1.
Crumple...
After Lionel hurried back to bed, Dolores remained alone in her office and crumpled Maison Arbuella’s measurement sheet.
"...Haa."
Feeling faintly flustered, she rested a hand on her forehead.
Had he seen it? Lionel was clever, so he might have.
"..."
There were several reasons she had accepted Lionel’s measurements even though she already had recorded measurements.
For one thing, a woman’s body was variable. It changed with the food she ate, her lifestyle, and most importantly...
Her measurements could also change depending on her health.
I’ve gotten healthier.
So it makes sense to measure again.
It was an entirely rational conclusion.
Besides...
"The child wanted to measure me..."
How could she refuse when he looked at her with such bright eyes, insisting it was the best thing for her?
She also could not disappoint a child who had carefully prepared for it and been looking forward to it.
"..."
Everything after that had been perfectly normal judgment as well.
Taking a bath first had merely been to wash herself clean before being measured.
She had chosen to wear her thinnest and prettiest underwear because Lionel had asked her to.
She had let down her hair because it was still wet, making it difficult to braid again.
And the reason she had not immediately tie her robe shut was...
I don’t know.
I don’t know...
In any event, there had been reasons for all of it.
Y-You’re pretty.
The child’s voice suddenly came to mind.
Her style had been different from usual, so surely it had merely been an offhand impression.
There could not have been any special meaning behind it.
Fidget.
Dolores pressed the back of her hand to the corners of her lips, trying to calm them down.
Crack... rustle...
The paper in her hand froze stark white before crumbling apart.
She no longer needed that measurement sheet.
Everything that had happened today had been decided through Dolores’s rational judgment.
Every one of her actions had a reasonable reason behind it.
Thinking that made her feel a little better.
...Though the corners of her lips never did come down.
2.
"..."
Scrub, scrub.
If there was one fortunate thing, it was that I was a blacksmith.
Making a simple detergent was damn easy.
I just mixed ash left over from burned charcoal with water and scrubbed the clothes clean.
My estimated age was thirteen. That was definitely an age when mistakes could happen.
The previous day had been pretty shocking, hadn’t it?
I understood. Even Kim Yujin at thirty might have made the exact same mistake.
I couldn’t confidently say otherwise.
Anyway, congratulations on becoming a man, Lionel.
Fuck.
One considerate and delicate thing about Yuna was that she kept her mouth shut in embarrassing situations like this.
[...Hehe.]
Yeah. Keep doing that.
Fortunately, doing laundry from six in the morning was not especially difficult.
It was just that the situation when I woke up had been so horrifying and mortifying.
It had been about fifteen years, counting by calendar years.
"...Everyone was asleep, right?"
I was not asking anyone in particular.
Nor did I want anyone to answer.
I wrung out my washed underwear and pants as thoroughly as I could, then hung them one by one from the rack attached to the workshop ceiling.
They would all be dry in about two hours.
Why? Because I was about to fire up the furnace.
With the crucible furnace burning, I...
Rustle.
Carefully took out a neatly wrapped paper bag.
Inside it lay a folded piece of black fabric.
This was Dolores’s underwear.
When I woke up, this had been sitting by my pillow.
It was not Christmas, but my heart had pounded the instant I woke up.
Slide...
"It’s black..."
Black is nice too...
I think it would go well with Dolores’s soft, fair skin...
Should I make it black...?
I spread a white cloth over the cleanest workbench I had.
Then I placed the black underwear on top of it.
For reference, the bra was big enough to cover my face.
It felt like if the workshop caught fire, I could tear off one side and use it as a mask.
"Phew..."
I pulled over a chair and sat before the workbench.
For the next two hours while the crucible furnace heated up, I planned to dismantle and analyze Dolores’s underwear.
And then...
I had not realized the reason underwear was black was that it represented a black hole.
My precious two hours vanished.
"I can’t see in front of me."
[That’s because you’re wearing it over your face.]
"Oh, okay."
I lowered the underwear that had been covering my face and wrote down the results of my analysis.
I could not be certain, but the outer fabric seemed to have been woven from black thread.
The inner side that touched the skin had been lined with softer thread.
Since it was so large, the section wrapping beneath the breasts was rather sturdy.
The shoulder straps were much higher than those of ordinary underwear as well.
"It has strong support."
