This Body of Mine, an Ordinary Life
The snake of a priest, who had not let the opportunity go, met his friend's eyes.
Before the heat, the obsession, the traces of jealousy from mere moments ago could even clear from his mind, Rigeon looked into Alpheir's gaze — and something in him gave way. Perhaps the feeling he might have scoffed at had, in that brief instant, twisted into envy.
Rigeon sat in the chair he had occupied when he first entered the room, a distance subtly apart from the two on the bed. As if trying to set himself aside, he leaned back into that seat.
"Mm."
With her back to Rigeon, Seira was nestled in Alpheir's arms, her face buried against his chest beneath the softly gathered blanket. All Rigeon could see was Alpheir — but it was the round back of the woman's head he looked at when he opened his mouth.
"Alpheir. My employer today is this one, correct?"
A form of address that put distance between himself and the woman who had been so terribly close.
"Tell her I'll deliver the diagnosis."
Even though she could hear him, Rigeon deliberately did not speak to Seira, who had her back turned. It was his original self, laid bare once the cooling desire had been stripped away. Perhaps it was his own particular brand of guilt.
Alpheir drew a short breath at those words. Given everything that had just happened, he didn't particularly want to. But he set that feeling aside for the moment and quietly held Seira closer.
"Miss Seira."
When Alpheir tried to ease her from his embrace as if to soothe her, Seira burrowed even deeper into him and lifted her head just slightly.
"Ah, I can hear everything. What is it."
What kind of damn priest was this. Either a cultist or a quack — Seira shot Rigeon a sidelong glance that carried the thought plainly, her entire posture declaring she would absolutely not turn around for him and him alone. Her legs were clamped tightly shut before both men, but all her warmth and breath leaned into Alpheir.
Didn't even put it in, and with that holy power crap...
She hadn't said it out loud, but she was treating Rigeon like a walking cheat code. And that was currently blooming, for no good reason, into a feeling of spite.
Rigeon met her glancing eyes and opened his mouth.
"...There's something I'd like to ask first."
Her attitude was poor, but she was listening. Unspoken permission to go ahead.
"Are you going to get angry again... and cry?"
Rigeon delivered it rather curtly, but the words left her no room to question or argue back.
"There's nothing."
What followed drove the stake home.
"From the beginning."
Silence filled the room with three people in it.
Most conspicuous was Alpheir. Faced with the woman who had wept so wretchedly only a short while ago, he still had no answer for what he could do to hurt her less — so he simply fidgeted with the blanket wrapped around her.
But Seira slowly closed her eyes, then opened them, and held her silence without a single change in expression. She simply turned her head away from Rigeon and wriggled in the space between the blanket and Alpheir. Then she looked down at the breasts filling her own hands.
Seira pressed her lips into a tight line, then nodded very slightly, and only a beat later spoke in a small voice.
"...I understand."
Perhaps because she had already passed through every emotion there was to feel — denial, rage, compromise, despair. Or perhaps because she had already done everything there was to try, more than once. All that remained now was to accept it.
Alpheir carefully stroked the cheek of the woman whose head was bowed, wondering, without meaning to, if she might be crying silently. At that worried touch, she murmured weakly.
"I'm not crying. So don't worry."
In the quiet air, Seira sat wordless for a long while, then spoke into the considerate silence surrounding her.
"...Ah, what even is this atmosphere. Anyway — you! You there! A so-called man of the cloth, going and doing this and that to this poor, pitiful me."
Grumbling. Instead of a thank-you, instead of dragging in an apology, she tried to break the mood with a joke, turning her head toward Rigeon.
"All that virtue you've been stacking up — the lucky chance to feel up this body of mine? That's over now. Your Holiness."
The words weren't kind, but even with her lips pursed in a pout, she was rather gentle. A slow, teasing curve mixed into the corner of her mouth, like a child poking fun.
Rigeon shrugged. He looked indifferent, but a faintly twisted relief showed in his expression.
"We don't call that luck."
He rose from his seat and straightened his clothes. Then he looked at Alpheir, very briefly.
"The work seems done, so I suppose I can enjoy my one-day vacation now?"
Alpheir quietly nodded at that gaze. A greeting in place of words.
Just before the door closed, Rigeon looked once more through the crack at Seira's silhouette — a pink mass wrapped in white sheets. Softly, he murmured,
Rigeon left. The door closed slowly, and the room grew quiet again.
