Zero To A Hundred

A clear, ringing voice spilled out of the bird’s beak. The dove looked so much like it was really talking that the effect turned faintly grotesque.

Hamel picked up the communication orb and headed upstairs. A thin light wrapped itself around him as he started up the steps, then vanished; the crisp shirt and robe he had been wearing gave way, somewhere along the way, to a one-piece nightshirt. He answered through a long, luxurious yawn.

“That’s right. Every bit of it just as you said. Told me he’d come after hearing the rumor, then asked me flat out whether I was researching demonology.”

“And the bargain?”

“Handed him a bowl of medicine.”

Hamel left out entirely the part about Keith volunteering as his specimen.

No need to share everything.

So this was a bargain inside a bargain: a double contract.

“Haa, that’s a relief…”

The sigh from the other end tickled the whorl of his ear. Hamel dug a finger into it and plopped his backside down on the bed.

“Pleases you that much, does it?”

“Because I’ve seen how hard he’s had it.”

“From what I hear, the two of you met not long ago. And he hasn’t told you everything about his condition either, they say.”

“I mean the sleepwalking. That one’s hard to hide from a lover, whatever you do.”

“Why?”

“Mm… because there’s a good deal of time spent together at night.”

Ah.

His earlobes flushed with embarrassment.

“A— a young girl, and not a scrap of shame in her!”

I don’t want to hear about the private business of a newly-wed couple.

He scratched hard at the gooseflesh risen on his forearm to brush it away, and switched the orb off.

— Click.

“It’s a trade I can’t lose on.”

Hamel muttered it as he crawled down into the plump quilt.

“Raising up a disciple with a bright future ahead of her isn’t a bad way to pass the time, either.”

He had no intention of dying with his shining knowledge clutched to himself alone. Because knowledge has worth only when it is shared and handed on.

“That clever little thing.”

Hamel thought of Ardine Paragon, who did ten with every one thing she was taught, and drifted off with a contented smile.

“Cantankerous old man, honestly.”

Pai grumbled as she set the communication orb, cut off from the other end, down on the side table. Still, the call had taken a good weight off her worries.

Anyone with a demon’s blood running in them is affected by demonic energy. In the previous life, too, Keith’s demonization had advanced by the moment as he fought Simon.

“At the end he even sprouted horns.”

A goat’s horns, the mark of a demon. Keith Paragon, eyes flaring blood-red as he tore out his death-cry. How was she ever to forget that…

“You’re doing well, Pai. One step at a time, moving toward the goal.”

She gave her head a loose shake and clenched her fist tight. There was no need to sink into gloomy thoughts. Because she really was doing well.

“And the medicine’s still in the earliest days of its development, so it won’t be perfect, but it’ll get better and better.”

In the previous life, too, Hamel had developed a medicine that eased the whole range of the half-demon illness. Some people called it the Elixir.

The ultimate cure.

But Hamel departed this world not long after the Elixir was finished, and demons burned his precious research materials, every last one.

“…And if we explore the Great Labyrinth together, the development will move faster, too.”

Perhaps in this life Keith Paragon would not fall to demonization at all.

“You’re doing well.”

She whispered it quietly.

You’re doing well.

You’re doing well.

You have to pull it off.

Over and over, over and over, she promised it to herself inside.

“…”

She wrung the last of the water out of her hair with a towel. Strands that usually looked like silver thread looked now like deep gold thread.

A noblewoman’s negligee was soft and light as a feather, so comfortable it felt like wearing nothing at all. She knew how to be thankful for every one of these conveniences. All the hot water she wanted, whenever she wanted it; several changes of clothing to rotate through, every one cut from good cloth.

— Clunk.

Just then she caught the sound of the next room’s door opening. Keith Paragon was back from meeting the mage.

“Well then, shall we head over?”

Bracing a hand on her knee, she got up and draped a thin, downy pink blanket over her shoulders. Through the archway lay a drawing room that doubled as a living room, and at its far end a small wooden door opened into the Duke’s bedchamber.

— Knock, knock.

She knocked once for form’s sake and flung the door wide open.

