The Elf's Virginity and My Unyielding Resolve
The torrent of harsh words still echoed in my ears. “Apis····. Are you okay····?”
Even after we fled the shop like criminals and wandered all the way through the main avenue into a nearby park, Apis’s fury showed no sign of subsiding. The cheerful shop owner had generously waived most of the compensation for the table and magic tools she’d smashed, chuckling that it had been quite the show. And the nameless young adventurer who’d kept throwing flirtatious glances at her despite the mood had stubbornly blocked our path for a while. But the moment I slammed him into the wall like the thugs from earlier, he fell silent too. So it was clear that once Apis’s mood improved, everything would wrap up smoothly.
Yet here she was.
“Hic… ughhh!”
Perhaps having her most shameful secret exposed to the world was simply too humiliating. Apis sat with her face buried in her knees, arms wrapped tightly around her legs. Every now and then a pitiful sob would escape her, making her look exactly like a lost child in a supermarket who’d been separated from her mother. The sight was heartbreaking.
“I-I couldn’t help it… hic! Back in my hometown, the men wouldn’t even come near me because of my hair color… ugh! And by the time I had that huge fight with the elders and got kicked out of the village, I was already well over three hundred years old…!”
I had no idea who she was muttering to, but her laments kept repeating like a looped nursery rhyme. How long had it been? Finally, Apis lifted her head.
“If you breathe a word of this to anyone, I’ll kill you! Especially if you tell the Hero or Dawna—I’ll tear you limb from limb! Got it!?”
The words she hurled at me the moment she looked up were quite vicious. Still…
“Apis····. Do I really look like the kind of person who has the courage to go around bragging about a friend’s virginity to other people····?”
“You look exactly like the kind of idiot who’d accidentally blurt out a secret during casual conversation!”
“····I see.”
I found myself nodding unconsciously at her sharp observation that had pierced straight through my very nature. After all, there had been that one time I’d accidentally let slip—during a drinking party with the party members—that Apis was secretly writing self-published fairy tales. I’d sworn to take that secret to my grave, yet I’d carelessly mentioned her pen name, “Princess Droplet Tomato,” while popping one of the little tomatoes into my mouth.
The insane rampage that followed—her screaming that she’d kill me and then kill herself—had required the entire party, minus myself, to desperately pile on top of her just to stop her. As expected of the greatest marksman in the Capital. She really knew exactly where to strike in a conversation.
“Until every single person who knows about today is dead of old age, I won’t set foot anywhere near this city for the next hundred years….”
“That won’t work…. Judging by how those people were cheering earlier, they looked ready to pass the story down to their children’s children…. In about two hundred years, Apis will probably go down in history as the one and only legendary virgin saintess of the Capital….”
“Shut your mouth right now!?”
“Guhk!”
It was always awe-inspiring to watch. Even with tear stains around her eyes and her foot flying recklessly toward me in a completely undignified kick, the dreamlike ivory complexion unique to elves never faded in the slightest. No—in fact, those traces of tears only added a single drop of fragile beauty to her wild, flame-like figure.
The words if only you’d act a little more modest, or at least pretend to be gentle rose all the way to my throat. But I knew that advising Apis to fix her fierce personality was no different from telling a lion to wax its mane, so I simply moved my lips without making a sound.
“And you! You! If you were going to step up and shout ‘She’s my woman!’ then at least don’t stutter like that! So embarrassing! Did you see the way that disgusting bastard looked you up and down when you grabbed his hand!? He was completely underestimating you!”
“No, if I hadn’t done that, you definitely would’ve burned him alive, so I just blurted out the first thing that came to mind….”
“That kind of trash deserves to be burned! The second he found out I was a virgin, the way he stretched his philtrum and waddled over like an idiot was proof enough! Eugh! It gives me goosebumps! Even if we’re the same race, that’s just wrong! Don’t you dare defend bastards like that!”
“Apis…. I’ve told you this before. We humans don’t have that strong a sense of racial belonging like elves do. It’s not uncommon for blood relatives born from the same womb to end up pointing blades at each other. It’s more accurate to say that each human sees others of their kind as completely different races who just happen to look similar, right?”
“Then why are you so desperate to save those complete strangers!?”
“Bad habit, I suppose.”
Apis had always been displeased with my habit of bowing my head first whenever I dealt with people. She hated it when anyone looked down on me more than death itself. The adventurer profession tended to attract rough characters, and even those who weren’t would naturally grow sharper after narrowly escaping death a few times. Even I was well aware that someone like me—who would still try talking first even if a blade was pressed to my throat—was an incredibly frustrating and annoying anomaly.
