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[Rudeus’s POV]
Our household had nearly been torn apart by the fact that Lilia was pregnant with Paul’s child.
Well, I had already known this was going to happen.
Ever since Zenith became pregnant, Paul had no choice but to live abstinently...
And I had seen that man, unable to control his libido, sneaking into Lilia’s room in the middle of the night.
Lumi had been beside me, so I hurried back to my room.
If I had truly been a little kid, I probably would have gone in with Lumi and suggested we play cards together.
After all, Lilia sometimes spent her evenings playing chess or cards with Lumi.
But unfortunately, I knew.
I knew what was going on—not beneath the deck, but behind Mother’s back.
I thought they could have been a little more careful.
Hadn’t our health teacher said something like this in middle-school health class back in my previous life?
—Good children, everyone! If you do it, you can make it happen! What a splendid phrase. Now then, we shall teach you the importance of contraception!
I dearly wanted to say that directly to Paul, whose face had gone pale.
Well, I had no idea whether this world even had the concept of contraception...
Of course, I had no intention of exposing the truth and causing the family to fall apart.
I had even returned to my room and asked Lumi to keep this matter secret from Mother.
Normally, I would never have forgiven him for laying hands on a maid.
But I owed Paul over the Sylph matter.
Just this once, I would forget it like an innocent child.
Being a popular man was hard. So if he ever came under suspicion, I would cover for him.
I could even fabricate a false alibi. Just as I resolved that and gave Paul a reassuring look,
Lumi stepped forward first and defended Lilia.
He pleaded in a heartrending voice, like a kitten that had lost its mother.
Perhaps Zenith had been weakened by the teary voice of such an innocent child, because she readily accepted logic that did not make any sense from her own standpoint.
What Lumi said did have some merit.
The harvest season had ended, and it was now winter, with snow falling thickly from the sky.
In such winter weather, the chances of a mother who had just given birth and a newborn safely completing a journey were not particularly high.
And since Lilia had been sending her wages back to her hometown, there was no way she could afford a shared carriage.
Setting out with a newborn in the dead of winter was practically a death sentence.
After hearing Lumi, I made up my mind.
Partly for Paul’s sake, but also for Lilia’s... I would help her.
I owed Lilia in my own way.
We had never been particularly close, and when I was a newborn, she had even found me unsettling.
She often looked after young Lumi, but she had barely ever spoken to me. Still, she had certainly taken care of me.
Even when I disobeyed Mother and took Lumi upstairs, Lilia noticed everything and chose to overlook it.
When I sweated from sword practice, she prepared a towel.
When I got soaked in the rain, she prepared hot water.
On cold nights, she prepared blankets.
When I failed to put away my books, she tidied them neatly.
And above all. Above all... above all else.
She had kept silent about the panties I had secretly obtained from Roxy.
Yes. Lilia knew. That had been back when I still thought Sylph was a boy.
It was raining. Lumi had gone to bathe, and I was in my room reading a plant encyclopedia as review.
Then Lilia came in and began cleaning.
Absorbed in my reading, I failed to notice Lilia cleaning near the drawer where I kept the panties.
By the time I noticed, it was already too late. Lilia was holding the panties in her hand.
I thought I was an idiot.
I had spent nearly twenty years shut away in my room in my previous life.
I had lived with everything spread out wherever I pleased, without a care.
On my computer desktop, alongside a folder titled "Heh-Heh," I had openly displayed a folder containing all sorts of memes I had gathered online, titled "Suhanmu Suhanmu Poop-Thrower the Panties Shinpachi Wore the Day Before Yesterday Shinpachi’s Life Balmung=Featherion Isaac=Schneider Two-Thirds of the Remaining One-Third Pure Feeling Is a Feeling Worried About Crumbs I Know That the Traitor Knows My Name While Not Knowing It Ruth Surume Medaka Kazunoko Koedame Medaka This Medaka Is Different from the One Earlier I Mean Ikeno Medaka Chili Oil Yu-Gi-Oh Drug King Pirate King PePePePePePePePePePePe Diarrhea Poopmaru."
So perhaps my concealment skills had rusted away.
But I had never imagined she would find them so easily.
I had hidden them quite diligently... Was this what maids were like?
Something inside me collapsed, and at the same time I could hear the blood draining from the top of my head.
The interrogation began.
"What is this?"
"W-w-w-what is th-th-that?"
"It smells..."
"Could it be that it does not not smell like sesame oil?"
"Whose is it?"
"I’m sorry. They belong to Miss Roxy."
"...Wouldn’t it be better to wash them?"
"Wash them?! What an absurd thing to say!"
"... ..."
Without a word, Lilia put the panties back in the drawer.
Then she left the room, leaving me trembling behind.
That night, I resolved to repay that kindness.
