Ventorino Kingdom - Sprouting (9)
Just how good could it possibly be?
That Ethylene girl... could she really be ruined that badly?
Essex suddenly felt a strange itch between her legs.
Ngh...
Her face flushed hot in an instant.
Though she was a virgin, she wasn’t exactly innocent. She knew all the usual things, and she was about the same age as the other girls who had already tried masturbating while imagining someone. So she knew perfectly well what her own reaction meant.
“A-ah... no... hng, nn...”
She pressed her thighs tightly together and closed her eyes in prayer.
But human lust was not something so easily controlled. Worse, without her realizing it, Valdes had already noticed her presence, and he was subtly showering her with charm magic.
For a knight like Essex, resisting that was impossible.
“Hah, haa... ngh!”
With that prickling sensation stabbing at her sex again and again, she staggered on her legs and barely managed to brace herself against the window. The position she’d ended up in was far better; now she could see inside much more clearly, and the sounds reached her ears with perfect clarity.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
“Hmm. What sort of punishment should I give you?”
“Hhk, huu, hnn...”
“Should I make it outdoor sex again, like your first time? That was when you clenched the best. Or maybe... was it because someone was watching?”
“Ngh...! Hah, ahh♥ Anything... anything is fine♥ Anywhere, this slave pussy will squeeze down tight for you...!”
Essex flinched.
...Huh?
It was the kind of filthy, perverse exchange she could have dismissed as nothing special. But one phrase caught her ears far too sharply: someone was watching. As if there had been a time when someone had seen them having sex. Outdoors, too.
No... way...?
One man rose naturally in her mind.
Noisel.
She clearly remembered hearing that he had been disciplined for masturbating outdoors.
If, if... the scene he had witnessed had been the two of them. If Valdes and Ethylene had used some means to hide or flee, and only Noisel had been left behind to take the punishment. Then it was a perfectly plausible possibility, and it began to grow in her mind like a weed in spring.
But then.
......
If that was true...
“...That’s way too perverted...”
In fact, being turned on in a place that had only the scent left behind and then masturbating alone outside was pathetic and perverted in its own right. It was simply that her love for Noisel had been blinding her.
Now that she was imagining something even worse, it felt as if some of the rose-colored lens she’d put over him was finally cracking away. For his best friend, it might have been a joke; for a girl in love with one man, it was instinctively repulsive.
No matter how you looked at it, spying on the woman you loved while she slept with another man and secretly jerking off was just too humiliating.
......
Ah... what is this...
Her mind felt strangely blank.
Thanks to that, the excitement died down.
Once the thought had taken root, she couldn’t seem to stop following it all the way down that path. Her opinion of Noisel was slipping little by little. It wasn’t that she had stopped loving him, but her mind had become tangled in too many different ways.
For now... I should go back and rest.
Essex lifted a foot to return to her own room.
Then she lost her balance and shoved the window open. The windows in the royal castle were built to be pulled from the inside. In other words, from the terrace where she stood, they opened outward when pushed.
Clack.
“...Ah.”
“Hah, hng... eh? W-what?”
Valdes and Ethylene, who had been deeply absorbed in their lovemaking, turned their heads toward Essex at once.
“E-Essex... kni...?”
“Ah, uh, well, Knight Ethylene. Th-that is...”
Those two pairs of eyes staring straight at her.
Essex panicked and had no idea what to do.
Not only had she crossed from the terrace into a junior knight’s room, she’d even gone and secretly peeped at them in the middle of sex. The moment she touched the window, there was no excuse left at all.
This is...
Meanwhile, Ethylene glanced subtly at Valdes, who was pressing down on her from behind. Even if she herself had somehow failed to notice Essex, there was no way Valdes hadn’t.
And sure enough, there was a faint smile playing at the corner of his mouth.
Sometimes, when he became too focused on sex, Valdes’s awareness of his surroundings did grow dull. But from Ethylene’s point of view, that was definitely not the case now. Even the way he spoke felt different from usual, and she could sense something off.
At first she had thought he was simply changing up the play, but now that Essex had appeared, she felt like she understood.
