Chapter 72

“Demon King, aren’t you feeling a bit exhausted~?”

Freise addressed me with what was undoubtedly a wicked hidden agenda.

“If you’re asking if I’m tired, then yes, I suppose I’m fairly worn out.”

I left out the part where I’d normally say, “But once I get home and see my wife’s smile, that exhaustion blows away,” because saying it would make me sound like a total sap of a newlywed.

“Oh my, that’s terrible! Actually, I happen to be quite skilled at acupressure. Why don’t you take two hours of paid leave and come with me to the breakroom? I’ll give you a slow, sticky acupressure session!”

“The word ‘sticky’ should never, ever be used to describe acupressure.”

What was she going to do, press a melted Slime against me?

“It’ll be fine. It’ll be over before you can even finish counting the spots on the wall. So please, to the breakroom! It’s on the house!”

“I have no intention of doing anything as dangerous as falling asleep alone with you, so give it up.”

At this point, I was certain Freise had reached the threshold for being fired for sexual harassment. However, she actually did her job well enough that letting her go would hinder our operations.

As proof, even Torualina—who was notoriously strict with others—hadn’t voiced a single complaint.

The only issue was that, for me personally, her distracting comments required me to have a much firmer will and higher concentration than before. Truly, the world never spins as smoothly as one would like.

Even now, I could feel a certain tactile sensation against my arm. Freise was pressing her chest against me.

“I’m providing all this ‘service,’ so could you show a little more reaction? You’re making me feel pathetic over here.”

“I don’t care. I’m unmoved by such blatant displays. Or rather, after being subjected to it so much, I’ve become relatively immune.”

“In the past, there were many influential figures among the Demons who devised the same plans as Freise.”

Torualina added an explanation. She was currently sipping tea, having finished one of her tasks. Torualina was exceptionally skilled at brewing tea.

“It wasn’t uncommon for people to try to marry off their daughters or sisters to the Demon King, hoping to become his relatives. In the early days, there were even Demons who attempted far more extreme honey traps.”

“Ugh… that’s a total turn-off…”

“Freise, go look in a mirror.”

There is always a certain number of people who fail to realize they are doing the exact same thing they find revolting in others.

“However, since the Demon King remained so utterly unmoved, they eventually reached the conclusion that aggressive methods were actually counterproductive.”

Well, obviously. If a stranger of the opposite sex suddenly hits on you, anyone would be creeped out.

“From that point on, we entered a very entertaining era where multiple self-proclaimed ‘childhood friends’ started showing up one after another.”

“Seriously?! I would have loved to see that!”

“I’d prefer not to remember it.”

Torualina’s lips curled into a slight smirk, perhaps from the memory.

In a single week, five different women claiming to be my childhood friend had appeared. I wondered what kind of scripted event I’d walked into. At the very least, those nobles should have coordinated their timing better.

“There was plenty more after that. We had the ‘tsundere’ types. Most of them were so rude to the Demon King that we had to sentence them to fines.”

“One of them was screaming, ‘I’ll blow you away!’ or something. At that point, you can’t blame me for treating it as a criminal threat.”

Even Freise looked stunned, which was a testament to how moronic the situation had been.

“Ah, yeah, you see those people sometimes. The ones who confuse being a ‘tsundere’ with just being a violent heroine…”

Freise seemed strangely knowledgeable about these archetypes.

“After that, we had a period where a bunch of women wearing glasses like mine swarmed the office.”

“I see~. They figured you might have a glasses fetish~.”

It’s simply that my secretary happens to wear glasses; it’s not as if I hired a woman because she wore glasses.

“Even from my perspective, that was quite unsightly. It was painfully obvious they were people who didn’t usually wear glasses just forcing them on. Some even only put them on right before meeting the Demon King.”

“That is a direct insult to glasses fetishes everywhere.”

Torualina and Freise were getting along surprisingly well.

“Right, right, I get it~. Those situations where someone thinks they’re providing a ‘service’ but it actually ends up being a total minus. I’ll make sure to learn from their mistakes.”

“Seriously, Freise, go look in a mirror.”

Her self-esteem was far too high. Not that having low self-esteem is better, but still.

“Oh, speaking of service, does the Demon King provide any service?”

Freise asked casually. I’d known it from the start, but this girl had zero intention of showing actual respect to the Demon King. She tacked on the “Lord” honorific, but it felt purely ceremonial.

“Service? I am the Demon King. There is no one among the Demon race for me to serve.”

Service—or to put it another way, “acts of service.” A Demon King does not perform acts of service for his subordinates.

“No, no, I don’t mean among the Demons. I’m talking about at home. ‘Family service’.”

That phrase struck a chord deep in my mind.

Family service?!

Come to think of it, wasn’t a father supposed to perform “family service” for his wife and daughter…?

Wait. Looking back, I had almost no memory of doing anything that could be called family service.

This was bad. Very bad.

I had spent all this time believing I was living a life that wasn’t too far off from the ideal father figure. I even thought my relationship with Angelica deserved a passing grade.

However, that alone might not be enough.

The very existence of the phrase “family service” suggested that a head of the household was expected to actively plan events to entertain the family.

Even if I felt I wasn’t doing anything wrong, that just meant I was “not doing wrong.” There was a danger that Angelica saw me as a “father who never takes us anywhere.”

What should I do…?

I needed to take countermeasures immediately. I had to.

“Freise, thank you. You’ve saved me.”

“Ah! So the Demon King was happy I was clinging to him after all. You closet pervert Demon King, you~!”

Freise nudged me with a smirk.

That’s not what I meant, and don’t use the phrase “closet pervert Demon King.” I’d hate for that to catch on.

Also, you really treat me with the casual distance of a high school classmate, don’t you…? Does this room have a curse that makes people who work here lose all respect for me?