Lily lay on the bed, and whether she had a fever or not, her pale skin flushed red as she moved the hand she had tucked between her thighs, twitching and letting out a sweet cry.
"Lord Herooo... ah..."
That honeyed voice reached me from across the room, yet her heat felt close enough to touch.
Watching so prim a girl in such an intimate act1 made me swallow hard, and it was far too lewd to look away from.
As I stood frozen and stared at Lily, our eyes met straight on.
Oh crap, crap, crap, crap, crap...!
"Since when have you been watching, might I ask?"
Lily straightened her messy clothes and sat up, pressing both legs tight together.
She looked as composed as ever, though her shoulders trembled.
"Just now, I think, right when you finished..."
"Knocking before you enter a lady's bedchamber is something I would consider very ill-advised3."
"I thought you might be praying..."
"Please choose, your eyes or your ears."
With a face holding back shame, Lily took up the holy staff that lay by the bed.
"You plan to blast off whichever I pick, right?!"
"Rest assured. After I blow away your eyes or your ears, Lord Haruya, I shall blow away my own eyes or my own ears as well. We shall share the pain equally4."
"That just leaves us both worse off?!"
Lily's eyes filled a little with tears, and she looked ready to cast at any second.
Guh, I have to share this shame with her!
"Everyone does it, you know, that thing!"
"P-Please do not say it so plainly?!"
"I was just too pent up2?! I get it, I get it! When you hold it in and push through, it feels great, right?! I try to hold back too, but I always end up doing it anyway!"
"Please do not place me with you?!"
"It's not just me! Everyone does it! Even the Hero does it all the time!"
"The Lord Hero would never do such a thing!"
"He totally does! Of course he does, the Hero does it all the time!"
He was a vigorous Hero too, but doing it while my companions and the Goddess watched was truly hard.
I would pick my theme ahead of time, slip out as if to use the toilet, and finish in that short gap. It was one reason I wanted to quit being the Hero.
That act should be more lonely and free.
Perhaps taking it as mockery of the Hero, Lily's face turned stern, though it was the truth.
"Anyway, why use the Hero as your theme?! Were you lusting for the Hero?!"
"Th-That is not it! There is a reason for this!"
Lily looked hit where it hurt, and she grew oddly flustered.
Her rare fluster and her act of self-pleasure gave me a fond ache, but teasing her here would blow my eyes and ears off. If I played it wrong, I could lose both.
"What reason?"
"I am but an untrained priestess. When I use divine arts, I add not only Faith Power but my own life force on top."
"Um, so what does that mean?"
"Since my life force is stirred and roused... I grow very pent up..."
Lily kept a prim face, but her cheeks burned bright red and hot as a boiled octopus.
Her state, from this prim Lily who taught me in my past life, hit me hard, but I could not let lust take me now, though I would carve it into memory.
"Hah... I see. Got it."
"You believe me just like that?"
"There's no reason to lie, is there?"
Even in my past life, Lily often ended up alone when we first met.
I thought she might be praying, but she was easing herself.
Lily is a child of man, after all.
"But still, a priestess of the Great Goddess Church using the Hero as a theme to ease off is pretty bad... isn't it?"
"I would never use the Lord Hero as a theme..."
"Lying about it now won't help."
"I-It is not a lie. I serve the Goddess, and I am also the Lord Hero's teacher. I must stay more pure than other priestesses, but... it is only..."
"Only?"
Lily looked away and mumbled, "If the Lord Hero truly wished for me, then rather than easing off as the Lord Hero's accessory..."
"So if it is that kind of fantasy, using it as a theme and doing it is allowed by the Church?"
"Barely5... I suppose."
The way she said it sounds barely out, so I will not press it since that would be cruel.
She is a girl who could bear plain cabbage for a month, so she must grow past bearing pent up.
But if the Hero truly wished for her, huh. If I had known that in my past life...
No, I do not want to use a friend's weak spot like that. Besides, I know she is the kind of girl who would make you take charge if you touched her, and that is the key part.
More than that, what grips me now is this, so I pulled out a chair at the round table and sat down.
"The Hero's accessory, huh... You truly hold to that, don't you?"
"..."
"You won't answer. Fine, I guess. But that way of thinking is truly scary."
Thanks to the lucky lewd scene... no, with bad luck my ears or eyes would have blown off, so I doubt luck had a hand in it.
