The Herb Warehouse Incident (2)
"Nngh! Hah… hah. Damn it."
A curse slipped out before I could stop it. This wretched wardrobe showed not the slightest intention of budging.
Worse, it was so narrow I couldn't even shift my posture. The only option left was to push with my back—and that was it.
If only I could use magic. Of course, this had to be the herb storage room, laced through with anti-magic circuits. That avenue was closed.
"Airen, are you all right?"
"Mm. I'm fine."
"Do you think anyone will come looking for us?"
"Who knows. They'll probably just assume we went to the herb storage and then ditched class."
"That… is a fair point!"
This was a school for nobles. Skipping class barely registered as a minor incident. Some students didn't even bother attending Herbology if the lectures didn't suit their fancy.
"This is a problem. I'm going to lower myself for now."
"Huh? Lower yourself?"
"My arms are about to give out."
I'd been propping myself up on my arms for roughly thirty minutes. On top of that, I'd been straining to shove the wardrobe free.
Honestly, my arms felt ready to snap. I wanted nothing more than to collapse onto the floor. Fortunately the wardrobe was absurdly long, so at least I could still shift forward and back.
"Pervert."
"What?!"
"If you go down, you'll have a perfect view of my underwear."
"I won't look! I swear I won't look! Your skirt isn't even that short!"
"Haa… fine."
"Then I'm going down."
With Airen's permission, I began carefully shifting my arms. I was easing my body downward as gently as possible, determined not to brush against her—when it happened.
Thud.
Something soft caught against the tip of my chin. Soft?
"Ah."
"……"
What else soft could possibly be here?
Naturally, what had snagged on my chin was Airen's chest. Damn it! Of all the things to get in the way—those massive breasts! And now that I'd touched them, she was absolutely going to start teasing me about being a pervert again!
"Airen, that was completely unintentional!"
"……"
"Airen?"
By now she should have fired off dozens of mocking remarks, yet she said nothing at all. When I looked up, her face was flushed and her gaze was turned away.
"Ah… um. That is…"
This was not the reaction I'd expected.
This was the same girl who'd teased me even after showing me her naked body inside the grimoire. And now a little chin-to-chest contact had her like this?
Suddenly awkward myself, I shut my mouth. About a minute passed like that.
My arms genuinely felt like they were going to break. But I couldn't lower myself either. I was still trying to figure out what to do when my arms made the decision for me—they chose collapse over fracture. Strength drained from them in a rush, and gravity claimed my body without resistance.
Soft.
My neck sank straight into Airen's chest. In that instant, a fresh, clean fragrance bloomed around me.
I'd never been held by a woman before, but… did they all smell like this? The breasts cradling my neck were impossibly soft. I almost wanted to nestle in and act spoiled—no. Idiot. Get a grip.
This situation was clearly, catastrophically wrong. If word got out that my neck had been buried between the Imperial Princess's breasts, even a ducal house's retainer would have his head flying a hundred times over.
I tried to push myself up in a hurry, but my arms refused to obey.
"A-Airen! This is—!"
That was when Airen suddenly wrapped her arms around me. The head I'd been holding up with sheer willpower sank fully into her chest.
"Mmph?!"
"I know your arms hurt. So just stay like this."
The words were almost tender. My head, however, was spinning. The scent from earlier flooded my sinuses even more densely, dizzying me.
"W-Wait a second. This is… this is way too—"
"Don't say anything else."
Airen held me tighter.
"I'm embarrassed too."
We'd known each other for less than three weeks. There was no way I understood everything about Airen.
But to hear this willful, shameless princess—who seemed utterly incapable of feeling shame—admit she was embarrassed… that was a line I truly never expected to hear in my lifetime.
I immediately tried to erase the thought that had just surfaced.
Airen is cute? No! Absolutely not!
I'd admired her appearance plenty of times. That much was fine. But thinking she was cute was an entirely different matter. Beauty and cuteness occupied completely separate realms of appreciation.
Finding someone cute presupposed goodwill toward them. No matter how adorable someone looked on the surface, if their conduct was rotten or they only ever treated you poorly, you wouldn't feel cuteness—you'd just think, what a bastard.
You could call a vicious woman beautiful, but you'd never call her cute. They were clearly different categories of feeling.
And yet I'd just thought Airen was cute? Me? The same me who had devoted himself solely to My Lady, who worshipped her and gazed after her like a sunflower?
Remember. Airen had forced me to become her attendant, played endless pranks, and tormented me at every turn…
Well.
Come to think of it, she'd also given me a tremendous amount of advice. And those pranks had often contained wisdom for surviving at the Academy…
No. Snap out of it, Frey. Why are you digging for reasons to feel affection toward Airen?!
I swore just yesterday. I would look only at My Lady! I would not dare set my sights on Airen! The only one I love is My Lady!
