39. Ten Tenths of Righteousness Is Sophistry

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/42/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Lalilalai was conscious of herself as a holy woman.
She believed it because she possessed a deeper love than anyone, and because she could, in fact, love even a person she had just met, without conditions.
And her love was, as a rule, not refused.
That was because Lalilalai had a body men found ideal, and because she housed in her heart a maternity that could make even a woman go weak—and yet
for some reason, it had never gone well with Ashera alone.
Why did Ashera not merely reject her love, but deny it entirely?
Until now their strengths had been matched, so Lalilalai had been able to believe in her own love.
This time, however, she had lost.

“Are you saying my love was wrong?”

She had been turning that over ever since the quarrel the other day.
It ought to have been right. Why, then, had the Ashera who denied it been able to win?
However long she thought, only one conclusion presented itself.

“It is because you do not know love. Poor Ashera.”

Lalilalai murmured it.
—That’s exactly why I can’t stand the likes of you.
She could almost hear Ashera’s complaint.

“If we held one another even once we would understand, and yet … if only you would entrust your body to me for a single night …”

So saying, she took her cup in both hands and sipped her tea.
Drinking this herbal tea was said to warm the body through and through.
Keeping one’s temperature a little high was, apparently, one of the secrets of pleasing a man.
That said, the partner she currently had in mind was a woman.

“Lalilalai. You in?”

Speak of someone and they appear, or so the saying went.
Just as she had been thinking of Ashera, Ashera’s voice came from beyond the door.
Lalilalai could not help feeling it was fate.

“I am here. I shall open it at once.”

She answered, hurried to the door, opened it, and received her with a full smile.
She had expected Ashera to be scowling, and so she had made her own smile a little more extravagant than usual, thinking that at least she herself should.
Contrary to expectation, the woman who appeared wore a mild expression. Her temper did not seem bad.

“Sorry. Showing up all of a sudden.”

That first utterance gave Lalilalai a violent sense of wrongness.
If her memory was correct, this was the first time Ashera had ever directed an apology at her.
A smile, too.
Something quite good must have happened.
As Ashera was now, it might even be possible to convey Lalilalai’s love.
She had begun to hold that hope.

“Please do not trouble yourself. If anything, I am simply glad you came.”
“That’s a relief.”
“I shall brew tea at once, so please sit and wait.”

Lalilalai spoke as she turned toward the pot.
Ashera came up behind her, opened both arms—and held her, gently.

“… Ashera?”
“Forget the tea. There’s something I want to ask of you today.”
“And what would that be?”
“Up to now, you and I have done nothing but fight. I’m sure that’s because the ‘love’ each of us had in mind never lined up.”

By that point, Lalilalai already understood what Ashera wanted.
So her body began to prepare to receive her.
Heat rose through her; her skin took on a faint flush and grew damp.

“If we understand each other, I think we can be real companions.”
“Ashera … I have been waiting for those words all this time.”

They tilted their heads and let their mouths meet.
Before long their tongues twined, and they began to make nasal sounds.
When Ashera’s hand then crawled over her through her clothes, Lalilalai rolled her hips as if dancing.

“Ah, haa … just as I imagined. You are terribly passionate.”
“What were you imagining me doing, exactly.”
“That much is decided. Shall I tell you why I did not leave my room after that battle?”
“You don’t have to. This room’s full of your scent.”
“… Shall I air it?”
“What’s with the meekness. It’s not a bad smell. Just smelling it makes me want your body more and more.”
“Kyah!?”

Ashera scooped Lalilalai up in her arms.

“You make a surprisingly cute sound.”

The one so addressed looked aside and pushed out her lip, sulking.
Unable to watch it, Ashera brought her mouth close again to soothe her.
This time she did not twine their tongues, but kissed her over and over, pecking.
After some five kisses had fallen, Lalilalai could not bear it; she brought her own mouth in, and again they tangled, deep and wet.
They moved to the bed while desperately exchanging what was in their mouths.
Laid upon the gentle, soft bedding, Lalilalai understood Ashera’s want and bared herself without defense.

“As you like, Ashera.”
“Saves me the talk.”