But Lumi acted first.
He persuaded Zenith before I could.
Before I knew it, everything had become Paul’s responsibility, and Lilia had become a victim who had surrendered herself because she could not withstand Paul’s threats.
That was how the situation ended, and Zenith looked at Paul with cold eyes, as though she were looking at a pig about to be slaughtered.
In certain circles, he might have enjoyed that as a reward, but my [Neo Armstrong Cyclone Armstrong Cannon] shriveled right up.
With that look in her eyes, Zenith returned to the bedroom alone.
Lilia was crying.
Lumi told me to leave this place to him and entrusted Zenith to me.
Well, I was not especially close to Lilia either, so comforting Zenith was probably the more effective move right now.
I followed Zenith to the bedroom.
If Paul and Zenith got divorced over this incident, that would be a problem in its own right.
When I knocked on the bedroom door, Zenith immediately poked her head out.
"Mother, what Lumi and I said earlier was a lie we made up on the spot. Please do not hate Father."
I said it quickly, without laying any groundwork at all.
Zenith looked dumbfounded for a moment, then gave a bitter smile and gently stroked my head.
"I know. It is not as though I fell in love with a man vile enough to do something like that. He is an idiot who goes mad for women, so I had prepared myself for something like this happening someday. It only startled me because it happened so suddenly."
"...Does Father really lose his head over women that badly?"
I played ignorant as I casually asked.
"Yes. He has been better lately, but in the past he was unbearable. For all I know, Rudy and Lumi may have older brothers or sisters somewhere that I do not know about."
The hand stroking my head tightened.
"Rudy, you must not grow up to be that sort of adult, all right?"
"But Lumi is always with Karen and Karin, isn’t he?"
"That is... an exceptional case. To be honest, it is the first time Mother has ever seen anything like it in her life."
Is that so? It seemed Lumi’s case was rare even in this world.
Well, even in a romantic comedy manga, it would be hard to find a story where a delicate otokonoko herbivore made fierce carnivorous older women bring up marriage first.
"In any case, Rudy, you must cherish Sylph, understand?"
The hand stroking—or rather, gripping—my head continued to tighten.
"Ah, that hurts. Of course, Mother. It hurts, though."
It felt as though a huge nail had been driven into my future behavior.
Still, I supposed this would be all right.
What happened from here on depended on Paul’s efforts.
Even so, it really was a problem that our father had gone and made such a mess.
There will not be a next time, señor.
The next day.
For some reason, sword practice became incredibly grueling.
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[A Vow of Loyalty.]
Lilia had been a guard maid in the Asura royal harem.
A guard maid was a maid who also possessed the qualities of a guard.
Normally, she performed maid duties, but in an emergency, she took up a sword and protected her master.
Lilia was devoted to her duties and carried out her work as a maid without issue.
But as a swordswoman, she had no more than middling talent.
Because of that, while fighting an assassin who had targeted a newborn princess, she made a mistake and was stabbed in the leg by a dagger.
The dagger had been coated with poison.
It was poison intended to kill royalty.
A troublesome poison for which no detoxification spell existed.
Her wound was immediately treated with healing magic, and a doctor attempted to detoxify her, allowing her to survive—but lasting effects remained.
She could live her daily life without trouble, but she could no longer run at full speed or move sharply.
Lilia’s life as a swordswoman ended that day.
The royal palace dismissed Lilia outright.
It was not uncommon, so Lilia accepted it.
It was only natural to be dismissed once one had lost one’s abilities.
She received no money for immediate living expenses, but she thought she should at least be grateful that she was not secretly executed merely because she had worked in the harem.
Lilia left the royal palace. The mastermind behind the princess’s attempted assassination had not yet been found.
Knowing the structure of the harem, Lilia understood perfectly well that her life could be in danger.
Perhaps the royal palace had released Lilia into the world to use her as bait and draw out the mastermind.
She had once wondered why someone from such an unremarkable family had been accepted into the harem, but in hindsight, perhaps they had simply wanted to employ a maid they could discard this way.
In any case, she needed to get as far from the royal capital as possible to protect herself.
Even if the kingdom had set her loose as bait, no order had been given, so she was under no obligation.
She had no intention of honoring any loyalty to them.
Changing shared carriages, Lilia arrived in the remote Fittoa region, where vast farming lands stretched on and on.
Other than Roa City, the fortress city where the lord resided, it was all barley fields—a quiet place.
Lilia decided to look for work there.
However, with her injured leg, she could not perform strenuous labor.
She might have been able to teach swordsmanship, but if possible, she wanted to work as a maid.
The pay was better.
In a remote area like this, there were many who knew swordsmanship or could teach it, but few maids trained well enough to manage a household perfectly.
