Orario, Leon's home.
The white-walled, red-roofed house stood quiet, a thin, lingering thread of chimney smoke rising and swaying gently in the cool air.
The vines climbing the courtyard wall had quietly shifted from the vibrant green of high summer to the still, dark hue of late autumn, edged here and there with traces of withering.
The weather was turning cold. Winter had come.
Even the birds and beasts that had chattered away on the banyan branches all summer now huddled in their nests, gone a little quiet.
Inside the house, the dining room.
The flames in the fireplace crackled away, the dancing firelight spilling a cozy warmth across the whole room, driving back the deepening chill outside.
"Ah, I'm stuffed! That was so good, so satisfying!"
Laurier set her wooden bowl and chopsticks down on the table, let her body go slack, and slumped into the soft high-backed chair with her round little belly sticking out. Rubbing her overfull stomach contentedly, she broke into her trademark goofy, dopey grin.
"Mmm, fresh veggies and fruit, sweet milk and juice, all kinds of warm fragrant bread... slurp... damn it, why is my stomach so tiny!"
As she spoke, her eyes went red and she puffed up her cheeks, glaring at the one person at the table still "battling on"... the only male in the household, who'd been wolfing his food down for a good half hour and showed no signs of stopping. Her overflowing look was pure envy, jealousy, and resentment.
Rose reached out a slender finger and lightly poked the little elf's forehead, then pulled out a tissue and gently wiped the crumbs still clinging to the corner of her mouth, smiling with a hint of reproach.
"You little glutton. If you didn't get enough, just eat more next meal. Whatever you do, don't copy Leon. He can eat that much because of certain special abilities. We don't have that kind of stomach capacity. Unless you've got a big-eater talent like your sister Jeanne's."
Laurier: "..." You don't have that big an appetite?
Never mind sister Jeanne, just look at sister Kureha, and you too, sister Rose, your appetites are several times bigger than me and Aura's!?
Laurier's gaze drifted across her big sisters with a subtle look, lips quietly pursed, ranting wildly inside.
Of course she didn't dare say any of it out loud. She wasn't actually an idiot.
After all, telling a lady she eats a lot ranked right up there with asking her age as the ultimate insult, an offense through and through.
Even gentle ones like Rose would get genuinely angry hearing something like that. Clearly... Laurier had absorbed quite a lesson from Leon's bitter experiences.
...
Tick... tick... tick...
The pendulum of the grandfather clock swung on, tireless.
A glance at the time showed another ten minutes had passed.
Eyes back to the dining table, and a certain man... was still going. It wasn't until another half hour had gone by that the man finally set down his knife and fork, dabbed elegantly at the corner of his mouth with a tissue, his face glowing with the bliss of a full stomach.
"Awesome!"
"Delicious!"
"So satisfying!"
Watching his childish display, Jeanne, who had stood to clear the dishes, couldn't help finding it funny.
But the thought slid sideways, and the "bad things" this rotten man had done to her and Rose last night and this morning floated back up... and a faint, sweet, sticky sensation seemed to phantom its way across her lips and teeth again...
Jeanne's cheeks flushed crimson, her violet eyes liquid, anger and shame tangled with a thread of affection. She shot Leon a chiding glare, then turned and busied herself.
Leon: "?"
What's gotten into the Holy Maiden now?
Watching her busy back and unable to make sense of it, he gave a slight shake of his head, then took a sip of the black tea Rose had brewed and happily opened his panel to study it.
Tsk, racked up a decent chunk of Excelia again. Time to spend some points!
Just as Leon started thinking over his point allocation...
Over on her side, Jeanne had worked herself into a flustered mess with her own imagination.
Damn it! What am I thinking!
Jeanne, Jeanne, you're the Holy Maiden! How can you surrender to evil!
Ngh... my body instinctively resisted that stuff at first, but... why do I feel a sliver of craving now?
Could it be... my body's already been trained by that bastard into... gradually getting used to it?
The terrifying possibility set Jeanne furiously whipping the braid behind her back.
No way, absolutely no way!
How could I end up cooperating with him like Rose and Kureha do...
But... aaaaaahhh!
My body's gotten so strange!
What on earth is going on!?
Could... could it be... I... I'm already broken...
As she washed the dishes, Jeanne fretted away in her little head over the wrongness of her own body...
What she didn't know was that, as her intimacy with Leon deepened, the Beloved's Blessing he'd granted and the Beloved's Crest she carried were flickering bright and dim like breathing, answering one another.
The quiet activation of these two skills meant that...
Jeanne's own potential and talent were slowly, steadily climbing.
So then...
What was the price?
Everyone knows there's no such thing as a free lunch in this world.
To gain something, you have to give something up.
Fate's gifts always come with a price marked in secret.
...
Meanwhile, on the other side.
Compared to Jeanne's inner turmoil, Rose and Kureha, who actively cooperated with Leon, reaped far more obvious benefits.
In particular, the vast majority of the "life essence" they swallowed down sent their Beloved's Crests flickering like mad, their potential and talent rising at an unprecedented pace.
And all of this was completely unknown to them.
...
...
The lively breakfast hour wound down in the warm atmosphere beside the fireplace.
To outsiders this breakfast might have seemed perfectly ordinary, but to Leon's group, who'd been groping their way through the Dungeon for so long, it was a lavish feast they hadn't had in ages. After half a month of "rough living" that had left everyone's mouths practically tasteless, they all ended up eating a little more than usual, even the ladies who cared so much about their figures.
As for Jeanne and Leon, whose appetites were already monstrous, that went without saying.
Just look at Jeanne now, still washing dishes with her little face flushed pink.
Clearly... it was a beautiful misunderstanding, one that no one but the daydreaming Jeanne herself was aware of.
...
The sitting room.
The busy morning passed, and the time came around to mid-morning.
Early winter sunlight streamed through the classical floor-to-ceiling lattice windows, filling every corner of the sitting room. Curled up barefoot beside the blazing fireplace, sunk deep into the soft sofa and now changed into a turtleneck sweater, the little elf let out a lazy, contented purr.
...
...
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