Pandora's Box
It wasn't so much a snap decision as it was a straight-up impulse.
If the Hero's emotional turmoil had stemmed from her burning desire for skinship with me, then my body had simply responded to the one-dimensional logic of *just giving her what she wants and calling it a day*.
Out of all the places I could have kissed, the reason I deliberately chose the back of her hand was simple.
It was the exact middle ground between my wish to fulfill the Hero's request and my conscience screaming that I couldn't defile a girl who was practically my niece.
After all, a kiss on the hand could still pass as a polite greeting in certain formal settings.
For something I'd come up with on the spot, I thought it was a pretty decent solution.
"Haa..."
I gently pulled my lips away from the back of the Hero's hand, where they'd been stuck like a Post-it note, and took a moment to catch my breath.
Since I was usually the one on the receiving end of skinship, initiating it myself turned out to be far more exhausting than I'd imagined.
And the other party was none other than *the* Hero.
My face burned hot.
My lips trembled.
Even my back itched nonstop, as if someone had dropped a tiny bug down the back of my shirt.
If I hadn't had the noble cause of calming the Hero's rampage, I probably would have found simply sitting here an ordeal.
"I can do this much for you anytime. So please, never do something like that again."
I wrapped my impulsive crime in the packaging of calculated behavior and scolded her in a firm tone.
Then I carefully examined the scar near the corner of her mouth.
A dark red bite mark where she'd savagely chewed her lower lip.
If I'd been even a second slower to stop her, it wouldn't have been strange for there to be an actual hole in her lip.
I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen the Hero bleed. Not since she'd grown so impossibly strong that it was hard to believe she belonged to the same species as anyone else.
My head throbbed as I tried to dig up those hazy old memories, but the headache didn't seem to come from that alone.
"O Lord, I am your finger. A mere lamb. I shall grant rest to all things upon this land beneath your divine power. All glory shall be offered unto you."
After quietly reciting the prayer and completely healing the Hero's wound, I continued with the rest of my lecture.
"As I've said many times before, it's completely natural for someone your age to feel a surge of interest in the opposite sex. Of course, ignoring the other person's will and demanding it forcefully, like you did just now, is wrong. Still, simply having those thoughts isn't something you need to blame yourself for so harshly."
I realized my tone had shifted to that of a parent who'd just caught their child watching adult material right around the time my baseless sermon had reached the part about the sacred union of yin and yang.
How much time had passed like that?
"Um, Hero? Are you listening to me?"
"····"
At this point she should have at least given some light acknowledgment, but when she remained completely silent, I called out to her with a hint of suspicion.
"H-Hero?"
"····"
But the Hero simply stared wordlessly at the back of her own hand—the very spot where I'd pressed my lips only moments ago.
I waved my hand in front of her eyes several times to check if she was even conscious, but her gaze remained fixed on the same spot like a security camera with an extremely narrow field of view.
"Hero! Snap out of it! Hero!"
Whether I snapped my fingers or grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her roughly, the Hero didn't show the slightest twitch. She looked exactly like someone who'd lost her soul.
Worried that something might actually be wrong, I checked her pulse and pressed my ear to her chest to listen to her breathing and heartbeat, but there was nothing out of the ordinary.
She had simply spaced out completely.
Just as I was feeling utterly bewildered by how anticlimactic this conclusion was after all that serious deliberation—
*Crack! Crash!*
Right then, the ominous sound of old wood shattering under too much force echoed through the room as my firmly closed door exploded into pieces.
"Kyaaah! Th-the door! The door broke! Wh-what do we do? What do we do, Sisters?!"
"I-I told you not to push! How many times did I say it?!"
"B-but! We heard a woman's moans coming from the room of that priest Lazis who's famous for being dense! How could my body not lean forward out of pure curiosity?!"
The intruders using the broken door like a doormat while bickering were the apprentice sisters in charge of managing this area.
A pile of people in identical uniforms with similar faces stacked on top of each other—it looked exactly like a game of Puyo Puyo.
Three identical blocks had gathered. They were probably about to disappear any second now.
My brain was so flooded with escapist nonsense that my reaction was a little slower than usual.
"Sisters, what exactly are you doing...?"
"F-Father Lazis! Th-this is! This is, um...!"
