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[Rudeus’s POV]
After finishing my afternoon swordsmanship lesson, washing off my sweat with Lumi, and getting ready to leave the house to see Sylph, I was about to head out.
"Lumi, don’t you want to come play with Sylph and me?"
"Today, I want to quietly drink tea and sit in the rocking chair."
"Is that so?"
"My sword still hasn’t been repaired, so I thought it wouldn’t be bad to rest for a while."
Was resting supposed to feel this leisurely for a child?
For some reason, Lumi’s way of relaxing didn’t seem very childlike.
Though I had no right to criticize him, considering I myself hadn’t acted much like a child until recently.
If Lumi wanted to rest alone, there was no need to drag him along.
Just as I thought that and was about to leave the house...
"Lumi~!"
"We came... to play again today."
Clear voices calling for Lumi came from beyond the garden.
Approaching while waving their hands were a beautiful white-haired, heterochromatic-eyed girl with a cheerful air and a black-haired, delicate-looking oni girl.
At the girls’ arrival, Lumi greeted them with a bitter smile.
"...Karen, Karin, welcome."
"Today, we’ll have an exciting sparring match—no, wait!"
"We’re... going to play."
Lumi had been sitting in the rocking chair and drinking the black tea Lilia had made. He looked troubled by the girls’ sudden visit and tried to refuse them, but it was already too late.
"No, today I was planning to meditate alone while blankly gazing at the sky..."
"What? Why would you do something so boring?"
"Let’s... play ball... together."
My younger brother might have been as gentle as a fluffy little lamb, but there was no way he could defeat a wolf and fox in sheep’s clothing.
The moment he showed even the slightest opening, the game was over.
"Come spend time with your big sisters."
"W-Wait... I..."
"Do you not want to?"
"Lumi... do you hate us?"
See? It was terrifying when they knew how to use their beauty as a weapon.
How many men could refuse the pleading of beautiful girls looking at them with tearful eyes?
With a troubled look, as though he had swallowed bitter medicine, Lumi gave in to their request.
"...Nngh. ...Only for an hour."
Seeing Karen’s forceful attitude and Karin looking as though she might burst into tears at any moment, Lumi reluctantly took the sisters’ outstretched hands and was practically dragged outside.
Watching him, jealousy and envy slowly began burning within my heart.
"A harem? He’s only six years old... and he’s already built himself a harem?"
Unlike me, who had struggled so hard and felt so anxious while trying to mend the awkwardness between Sylph and me until just recently, Lumi had gained two fiancées in only three days.
And according to what Paul and Zenith said, they were apparently famous in the village for being pretty.
Watching this unfold, I was once again made keenly aware that Lumi had inherited Paul’s womanizing genes.
"Well, from the outside, it just looks like three girls going off to play together."
I had thought a manly impression like Paul’s would be popular in this world, but apparently it was not much different from my previous world.
After all, even a pretty boy like Lumi, whose appearance could confuse people about his gender—a yasao-otoko, in technical terms—had no trouble charming girls.
Come to think of it, they had always existed near the very top of the food-chain pyramid in my previous life.
Handsome men and pretty men. And especially pretty yasao-otoko beautiful enough to charm even handsome men were exceedingly rare.
In gaming terms, they were rare characters on par with an SSR pull.
Even the gods and heroes of ancient myths pursued beautiful boys and young men, rather than beautiful women, as symbols of pure love.
Japan was no different.
In fact, there were even written records that, long ago, infants were gathered together and put through various procedures to create male prostitutes for that purpose. That was how rare men more beautiful than women were.
Sometimes, seeing photos online of cross-dressing men that had been touched up, I had thought it was convincing enough.
Of course, most of them were artificial creations made through photo editing and makeup, so I also found them vaguely unpleasant.
Back then, I had thought they were imaginary creatures that did not truly exist, like unicorns or pegasi.
Yet there was a real otokonoko right in front of me.
What an exciting situation this was.
Until Lumi was five, even bathing together had made my heart pound.
His hair color was different, and so was his eye color. I even wondered whether he might be my half-brother by another mother.
I had even considered taking things all the way, but whenever I saw the face he occasionally made that was the spitting image of Zenith’s, or his talent for swordsmanship like Paul’s, I was reminded that we were brothers born of the same blood.
After that, I simply stopped thinking much of it.
Come to think of it, that was only natural. How many people in the real world looked at their own older or younger sister as a member of the opposite sex?
Only someone with a serious sister complex would. Compared to that, I was an otaku who could distinguish reality from fiction.
"I worked so hard and worried so much just to make up with Sylph... but Lumi did it in one shot."
Rather than viewing Sylph as a member of the opposite sex, I had resolved to return to the normal relationship we had always shared.
I would treat her as normally as possible. So she would not be frightened, so she would not be flustered, I would conceal the manly part of myself for now.
