May I Love You Even More?

The moment Lady Shitoen let go of the pillow, she rose onto her knees on the bed.

She loosened and untied the cord fastening the collar of her nightclothes.

Undoing about three cloth-covered buttons, she slowly opened the front of her robe.

Honestly.

I desperately tried to keep up appearances and stay calm, but.

Inside, my heart was pounding like mad.

Crown Prince Arios hated them, so much so that some people even nicknamed him the “lizard man.”

There were no tattoos visible on her arms, neck, or calves, but how many tattoos had been done in the places hidden beneath her clothes?

Really.

Was it something so shocking it would make a person recoil?

I was holding back the sweat that threatened to bead on my forehead, when.

“…Huh? This?”

I was so dumbfounded that I slipped into Tidros language without thinking.

Just as Lady Shitoen had said.

It was there, in the middle of her chest.

Or rather, slightly to the right.

At the edge of the swell of her breast, or rather.

There.

There were two petal-shaped marks, like cherry blossoms. They sat side by side like twin stars. In size, each was about as large as the nail of a pinky finger.

They were blue. Colored in a shade like aquamarine.

“This is the dragon crest?”

I found myself asking Lady Shitoen in a daze.

She gave a small nod.

With a serious face.

With an earnest expression.

As though she might burst into tears at any moment.

And yet, so as not to miss a single change in my expression, she never once looked away.

“Did Crown Prince Arios see this?”

“No. I offered to show him, but he refused.”

The stiffness in her voice let me imagine how painful that moment had been for her, and I panicked, thinking I had messed up.

At the same time I thought I should not have said something unnecessary.

I cursed that man in my heart, calling him a fool.

He had imagined the dragon crest however he pleased, never even looking at it, and frightened himself over his own assumptions.

And because of that, he had hurt such a sweet girl.

“…Uh, well…”

I let out a meaningless sound, then stared hard at the tattoo called the dragon crest.

It was very different from what I had imagined.

If I had to say, I had thought these scale-like tattoos would be, well… spread all over her body.

Endlessly, densely.

Crown Prince Arios had probably imagined the same thing and felt disgust.

Poor thing.

Because of something like this, she had been humiliated in front of a crowd, hurt, and forced to spend two years in misery in a foreign land.

Before I knew it, I had gently reached out and touched that dragon crest.

Naturally, it was warm.

Its smooth skin had nothing rough or unpleasant about it.

When I pressed with my finger, it was soft. I rubbed it firmly with my thumb, but a tattoo was a tattoo. It did not come off.

It did not even distort.

On that taut skin, it was not so much stuck there as simply naturally part of her.

Feeling strangely moved, the instant I covered it with my whole palm.

“U-um…!”

A shrill voice rose right nearby, and I blinked.

“U-um……..!”

Right in front of me, Lady Shitoen, her face red like a boiled octopus, looked at me with a face on the verge of tears, her words dying away.

“……………………Huh?”

As for me.

I was sitting there clutching her breast in my right hand and staring right at it.

“I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I’m so sorry!”

As I leapt back, I tumbled off the bed and slammed the back of my head hard. I let out a “Gahf!” and crouched there groaning.

But the sensation in my hand refused to disappear at all.

That soft, smooth, fluffy feeling.

And in an instant, all sorts of things became very difficult.

“Are you all right!?”

Along with her voice, I heard the rustle-rustle-rustle of someone crawling across the bed toward me, and I panicked.

“Don’t come over, don’t come over! Things are bad right now!”

“Are you hurt somewhere!?”

I obviously could not say, “Well, my lower half is a bit…,” so I just kept repeating that I was fine and curled up.

Curled up, I rubbed the back of my head where I had hit it hard.

Thank goodness, it had not even swollen into a bump.

“No, really, I’m terribly sorry…”

I apologized while hiding under the bed.

She had only told me to look, so why had I touched it? Idiot, idiot, idiot.

“I am sorry too, for suddenly raising my voice…”

Her voice grew quiet with embarrassment, so all I could do was feel ashamed. Idiot, idiot, idiot. I’m such an idiot.

“Um… so then.”

“Hm?”

From the far side of the bed came a voice taut with tension.

Things had calmed down considerably by then, so I slowly raised only my face.

On the bed, Lady Shitoen had already adjusted her collar and was sitting in a strange way with both knees folded under her. It looked bad for her knees.

“Um… it was not disgusting, was it? The dragon crest.”

Asked that so seriously, my face instantly grew hot all over again. Desperately, I shook my right hand as though to fling away the sensation, my lips trembling as I answered.

“Not at all, I mean… well. What do you even call the opposite of disgusting?”

I babbled nonsense in Tania language and still could not bring myself to climb back onto the bed.

“If you come any closer right now, I’m honestly confident I’ll pounce on you.”

When I said that, my face and whole body burning red, apparently that heat spread to Lady Shitoen this time.

She turned so red it looked as though steam might rise even from her toes, hugged the pillow, and moved all the way to the opposite end of the bed.

“…Um, did you end up hating me?”

When I asked dejectedly, she shook her head furiously from side to side. Her silvery hair swayed softly.

It was so beautiful it looked out of place, beautiful enough to captivate me.

“May I come to love you even more, Prince?”

And when she asked me something like that, her face bright red.

I nodded over and over again.

If I were being honest, I wanted to hug her and kiss her, but to begin with I could not let her see me in such a pathetic state, and it was obvious it would not stop at a kiss, so I decided to endure it quietly under the bed.

“Thank goodness.”

She smiled like a hibiscus flower blooming open.

Damn iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

She’s insanely cute, so why the hell am I not allowed to make a move!?

What!? What is this!! What exactly am I being tested on!?

I threw myself flat onto the floor. Even though I felt like rolling around all over the place, I endured that too. From the bed above, she kept asking over and over, “Prince?” “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. After a little while, I’ll sleep at the edge of the bed. Good night.”

I answered face-down. I could not let her see my face.

Remaining in that full prostration, I chanted sutras in my head over and over. Now, become nothing, me.

While I was thinking that, I heard the rustle-rustle-rustle of cloth again, just as expected.

Was Lady Shitoen moving across the bed, or slipping under the covers to sleep?

As I was wondering that, something suddenly touched the back of my head.

“Huh?”

Startled, I lifted my face.

Our eyes met, those violet eyes and mine.

Lady Shitoen had moved to the edge of the bed, and was lying on her stomach just like me, stretching out her hand. She was patting the back of my head.

“Pain, pain, fly away.”

She said that with a bright smile.

Was this girl a goddess, or a devil?

I said, “Thank you,” and decided to keep enduring it face-down for a little while longer.