That was why Apis scolding my indecisive self at every turn had always been a regular occurrence between us. The quiet atmosphere of the sparsely populated café felt as natural as the occasional household noises in a cozy home. Simply listening to each other’s voices was enough to put the heart at ease. You could call it our daily routine.
“More importantly! You! You really weren’t going around working as a male prostitute, right!?”
“After seeing what I looked like earlier, you still ask that…?”
“Haha! Guess not!”
Between our exchanges, faint laughter began to seep in. Apis’s hand slapping my back was quite forceful, but instead of feeling unpleasant, it only lifted my spirits like I’d met an old friend from back home.
“Ugh, seriously! This is all because Dawna kept spouting nonsense! Saying it was clearly a kidnapping! That the Cathedral people were bringing in sex slaves to satisfy their lust! All that garbage! She just blurted out whatever came to mind without thinking, and look at the mess it caused!”
“So that ridiculous misunderstanding originated in Dawna’s head after all…. She really hasn’t changed.”
“Right!? So that’s why I gave her a good talking-to back then! I told her there’s no crazy woman in the world who’d try to seduce a middle-aged man who’s long past marriageable age—especially not one who isn’t even a maiden anymore!”
“Come on, for someone who said that, you also seemed dead certain I was working as a prostitute until I lifted the Horn of Purity, didn’t you?”
“Ugh!”
“What was it you said again…. If my memory serves me right, it was something like ‘I never thought you’d only amount to this much…’”
“Aaaah! Aaaah! F-forget that! Forget it right now! You bastard I’ll burn you alive!”
“Cough, cough! Wait! Apis! My solar plexus! Not the solar plexus!”
We continued talking like that for a while longer, calmly untangling the misunderstandings that had been twisted together like power cords behind a computer.
“So the reason your name wasn’t on the list, and why the nun in charge of reception treated you like you didn’t exist in the monastery, was because the Cathedral deliberately hid your identity since they don’t look favorably on your background. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes. Probably.”
I wasn’t entirely certain, but at least that was what I thought. My name—Reygis Rowbill. The surname Rowbill was one mostly used by orphans without parents. The fact that the Saintess’s personally chosen exclusive guardian priest was a lowly orphan would be quite an eyesore for the Cathedral, which was obsessed with honor. Even when the news that I had unintentionally revived Priest Lanoel spread far and wide, the rumors had been deliberately vague—only saying that the Saintess’s exclusive priest had performed a miracle—without specifying who I was. I’d even heard from one of the nuns that several newspapers had hired a clan that made their living from stealth techniques to thoroughly search the monastery in order to uncover the identity of the veiled exclusive priest. But thanks to Priest Lanoel, whose mental state had become quite unstable after that day, strictly controlling his fiancées’ tongues and even proactively leading information suppression that no one had asked for, my identity was never revealed. Therefore, the only people within the Capital who knew I was the Saintess’s exclusive priest were the high-ranking priests who attended the enthronement ceremony, a few involved parties, about seven or eight noble young ladies who were Priest Lanoel’s fiancées, and Apis.
“Hmm. Still, for that to be the case… Well, never mind. It’s something I’ll naturally find out if I drag you along and storm the Cathedral later about the suspicious parts.”
“Haha….”
Should I call this bold or just reckless? Her personality of charging headfirst at any problem she faced was still the same.
“Then what about walking around outside with a nun and a collar around your neck?”
“Ah, that… There were some circumstances, so I attempted a tearful great escape, but I got caught midway….”
“Sigh, you idiot….”
How much time had passed after that? Apis, now wearing a refreshed expression as if she had shaken off all her gloomy thoughts, spoke to me.
“Alright! So when do you think you’ll be able to return to our side? Around the time of the Grace Bestowal Ceremony? Haha! The Hero’s going to be so shocked! Dawna and Victim too! Especially that Hero girl! She’s been searching everywhere just to find you….”
To Apis’s words, I responded in a low voice, pulling out the gentle smile I had prepared. In a volume so soft it probably couldn’t even extinguish the candles on a birthday cake. In a quiet tone. I solemnly recited the breath that carried my firm determination.
“Apis. Just in case, I’ll say it clearly.”
Right after that, Apis’s previously cheerful face gradually hardened, losing all its warmth.
“I have no intention of returning to the Hero’s party.”
And then.
“Moreover, for the rest of my life, I never want to see the Hero’s face ever again.”
It didn’t take long for Apis’s pure white face to twist with fierce rage at my utterly rude and outrageous declaration.