Dolores had large breasts, so naturally, a function that supported their shape and kept them from bouncing was important.
Since it had been custom-made, it did seem to account for those difficulties in its own way.
The problem was...
"...It would be uncomfortable if worn for a long time."
All right, the underwear itself was good.
The material was good, and it suited her body type, but ultimately, it was an item focused on holding everything in place.
Especially beneath the breasts and around the sides.
"The pressure here is too strong, isn’t it?"
For an ordinary person, it might only feel a little constricting.
But it was different for Dolores, whose circulation was already poor and whose veins were blocked by cold.
It would probably feel suffocating.
The bottoms were not much different.
Dolores had a sturdy, childbearing build, so if they were made wide enough for her hips, the waist would be tight.
But if they fit her hips, there would be a gap at the waist.
Her lower body itself had an hourglass shape, so empty space formed no matter where they were fitted.
Though continuing to examine a woman’s body like this made me seem like quite a pervert, I still felt I had a long way to go.
At least when it came to Mama’s body, I dreamed of reaching a level where I could describe its shape with my eyes closed.
"..."
Given their size, support was indispensable.
But I did not want to make her uncomfortable.
Something that held them in place without really constraining them...
"...What if its properties changed moment by moment?"
[What do you mean?]
"The material’s properties."
Soft when she was still.
But if a part started moving and bouncing, only that part would become firm.
Comfortable under normal circumstances, but strong during battle or movement.
Let’s think about the material.
I felt like I had seen something with properties like that somewhere...
Ah, right. Like potato starch mixed with water.
I briefly buried my face in the underwear.
Remember, damn it.
It smells nice.
Then...
"...Ah."
I remembered.
The material used for elven bowstrings.
It stretched softly when pulled slowly, but the instant force was applied, it stiffened firmly.
Why would a bowstring need such a property?
When drawing the bow, it stretched smoothly to assist the physically weak elves.
But the moment the arrow was released, the string reacted to the force of snapping back toward the bow and contracted even more powerfully.
Easy to draw, stronger to shoot.
"What is this?"
Wasn’t this exactly the material I needed right now?
It would hold Dolores in place when she walked or moved intensely, but when she was resting, it could sway just enough...
Hehe.
Now that I thought about it...
"This is a material optimized for underwear, isn’t it?"
You elves are a pretty lewd race, huh?
How sly.
Well, they were elves... Mm-hm, that did somehow make sense.
Elves were originally a lewd race, after all.
The material was called Spirit Thread.
It had to be drawn directly from spirits, though the process itself was rather complicated.
You had to win a spirit’s favor, obtain a spirit stone, crush it into tiny pieces, and dissolve them in water.
The once-solid crystal would melt into the water into a thick liquid, which you extruded through a spinneret full of tiny holes to make thread.
That much was merely the prototype.
To give it proper properties, it had to be tuned at the end.
I heard that elven craftsmanship involved tapping it with their hands or a flat board because they lacked suitable tools.
Sorry, but I did not want to do that.
"With a hammer."
I would spread the prototype threads over an anvil.
Then I would hammer them with different levels of force depending on the area.
The lightly hammered sections would become the upper part of the bra, which needed to restrain bouncing less...
And the heavily hammered sections would support beneath the breasts, right?
Elves adjusted the moment their bowstrings hardened through that process.
This was going to be an utterly miserable job on an unprecedented level.
Before that, though...
"Could you open my DMs?"
I had not opened my DMs for a long time because of the Abyss and the lingering unease it left me with. I wondered how many messages had arrived.
【High Chieftain of the Great Forest, Erien】[19]
Hm, that was not too bad considering how long I had left them unread.
I opened the message window.
【High Chieftain of the Great Forest, Erien】: Heir ㅠㅠ Nothing happened to you, did it? ㅠㅠㅠ
That was the last message.
Okay, I would do as much as I could first, then ask for help if I needed it.
It did not seem like these people could open the [Children of the Forest] textbook anyway.
"Yes, I’m alive."
After sending a brief reply, I closed the message window.
Swipe.
Then I naturally opened a document.
[🔑] An Introductory Guide to Elven Equipment Crafting.
I skimmed past the table of contents—methods for softening leather, reading the grain of gemstones, thermal-shock delamination, and so on.
"Found it."
[Chapter 4. Spirit Thread]
I immediately opened that section.
