Chapter 5 – A Bath And A Strange Book

“Anything the matter, princess?” Seris asked as she untangled her ponytail, taking off the last clothing item that she had on herself.

Darya felt as if her feet were encased in hardened concrete.

Why am I freezing? Isn’t this exactly what I wanted?

“N-n-nothing,” Darya said shakily, inching timidly towards the bathtub. Looking at Seris right now was like looking at the sun. Darya was tingling all over her body, and her cheeks were burning hot.

“It’s just cold water, princess,” Seris said, approaching her from behind. Darya was doing her best not to fall apart. The first piece of the domino was kicked when she felt Seris’s hands quickly loosening the waist straps of her dress from behind.

It was going to fall off before she readied herself. Out of options, Darya walked into the bathtub.

“Wait!” Seris yelped, hurriedly pulling the dress off her. Darya slithered out of it just in time to hide herself underwater. She stuck out her head just enough not to stare up at Seris, but ended up doing it anyway. She was a moth to this elf girl-shaped flame.

“This dress is going to need a proper beating to get this blood off,” Seris said, plopping it into a separate water bucket. “We should hurry.”

Seris splashed into the bathtub with a large sponge and a bar of soap. Darya was lurking in the corner like an embarrassed crocodile. She felt as if her face was flushed hot enough to boil the water. She hadn’t expected the pretty elf to be this pretty.

“What are you doing, princess?” Seris asked with an amused look as Darya slowly stood, covering her chest with her arms. Their eyes met for a moment, and Seris seemed to read her expression. “…are you embarrassed or something?”

“I f-f-forgot m-my memories and all that…” Darya muttered under her breath.

Seris sighed deeply. “Ugh! This is really hard to get used to!” she said, closing the gap between them. “Do you have any idea how many times we bathed together? We’ve been together since you were nine years old!”

Seris turned her around and started lathering soap. It took a while to get used to it, but Darya eventually warmed up. Seris went to town on brushing any Dreagan blood off her. Darya’s brain was brute-forced into accepting this new world and the unprecedented amount of skin contact. She felt better when she was safely hidden under a thick cloud of soap bubbles.

It only ended when Seris rubbed her tanned skin pink. Darya was a brand-new princess by the time the dirty soup was cycled out. Seris tossed the sponge away and sat down with a grunt as the tub filled up again.

“Done at last…” she said, leaning back on the edge.

Darya wobbled close and sat next to her. Seris was somehow just as comfortable naked as she was with clothes. Darya had never been that way, not even when she had her own place with all the privacy she ever needed. She always had to wear something to feel like a person with a definite shape.

I was never comfortable with anything. Sounds weird after dying, but I didn’t want to be me at all. I don’t even remember why now.

There was a lot that she didn’t like about herself, and they weren’t limited to her appearance. Her self-image was a blob. At thirty, she couldn’t even remember exactly how or why she ended up that way.

She knew she didn’t have a great childhood.

Then again, that was the way of the world. The exact way one broke to pieces stopped mattering beyond a certain age. There was a threshold between blaming your circumstances and being responsible for yourself as an adult.

Darya, being who she was, had never slowed down enough to fix anything about herself. She was still in pieces, but she had naturally outgrown and forgotten most of it.

Suddenly, she remembered her pale hands resting on a table. Fingers scattering away on the keys of her favorite brand of keyboard. Everything she ever did had been about running. Nellie—

Wait, who am I thinking about?

Darya raised her hands and watched the water slither off them with a frown. Her hands were tanned. She had just remembered pale hands, a keyboard, and another name.

She heard a noise at the back of her head resurface.

[Soul Merge Conflict: Resolve Identity]

It was a Verse command again. It didn’t stay long enough in her brain to comprehend what it was. A fleeting sense of wrongness gradually dissipated. She remembered feeling exactly like this a while ago.

Is Verse still fixing something? What could it be?

She had been losing her mind ever since Seris took her clothes off, but she felt the adrenaline spike blunt a bit now. She wondered if Verse was stabilizing her psyche. It was a brain interface after all.

“What’s wrong, princess?” Seris asked in a soft voice, raising her face off Darya’s shoulder. Her hazel eyes shone like gems, and Darya felt electricity ripple through her staring at them.

Hell, no brain interface could make me immune to elf charms!

“N-nothing…” Darya said, looking at her blankly. It was a good thing she was brown enough to hide how flustered she was.

Seris grabbed her face gently and started rubbing her thumbs on Darya’s cheekbones.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Why are you like this? You’re so adorable now!” Seris said, squeezing Darya’s cheeks.

“N-not used to being touched—” Darya said, averting her eyes.

“Eh? What happens if I tickle you?” Seris asked with a devious grin, eyeing Darya’s armpits.

“No! I’ll die again!” Darya yelped in panic as she leaned away. That was no exaggeration. Her heart could actually pop if she got into a tickle fight with a pretty elf.

“Come back, I’m joking, of course!” Seris said, giggling as she pulled her back.

Darya relaxed as Seris wrapped her arms around her warmly.

“Ah! I’m so glad you came back, princess!” she said, resting her head on Darya’s shoulder again.

“What if I’m not the same princess anymore without my memories?” Darya asked, trying to remain calm.

Seris was entirely too warm and soft. This had nothing to do with her body type. They were similarly petite. Seris was a bit bonier than Darya, who had a certain amount of squish. She was feeling this great cotton-candy warmth and the softness mostly inside her head. This was all new. On Earth, she had never been this close to someone that she was actually attracted to.

“I hope you’ll remember things eventually,” Seris said, running her hands on Darya’s back. “If not, we can always make new memories. At least I didn’t lose you. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”

“You thought about it?” Darya asked, using one hand to wrap around Seris. She was rigid and awkward, trying to hold the pretty elf like an oversized vase that might topple.