When supply was low, wages rose. But it would be dangerous to be employed as a maid by the lord of Fittoa or an upper noble of comparable standing.
Such people naturally had connections to the royal capital.
If it became known that she had been a guard maid in the harem, she might be used as political leverage.
She wanted no part of that. She never wished to come close to dying again.
She felt sorry for the princess, but she wished for the royal family’s succession disputes to proceed however they pleased somewhere far beyond her sight.
But if she worked somewhere that paid too little, she could not send money to her family.
Finding conditions that balanced wages and safety was not easy.
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After spending an entire month traveling through various places, one posting caught her eye.
A lower-ranking knight in Buena Village, Fittoa, was recruiting a maid.
It stated that those with experience raising children and knowledge of midwifery would be given preference.
Buena Village was a small village on the outskirts of Fittoa.
It was the countryside of all countrysides, an absolute backwater.
It was inconveniently located, but that was precisely the sort of location she wanted.
Moreover, the employer was a lower-ranking knight. The conditions were better than she could have imagined.
Above all, she recognized the recruiter’s name.
Paul Greyrat. He had been Lilia’s fellow disciple.
He was the wastrel son of a noble family who had abruptly stumbled into the dojo where Lilia learned swordsmanship.
He said he had fought with his father and been driven out, then remained at the dojo to learn the sword.
Although their styles differed, he had also learned swordsmanship at home, so he surpassed Lilia in no time.
It had not been amusing for Lilia, but looking back, she resigned herself to the fact that she simply had not possessed talent.
One day, the talent-overflowing Paul caused trouble and ran out of the dojo.
Leaving Lilia with only the words, "I’m going to become an adventurer."
He was a man like a storm.
Had it been about seven years since they parted?
To think that the man from back then had become a knight and even married...
She did not know what turbulent life Paul had lived, but the Paul in Lilia’s memories was never a bad person.
If she told him that she was in a difficult situation, he would help her.
If not, she could bring up the old days. She had plenty of stories that could serve as bargaining material.
Calculatingly, Lilia made her way to Buena Village.
Paul gladly welcomed Lilia.
His wife Zenith was about to give birth, and he seemed anxious.
Lilia had acquired various pieces of knowledge and skills in preparation for the princess’s birth and upbringing, and since they already knew each other, her identity was trustworthy. She was a safe choice.
She was welcomed.
Paul even said he would pay her more than she expected, which was more than Lilia could have wished for.
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[Lilia’s POV]
I will say this plainly.
The pregnancy was my fault.
I was the one who seduced Paul.
When I first came to this house, I had not intended to do such a thing.
But every night, I heard the two of them moaning, and when I cleaned rooms saturated with the scent of a man and woman, being a woman myself, desire built up inside me.
At first, I took care of it by myself.
But as time passed and Paul and Zenith’s children grew, the situation changed somewhat.
Luminous, the twin child born to the two of them, came to me clutching a pillow, saying he was frightened by the ghostly sounds echoing through the house.
Looking down at that child, I somehow felt foolish for trying to become aroused by such things.
‘The children are not even asleep... What was I thinking?’
Unable to bear it any longer, he had come looking for me because his parents’ moans frightened him.
Perhaps I felt maternal affection for Luminous then.
I gave a small laugh, picked the child up, laid him on the bed, and sang him a lullaby.
Drawing on my experience caring for children as a guard maid to the princess at the royal palace, I patted his stomach for dozens of minutes.
Luminous fell into a deep sleep with the face of an angel.
Watching him, the desire that had been boiling inside me vanished like a ghost.
However, that did not last long.
Whenever I saw Paul practicing swordsmanship in the garden each day, the dying ember inside me grew once more.
When we were younger, while we stayed at the sword dojo, Paul had seduced me.
I had not disliked his advances, but we had not been in love with each other either.
Later, I tried to give my heart to Paul, but he ran away from the dojo.
At the time, I had cried over it.
But the next person to make advances toward me was an older minister.
Thinking Paul was better than that, I no longer cared at all.
Even when I heard that Paul was looking for a maid, I thought I could use what had happened back then as bargaining material.
The Paul I met again after so long was far more manly than he had been then.
The appearance of a boy had vanished, and he had become a man who possessed both severity and strength.
I wondered how I had managed to endure having such a man before me for six years.
At first, Paul did not make advances toward me either.
I merely put Luminous to bed in his room, and there was no point of contact between us.
If things had continued this way, the fire in my heart would gradually have died out.
But the occasional dirty joke made the fire of my desire blaze fiercely.
I could endure it, but I knew the balance was precarious.
Like a swaying bridge on the very verge of snapping.
And then... Zenith’s pregnancy snapped it completely.
Once she became pregnant, the couple stopped doing such things, and Luminous no longer came to see me.
I saw Paul’s inability to control his desire as an opportunity.
