“Ugh…”

An incessant beeping in my mind pulled me from the sweet depths of rest. The horrible headache blasted away any vestiges of drowsiness I could take refuge in. Thankfully, it didn’t seem like a hangover headache, more a dehydrated-for-an-entire-day type headache.

Thankfully, I had no desire to pass out again on the bed, so I was at minimal risk of soiling the bed from a rapidly growing pressure on my bladder.

I ran to the bathroom, relieving myself before walking out and downing enough water to make myself want to throw up. I felt a bit better after hacking out what water got caught in my throat but also woke Umara up.

She followed in my steps, stumbling through the same process I had.

After about half an hour, we sat side-by-side on the kitchen floor against some cupboards, blankly staring off into space, trying to re-order and make sense of the drunken memories of last night.

At some point, I spoke.

“You dropped me down the stairs.”

“I-I twisted my ankle.”

“You sang on stage.”

“You built a pillow fort for the bartender to sleep in!”

“Hey, that was cool and I regret nothing. And he couldn’t sleep there because you threw up in it.”

“Ahh!!”

She cried out while burying her red face in her knees.

“I want to die! Just bury me in my grave!”

“Hey now, it’s not like they knew who you were, though they will in fact remember it for the rest of their lives, just like I will.”

“Ahhh!”

She toppled over, bundling herself under her robes.

I laughed and laid on top of her, wrapping her body up.

The faint glow of the setting sun illuminated the two of us as we lay there together, at peace until… something… didn’t feel right. It wasn’t just Umara’s hand, which had somehow wedged itself against my ribs.

I lifted my wrist and checked the time.

“Hey, what time did your mother say the Rail left?”

“...”

Umara froze before shifting around.

“...30 minutes.”

“Shit.”

I cursed and jumped up.

“We gotta go!”

“I need my chest! All my stuff is at the Magisterium!”

“Ahh!!”

I sprinted out of the kitchen and threw everything I could think of into my trunk before heaving it up, running over to Umara and lowering my back.

“Get on!”

“Ok!”

She crawled up. With a twisted ankle she couldn’t run, so I just decided to carry her on my back.

Chest in hand, I crammed Umara and myself out the door while she called a carriage.

“I’ll see you later, Key Master!”

“Have a good trip, John!”

He waved while we barged out the lobby doors, seeing the carriage roll up.

Swinging my trunk in, I lowered Umara to the seat before sliding myself in as well, tipping the driver some coin for speed.

We careened through the streets in record time, rolling up to the Magisterium to grab Umara’s things.

Thankfully we had the foresight to prepare for the worst, so she had packed most of her things.

Within a minute or so we were running back to the carriage to get to the Terminal.

Unfortunately it still took a while to get to the outskirts of the city. When we arrived, our Rail was scheduled to depart in 5 minutes.

Thankfully, it wasn’t Umara’s legs or arms that were broken; she carried her own chest above her head, legs solidly clamped on my waist. I ran as best I could with two chests and a person in hand. The Vigor provided through our awakenings and temperings helped massively in the process.

I quickly scanned a hanging sign, locating our Rail terminal.

The last few people were being let on.

“Hey! Wait for us!”

“Don’t go!”

I sprinted over with Umara on my back, our strange duo catching many eyes. Most importantly, the conductor noticed us, although his face was filled with a strange, inscrutable emotion.

I held out our tickets, which he took and snipped.

“Welcome. You’re just in time.”

“Ah, thank God.”

I let out a relieved breath as we walked on.

The conductor latched the door shut after we made it on, passing us by and letting us get to our designated car.

Thankfully, our car was nicer with private rooms, letting us destress and settle in quietly.

I set Umara down on one of the small bunk beds and took a spot next to her.

She grunted while lifting her leg.

“Damn, that hurts.”

“Let me see it.”

I reached over, lifting her leg and resting it on my lap as she laid down.

She was still in her shoes from before, some fancy slippers that went with her dress.

I removed them, pulling a sheer sock off as well.

She covered her face with her hands, peeking through her fingers with scarlet ears.

“I-I think it’ll be fine. You don’t have to really look at it.”

