Reincarnated Princess Stuck in a Door - Chapter 9

Chapter 9

“Larissa.”

The voice calling her name felt distant. Why was he calling her by name anyway? He’d always called her Princess. Even that was only after they’d gotten a bit closer. At first, it had been Your Highness, the Ninth Princess.

And come to think of it, wasn’t this a win in its own way? She’d only joined to worship him from afar. A distant junior in the school. But they’d gotten fairly close. They talked. And now he was—

“—!!”

The thought of borrowing his mana vanished in an instant. A soft, moist sensation pressed against her lips. Every scattered thought and the heat churning through her body disappeared all at once.

Lukenian’s lips were resting on hers. Her eyes flew open in shock, and she caught the narrowed gaze of his eyes reflecting hers.

His tongue moved over hers. No sound came through, but the words flowed directly into her consciousness through his mana.

Focus.

Even with her head gone soft from the heat, Larissa could still manage to wonder whether a seventh-circle archmage really needed to use a method like this. It was true that deeper physical contact made connecting to mana circuits easier. But Lukenian didn’t need to resort to that. If he wanted to help her, he could just get rid of this damn door, forcibly drain all the mana from her circuits, leave her in a state of exhaustion, and calm her down. No, he didn’t even need to go that far. He could just put her to sleep with magic until she settled down.

But she had no room to ask him why. A tidal wave of mana pushed into her, forcing her own mana into submission.

“Hnngh…!”

The moan couldn’t escape past her sealed lips. She had no room left for calculations now. Their senses had synchronized, and she was perceiving with a clarity like counting stars through an astronomical telescope. Every particle in her body was being swept through. The door and Larissa, separated and recognized as distinct. This was Lukenian’s perception. Completely different from her own sixth sense, which could only register the sparkly presence like touching glitter-filled slime—aware it was there, but never pinpointing exactly where.

Her entire nervous system hit saturation. Her brain couldn’t process all the information at once and buckled under it. Larissa clung to Lukenian and floundered. She wanted to say she couldn’t take any more, but her mouth was still blocked. Honestly, even if it weren’t, she doubted she could’ve said it.

Lukenian’s tongue moved freely inside her mouth. Every time it swept across the roof of her mouth, every time he drew her breath, she lost her sense of balance. Like hanging from a lever in unstable equilibrium. Her body endlessly soaring up, endlessly plummeting down.

Their tightly clasped palms burned like fire. The foreign presence flooding her mana circuits burrowed into her entire body, raking through every last capillary. A sound escaped from deep in Larissa’s throat before she could stop it. Something between pain and rapture.

Lukenian no longer told her to focus. The mana swelling inside her, filling her body to the point of bursting, expanded like a balloon. She squeezed her eyes shut, but it didn’t matter anymore whether they were open or closed. Her physical senses, sharpened to the extreme by the surging mana, read everything through the ether. Her brain translated it into sensations she could understand. She saw the world with her eyes closed.

An illusion. As if golden particles filled the air around her. Ether, in theory, was invisible and had no physical substance. This was a concept. And at the same time, the shape of the world as Lukenian saw it.

Fwoosh—!

The door particles separated from inside her body. Countless grains shifted conceptually into another dimension, one by one, as if each were being sealed in vacuum packaging. It was only a door and the inside of her body. A localized event, in terms of scale. But the magic was sublime. Magnificent in its precision.

-Breathe.

Lukenian’s voice pierced directly into her mind. Startled, she sucked in a sharp breath and belatedly realized their tongues were still tangled together.

-Focus. You’ll only see this once.

The door particles, shunted into another dimension, annihilated all at once. Gasping, she watched countless explosions erupt inside her own body. The immense ether released as physical matter ceased to exist filled her completely. She felt like she might burst. Her breath caught and hiccupped as if she might choke on it, but each time, Lukenian’s breath and tongue pulled her consciousness back up.

“Haah, nnh…”

She couldn’t hold back the moan. Space lost its reference points. Up and down, left and right, the walls, the floor, the ceiling. All of it vanished. Only the two of them remained, suspended in an infinite void filled with golden stardust. Their hands intertwined. Their lips pressed together.

The ether orbited like a constellation, following Lukenian’s will. Gradually, it swirled faster and faster, then finally converged into a single pole. Larissa watched the sublime magic unfold in a daze.

She really couldn’t help but adore this man. Sure, she’d fallen for him at first because his looks were exactly her type and he had that aloof, almost transcendent arrogance. But the more she got to know him, the deeper she sank.

Who wouldn’t? Anyone who’d dipped a toe into magic. No one could resist falling for this mage. He was the very manifestation of flawless magic itself. The more you knew, the truer it became.

It was a bad habit of Larissa’s. When she fell for someone, she wanted to know what they loved. Usually, that was what cooled her feelings. As she got to know them, the illusion shattered. She’d realize they couldn’t love the same things. Or she’d come to understand she could never compete with the object of their devotion. Her heart would naturally drift away.

But not this time. Maybe it was because Lukenian was simply too far out of reach. The personal illusion had shattered, yes. But the magical illusion wasn’t an illusion at all. It was real. So it couldn’t shatter. It only shone brighter. And as for standing against magic—she was—

Thump.

In that moment, Larissa’s posture collapsed. She toppled backward and fell into a firm, solid chest.

“Why are you crying?”

Lukenian’s whisper slid across her damp lips. In an instant, she’d crashed back down from celestial wonder into the reality of flesh. She groaned, feeling miserable, like she’d been dragged to the ground.

“Ah…”