─────────────────
『The crystal a spirit gives is part of its heart. Do not covet it and take it by force; wait until it offers it of its own accord.』
『It is an extremely, extremely, extremely, extremely precious material, so you must never use it carelessly.』
─────────────────
Okay.
This had honestly been what I was most curious about too.
Where the hell was I supposed to get spirit stones?
Seeing as it said “extremely” four times, they really seemed precious...
『Because it is a raw stone obtainable only when one’s affinity with spirits reaches its utmost limit, you must take care not to lose their trust...』
Ugh, I was already tired.
I looked at the reference photo of a spirit stone in the textbook.
It was about large enough to fit comfortably in one’s palm.
Within its transparent surface was a colorful stone with a jumble of mixed colors.
Each stone had different colors, but objectively speaking... it was pretty.
Could I find one at an auction house?
"...?"
But what was this?
It looked awfully familiar.
I had definitely seen this somewhere...
I searched my memories.
And then...
"Ruby."
Recently, Ruby had complained whenever she jumped rope that it was no longer enough exercise.
I thought she was starting up again, but then she had suddenly stuffed colorful stones into a pouch, tied it around her waist, and started jumping.
I enlarged the image.
"...They’re identical, aren’t they?"
I realized they looked exactly like the stones Ruby casually stuffed into a pouch before jumping.
No, wait a second.
The elves supposedly could not get these stones even if they desperately wanted them.
And Ruby used them for weight training?
Rustle, rustle.
I took down the underwear and pants hanging from the ceiling, shoved them into the bag containing Dolores’s underwear, and...
Headed straight back to the mansion.
Bang!
I threw open the door to the drawing room... no, I should call it the gym now.
"You scared me."
"Ruby."
As it happened, Ruby was stuffing spirit stones into a leather pouch.
Oh, those precious things.
"Why?"
"Give me some stones."
Naturally, she resisted at first...
"No."
"I’ll make you something better."
"Uh..."
Clink, clink.
I scooped up a bucketful of sand from the garden and made her sandbags of the same weight.
I even provided the service of fastening them around her waist myself.
"This is better, right? It doesn’t rattle."
"...Yeah, I guess it is... And I like that you put it on me..."
"Yeah, I’ll keep putting them on for you from now on. Tell me if you need more weight."
"...Thanks."
Thus, with sweet talk mixed with words carefully chosen to win her favor...
I succeeded in taking—no, obtaining—all the spirit stones from Ruby, stones the elves could not get no matter how badly they wanted them.
This was what you called a win-win trade.
3.
Meanwhile, in Dolores’s office.
Why do you look so miserable again?
"..."
Dolores silently held her forehead.
Could you move your hand? I finally call you after so long, and...
At those words, Dolores reluctantly lowered her hand.
The other party was an old friend with whom she had once climbed the Tower, a companion who had filled the role commonly called a healer.
No matter how much she thought about it, there was no one else she could ask such a private and serious question... Only this woman, who was discreet and possessed extensive medical knowledge.
...Hey. Why is your face so red?
Did you drink poison?
In the end, after moving her lips several times, Dolores finally managed to open her mouth.
"...The child became a man, what am I supposed to do... Hic."
She covered her face halfway through speaking.
Wh-what did you say? I couldn’t hear you well.
"TheboyI’mlookingafterbecameamanwhatamIsupposedtodofromnowon..."
What?
"..."
Dolores tightly bit her lip.
Then...
"The boy I’m looking after became a man."
What are you talking about?
"...I’m asking what I’m supposed to do for him from now on."
...
How long did it take?
How old is he?
That was what the other woman asked.
Dolores’s voice grew even quieter.
"...years old."
As soon as Dolores said it...
...
...Wow.
"...Um."
What do you mean, what should you do for him, you crazy bitch?!
"No, I just meant from now on..."
What exactly did you want to do for him?
"..."
Dolores shut her mouth.
He might simply have been surprised and confused on his own, so she should have a calm conversation with him.
But she had a feeling she should not elaborate any further in response to that question.
Yet she was a person who could not bear unanswered curiosity.
"It’s just that he might have been flustered and having a hard time alone..."
I’m hanging up.
"I’m not done talking yet..."
Do it five years from now. Five years from now.
Click.
The connection was cut off.
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