Chapter 357 - 357: Through the Wall

"No answer, huh."

Rigel wiped his wet fingers on the inside of Erna's thigh.

The skin there was hot. It jumped when the cloth touched it.

From the far side of the wall came only breathing.

Fast. Shallow. Not the breathing of someone still trying to argue about gold coins.

"I'll take that as a yes."

He undid his belt with one hand.

The sound of metal was small, but in the ruined corridor it carried.

Erna's legs twitched.

"W-wait… what are you taking off…"

"You can guess."

"Don't you dare. This is a work site. If someone—"

"Then keep your voice down."

He pushed the work pants and undercloth aside.

What showed from the hole was already wet, flushed, slightly open from his fingers.

The tool bag still bit into the stone edge and locked her hips in place.

She could kick. She could twist.

She could not close.

"Rigel-san… please, the bag. Just the bag."

"After."

"That's not— ahn!?"

He set the tip against her and pushed.

Not all at once.

Enough that the head spread her and stopped.

Erna's whole lower body tried to climb the wall.

The hole did not allow it.

Stone scraped her waist. The leather bag creaked.

"Haa… tight."

"P-pull it out… it won't fit… you're too—"

"It'll fit. You just came. Your body's softer than your mouth."

He took her hips in both hands.

The angle through the wall was awkward.

That made it better.

He could not see her face.

He could only feel the way she clenched when he spoke.

"Listen. Ten gold coins."

"F-five…!"

He pushed to the root.

"Guh…!!"

A wet, heavy sound filled the gap in the stone.

Erna's toes scraped the floor and found no purchase.

Her voice broke on the second syllable and became something that was not a word.

Rigel let out a short breath.

Warm. Narrow. Pulling at him even while she shook her head on the other side.

The cheat skill [Rape] liked this kind of thing.

A proud craftsman.

A hole she crawled into herself.

A price she refused to yield on.

Now she was yielding with a different mouth.

"Still five?"

"Uu… uu…"

"I'll move."

He pulled back to the head and drove in again.

The wall took most of the sound.

What leaked was the slap of his hips against the stone rim, and Erna's breath bursting in time with it.

"Ah… ah… wait… the pillar… I have to check the pillar…"

"Check it later."

"This is my job… nn… don't mix it with… this…!"

"You're the one who got stuck. I'm just using the opening."

He found the spot his fingers had already mapped and aimed there.

Erna's legs kicked once, hard.

A tool in the bag chimed against the wall.

"There— don't— that's—"

"That's the one."

"Rigel-san… I'm going to… again… if you do that I—"

"Then come."

He did not speed up much.

He did not need to.

The wall held her for him.

Every thrust bottomed out because she had nowhere to retreat.

Erna bit something on the far side.

Cloth, or her own wrist.

The sound still got through.

A muffled cry, then a wet hitch, then her insides clamping down in waves.

Rigel clicked his tongue, pleased.

"Twice already. For someone who wouldn't give me one extra coin."

"Sh-shut… up…"

The words had no weight left.

He kept the same pace and felt her go loose, then tight, then loose again.

Footsteps sounded far down the west corridor.

Two, maybe three people.

Voices of craftsmen talking about beams.

Erna froze so hard it hurt him.

"S-someone's coming… stop, please stop, I'll yield, I'll—"

Rigel covered her mouth from this side the only way he could.

He leaned his weight in and spoke low toward the hole.

"If you scream, they see this. You choose."

Her legs stopped kicking.

The footsteps came closer, then turned down a side passage.

Someone laughed about lunch.

The sound faded.

Erna's breath exploded out of her.

"They're gone."

"I… I thought I was dead…"

"You're not. You're just stuck."

He started moving again before she could gather a refusal.

This time faster.

The stone rim knocked his hipbone.

He did not care.

"Ten gold."

"Haa… haa… s-seven…"

"Ten."

"Eight… that's as far as… ah, there, not there—"

"Ten, or I call them back."

"You're insane…!"

"Occupational habit."

He gripped the tool bag strap and used it like a handle.

Erna made a broken sound.

The leather dug into her waist and pulled her back onto him with every stroke.

"I-I'll write it… ten… I'll write ten, so pull out, don't finish inside—"

"That wasn't the deal."

"Please… I have work after this… if you put it in I'll drip, I can't stand in front of people like—"

"Then clench."

"That's not how it— nnk…!!"

He drove in to the root and stayed.

Heat gathered.

The skill liked the last second best.

The part where the other person still understood what was about to happen and could not stop it.

"Taking it."