Seeing it as an opportunity, I invited Paul into my room...
That is why it was my fault.
I thought the pregnancy was my punishment.
Punishment for betraying Zenith after losing to my desire.
But I was forgiven.
He forgave me.
None other than Luminous forgave me.
That clever child understood exactly what had happened, did every kind thing within his power, guided the conversation, and enabled it to end cleanly.
I had pitied Luminous and felt sympathy for him.
That child could not go out into the world.
To live as Luminous, he would have to spend his entire life in this village.
I had thought that fate tragic.
Luminous was a God’s Child.
And he was a Child of Healing.
With a single drop of his blood, he could cure any disease or injury.
The power in that blood rivaled the God-class healing magic displayed by the pope who had once come from the Millis Holy Country... magic that healed a royal afflicted by an incurable plague, who had been left with only their head and arms.
That was why Paul and Zenith understood why Luminous did not resemble either of their hair colors.
Why, ever since he was a newborn, he had never cried and had only lain still.
They said that God’s Children displayed extraordinary behavior even as babies.
That must have been why Luminous did not move when he was an infant.
If this child’s power became known to the world, there would be no one who would leave Luminous alone.
God-class healing magic was not something one could simply cast again and again.
It was magic only the pope of the Millis Holy Country could wield.
And because it consumed an enormous amount of mana and stamina, one had to recover mana for several months before using it again.
Yet something so extraordinary could be accomplished with a single drop of blood.
As long as one was alive, even if one had been displayed with only one’s head remaining, he could restore them completely.
There could scarcely be a more valuable card in war and political conflict.
I pitied the fate Luminous had been born with.
I felt sorry for this child, destined one day to lose his own name, live solely as the God’s Child, and become a tool for powerful people.
And yet... I was saved by the child I had merely pitied and felt sorry for.
This child chose a way to save me, the woman who had betrayed his parents.
He told me it was all right—that I, who had looked after him with pitying eyes and sympathy, was family.
Only then could I face Luminous not as a pitiful creature, but as one person facing another.
Rather, I was ashamed that I had cared for him while looking at him that way.
He was my savior.
He was someone I should respect. Someone I had to respect.
I held such resolve, but some time later,
my thoughts changed.
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"The black tea Lilia makes is always delicious. Even Mother cannot make it taste the same."
"You flatter me."
"...Lilia."
"Yes."
Several months after the pregnancy incident.
It was one day when flowers were in full bloom in the garden on a warm spring breeze.
Luminous, enjoying a peaceful morning tea, took a sip of black tea and spoke softly.
"Lilia, you said that before becoming a maid here, you worked at the royal palace as a guard maid, correct?"
"Yes. I was a guard maid, but while protecting the princess, I was struck by a poisoned dagger and injured my leg, so I had to resign."
"...Hasn’t the injured place healed?"
"The poison was neutralized and the wound healed, but treatment came too late, and lasting effects left part of my leg’s function paralyzed. It does not interfere with my daily life, but I can no longer run or lift my leg high."
"..."
After hearing this, Luminous nodded silently and suddenly picked up a butter knife.
Then—he cut his own finger.
"Master Luminous?!"
"Lilia, show me your injured leg."
"What do you mean by—"
"...Just listen to me, please."
When I lifted my long skirt, Luminous touched my leg with the finger from which blood was dripping.
Before long, an unknown, ecstatic sensation seeped through my skin and took hold of my body.
Along with a strangely pleasant feeling, as though the fatigue from my entire body were being washed away, I felt my heavy leg become light.
That was right. Luminous had completely healed me with his own blood.
When I looked at him in confusion at his incomprehensible action, Luminous smiled with an angelic, pure-white smile and spoke.
"...Now Lilia will have no trouble protecting the child in her womb as a mother. And as family, I believe it would be wrong for me to leave the mother of the little sibling who will be born... in poor health."
"Pardon?"
"Lilia has been our family from the beginning, and she still is now. So please remain by my side as my family from now on as well. There is only one mother in the world who makes black tea this delicious, after all."
At that moment, the desire merely to respect him disappeared.
Ah... I had received far too great a kindness from this child.
I had received a selfless love that I could never repay, even if this life ended.
"...Lilia?"
"Master Luminous, I will serve you with all my life."
Despite my swelling belly, I knelt and lowered my head, showing Luminous the respect one would show royalty and swearing my loyalty.
This person was the master I must serve for the rest of my life.
Beyond respect, I had to devote my loyalty to him even at the risk of my life.
He was someone to whom I must offer the utmost reverence and serve until I died.
He was not someone like me who should be pitied.
I would never be able to repay the debt I owed him.
Yes. If the child in my womb was born safely and grew up,
I would ensure that child could serve Luminous... Lord Luminous.
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