There, Alpheir — who mere moments ago had been ready to greedily monopolize Seira the instant the other man left — simply stayed where he was, holding her, as if that earlier self had never existed.
Seira, still nestled against him like a child, gave his shoulder a tap with one finger. A very light push. Softer than asking him to lie down — a gentle suggestion.
At that small movement, Alpheir leaned his back as if he'd been shoved. As he lay down on the bed, her weight naturally settled over him.
Her breasts, a presence every bit as unmistakable as that pink hair, pressed down on him. Long hair spilled down, brushing his shoulder and cheek, and she half-closed her eyes and quietly let out a sigh.
"Haaaaah... now what."
Her swollen breasts mashed against his chest as if sinking into it, and the breath that slipped between her lips was hot and soft.
"I'm fucked."
A single blurted line. A voice that didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Alpheir only lifted his head slightly, reading her face.
"Miss Seira — it's the way you've changed that you don't like, isn't it?"
Alpheir's tone was careful and considerate. He was simply referring to what Rigeon had explained — that her body had become smoother, far more voluptuous than before, and far more sensitive. Ordinary women would fight countless fierce battles to have such a thing. Normally Seira would have snapped, "Then why the hell do you think I'm acting like this?" and shown that temper of hers. Right now, though, it was just:
"...Yeah."
And staying in his arms. That was all.
The conversation ended on that short answer. The aftertaste settled, and silence descended on them again. Feeling he ought to do something, Alpheir rested a hand on her head, hesitated a moment, then spoke once more.
"Then... is Miss Seira's journey perhaps ending here, at Eliyes Monastery?"
It sounded like a small question, but to Alpheir it was a very important one. He had been permitted to accompany her as her attendant on this journey, and the fork in the road ahead would split from this.
Seira slowly shook her head.
"I wanted to wrap this up in the most plausible place, in the most plausible way. That... didn't work out."
She had, in fact, adapted quite well to this body, and beside her was a man of the highest possible station who followed her around saying he liked her. She lacked for nothing — but that didn't mean she could settle.
After all, she was Leon Belgard. Not Seira. Her life was the long, fierce trail of everything she had fought to survive, and its result — and just because she'd suddenly become a young, taut, beautiful woman, was she supposed to go, well, time to live as a woman now!?
She shifted, changing her position atop Alpheir's body, and from where her head had landed she pressed a light kiss to his chest. She didn't bite down. Rather, a little plump, a little tender. A small bit of spite, and a farewell.
"I'm going far away now, so Young Master, you go wherever it was you were headed."
The remaining paths were the Royal Mage Corps, the Mage Guild... and the road to unaffiliated mages, the lawless ones — a lineup where even if he came along and helped, there wouldn't be anything pretty to look at.
"Hey. Must be nice. I'm jealous. I want to lounge around looking hot at some resort too."
The tone was tossed out lightly, but Alpheir read a strange emptiness in those words. The look peculiar to someone with nothing, who had set something down and let it go. And a distance that said he would not be able to stand beside her.
He shook his head quickly.
"Would it be all right if I went with you?"
The words were simple, but there was firm will in them.
Seira lifted her head. For a moment, a serious expression flickered across her face. Then she snorted a laugh and shot back.
"Your little rebellion's had enough of a run here, Young Master."
Seira tugged the blanket a little and turned her body. She couldn't understand someone who had a paved road stretching out before him choosing to go buy himself hardship — not when she had only ever walked the hard ones.
"It isn't a rebellion. Is my sincerity... not enough?"
At that, Seira burst out laughing a beat late.
"I think I can hear your parents grabbing the back of their necks and collapsing."
She poked his chest with a fingertip. First woman, virginity, all that — what did any of it even matter.
"I may be this attractive a woman, but think about it rationally. There's nothing good that comes from getting mixed up with me."
There was worry in those words, if anything.
"If the well-bred young ladies aren't to your taste, you can just go to the nobles' playground, can't you? Pretty women — maybe not as pretty as this body of mine, but still — will line up to throw themselves into your arms, Young Master."
Seira chuckled, a light shake of her shoulders.
"Then take those women and go enjoy a perfectly ordinary everyday life."
Alpheir didn't answer.
He simply looked at her.