Ashera reached to her chest and stripped the clothes away, roughly.
For a while after that, only the two women’s sweet voices leaked from the room.

 

◇◇◇

 

When it was over—though Ashera, for her part, was not yet satisfied—Ashera and Lalilalai came to the shower room to wash off the sweat.
Of course they used only one stall.
They pressed into the narrow cabinet, held each other, forgot the original purpose, and kissed hard.
The important parts of their bodies were hidden by frosted glass, but if anyone had entered the shower room, the wet sounds slipping through the gaps of their mouths and the broken voices would have given the relationship away at once.
Not that Lalilalai was the sort to mind, and Ashera, who had stopped being human, no longer possessed that kind of morality either.

Mouths met, parted, met again; breath slipped between them.

“Fhaa—! N … aah … haa … Ashera …”
“What is it. I’m not done.”
“Please wait. I am already at my limit.”
“Eeh? When you were with men you used to look perfectly fine going days without a break.”

They were knights; their stamina was bottomless.
It had been displayed without reservation in affairs between men and women as well.
And how was she now—red to the face and out of breath from being kissed?

“Don’t tell me you didn’t like doing it with me?”

Ashera whispered it nastily at her ear.

“Th-that is not it! That is the one thing it is not! To be able to love one another with you, with whom I have done nothing but quarrel—I have never had a happier day than this!”
“Then why?”
“That is … I do not know myself. For some reason, with you, it will not go as it usually does.”
“… Well, can’t be helped. We’ll leave it here for today. Continue tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow as well?”
“You hate it?”

At the question, Lalilalai shook her head rapidly left and right.
It was a gesture unlike a woman who ought to have been used to such things. Ashera put a hand to her mouth and gave a small laugh.

 

◇◇◇

 

“And that’s why I came to your room today.”
“I was going to come anyway. I told you. I can’t live without Miyako anymore.”

This was Miyako’s own room.
As a woman who was supposed to be an ordinary soldier, she ought not to have been given a private chamber; Chigusa, who now held the whole castle, had arranged the space for her.
It was not favoritism. The judgment was that it might be needed when bringing a knight down.
Ashera, having left Lalilalai, had come here at once and clung to Miyako.
She had spent from morning to evening overlapping her body with another woman, and still claimed it was “not enough.”

“You’re so aggressive, Ashera. I don’t know if my body will hold out.”
“Liar. You reek of all kinds of women, and you say that.”
“Ah, you can tell? Lunch was fun too. When Lalilalai falls, you come along with her.”
“Yeah. I will.”

Miyako sat on the edge of the bed; Ashera sat facing her, in her lap.
Ashera looked down at her, and they held each other’s gaze.
Red sights tangled, and both their moods rose.
Their faces drew together of themselves, and they pressed glossy crimson mouths together.
Unlike with Lalilalai, they first rubbed their lips slowly, then put out their tongues a little and touched only the tips.
As if lovers teasing each other, they enjoyed the impatience, and the joining deepened by degrees.
Ashera was above; what she secreted therefore flowed naturally into Miyako.
Miyako tasted thoroughly the beloved person’s fluid running down her tongue, rolled it, and swallowed it little by little.
It was sweet, and it made her dizzy as if she had taken some nasty drug; her body was hot.
It would have been a shame to taste it alone, so she resolved to change places later and let Ashera enjoy it as well.
For now, though, she let it be done to her, and enjoyed the cat’s place.

She sucked lightly at Ashera’s tongue at the last, and they parted with a small sound.

“In a slow, clingy mood today?”
“I had my fill of the rough stuff with Lalilalai.”
“Did you. So it was rough. There was something mixed in your mouth besides the usual you, yeah. That must be Lalilalai’s taste.”

Miyako set a forefinger to her lips, looking dazed.

“Instead of secondhand, you should taste her yourself, Miyako.”
“Too soon. The charm hasn’t gone that far yet, right?”
“Well, no. But I think it’ll be in no time, and—”
“And?”
“You’ll probably get to see something interesting.”

