Waiting (14)
"Mmm-hmm~."
Inside the bathroom, thick with hot steam, Mari’s cheerful humming echoed softly off the walls. Along with it came the sound of a wet towel working over her skin, brisk and diligent, almost as if it had been enjoying its labor more than usual today. It was a rare sight indeed: the princess, alone and taking care of her own dressing, yet Mari was happier than ever.
And no wonder. At long last, her turn had come.
With back-to-back night duties, a merits ceremony, and even her vacation all piling up, her turn had been delayed for quite some time. Even then, she had only managed to secure priority through a wager, forcing her way ahead of her sister at last.
If all she wanted was an ordinary night, she would never have gone this far.
But Mari had spent a long time preparing for today—so long, in fact, that she had begun back when they were still in the Ventorino Kingdom.
After hearing about the tactic her older sister, Princess Mercedes, had used in the training grounds, Mari spent days turning it over in her head. Valdes was trying, as much as possible, to treat the sisters equally. Each of them had her own charms, and so the sisters did not fight too fiercely over his love either.
But night was different.
She needed something that would let her get ahead in a way her sister couldn’t match.
The one who had given her the hint, oddly enough, was Alfonso, who had been trailing after her like a puppy. Of course, he hadn’t meant it that way, but the shy words the young prince had thrown out so casually had given Mari a tremendous spark of inspiration. From that moment on, she had built the plan, and prepared every single thing she would need.
"No one else would have thought of this!"
There were only four real rivals, including her sister. Ethylene technically shouldn’t have counted among them, but what had happened in the marquisate had made Mari acknowledge her all the same.
In any case, when the number of rivals was still small, this was the time to make her move—before he truly began traveling across the continent.
"By the way, what are you going to do about that Ma-in woman?"
Mari’s thoughts, which had been overflowing with happy fantasies and burning resolve, drifted to Jurina.
Since Mari happened to be the person Jurina could rely on most at the moment, she often passed information to the second princess in secret. Mari, who had also been asked by Valdes to keep an eye on her, accepted the updates at an appropriate level of patience while periodically reporting Jurina’s situation back to Valdes.
Truthfully, there hadn’t been much worth reporting. Jurina kept failing, after all. Considering the places Valdes had recently been moving through, it was hardly surprising that she kept arriving too late and finding nothing. Even so, Jurina was trying her best in her own way.
She joined the Pedro Knights, took on the occasional assignment, and spent every spare moment desperately circling around Valdes. She had become so persistent that even the other knights had begun to wonder whether Jurina might have come to the Ulsro Kingdom for Valdes in the first place. In a sense, that guess wasn’t entirely wrong.
And so Mari only treated Jurina as a convenient excuse to see Valdes’s face, and her interest in the matter had gradually dried up.
Valdes, for his part, didn’t seem particularly interested in Jurina either.
She had been a variable, yes, but compared to the plan already moving so smoothly ahead, she was far too insignificant. Her personal abilities weren’t extraordinary, and she didn’t possess anything that could threaten Valdes. Knowing the identity he had revealed offhand as something to kill time with was about the only thing she had achieved.
Mari sometimes thought that Jurina might be one of the most pathetic lives of all.
"Well, not my problem."
Her pity for the unfortunate Ma-in female knight ended there, along with her bath.
There was no reason to think about Jurina anymore, and Valdes would be arriving soon enough, so she needed to finish getting ready. It would take a little while to put on the clothes she had prepared, so she had to hurry.
"Mmm-hmm~."
Wiping away the moisture with a towel made of high-quality fabric, Mari started humming again.
Valdes had spent three days of vacation in the dungeon.
During that short period, he had made the necessary preparations as the Demon Prince and reviewed the plan as a man bent on vengeance. At first, he had intended to use all three days of leave to torment Robert and watch her suffer, but that feeling hadn’t lasted long.