It was a different situation from mine, where I had resolved to wait for the right time like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
If anything, Lumi was the gentle sheep, while instinct-driven wolf cubs dragged him this way and that.
Since Lumi had been the victim in the first place, that was probably why such a relationship had formed.
More than that, he had promised a future with sisters two and three years older than him.
Three days ago, the sisters Karen and Karin, who had forcibly stripped Lumi’s clothes off, declared that they would take responsibility for him and make him their husband.
Their mother and Zenith, who had watched the whole thing, squealed happily in delight.
Paul, meanwhile, staggered and lost his balance in a gag-manga-like display.
The sight of the sisters wanting to marry him on the spot and Lumi, flustered and demure like a young bride about to be married off, had been truly spectacular.
The sisters’ impulsive personalities combined with Lumi’s rigid personality to create a rather interesting development, but no matter what, children who knew nothing of the world getting married was unreasonable.
Paul and Kashua soothed the children and reached an agreement: they would start by being friends first.
The result was the sight before me—Lumi reluctantly being dragged away by the Oni sisters in the distance.
My little brother was spending the busy days of his youth being pushed around by his carnivorous childhood friends.
"Haha... damn normies, go explode."
As I said that, Sylph, who had apparently arrived without me noticing, tilted her head and joined in.
"Normies explode? Rudy, what does that mean?"
"Oh, Sylph. It doesn’t mean anything, so just ignore it."
"Really? It’s not an incantation for an explosion spell?"
"Absolutely not. More importantly, I’ll teach you a new spell on the hill today, so let’s get going."
"Okay~!"
Then again, who was I to call anyone a normie?
I had cute Sylph by my side too, after all, thanks to an experience straight out of a romantic comedy.
At first, I thought Sylph was a boy. But it couldn’t be helped.
When we first met, her hair had been even shorter than mine.
It was not stylish enough to call it a very short cut, but neither was it shaved close to the scalp.
She had never worn feminine clothes like Karen and Karin did, either.
A pale-colored top and trousers. That was all. If she had worn a skirt, I would not have been confused.
No... thinking about it calmly, she had probably cut her hair short so it would not stand out because she had been bullied over its color.
And because she had to run away whenever she was bullied, she wore trousers rather than a skirt.
More than anything, Sylph’s family was not as well-off as mine or the sisters’.
So if they could afford to have one pair of trousers made, they did not have the means to make a skirt as well.
If we had met three years later, I would not have mistaken her for a boy.
In the first place, I had merely assumed Sylph was another pretty boy like Lumi because there was an otokonoko like him around.
There was no point arguing about it now. I could not go back and change it.
Now, I could only—
"Rudy, why have you been spacing out for so long?"
"It’s nothing~. I was just worried about how Lumi is playing..."
"Why Lumi? Karen and Karin like Lumi, don’t they?"
"Yeah. That’s why I’m worried."
"Huh?"
All I could do was pray inwardly that Lumi, who unexpectedly found it difficult to deal with girls, would somehow overcome this ordeal.
◆◇◆
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[Luminous’s POV]
After that incident, Karen and Karin came looking for me every day.
Whenever I tried to refuse them, they used their exceptional strength and their tears as girls to leave me utterly unable to resist.
In the end, unable to overcome their pleading, it became routine for me to be dragged along by the sisters and spend time in the wide fields.
"Lumi! I won’t go easy on you today."
"...Karen, your attacks are too headlong. You focus so much on attacking that you waste unnecessary strength. You need to learn defense and counters."
"It’s no use saying that! I’m the type who learns with my body!!"
"?!"
While Karin spread out a mat and unpacked the lunch she had brought, Karen and I began sparring.
Using the martial arts she had learned from her Oni mother, Karen turned out to be a surprisingly good practice partner.
Of course, she was still inexperienced, lacking the ability to control her strength and speed, to observe several moves ahead, and to respond accordingly.
But her tremendous strength, enough to knock someone down with a single hit, was not something to dismiss.
In fact, if I made even one mistake and got hit, she was as dangerous as a weapon that could send me to my grave.
Unlike Father, she did not recognize the violence in herself, and the fear that inspired was more than enough to revive the instincts of my previous life.
Thus, our sparring session in the name of play came to an end when Karen’s stomach rumbled.
◆◇◆
Karen and Karin were Kashua’s two daughters. Kashua ran the village smithy, and the girls had been born to her and their father, who was of mixed Oni and Dwarf blood.
Karen, who looked exactly like her father, had no horns, but she had inherited her mother’s exceptional strength intact.
In contrast, Karin, who resembled her Oni mother, had inherited the traits and talents of the Oni.
They had each inherited different traits from their parents, so their talents differed as well.
Karen had a bold personality and a talent for close-quarters combat using her immense strength.
Karin, with her quiet and meticulous personality, resembled her mother, a skilled craftswoman as well as a blacksmith, and was exceptionally talented at making things.
