Chapter 37

It wasn’t a suggestion to have sex, but quite literally an invitation to just fall asleep together, so Felix tried to leave the room first. I immediately caught him and pulled him back.

“I’m not going to sleep yet. I’m not even sleepy. Once I finish cleaning the kitchen, I’m going to check on the garden. I have plenty to do while you sleep.”

“Let’s do that together, too. I can just sleep at night.”

I placed my hands on my waist and frowned.

“Are you going to keep making me angry?”

“Is this really something to get angry about?”

Felix replied with a faint smile. Honestly, I’m trying to be considerate of the guy. I glared at him, then finally let out a big sigh and surrendered.

“Fine, all right, I get it. We can just sleep together, can’t we?”

He seemed to want to use me as a kind of attachment pillow, but hey, why not? I tossed my apron aside and laid my body on the bed first. Felix followed soon after, climbed onto the bed, and lay down next to me.

We lay side-by-side, staring at the ceiling for a while, before Felix called to me.

“Iel.”

I had only lain down with him so he would fall asleep, so I wondered why he was calling me again, but I turned my head to look at him. He had turned to face me, propping his head up with his folded arm, and began to stare intently.

“Whaaat?”

I grumbled a bit, telling him to speak if he’d called me. Besides, it had been a long time since we’d lain in the same bed, so I felt a bit shy. It wasn’t like we were at a stage where we needed to be reserved, so I felt embarrassed about getting caught feeling this way. That was why I had been trying so hard to hide it.

“I guess I’m just a bit fluttery because it’s been a while since we’ve lain together like this.”

Why does this guy say such things so confidently! Thanks to him, I felt even more embarrassed. I couldn’t find the words for a moment, stuttering, before I lightly placed my hand on his face.

“Just go to sleep, will you?”

“My sleep has flown away.”

I told him not to be ridiculous and gave him a flick on the forehead. Despite my prickly reaction, he crept closer and hugged me. He stopped for a moment, as if gauging my reaction, and then tried to slide his hand inside my clothes. I immediately turned my body to face him. Felix stopped his hand and gave a vague smile.

“Do you hate it?”

I don’t hate it, but I dislike it. And I didn’t want to explain each and every thing out loud. To my eyes, Felix right now looked like he was out of his mind from sleep deprivation. No matter what I said to his muddled brain, it didn’t seem like it would sink in properly anyway.

I figured that his fumbling with my body just now was halfway to a sleep-induction tactic. Even though I had forgiven him without interrogation, he still seemed anxious. That was why he was instinctively doing the thing that would give him the most peace of mind in our relationship; it was hard to believe he was actually turned on. In the first place, isn’t he in a state where he couldn’t possibly be turned on? The guy has dark circles under his eyes, for crying out loud.

He’s so much work, really. I pulled his head into my embrace. Then, I began to rhythmically pat his back. Felix obediently let the tension drain from his body, as if sinking into my hold. Soon after, even, steady breathing began to be heard.

Conversely, I really wasn’t sleepy. But I couldn’t do anything in this state, so I just closed my eyes, and at some point, I drifted off to sleep before I knew it.

Felix slept for quite a long time. Every time I woke up in between, he hadn’t moved an inch, his head resting in my arms the entire time.

He seemed to wake up briefly around dawn, but he fell back asleep. To be precise, as I tried to wake up along with his movements, he quickly embraced me and put me back to sleep. I had told him I didn’t need to sleep, anyway. Muttering, I quickly lost consciousness again at the touch of his patting hand.

When I came to, it was already morning, and I was alone in bed. When I went out to the living room, the cleanup I hadn’t finished the day before was neatly done. I opened the door to the bathroom, from where I heard the sound of water. Felix was washing his face.

“Did you sleep well?”

He gave a fresh greeting while wiping his face with a towel. I felt relieved to see that he finally looked like a normal person.

Then, now I have to hear the full story properly.

Neither of us had breakfast. We sat facing each other across the kitchen table and drank tea in silence for a while. It was Felix who spoke first. He toyed with his teacup and gave an embarrassed laugh.

