Chapter 47

“Lidia-san, I’m Franz. Your sister has been a great help to me.”

“Ehh? ‘A great help’? Is that a dirty joke? Just because we’re Succubi doesn’t mean you can throw around lewd double entendres, you know!”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that! I meant she’s been helping me out in a much more general sense…”

Is she really Cerulia’s sister…? I wondered for a moment if they had a complicated family dynamic, like being half-siblings or something.

“You’re thinking she’s totally different from Cerulia, aren’t you? This difference is like, totally insane, right?”

Gulp. She saw right through me.

“Yeah… Even from my perspective as the older sister, that girl is just a ‘perfect daughter’ type. She’s had top-tier grades since she was little. Our upbringing is actually quite strict, but she endured all of it. She almost never complained.”

Lidia spoke about her sister with a face that looked momentarily enlightened. That alone convinced me they were definitely sisters.

“But you know, if you put it another way, it just means she’s obedient.”

I could see it in her eyes. This person seemed flighty, but her outlook was quite sharp.

“That girl has zero experience rebelling against our parents. Of course, if she thought for herself and decided there was no need to rebel, that’s fine. There are plenty of people in the world who rebel just for the sake of rebelling because they’re in a ‘rebellious phase.’ Those people are just drifting with the majority; they aren’t using their own heads.”

“I think I understand what you’re trying to say.”

Beside me, Mary listened while nodding in agreement.

“But if that continues, you lose the ability to know how to rebel. If you stay in an ‘unexperienced’ state, you can’t suddenly do it when someone tells you to. I think Cerulia has that side to her. If we leave this alone, it’s gonna be bad.”

“So, you’re saying that for this marriage meeting too, she might not be able to go against our parents’ wishes?”

“Exactly! That!”

Lidia snapped her fingers and pointed at me.

“I’m scared that she’ll just go with the flow and say ‘okay’ to the marriage. Especially since the Incubus she’s meeting is the kind of guy who brags about seducing four-digit numbers of human women…”

“The more I hear, the more anxious I get…”

Mary nudged my side with her elbow.

“That’s exactly why we called Lidia-san to do something about it. You can’t be timid. Especially you, Franz—you’re so kind-hearted that you might start thinking, ‘Maybe a Succubus should be with an Incubus instead of a human.’”

That was indeed a thought that had flickered through the back of my mind.

“I’ll be careful… because I don’t want to let Cerulia go.”

“Yeah, that’s the spirit. You don’t need excuses about ‘the other person’s happiness’ or whatever. It’s better to be a bit selfish and just feel like you don’t want the person you love to be taken away.”

“Right? Men who say things like ‘I did this after considering your happiness’ are usually just thinking about saving face,” Lidia added.

I had to be careful. If a “herbivore” guy isn’t careful, he can easily fall into that trap.
Now, we moved on to concrete measures.

“Lidia-san, I want to meet with Cerulia’s father before the marriage meeting.”

I would tell him that Cerulia was crying because she hated the idea, and ask him to call the whole thing off.

“Got it. I’ll go with you. If you go alone, they’ll just turn you away at the gate. I’m a bit of a socialite, but if I tell them I need to talk to my parents, they’ll let us in.”

In my head, I imagined a stubborn old man shouting, “I won’t give my daughter to the likes of you!”

The thought of being yelled at was scary, but I couldn’t run away now.

“You’ve got a pretty good look on your face. I guess there’s a reason Cerulia chose you as her master.”

It might have been flattery, but Lidia praised me before heading out.

●

I slept at Mary’s house that night, and the next day, we headed toward the home where Cerulia’s family lived.

A carriage driven by a headless coachman was waiting in front of Mary’s house.

“This is a pretty horrific sight, but I guess it’s normal for the Demon Realm?”

“It’s a common means of transport. Many demons can fly themselves, but they get tired if they fly for long distances. So we get rattled around in these.”

Once Mary and I climbed in, the horses started running with incredible momentum. Moreover, the road was poor, and the carriage jolted violently up and down.

“What is this?! Isn’t the driving a bit too rough?!”

“The road isn’t great here, but we’ll hit the dedicated highway soon, so just bear with it for a bit.”

“A dedicated highway?”

Mary’s words were true. At a checkpoint-like gate, the coachman paid a copper coin, and the moment we passed through, the road turned perfectly straight and level. The ride became smooth and comfortable. The carriage began to sprint at a speed that felt like double our previous pace.

“In the lands of the demon race, these dedicated highways are spread everywhere, allowing carriages to run at high speeds.”

“I guess the demon race is advanced in a lot of ways…”

“Though, in the human lands, there aren’t many breeds of horses that can run at this speed for long periods, so it couldn’t be realized there anyway.”

“True… we might be running at a speed that could even overtake a dragon…”

The houses near the highway blurred past in an instant. Without something like this, Lidia-san wouldn’t have been able to visit us and return so quickly yesterday.

“Also, you have to be careful about safety. If we collided with another carriage at this speed, I’d be fine, but you’d die instantly, Franz.”

“That’s a nasty thing to hear…”

“If that happens, I’ll hug you and absorb the impact,” Mary giggled. I felt like Mary had really started making expressions like a girlfriend lately.

“I know you’re joking, but if we really do crash, I’m counting on you.”

After about two hours of travel, the carriage arrived at the village of the Succubi and Incubi. Every manor was of a scale that seemed to mock the humans living in the Capital. You couldn’t even clean them without hiring a fleet of servants.

“The standard of living for demons is high…”

“Succubi and Incubi are high-ranking demons, so the townscape looks like this.”

Then, a manor that looked like a castle—clearly several times larger than the others—came into view.

“That is the Orbein estate, Cerulia’s family home.”