Ventorino Kingdom - Sprouting (8)
Essex was Ethylene Propylene's senior knight.
As the winner of the Hero Origins Martial Arts Tournament and the senior knight of the heir to the famed House Propylene, renowned for its rapiers, it was a matter of some honor for someone like Essex, who came from an ordinary viscount family. It was also the first junior she had ever been assigned. So she looked after Ethylene with especial care.
And then something unbelievable happened.
No, in truth, it had happened long before. She had simply never known.
Essex had someone she liked. And the man she liked was in love with another woman—her junior knight, Ethylene.
Before Ethylene ever joined the knight order, she had heard about him from him. He spoke of Ethylene with such admiration, saying that he respected her deeply and used her as his model. At the time, she had felt a little jealous, but she had let it pass. There were plenty of knights in the kingdom who admired her.
But that had been a misunderstanding.
The feelings that man, Noisel, held for Ethylene were unmistakably those between a man and a woman.
And Essex had not been the only one to notice. Noisel himself had soon admitted his feelings and gone to seek advice from someone else. Unluckily for him, that person was Essex, who had been secretly in love with him.
"...Y-yeah, o-okay. I’ll help, too."
Essex had made a foolish choice.
She had decided to help the romance of the man she herself loved. Of course, since she was nothing more than a hopeless singleton who had gone without a lover for as long as she could remember, she wasn’t all that useful. She had merely made some use of the fact that she was a woman, and of the fact that she was Ethylene’s senior knight.
And so time slowly passed.
Over the course of about two months, Essex helped Noisel with all her heart.
She diligently told him everything she knew about his junior, and she arranged chances for the two of them to be alone together. For a bashful young knight like Noisel, it was help he could never have imagined. But that did not mean Essex had done her utmost only for the sake of seeing him succeed, nor did it mean his love had borne fruit.
"Haaah, I failed again...."
"It’s okay. It happens."
Every time Noisel failed, Essex comforted him.
She drank with him, listened to his troubles, and while cheering on the man she loved, she also secretly hoped he would one day turn and look at her. But the hopelessly dull Noisel never once noticed her feelings.
And then—
"Noisel! What the hell did you do?!"
"...What."
"I mean, sudden disciplinary action...."
"......"
Just as Ethylene’s time in the knight order was nearing its second month, Noisel received disciplinary punishment. Beyond that, Essex could learn no details.
Even the disciplinary committee that had handed down the punishment said nothing, and the man himself remained silent. Only a vague rumor spread that it had something to do with public indecency.
The first silence was for the sake of preserving the knight order’s honor and giving Noisel one more chance. As for Noisel himself, there was no need to explain. He hadn’t merely been punished; he had also been shocked senseless after seeing a sticky, indecent scene between a man and a woman. Unless one was a first-rate pervert, few idiots would blab about it out of their own mouths.
It was the same with Essex, whom Noisel considered his close friend.
"Haa, all right. If you don’t want to talk, I won’t ask."
"......Thank you."
"Ah, no."
Essex was pleased to hear his thanks. She thought the matter had ended there. But from that point on, Noisel’s behavior grew strangely off.
He started avoiding her.
No, to be exact, it wasn’t her he was avoiding so much as Ethylene.
Since Essex was Ethylene’s senior knight, she was often with her—and naturally, Noisel began avoiding Essex as well. It was only later that she realized it. By then, there was nothing she could do.
And then, by chance, she learned the reason for Noisel’s punishment.
"O-outside... h-he did th-that...? Noisel...?"
"Haah, yeah. It was so ridiculous I put him before the disciplinary committee right away, but... since you’re his close friend, I figured maybe you’d know something."
"Ah, th-that... I’m sorry. I-I don’t know either."
"I see.... Hmm, I’m sorry to say this to you, since you like the guy and all, but... I do know he’s fundamentally a diligent fellow. So help him out, will you?"
"Wh-What?! Me liking him? What are you talking about... Ah, ugh... haah, all right, I understand...."