“You’re back? Your work finished late tod— …eeek…”

Pai went stiff as stone at the sight in front of her. — Slip. Flump. The blanket over her shoulders dropped to the floor.

“…”

“…”

Keith was stripped to the waist.

God above, isn’t that far too sexy…

She was not seeing a man’s bare body for the first time, nor was this her first sight of Keith half-undressed. Never, of course, in circumstances as indecent as these.

Normally it was only when he’d been badly hurt.

When a demon’s claws had ripped his flank open, say. With the flesh split wide and blood pouring out in gouts, nobody was going to stand there marveling, ‘Oh, nice body?’ There had been no room to weigh whether it was nice or not, either. Besides, most physiques left Pai unmoved; she had a lean, hard body of her own and saw it in her mirror every day.

And yet now it was different.

“…”

— Gulp.

Keith Paragon had the sort of body that belonged in a manual written for warriors. His developed shoulders and chest alone were enough to draw a sigh, and his waist was short and slim on top of that, so the line tapering steeply from ribcage to hip came out a work of art.

“Huh—”

He must have frozen in shock just the same; several seconds went by before he sucked in a sharp breath and covered his chest with a bundle of clothes.

“S— stop looking, please.”

“N— no. Is it my fault for looking? Your chest was just there…!”

“It was not.”

“It w— it was there, okay? It was right there, so how was I not supposed to look?”

Keith had flushed red, his face of course, but his earlobes and the nape of his neck as well.

What is he doing carrying on like a blushing bride!

Pai felt the heat climbing in her too, as though she had been held over steam, and she twisted sharply around and muttered.

“I’ll wait right here until you’re ready.”

“…Yes.”

A rustling went on behind her back. Listening to it in silence, she found herself picturing his frantic hands, and a laugh slipped out before she knew it.

Come to think of it, we’re lovers.

And a pair who traipse in and out of each other’s beds (?) night after night, at that. Being startled half out of their skins over a bare torso and nothing more seemed all wrong. The staff, too, would think it suspicious if they caught the two of them flustered like this with each other.

“I’m done.”

“So— I’ve been thinking.”

Pai led with that as she turned around. Keith had put on a loose long-sleeved garment that came down to his knees, and long trousers. He looked bundled up so tight that not a scrap of bare skin showed, and her smile spread again.

She let her voice drop into something insinuating and walked slowly up to Keith.

“We… we’re seeing each other, aren’t we.”

When she closed the distance and reached out a hand, the muscle stood out along the man’s jaw. But he did not shy away from the woman’s touch.

Pai took hold of the linen shirt’s collar where it sat naturally closed and pulled it lightly apart. The gap between the collar’s edges opened wide and deep, laying bare his collarbone and the upper part of his chest.

“I think we need to get used to each other’s bodies.”

“Ah.”

“Everyone else is going to think we’ve already seen all there is to see of each other, so if you go into a mad flurry covering yourself up over nothing more than a look at your chest, that’s strange, isn’t it.”

“Mm, I agree.”

Keith blinked slowly and answered with his chin tucked in. Then he put out a hand of his own and cupped her shoulder.

His palm rubbed at the round of her shoulder blade, and a warm heat spread with it, a ticklish current running up from her spine to the nape of her neck. Pai straightened her back without meaning to. Presently Keith took his hand from her shoulder, drew a deep breath and opened his mouth.

“I am ready.”

“…Ready for what?”

“The chest.”

“Sorry?”

“Did we not just agree to show each other our chests?”

“…”

“A— was it not.”

What was one to do with this guileless man.

No sly intent seemed to lie behind it. A person got over a fear by deliberately walking into the thing he feared, and Keith must have meant to apply the same method to chests.

So, in order to get used to chests… Though the word ‘chest’ did rather seem to be getting far too much use just now…

“I did look, so in fairness I can show you mine, I suppose. I’m just not sure this would have any effect.”

“Why… is that?”

“Because it isn’t the least bit romantic.”

“Ah.”

Keith propped up his short, pointed chin and sank into thought. Then, having apparently reached a conclusion of his own, he spoke, his face a shade brighter.

“Then let us sleep together tonight.”

Talk about zero to a hundred.