Chapter 52 52: “Emilia's Decisive Victory Sleepwear”

"What's wrong, Ram? Are you okay?"

Natsuki Subaru asked with a concerned look.

"It's nothing..."

Ram noticed his worried words and that careful gaze — and despite herself, the tight furrow in her brow eased just slightly.

But she kept her face cold.

"It seems Ram came over of her own accord to teach someone their letters, only to meddle where she wasn't wanted."

"In that case, Ram will take her leave. Good night, guest."

Ram turned around and walked toward the door without a moment's hesitation.

There was a sharp bang as she slammed it shut behind her.

Subaru stared blankly at the door for a moment.

What just happened? Ram had suddenly gotten angry.

Was it because he'd hurt her just now?

He scratched his head. He couldn't figure it out.

He'd meant to think it over tomorrow — but when he turned around, he noticed the fairy tale collection scattered all over the floor.

He crouched down and started gathering the pages.

But as he was picking them up, he suddenly noticed one sheet that was clearly different from the others — different paper, different feel from the fairy tale pages.

Curious, Subaru picked it up and found a strange little story.

It was about a red oni and a knight who had broken down mentally and turned to darkness.

The ending, it seemed, was a tragedy.

He read through it once, then again. Subaru thought it was a little dull — the kind of thing meant for young children, really.

But then something clicked in his mind, and he picked up the page again for another look.

A red oni... a red oni... wasn't Ram part of the oni clan?

And the paper itself — its texture, the whole feel of the story — was completely out of place next to the other fairy tales.

So — could this be the story Ram had mentioned? The one she said she'd written herself?

It suddenly came back to him: when Ram had first produced this fairy tale collection, she had mentioned something along those lines, hadn't she?

"Damn. If I'd known, I never would've brushed it off like that just to save myself the trouble."

Subaru buried his face in his hands with a groan.

Nothing to be done about it now — he'd just have to figure out how to make it up to her.

Knowing how sharp her tongue could get, he was probably in for a solid stretch of being on the receiving end of Ram's wrath.

He was rubbing his chin and mulling over possible solutions when there was a knock at the door.

"Come in!"

Still half-lost in guilt and schemes for apology, Subaru answered on reflex.

Almost before the words were out of his mouth, the door swung open at speed, and a flash of violet swept into the room.

"Subaru!"

Emilia called his name the moment she stepped inside, her face lit up with a bright smile.

The light, cheerful lilt of her voice cut through the heavy, slightly suffocating atmosphere that had settled over the room.

"Emilia? What are you doing here — did something happen?"

Subaru looked up at the sound — and found Emilia standing by the closed door, dressed in a violet nightgown and hugging a long rectangular pillow to her chest.

Everything looked perfectly normal...

Well. If you ignored the cut and coverage of the nightgown Emilia happened to be wearing —

Like hell it was normal!

Subaru's jaw dropped. His eyes went wide.

She was wearing a slip-style nightgown made of almost nothing at all.

Both her fair, slender arms and her smooth, soft legs were completely exposed to the open air.

As for the rest of her body — it was draped in what amounted to a single layer of translucent gauze.

Under the glow of the wall sconces hung around the room, the graceful curves beneath that nightgown — and the skin half-visible, half-hidden beneath it — were rendered only more vivid, more arresting, pulling at something deep and very primal in Natsuki Subaru.

"E— Emilia-tan!"

"That outfit you're wearing, it's..."

Subaru felt a rush of heat surge straight to his head. His cheeks went scorching hot in an instant, as if steam were rising off them, and his voice cracked embarrassingly.

He wrenched his gaze away — or tried to. His eyes, however, seemed to have developed a will of their own, dragging his line of sight right back every few seconds.

"Hm? This?"

Emilia tilted her head, apparently entirely unaware of the devastating impact her choice of attire was having on one adolescent boy's nervous system.

Instead, she clutched the pillow a little tighter and stepped forward two paces, the same pure, sweet smile still on her face.

"After Subaru left this afternoon, I asked Puck what kind of clothes Subaru might like to see me wearing."

"And then Puck recommended this!"

Emilia's cheeks flushed faintly pink. She crossed her arms and shrank into herself just slightly.

"But... I thought it was probably the sort of thing you should ask the person directly, right?"

"So — Subaru, what do you think of what I'm wearing? Do you like it?"

This was moving way too fast.

Subaru stared at Emilia standing shyly before him, and felt a very familiar warmth beginning to build behind his nose.

"Puck. Father-in-law. Well done."

One hand clamped over his nose, the other raised stubbornly in a thumbs-up, Subaru silently saluted his prospective father-in-law, who had long since drifted off to sleep with the setting sun.

Then Emilia saw it — bright red seeping through the gaps between Subaru's fingers — and the smile on her face vanished instantly, replaced by alarm.

"Subaru? You're bleeding!"

She gasped and, almost by instinct, broke into a quick jog straight to his side.

A soft pale-blue light bloomed in her palm, and a water-attribute Healing Magic cool and gentle as a breeze settled over Subaru's nose.

After a moment, the bleeding stopped.

Then Emilia quickly reached behind Subaru toward the desk and pulled out a few sheets of tissue paper.

Flustered, she began dabbing at the blood that had already nearly reached his lips.

"Why did you suddenly get a nosebleed? Subaru, are you alright?"

"Are you too tired, or is something hurting somewhere?"

Emilia leaned in close, her clear, bell-like voice full of genuine worry.

Her violet-blue eyes gazed at him with undisguised concern.

She was completely, entirely unaware that her current outfit was the direct cause of this whole incident.

And to make matters worse, she was now even closer to him than before.

At this range, Subaru had an absolutely unmistakable view of Emilia's wonderfully developed figure — and a certain formidable presence at her chest that she normally kept well hidden.

"I— I'm fine! Really!"

Subaru's gaze darted everywhere except where it wanted to go. Unable to look directly at the lovely face just inches from his or those tantalizing half-glimpsed curves, he could only stammer and fumble for an excuse.

"It's just... I've been a little overheated lately! That's all!"

"Yeah, it's the dry air! Ha ha... ha ha..."

His forced laugh echoed through the room with all the subtlety of a foghorn.

This couldn't go on. At this rate he was genuinely going to pass out from blood loss.

He had to do something!

A flash of inspiration cut through the chaos in his brain, and Subaru suddenly raised his voice, almost talking over her:

"Oh right, Emilia-tan!"

"You— you came all the way here this late at night, so there must be something you wanted, right?"

He strained to keep his voice sounding even remotely normal, desperately trying to drag the conversation away from the whole mortifying nosebleed situation.

"Hm?"

Emilia paused in what she was doing, as if only now remembering why she'd come in the first place.

"Well... I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd come talk to Subaru for a while."

Emilia blinked, and both her eyes slid to the left — just slightly — in a way that hinted, very faintly, at a guilty conscience.

____

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