Chapter 7: Sleeping together?

The Itsuka residence's hall had been transformed into the battleground of two wills, between the Empress from another world and the Sword Princess. 

On one side of the sofa, Yatogami Tohka maintained a territorial defense posture, with the remote control pressed against her chest as if it were the hilt of Sandalphon. 

On the other side, Lian lay with a languor that radiated danger, while one of her spectral maids slowly fanned her with a translucent silk fan.

“It’s a fascinating artifact,” Lian remarked lazily, pointing at the control with a long, lacquered fingernail. “But your insistence on ‘getting there first’ is commoner logic. In the Upper Realms, control belongs to the one whose soul resonates with the essence of the laws… or to the one who holds the highest rank. And since I am an Empress and you look like a… starving, wandering warrior?” the hierarchy between us is clear.

"I'm not a wandering warrior! I'm Tohka!" the purple-haired girl shouted, pointing at the screen where a cartoonish space cat was about to explode. "And the cat's about to find the treasure! You can't take control of the TV now!"

Lian sighed, a sound that carried the weight of centuries of "patience" in the face of nonsense.

“If you’re so eager to see that low-class feline, I’ll allow it. But in return…” Lian leaned forward, his golden gaze locking onto Tohka’s with an intensity that made the girl recoil slightly, “you’ll explain why this ‘bread’ is so important. I’ve consumed elixirs of golden lotus and phoenix meat roasted in celestial fire. What can a piece of baked wheat possibly offer?”

—Do you want to know the sacred properties of Kinako bread? I'll tell you!

Before Tohka could launch into a proclamation about the virtues of sugar, the kitchen door opened. Itsuka Shido appeared carrying a tray, his face looking like someone who had just defused a nuclear bomb with a paperclip.

"It's here!" Shido announced with forced enthusiasm. "Freshly baked kinako bread and... high-quality green tea for our guest."

Where did Kinako's bread come from if Shido didn't go out to buy anything? Do you have to ask?

Let's just say that his work must guarantee certain "benefits".... Even if it's not for himself.

Tohka launched herself at the tray like a projectile, but stopped dead in her tracks when the spectral maiden on the left stepped forward, blocking her path with a silent, terrifying elegance.

"Get out of the way, faceless lady!" Tohka huffed.

"Patience, little one," Lian said, sitting up. She gestured with her hand and the maiden vanished into red petals, allowing Shido to place the tray on the low table. "Shido, come here."

Shido obeyed, feeling Lian pull him toward her side of the sofa. She picked up a piece of kinako bread with her fingertips, examining it as if it were an unknown biological specimen.

"It smells...not bad at all," Lian murmured. She brought the bread to her lips and took a small bite.
Inside Lian, Li Wei was having a meltdown.

"Oh my God, it's delicious! Fluffy, sweet, with that tender touch that caresses my tongue! A thousand times better than the bargain noodles of my previous life! I want to eat ten... No, twenty of these!"

However, the Empress's body only allowed one reaction: Lian closed her eyes, chewed with insulting elegance, and swallowed slowly.

"It's... acceptable," Lian declared, though his hand was already subtly searching for another piece. "It has a simple texture, but the cook's intention gives it a touch of... warmth. Congratulations, Shido. You're not just a visual treat, you also have a talent for the culinary arts."

'Yes, I cook...but this was given to me by my sister's subordinates,' Shido thought to himself.

"I'm glad you like it!" Shido said, breathing a sigh of relief as he saw the affection meter on his contact lens (connected to the Fraxinus) rise to 68%.

"It's mine!" Tohka, taking advantage of the distraction, had already stuffed three loaves of bread into her mouth, speaking unintelligibly. "See... I told you... it was... the best!"

Lian watched Tohka with a mixture of horror and fascination. "You eat like an obsidian cave ogre. But there's a certain honesty in the way you indulge your gluttony. Perhaps you're not so annoying after all... for now."

♦♦♦♦

Evening fell upon Tengu, and with it came the problem Li Wei feared most: cleanliness and rest. 