Once he had shoved the Great Mage into a female body and driven her down into hell, it had somehow felt a little less like revenge. On top of that, there was less pleasure in watching her collapse into despair so easily. In the end, she was already a fish caught on the line, and that had drained his interest entirely.
That didn’t mean he had forgiven her, or rescued her from despair. He had simply made it so she could keep company with the monsters in a corner of the dungeon’s depths. For three whole days. And even after he left the dungeon, that was exactly how things would remain.
After returning from his vacation, Valdes found himself suddenly thinking, In the end, neither of them even begged for forgiveness.
There hadn’t even been any excuses.
He couldn’t tell whether it was because the shock had been too great or because guilt had crushed them too completely.
Perhaps because he had pressed so hard, watching them break so quickly made him consider easing up a little next time. It wasn’t mercy, and it certainly wasn’t pity. It was simply that this way would be more entertaining, and the fun would last longer.
Besides, even if I start as fast as possible, Claudi won’t be finished right away.
As he headed toward Mari’s bedroom at her request, he thought of what would happen a few months from now.
He would have at most a month in the Holy Kingdom—more precisely, in the domain where the papal see was located. The saintess, armed with devotion to the Goddess and overwhelming Holy Power, was one of the strongest opponents he would have to face.
Even if he focused only on her, a month was a short time, and he wouldn’t even be able to meet her often. The saintess held a position as high as any queen or queen consort, but her role was quite different. If a high noble’s duty was to remain firmly in place, then the saintess, by contrast, was often out traveling.
Which meant there would be very few opportunities to be alone with her.
Still, he was confident.
Saintess Claudi had two secret weaknesses known only to a tiny handful of people. And Valdes knew both of them. The plans that made use of those secrets had already been laid out as well.
He would spend the first month preparing everything carefully, and when he returned later, he would trap the fruit of that labor.
"In a way, that damned dwarf may be even more troublesome than Claudi."
The moment Dwarf Paladin Luciano came to mind, Valdes’s brow creased of its own accord.
He wasn’t a woman, and he didn’t have family tied to him by blood.
He was the kind of man who outright denied the very method of Valdes’s revenge.
Granted, he had adopted daughters, but honestly, Valdes wasn’t sure how much affection Luciano had ever truly shown them.
More importantly, what Luciano wanted was war—a war in which he could play his part. Even stripping that from him directly was impossible. That meant bringing the dwarf down would require a far more varied set of strategies, and those would need to be adjusted in real time depending on the situation.
This opportunity probably won’t be enough. But if I use the fallen heroes…
As his tightly furrowed brow relaxed, a smile surfaced on his face.
So far, every plan had gone exactly as intended.
And from here on, he had no doubt it would continue that way.
Lost in those thoughts, he arrived before Mari’s bedroom before he even realized it.
Mari had already taken care of things in advance, sending away all the servants nearby, so Valdes came without running into guards, maids, or anyone else.
"Just what has she prepared?"
Mari had been building his anticipation ever since they were in the Ventorino Kingdom. Clever little thing that she was, she had kept telling him to look forward to it, feeding his curiosity with deliberate cruelty, and he had obediently let that expectation grow in a corner of his chest.
He grasped the handle and opened the door. That too had been something Mari had told him to do beforehand. And what came into view was certainly worth admiration.
"Hah…."
"Welcome home, big brother♡"
Valdes froze with the door half-open.
Mercedes’s detachable light armor and the tights she wore beneath it, or even Beatris’s lingerie, had both been shocking in their own ways—but this was something else entirely.
The moment he opened the door and saw Mari, he thought for an instant that she must be wearing a wedding dress.
It was because of the pure white outfit that wrapped her body.
It didn’t take him long to realize that was a mistake. He couldn’t tell whether the clothing itself had been based on a wedding dress or was merely arranged to create that impression, but on closer inspection it was obvious that it was absolutely not a wedding dress.
No—calling it clothing at all was almost questionable.