"Lumi, is something funny? Why are you grinning like that?"
"...Just seeing how well you two get along is quite amusing."
Despite being sisters who were surprisingly incompatible in many ways, they had always gotten along without fighting.
Perhaps it was because they had been born only a year apart.
Still, simply seeing sisters who got along without fighting was heartwarming.
"My sister is... dependable, and she always gives in to me."
"Karin is my little sister. There aren’t any big brothers or sisters who bully their younger siblings, right? That’s why we can share our future husband like this too~."
"Y-Yes... We’ll get along and take responsibility for Luminous."
At the sisters’ unexpected answer, my expression crumpled.
Those innocent, wolf-like girls gave me a shock as though electricity had run through my chest.
The tips of my ears burned.
"...Uuugh."
"Lumi, your ears are red~."
"So... cute..."
"You really do like older girls, don’t you? That’s it, isn’t it~?"
"I’m... happy that you like us."
They were only girls two or three years older than me, so why did I become so weak around them?
At times like this, I missed Sanosuke’s advice.
[Hey, Saito, if you’ve come to the pleasure quarter, it’s only natural to keep courtesans close, isn’t it? All the others have a courtesan beside them while they talk, but you’re the only one alone. Don’t you think that’s strange?]
[For a samurai, becoming entangled with women is...]
The two handsome men who received the full devotion of the women even within the Shinsengumi.
Hijikata Toshizo was feared as the Demon Vice Commander for his icy manner and decisiveness, but those same qualities stirred the hearts of women.
In complete contrast to Hijikata, Harada Sanosuke was popular for his gentle whispers that quietly tugged at the heart, and for words and a face as warm as a hearth fire.
Because the Shinsengumi’s intelligence work sometimes required gathering information at the pleasure quarters, Sanosuke frequented them as though they were his own home.
Whenever he went, he always took me along. The reason was—
[There you go again. To be honest, it’s just because you’re not used to women, isn’t it?]
[Th-That is not it. I merely...]
[A fellow so marvelous with a sword turns as weak as a child before women... Isn’t that amusing? Get a little more used to women, would you~? You never know when some woman might lure you in and pounce on you, Saito! Hey, ladies! Please keep this fellow company.]
He always claimed that he was trying to train me, because while I could show my true self as naturally as breathing when facing ruffians and ronin, I could not even properly exchange a word with women.
「Oh my~, then would you accept a drink from me, dear samurai~?」
[U-Uuugh! Wait! I-I merely do not get close to women unless they are the woman I will marry...!]
[Oh ho ho ho ho~. What an adorable samurai you are. Girls, let us all keep this samurai company.]
[Eek~. What does it feel like to hold a woman~?]
[...Uuuugh!]
[Oh my, oh my, look at how red his face is, like a camellia blossom~.]
[So cute~.]
Sanosuke told me not to act awkward around women.
If a woman among the imperial loyalists dressed as a man and tried to fight with a sword, would I refuse to draw my blade?
After Vice Commander Hijikata made that remark, those days continued.
Thanks to that, I did become somewhat more natural around women, I suppose...
No. I had been unfamiliar with women even in my previous life, but not to this extent.
After settling in Aizu, I married women of samurai families there and built a family.
At first, even holding hands had troubled me.
But as we touched one another, weathered the trials of time together, gave birth to children, and raised them, I came to think of them not as women but as family, and it no longer bothered me.
Time had passed, and my emotions had grown dull. I had thought I was unaffected by women.
Yet this young body I had gained through reincarnation reacted far too sensitively to the opposite sex.
Even though my mind was that of an old man, my immature body was painfully honest in its response to girls.
"D-Don’t say things like that. And more importantly, don’t hold my hand. This is something married couples do."
"What’s the problem? You’re our future husband anyway~."
"I want... to touch Lumi’s hand a little more."
"Uuuugh!"
I was far too weak when it came to women.
Even when I tried to shake them off, Karen and Karin kept reaching for me like vines, and I ended up stiffening as hard as stone.
"S-Stop it... It’s embarrassing..."
"It’s not anything to be embarrassed about. We’re only holding hands. The more shy you get, the cuter you become~."
"Just like my sister says... Lumi is cute. I like... cute things too. And... when you saved me, you were incredibly cool. You’re a cool and cute... husband... so I like you, Lumi."
Overwhelming embarrassment rose inside me without beginning or end, and I lowered my head of my own accord.
Perhaps they found my reaction amusing, because the two of them came even closer and spoke to me.
"...Y-You two... shouldn’t say things like that so casually to a man."
"Oh my, why not? Your big sisters mean it~."
"I-It isn’t casual! I-I’m saying it to my husband!"
That was how it went. They were not even very good at speaking, yet before I knew it, I had childhood friends who had promised to marry me.
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