Today, each time Lalilalai had overlapped her body with Ashera’s, her shame had grown stronger.
She herself had seemed bewildered by it; the awkwardness of the exchange in the shower room had likely been the effect.
Why had she grown more abashed the later it went.
It was probably—because Ashera’s charm had been advancing.

“Well, look forward to it.”
“I will. To Lalilalai, and to whatever you’re going to do to me now.”

 

◇◇◇

 

The next morning, Ashera visited Lalilalai’s room at once.
A night had passed, and Lalilalai’s manner had not changed.

“I did say you would come, but I did not think it would be this early in the morning …”
“That a problem?”
“N-no. Of course it is quite all right. Please, come in quickly.”

The usual Lalilalai ought to have received a partner gladly, whenever they came.
And yet she was, for some reason, bewildered now.
The reason was very simple.
She did not know it, because the environment in which she had been born and raised had been far too warped.

They sat first side by side on the bed.
Lalilalai set loosely fisted hands on her thighs and stayed frozen, her face tense.
When Ashera put an arm around her waist, her eyes went wide and she gave a small start.

“What’s with you. You’re acting weird.”
“Am I …”
“Anyone looking would think so. You coming down with something?”
“No. That is not it.”

As she spoke, Lalilalai moved her hands to her chest and squeezed her fists tight.

“Then look this way. I can’t even kiss you.”
“Ah, yes …”

Slowly their faces turned toward each other, but their gazes were slightly off.
Lalilalai would not look at Ashera’s face.
Her own was scarlet; she bit her lower lip and drew herself small.
She was like a pure girl thrown by a first love.

“Hey, Lalilalai. Do you like me?”
“Of course I do. I love you.”
“The same way you do everyone else?”
“Of course. I love and cherish all human beings.”
“That so. I like you too. But—when you’re with me, you ever feel like it’s different from other people?”

Could a human being love every living person equally?
Ashera thought not.
Even if such a human existed, it surely would not be “love.”

“Ashera—did you do something to me!? I thought it strange. When I am with you my chest hurts and I can scarcely breathe … surely it is not some sort of poison!?”
“Fu … kuku, ahahahahahahaha!”
“Wh-what … why are you laughing?”
“Because … fufu, of course I’d laugh. Saying something like a kid.”
“I have said nothing childlike—”

Lalilalai, most likely, knew neither romance nor love.
The family her mother had lost, she had forced the small girl to fill.
Her father used Lalilalai as an outlet for lust. Her brother clung to her as if he himself were a child.
When she screamed in pain and tried desperately to refuse, her father said this:

“This is love, Lalilalai. Is it wrong for people to love one another? Of course it isn’t.”

In that instant a false set of values was born, and branded into her soul.
When her brother grew older, he began to demand the same release her father had.
The child Lalilalai, already accustomed to being used, accepted those demands readily.
The distortion deepened.
How she later lost her family has never been made clear.
By the time she entered the army in her teens, she had already undergone two abortions.
She had always had a body men favored; once she was in the army, countless soldiers invited her, and she accepted every invitation.
When the rumor spread that she would do it if you asked, still more soldiers approached, and she accepted those as well.
In the result, from the day she became a knight until the present, she had undergone a further eight abortions since joining the army, and each time she had had a tattoo cut into her body.

To her, that had been love, without question.
She had loved; she had been loved; therefore they had loved one another.
Her father had taught her so, so it could not be wrong. Lalilalai had never stopped believing it.

If—someone had truly fallen in love with her, she would surely have accepted the confession.
But no romantic feeling would be born in Lalilalai.
The result that lay beyond—namely “love”—had been stamped in while skipping the process.
Then what was needed to make her fall in love, and to correct that love into a proper shape?
Drugs, magic, surgery, or a curse.
One had to use “something” that changed a person’s feelings directly, and force it right by strength.
And now Ashera had the means to set her right.

“Hey, Lalilalai. You wouldn’t know, but that feeling’s called being in love.”
“What are you saying. A thing like this cannot possibly be love!”
“I’ll tell you now: I didn’t plant any poison. And it hurts, and it’s hard … and even so, you don’t want to get away from me, do you?”
“That is …”

Lalilalai had already entrusted her body to Ashera.
Even through the shame, desire was crying that it wanted to be still closer.