“I’m sorry. Was I embarrassing yesterday?”

“A little? But it’s okay.”

That side of him was actually kind of cute. I told him not to worry about it, and my gaze drifted to his left arm.

“I saw bandages wrapped around your arm earlier, did you get hurt?”

The reason I hadn’t truly realized that mercenary work was dangerous was because I rarely saw him injured. Perhaps there had been injuries I didn’t know about during the days we couldn’t strip down and check on each other. When that thought occurred to me, I didn’t feel very good.

Maybe from now on, when he gets back from a job, I should strip him down and check first. I don’t want to act like a woman suspicious of cheating, but this is a safety issue, so I have no choice. I made excuses to myself and looked at Felix.

He placed his other hand over the arm covered by his shirt. He stayed like that for a long time, eyes cast down, saying nothing. Just when I thought the silence of him wondering what to say was getting too long, Felix finally lifted his head.

“I did it myself.”

“You did?”

“Yes. I carved the skin out with a knife.”

I set down my teacup. I didn’t think I was particularly agitated, but it seemed I had put force into my hand without realizing it. The sound of the pottery hitting the table was quite loud.

“You wouldn’t have done that for no reason. Why?”

“I asked them to cancel the blessing prayer, but they wouldn’t do it.”

“That wasn’t even a reasonable request in the first place. How do you cancel a prayer?”

“Right. That’s what they said. But I didn’t know. They didn’t tell me beforehand.”

“Well, that’s just common sense…”

I let out a sigh.

“So? You protested like that because they wouldn’t cancel it?”

“…”

“You idiot.”

“Yeah…”

“Canceling it like that doesn’t actually cancel the prayer, you know.”

“Yeah…”

What is this? My head started throbbing, so I gripped my forehead.

“I didn’t say this back then, but a blessing prayer is actually a pretty good prayer. There’s a reason people pay a lot of money to receive one. If you could receive it for free, it was actually a gain, so why did you want to cancel it?”

“Maybe the compatibility with me wasn’t great, but ever since I received it, my luck has been bad.”

“That’s probably just because you had bad luck. Do you have any proof that it’s because of the blessing prayer?”

“It was distinctly different before and after receiving the blessing prayer.”

“For example?”

Even as I asked, I honestly didn’t think it was credible. Because he was saying such nonsense. A blessing prayer had nothing to do with luck.

“Like tripping over my shoelaces during a battle, or the string of a perfectly good bow snapping limply the moment I try to use it. If there’s a tree or a building above my head, something is bound to fall, and if I buy something, it’s almost always defective…”

I crossed my arms as I listened to the list of things he reeled off. It was certainly unnatural, but I still didn’t think it was because of the blessing prayer. Rather…

“Fel. You didn’t, by any chance, do something disrespectful, did you?”

Felix’s eyes went round. It wasn’t that he didn’t think about it at all, but rather that he looked like he was feeling guilty about something. It seemed he had heard a similar opinion before.

“Do you, think so?”

“That’s what makes the most sense.”

A blessing prayer is a prayer that supports an individual’s desire for improvement. For example, if someone wants to be good at running, it feels like their legs become a little lighter.

Of course, if you say it like this, it might not sound very impressive compared to the money spent, but it was useful when faced with important tasks. Exams, transactions, and the like. For a person facing something like a life-or-death battle, the effect of the prayer was good because their goals weren’t scattered.

Conversely, if it’s a vague case of “I want to be good at this AND that” without desperation, it’s not recommended. It doesn’t mean it has no effect, but it means it’s not worth the cost.

For Felix, it must have been a pretty decent prayer. I don’t know if he has that desire for self-improvement, but once he enters battle, isn’t he forced to focus anyway? Whether it was gaining stamina or faster reflexes, he would have experienced an improvement in physical ability.

Of course, the range of change would differ depending on individual talent, but it was certainly an environment where he could feel the prayer’s effect immediately and clearly.

Anyway, since it was a prayer with that kind of structure, I didn’t think it had influenced the bad luck Felix was talking about.

“I can’t help but think it’s a separate issue. Did you kick a holy object or something?”

“No.”