“I’m checking how bad it is.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“B-But my feet smell! You don’t have to!”

“I held your hair as you vomited inside my pillow fort.”

“Eughh…”

She let out a weird embarrassed moan as I ignored her, checking her foot and ankle.

Besides, she actually didn’t smell that bad. Because of the magic crap, people in this world had better bodies and didn’t smell nearly as bad, or at least, it took longer to smell like how people did on Earth.

Basically, body odor was much lighter and so I didn’t mind it at all. If anything, her unique scent smelled rather nice. It wasn’t so much an odor as it was an aroma and evenly emanated from her whole body, something I’d noticed after spending a lot of time with her. Hell, even my own body odor was better than before.

It was still fun to see her so embarrassed as I inspected her ankle.

Her ankle was probably twisted. Swollen flesh bulged outward, but she wasn’t reacting negatively — beyond surprise — to my probing fingers, so nothing seemed broken. She also had a full, albeit painful, range of motion, so it didn’t seem like any ligaments had been torn.

It would heal with time, but given her status, we could get it looked at to expedite the healing process. After a few reassuring pats to her knee, I took out a cigar and offered it to her, grabbing another for myself.

Both of us took a few deep drags, feeling waves of rejuvenation ease our sore bodies.

For a while I decided to just massage her leg, going from her foot to her calf and avoiding the hurt areas.

She gradually relaxed until she let out contented sighs. I could feel her watch me as she lay there, but I kept my eyes down and simply let her do as she wanted.

And after doing one leg, I couldn’t ignore the other. With more freedom, I massaged her other foot, ankle, and calf.

I was firm yet gentle with it, sometimes caressing, sometimes relieving pressure and stress through her muscles. I worked my way up bit by bit, going with and against her blood flow until I felt all knots disappear and turned her legs into butter.

Of course, I didn’t take it much farther than that, otherwise we would be entering dangerous territory.

It was unfortunate, but both of us knew that there was a certain line we couldn’t cross. We could generally ignore it, but had been pushing ever closer and closer; it would have to be confronted one day.

And it wasn’t like kissing wasn’t enough, but both of us were getting a little greedy. Holding back was difficult but in our best interests, and so we both made do.

I felt Umara grab my arm and pull me down beside her.

She planted her lips on mine after setting aside her cigar, giving me a slow, passionate kiss.

My brain was clouded until she pulled away, peering into each other’s eyes.

She muttered with a rosy face.

“I love you.”

“...”

I almost recoiled at her words. They were far from expected and I was stunned into silence.

Was it even okay to say something like that? Our relationship of three months was already under incredible scrutiny.

But then again, why did I give a damn?

Once I properly processed what she was saying, my mind was overwhelmed with so much love for this girl that I instinctively gave her another kiss before muttering in her ear.

“I love you too.”

“Mmm.”

She hummed as we continued to kiss, and for a moment, I almost decided to throw away all reservations and cross the line in the heat of the moment.

But I knew better. My mind was too clear — damned Spark — for love to cloud rational thinking. I not only rationally understood that our current position was actually beneficial for us; I also had the willpower to drive off temptations. If I fell to Umara’s temptations, it would have to be a full dive of my own volition.

It didn’t help that she had brought us yet again one step closer to that line. There was nothing more we could do short of getting married that would advance our relationship any further.

Despite that, I could tell that she got more heated as we continued in the small bed. Her grinding, the intensity, it all told me that she was seriously pushing.

Man, she was really making this difficult for me. Not that I could blame her. The heat of passion was an addictive drug. The only reason I wasn’t succumbing to it was due to the power of my mind that elevated me above the fleshly desires of my brain, to some extent.

Not even being piss drunk could completely fog my mind. I found that out last night at the Gala.

And so, I was the one who had to exercise some restraint for both of us. Taking control, I rolled and got her off me before forcefully separating.

She watched me with clouded eyes for a bit before her red face shifted into worry.

“Do you not want to? I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to-”

“No no.”

I put my hand on her face and stopped her lips with my thumb, smiling.

“God knows that there is very, very little keeping me from tearing off your clothes right now. Hell, I’m about to tear through my own, but we both know that we can’t, not right now.”