Stay calm. Recite the Imperial Anthem. O radiant sky of the Empire—even between sheer cliffs, light seeps through!
"Frey? Why aren't you saying anything?"
"W-What am I supposed to say in a situation like this?"
"Hmm. Something like… 'They're soft'?"
"How am I supposed to say something like that?!"
"They're not soft? I was… pretty confident…"
Airen's face flushed as red as a ripe persimmon. If she was going to get embarrassed, she shouldn't say things like that in the first place!
No, seriously—what was wrong with Airen today? Lines she would normally toss out without a second thought, she was now blushing over one by one!
And that made her so unbearably cute I thought I might lose my mind. Wait. Where had I left off in the anthem? Sprouts that rise to meet the light? We are they? The light is His Majesty the Emperor?
"So they really aren't that great?"
Airen looked dejected. Something in my chest crumpled at the sight. I answered in a rush.
"N-No! They're incredibly soft!"
"Really?"
"Yes! No! Why are you making me say this?!"
"You just got honest for a second. That's all."
"That— Aaaaagh! Is anyone there?! People are trapped in here! Help!"
I shouted in desperation, but not a single sign of life came from outside. Please, someone come help us. If I stayed like this any longer I was going to go insane!
"Sorry, but could you keep it down? My head hurts."
"How can you be so calm right now?! What if we don't get out today?!"
"Someone will come tomorrow. That isn't what matters right now."
Airen lifted her head and whispered against my ear.
"You're pressing down on me like that… and it's making me feel strange."
A chill raced down my spine. Instinct screamed that staying like this was dangerous—that as a living creature, I needed to flee.
The problem was that we were trapped inside a wardrobe with no options left.
"Hey, Frey. Among nobles, arranged marriages are just everyday life, right?"
"Th-These days free love is becoming more common, isn't it? It's a peaceful era, after all."
"Even so, for high nobles, arranged marriages are still the norm. I'm an Imperial Princess—same thing applies to me. Unless I become Crown Princess, my fate is already decided."
Airen released the arms that had been holding me. Instead, she raised her hands and cupped my cheeks. I was forced to meet her eyes.
Her face still flushed, Airen looked up at me. Her breathing had grown rough for some reason, and I could see her pupils trembling.
"Even so… I want to date the person I love. I want to marry them. And that person is you."
"Airen, I—"
"Don't say it. I already know what you're going to say. But just once. Can't you indulge me just this once?"
Something thudded hard in my chest. Tears were welling in Airen's eyes—that Airen.
Why? We'd only met at the Academy entrance ceremony. Before that, we'd had no contact at all.
So why did Airen want to be with me, and why did my heart race whenever I looked at her? Damn it. None of this made sense.
"I want you this much. Can't you look at me even once?"
"Ugh…"
"Just hold still a little. It'll be over soon."
To my shock, Airen slowly brought her lips closer. I squeezed my eyes shut. No. I had to refuse. I couldn't give false hope to someone I didn't feel that way about.
If we kissed like this…
Tap. Airen's lips met not my mouth, but my index finger. She stared at me, stunned. I offered a bitter smile.
"It's still too early."
Then I pressed my left hand against the wardrobe wall and gathered mana. Airen asked in alarm,
"What are you doing?"
"Getting us out. You're panicking because we're trapped and acting on impulse. So we need to escape."
"You can't use magic in here."
"More precisely, anti-magic lines are laid throughout the room."
The herb storage might as well have been one giant circuit. Circuits packed down to the millimeter simply scrambled a caster's mana array.
The principle was to scatter the array and prevent a spell from forming at all. So how did you break through?
You stacked your magical array so densely, so solidly, that it couldn't even begin to be scattered.
If a normal spell's density was 1, you needed to push it to at least 100.
Like any substance, magic lost its form when compressed too far. No matter how earnestly you petitioned the world for a house-sized boulder, if it emerged compressed a thousandfold, what you got wasn't a boulder—it was a grain of sand.
But even then, there was a way.
You raised the output so that the desired form still emerged after compression. In the end, it came down to simultaneous amplification and compression.
Doing two opposing things at once made the difficulty astronomical. Even an Academy graduate couldn't manage it.
But I could. The magical skill I'd honed to serve My Lady made it absolutely possible.
I gently covered Airen's eyes with my right hand.
"It'll be a little bright."
Maximum firepower. Maximum compression. The attack itself would be a basic spell.
Immediately the circuits woven through the herb storage tried to shatter my magical array.
But shattering only works when there's a gap to slip into.
Just as the world's smallest unit cannot be divided further, the circuits could not dare split my magic. This was the skill I'd built for My Lady. There were no gaps.
Basic magic.
Fire Bolt
A pure white flash detonated.
When I opened my eyes, half the herb storage had been obliterated.