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※ This work contains depictions of coercive relationships, explicit language, and other graphic content. Reader discretion is advised.

II. Kazan of the Desert

“You asked if there’s a reason I can’t go home?”

[Help her survive this year and free her from her unhappiness.]

Edith’s gaze drifted slightly to the side before returning to Kazan.

“It seems I can only go back… if I can protect my whole self.”

If she endures just one year as the system—as the goddess—wants, she can return to reality.

She could probably endure in the Empire too, but that place would want her to exist as the unfortunate Edith, not as herself.

At first, she ran from the main characters because she wanted to deny the truth forced upon her.

But now, she was running driven by anxiety: if she stayed there, could she possibly not lose the self that is ‘me’? And if she lost it, could she still return to reality?

“So that’s why…”

It was a sufficiently eerie situation. Just moments ago, this person was clutching her head, unable to compose herself, and now she was speaking enigmatic words with an air full of secrets and a strange smile. But Kazan had no time to feel that eeriness.

Because Edith was slowly approaching, wrapping her arms around his neck in a coquettish manner.

Moving closer to Kazan’s face—his pupils still trembling violently as if unable to grasp the situation—Edith whispered.

“Will you help me, Mr. Kazan?”

The embarrassing words, spoken against her will, felt like dragging up deeply buried inner thoughts and laying them bare before her own eyes.

When she thought of them merely as irresistible forces due to the game’s clichés, she could barely accept it.

But realizing she had become ‘Lady Moulton,’ forced to accept the deliberately created role of the “Black Saintess” who bears the Saintess’s misfortune, made the situation unacceptable.

Whether their misfortunes were originally meant for Serenity, the Saintess, or were truly one of the misfortunes destined for Edith herself, no longer mattered.

Only Edith remained, having suffered unjustly, regardless of her own will.

She no longer wanted to lose herself.

She didn’t want relationships forced upon her by misfortune, but to live a life by her own will, to have relationships formed by her own choices.

To do that, her most deeply craved desire was to escape the acts she had endured from the male leads—acts dripping with the excessive s****l desire and obsession typical of a dark fantasy—and to have relationships with normal people of her own choosing, not them.

Right. Being involved only in abnormal relationships had made her fixated on that aspect.

Her primal instinct seemed to judge that being with someone other than the main characters was a way to protect her true self.

Just as their lips were about to meet, Kazan grabbed Edith’s shoulders and pushed her back.

As Kazan’s face, which had been drawing near, suddenly moved away, Edith’s eyes widened. She blinked, looking at him.

His skin, as dark as wet sand even in the darkness, was flushed red as if heated by a scorching sun. His expression, a mix of bewilderment and confusion, avoided her gaze, his eyes cast down.

Covering his mouth with the hand that had pushed her, Kazan seemed deeply shocked by the situation.

“If it’s not you, Mr. Kazan, there’s one more person I can ask.”

But Edith, suddenly rejected, seemed to have her pride hurt. She pouted her lips, stood up, and brushed herself off.

“Wait…!”

Kazan stared blankly at her, then quickly grabbed her wrist as she stood up.

Edith, her wrist suddenly caught, turned to look at him with an expression showing no emotion. Kazan avoided her gaze again, fidgeting with the back of his neck.

In this silent situation where only her wrist was held, just as Edith’s patience was about to run out…

“What… do I need to do…?”

She could feel her primal instinct finding him quite cute, with his face flushed and looking at her petulantly as he asked.

Satisfied with his words, Edith smiled. This time, she climbed onto his body where he sat on the ground and, as if taking petty revenge, pushed his shoulders with her fingers, making his upper body lie back.

Thump.

He was lying on the ground, still wearing that petulant expression from before, but he probably didn’t realize how blatantly his Adam’s apple kept bobbing.

Seeing that, she also swallowed dryly and carefully moved her fingers from his shoulder, sliding them down to his chest.

“Ngh.”

Feeling the touch of Edith’s fingers, his expression—stubbornly maintained and flushed red by the firelight—collapsed in an instant with a suppressed groan.

Kazan was wearing a thin, functional-looking black sleeveless top under the robe covering his whole body. It was so thin that the contours of his body were completely visible.

As Edith moved her hand down over the fabric, her fingertip caught on a small, protruding part near his chest, unintentionally grazing it.

Teased through the fabric where the small nub on his chest was exposed beneath Edith, Kazan turned his head, covering his mouth with one hand, letting out a groan and ragged breath. It was intensely lewd.

Unable to resist seeing that, Edith teased that spot a little more, tormenting him. His expression fell apart completely, and he pressed his hand firmly over his mouth to block any sound that might reach Perry.