“Your ‘love’ was wrong. Or rather—you knew, didn’t you? You just made excuses so you wouldn’t have to look at a fact that didn’t suit you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The first time your father took you, it must have hurt, and been disgusting, and you must have screamed.”
“That is not so. I accepted it from the first, and I was smiling!”
“No way that’s true. A child that age who takes an adult in can die, if it goes badly. Smiling through that isn’t something you can do unless you’re a born holy woman. Or what—were you born from under a virgin mother’s arm?”
“Even so … ghk, mmph!?”

A kiss closed the mouth of the protesting Lalilalai.
Each time, the magic laid over her memory threatened to be stripped away.
The true shape of the day her father had first violated her—conveniently rewritten—rose in her mind’s eye.

“Stop … please, no more—”
“Then shove me off.”
“I cannot!”
“Why not?”
“Because … because I … like you, Ashera.”

Even allowing for the charm, to think that Lalilalai would become this meek.
Ashera wanted to push her down at once and stir the heat that was seething in her.
Not yet. One more push, to break the fetters on her heart—

“But it is not, it is not. This cannot be love, I cannot be the one who is wrong …!”
“Why deny it that hard. Just take it easy already.”
“I cannot! Because, because if I admit this was wrong—then everything I have done until now, the lives I have wasted, will all vanish as if they had never been!”

The tattoos of fetuses cut into her body.
Those were the last humanity left to Lalilalai, and a symbol of guilt as well.
And there was one more distortion she would have to set right.
Her mother.
A few kind memories remained, just barely; because her mother had died, Lalilalai had been used by her father as a substitute.
Hatred of her mother—the impulse toward abortion—and longing for her mother—guilt.
What lay at the root of both was, in the end, a shortage of affection.
Her father had not loved her, and her mother had died without being able to love her enough.
So when she admitted that what she had believed to be love was a sham, everything would vanish from her.
The anxiety of a small child thrown alone into a wasteland—Lalilalai, reduced to zero, was not strong enough to resist it.

“That thing you think is ‘everything’ is actually a burden. There might be things you only see once you throw it away.”
“I do not need to see such things.”
“You scared?”
“Of course I am! You too, Ashera—if you lost the power to fight, you would be frightened, would you not? Is this not the same!?”
“Yeah. That’d be scary, sure. But I could still walk without it.”
“How?”

Lalilalai’s eyes were wet with unease.
Ashera drew her in still closer, looked into those eyes from the shortest distance, and told her.

“I’ll support you.”

Thump, thump, thump.
Lalilalai felt her chest beat higher than it ever had.
Their mouths drew together of themselves.
When heart and heart connected, a pull was born there.
Surely that was what was drawing the two of them together.
Even if that pull had been made by the magic called charm, genuine was genuine, whether natural or artificial.
The two mouths became one—and while tasting a faintly warm, soft sensation, Lalilalai knew, by intuition.
Surely this, for me, is a first kiss.
Ah. This really is—love, isn’t it.
The instant she admitted it, the element that had composed her until now—“wrong love”—collapsed with absurd ease.
She no longer had the stamina even to put up a front.
When their mouths parted, what remained was a Lalilalai whose inside was nearly empty, a raw self who could scarcely even stand.
What remained, just barely, were only the elements stored in the time until her mother’s death, when she had been raised, more or less, as a proper child.
So she wanted.
Honestly, from the heart, she put the want into words and told Ashera.

“Ashera, will you please love me a great deal?”
“That’s what I came here to do.”
“And … if you could love me as a mother would, I would be glad.”
“That’s a tough request. But it’s my precious Lalilalai asking, so I’ll hear it.”

Ashera gathered Lalilalai’s head to her chest, and the two of them fell together onto the bed.
When her head was stroked, the memory of her mother doing the same returned.
—I have wanted this all along.
Lalilalai’s mouth softened.
Seeing her like that, Ashera too felt something maternal rise; her chest squeezed tight.

A slow time went by.
Lalilalai had not yet fallen—but that the ending was already transparent was obvious to any eye.