In the Maid's Arms
In the maid's arms! Sophie's breasts were large and comforting. No, even if I tried not to think anything lewd, there was simply no helping it. They belonged to a girl my own age, after all, and they were huge. The academy uniform was quite thick, and with a shirt and undergarments layered beneath it, the fabric should have formed a barrier that made it nearly impossible to feel the texture of skin. Yet the bosom my face was buried in felt impossibly plush and soft. It was the kind of yielding softness that left no room for empty space or air at all. Telling myself not to savor it would have been pointless.
Back when I was simply a reader of novels, I had obviously devoured those stories because I liked the girls, and… even in my childhood, among princes with strikingly handsome features, I had singled out Erica at first glance. My preference for girls over boys had always been strong. Since both of my personalities shared that interest in women, there was no way I could avoid having strange thoughts while resting against a beauty who was willingly letting me use her chest like this…
“Um, miss?”
When Sophie’s voice, which had been warmly comforting me, grew a touch chilly, I couldn’t help but reflect on how far I had gone.
“You’re rubbing against me quite a lot.”
“I was trying to wipe the blood off my face…”
“And you chose my uniform for that?”
Even I had to admit it was a pathetic excuse. It was practically begging for punishment. Sophie looked ready to deliver some appropriate discipline; she seized one of my curls, then let out a sigh and released it.
“There are frills available. If you truly needed to wipe it off immediately, I would have lent you one. And since it’s that strange woman’s blood, I do understand the urge to clean it quickly.”
“The frills are white, so the blood would show. The uniform is red, so… if I rub it here, it won’t be as noticeable…”
“…You simply wanted to rub against me, didn’t you?”
Aigoo. If I had answered with just the right amount of restraint, I might have been able to fool her. Instead, I had tacked on unnecessary details and laid my weird intentions completely bare. In moments like this, the best move was to be shameless.
“C-can’t I? I’m someone who just suffered a terrible shock… I need care… Besides, I’m your master…”
At my whining, Sophie let out a soft “Pfft” and pulled me into an even tighter embrace.
“Then by all means. If Sophie is enough for you. As I said earlier, in this dangerous world, if I don’t protect you, miss, there is no one else who will. Of course, there would be countless people willing to fight on your behalf, but the only one who can stay by your side at any time, in any place, is me…”
“By the way, Sophie, what were you doing out here?”
Reassured by her words, I lifted my face from her chest and asked. Sophie hesitated for a moment before answering.
“I was taking a short night walk. The troubled expression you wore during the afternoon sparring kept coming to mind. I couldn’t eat properly and barely slept. I thought a brief stroll might help clear my head, so I asked for permission and stepped outside.”
“With whom? Never mind, the fact that you could get permission from the dormitory makes it obvious. Were you having a secret rendezvous with Erica? Behind my back?”
“A secret rendezvous? No, that’s not—”
The academy was surprisingly strict about night walks. It was because every single student was a powerful mage. Unlike the usual clichés in academy stories, the professors in my world did not possess overwhelmingly superior combat strength compared to the students. They all had experience and had undergone dungeon exploration training, so they were certainly more skilled than most novice students, but the magic power of fully grown witches rarely increased dramatically through academy training alone. What they held clear superiority in was scholarly knowledge for properly utilizing magic and the practical experience of having done so. When you considered that the truly top-tier mages were still out there actively conquering dungeons and rarely took teaching positions, it would be extremely difficult for the faculty to control the student body if they ever decided to riot.
That was why night was a dangerous time. No matter how nobly the students had to be treated, the academy could not easily permit them to wander freely after dark. With only a handful of night-duty personnel available for immediate response, there would be no way to handle it if students acted impulsively.
…Even now, one of the most heavily guarded dormitory rooms had been broken into, and the school had been unable to mount any response. Yet such an outing had been permitted with mere permission? Sophie’s name and reputation would never have been enough. Even I would have been on the borderline; the request would probably have been rejected more often than not. In other words, it meant Erica had approved it. The influence of a mere new student who could wield more practical power than the headmistress herself.
