“Are you alright?”

Serena, who had been slowly moving her fork, searched for the owner of the voice that had suddenly been thrown at her. The butler, who had entered without her noticing, was looking at her with concerned eyes.

With her mind somewhat foggy, Serena stared blankly at the butler before finally letting out a belated “Ah.”

“Are you asking me?”

“Yes. You’ve seemed unwell for the past few days. If there’s anything lacking in our service, please feel free to tell us.”

She lightly touched her cheek with her hand. Feeling her skin had definitely become rougher, she quietly swallowed a sigh. 

For others to notice her poor condition, it was her mistake, no matter how sensitive her nerves had been. Serena barely grasped the precarious thread of reason and rebuilt her composure.

“No. I’ve just been having some insomnia…”

“Ah, then shall I call a physician for you?”

“I’ll ask again if necessary.”

Though it was a psychological issue, Serena immediately refused, fearing the physician might notice something strange. She mentally scolded herself repeatedly to pull herself together.

It was all because of that strange book and the dreams.

At first, she tried to think it was because she wasn’t feeling well, that she had such dreams because she read the book right before falling asleep.

But starting from that day, the frequency of bizarre dreams gradually increased. Even on nights when she deliberately read complex research papers before bed, the terrible dreams still came without fail.

And what made Serena even more desperate was.

“…!”

“I’ll clear your empty plate.”

When the maid approached, Serena visibly shrank back and moved far away. The maid hesitated at this excessive reaction but quickly composed herself and cleared the table more carefully.

‘Ah, again…’

Having reacted oversensitively to avoid even the slightest brush of the maid’s hand against her clothes, she chewed her already ragged lips again.

This was exactly it. Since beginning to have those dreams, Serena’s body had become sensitive beyond her control.

Fabric that she had previously worn without issue now created peculiar sensations when touching her skin, making her clench her teeth without realizing. 

When someone spoke even slightly closer to her, goosebumps rose on her nape, and if a hand brushed against her clothes, her thighs would unconsciously tense and her waist would twist.

“Miss. Then for today’s dessert…”

“No. I’ll skip dessert today.”

Rising from her seat with an awkward expression, trying to act normal, Serena rushed to her room almost like she was fleeing. 

Leaning against the door, catching her breath, her face flushed red with a different heat than before. Her eyes ached with the feeling of wanting to cry. Her gaze slowly moved downward.

She tightly clenched her private parts and shuddered violently. But she couldn’t stop the thick fluid flowing from her twitching opening. Without needing to check, she knew her underwear was soaking wet.

After carefully closing the curtains, Serena hesitantly rolled up her skirt. The outermost garment was fine, but the knee-length drawers underneath were already damp between the thighs. Still, this was nothing.

Removing the drawers, she carefully brought her fingers to the thin undergarment closest to her skin. Just lightly pressing her finger on her private parts, sticky fluid already soaked through the wet cloth onto her fingertips.

“Aah.”

With a despairing sigh, Serena sank down and buried her face in her knees.

She couldn’t even count how many times this had happened. Her body seemed broken beyond just being sensitive. Just wearing slightly tight clothes or sitting on a hard chair for too long would compress her private parts and immediately ignite strange sensations.

Even when she tried not to be conscious of it, her narrow opening kept twitching. It wasn’t the first time she caught herself unconsciously rubbing her lower body against a hard chair before coming to her senses.

Naturally, her opening, excited by even small stimuli, would twitch and leak fluid continuously. It would have been less embarrassing to accidentally wet herself. 

The fact that her private parts burned with heat and secreted strange fluids enough to soak her underwear was a shameful secret she couldn’t let anyone discover.

“I’ll need to visit the shop soon.”

Carefully removing her wet underwear and changing into new ones, Serena checked her dwindling supply and muttered glumly. 

She couldn’t possibly entrust such underwear to the maids, but washing them herself risked drawing attention. Having hidden her wet underwear all this time, she now had very few left.

“To go to the shop, I’d need to take a carriage…”

But she couldn’t guarantee her broken body could withstand the rough jolting of a carriage, making her hesitant to go out like before. Unable to decide what to do, Serena quietly closed her wardrobe with increasingly frequent sighs.

* * *

Several weeks had passed since she arrived at the Duke’s mansion. But the butler still repeated that he didn’t know when the Duke would return.

The letter she sent to her father came back with the reply that she should ‘stay there as long as possible, carefully observe changes in the Azure region, and successfully conclude the contract.’

It seemed the flow of battles breaking out in the border regions was concerning. If the fighting spread further, there was a high probability that the flow of goods throughout the empire would be greatly disturbed, putting everyone on high alert.

“Compared to that, the Duke and the Azure region seem excessively peaceful.”

Though she couldn’t go out herself and only heard reports, the general assessment was that both prices and trade volume in the Azure region remained stable.

“Still, I need to go out…”

She couldn’t stay cooped up in her room forever. There were things she needed to check personally, and most shockingly, she had almost completely run out of underwear.

Fearing the maids might discover her hidden underwear, she had strictly instructed them not to touch her wardrobe. Organizing her wardrobe herself, Serena sighed and carefully sat on the sofa. Fortunately, sitting on the soft sofa caused less stimulation.

She glared resentfully at the suspicious book hidden in the bookshelf. Since having strange dreams and becoming sensitive, she hadn’t dared to read further. 

It had been days since she sealed the book away. Perhaps because she wasn’t reading the book anymore, the dreams she had every night were repetitions of similar situations, which was somewhat fortunate. 

Though it was slightly worrying that the sensations in her dreams were becoming increasingly vivid.

‘Maybe I can keep delaying the contract like this?’

She knew she needed to finish reading the book quickly to complete the contract and settle matters, but she simply couldn’t bring herself to touch it. 

Even reading just the beginning of the book had caused such strange dreams, so she feared what stories might come later. If she had known she had such a vivid imagination, she wouldn’t have made the contract then…

“No. Even if I hadn’t, there was no way out without making the contract.”

Regret wouldn’t change anything. No matter how she looked at it, she couldn’t allow herself to be subjected to suspicious acts like having her memory erased.

Consoling herself that she was just shocked from reading such a stimulating book, that her body was temporarily responding sensitively because of it, Serena nodded to herself.

‘No rush, take it slow. Maybe taking the book back to the research lab for proper investigation wouldn’t be a bad approach.’

In the end, though she wanted to deny it, she acknowledged that the strange dreams were manifestations of her unconscious. 

Serena concluded that her body, sensitized by overly stimulating stories triggering her imagination, was causing these strange dreams. 

If so, perhaps approaching it differently would be better than rushing to get it over with?

‘That man…’

In fact, beyond the dream content itself, what made her more ashamed was that the man who appeared in her dreams to torment her seemed to be the deranged owner of that obscene shop.

It wasn’t that she wanted another man to appear, but why, why him of all people! 

Since it was a manifestation of her unconscious, it seemed natural that the man most closely connected to this incident would appear, but it was still unpleasant.

Being harassed and tormented all night by a man who merely made and sold lewd toys made her dejected.