"I've heard a lot of rumors about you, hyung. Mostly about women."
"Huh? Ha, haha. Has it spread that far……"
"They say you swap out women every two months. Impressive."
Daisy snarked. Luke took it as good-natured teasing and just grinned like an idiot.
I'd told him that Heroes were lechers, and sure enough, Luke was living out such a glorious adolescence that there probably wasn't a virgin left in the city. Part of it had to do with his reputation as the adopted son of the Demon Lord and ruler, of course.
"Nothing that impressive, really. I'm just putting into practice what my father taught me."
"What did your dad tell you?"
"Yeah. He said the institution of family is just a way for people to pass private property down to the next generation, ultimately perpetuating the inheritance of wealth."
Luke rattled on with the conviction of a clergyman delivering divine truth.
"He said that for true equality to be achieved, our very notions of marriage and family have to change. So if you find someone attractive or feel affection toward them, the best thing to do is just casually enjoy your time together!"
……Wait. Did I actually say that?
Ah, ah— I remember now. There was a time when Luke came to me in secret because he felt guilty about sleeping with Jeremy. He thought Jeremy was my concubine. He considered it a sin to be carrying on a secret affair with his adoptive father's lover.
That was when I'd fed him that little speech. That love is a matter of personal freedom, whether it's Jeremy or anyone else. If the two of you are happy, that's all that matters…… I'd just said whatever came to mind, half-assed. Back then I was preoccupied with figuring out how to deal with Henrietta in Franck and had no patience whatsoever to seriously counsel some kid.
'S-So it's okay for me to do… that… with Jeremy unnie?'
'Of course it is.'
While my mind was consumed with pondering just how badly I needed to screw over Henrietta before word spread that I'd really done a number on her, I irresponsibly told a boy who'd barely hit puberty:
'The more you do it, the better, in fact.'
'R-Really?'
'Think about it, Luke. If you teach your partner about free love, doesn't that spread the mentality that much further? In your entire lifetime, no matter how many women you sleep with, you won't reach ten thousand. But ten thousand is still an incredible number. You'll have done right by ten thousand people's worth. That, too, is a mission that the Goddess Aphrodite has bestowed upon us since time immemorial.'
'O-Oh, is that so……!'
The exceedingly naive future Hero candidate clenched his fist.
'I understand! I-I will follow the Priest's teachings and spread the message of free love throughout the world!'
'That's a fine resolution, Luke. Keep at it.'
……Now I've fully remembered!
Honestly, Luke was so much dumber compared to Daisy that I'd always just brushed him off with vague responses. It didn't really matter, since the whole reason Jeremy was toying with Luke stemmed from my own instructions in the first place. But the offhand words I'd carelessly blurted out like a joke had actually shaped Luke's entire romantic philosophy!
In other words, the hundreds of villagers and city dwellers who had lost their virginity to Luke up until now……when you really thought about it, they had effectively lost their virginity because of me.
What an utterly unimaginable result. It wasn't that the Hero was a lecher — I had turned him into a once-in-a-generation lecher, a monstrous Casanova……just how deep were my sins……
"Hmph."
Daisy let out a cold, contemptuous snort. I swear the temperature in the room dropped by about two degrees. Daisy stamped on the bare floor with a heavy thud. Naturally, her foot was perfectly visible to me hiding under the bed.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing. I saw an ant, so I stepped on it."
I had just been treated like an ant by my adoptive sister.
Daisy let out a small sigh.
"Big brother. In this world, we're the only two siblings we have to each other."
"Hm? Of course."
"I think that, for the most part, we shouldn't keep secrets from each other."
Luke nodded several times, saying "Yeah." He seemed to be deriving simple joy from just having a long conversation with his beloved sister after three years. Unlike the visibly excited Luke, Daisy carried a certain cool aloofness about her.
"I get that you're serious about romance, big brother. I have no problem with it at all. If anything, I want to cheer you on. I mean that sincerely."
"Haha. Thanks, Daisy. You should go find a good man too soon……"
"Actually, there's one thing I'm curious about. You're almost always spending a lovely time with your lover, aren't you, big brother?"
Daisy said.
