Chapter 64: Clarity

I leaned my forehead against the cold metal of the coach side and just started hammering.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Post-nut clarity is a physical assault.

[First, I walk in on Serena jerking off. Then, Serena catches me getting my dick sucked.]

I closed my eyes, but that only made Serena’s wide-eyed expression clearer. She’d looked like she had just collected enough blackmail material to fuel a small war.

[She’s actually going to kill me. She’s going to wait until we’re in the middle of those Hanamura mountains and then she’s going to bury me in a shallow grave.]

"I regret nothing," Marisol said.

I didn’t even look at her. She was standing there smug, probably still tasting me.

"You’re a demon," I muttered into the metal.

"I’m a morale officer, partner." She stepped closer and dropped her voice. "I still don’t fully grasp the ’why’ of your obsession with Frostfall’s modesty, but the ’how’ is clear. Fourteen nights. I’ll handle the rotation. I’ll make sure Everdawn’s schedule is so cluttered with ’sightseeing’ and ’bonding’ that she won’t even know the baths exist until after the trip is over."

She patted my shoulder, which was pretty patronizing from someone who had been on her knees thirty seconds ago, and turned to leave.

"Let’s do it again sometime~"

She walked away with her hips swinging. I stayed against the coach for another ten seconds, praying for lightning to smite me.

Then some shouting started.

The faculty had finally figured out whatever magical glitch was tilting the carriages. One by one, the boxes hummed back to life and hovered steadily. The crowd of bored students surged forward.

I pushed off the coach and smoothed out my uniform, trying to erase the evidence that I’d just been a human piston.

"Kohaku! Over here!"

Lily was waving at me from the steps of Group 11’s coach. She was smiling, completely unaware that her best friend had spent the last twenty minutes getting her dick sucked behind a carriage.

I hurried over and slid in next to her. To my own surprise, I was kind of excited.

[Wait. I actually... want this to start.]

Between the hidden swords, the bathhouse logistics, and the probability of Serena attempting a clandestine assassination, this trip was a nightmare on paper. But I looked at Lily and I was eager anyway.

[If I can just get her that sword and keep the peace, I might actually survive this. Hell, I might even have fun. Wouldn’t that be a miracle?]

I leaned back and closed my eyes.

[Probably not, though.]

---

{Serena}

The absolutely degenerate scene kept flashing before my eyes.

Marisol Vantecca, a girl I had previously viewed as a mildly annoying social climber, on her knees in the dirt with Kohaku Sakana, the most annoying beastkin in the entire academy, leaning against a coach with her head thrown back, her cock firmly embedded in Marisol’s mouth.

And the sound. That soft, strangled noise Marisol had made.

I stared out the window of my private coach, my expression frozen. I was currently enjoying the "privilege" of a smaller carriage, a perk that came with being unofficially engaged to the Crown Prince. Usually, I cherished this silence. It was the only time I didn’t have to maintain the facade of the perfect noblewoman.

Right now, the silence was just a canvas for the mental image to paint itself on.

Across the drive, the Group 11 coach was loading up. I could see them through the glass. Kohaku was leaning in close to Lily, gesturing wildly with her hands, probably telling some absurd story to make the girl laugh. Lily was beaming, clearly enjoying herself.

[Gross.]

I didn’t realize I was staring until a voice broke through the haze.

"You seem preoccupied, Serena."

I blinked and turned my head. Prince Aldric was sitting across from me, lounging in the plush velvet seat with his usual look of royal boredom. He followed my gaze out the window, his eyes landing on the cluster of students.

"The commoner girl," Aldric noted, his voice flat. "Are you planning to approach her? I know you’ve been observing her. If you’re looking for a way to reconcile, I might be able to provide a method or two."

He thought I was staring at Lily.

The assumption was so wrong I almost laughed. Despite our history, I’d been doing just fine without her... No, not really, but I wasn’t about to get on my knees and beg to reconnect just yet.

No, I was staring at the fox. I was staring at the woman who had just been sucked dry by a noble’s mouth in the dirt.

"No," I said, my voice cold. "I have no intention of speaking to her."

"A pity," Aldric sighed, looking back at his nails. "She is a rare specimen."

