The Room You Can't Leave Without Obeying (3)
“A-Are you insane? And why should I, your master, have to submit to you?!”
“Because I’m not your servant yet. And I’m saying we should try every possible way to escape the grimoire. Who knows? Maybe what Airen knows isn’t the exact method.”
“That’s impossible!”
“The world of magic is infinite. Even a one-in-a-million chance is worth watching out for.”
Airen glared at me.
“And how is putting on a dog collar and going ‘woof!’ supposed to count as submitting?”
“Because that’s what dogs do. They bark ‘woof! woof!’ at anything they see as a threat. You’ve never raised a puppy before, have you, Airen?”
“Have you?”
“When I was very little.”
Truth was, I hadn’t raised one myself. There had just been a stray that followed me around on the streets.
It had been an incredibly affectionate little thing. On the days Mother went out to work, I spent most of my time with that puppy.
But those days hadn’t lasted long. A year before I met the young lady, hungry vagrants had snatched it away.
I tried to stop them, but they were adults and far stronger than me. When I got home I bawled my eyes out. Anyway—best to leave the sad memories behind for now.
“So please just do it once. It’s less humiliating than having to declare your submission out loud, isn’t it?”
I put it as nicely as I could, but Airen still thrashed. The more she struggled, the more the ropes binding her body chafed, and little tears began to leak out.
“Frey. I’m asking nicely—untie me. It really hurts.”
“Then put on the dog collar and bark ‘woof!’ just once.”
“You think I’d ever do something that ridiculous?!”
“Then I guess there’s no helping it. I’m going to get a little more sleep.”
“What?”
I set the dog collar aside and flopped onto my back. Airen stared at me with a look of pure panic.
“F-Frey? You’re joking, right?”
“I still feel exhausted. Maybe it’s because of the sleepwalking?”
“Don’t do this. Y-You’re really not going to untie me? After you were the one who tied me up?”
“Now that I think about it, you ought to watch your wording.”
I manipulated the crystal orb and rewound the recording to the very beginning—the part where Airen stood holding every kind of bondage tool imaginable.
“You tried to tie me up and got caught in reverse, Airen. If you’d just gone to sleep quietly, none of this would have happened.”
“Th-That’s—!”
“What exactly were you planning to do after you bound me? Did you think that if you forced me to submit like that, I’d get all excited the way Her Highness is right now?”
“W-What? Excited?”
“Look in the mirror. See what Princess Airen looks like at this moment.”
I’d been wanting to say this for a while.
Even in the recording, Airen’s face had flushed a little as she was being tied. Right now she was full-on blushing.
The tears she was shedding didn’t inspire pity so much as they looked sensual. And the way she kept twitching and trembling while claiming it hurt—was that even normal?
Airen looked at her own reflection in the ceiling mirror. Then she flinched hard.
“Well?”
“Th-This is…”
“Admit it. You’re getting turned on by being tied up like this.”
“N-No! I’m the Third Imperial Princess, and I would never engage in something so vulgar—!”
“And who was it that tried to do something vulgar to me?”
“Urgh.”
Airen’s face twisted with frustration. For some reason that expression looked incredibly alluring. I wanted to see more of it—just a little more.
“Airen. If you hate it, thrash around.”
I unfastened the dog collar and brought it to her neck. She stared at it with frightened eyes, but she didn’t move.
Jingle.
The collared bell settled around Airen’s throat. Just as I’d expected, it suited her perfectly.
“It looks great on you.”
“Ugh. Shut up.”
“Then shall we try a ‘woof!’ so we can get out of here?”
“Uuugh.”
“You don’t want to leave? Then are we supposed to stay here forever?”
“I-I don’t want that!”
“Then bark just once, like I said. For the record, I’d rather stay here for the rest of my life than declare submission.”
“Uuuugh, you’re the absolute worst.”
“Not at all, Airen.”
I gave her a bright smile.
“Friends can do this much for each other, right?”
“…….”
Airen’s face turned bright red. Then she opened her mouth, very quietly.
“……Woof.”
“Hmm. I can’t hear you.”
“W-Woof.”
“Looks like I’m the only one here!”
“W-Woof! Woof woof woof! Woof!”
Airen barked in the cutest way imaginable. Hearing it sent a strange shiver through me, and before I knew it I had grabbed the leash attached to her collar and was pulling it taut.
“The grimoire still hasn’t changed. Put a little more heart into it.”
“W-Woof?”
“Can’t you make it cuter?”
“Woof woof. Whine.”
Once she started barking, Airen seemed to get used to it; her barks grew more and more natural. Even so, the space inside the grimoire remained unchanged.
What was the problem? Did you really have to be sincere to escape the grimoire? But how did a grimoire even judge sincerity? Couldn’t you trick it into thinking you were sincere just through actions?
Actions, huh.
“Airen.”
“Y-Yes?”
“Dogs aren’t supposed to speak human language.”
“W-What?”
I yanked the leash hard.
“Ghk—?!”