"Then why do you keep masturbating like a dog in heat every single day?"
"......"
Silence fell.
Though I couldn't see Luke's face, the sheer awkwardness he felt was palpable in the air. Now I was beginning to grasp what Daisy was getting at. And I was silently horrified in equal measure.
"What... what are you talking about?"
"Exactly what I said."
Daisy's voice began to shift into a threatening tone.
"Don't bother trying to deny it. Teacher Jeremy must have given you a certain item."
"Oh... so Jeremy told you about that. Haha. I was wondering what this was about. Anyway, Jeremy just loves teasing people far too much. You've really inherited that personality from her, haven't you?"
Luke tried his best to steer the conversation away with a joke. That only underscored how embarrassing and awkward this topic was for the young man. However, Daisy decisively cut off the flow of the atmosphere.
"If you don't answer my next question, I will cut ties with you forever, big brother."
"Daisy...?"
"I know it's embarrassing. I know you don't want to talk about it. But the reason I specifically called you, my brother who's been avoiding me for over three and a half years, into an empty room late at night to ask this—there's a reason for all of it. So, answer me."
Daisy took a step closer to Luke.
"When you have lovers falling all over you, why do you still keep using that ridiculous slime?"
"......"
After a moment, Luke spoke.
"If I tell you why I'm asking, will you answer my question first?"
"If you answer me honestly."
"This really is an important question, right?"
"I promise."
Luke let out a sigh.
"Ugh, fine. You know what, thinking about it, it's not really that embarrassing. At my age, that kind of thing is perfectly natural."
"Answer my question."
"...It was a gift from Jeremy, to start with. Let me see—it's been about five years now, I think. You know how Jeremy can be pretty pushy in all sorts of ways... I think she was just trying to mess with me back then, since I was still a total kid."
Luke kept trailing off at the ends of his sentences as he explained. His voice was practically overflowing with embarrassment. Having to reveal his own shameful secrets to his little sister was clearly burning him up inside.
"So anyway, what happened was... do I really have to go into all the details?"
"No. You can just answer the important parts."
"Oh, thank goodness. Well, Jeremy used that thing to torment me all the time. How should I put this... it's a bit embarrassing, but I eventually got used to it, so..."
Luke's voice shrank to the volume of a mosquito.
"I mean, I'm still young now, but I was even younger back then. When someone all grown up like Jeremy starts picking on you, there's just nothing you can do. No, it's not like Jeremy's a bad person or anything. Anyway, that's how it happened. Yeah."
"Later on, you ended up with lots of lovers, didn't you? And you still needed to rely on that thing?"
"No... I wouldn't say I needed it. How should I put this..."
Daisy continued her interrogation with a cold edge.
"So it felt good?"
"Yeah, I guess. Sure. Something like that."
"And you couldn't feel satisfied even when you slept with other lovers?"
"...I'm just weird, I guess. Maybe it was some kind of first experience and it left behind strange aftereffects. Sigh—Daisy, you wouldn't understand yet, but... there's a kind of compatibility between people who love each other."
Luke was still embarrassed, but he spoke more freely than before. It seemed like he'd somehow come to terms with the situation in his own mind. He probably understood it as him, the older brother, giving sex education to his purely innocent little sister. Something like that, maybe.
"Hey. Don't laugh if I say this."
"I won't laugh. It's not exactly a funny topic."
"...I think I'm most compatible with that thing, after all. Ugh. There were actually a few girls I liked. But even when we shared love, or after we did, it felt like—strangely—they just couldn't compare to that thing... Sigh. Honestly, this is something I feel really bad saying to the girls who actually dated me."
Daisy let out a small laugh.
Luke must have taken that laugh the wrong way, because he suddenly raised his voice.
"You promised you wouldn't laugh!"
"Sorry. It just slipped out before I knew it."
"Fine. I'm not telling you anything else anymore."
Luke's tone made it clear he was thoroughly sulking.
"Look, the real thing and the artificial thing are supposed to feel different, okay? Besides, Dad has been way too easy on you, Daisy. Teaching you with absolutely zero knowledge on that front! There's a world of difference between not caring after you've found out and not caring because you never knew in the first place. I'm going to tell the Godfather first thing tomorrow so that you don't stay completely clueless—"
"It's mine. My brother."
