Three Steps From Ruin
Serina sat perched on the end of the bed, staring down at her legs. The garter belt — the first she had ever worn — felt like pure suffocation against her skin.
It pulled her stockings up properly taut, and yet at the same time it cinched so hard around her groin that the sensation rivaled her very first period. She couldn't begin to guess how much moving around it would take before she grew used to it.
Deciding it must be because she had been forced into the thing, Serina looked back toward the bathroom door, her feelings in a tangle.
"You or I, we've both been sweating until just now. Let's get ourselves properly cleaned up before we leave."
Just as he'd said — she had been taken through that rear-entry position for the first time and driven to the very brink of unconsciousness, and she had wanted to wash more desperately than she ever had in her life. But she had bitten it back, certain that Lean would start spouting some insane nonsense about bathing together.
"Go on and wash first. I'll get in after you. Ah — I've warmed the water for you, so take your time coming out."
It was Lean who had magnanimously yielded even the bathtub. Serina had thought — has that bastard lost his mind? — then sunk her body into the wooden tub and luxuriated for the better part of an hour, washing the fatigue away.
Just in case, she had drained every last drop of the bathwater before stepping out — and Lean had taken his turn without a word of complaint.
Even after that, it had been one strange thing after another.
With every last preparation finished, Lean picked up his travel bag, stood at the door, and looked back at her.
"Shall we go, then."
What was this, now? She'd been certain he would tear her panties aside and bury himself inside her on the spot. At the unexpected turn, Serina stared at him for a moment — and that stare, quite plainly, kindled Lean's curiosity.
"Why, what is it? Do you perhaps wish to do something more...?"
Serina sprang up from her seat, cutting him off mid-sentence.
"G-go. Let's go."
Her mind must have well and truly come undone. To be thrown into a fluster by the news that he intended to leave without ravishing her.
Walking along behind Lean's back, Serina hammered blows against her own head. Weakly — so weakly that even a rabbit wouldn't have felt the pain.
Thud.
...So I was a man who amounted to only this much.
Had it already lodged itself in her as trauma? She had no desire to be exposed to violence, even in jest — and naturally, she wanted to avoid even the smallest pain.
All she had felt in her time with Lean came down to pleasure and pain, the two of them and nothing else. So it was hardly strange that she had made up her mind to devote herself to the former alone.
The two of them set off, keeping a proper distance between them as they walked to leave the village behind. Trailing along in his wake, Serina stretched long and hard, her heart light with relief. Simply escaping the space where she had been violated day after day was enough to make liberation come flooding over her — and then, feeling the urge to smash his skull in surging up all over again, she broke out in goosebumps.
Not yet. I have to lull him a little longer.
Since she had begun playing the obedient saintess, she had probed him steadily with questions, and the conclusion she reached was this: Lean would not head straight for the Order.
"Much as I would like to return at once, the villages nearby are in poor shape as well. Even if it means a detour, I intend to look after their wellbeing with the Saintess at my side before making for the Order."
Viewed one way, it was the obvious outcome. A hero sent to bring the saintess home safely had instead raped her — and, not content with that, had coupled with her flesh dozens of times over? He could have his head smashed in with a crucifix then and there, and have nothing to say for himself. At the very least, that was what Serina firmly believed.
And with good reason: she knew full well that the cardinal who now led the Letan Order was the blood brother of Galef, the man she had followed like a father. The letters Sister Michelle sent from time to time had assured her of it too — that the place was a properly run religious organization. So of course Lean would try to avoid going anywhere near the Order; there was not a chance he would hand her over so obediently.
I'll have to watch for the right opening, crack open the back of his skull, and run.
She had accepted doing whatever it took for that end. If she played the part of his girlfriend properly, then while he was too busy biting and sucking like a beast, shaking his hips out of his mind, she might manage to aim for a vital point.
Serina smoothed her knitted brow.
Perhaps because he felt her gaze on him, Lean stopped walking ahead of her and looked back.
"Saintess. Do you mean to keep following behind me?"
He gestured to the spot at his side. "It's been so long since you've been out — walk beside me, as if we were out for a stroll. It's been a long while since the Saintess felt the open air, hasn't it?"
"...Yes."
