Theo carefully sorted through the memories he had recovered so far.
It was embarrassing to say himself, but he seemed to have been quite a remarkable person. As the memories up to age twenty returned to him, he finally felt the reality of it. He had entered the Imperial Academy at fifteen and graduated at the top of his class in just three years, then was immediately selected for the vanguard of the demon subjugation force. For the following two years, he moved from battlefield to battlefield, accumulating both great and small military achievements. And in the year he turned twenty, the Emperor personally bestowed upon him a medal and a domain, granting him the title of Baron.
All of it felt like a life that had nothing to do with who he was now.
If I want to know about Lihen, I need to show myself to Lihen as well. That’s only fair. I didn’t want a relationship where only one of us pried.
Theo took a scarf out of a box. It was a fine material — soft yet substantial to the touch. It was something he had bought with money saved coin by coin from working at the tavern. When he recalled that he had a domain to his name, he thought that someday he might be able to give a finer gift with the money earned from there. A vague thought, but one he wished for all the more because of that.
“Lihen. This is a gift. I bought it when my first pay came in.”
Theo wrapped the scarf around Lihen’s neck himself. The moment his hands touched him, Lihen’s face brightened.
“You didn’t have to get me something like this. You could have used it yourself.”
He smiled and smoothed the scarf with his hands.
“Thank you. It’s warm.”
At those few words, the tension that had been sitting in Theo’s shoulders eased a little.
“And — I’ll tell you about the memories I’ve recovered up to now.”
Theo laid everything bare without hiding a thing — who he had been. Lihen listened all the way through without interrupting, nodding at times and occasionally letting his brow furrow slightly.
When all of it was done, Lihen said quietly:
“Thank you for telling me. And for trusting me.”
As always, Lihen ruffled Theo’s hair gently. Then as he moved to rise from the chair, Theo stood with him and caught Lihen’s wrist. With a grip stronger than even he expected of himself.
“Then now it’s Lihen’s turn. Tell me your secret.”
“My secret?”
Lihen blinked and looked at Theo.
“Are you trying to play that question-and-answer game you mentioned before?”
Lihen put on a carefully harmless smile. A smile readied to lower another person’s guard. But this time, it didn’t work.
Theo tightened the hand gripping Lihen’s shoulder. It was hard to temper his grip. The thought that something might break if he wasn’t careful crossed his mind, but he couldn’t let go. The voice that came out of him was low and sunken in a way that felt foreign even to himself.
“Lihen. Did you think I wouldn’t know?”
Lihen’s expression went rigid.
“Kn-know what…?”
The moment he saw that reaction, certainty spread through Theo’s chest. There was something being hidden, after all.
“You’ve been doing something shameful every night without my knowledge. Something you couldn’t let me find out about.”
Lihen stood frozen, unable to say a word. That silence felt to Theo not like a denial, but like an admission. Through the wrist he had caught to keep him from running, Lihen’s heartbeat transferred to his palm. Fast and uneven.
A moment later, Lihen lifted his head with a sigh.
“I’m sorry. But there are circumstances behind all of this…”
Before those words were even finished, Theo let out a bitter laugh.
“Of course there are circumstances. Raising me properly — someone who’d lost both his memories and his abilities — must have taken a great deal of money.”
Lihen’s eyes went wide.
“But even so, selling your body every night—”
“What are you talking about. Selling my body. Why would I do something like that?”
Bewilderment and indignation showed on Lihen’s face at once. The reaction was so utterly genuine that Theo faltered for a moment. But he couldn’t back down now. Because he had already seen it with his own eyes.
“Are you still going to deny it. Last night, I clearly saw Lihen going into a pleasure house.”
The scene from that night was vivid. The figure disappearing into the dark, the heavy musk scent, the images that hadn’t left his mind since.
The color drained from Lihen’s face.
“I didn’t go to sell my body. I went because I had something else to do there.”
It sounded like an absurd excuse. Theo shook his head.
“Your clothes were different going in and coming out. On top of that, you were soaked in the heavy perfume they say male escorts use.”
Every time he recalled those circumstances, something inside Theo burned black.
A heavy, viscous silence settled over the room. It was quiet enough that even the sound of breathing stood out sharply. Lihen said nothing for a long moment. The expression disappeared from his usually laughter-filled face. When the silence had stretched to the point of being unbearable, Lihen laughed weakly.
“So you found out…”
He dropped his head like a man confessing to a crime. His voice sank into quiet desolation.
“I knew it was something I shouldn’t be doing. That’s why I tried to hide it to the end. I’m sorry — for being this kind of guardian…”
Theo stepped closer to Lihen as if by instinct. His golden eyes bored into Lihen with relentless focus.
“I’ll buy you.”
“What?”
When Lihen raised his head, Theo’s expression had already arrived at its conclusion.
“Tonight — I’m going to buy Lihen.”
