Didn’t I just say I wouldn’t take payment?
Why does everyone who gathers around me lean toward going overboard?
The faint rustle of fabric on fabric.
Even though Mio had started undressing in front of me, my mind was — surprisingly — calm.
“Stop. I’ll call Alice.”
“Alice is on watch outside. She won’t hear.”
“You really don’t know her, do you? If I called for real, she’d come even from the opposite side of the world.”
”…Even so. I have a reason I can’t stop…”
Mio began to recount her past and her circumstances in a low, flowing voice.
But I had bigger fish to fry, so I listened with half an ear while thinking through how to extract myself.
If I forcibly shake her off, I escape Mio.
But she won’t be convinced — she’ll cling and try again.
That, I want to avoid.
…I recall reading once that if you apply gentleness after violence, the recipient can’t process the conflicting emotions and stops thinking.
Yes — this.
I’ll fudge it into something neutral and push through.
“So please, Lord Veret. Won’t you nurture love within me, just for one moment, and engrave it…?”
“No.”
The reason I’m refusing? Just one.
I’m a big-chest guy.
◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇
“I should never have given birth to you.”
Of all the words my mother flung at me, those were the most frequent, I think.
My mother was the mistress of a noble.
Lavishly doted on, living in luxury, or so I was told.
But when she became pregnant with me, the noble cast her aside, and she was driven out into the countryside.
She couldn’t live the way she used to.
She resented me.
Having lost both her easy life and the man she loved, she beat me, day after day.
Aaah — I should never have been born.
Without ever knowing love, I lived through my days.
After almost ten years of that life, my mother died — quietly.
The same woman who had so vigorously hit me every day.
I was then raised at the orphanage run by the royal capital’s church, and that brings me to today.
I could have served as a nun, but I refused.
I had wanted to help children who suffered violence as I had — that’s certainly one of my reasons.
But the biggest reason: I could not understand love.
How could someone who had never received love stand beside someone else’s pain?
How to raise a child, how to relate to them — I learned from books.
I learned because it was necessary.
But it was all surface.
I have been afraid, so deeply afraid, that we are not truly loving those children.
“So please, Lord Veret. Won’t you nurture love within me, just for one moment, and engrave it…?”
I am a base woman.
The deprivation of my childhood left me with a body that is hardly attractive.
If I explain my circumstances, the kind Lord Veret will accept me.
I came to make this night visit knowing he would save me.
“Mio…”
Lord Veret said my name and reached for my cheek—
“No.”
Slap. A clear refusal.
A memory from my childhood surfaced.
A throbbing, hot pain on my cheek, the first I’d felt since my mother.
“Ah… ahh…”
Next, and the next… I’ll be beaten until he’s satisfied.
I squeezed my eyes shut, as I had then, trying to endure the fear.
…But, trembling as I waited, no further violence came.
Fearful, I opened my eyes.
And I found myself being gently held by Lord Veret.
Eh? Eeh!? Wh… why…!?
“L-Lord Veret!?”
“I’m sorry. But to overwrite all the things that torment you — that act was necessary, first.”
“Ah…”
I finally grasped the meaning of what he’d done.
Lord Veret had struck my cheek on purpose, to dispel my past.
He’d given me the same violence as my mother, then a kindness she never showed me.
This warmth was what released me from being chained to the past (her).
”…Looks like it worked.”
Lord Veret patted my back twice and stood up.
The warmth pulling away made my heart lonely.
“The answer you seek is not for now.”
”…I understand. I will pray for your safe return.”
“No need.”
“What do you…?”
“Our victory is unshakable. That’s all.”
A declaration of victory from an absolute power.
There is nothing more reassuring.
“So Mio, sleep without worry. When you wake, it’ll all be over.”
To the very moment he leaves, he gives me his kindness.
Thank you.
But — I am not so foolish as to merely receive.
“I will absolutely greet you and your companions at the entrance when you return.”
He didn’t reply to my words.
He only smiled, and left the room.
◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇
”…Argh, please let Mio just be asleep…”
I’d been hoping to dodge her question about love and quietly leave.
I’m no saint. I have no life experience to answer something that heavy.
So I told her to sleep and wait — but at that rate, she’s definitely awake.
“Ouga? Something the matter?”
“No, nothing.”
I shook my head.
Can’t. We’re about to step into a battlefield.
Carrying extra thoughts can be the difference between life and death.
The true first-class villain does not lower his guard even against weaker enemies.
“Hey. This is the place, yes?”
”…!! …!!”
The guide — gagged with cloth so he couldn’t speak — nodded furiously.
According to what Alice had extracted, their headquarters was the only tavern in Inivent.
The boss was inside, drinking, waiting for his men’s report.
“Mashiro. You’re fully awake now, yes?”
“Y-yes! I slept lots, I’m full of energy!”
“Good. Don’t tense up too much. I’ll handle the boss. You scatter the small fry around the edges.”
“Got it!”
Mashiro flared her nostrils, fully fired up.
She was so fired up that her chest, pressed between her arms, was distorting its shape.
I looked away and turned to my sword.
“Alice. You don’t move this time. The point is to gauge Mashiro’s ability.”
“Understood.”
She’d tied up the captured thugs and was carrying them with both arms, so she only bowed her head.
Just what kind of arm strength does she have, really.
“Dammit…! Aren’t they back yet!?”
“L-Lord Aliban! Please, calm yourself!”
“That’s a waste of fine liquor!”
A thick, alcohol-roughened voice and the sound of a glass bottle shattering from inside.
The target’s there, all right.
”…All right, let’s go.”
I raised a leg high and kicked the door in.
“Gwaaah—!?”
The wail of the unlucky one nearest the entrance and the sudden splintering sound drew every eye.
“What the hell, you bastards!?”
“The man who came to deliver you nightmares.”
I lifted a sharp grin and pointed at the giant — likely Aliban — with veins bulging at his temples.
“This is the end point of your evil.”