On the Fraxinus spacecraft, Kotori watched the screens with a malicious smile.

"Alright, Shido. Empress has refused to return to the ship for the night. She says 'a metal palace is unfit for a lady's sleep,'" Kotori reported through the earpiece. "She'll have to stay at your place. And since we can't leave her alone with her 'maids,' you'll have to be her host... in every sense of the word."

"What?! Kotori, you know there are no rooms available!" Shido whispered from the hallway. 

In this house, there were only four rooms, and all of them were in use. Although Shido and Kotori's parents were almost never home because of their jobs, the house had a bedroom on the ground floor designated for them, and it would be inappropriate and strange to have Lian sleep there for many reasons.

Putting everything else aside, however improbable it may be, if her parents were to arrive at some point and see a sexy spirit sleeping in her room, how would they react?

Even worse, would Lian kill them!?

Too much risk.

"Reine says that close contact will accelerate the sealing of her Reiyoku," his sister replied with professional coolness. "Besides, we think she's decided that YOU are her personal pillow anyway... Good luck, brother!"

—....

Shido returned to the living room, where Lian was examining a painting on the wall. Upon seeing him enter, she turned, and the light of the setting sun filtering through the window accentuated the translucence of her skin and the crimson sheen of her dress.

"Shido," she said, her seductive voice making the boy tense, "this body requires purification. I've felt the impurities of this air clinging to my skin. I wish to bathe. And since I am a high-ranking guest in your home, I expect you to assist me..."

Li Wei wanted to scream.

"NO! STOP! I can't bathe with him! I'm a man! If I take this off, the game's over... or something much worse starts!"

But the Empress's logic was implacable: in her world, servants or favorites prepared the bath and attended to the sovereign. For her, Shido was her "favorite."

"T-the bathroom is this way," Shido stammered, guiding her toward the bathroom in the hope that she would simply walk in and close the door herself. "Here are towels and... soap. Just turn this tap for hot water."

Lian entered the small bathroom, looking at the plastic bathtub with a raised eyebrow.

"Hot water from a tap? What mundane ingenuity. Aren't there heat crystals or steam dragons beneath the ground?" She turned to Shido, beginning to untie the golden knots of her neckline.

—Alright, boy. Help me with these layers. Phoenix silk is difficult for inexperienced hands to handle.

Shido turned bright red and stumbling out of the bathroom.
"I'M SORRY! In this world... we bathe ourselves! It's a sacred law! I'll wait for you outside!"

¡CLICK!

Shido closed the door and leaned against it, his heart pounding. Inside, Lian stared at the closed door with an expression of utter bewilderment.

"A sacred law?" Lian murmured. "What strange barbarians these mortals are..."

Li Wei, alone in the bathroom, let out a sigh of relief that almost made him lose his balance. He looked at himself in the mirror, seeing the face of the most beautiful woman he had ever imagined, and felt a pang of terror.

"This is not a dream... I'm really trapped in the body of a goddess while I try not to go crazy from its programmed impulses!"

♦♦♦♦

The tension in the Itsuka residence did not lessen with the closing of the bathroom door; on the contrary, it condensed like the steam that began to fill the small room.

Inside the bathroom, Li Wei watched the water running. 

As he finally removed the layers of phoenix silk, Li Wei felt an unnatural lightness. There were no scars, no imperfections; his skin emitted a faint pearly glow, something that seemed possible only because this was a computer-generated body materialized by unknown forces.

"This is ridiculous," Li Wei thought, avoiding looking at himself in the mirror as he submerged himself in the bath. "I feel my Golden Core resonating with the elements. The water... the water is beginning to glow."

Indeed, upon contact with her body, the water in the tub began to turn a pale pink and emit small sparks of crimson energy. 

It wasn't dirt; it was the Earth's energy being "stained" by Lian's Spiritual Essence. The steam now smelled intensely of sandalwood and ancient flowers.

