“There is one. Spending time fooling around with my wife.”

Daniel smiled gently, saying it was the thing he looked forward to most today. Though he no longer turned bright red from embarrassment, his cheeks were still flushed with happiness.

Lenore’s heart fluttered. Strangely, her heart beat faster when he made faces like this than when he acted like a villain or snake. That is, when he showed his true self.

“If that’s your schedule, fine. But let me go if you’re not planning to stay like this all day. This position is heavy and uncomfortable.”

Her waist had gradually bent from him leaning on her. She was already half folded and felt like her head would soon touch the floor.

When she mentioned being uncomfortable, Daniel didn’t insist on maintaining his prison of arms. He took her hand and led her to the sofa, sat down first, then looked up at her standing there. He patted his knee, seemingly indicating she should sit on it.

She didn’t want to do what he wanted. Though her mind thought she didn’t want to, somehow her body was already grabbing his shoulders and lowering her bottom onto his knee.

Daniel placed his hands on her waist and stroked with his thumbs.

“That tickles.”

When Lenore fell into his arms telling him to stop, Daniel moved his hands behind her waist and interlocked his fingers.

Puhehe, she heard him laughing above her head.

“Why are you laughing?”

“Because I’m happy. That I can hold you, whom I love, like this.”

It was quite flattering to have someone say they loved her and were happy because of it. Lenore’s shoulders unconsciously rose. The corners of her mouth tried to rise too, but they just twitched as she tried not to smile.

“I often had to leave dejectedly after seeing you sleeping in the study.”

“…When did you come to the study?”

“Too many times to count.”

“Why didn’t I see you?”

“Because you were always asleep. I came wanting to get closer to you, hoping to exchange even a few words, but I only ever saw your sleeping face.”

Lenore’s eyes widened round, saying she had no idea.

“So you just looked at my sleeping face and left without waking me?”

“……”

“What? Isn’t that strange? Did you do something more?”

Daniel made a troubled face and quickly averted his eyes.

“No. I didn’t do anything. I just confirmed you were sleeping and left right away.”

Judging by how he avoided eye contact, it was 100% a lie. Lenore pressed him for answers.

“What is it? Don’t make me curious, tell me the truth right now!”

“……”

“Quickly!”

When Lenore grabbed his face and pressed him to confess, Daniel finally surrendered.

“You just looked cold, so I covered you with a blanket, and then…”

“And then?”

“I… held your hand…”

She thought he might have secretly kissed her while she slept, but all he did was hold her hand a bit. Was that something to be so embarrassed about?

Lenore tilted her head and asked,

“Did you do anything else with my hand?”

“What do you mean by anything else?”

What else could there be besides just holding hands?

Daniel didn’t understand her question. It took him quite a while to realize what she was implying. She was suspecting that he might have secretly played around with her hand.

“How could I possibly do that!”

“Hmm. Well, I suppose not. Considering your usual personality, you wouldn’t be bold enough to do something like that.”

“Of course not.”

“But thinking about how you are in bed, it seems like you might have.”

Daniel opened his mouth wide and shook his head. Really, he didn’t. He just briefly held her hand. He pleaded with her to please believe him, expressing his sense of injustice.

Actually, Lenore knew he was innocent. She just wanted to see him flustered, even though he had become quite sly lately.

“Then I guess you wouldn’t be interested in me touching you with my hands?”

And here I was thinking I might do it if you said you wanted to.

Lenore hummed and muttered coyly. Daniel froze. He struggled with whether to deny interest for the sake of his innocence or follow his desire and ask her to do it.

“Wife, that’s too, too difficult a temptation to resist…”

He squeezed his brow muscles as if in considerable distress.

Lenore smiled gently. Isn’t he silly? Making such a fuss about a little hand touching.

He’s really silly. But why does it feel cute? Is something wrong with her? Is she really seeing him through rose-colored glasses?

No. This is because his sulking face is objectively cute.

Lenore looked at him while actively denying her own emotions. Daniel had his lips rolled inward and bit them, with reproach in his moist eyes. Who wouldn’t find this cute? Reassured that it wasn’t just rose-colored glasses, Lenore pressed his cheek with her palm.

“So? Are you interested or not?”

“…I am.”

“Heehee. I see. But what can we do? I was considering doing it, but I just decided I don’t want to!”

After making him agonize so much, now she says she won’t do it.

Daniel’s pupils dilated in shock. Lenore found this amusing and teased him a bit more before finally taking off his pants and touching him with her hands.

* * *

Daniel had noticed that his wife’s mood around him had changed significantly recently. If previously she had been like a fortress resisting him, now she was like one with open gates, showing him around every corner.

In other words, he was discovering slightly different aspects of her every day.

First, she thought she liked all books, but that wasn’t true. She generally enjoyed novels and didn’t read other books much. Though the study had many books, there weren’t many novels.

“With so many books here, I was a bit disappointed that there weren’t many novels I’d want to read.”

Still, when she looked carefully, there were quite a few.

Though Lenore continued speaking, Daniel was no longer listening. The next day, he immediately ordered a large quantity of novels from the bookstore.

Besides her book preferences, yes. Once she fell asleep, she was hard to wake even if he kissed her and bothered her a bit. If he called her name, she would mumble a response, but wouldn’t even remember doing so.

“How can my wife be this cute?”

When he called her cute, she would quietly blush. When he said she was too cute to bear, she would snort, but wouldn’t avoid his kisses and would quietly accept them.

The reason he was able to get close to her so quickly — though he didn’t want to admit it — was thanks to Count Tivonne. There was a time when he hated Tivonne out of jealousy, but he felt better once he started thinking of him as a love teacher.

“What would teacher do in this situation?”

When he thought about it and acted and spoke as the teacher would, the success rate exceeded 70%. Though Lenore would point out it was too cheesy 3 times out of 10, succeeding 7 times was good enough to be called a winning strategy. There was no reason not to continue.

At first, acting like a villain felt awkward and embarrassing, but now he was used to it. It felt so natural that he wondered if being a villain might have been his true calling.

As Daniel became more comfortable with villainous lines, he grew more ambitious. Right now he only talked about punishing her, but he thought he might seem like a real villain if he added some actual actions.

However, he wasn’t sure what actions would be good.

“I can’t actually lock Lenore in a dungeon and punish her…”

He tried going down to the old dungeon of the Count’s mansion and imagining her locked up there, but it wasn’t right. She belonged in the sun-filled study, not in a dark and damp dungeon.

Daniel recalled his own villainous lines and what evil deeds Count Tivonne had done in the book. Lenore had said she liked how Tivonne did evil deeds boldly and decisively rather than being petty.

Count Tivonne mainly used magic to blow up buildings. Her description of ‘decisive’ seemed to refer to the explosions.

“But if I actually did something like an explosion, the human casualties would be enormous.”

What about a ship instead of a building? If he had everyone disembark and blew up the ship in safe waters… Daniel shook his head. Having people evacuate first was already far from being evil.

Daniel seriously pondered how to do something truly evil without causing casualties. As he agonized with groans, a good idea occurred to him.

“Yes. That would look like a real evil deed but no one would get hurt.”

It was a brilliantly good idea. He happily began preparations to carry out his idea. First, he needed magic stones capable of creating powerful explosions.