Daisy said.
In a voice devoid of any color.
"That thing. It belongs to me."
"...What are you talking about now?"
Even the ever good-natured Luke was finally losing his patience.
Instead of answering, Daisy stood up from her seat. She walked over to the dresser at the far end of the room and started rummaging through a drawer. From my angle, I couldn't see what Daisy was pulling out. But it was perfectly predictable.
"It's exactly the same as this. The slime you use, brother."
"..."
"Even if you don't know, that transparent slime is only half of it. It resonates with the sensations of the other half. For example, if your slime bends, this one bends in exactly the same way."
"I don't have a clue what you're talking about, seriously…"
"It was five years ago, in the depths of Frank's Forest."
Luke fell silent.
Daisy began to speak in a quiet, measured tone.
"It was a forest so dense that even sunlight was scarce. It was daytime, but it was a little chilly. A few days before, Jeremy-nim had inserted a transparent slime into my body, but I didn't understand what that meant. That day, I saw Jeremy-nim take you into the forest, and I followed secretly."
"Uh, ah…?"
"I hid in the bushes and watched you two. You were sitting on a rock. Jeremy-nim was on her knees on the ground, caressing you. It was shocking, but it was nothing compared to what I saw right after that."
A little falsehood mixed into the overwhelming truth.
Each of Daisy's words became a sharp arrowhead, piercing Luke's very lungs.
"Jeremy-nim took something out. It was too far away to see clearly, but I could tell at least that it looked exactly like the thing she had forcefully given me a few days before. I've never resented my good eyesight as much as I did then."
"That's a lie… Daisy, what are you saying…?"
Luke's voice trembled.
"This has gone too far. J-Jeremy noona? Was it something Jeremy noona told you to do…? This won't do. Where is Jeremy noona's bedroom? It's on the second floor, right? I have to go tell her right now…"
"Don't run."
The moment Luke hesitated, about to get up from the bed, an utterly frigid voice flowed from Daisy's lips. I couldn't see what was happening from my vantage point at the foot of the bed. But I could tell that Daisy was leaning closer and closer to Luke, judging by the changing position of their ankles.
"Look me in the eyes. Listen to the end."
"Uh, agh…"
"That thing covered your body. At the same time, the thing inside my body vibrated in exactly the same way. Again and again. Over and over. I desperately held back the moans that tried to escape my lips. I lay on the ground, desperately wishing that this hellish time would just end."
"It's a lie… it's a lie…"
"You did it twice yesterday."
Luke's sobbing stopped abruptly.
"Once around noon. The other time was in the middle of the night. Did you not sleep well either, brother? Thanks to that, I was wide awake from the crack of dawn yesterday too, and it threw off all my work. The day before yesterday was better — only once, thankfully. Do you know what I've wished for more desperately than anything else over the past five years?"
"A-ah…"
"Just once today. Please, just let it be once today. Because every time you toyed around with that slime you said had great compatibility, all I could do was stand in place and endure it, unable to do a single thing."
Luke's legs trembled. His entire body was shaking.
"At first, I thought it would end someday. Just a little longer. Let's endure just a little longer. Then it'll be over eventually, I told myself. Nothing happened, and it'll just quietly pass."
"A-ah, ugh, ah… ahhh…"
"When I heard you had taken lovers, I cried silently. It's finally over, I thought. But somehow, even after a year passed, even after two years… no matter how much time went by, those hellish moments never ended."
Daisy let out a faint, bitter laugh.
"In the end, I no longer had the courage to look at your face. Same with our parents. That's why I cut ties. How could Mom and Dad accept the reality that their son and daughter were essentially copulating every single day? Another three years passed like that, but you never changed. You didn't have the slightest clue why I started avoiding you. I was the only one — only me — who suffered."
"……."
"That's why I decided to tell you the truth today. Luke. My brother."
Daisy pressed her body close to Luke.
And whispered quietly.
"You're a piece of shit who raped your own little sister countless times over five years without batting an eye."
——In that moment,
Luke felt the mind he had barely been holding together snap, cleanly and completely.