A silver divine will flowed out with Freya's melodious voice.
What Freya had said was an outrageous theory through and through.
Gods could be drawn in by the [Unknown] of the Lower World and undergo change. Perhaps they would be like Loki, cutting away the rot that had once festered within her, or perhaps they would be like Artemis, falling into a love she had never experienced before.
But those were matters of the heart. No matter what happened, a God's body would never change. Even if their flesh suffered a fatal wound and they truly died, they would be reborn in their original form.
From that perspective, how far did a Goddess have to go before she could be said to have forsaken chastity?
If the body did not change, then was falling in love with the heart an even more serious fall?
All of those answers were vague.
"W-what are you talking about?!"
Hestia's cheeks flushed red at the blunt topic.
"..."
Hephaestus sighed softly and silently commented in her heart.
As expected of Freya, the Goddess of Beauty who governed love...
Even though she had never experienced romance herself, she was dissecting love and chastity in her own deep, rational way.
"Are my words really so strange? Hestia knows about these things too, does she not?"
Freya answered softly.
As an omniscient God, even if Hestia was a Virgin Goddess, she still understood such matters.
Freya had merely brought a topic the Goddesses had always avoided out into the open. In this extremely private tea party between Goddesses, there was nothing improper about it.
"I know, but saying it like that is just too weird, isn't it?!"
In Hestia's view, the path away from chastity roughly followed the order of holding hands, embracing, falling in love, kissing, and finally crossing the physical line.
But Freya's argument completely denied that.
By her logic, Artemis had already betrayed chastity completely.
And no matter how intimate Hestia became with the boy, as long as they did not form a romantic relationship, she would not be unworthy of being a Virgin Goddess.
"Ugh..."
Hestia could not help pressing a hand to her forehead.
What had she been thinking just now?
She had almost been led astray!
Unable to come up with a good rebuttal, Hestia fell silent for a moment.
"Astraea, what do you think?"
Freya shifted her target.
"..."
Astraea instinctively pressed her legs together.
She knew very well that Freya's outrageous theory was not based on personal experience, but an objective fact all Goddesses knew.
The thing Astraea governed did not include chastity, and she did not have much resistance toward matters of pleasure between men and women.
If the children in her Familia fell in love, Astraea would acknowledge their romance and offer them gentle blessings.
The same applied to herself.
Because she had no one who stirred her heart, she had preserved her chastity. Because she encountered a righteous boy, she embraced love.
There were no restraints on her heart in that relationship. It had simply happened naturally.
Astraea felt a slight resonance with Freya's words.
Perhaps in the eyes of mortals, this was very difficult to understand. People might think a Goddess's love was too quick and too cheap.
But Gods had already lived through hundreds of millions of years. Faced with the stirring of the [Unknown], a Goddess would treasure that fleeting time all the more. After all, it was only an instant, like the flutter of a butterfly's wings. If she failed to seize it, she would surely regret it.
That was why Astraea had followed the fluttering in her heart and accepted the boy's confession.
The loneliness of hundreds of millions of years surged like a tide. For a Goddess who had tasted the forbidden fruit, enduring such overwhelming emotion was extremely difficult.
If she had not spent so little time with the boy, and if the [tragedy] had not stood between them, Astraea felt she might already have fallen completely.
As Freya had said, Gods' views on chastity were vague.
For a Goddess like Astraea, one not bound by what she governed, her romantic feelings on the matter between the sexes were inevitably [suppressed].
"Did Astraea imagine something?"
Seeing Hestia fall silent, Freya turned to the Goddess of Justice instead. Her calm, detached gaze seemed to be looking at someone's shadow from the past.
"N-no, I did not..."
Astraea's voice was unexpectedly flustered.
After pausing for a moment, she quickly regained her gentle tone. "My view on chastity is that it is best to let things happen naturally. Freya, as someone inexperienced, I have not crossed that line with Bell, so I cannot give you any useful reference."
Astraea had misunderstood the silver-haired Goddess's thoughts, believing that the Goddess of Beauty who governed [Love] wanted to explore the true nature of chastity and romance through their relationships.
"Someone with experience, is it..."
Freya murmured softly and gave Artemis a meaningful glance.
The instant their eyes met, Artemis looked away as if she had lost her nerve. Freya smiled lightly and continued, "If that is the case, then surely Artemis, who governs chastity and has entered a romantic relationship, would be the most useful reference."
"****! Who would expose everything about herself to a rival in love?"
Artemis turned her head away coldly.
"Rival in love?"
Hephaestus caught the key phrase.
"Oh? So that is how Artemis sees Hestia? No wonder you came to me before to ask how you could have the boy all to yourself."
Freya answered calmly.
"What?! Artemis, is what she said true?"
Hestia snapped back to herself, planted her hands on her hips, and questioned her friend. "No wonder those girls kept dragging things out when we were updating Status last night. You definitely did something in secret then, didn't you?!"
"I-I did not do that..."
Artemis's answer had no confidence at all.
"Ah! I knew it! Artemis has become a complete vixen! Tell me, what exactly did you do?"
Hestia immediately pressed her.
"I am curious too. If Artemis slept in the boy's bed, does that mean aside from the final step, you have already done everything else, like holding hands and kissing?"
Astraea picked up the topic.
This was a shameful trial, and she pushed the Moon Goddess into the storm without hesitation, using her as a shield.
"Since we have already come this far, why not tell us about the romance behind the Ruins incident too? Artemis, were you confessed to by the boy like Astraea, or did you take the initiative and ask him to date you?"
Freya cooperated by adding more questions. "A love that lasts ten thousand years. Artemis's maiden heart is surprisingly intense."
"Ugh..."
Under the Goddesses' barrage, Artemis's face turned bright red, and she could not say a single word.
The black tea gradually cooled, but the burning shame that flooded the Moon Goddess's entire body was still far from over.