Chapter 110: The "L" Bomb

The following evening, I found myself in a situation.

I was kneeling on the rug in the middle of our room. Lily was kneeling on the rug in front of me, close enough that our knees were touching, and she was holding both of my hands in hers. She had asked me to sit down because she had "something very important to say," and then she had spent a full minute staring at our hands without saying it.

"Kohaku..." She took a deep breath. "Ever since the beach, I’ve been thinking. Actually, I’ve been thinking about it since before the beach, since the forest, maybe. I just didn’t know what to call it yet."

Her cheeks were pink. Her eyes were shining. Her thumbs were rubbing little circles on the backs of my hands.

I knew exactly where this was going. I had written it at least forty times, across a dozen different novels. There was always the deep breath, then the speech about how long she’d been feeling it, and then came the three words that changed everything.

In other words, the sweetest girl in the world was about to tell me she...

She...

You know. She "L’ed" me.

[I-I can’t just let her say that to me! I’d die of embarrassment!]

I had been on a date exactly zero times in my first life. I had no idea what a person was supposed to say back. Was I supposed to say it too? Did I already feel it? Did I need to decide right now, on the rug?

"So, what I’m trying to say is..." Lily squeezed my hands. "Kohaku, I lo—"

"LILY!!!"

I tackled her.

She squeaked as we went down together onto the rug, and I landed on top of her with my arms wrapped all the way around her and my face buried in the side of her neck. My tail swept around and curled over her legs on its own.

"K-Kohaku!? What are you...?"

"You’re just so cute!" I nuzzled her neck, and she smelled like the lavender soap she always borrowed from me. "Do you have any idea how cute you are? You’re the cutest girl in this whole academy! No, you’re the cutest girl on the whole continent!"

"I-I was in the middle of saying something important!"

"I know, I know~" I kissed her jaw, then right below her ear. She shivered all the way down to her toes. "It’s just that you were looking at me so seriously, and you were holding my hands, and I couldn’t help myself. That’s your fault, you know?"

"H-How is that my fault!?"

"Because you’re adorable." I slid one hand down to her hip and squeezed, and she let out a little gasp. "That’s a crime, by the way. I should report you."

Lily opened her mouth to argue. I kissed her before she could, slow and deep, and her hands, which had been pushing at my shoulders, slowly stopped pushing. A moment later, they were holding onto my shirt instead.

When I finally pulled back, she was flat on the rug with her hair spread out everywhere, her face bright red, and her chest rising and falling fast against mine. Her nightgown had ridden up to the middle of her thighs, and neither of us made any move to fix it.

"I..." Lily blinked up at me.

"Hmm? Were you saying something?" I looked at her with a smile and a raised brow, challenging.

"I was! It was really important!" She frowned up at the ceiling and thought very hard. "I had a whole speech, and I practiced it in the bath, and now... Uh..."

[YES! Her resolve broke!]

"Then it’ll come back to you later~" I nuzzled her cheek. "In the meantime, I’m not done telling you how cute you are."

Lily covered her face with both hands and made a noise somewhere between a whine and a giggle. Then she peeked at me through her fingers, wrapped her arms around my neck, and pulled me back down.

[Phew. I bought myself some time.]

That was good. The problem was that Lily practiced her speeches in the bath, and she was going to take another bath tomorrow.

In other words, I had only bought myself one day.

---

Later that afternoon, I took Lily out to the empty training yard behind the dorms for her lesson.

The deal with Sabine had always worked the same way. Sabine taught me, and then I taught Lily whatever I’d managed to understand. Of course, I left out the parts where Sabine had her hand on my thigh and called it "postural correction." In other words, Lily got the cleaned-up version.

"Okay! Today is Tide," I said, pacing in front of her with my hands behind my back. "I’ve been working on this one for a while. Normally, when you Coat, you push your mana over your whole body at once, right? It’s strong, but it burns through your mana super fast and it hurts the entire time."

"Right!" Lily nodded seriously. She was holding a little notebook and writing down every word I said.

"With Tide, you only armor the part of your body that’s doing the work. So, if you’re swinging your arm, the mana goes to your arm. Then, when you step, it moves down to your leg. It’s like a wave running back and forth through you."

"A wave..." Lily closed her notebook, closed her eyes, and took a slow breath.

A faint glow slid down her right arm, into her shoulder, across her back, and down to her left knee. Then it came back up again, smooth and steady, without a single flicker.

I counted in my head as five seconds went by, then ten, then twenty.

At thirty seconds, she opened her eyes.

"Like that?"

It had taken me two weeks of crying in the ruins to get to just seven seconds without falling apart.

In other words, my student had just beaten me by twenty-three seconds on her first try.

[God, her natural talent level is almost scary.]

"Yep! Just like that!" I gave her a big thumbs-up and smiled so hard my cheeks hurt. "Perfect! Amazing! Your teacher is so proud of you!"

[I’m not jealous at all! She’s the heroine, she’s supposed to be good at everything, and I’m the one who wrote her that way! This is just her true power, for which, I am responsible!]

Lily beamed and started Tiding again, this time while walking in a little circle around the yard. She looked so happy that I decided now was a good time to give her the news. It was good news, after all.

"Oh, by the way," I said, "Serena said yes."

Lily’s foot came down wrong. The glow in her leg blinked out, and she stumbled sideways into the weapon rack with a clatter.

"S-S-She said WHAT!?"

"Yes! To the knight role!" I jogged over and caught her by the elbow before she could slide down onto the ground. "I asked her yesterday, and she agreed on the spot! Isn’t that great?"

Lily wasn’t listening. Her face had gone white again, and her eyes were starting to roll up in the exact same way they had on the rug.

"Hey, hey, hey! Stay with me, hon!" I grabbed both of her shoulders. "This is great news! Seriously! Think about it for a second!"

"T-Think about what!?"

"Didn’t you want to make up with her?" I said, as fast as I could. "Ever since Hanamura, you two have been trying to fix things, right? Well, what better way to make up with someone than with a kiss? In front of lots of people, even! It’s like a big, public peace treaty!"

Lily stared at me. She opened her mouth, then closed it again, then opened it again.

"...A peace treaty?"

"A huge one! Four hundred witnesses! Nobody will ever be able to say you two aren’t friends again!"

Slowly, the color started coming back into her cheeks. Then it kept coming, until her whole face was pink.

"I... I did want to make up with her," Lily said quietly. "She used to share her snacks with me, even the ones she really liked. That was nice."

"See? There you go! You can start sharing snacks again!"

"And if Serena’s brave enough to do it in front of everyone..." Lily straightened up, and her hands balled into fists. A bright glow ran down both arms at once. "Then I can be brave too! I’ll be the best princess she’s ever kissed!"

"That’s the spirit!"

[Phew. Damage controlled.]

Lily nodded firmly to herself, flipped open her notebook, and paged through to the copy of the script she had tucked inside the back cover. She ran her finger down the final scene.

Then she stopped.

"Kohaku," she said, in a very small voice. "How long is the kiss supposed to last?"

I leaned over her shoulder and read the stage direction.

"Until the curtain comes down."

Lily fainted into the weapon rack.