Chapter 38: The Measurement

“Miss, the Marquis hopes you will display the grace of the Olivia family during this hunt. That’s why he demands you change clothes. But we can’t tailor without measurements.”

Balian looked at Aurora, who was clearly resisting, and brought out the mountain named ‘Father.’ His tone was as earnest as a head teacher trying to persuade a rebellious teenager to drink more hot water.

“Besides, Madeline said that one high-precision measurement can create a perfect body data model, and you won’t need to be measured for years. Short pain is better than long pain. Just treat it as fulfilling the Marquis’s task and bear with it?”

Aurora ground her molars.

True, if she didn’t cooperate, her father would have an excuse to nag, maybe cut her allowance or increase her grounding.

Things were going well for her now. If this job succeeded, she could, through monopolizing the bakery, a daily necessity, indirectly collect a poll tax from the lower class and get involved in the grassroots administration of Frania City.

If she made Ed angry now, what if he vetoed her bakery proposal?

Besides, who doesn’t wear clothes? To wear clothes, you need measurements. It was only natural.

Aurora frantically built up her mental fortitude.

‘It’s just a regular check-up. Balian is just an emotionless measuring instrument. Don’t think too much. Don’t think too much.’

To be honest, when Balian fell into a ditch and caught a cold as a child, she was the one who checked his temperature, covered him with a blanket, and made him drink hot water. That level of physical contact was quite normal between a guard and their master.

Although Balian had now degenerated into an ambitious, sexually repressed pervert, touching and looking wasn’t actually doing it. It wouldn’t affect anything later.

It wasn’t like he could carve a one-to-one figurine out of her, right?

“Fine.”

Aurora took a deep breath, walked forward as if facing death, then turned around extremely carelessly and slowly, with her back to Balian, raising her arms high.

‘This posture feels like a tentacle hentai, the heroine covered in some unknown liquid being caught and hung up to dry.’

‘Ew, disgusting.’

Aurora closed her eyes, already imagining how Balian would torment her.

But the expected feeling of being lifted never came.

Behind her, there was dead silence.

Aurora dangled her arms in the air for a while, then opened one eye in confusion and looked back: “What are you waiting for? Get on with it.”

Balian stood behind her, a rare look of embarrassment on his face. His hand rose and fell, as if measuring something, then he sighed helplessly.

“Miss, you don’t need to raise your arms.”

“Huh?”

“Well… if it were Miss Vapgis or Miss Juliet’s figure, I could lift them with one hand. But miss…”

Balian’s gaze swept from Aurora’s head to her heels, gesturing a height, and spoke frankly:

“You’re too tall.”

Vapgis and Juliet were like dwarves in front of Balian’s height, but Aurora was a proper grown young lady, with long legs and a slim waist, reaching Balian’s shoulder.

“So?”

He paused, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he thought about how to phrase it so Aurora wouldn’t get angry.

“I have to hold you.”

The air froze for a second.

“How are you planning to hold me?”

Aurora genuinely suspected Balian was in cahoots with the tailor to cop a feel, but she had no evidence.

How could there be such a bizarre measuring method? Who invented it?

Balian remained expressionless, completely unaware of Aurora’s inner storm.

“Of course, I’ll hold your waist and lift you. How else would you want to be held?”

With that, Balian stepped forward and reached his hand toward Aurora’s waist.

“Is this okay?”

“Stop! Stop! Cut it out!!”

Aurora’s goosebumps rose all over, and she shrieked like an angry cat.

‘Holding me face to face?’

‘Is this measuring? Are you flirting?’

If Balian held her face to face, considering her size, the closest distance between them would be less than twenty centimeters. They might even touch, and she would feel his body temperature and heartbeat!

Absolutely not!

“Hold me from behind and keep your distance! And wear gloves, guard!”

Balian withdrew and obediently put on gloves as Aurora demanded.

Then, before Aurora could make her final mental preparations, a pair of strong iron arms passed under her armpits from behind, tightly encircled her waist, and shoved her into the magic gel.

“Plop…”

The sound of entering water was as expected, but the sensation was completely different.

The gel engulfed Aurora’s entire body in an instant. It wasn’t the shock of being splashed with cold water, but a dense, even pressure surging from all directions at once, cool in temperature, resilient in texture, like being wrapped entirely in a giant ice-cold rice cake.

Her vision blurred.

Looking out through the blue translucent gel, everything in the reception hall twisted into a watercolor painting. Madeline’s red dress became a moving blob of color, and the outlines of Vapgis and Juliet blurred into two patches of differing shades.

She could breathe.

That was the only reassuring thing. Although the gel wrapped her airtight, filling her face, hair, and even ears with this semi-solid substance, miraculously, her breathing was unaffected. There was no blockage in her nasal cavity; she still inhaled normal air. Probably some magical mechanism was at work.

Aurora had never been swallowed by a slime in her previous life, obviously, who had?, so she didn’t know if this was the same feeling. But if it was, those unlucky souls in adventure novels who got swallowed alive by slimes probably had a much weirder experience than she imagined.

The gel had buoyancy.

Aurora could clearly feel her body floating upward, but the hands reaching in from behind, Balian’s, were steadily gripping her waist, fixing her in the center of the gel, neither rising nor sinking. The force transmitted through the fabric was just right, exactly counteracting the buoyancy, as professional as a master craftsman of ten years, not a novice who had only learned half an hour ago.

Every second that followed felt unbearably long.

Aurora stared fixedly at the blurry watercolor landscape ahead, forcing her attention on the constantly flickering data scroll in Madeline’s hand.

But she couldn’t.

Because all her senses were screaming one fact, Balian was right behind her.

Even though the gel separated them, even though she couldn’t see his expression, even though reason told her the guy’s hands were obediently placed at her waist, not moving an inch. But,

The distance was too close.

Even if Balian deliberately stretched his arms, the gel was only so wide. How much leeway was there for his hands to reach in from outside to her waist?

Even if her waist was slender, it was at most half a meter, right?

Unsafe.

What was half a meter? It was the distance you could touch by stretching out, the distance of being forced to sit close in a crowded carriage, the distance where breathing could hit your neck.

Aurora stopped that dangerous thought.

Then something even more unbearable happened.

The skin on the back of her neck actually felt a warm, rhythmic airflow.

It was Balian’s breathing.

He was breathing.

His breath was hitting her neck.

Aurora froze into stone. That faint warmth brushed over the most sensitive down on her nape, steady and unhurried, like a big dog napping at her neck.

‘This is too much! Can’t he hold his breath? You’re human, not a fish! You’ll die if you don’t breathe for three minutes?’

Aurora cursed in her mind, but her cheeks betrayed her by burning hot. She could even feel her earlobes turning red in the gel, though she wasn’t sure if the gel was recording that data too.

God knows how much of the three minutes was left.

She tried counting seconds.

One second.

Two seconds.

Another warmth on her nape.

Aurora clenched her teeth.

In her mind, she cursed Balian’s ancestors down eight generations, then downgraded him from hero candidate to pervert candidate, and then to depraved candidate.

Going crazy.

“Shua.”

Suddenly, the world cleared.

The sensation of being wrapped in gel vanished instantly, replaced by dry air and bright light. Balian’s hands withdrew from her waist, steadily setting her back on the ground.

Aurora’s feet touched the wooden floor, and she stood stunned for three or four seconds.

“Huh?”

She blinked in confusion.

“It’s over?”

Balian replied dumbly:

“Three minutes are up, so of course it’s over. Miss, is something wrong?”

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