He knew how cruel it was. How twisted. And still he couldn’t stop. Theo brought his lips to Lihen’s ear and whispered, like he was chewing every word before letting it go:
“If it’s a body you’ve been selling to anyone for money, then you can sell it to me for a day too. The money… I’ll find a way to give you enough that you won’t feel shortchanged.”
In the world of this game, buying sex with money was illegal. Yet pleasure houses continued to thrive in the shadows. As always, the law and reality ran on separate tracks.
So to put it plainly — if Theo paid money and had sex with me, that would be a wicked act. And in this world, a wicked act returned to me in the form of points as a reward. Right. I had already carried out soul offerings. What was there to be squeamish about at this point? Selling my body was nothing in comparison.
The important thing was that I couldn’t let myself show any sign of refusal here. The moment I let even a hint of reluctance to be intimate with Theo show, the points would fly away with it. Theo was a good person — he would never do something I seemed unwilling to accept.
If I wanted to collect Evil Points from this opportunity, I had to shut my eyes tight and act utterly shameless. Theo might think I was easy. But if this was the price for saving the world, I could bear a little misunderstanding.
I shrugged and said, tilting the words sideways:
“How much are you going to give me? Even if you say you have a domain, or that you received a medal — you don’t have money right now.”
Theo seemed caught off guard by my composure. He got to his feet and moved to one side of the room. Then he came back holding the treasured sword I had given him.
“For now, let me return this to you at least. This sword is incredibly precious, isn’t it.”
He held out Rapière carefully as he continued:
“And later, once I’ve fully grown and returned to my domain… anything there that Lihen wants, I’ll give it all to you.”
I stiffened as I watched Theo try to hand the sword back to me.
“Don’t you dare think about selling that sword, even as a joke. That’s for you. You must never hand it to anyone else.”
“Th-then what should I give you…”
For someone who had declared so boldly that he would buy me, he looked thoroughly at a loss. The flush spreading across his cheeks carried a raw, unpolished air. It confirmed my thought — the plan of taking money from Theo was best called off. What would I even do with money from someone still so green?
Come to think of it, there was no real need to formalize this as a monetary transaction to begin with. The mere fact of a hero and a demon being intimate was, by this world’s standards, already a sufficiently corrupt choice. Even if Theo didn’t know who I truly was.
Shane’s father, too, had been intimate with his mother without knowing she was a demon — and hadn’t he paid for it with a cruel punishment? So Theo’s act, in and of itself, was more than enough to earn Evil Points.
“Never mind. What would I do with money from you.”
I spoke a little more slowly than usual. Even as my lips moved, my mind was working busily. How to phrase it naturally. What tone would keep Theo from hesitating to hold me. I mentally wrote and erased sentences several times over, trying to find words that would sound practiced.
At last, something reasonably convincing came to me. Content that was hard to bring to my lips with a clear head — but collecting Evil Points came first.
“…To celebrate you all grown up, I’ll take care of your virginity for free.”
Theo’s eyes went very wide.
I took hold of Theo, pulled him to the bed, and laid him down. From the movement alone, it must have looked like I had no hesitation at all — but in truth, my insides were locked rigid with nerves. Of course they were. This was my first time being intimate with a man. But I couldn’t let that show. Because I had — against my own will — ended up playing the role of a seasoned male escort with extensive experience. Damn it all…
I smiled with an air of ease and reached for my clothes as though stepping onto a familiar stage. Unhurried and leisurely, drawing out each meaningless movement as though putting on a striptease. All so that, on the surface at least, I appeared not to be trembling in the slightest.
I leaned down and brought my lips close to Theo’s ear. I playfully blew a soft breath into it — hff — and Theo’s shoulders flinched with a start. The innocent reaction was endearing.
“You want to hold me, don’t you?”
I whispered, letting a languid exhale weave through the words. Theo nodded immediately, without the slightest hesitation. The response was so unguarded that I was the one who ended up catching my breath first.
I slowly dragged my lips along the side of his ear and down his jaw. The soft, feathery sounds of lips touching and lifting spread quietly through the room. I settled my hips against his groin and began to move my pelvis in slow, gentle rolls. Even the faint rustle of fabric grazing fabric was sharply audible. Through the layers of cloth, a substantial weight and fullness made itself known. I froze.
What the — it’s this big?
Cold sweat began to bead. However much this was for the sake of saving the world, fitting something of that outrageous size inside my body was impossible. My head was already beginning to pound. What do I do next. Will all of that even fit. When a well-worn escort encounters this — what are they supposed to do… Thought chased thought in an endless spiral.
But wait — did I actually need to act experienced in that department specifically?
Muddling through with a clumsy lie until something went terribly wrong seemed far worse than mixing half-truth with half-fabrication. Something along the lines of — yes, I’ve sold my body, but not that way. If he knew his partner was inexperienced in that particular sense, Theo would probably be a little gentler.
“Theo, listen. Actually…”
I let out a long breath and confessed honestly.
“I… I’ve never used my back before.”
