Chapter 75: Remilia: Let's Have a Round Right Here.
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The night was as dark as ink, lit up by the vibrant neon lights of the city painted across the pitch-black sky.
Holding Remilia, Kihara swiftly wove through one streetlamp after another. Though there was nothing behind him except their own shadows, he could practically hear the wail of police sirens echoing in his ears—as if stopping for a single second would get him dragged off by the patrol team to sing blues behind bars.
"What are you so nervous about? Could there be something wrong with what I said earlier?"
"Of course there's a problem! Saying those words with your current appearance is no different from making me trigger an Incident right in front of Reimu."
"Human rules are so troublesome—to think they won't even allow something as trivial as this."
"If they allowed it, that would be when major trouble starts..."
After tossing out the retort, Kihara spotted the entrance to a small park not far ahead. Without a second thought, he veered around the corner and ducked inside.
The nighttime park had lost its daytime vitality. Swings hung motionless beneath the streetlamps, fine white sand was scattered along the edge of the sandbox, and a plastic bucket and spade left behind by some child remained planted at an angle in the center.
On the left side, a semi-circular small playhouse opened its pitch-black doorway to the two of them, looking like a passage leading into the abyss.
"What did you bring me to the park for?"
"Didn't you want to buy thigh-high stockings? I have stockings from other worlds right here for you to try on. If you like them, we can have Sakuya ask Ais and the others to help purchase more later."
As Kihara spoke, he bent down and carried Remilia into the playhouse, setting her down before producing a pair of white thigh-high socks embroidered with gold thread from his 4D Backpack.
"Carrying this kind of socks around with you... don't tell me you harbored intentions of doing something with me before even stepping out the door?"
"How could I!" He handed the stockings over with a wry smile. "I just wanted to finish tailoring the clothes early. We might even make it back in time for dinner. Restaurant food outside really doesn't suit my taste as well as Anna's cooking."
"To earn your praise for her culinary skills—does that young girl possess a special talent in that department?" A flash of surprise gleamed in Remilia's crimson eyes.
"Not to that exaggerated extent. It's just that Anna cooks entirely according to my preferred taste."
Aside from a small fraction of authentic Chinese restaurants, the food served in other eateries around here was either sickeningly sweet or brutally salty. For a Chinese native like Kihara, enduring a meal that made him feel like he needed insulin shots immediately afterward was truly unbearable.
Eating it once or twice on occasion was tolerable, but having only those two flavors meal after meal was genuinely impossible to take.
Thus, under Kihara's influence, Anna Yanami's cooking leaned heavily toward Chinese-style seasoning, never making a blood-pressure-spiking move like adding sweet bean sauce to shredded green pepper pork.
"We're veering off topic. Hurry up and try on the stockings."
"Mmhmm."
Remilia took the thigh-highs. The moment they touched her hand, a sensation as smooth as a young girl's skin yet carrying a hint of coolness drifted from her fingertips, causing her eyes to sparkle with wonder.
"This texture... What material is it made of?"
"Have you played adventure games on console consoles before?"
"I have."
"That makes it easy to explain then. These thigh-highs are crafted from monster materials—materials that are quite rare even in Ais's world."
"Not bad."
Remilia nodded in satisfaction. Stockings crafted from rare monster materials were naturally worthy of her status as the Young Miss of the Scarlet family.
She then handed the stockings back to the thoroughly bewildered Kihara, floating mid-air as she crossed her legs. Extending her black, round-toed leather shoe toward his face, she tilted her chin slightly, the corners of her lips curling upward into a soft smirk: "My personal butler, the task of changing your master's socks is entrusted to you."
She saw with absolute clarity that after she uttered those words, Kihara's Adam's apple bobbed slightly, his nostrils expanding subtly from a sudden heavy breath.
These reactions were blatant
acknowledgments of Remilia's personal charm, satisfying her vanity completely.
Seeing Kihara freeze without taking action, she lowered her voice, her tone carrying a hint of charm she hadn't even noticed herself as she asked, "Why are you standing there like a fool? Don't tell me you don't even know how to take off a shoe?"
"As long as you don't regret it later."
"Heh, go ahead and change my socks. I won't go back on my word."
Having tasted sweet bliss, Remilia genuinely harbored the idea of having a round with him right here. Though brief, his performance during the clothes-shopping trip had managed to barely touch the shadow of Sakuya Izayoi, the perfect maid.
In all fairness, she ought to grant Kihara a degree of reward to acknowledge his efforts.
Kihara raised his hand, grasping the heel of her leather shoe and applying slight force, easily slipping the shoe off to reveal Remilia's small foot clad in a white ankle sock.
"Mmh..."
Supporting her plump sole from underneath with his palm, he looked up with a smile in his eyes: "What's wrong?"
"N-Nothing!"
Remilia shifted her gaze away, raising a hand to lightly tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear, attempting to use the motion to cover her inner nervousness. Little did she know her ear had already flushed a lovely shade of pink, completely exposed to Kihara's line of sight.
Amused secretly in his heart, Kihara pretended to notice nothing in order to protect her crumbling majesty, lowering his head to pull off the white ankle sock.
Under the moonlight, Remilia's delicate foot looked like a smooth, pink-and-white jelly peeled out of its shell, carrying a cool touch as it rested in Kihara's palm.
A vampire's body possessed no warmth; even after overcoming their weaknesses, it was impossible to restore body temperature, which was why they remained so infatuated with warm blood.
Though Remilia appeared calm as she tilted her head up to gaze at the bright, clear moon through the opening in the roof, the endless, scalding heat radiating from the sole of her foot alone already made it impossible for her to maintain her levitation.
'Curse it... I'm not even drinking blood, so why does my body feel so strange the moment I feel his body temperature?'
Although Kihara didn't know what she was thinking, seeing those five plump, cute, rosy-white toes curl tight together allowed him to guess a thing or two.
A few seconds before Remilia lost her balance and fell from mid-air, he took the initiative to pull her down to sit on a raised stone step inside the playhouse. Holding one of the thigh-highs, he slowly slid it up from the tip of her toes.
Finally, pulling his thumbs out from hooking the top edge of the stocking, the fabric instantly snapped back against her soft, milky-white thigh, letting out a crisp, loud slap.
The gold-trimmed band bound the thigh meat into a slight indentation, forming a curve capable of sucking a person's soul right in—so much so that the moonlight cascading from above looked like a waterfall spilling along the contour down to the ground.
Helping Remilia put on the right stocking, Kihara looked up and gently pinched her soft, small foot with a smile: "How does it feel wearing it?"
His smile looked particularly devious to her. Clearly, putting on a sock didn't take much time at all, yet he had deliberately teased her step-by-step.
Without a second thought, Remilia raised her right foot and stepped straight onto his face, scolding him in a tone that sounded almost like pouting: "You meanie, hurry up and help me put on the other stocking too!"
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Thank you for reading.