I stopped listening to him.

My mind, traitorous and unbidden, drifted back to the image of Kohaku’s expression. The dumb fox looked overwhelmed with pleasure. Something I hadn’t experienced in a long time.

A sudden, intrusive thought slammed into my head.

I imagined walking up to that commoner’s coach. I imagined storming inside, grabbing that orange-haired idiot by the collar, and commanding her to get on her knees. I wanted to see if that same look of breathless surrender would happen if it was my dick she was taking. I wanted to see Kohaku Sakana reduced to nothing but a shivering mess of submission.

The image was too vivid.

And the reaction was instantaneous.

A violent surge of heat flooded my lap. My dick responded with a speed that felt like a personal attack, straining against the fabric of my trousers.

I nearly gasped, my back snapping straight against the seat.

[What the hell is wrong with me?]

I gripped the armrest so hard the wood groaned. My heart was hammering against my ribs, and for a second, I felt a wave of genuine panic. I was the top student. I was the one who held the leash.

And yet, here I was, getting a hard-on just by thinking about a fox-girl’s mouth.

[I need to get this fox out of my mind. Immediately.]

"Are you alright, Serena?" Aldric asked, noticing my sudden rigidity. "You look... flushed."

"It’s hot in here," I snapped, my voice sounding strangled. "Open a window. Now."

---

{Kohaku}

The coach lurched forward, the humming crystals under the chassis finally settling into a smooth rhythm. For the first time in weeks, I actually leaned back and looked out the window.

The academy grounds blurred past, replaced by the rolling greens of the kingdom’s outskirts. It was breathtaking. The grass was a shimmering emerald, and the trees looked like God had turned the saturation all the way up.

[God, it’s actually beautiful.]

It was a surreal feeling. I was looking at a landscape I had created, or more accurately, a landscape I had described in a few lazy paragraphs while I was halfway through a bag of chips at three in the morning. I’d provided the bare minimum of blueprints, and the deities or whatever cosmic interns ran this world had filled in the rest with an obsessive level of detail. Every leaf, every distant mountain peak, every iridescent butterfly fluttering past the window was something that had once been a vague thought in my head. Now it was a physical reality I could actually breathe in.

The kind of view that would make a normal person feel a sense of wonder, sure. For me, it just felt like a really high-res version of my own laziness.

"It’s so pretty, isn’t it, Kohaku?"

I turned to see Lily leaning against the window, her blue eyes reflecting the sky. She looked like the literal embodiment of a "pure heroine" trope. The lighting was hitting her blonde hair just right, creating a halo effect that was honestly a bit too on-the-nose. Even I, the author, found it a bit much.

"Yeah," I said, feeling a genuine warmth in my chest. "The best part is that we’re finally getting out of those stuffy classrooms. No more lectures on mana theory or worrying about whether the student council is plotting our demise."

Lily giggled, a sound that was scripted to melt the hearts of every male lead in a ten-mile radius, aimed at me instead.

"I’m just happy we get to go together," she said softly.

I grinned and sat up, my energetic wingwoman mode kicking back in.

"Oh, you bet! I’ve already got a list. A real itinerary! We’re going to find the best local street food, explore every single hidden shrine, and maybe find some ridiculously overpriced souvenirs that we don’t need but will buy anyway. I’m talking full-scale tourism, Lily. We’re going to experience everything Hanamura has to offer!"

I was lying, of course. My "itinerary" mostly consisted of *Find the sword, stop the bathhouse incident, maybe throw Lily at an available man, and try not to get murdered by Serena*. But Lily didn’t need to know that. She deserved a vacation, not a tactical operation.

Lily smiled, and for once, it wasn’t the polite, practiced smile she gave the nobles. It was a real one.

"That sounds amazing," she said, her eyes sparkling. "I think it’ll be really fun, just hanging out together outside the academy."

[Too pure. She’s way too pure. I can’t believe I wrote her this way.]

I looked at her and felt a sudden, fierce urge to protect that smile, mostly because if it disappeared, the plot would probably collapse and I’d be stuck in this world forever, but also because...

[And also because she’s adorable. Definitely mostly that.]