https://ncode.syosetu.com/n5562hc/76/
Adult Toys
The training at Lily’s villa came to a close before I knew it. Surprisingly, the dragon attack didn’t change any of Lily’s plans. We secretly approached the nearby mountain where we heard that dragons had gathered around, and we killed another dragon after luring it out. The strength of Nerine’s magic tool is tremendous, and now that Lily has gotten used to using it, she is able to accurately hit her targets even from a distance. It made the whole battle feel…. trivial.
With that thought rattling away in my mind, I boarded the carriage back to the capital with the hope that we might actually be able to pull off a great performance. On our way here we rode two carriages with me and Lily by ourselves, but since the argument with Nerine has been solved, there’s no reason why we couldn’t all ride back with each other. At the moment, Ran and Peony had both fallen asleep, and their upright bodies were using the other’s to prop themselves up.
This meant the seat was a lot more cramped than the first trip, but more importantly, it’s frustrating that my alone time with Lily has gone down.
As for Lily, she had the freedom this time to blankly stare out the window, but after a few hours had passed, she suddenly opened her mouth.
“Nerine, I am still curious. What are ‘adult toys’?”
“Hii!? W-Why so sudden?”
“It’s nothing to mind. Just tell me.”
“I’m curious too. It’s got something to do with magic tools right?”
Nerine was sandwiched between me and Lily with no hope of ever escaping. Looking back and forth between us, she quickly realized she had no other choice than to give up with a sigh, and she began digging through her bag. Eventually, she brought out two different devices. One had some kind of protrusion on the surface that was just begging to be pushed while the other looked like a simple, elliptical sphere.
“What’s that?”
Lily and I tilted our heads together.
“So this is…. um…. a vibrator. When you press the button on this one, this other one shakes. It won’t move right now though since it’s out of magic.”
So according to Nerine, all the round one does is shake, and the other one is just supposed to turn the first one on?
“It shakes?”
“Yes. Shakes.”
“Then, what would you use it for?”
“That…. no, no, no! I can’t say it!”
Nerine’s cheeks turned a vibrant red and viciously shook her head.
When I looked at Lily, she was wearing the same smile she had whenever she was bullying me. She hadn’t started drooling yet, but Nerine was about to fall into her web. However, I have absolutely no idea what it was about Nerine that had Lily’s heartstrings like this.
“Lily-san, speaking of….”
“You shut up.”
Lily doesn’t want to have her enjoyment interrupted, so she curtly cut me off before I could say anything like I’d done with Peony.
“Nerine. What would you use something like this for? All it does is shake, right?”
Nerine silently nodded as her cheeks grew even redder.
“All right then, where exactly should I put it? Does it go someplace on the human body?”
Nerine silently nodded again. Lily was only getting even more excited as she brought her lips close to Nerine’s ear and whispered in a voice so soft, I had to strain my ears just to make out what she was saying.
“Where should I put it? Tell me.”
This time Nerine shook her head. That’s the one thing I don’t understand about all of this. What is it that has Nerine feeling so shy?
“You refuse to say? Then it can’t be helped. I will ask your body directly. “Here?”
Lily ran her thin, white fingers along Nerine’s neck. A shiver ran up Nerine’s spine as she shook her head again.
“Well…. perhaps here?”
Lily’s fingers ran further down, tracing the edges of Nerine’s collarbone. Nerine shut her eyes tight and endured. Following the flow, I’m starting to understand where this is going.
But Lily is verbally abusing someone other than me. Does this count as cheating? I made my resentment clear to Lily, but when she met my gaze, the only thing I could read from her expression was a, “I’m not stopping.”
“Around here then? Tell me, Nerine.”
Lily’s finger skirted across the surface of Nerine’s clothes and finally came to rest right over Nerine’s lower abdomen. After all this, I no longer need anyone to explain to me what an adult toy is. It’s a tool meant to comfort yourself.
With the correct location finally guessed, Nerine nodded her head ever so slightly.