The first to answer my question was Marianne, the one I was most familiar with among them.
She was the apprentice sister who worked as the secretary and assistant to Sister Beltein—the nun who oversaw all operations within the monastery and had the most contact with me.
In other words, she was the friend of a friend. Someone in a rather awkward position relative to me.
"I-I'm sorry! Sister Beltein told us to bring Father Lazis to the Audience Chamber as quickly as possible! So we came to visit for just a moment!"
"Ah, right. I'll get ready right away. Just give me a second."
"Y-yeees!!"
*Oof, she bit her tongue.*
Seeing Marianne's deathly pale face, which was clearly tense, I briefly wondered if I should switch conversation partners.
But the other visitors were all hiding behind her back and cautiously watching my reaction, so that didn't seem like an option.
"By the way, was there anyone else outside the door?"
"Y-yeees?!"
"No, no, you don't have to be that nervous. I'm not scolding you. I was just asking if there was anyone else outside. Like, perhaps a very tall man...?"
"Y-yes! There *was* a man with a very sturdy build... But, um... Right after we heard a woman's m-moans coming from inside your room, he suddenly covered his ears, started dry-heaving, and ran off somewhere in a hurry..."
"Tsk..."
My hand instinctively rose to pinch the bridge of my nose.
It seemed Victim had completely misunderstood the situation based on the fragmentary information he'd heard from outside the door. He'd probably assumed the Hero and I were doing *that* kind of thing.
I knew full well that for those siblings, the sound of their brother and sister moaning was the most horrifying noise imaginable.
Still, I couldn't help feeling just a tiny bit resentful that he'd run off without even checking if it was true.
Me and the Hero getting intimate? Absolutely not.
That was something that would never happen even if the sky split in two. No—it was something that *must never* happen.
"I understand why Sister Marianne came here. But what about the rest of you? What exactly were you all doing gathered in front of my door...?"
"W-well..."
Everyone avoided my gaze at the pointed question.
A few of the sisters had even completely covered their beet-red faces with their hoods.
Their embarrassed behavior made me suspicious, so I paused to think.
As the tangled threads of my thoughts slowly unraveled, all the sinister clues decorating my surroundings came into sharp focus.
Two men and women drenched in sweat inside a sealed room.
The faint, hazy moans that had occasionally leaked out through the door.
Red bloodstains soaking the pure white bedsheets.
Even the thick smell of cigarettes that filled the cramped room.
To my eyes, every single one of them looked like landmines someone had planted to ruin my life.
"E-everyone! J-just wait a second!!!"
I hurriedly pulled the Hero into my arms and covered her face.
Thankfully, she was currently wearing the recognition-inhibiting necklace, so as long as they didn't see her face directly, there was no risk of her identity being exposed.
But.
"Kyaaah—!! He's hugging her—!!!"
The moment the pink-colored screams burst out from them, my mind went completely blank.
I couldn't even begin to speak.
No matter how much pure desperation I poured into my next words, it was painfully obvious that in this situation, they would only sound like pathetic excuses.
Even with all this chaos going on, the Hero remained completely still, staring intently at the back of her hand.
It looked like her hand was slowly moving toward her lips, but the movement was so incredibly slow that it could have been a tie with a snail. It was easy enough to dismiss as a trick of the eye.
"Everyone, please! Just wait! Listen to me!"
"It's fine! Father Lazis! We didn't see anything today! *Nothing* at all!"
"Kyaaah!"
From behind Marianne, who had squeezed her eyes shut to block me, the sisters' excited pink screams kept spilling out one after another.
Among them was one sister scribbling furiously in a notebook with sparkling eyes, and another covering her eyes with her hands but spreading her fingers wide.
"Everyone, listen! The truth is—!"
I quickly draped the blanket that had been lying around over the frozen Hero to cover her face first.
Just as I was slowly lifting my heavy body from the bed to begin my explanation—
*Clink.*
Right then, something fell from my pants pocket and rolled across the floor. Every single eye in the room converged on that single point.
"Th-that's...!"
It was a small box no bigger than the palm of a hand.
The special jeweled craft that a man and woman who had promised their futures to each other would buy to confirm their love and prove it.
A modest little box meant to hold one of the most precious treasures among precious treasures.
In other words.
"Isn't that... a ring box...?"