Honestly, Master is so rotten. But... I do love that about him too...♡
After roughly piecing together the situation, Ethylene rose.
“Ngh, hnnng...♡”
Valdes’s body was naturally pushed backward, and he dropped back onto the bed. In the process, Ethylene went light-headed from the sensation of his cock driving deep into her cunt, and she trembled hard, lifting her face sharply.
“Hngh...! Haa...”
“A-ah, uh, uh...”
With her head tilted back and her tongue hanging halfway out, her face was obscene beyond measure. Essex, despite her confusion, completely lost the excuse she had been scrambling to put together.
“Huu... hht.”
Having leisurely savored even the afterglow of her climax, Ethylene slowly lowered one foot to the floor beside the bed.
Splutch... pop.
Essex’s full attention was locked on the man and woman on the bed, and now she knew exactly what sort of sound it made when a cock was pulled out of a pussy in the middle of sex. As the thing that had filled her up vanished, something white began to trickle out of Ethylene’s hole and run down her leg.
“Haa...♡”
“...Uh, K-Knight Ethylene...? C-can I go now? I, I’m a little tired...”
Ethylene walked slowly toward her with quiet, deliberate steps. The sight of her made Essex feel an inexplicable dread. So much so that her beautiful figure, and the traces of sex left all over her body, didn’t even register properly. Ethylene’s smile made her tremble in a thoroughly negative way.
As a result, she babbled nonsense and kept blurting out words that didn’t fit the situation at all. Of course, even if she had said something sensible, Ethylene wasn’t the sort to let her go.
“Oh? I happen to know a folk remedy that’s excellent for fatigue...”
“Eh? A folk remedy?”
“Yes♥”
Though Ethylene had joined the knight order later and was technically her junior, her skill was above Essex’s in every respect. That included her handling of mana. Concentrating mana into the soles of her feet in an instant, Ethylene rushed her without giving her even a moment to breathe.
“N-no, I’m fine—kyaaa!”
Captured by the junior knight, Essex was dragged straight toward the bed without even managing to resist properly.
And not long after that...
“Hnnng, hngh, hahh, hnn, ah, ahng, haaah—♥”
Sounds that were not Ethylene’s own began to ring out from her bedroom.
“Big brother. You’re not planning to touch every single woman in the knight order, are you?”
“Huh? Of course not.”
“Honestly. Then please restrain yourself! And stop adding women you didn’t even plan for!”
Valdes, a little awkward under Mari’s not-quite-a-scolding, took a quiet sip of tea. But thanks to how often he’d been drinking whenever she started nagging him, his cup had long since gone empty.
“Hey, here’s your tea.”
“Ah, yeah. Thanks.”
As Mari finished pouring the tea, she opened her mouth again, but Valdes cut her off before she could start.
“No, come on. It’s not like I’ve touched that many of them, and this time there was no helping it.”
“But you’re going to keep touching more of them in the future, aren’t you?”
“Well, I did decide to get revenge like this...”
“Then when are you planning to finish your revenge?”
“Uh, well...”
“You’re not aiming for triple digits, are you? And even then, you still can’t bring yourself to throw them away.”
......
At Mari’s suddenly vicious criticism, Valdes quietly shut his mouth.
It was the sort of thing that left him with nothing to say, even if he had ten mouths. The reason he had chosen to take revenge by playing with their lower halves was not simply because killing them alone wasn’t enough to sate him, but also because he wanted to vent all the desire that had built up inside him until now.
Because Valdes never bothered to hide that part of himself, and because the more time people spent with him and learned his true nature, the more they all noticed it. Mari, who was quick on the uptake, naturally noticed it first, but so had Mercedes, and even Ethylene. What had happened yesterday had been Ethylene moving first because she had already begun to understand his nature to some degree.
“Big brother, you have way too much affection. You got burned for it, and you still haven’t fixed it.”
“Shut up. A strong man needs at least a little carelessness now and then if he wants to seem human.”
“...Hehe, that’s true. It is. That’s why... we love you even more, big brother...♡”
Mari picked up a cookie from the tea table and placed it into her mouth. Then, all at once, she pouted her lips toward him.