“Where exactly would you put it? And, what are you thinking when it’s on?”
“It…. It feels good–“
I finally reached my limit, so I lightly hit Lily’s head.
“That’s more than enough Lily-san.”
I stretched my neck so Nerine wouldn’t be able to see the face I was making and gave Lily a stern look. She just shrugged her shoulders at me, so it didn’t seem like it had any effect on her though. But this is cheating. No matter what Lily says later, I am determined to always see this as cheating.
“Even though I was just starting to have fun…. well, this is fine. You made something interesting Nerine. May I buy one?”
“Eh…. I can just give you as many as you want.”
Lily thanked Nerine and received the magic tool with a smile. That egg-shaped one, it’s definitely going to be used on me at some point. My expectations mixed together with my fears and stretched out my back.
“Even so, just like with the ice magic tool you made, it seems strange you cannot use any magic when you can create a tool like this. From my point of view, both of these are magic.”
“Anyone can make the mechanism itself, but you need magic power to give it energy. Like how anyone can make a stove, but it’s not going to cook anything without someone preparing a fire first. You’ll need to study the art of crafting to do it though, and my family holds the secret tight so it doesn’t leak out.”
The two of them suddenly switched to a more serious conversation, and I ended up losing any interest. I decided to just close my eyes and give them a chance to talk while I took a nap.
“The Candy family is monopolizing the information? Showers are a magic tool as well though? Is the reason why they are so expensive actually because the manufacturing process is a secret?”
“Unfortunately. I want to make improvements so that they’re small, cheap, and anyone can have one, but Dad just wants us to focus on how we can squeeze as much money from the nobles as we can. When he heard my ideas, he said I was just being jealous since I can’t use any magic myself, and we ended up having a fight with each other.”
“You mean your father is a genius who wishes to squash any possible competition. If he accepted his daughter’s talent, the world would surely change around us.”
“He hates it. He’s afraid that magic tool engineers will cause a revolution around the world, just as mages did before.”
“Old men in general seem to share that trait.”
“Well…. I guess. It made me want to go against Dad even more.”
“You could resist more now if you wanted. Become a hero, increase the fame of your name, and when you’re ready, start up a guild meant to make magic tools.”
“I…. can’t. Dad is so scary. I don’t have the courage to do something like that.”
“Whether you have the courage or not, you will only ever have one life. If you wish to avoid the future where you end up having to marry a nobleman, you will have to do something.”
Rather than being exasperated with how the conversation was going, Lily is probably just sympathizing with Nerine. There’s nothing wrong with Nerine’s fear of her father. He’s probably trampled over her feelings so many times by now just trying to crush her dignity so she wouldn’t go against him.
From that point of view, Akatsu probably came across as a fairy godmother of sorts for her with that helping hand he offered. There’s nothing praiseworthy about that though considering he only offered to help because he wanted to trample over his own daughter’s feelings.
The conversation stopped there, probably because Lily assumed she wouldn’t be able to convince Nerine to do anything else no matter what she said. I heard her sigh from the other side of Nerine, and I drifted off to sleep soon after.
♠
When we returned to the dormitory, I dove into the wonderful mattress I was used to. In Lily’s room of course.
“Ah…. the villa was nice, but nothing makes me more relaxed than this bed….”
The bed sinks further in. Lily collapsed down right next to me.
“Liffy, should we try out that adult toy?”
She had pulled out and was looking over the egg-shaped toy in her hand.
“For tonight…. maybe we should wait until the second screening is over? I’m still tired from the carriage ride…. fuwa….”
Dropping my guard for a second means a yawn sleeps out. Lily giggled and began stroking my head.
“You are always so focused on simply enjoying yourself. It’s what makes you so cute.”
I wanted to say that isn’t true, but I was so happy that Lily had called me cute that I let it slide.
Before I knew it, I had let everything that happened in the carriage go and peacefully floated off to sleep.
Experimental Translations 