“Commander, take this cap with you.”

Allen received a box about the size of a middle finger from Tom and asked with curiosity,

“Cap?”

“Commander, really… it’s essential.”

Tom gave him the box firmly with a determined look in his eyes.

“What is this?”

“Commander, are you really asking because you don’t know!”

“I’ve never seen it before.”

「Hup, right. The commander was said to be impotent?」

What could this cap be that even brought up the impotent talk? Allen examined the box from all sides. Something seemed to be inside, but he couldn’t tell what. When Allen opened the box and took out some rubber, Tom spoke in a solemn tone:

“Commander, this is… something you put on your thing.”

“Pfft, w-what?”

Allen was trying the rubber on his finger when he suddenly got startled and threw it away. Tom picked up the rubber from the floor and offered it back to Allen.

“Commander, you must use this.”

Allen was horrified, but Tom was serious.

The North had developed contraceptive caps for open s*xual activities. Rather than for family planning among married couples, it was for enjoying secret affairs without consequences.

In contrast, in the Empire where Allen was born and raised, a ‘child’ was considered something that naturally occurred, designated by heaven, so there were no contraceptive devices. The Empire was a place where if a child was conceived during courtship, marriage was mandatory, and affairs were unthinkable. For such imperial citizens, contraceptive devices were useless.

So for Allen, the cap was like a new invention.

The Emperor usually disliked the laws of the Empire. The laws of monogamy were fine. But the law requiring immediate marriage when a child was conceived during courtship was problematic because there were many cases of abuse, resulting in numerous victims.

When unable to win the heart of a desired partner, they forcibly take their body and use pregnancy as an excuse for marriage.

This was quite a headache, so the Emperor had tried in various ways to abolish this law, but due to opposition from several conservative nobles, abolition wasn’t easy. The Empire had no contraceptive devices, and considered the act of removing a child from the womb a sin, which made it even more difficult.

So reluctantly, they maintained the law.

And here, he discovered the contraceptive cap.

Allen’s eyes sparkled after hearing from Tom about the cap’s use. During his time at the imperial palace, there had been a terrible incident where a rogue noble had r*ped a commoner virgin and ended up marrying her. Back then, he was so shocked to hear in his mind the dirty plan—unimaginable to Allen—of that rogue noble. He had regretted not being able to behead the guy at that time.

He thought that if all men were officially required by law to use this cap, such unfortunate incidents might decrease somewhat. So he carefully put the cap Tom gave him into his pocket. He would keep it safe to give to the Emperor when he went up to the capital.

“Commander, this is for both of your sakes!”

“I got it, I got it.”

Tom earnestly implored. He seemed concerned about the fact that Allen had never used a cap before.

In reality, Allen had no intention of doing anything with Lea.

“Well then, Commander, have a good trip!”

Tom, unlike his innocent appearance, knew quite a lot. It felt strange to see him explaining how to put the cap on there with his cow-like eyes. Anyway, although it was embarrassing, Allen, having learned about a new item through Tom, received his farewell greeting and went outside.

* * *

Allen took several deep breaths while watching Lea enter deep into the back alley. It felt a bit awkward to be hiding behind a wall and peeping, but he had no choice. For him, facing Lea required great courage.

“Commander, why are you spying on the vice commander from here?”

But unfortunately, some knights patrolling the plaza discovered him.

“Hey, hey, why would the commander do that? We received reports about some pervert who approaches women alone in this area. He must be waiting to catch him. Right, Commander?”

“That’s right. I was waiting for the vice commander to handle it.”

“I thought the commander was being shy—ow, why did you hit me!”

The knight rubbed the back of his head, looking aggrieved. He didn’t seem to understand what he had done wrong. The other knights couldn’t openly scold him but were sending him desperate looks, begging him to understand.

「After seeing what happened to James for running his mouth!」

「That guy has absolutely no tact.」

Allen looked at the knights and swallowed a sigh. Somehow, he felt anxious that this misunderstanding would last a lifetime.