At first glance, an ivory-white fabric seemed to embrace her body. But looking closer, one could see that it truly was wrapped around her. The phrase was literal: strips of bandage, each about half the width of an ordinary towel, were wound around Mari’s naked body.
…….
His eyes swiftly swept over her from head to toe.
Noticing the quick movement of his gaze, Mari’s eyes curved into bright, delighted crescents.
White bandages worn in the shape of a proper outfit. They had not been wrapped carefully enough to close every gap; instead, Mari’s pale skin showed boldly through the spaces between them. What surprised Valdes even more was that where the straps of her underwear should have been visible, there was nothing at all.
In other words, she really was wearing nothing but those bandages.
Because the bandages were fairly wide and quite long, they covered nearly half her body, but by the same token, more than half of her skin remained exposed. Even so, Valdes found it astonishing that something like that could still resemble a one-piece dress.
"Hehe, I surprised you, didn’t I?"
"…Yeah, you really… surprised me a lot."
Valdes stepped inside and quickly shut the door behind him. He knew the servants had been sent away, but you could never be too careful.
"What do you think of the outfit I prepared?"
"It’s incredible. Honestly… I never would’ve thought of anything like this."
"Right?! Heehee. Anything’s better the first time, isn’t it? But a wedding won’t be possible for more than two years. So… I thought I’d wear something similar instead♥"
It was certainly an impressive idea.
A dress made of bandages that evoked a wedding gown. What was especially admirable was that it looked like a wedding dress without actually being one. In a sense, it was a pseudo-wedding dress.
Any woman would want to wear one, but as for marriage—pregnancy aside, he had already made it clear that marriage would have to wait until after the war. Because of that, no one had been able to show him what he would look like in a wedding dress. Mari, however, had managed to create the feeling of one without actually showing him the real thing, saving it for a later wedding.
"It was a pain to get this ready, you know."
"…I can see why."
He glanced over the rest of the accessories beyond the bandage wedding dress.
These accessories were a big part of what had made him mistake it for a wedding dress at first glance.
A veil that fell to her waist, white mesh gloves, and wedding garters visible beneath the lifted hem of the skirt. There was no bouquet, which would normally be the centerpiece of a wedding dress, but instead the bed around her was decorated with white flowers.
Considering the superstition that the person who caught the bouquet would be the one to marry next, Mari could also be understood as having given that bouquet to herself. In many ways, it was a symbol of how badly she wanted marriage.
Seeing Valdes inspect her so carefully, Mari smiled shyly.
"I was trying to think of what kind of event would be best, and then Alfonso gave me the inspiration."
"…Alfonso?"
He tilted his head, puzzled.
"Yes, that little prince said it would be nice for the person marrying me. He said he wanted to see me in a wedding dress…."
At that, Valdes let out a faint laugh.
At the time, Alfonso had probably said it thinking he might actually be able to marry Mari someday, but in the end those words had worked out in Valdes’s favor. That little adopted son—and brother-in-law—was adorable in so many ways that he was almost impossible to hate.
He had ended up with strange tastes because of his own influence, but if possible, Valdes felt like he ought to give him a proper wife someday.
"I suppose I should be grateful."
"Exactly♡"
Mari echoed his words, her eyes glinting mischievously as she went on.
"But, big brother."
"Hmm?"
"Mari’s having a hard time… so when are you coming?"
…….
Mari had climbed onto the bed on her knees, spread her legs wide, and was lifting the ends of the bandage dress with both hands. Because of that, the already short dress looked even shorter, and everything beneath it was laid bare to view. But it was also a pose that consumed a fair bit of strength to hold.
"…Yeah, it’d be rude to just stand there staring at a table that’s already been set."
Watching the boy walk toward her with that faintly lecherous smile, Mari beamed brightly.
"Please eat Mari up deliciously, while she’s wearing your cock-sheath declaration dress, big brother♥"