Still, had it not grown easier to raise the main point?
It was something I could never have asked before.
I am no Hero now, so I could ask with no hold back.
Lily tried to dodge, but sensing she could not flee my gaze, she spoke low, "Lord Haruya was an orphan, were you not?"
"Yeah, I was left in the woods with one blanket, so they say."
"...I am also an orphan. But not left... I had parents. It was a plain warm home, the kind found anywhere."
Ah...
If she keeps warm home memories yet is an orphan... it must have been monsters.
The kind of tale heard far too often, rising now and then in a corner of this world.
Lily spoke bit by bit as if holding herself in, "It is a common tale, Lord Haruya."
"Yeah."
"A cruel evil dragon hit the village... a common tale."
"...Yeah."
"The sole change is that a small girl was told by her father to hide in the church, and while dark flames ate the village with a roar, she kept praying before the painting of the Goddess who grants divine words to the Hero."
Perhaps the flames came back to her, for Lily's lips shook.
But as if casting it off, she said in a strong voice, "The village, the church, the people, all turned to ash, and what stayed in the empty village was... the painting of the Lord Hero and the Goddess, and a small girl who kept praying as if clinging to hope."
No feeling showed in Lily's eyes.
She, who could have taken her own life with ease, held pure faith in her eyes instead.
"This world... needs light, and a Hero. Lord Haruya."
With the same eyes she used to preach that I should be the Hero, Lily urged me to be the Hero.
It was a tale I could never have heard had I not come back from death.
I stayed the Hero, and Lily stayed a priestess.
This must be Lily's root.
Well, having faced death and been stripped bare of feeling, hers was no base wish like mine to build a harem. Her iron will stood clear to me once more.
"I'm glad I heard it, Lily."
At my plain words, Lily opened her eyes wide with a touch of amusement, "Is that so? People usually do not make glad faces at such a tale."
"It's since we're still strangers to each other. We don't get too close."
"...I see, a right sense of space."
Lily seemed back to her plain self.
Was there a word I could lend her? I weighed it, but she would surely snap that it was none of my trade.
Now then, for now...
"For now, though..."
At once the window burst apart and a spear flew straight at me.
Lily gripped her holy staff, but she seemed stuck and could not move at once.
She still lacked field time, it seemed, while I stayed seated in my chair and calmly batted the spear aside.
"Let's cut our way through this mess that came for us, shall we?"
Trivia:
1. Lily's justification that using the Hero as fantasy material would be "barely" acceptable to the Church hints at a loophole in Church doctrine that treats a priestess as an accessory to the Hero — foreshadowing institutional attitudes toward Heroes.
2. The detail that Haruya was abandoned in the forest with a single blanket mirrors Lily's orphan origin, quietly linking the two as survivors of loss despite their different circumstances.
3. Lily's habit of adding her own life force to divine arts — causing involuntary arousal — is a hidden mechanical cost of her faith that she hides from everyone, revealing how much she quietly endures.
Translation Notes:
1 ↩ The source uses a censored form (replacing a character with a circle) to soften the explicit term for masturbation; the comedic self-censorship is part of the scene's awkward humor.
2 ↩ Onomatopoeia for rising sexual desire or restlessness; rendered as "pent up" here, but the reduplicated sound itself carries a playful, crude nuance.
3 ↩ Lily's phrasing here is deliberately indirect and formal ("I would consider it very ill-advised"), a roundabout way of scolding that preserves her prim, honorific-laden speech register.
4 ↩ Literally "sharing the pain," used here as a mock-justification for mutual punishment — a wordplay on fairness that turns a threat into dark comedy.
5 ↩ Short for "girigiri" (barely/just barely); Lily's hesitant "barely acceptable" answer is a comedic admission that her excuse is on the edge of violating Church rules.
Notes:
• Haruya - Solo adventurer in the trading city of Gran Neal, formerly the Holy Hero who defeated the Demon King Chronova. Maintains a bronze-rank adventurer status deliberately to avoid responsibility and attention. Slim-built young man in plain breast armor with a longsword and a large hip pouch of adventuring tools. Harbors a singular life goal of losing his virginity at a high-class brothel and building a harem, a dream he loudly declared at guild registration, earning him infamy among female adventurers while being well-liked by male adventurers for his candid lewd talk. Secretly a returnee from death who deliberately destroyed his hero-route reputation.