Realizing denial would only make things worse, Essex bowed politely to the knight, took her leave, and fell into thought.
What on earth did he see her do that made him... do that?
But the knight who had caught Noisel said that he had been masturbating somewhere no one could see.
Then was it just from imagining it...? Or maybe he caught a smell or something?
It was a plausible theory. Ethylene happened to train around there often, after all. It wouldn’t have been strange for the scent of sweat to linger. If anything, the strange one was Noisel.
She considered many other possibilities, but of course, no conclusion came from brooding about it alone. Still, the clue was obvious enough. Noisel’s suspicious behavior. It had to be related to Ethylene.
It didn’t seem as though his feelings had cooled. The way he looked at Ethylene was much like the way Essex herself looked at Noisel. It was the gaze of deep affection.
Good. Looks like this’ll be solved soon enough.
But contrary to her expectations, the matter dragged on and on.
It wasn’t resolved until she was assigned to escort a diplomatic delegation bound for the Ventorino Kingdom. In the end, she accompanied the delegation all the way to the capital of the Ventorino Kingdom without anything changing for the better.
After drifting about there with nothing else to do, she happened to come across a clue.
"Valdes."
The runner-up in the martial tournament, and Ethylene’s rival. At the same time, he was also the man who seemed closest to her.
"They didn’t seem like ordinary friends."
Valdes hadn’t even been able to enter the royal castle, and it was only after a week had passed that he was finally allowed in, thanks to the queen. Only then, by watching Ethylene’s reaction, did Essex realize there was something between the two of them.
Until then, she hadn’t noticed because Valdes had always been around Ethylene.
But if she compared the period before they arrived in the capital of Ventorino, the week when Valdes was absent, and the time after his return, even a fool could tell that Ethylene’s behavior changed dramatically.
No doubt about it. Ethylene...
likes that boy.
But there still wasn’t enough evidence to be certain. And more importantly, something that small could not explain Noisel’s change. So she kept a close watch on the two of them.
Several more days passed as her certainty grew, and at last, an opportunity came.
"B-bold...."
She witnessed Valdes enter Ethylene’s room.
"To think he’d just go visit a woman’s room...."
What on earth had brought him here in person?
Essex waited, puzzled, for him to come out. But even after quite some time, there was no sign of him leaving. She even pressed her ear to the door, but the soundproofing magic was so good that she couldn’t hear a thing.
What should I do?
When she returned to her room and began thinking of a way, her eyes fell on the window.
......
Her room was right next to Ethylene's. She had only noticed Valdes entering Ethylene’s room because she had been returning to her own after coming back that way.
"All right. Let’s do this."
After a moment’s hesitation, Essex finally chose that absurd method.
She would cross from her window terrace to Ethylene’s terrace.
It was fortunate that it was already late evening and the world outside was dark. For a brief moment, she wouldn’t be noticed by the soldiers or guards patrolling below. She also reasoned that there would be no one keeping a close eye on the rooms where the escort of the foreign delegation was staying.
Huu.
Crossing the terrace wasn’t difficult.
The gap between the two terraces wasn’t especially narrow, but she was skilled enough to have been admitted to the Royal Pedro Knights. Gathering mana in her hands and feet, she jumped the distance in one breath.
Hn...there. Ah, that was close.
She drew only as much mana as she needed to avoid making any noise. It was a little risky, but she made it safely onto Ethylene’s terrace.
They didn’t notice, right?
She reduced her mana output to the bare minimum so she wouldn’t make a sound. Even so, if she were caught, it would be humiliating.
Luckily, the terrace window was half open. The curtains blocked her view of the inside, but she gently parted them and tried to look in.
...Huh?
Just before her fingers touched the curtain, a sound came from inside.
Essex’s hands and feet froze, and her ears perked up.
A voice she knew well, and another she did not.
"U, h, hngh, hyaa... haa, Master, Master, Masteeer...♥"
"You’ve gone and made me wait all this time, and this is the tightness I get? Aren’t you going to squeeze properly?!"