“Well then, Commander, fighting!”

He wished they would stop with that encouragement too.

Allen placed his hand on his throbbing forehead.

* * *

Meanwhile, Lea was timing when to ambush the person whose gaze she felt from behind. It had been suspicious that someone had been following her closely for a while. Though there wasn’t the creepy feeling typical of a pervert, at some point they stopped hiding their presence and boldly followed her, making it seem like they wanted her to acknowledge them. Perhaps the pervert was doing this to make her nervous. If the pervert was someone she knew, that was entirely possible.

In truth, there was no need for her, the vice commander, to step in just to catch one pervert. This type of criminal could be easily suppressed, and there were many other skilled knights in the division.

Nevertheless, Lea took action herself because she thought the pervert might be someone she knew.

Lea frowned at a certain scene creeping up from her memory. It was a memory she had deliberately blocked with other thoughts, but it was crawling out on its own and becoming vivid.

She didn’t want to be captivated by old memories. So she drew something even more stimulating and overlaid it on the scene. She did in her mind what she had so desperately wanted to do back then. When she repeatedly played the same scene countless times in her head.

Just then, she felt a presence right behind her.

When had they gotten so close? Lea slightly gripped the dagger in her bosom. She thought perhaps she had failed to notice them because she was too immersed in her imagination. There had been some distance between them. She had let her guard down, which was unlike her.

Just as Lea quickly drew her dagger and was about to strike behind her—

“Wait! Vice Commander, it’s me.”

Her wrist was grabbed firmly and then quickly released. Lea turned around at the familiar voice.

“Commander?”

Allen, with a face turned pale blue, was looking at her.

“Did you get stabbed?”

“Why would I get stab… ah, no. I’m not hurt.”

Allen flinched and then pointed to his body as if nothing was wrong. Indeed, his limbs were intact, and the area she had aimed for seemed to be still attached.

Lea examined her clean dagger without a drop of blood on it before putting it back in her bosom. Allen looked like someone who was seriously injured, so she had asked just in case, but it was fortunate that he wasn’t.

“I’m sorry. For a moment, I thought you were the pervert.”

“It’s fine. These things happen.”

“But if you saw me, why didn’t you call out earlier? You kept just following me, so I really thought you were a suspicious person.”

“What do you mean?”

Allen’s expression became strange.

“Wasn’t it you, Commander?”

Lea stroked the back of her chilled neck and asked once more.

“There was someone following me since I entered the back alley. Wasn’t that you, Commander?”

“I just spotted you now.”

To be honest, he had spotted Lea at the entrance of the back alley and followed her after preparing himself mentally, but Allen didn’t bother to explain that.

“Then……”

Lea’s eyes clouded over. She seemed to be deeply thinking about something. Others might have thought she was seriously considering the suspicious person.

But Allen knew.

‘What is she imagining this time?’

That while pretending to think seriously, she was actually imagining cutting off the lower part of a man with a blackened face over and over again. He could roughly understand that the man with the black face was the pervert, but he couldn’t understand why she would imagine such a thing.

For Allen, having witnessed worse things through many wars, he thought this was better than lewd fantasies. But unfortunately, because he had grabbed Lea’s wrist earlier, he had the terrible feeling that his own might be cut off too. The unnecessarily vivid imagination still gave him goosebumps.

Did she have some grudge against that pervert? The sight of her brutally butchering the approaching man made even Allen fearful.

“It seems the guy disappeared when I showed up. I’ll have this area patrolled more frequently.”

“Yes.”

“And perhaps that pervert and… never mind.”

Allen looked back and forth between Lea and her thoughts, then shook his head. He felt both curious about Lea’s past and completely unwilling to know. For now, there were other things to do.

“Where did you say the Colosseum was?”

“Ah, if you follow this alley straight ahead, you’ll reach it.”

They decided to put this matter aside for now.