think it's swelling."
She shouldn't have hit herself so hard.
"Mm…! Does it have to be someone else hitting me?"
Layla dropped to the floor where she stood. If she went to her sister and asked, Could you please hit me a little?—her sister would swing without a moment's hesitation. Even so, Layla had a feeling she'd be treated like something was wrong with her. They were only just starting to feel a little closer. Ruin that with her own two hands? Absolutely not.
"……Sis is scary. And Brother is… kind of not an option."
She shuddered and turned it over again. What had been different? What was the distinction?
"Ah…!"
Did it only turn into pleasure if they were having sex?
"Then it would be all right to get hit while we're doing it."
Ah…? What had she just said? All right? Had she actually said all right with her own mouth? The moment the words left her, her face burned.
"I must be out of my mind!"
Wasn't this far too strange a taste? She could blame the skill all she liked, but even among succubi she seemed unusually sensitive, and Shasha's reaction had only made her more certain. Did it even make sense to like it the instant someone touched her? Did other succubi not have this, or was it only her? There was no way reacting to every single touch was normal. The others were the sort who took the lead and were good at it.
"No matter how I look at it, I'm the most hopeless of the hopeless…"
Layla crawled onto the bed and buried her face in the pillow.
…Ugh. Can't breathe.
It hadn't even been that long since she'd decided she needed to take the lead, and already she'd been toyed with using her own essence. She'd gotten it back, so her stats were the same as before, but it felt as if she'd been played with to someone's heart's content and then tossed aside. That was why she felt, strangely, as though she'd lost. Especially since they hadn't even finished her off properly!
"Haa……"
They said a late-blooming passion was a frightening thing. Layla hugged the pillow and leaned her back against the headboard.
"First, I have to raise my stats."
That was the conclusion.
"Last time and today both. I keep getting dragged around because I'm weak."
Right. The Demon Realm was a society of ability, too. Layla changed into the dress she'd bought that day and turned this way and that before the mirror—the deeply open back, the waist nipped in tight.
Not bad?
"But do I have to be the one who pounces first…?"
She probably did. She was a succubus, after all.
"I can do this. I'm a succubus."
Layla drew a deep breath and closed her eyes.
Dream Leap
Her mind rose, hazy and drifting. Even with her eyes shut, she could feel countless doors sweeping past her on every side, and from one of them a familiar presence seeped out.
That's probably that High-Ranking Demon woman.
She did miss that woman's warmth, but today she was going to the Human Realm to do something properly demonic, so she let that door pass. Besides, if she tangled with that woman again, she'd obviously collapse afterward. Layla chose a different door. The sensation of slipping through a thin membrane came and went, and a cool wind slid across her body. When she opened her eyes a crack, stars were pricked into the dark sky, and a pure white moon hung among them.
The Human Realm! This is a human's dream!
This time she would do it right and earn praise from her sister and brother. Heart fluttering, she searched the forest for the dream's owner. Her stats were low, so reading a presence wasn't easy, but fortunately it didn't take long. A short way off, a still lake showed between the trees. Grass rustled in the wind, and someone was sitting at the water's edge—an old man with white hair, a straw hat pulled low, nodding off with a fishing rod in his hands. Layla hid her small body behind a great tree and watched.
"Mmm…"
This really didn't seem like it would work.
"If I take his essence, won't that old man die?"
She had come to absorb essence, not to kill anyone. She had lived longer as a demon than as a human, and she had been taught that humans were the enemy, but killing a grandfather sat very badly with her all the same. A human with a blade in hand, or someone threatening—that would be different. She had no wish to wring a white-haired old man who was only fishing at his leisure as dry as kindling.
"……I'm going back. If he dies because of me, I think I'll feel awful about it for the rest of my life."
Layla quietly slipped out of the dream. She was in her room again.
"So it wasn't just my mind that went. My actual body went."
That was new. And one thing more.
"There was a cooldown…?"
To use Dream Leap again, she had to wait. Layla sprawled on the bed like a starfish and stared blankly up at the ceiling. She had even dressed up in a provocative little dress and gone into a human dream, and she had accomplished nothing at all. How long she wasted time like that, she couldn't say. The moment she sensed, almost without meaning to, that she could use the skill again, she used it at once.
This time, for real.
In this dream, the sun was setting.
"Daddy! Higher!"
"Agogo—keep this up and Daddy's going to get dizzy and fall right over."
"Just one more time! Nnh!? Higher!"
A young man was spinning in circles in the yard with his little daughter up on his shoulders, and the happy sound of a child's laughter carried across the grass. Layla watched from behind the wall.