“It was a joke, Sophie. There must have been something you absolutely needed to discuss.”
“…If there is one person in this academy I can trust to be entirely on your side, it is her. There was no one else I could talk to.”
“Erica is…”
The words hard to believe she’ll stay entirely on my side until the end rose in my throat and sank back down. Yes, at this exact moment, Erica was completely on my side. But in the original novel, she had clearly been on Elena’s side, not mine. If only I could remember what the “Villainess Lawsuit” incident had felt like from my own perspective. That particular memory refused to return, no matter what.
I wasn’t sure. The Elena in the novel and the Elena I had seen with my own eyes were so different that I could no longer fully trust the novel’s depiction of why Erica had opposed Maria. To think that, as a novel transmigrator who should have been able to take full advantage of knowing the original work, this was the situation I found myself in…
In any case, warning against Erica without knowing the concrete circumstances would only sow the seeds of discord. Now that Sophie and Erica—who used to glare and growl at each other with me stuck between them—were apparently getting along, I couldn’t ruin the moment by spouting nonsense.
“Why the princess?” Sophie asked when my words trailed off. I answered with the first thing that came to mind.
“Erica must have given you helpful advice. After all, it’s only been a little over two years since we grew apart, and until then she was the person who knew me best.”
“Actually, the main topic was more about her than about you, miss. That’s why, on my way back, when I saw the special-class student loitering near the dormitory entrance, I found it suspicious. The night walk I received was only granted after I practically begged Her Highness. There was no way a special-class student would have been allowed out of the dormitory.”
“So you followed her and ended up here.”
“I kept my distance so I wouldn’t be noticed, and I got a little turned around while tailing her. Of course, I was most wary of the possibility that she might be targeting you. But attacking the front door would have been too crude, so I wondered if she was aiming for a window or some secret passage instead. While I was searching in the wrong places, I ended up arriving a little late…”
None of that was strange at all. In the original novel’s “Villainess Lawsuit,” Sophie had served as Maria’s assistant—the plaintiff or prosecutor accusing the protagonist Elena—while also playing the role of the bumbling detective in the mystery. Maria usually challenged Elena’s lineage, attempting to prove she was a pure commoner with no ties to any noble house so she could be expelled under academy regulations. Sophie typically handled the evidence gathering for that.
Yet whenever it came time to collect evidence, Sophie often displayed a clumsy side: she would overthink things and miss what was right in front of her eyes. For example, while searching the secret archive for genealogies and yearbooks of major noble families, she would overlook a book sitting openly on a shelf, only for Erica to snatch it first…
“Sophie, you really do sometimes jump to the wrong conclusion over the simplest things.”
“Still, I think I’m better than Lady Lillia.”
“No, she solves simple problems easily. It’s the complicated ones where she keeps stumbling… Anyway, I’m curious what you talked about with Erica. Is it something you can’t tell me?”
“I wanted to know how much personal information the imperial family had gathered regarding Elena Kerru. She is, after all, an extremely rare commoner special student. But according to Her Highness, even she doesn’t know much beyond the entrance exam scores.”
“Even Erica doesn’t know, huh…”
“Deliberately digging into someone’s background to collect information isn’t like you, is it? It’s one thing to have sufficient information about the people you need to deal with, but being overly sensitive to information and snooping behind others’ backs are two different matters. Striking that balance is difficult in our position.”
“In Elena Kerru’s case, it means there is very little information that surfaces naturally—enough that identifying her is difficult unless you deliberately investigate.”
“Exactly.”
…Now that I thought about it, aside from the detail in the original work that “Elena, from commoner origins, lost her parents at an early age,” had any other information about her been provided? There were novels that deliberately omitted the protagonist’s detailed background to make immersion easier for readers, and I had assumed this was simply one of them. But now, in this situation where Elena had become a complete stranger, it was a truly unhelpful narrative device. If only the novel had revealed a little more about her background, I would have far more options available to me now.