PMEVBO 70

“I’m curious about something. ……Don’t you want anything from me?”

I had asked while thinking about the praise quest, but from the listener’s point of view, it must have sounded rather out of the blue.

“……Something I want from you?”

Iser lifted his gaze and met mine.

In that moment, for some reason, the Pope’s words came to mind.

‘Did you think I had something I wanted to say to you?’

Without realizing it, my hand tightened. The bedsheet beneath my palm crumpled pitifully.

Then, Iser’s calm voice reached me.

“I just wish you weren’t in pain.”

It sounded like something a parent would say to their child. “Don’t get hurt, just stay healthy.” Something like that.

His unexpected answer drained the strength from my left hand, which had been tormenting the bedsheet. Staring at Iser’s face, I belatedly managed to speak.

“…I’m not hurt anywhere. You healed me all up.”

I was just about to say, “tell me something else, not that” when Iser’s hand covered mine. He guided my hand, which had been resting on the bed, up to my neck. I felt sticky scabs against my palm.

Ah…

Come to think of it, there was this too.

Coincidentally, the hand Iser had grabbed and forced to touch the wound on my neck bore my own bite mark. I reflexively flinched and shook my hand. Iser immediately stopped the tactile game. But he still held my hand.

“The wounds on your neck and hand, did you do this to yourself again?”

“……yes.”

Out of shame, I quietly averted my gaze from him.

“Did you meet anyone while you were injured?”

“Uh, yes. …The neck.”

The wound on my neck had been inflicted right before the Pope’s eyes. After that, I’d followed Palet back to my cell. Besides Iser, two others knew about the neck wound.

The wound on my hand, however, was different. I’d inflicted it on myself while alone in my cell, before using the Guidance skill. No one but Iser had seen it.

“Then I can’t heal your neck.”

Iser muttered, then suddenly bowed his head and kissed my hand. I felt the cool, soft touch of his lips.

Actually, something similar had happened a few days ago. He had bitten my finger then. Yet, this moment felt far more bewildering than that time.

The spot where Iser’s lips had landed happened to be exactly where my bite mark was. The sight of the crimson mark, the imprint of my teeth, meeting his red lips was vivid. I froze like stone, forgetting even to breathe.

Meanwhile, the wound vanished quickly. Iser lifted his head and looked at me.

“……Do you dislike your birthmarks?”

He asked, gently rubbing the butterfly birthmark on my index finger with his thumb. The unfamiliar sensation made my fingertips tremble, then I frowned. I couldn’t understand why he was asking this question.

“You keep picking on the spots with the butterfly marks.”

……Me?

The spot under my eye and my neck that I keep scratching. The index finger I kept biting. Come to think of it, they were all areas with butterfly birthmarks. I had spent so much time without a mirror, I hadn’t considered it that way. It was a novel approach.

But regardless, I didn’t think it was a particularly brilliant hypothesis.

And no wonder, I don’t have any particular feelings about the butterfly birthmarks.

At best, this body was someone else’s, I simply didn’t care enough about this body to have preferences about its marks. Well, my apologies to the original Lucariel…

Ah.

Could this also be a remnant of the original Lucariel? …Like the butterfly carcasses trauma.

After all, both were butterfly-related, and…

‘That habit. I thought you’d already fixed it.’

At that moment, a low voice pulled me out of my thoughts.

“You said you have seven butterfly birthmarks on your body.”

He scanned the area hidden by the uniform carefully before asking quietly.

“Did you torment the other ones like this too?”

“No, nothing like that.”

It was true. If it had, I would have been the first to notice the connection between the self-harm and the butterfly birthmarks.

“I admit I sometimes act abnormally. But there’s no grand reason behind it. And it’s certainly not because of the butterfly birthmarks.”

“……”

“As proof, look. The one the top of my foot is perfectly fine.”

I nonchalantly stretched out my left leg to show him.

If that annoying habit really did originate from the original Lucariel, continuing this conversation any further would be pointless. That’s why I wanted to change the subject as quickly as possible.

But life never went according to plan.

“I don’t believe you.”

“What would make you believe me?” “

I chuckled and asked. But his next words made me lose all desire to laugh.

“Show me the other three places too.”

“……What?”

“I need to see for myself that there are no wounds. Only then can I feel at ease.”

His eyes, dark as the night sea, held an emotion I couldn’t fathom.

Iser wasn’t the type to easily ask others for things. Just look at how he responded to being asked if he wanted anything, he simply wished me good health. Knowing Iser like that, it wasn’t easy to refuse his request.

But do we even have time…

I had to take off my uniform top to show him what he wanted. The problem was, the restraints were fastened over the uniform.

It was ridiculous, but even a violent criminal like me was allowed periodic showers and clothing changes. In exchange, the restraints had to be worn at all times without exception. Because of that, my prison uniform was designed with small buttons along all the seams, allowing it to be put on and taken off while the restraints were still attached. So, taking off the clothes and putting them back on again took forever. I had to undo countless buttons one by one and then fasten them all again.

Time was something prisoners locked in cells had in abundance, so normally it wouldn’t have mattered. But right now, there was a 10-minute time limit until the system automatically returned me.

What’s more, quite a bit of time had already passed since the initial system notification popped up.

…Maybe three minutes left?

I glanced at the status window to confirm.

(13m 2s)

…What?

Why did it jump to 13 minutes…?

I was staring at the unexpectedly extended time limit, like some karaoke bonus time, when Iser touched my hand and asked with a dejected look.

“……Do you maybe not like it?”

“No, I don’t dislike it. I don’t dislike it.”

I blurted out denial like a stuffed bear that shouts ‘I love you’ when you press its belly.

Yeah, what’s the big deal about taking off the top…….

If he wants to see it, I’ll show it.

I didn’t know why the time limit had suddenly increased, but this damn status window acting up wasn’t anything new. It used to randomly use skill draw tickets on its own, so changing the time limit was just a minor quirk. It wasn’t like it was a bad thing. Thanks to the time limit increasing to 13 minutes, I could comfortably grant Iser’s wish.

I started by undoing the buttons on the sleeves. But the real challenge came when I finished the buttons on the left arm.

Iser’s gaze was intense. Unable to handle his piercing stare, I finally looked up. I was just about to tell him to read a book if waiting bored him.

“I’ll help you take it off.”

He must have misread my worried gaze as an SOS for help.

“……Uh, yes, thanks.”

I answered reflexively, but I wasn’t sure if that was the right response. More than anything, I didn’t understand Iser. Why would he go to such trouble just to check someone else’s birthmarks?

Meanwhile, Iser moved closer to me and began unbuttoning the buttons near my neck. Watching him deftly undo them one after another made me feel even more complicated and awkward. Thanks to the combined labor of the two of us, I was able to become semi-nude sooner than planned.

But there was one thing I had overlooked.

What am I supposed to do? …I want to die.

Wearing only black restraints on my bare body feels a bit…

I’d never shared myself like this with anyone before, so I hadn’t realized it until now, but it was humiliating. The restraints wrapped around my chest were the worst offenders. I would feel less embarrassed completely naked without them.

Ah, I shouldn’t have agreed to show myself…