In a dream… it isn't only the dream's owner who appears.
It was obvious, and yet she hadn't thought of it. Family. The long stretch of time when she'd been ignored for failing to act like a proper succubus. Her sister and brother, indifferent even when she spoke to them. Days when she was treated as a demon who might as well not exist, even while she was right there in the house.
Of course, things have changed a great deal recently.
Her sister and brother probably hadn't done it because they hated her. They had wanted her to live like a demon, and both of them must have been frustrated. Maybe, in their own way, it had even been a kind of shock therapy. And maybe the way she'd turned into someone who only watched other people's moods was also…
No. It's just my personality. Don't blame the family. I was the one being stubborn, too.
Just then the child hugged her father's head tight.
"I love you, Daddy!"
"Daddy loves our girl most of all, too."
It was nice to see. In the end, Layla returned to her room from the second dream empty-handed as well.
"I have to wait again."
She still had time, and her throat was dry. She went out to the kitchen, poured a full glass of cold water, and drank it down. As the chill spread through her body, her head felt a little clearer. She had gone looking for humans twice, and both times she had come back with nothing.
"Should I just go to that demon?"
Someone she had already met once. She didn't seem like a bad demon. If she had truly been dangerous, Layla wouldn't have made it home in one piece last time. Layla clenched her trembling hand once, then opened it, and used the skill toward the familiar door.
"This isn't…… the bedroom?"
It was a place she had never seen—a dim room, a chandelier hanging from the ceiling and giving off a small, subdued light. The glow didn't quite match the mood of the room. Like moonlight reflected on water. That kind of dreamlike light. Was it because this was a dream? Beneath it sat a long oval table. A great map was spread across the top, black flags and white flags planted here and there, and more than ten high-backed chairs ringed the whole thing.
A conference room… or something like it?
The edges of the room, where the light didn't reach, were darker still. Layla instinctively headed for a corner and put her back to the wall. By nature, corners put her at ease.
Where is this…? And where's that woman?
She was squinting, feeling her way around the gloom, when a voice came.
"First an assassin. This time, a spy?"
Ah—that was the demon woman's voice. But a spy?
Me?
Her heart dropped with a lurch. Had she done something wrong? At the very end of the table stood a black chair far larger than the others, gold ornament set into the armrests. There the woman sat, sunk deep into it, legs crossed. Layla closed the mouth she had been about to open in a glad greeting.
"Did you come to strip my stats again this time?"
"Ah…"
At the woman's words, Layla pressed her back harder against the wall, as if she could hide herself in it.
"Why are you hiding?"
"……I'm not hiding."
"You look about ready to become one with the wall."
"I just like corners. When I'm in a corner, I feel at ease."
She turned the woman's words over again, carefully. It was true that she had come to absorb essence. But why had that woman assumed she would simply hand it over? For what reason? Because of the bodies they had tangled that night? Or because she had acknowledged her…? Had Layla been the only one deluding herself over that small warmth?
"You need to answer. I asked whether you came to take my ability."
"…You're going to scold me, aren't you."
"You'll be scolded whether you speak or not. And whether I scold you is something I'll decide after I've heard you."
The woman tapped the table as she said it, as if coaxing her along.
"Come out, first. Your voice is already small, and if you stay in the corner I can't hear a word."
She wanted to go back. But even if she did, there was nothing she could do. Shasha had treated her like a toy, and from the human dreams she had entered so confidently, she had walked out empty-handed twice. With a personality like hers, this was the only place she had to go, and the only place she had to lean on. With no other choice, Layla walked out into the light. With every step, the feeling that she shouldn't have come only grew. She circled the table and stood before the woman.
A uniform?
A black uniform, ornaments at the shoulders and chest, a belt cinched neatly at the waist. The atmosphere was completely different from the last time she had seen her. Had uniforms been her type all along? It suited her, Layla thought.
"Five."
"……Yes?"
"I checked. Since that night, my stats have dropped by five."
Layla worried her lower lip between her teeth.
In the end, she is going to scold me for taking her stats. And she says she'll decide whether to scold me after she hears me out? Liar.
"That's why I asked. Whether a succubus takes that many stats as her price."
Why was she saying something like this? To check whether Layla had taken too much? The uniform the woman wore didn't look ordinary. And to a woman like that, what was she? Just a low-ranking succubus, surely.
I was the only one who got the wrong idea from that warmth.
When Layla's expression sank, the woman tilted her head and asked.
"What answer do you think I got?"