"H, hhek...! I-I’m sorry, ngh! I’m sorry...! I-I’ll squeeze it properly, so... hek, d-don’t pull your cock out...♥"
"What kind of sex slave orders her master around? Just squeeze it like the sex slave you are!"
"Hah, uhngh, h-hot?! ...Y-yes, yes♥ This sex slave Ethylene, heh... will squeeze Master’s cock t-tight, tight...♥"
It was the sweet, filthy cries of her junior as she writhed obscenely.
Th-that... Ethylene...? That’s definitely Ethylene’s voice?! And the man is....
There was no need to think.
The man who was so viciously insulting Ethylene was Valdes.
And inside the room, there was more than just voices.
Smack, smack, thud, thud.
The obscene sound of flesh striking flesh with violent force rang through the air.
The chorus of a man and a woman coupling on a bed—something beastlike, something she had never heard in her life. That erotic resonance kept slamming into her ears. Dizzy-headed, Essex instinctively parted a corner of the curtain and stole a look inside.
Ah... just as I thought, they’re doing it... sex... Ethylene and V-Valdes....
So shocked was she that she nearly cried out.
The scene beyond the curtain did not deviate even slightly from her expectations. No—if anything, it exceeded them in a different way.
The two naked figures rolling together on the bed were even more obscene and depraved than Essex had imagined. In truth, words like “rolling” or “entangled” hardly fit what she was seeing.
Ethylene had her face buried deep in her pillow while Valdes clutched her hips, raised high in the air, and drove into her hard from behind. The force of those thrusts was so fierce that Essex even wondered for a moment whether it might be rape. For an instant, the two of them looked less like people than beasts.
But they were clearly human, and between the things Ethylene was saying and the way she was moving her hips, anyone could tell at a glance that this was consensual sex.
......
J-just when did this start...?
How long had they been like this?
Her innocent brain simply could not imagine that the two of them could have become so deeply involved within the three months since they first met. Even if they had fallen in love at first sight during the tournament and started dating right away, she felt like they should have only reached kissing at most.
Suddenly, old memories flashed through her head.
The strangely sultry, strangely sensual way Ethylene had looked at certain moments. The sharp, alluring aura she gave off whenever she casually swatted away Noisel’s timid advances. And all the other reactions that were hard to reconcile with a lady who supposedly knew only the sword.
"Ah...."
Everything made sense.
Even if Essex were a complete innocent, she wasn’t such an idiot that she couldn’t read the situation once it had come this far.
Noisel was trying to win a game that had no chance of success....
Come to think of it, had it even been a game at all?
Valdes and Ethylene probably hadn’t even known Noisel had feelings for her. And there was a good chance Valdes didn’t even know Noisel existed. To him, Ethylene would naturally already be his woman.
"Huff, if you want my cock! Then squeeze harder!"
Smack!!
"Ugh...!"
The crisp slap to Ethylene’s butt snapped Essex out of her daze. Even with the blow hard enough to turn her skin red, Ethylene didn’t seem to be in pain at all; instead, her whole body twitched and she let out a delighted moan.
"Hoh...! Huff, hnh, hheeh♥ G-give me your cock, Master’s cock... Please... put it in this faithful sex slave cunt... please...."
"That’s all it takes? Ha! Honestly, what you need isn’t praise—it’s punishment, isn’t it?"
"Hik♥ Y-yes, yes...! T-that’s right...! Punish this marquis daughter cunt, punish me...♥ Please, Master, give me that huff-huff cock punishment...♥♥"
"...Gulp."
Essex swallowed without realizing it.
It was impossible to believe that this was the heir of House Propylene, a noble young lady. She even found herself wondering whether a prostitute could say those things with such shameless sincerity.
And then another question surfaced.
Just how good did it feel?
Ethylene... can be broken down like that....
Without meaning to, Essex suddenly felt a stirring between her own legs.