“You’ll have to submit a little more thoroughly if the grimoire is going to let us out. Yes—how about showing your belly? Dogs show their bellies as a sign of submission, you know.”
“F-Frey?”
“You said ‘woof.’”
I gripped the leash even tighter. I could see Airen’s pupils shrink.
“W-Woof! Woof woof!”
Watching her bark with all her might was satisfying. I loosened the leash and said,
“Good. Now show me your belly just like that.”
“Wooof.”
With a look of pure humiliation, Airen slowly lifted the hem of her clothes. A beautiful navel that drew the eye appeared against her pure white skin.
“That’s it—keep going. Woof woof.”
“Woof! Woof!”
Airen barked with everything she had. And the grimoire?
“Still the same. Haaah. Airen, you’ll have to try a little harder…”
“Frey.”
“Airen, what did I just say? Puppies—”
“P-Please.”
What did I just hear?
“Please, this is weird. This isn’t the real Frey. Frey, please…”
Airen was begging. She had asked me for things in the herb warehouse too, but she had never pleaded like this.
The girl who was always high-handed and never backed down from her own opinions was now trembling as she looked up at me and begged.
“You’re a kind person. If you think about this later, you’ll end up hurting yourself.”
“……No. Right now I’m completely in my right mind.”
“You’re not. You’re clearly not yourself. Then let me ask you this—once we get out of here, do you still want to treat me like this?”
“That’s…”
That’s…
Damn it.
“Kyaa?!”
I dropped the leash. She collapsed onto the bed with a sharp cry. I felt bad, but I didn’t let it stop me; I pressed a hand to my own head.
Then I poured mana into my skull. Clean mana scoured the pathways that normally should have been filled only with my own power. Strange violet energy was nestled here and there along those channels. Without hesitation I swept every last scrap of that violet energy away.
Flash!
It felt as if sparks had gone off inside my head. At the same time everything suddenly felt clear.
The moment I registered that clarity, I looked at Airen—still collared and bound—and went completely pale.
“A-Airen! I’m so sorry!”
“Ha… haha. You’re back.”
“Ugh. I’ve never done anything like this in my entire life.”
I was mortified by the person I’d been just moments ago. What the hell had I been doing?
“I’ll untie you right away.”
I didn’t bother with any excuses about having to touch her body. By concentrating mana at my fingertips I could use them like a sharp blade, and with that I sliced through the ropes binding Airen in a single stroke.
Finally free, Airen rubbed her wrists and ankles.
“Ugh, I’ve never hurt this much before.”
“I’m truly sorry. I got drunk on the grimoire’s mana.”
“It’s fine. Grimoires are just like that.”
She was right. I had been intoxicated by the mana inside the grimoire.
Grimoires that trap their users are designed to encourage them not to leave. Last time we had escaped quickly, so nothing like this had happened. This time, however, a full day had passed by the grimoire’s internal clock—more than enough time for its mana to seep in thoroughly.
The escape method Airen had deduced was for me to submit to her. Even if she submitted to me, we still wouldn’t be able to leave.
The grimoire had clearly been aiming for that. It had filled me with sadistic impulses so I would force Airen to submit instead. If that had happened, we would have been trapped here forever.
Even the fact that I had tied her up while supposedly sleepwalking was probably the grimoire’s doing. Realistically, how could a person perform such complex actions while sleepwalking?
If Airen hadn’t noticed that sense of wrongness, we would have been stuck here for the rest of our lives—until we eventually died of mana depletion.
“Are you okay? It looked like the grimoire was messing with your head.”
“I’m fine. Ugh, I’m really, truly sorry, Airen. How am I supposed to make this up to you?”
“It’s okay. We’re friends. I’m not petty enough to refuse to forgive something you didn’t even do of your own free will.”
“Airen…”
In that moment it felt as if light were pouring out of her. As expected of an imperial princess—her heart was as vast as the ocean!
“By the way, Airen, you’re really something else.”
“Hm? What do you mean?”
“Even if you didn’t realize it at first, you still went through with something that embarrassing just to escape. I never could have done it. You’re a true pragmatist.”
I meant every word. If Airen had ordered me to do the same things? I would have put the dog collar on myself and jumped off the bed. But she had willingly done everything I asked for the sake of getting out.
“Actually… I didn’t… hate it that m—”
“Sorry? What was that?”
“N-Nothing! I just mean that if you want to achieve your goal, you have to do even the things you hate!”
“I see.”
I found myself respecting her a little more. If something absolutely had to be done, you had to be able to endure the embarrassment. That was the mark of a truly upright person.
“So what do we do now?”
“More importantly, Airen—there’s something more urgent.”
“Huh? What?”
I pointed at her neck.
“You still need to take off the dog collar. You forgot about it because of the ropes, right?”
“U-Uwaaah! I’ll take it off! I’ll take it off myself, so don’t touch it!”
She frantically tried to unfasten the collar. Watching her, a strange thought crossed my mind.
I was sure I had purged every last bit of the grimoire’s mana. So why did Airen still look so perfectly suited to wearing a dog collar?