Serina took slow, languid steps until she stood at Lean's side. When he reached out his hand, she moved to take it.
"Hnngh..."
But her hand stopped midway and simply hung downward, curled awkwardly into a fist. Somewhere along the way, the hand she had meant to hold had plunged into her clothes instead, and was now kneading at her breast.
Her body had already been tingling with a sharp, stinging pleasure as the fabric scraped across her nipples — and now he was pressing down hard on them, squeezing and kneading at will. Serina's head swam.
"H-Hero. If you do that so suddenly..."
"The sights here would only be bad for the Saintess. That's why I'm telling you to pay your surroundings no mind and simply walk, in a pleasant state."
".........Yes."
Believing him makes me the fool. This lecher has no interest in something as innocent as holding hands while walking. Resigned, Serina let her shoulders sag a little and walked on in step with him, her body trembling faintly.
This much is nothing by now, isn't it? Yes. Endure. Just endure it.
Her mind so absorbed in that resolve, Serina whipped her head around in alarm at the sound of someone calling her.
"Yes?"
"Your expression looked poor. I worried you might be remembering something unpleasant — it had me fretting over nothing."
"I'm fine. Don't worry about it."
"Well, that's a relief."
Gradually growing used to it, Serina decided to ignore whatever was being done to her chest, and began to look slowly around her.
Still just as it was.
The ruined village kept those harrowing moments preserved, exactly as they had been. Though the bodies had long since been cleared away, the horror of that day remained vivid in Serina's memory.
She remembered Galef's back — pouring out every last ounce of his strength as he tended the wounded, right up to the very end. If only she had been a little faster, she might have blocked it. But before the spear she conjured could even leave her hand, a weapon had already found Galef's back. The demon adjutant cut him down with a single stroke and vanished without a trace, and Serina, arriving too late, had clutched his corpse and wept for a long, long while before she met the Hero.
She tried to imagine what would have happened if she hadn't taken the Hero's hand that day. If she had suspected him from the start and kept her guard up, could things have turned out differently? To the thought that rose in her, she added a denial.
No — I would have suffered something far more terrible instead. And I wouldn't even have had the hope of saving these people the way I did.
The Holy Sword had succeeded in touching every soul. Judged on that result alone, there was hope in it.
"Don't look too closely. As I said before, it will only make you feel worse."
"Yes. Th-that... hnngh... I won't."
The great problem was that every other part of it fed straight into the hostility she bore toward him.
Serina shot a sidelong glance at Lean.
Keep it in moderation, you perverted bastard.
But even that meager indulgence vanished without a trace once five minutes or so had passed. Her underwear was growing damp.
Back when she'd had a man's body, only a small patch of her would dampen with pre-cum; in this body, her lower half felt drenched clean through. Her mind grew muddled. Perhaps because nothing like it had ever happened to her before, the uncomfortable new discoveries were far more than one or two. If getting wet were the whole of it, she could have shut her mouth and simply kept walking — but her lower belly was heating up little by little, and warmth was spreading up around her neck.
Don't tell me I'm in heat?
The anxious thought soon became reality. Serina began deliberately knocking her knees together in time with her steps. If she didn't rub her crotch against something — anything — she felt she would lose her mind.
"Saintess. Are you unwell somewhere?"
Her head, frozen stiff, turned with great effort. An expression wearing the most awkward of smiles turned toward him.
"Ah... no..."
"Your color doesn't look good."
"As if... I— haahng..."
"If anything is troubling you, tell me at any time. I will grant you whatever you wish."
"Not yet... hnngh, I'm fi...ne, haahng...!"
Lean, who had by now set about tormenting her nipples in earnest, smirked as he watched her clamp her mouth shut.
You fucking bastard. This is what happens when I keep letting things slide...
Serina forced her trembling legs to carry her forward. Three steps — that was all. Her body stopped short, shuddered violently, and then crumpled, collapsing as though it would give out beneath her.
Even this — as though he had anticipated it — Lean wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her tight against him.
"Whoops. Saintess. Are you quite alright?"
Serina said nothing, only gasping for breath. More than raging at him, she found accepting this absurd situation the harder burden.
This is madness. I'm about to come just from having my chest groped?