"Don't— inside is— aaaaaah…!"

He came hard enough that his vision narrowed for a blink.

Erna's body tried to fold around the hole and failed.

Her knees went.

If the wall had not been there she would have sat down in her own mess.

Rigel held her hips until it finished.

Then he pulled out slow.

White followed, thick, and ran down the inside of one thigh toward her work boot.

"See. You can take it."

No answer at first.

Then a very small voice.

"…Tool bag."

"Hm?"

"Take… the tool bag off. Please."

He finally undid the clasp.

The leather came free.

Erna slithered out the far side and hit the storeroom floor with a dull thud.

For a while there was only the sound of her trying to breathe like a person again.

Rigel fixed his clothes.

He picked up a fallen chisel and set it on a crate, neat, as if that restored the site.

The hole framed a slice of dim room.

Erna sat against a cracked pillar, pants half-up, face hidden in her arm.

The collar of dust around her waist looked like another kind of mark.

"Estimate sheet," Rigel said.

"Give me a minute."

"I'll give you two."

She laughed once.

It was an ugly little sound.

Then she dragged the clipboard out of the bag with fingers that would not stay steady.

The pen scratched.

Five became ten.

She wrote it twice, darker the second time, as if the paper might argue.

"There. Ten gold. Happy?"

"Fair's fair."

"This isn't fair."

"You crawled in. You got stuck. You negotiated. I negotiated better."

Erna lowered the sheet.

When she looked at the hole, she did not look at his face.

She looked at the stone edge that had held her.

"If you talk about this on the site, I'll deny it."

"I don't talk."

"If the Count asks why the discount jumped—"

"I worked hard."

She closed her eyes.

Opened them.

Pushed herself up using the pillar.

Her legs folded on the first try.

The second try held.

"I still have to check this pillar."

"Do it from this side."

"I intend to."

She came back through the hole without the bag this time.

It was wide enough.

She kept her eyes on the stone the whole way, jaw set, as if looking at him would make the last ten minutes real in a way she could not file under "site accident."

Up close, her ears were red.

A smear of white had already reached the hem of her work shirt.

She noticed.

She pulled the shirt down hard and said nothing.

Rigel held out a clean rag from a nearby crate.

Erna stared at it.

Took it.

Turned away to use it.

"Don't follow me into holes again," she said to the wall.

"Then don't get stuck."

"I won't."

"You will. You're the type."

She shot him a look over her shoulder.

The prickle was back, thinner than this morning, but back.

"Next time I charge danger pay. For me."

"Put it on the sheet."

"I will."

They left the west corridor without speaking much.

The rubble pile was gone.

The path was clear.

To anyone walking in now, it would look like a morning of honest labor.

Near the stair, a craftsman raising a beam called out.

"Erna! You two still alive in there?"

"Alive," she said.

Her voice almost worked.

"West side's clear. Don't walk the inner storeroom till I mark the pillar."

"Got it. The young lord actually useful?"

Erna's pen paused on the board.

"…He carries heavy things."

The craftsman laughed and went back to the beam.

Rigel smiled with only his mouth.

When they returned to the conference room, Count Blade was on his fifth bottle.

Mesterica and Cynthia sat as far from each other as the chairs allowed.

Both stood the instant the door opened.

"You're late!"

"Lord Rigel, you smell like stone dust. Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine."

Erna set the revised estimate on the table.

Count Blade read the bottom line, then looked up.

"The discount grew."

"He worked," Erna said.

"That much?"

"That much."

She did not explain the hole.

She did not look at Rigel.

She bowed the exact depth a site chief owed a count, turned, and left with her tool bag knocking against her hip.

Mesterica watched the door close.

"That woman is rude."

"She's a craftsman," Rigel said.

"Leave her."

Cynthia leaned in, sniffing once before she caught herself.

"…Lord Rigel. Your hand."

There was a faint scratch on his knuckle from the stone rim.

Nothing else visible.

"Rubble," he said.

Count Blade capped the empty bottle and finally pulled a ledger forward, as if the castle might hold still long enough to talk about the country outside it.

"Then we begin. The problem in the former Valstine territory is not reconstruction."

Rigel sat.

The ache in his hip from the wall rim was pleasant.

The number ten on Erna's sheet was more pleasant.

"What is it, then?"

Count Blade's mouth tightened.

The next bottle waited at the edge of the table, unopened, like he already knew he would need it before sunset.

"People are disappearing," he said.

"Not in the slums. In villages that should already be quiet. And the ones who come back… are not quite the ones who left."