“...What if I don’t care?”

I could feel her squirm underneath me as she bit her lip, her thighs brushing against my rock solid pants.

I almost laughed, my remaining sanity barely keeping me in check.

“What if it’s for us? For our future?”

“We can do both.”

“Can we? You know better than I. What would it really mean for us to have sex right now? I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks and hate the other nobles a lot more than you do, but if it keeps them in check, then I’m willing to wait. The future could hold a lot more. How much will doing this take away?”

“...”

She didn’t respond, going from pondering to frowning.

Through the horny, she started to get agitated before the anger surged.

“Agh! Dammit! Stupid fucking old assholes! Why should we have to care?! Can they not just keep to themselves?! My life is my own! I’m not some political benefit just so some elderly bitch can use my mother as a money bag!”

She stood out of bed as she started yelling, her arms flailing and knocking stuff over.

I just watched, even as the air was kicked up with magic.

She was pissed and I had no intention of stifling anything. I was angry too. Even more so than her.

If anything, I was glad she was angry. Unfortunately, our lives weren’t our own to dictate, not yet.

We would need do develop more power so that someday, we could tell them all to go fuck themselves.

At that time, we could fuck whenever we damn pleased.

Suddenly, Umara turned to me.

“Do you know why? Why we can’t do this? Do you know how they’ll take away our future?”

“How?”

I sat straight and asked. I was genuinely curious, because she did in fact know better than me.

She let out a sharp breath.

“My virginity. If you took it, then I would become less valuable to any suitors. But that doesn’t help us. It would only mean that they can push the boundaries farther. I become little more than a product at that point, and because of that, they have all the more reason to simply kill you and marry me off. And there’s nothing my mother would be able to do if you’re dead. No matter how long it took, they would get what they want.”

“...I see.”

My response was succinct. I didn’t realize that, but it made sense.

Virginity was important, especially for women. That was simply how it was in these noble societies. And I knew that, but I didn’t know what getting rid of that would do to us.

Now I knew. It would only give them more leverage, more reason to kill me and take Umara.

The Duchess could withhold her daughter because she was valuable. But if her value went down, then she couldn’t, especially if I wasn’t there to be a living excuse.

In short, having sex would kill me.

How fun.

I sighed, standing up and hugging my enraged girlfriend.

“Alright, let’s readjust our position. We can’t do anything now but that doesn’t mean we have to give them control over us. Let’s think of it like this. We’ll wait to have sex until we’re married. All we have to do is hold ourselves accountable until that day comes. Nobody will be able to say that we didn’t do something because we were afraid of them.”

“...Okay. I agree.”

“Good. Now let’s cheer you up. I don’t like seeing you so mad.”

“It’s not my fault.”

“I know it’s not. And I’m sorry I can’t do more.”

I rubbed her back as she started to calm down.

“One day we’ll be able to do whatever we want. As long as you’re willing, we’ll work toward that together.”

“I-I did just say that I love you, right? I thought that was a given.”

“And I love you too. But I’m not gonna lie and say I don’t have small doubts.”

“About what?”

She looked up at me, worry painted across her face.

I scratched my head.

“I’ve had a couple relationships in the past, and even though I thought they loved me, even after they said it, they still left. I just get worried that as time goes on, things might change.”

“Oh…”

She looked down, thinking for a few seconds before raising her head back up.

“Then like on the battlefield, I’ll prove to you that you can trust me.”

“No. I already trust you. I love you. And I’ll keep loving you, so long as I’m not alone in that.”

“You won’t be. In fact…”

She pushed herself up, giving me a quick kiss, red blooming across her cheeks.

“W-When we get married, I’ll make you feel stupid for ever having doubts.”

“Oh my. I can’t wait. Because we’ll get to do some other stuff too once that happens.”

“Y-y-you’re just doing this for my body?”

“Well you are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”

I grinned and leaned down, kissing her neck and making her hands tighten around my back.

“B-Bad… Bad guy!”

“Come on. I won’t be able to kiss you so much while we’re at your parent’s house. We’ll need to get in enough for a few days.”

“That's t-true. S-so stop licking my neck!”

“Hahaha…”