Li Wei understood what was happening almost instinctively; the elemental energy of this world was pathetically weak, and his high cultivation level subdued them with crushing ease. If he so desired, he could manipulate nature without resorting to his fan, but this also meant that it would be difficult to recover his power in a world with such scarce resources.

Proof of this is that his Spiritual Essence decreased by 10% after the last encounters and so far he has only recovered a meager 2% through passive absorption.

"If the elements of this world are so poor in Qi that my energy influences them so easily and my recovery becomes scarce," Lian murmured, his voice echoing off the tiles, "I'll have to actively cultivate to always be at 100%... I won't allow my power to weaken in this sterile air."

And so, Lian began cultivating to regain all his energy, making Li Wei feel amazing experiencing real cultivation, even if it was only to regain spiritual energy.

The essence of the world within the bathroom diminished significantly....

Meanwhile, in the living room, the situation was straight out of a surreal horror film. Tohka was trying to watch television, but the two Spectral Maidens stood motionless just behind the sofa. 

Their faces, covered by red silk veils, did not move, but Shido would swear he could feel their invisible eyes following his every move.

"Shido! Tell them to sit down or leave!" Tohka protested, hugging a cushion. "I can't concentrate on the Space Cat plot if I feel like they're going to put a curse on me!"

Shido, who was trying to prepare a futon on the living room floor for himself (giving up his bed to the guest), sighed heavily.

"Tohka, I don't think they'll listen to me. They only obey Lian," Shido replied. He cautiously approached one of the maids. "Um... excuse me? Miss ex-AST? Could you... I don't know, rest in a corner?"

The maid did not respond with words. She simply bowed her head respectfully and obediently went to a corner. 

A chill ran down Shido's spine. These women weren't robots, but neither were they the people they used to be. They were extensions of the Empress's will... And the only reason they obeyed her was obviously because it benefited her.

♦♦♦♦

Twenty minutes into her bath and recovery session, the bathroom door opened. Lian emerged, wrapped in a silk robe Shido had lent her (which was too short and dangerously accentuated her sensual, goddess-like figure). 

Her black hair, still damp, dripped over her shoulders, and her golden eyes seemed brighter after her bath.

"I've finished my bath and cultivation," Lian announced, walking toward Shido with an elegance that made the wooden hallway seem like a real carpet. "Shido, show me to my temporary quarters. I've decided today has been exhausting enough for my senses."

—Uh....okay...

Shido took her to his room with many doubts in his heart.

"You can sleep here, Lian. I'll sleep in the living room..."

"Sleep out of my sight?" Lian stopped in the doorway, closing her fan—"who knows when I summon"—with an authoritative click. "I've said you're my 'Treasure.' A treasure isn't left lying alone in a common room. You'll sleep here, by my side. It's a decree."

"WHAT?!" Li Wei's and Shido's internal screams were perfectly synchronized.

On the bridge of the Fraxinus, the crew was in absolute silence.

"Affection: 72%," Reine reported in a monotone voice. "The 'Sleeping Together' phase has begun prematurely. I suggest Shido keep his hands visible at all times if he doesn't want to be incinerated by an instinctive reaction from the Empress."

"Shido, don't even think about doing anything stupid...!" Kotori started shouting into the communicator, but stopped when she saw Lian's gaze through the hidden bedroom camera.

'It's strange, are they spying on me?'

Li Wei wondered when he felt a gaze on the back of his neck from somewhere, tilting his head while squinting.

Lian sat on Shido's bed, testing the mattress with disdain.

—Soft and inefficient for a monarch's relaxation... but I suppose it will do for one night. Shido, lie down. My retinue will guard the door. No one will disturb our rest.

Shido, trembling, sat on the edge of the bed, as far away from her as possible.

—Lian, really... in my world this is very... rushed.

Lian let out a soft laugh and lay back, resting her head on Shido's pillow, inhaling his scent with a familiarity that chilled the boy's blood.

"Your world has petty rules for petty people, Itsuka Shido. I am the sovereign of the Crimson Lotus. My rules are the only ones that matter under my roof... and tonight, this is my roof."