“Mmm...”
“...I really do wonder about you.”
With a snort of laughter, he bit into the cookie—and, taking the momentum, bit Mari’s lips as well. Mari, grinning at the reaction she’d been waiting for, enjoyed a sweet kiss with the big brother she adored.
“Mm, mm... mmh. Haa...”
“You really are such a spoiled girl, Mari.”
“That’s right. Mari is always a spoiled girl in front of big brother♥”
“You’re cute now, but when you grow older it’ll get creepy.”
“Mm... I guess that’s true? Should I start learning mana now, then...”
“I’m joking. I’m joking.”
At her serious little frown as she took him literally and started thinking hard about it, Valdes reached out and patted her head. The princess’s golden hair fluttered softly under his hand.
“Hngh, I actually put some effort into my hair today...”
“Ah, sorry.”
“...But since it’s you, big brother, it’s fine. ...Oh, that reminds me, your work is almost finished, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, pretty much. At most, it’ll all be over in two weeks.”
The affair with Queen Katarina, and the training of Princess Clara, were both progressing smoothly. Even that troublesome female knight from the demonkin had been swept up in the movement he’d planned. From here on out, it was likely only a matter of occasional entertainment.
“Hehe, then our timing should work out nicely.”
“Timing?”
“Yes, I’m... preparing a special event just for you, big brother♥”
“Ah, I see.”
He thought he might have heard something about it from Mercedes before. Apparently, in opposition to the trouble her older sister had stirred up, the younger sister was also preparing something special of her own. Since Mari was so crafty, Mercedes had secretly warned Valdes in case she tried something strange. He even wondered if that, too, might have been part of Mari’s plan all along.
“So, what kind of event is it?”
“Come on, if I told you in advance, it wouldn’t be any fun~.”
Seeing Valdes try to fish it out of her, Mari wagged a finger at him playfully.
“The more curious you are, the more you’ll look forward to it, right?”
“Hmm... that’s true, but if your expectations get too high, you might be disappointed later.”
It was a small provocation. He already knew it wouldn’t work, but he was testing the waters anyway. Mari answered with a smile.
“I’m confident. At the very least, it’ll be better than my sister’s. Because... I’m preparing luxury wrapping paper just for you, big brother♡”
“Luxury wrapping paper?”
Valdes’s brow twitched.
What was that supposed to mean?
It was probably a metaphor, but taken at face value, he couldn’t make head or tail of it.
Seeing his puzzled expression, Mari realized her plan had succeeded from the very start, and she broke into a delighted grin. Seeing that smile, Valdes couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d been had. Considering the time it would take for matters to wrap up, he’d probably have to wait another three or four weeks, and every time he looked at Mari, he’d end up thinking about luxury wrapping paper.
“...Can’t you give me a little more of a hint?”
“Not just the wrapping paper—the contents are luxury too, big brother♡”
He stared at her, clearly asking for one more hint, but Mari only smiled and kept her mouth shut.
“Haah. Fine, I’ll look forward to it.”
“Yes~!”
After saying that much, Valdes rose from his chair. It was about time to prepare for tonight’s business.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ve got a few things to set up tonight.”
“Eeeh~ Don’t tell me you’re sulking and running away?”
“...You’re going to get a serious scolding if you keep that up.”
“Hehe, if it’s on the bed... you can punish me as much as you want, though♡”
With her chin resting on her folded hands atop the tea table, Mari blinked at him. At that impish expression, Valdes could only laugh dryly. No matter how he looked at it, Mari seemed to have already surpassed Beatris in her prime.
“I’d like to, too, but I really do have work. ...Actually, could I ask you for a favor?”
“Me? What kind of favor?”
“Nothing big. Just secretly follow me with Ethylene. I was going to ask Mercy at first, but you’ll be fine too. Ask Ethylene for the details. ...You’ll probably even get to see something interesting.”
“Hmm... okay!”
Shoving her chair back with a quick motion of her hips, Mari replied with bright, sparkling eyes.