Chapter 19: Hestia: A Trio?
....
Aiz's unprompted approach had rattled both of them more than either wanted to admit.
She was Level 5 — the most celebrated active adventurer in Orario, the woman the gods themselves had titled the Sword Princess. If Loki decided to send her over as a serious recruitment effort, Hestia and Lili both knew, with uncomfortable clarity, that competing on paper wasn't something they could win. It wasn't that they doubted Kihara. It was that standing next to someone like Aiz and measuring themselves against her had done quiet damage to something they hadn't known was fragile.
Kihara read the mood the moment they got home. He sat down, pulled both of them into his lap, and spent the next stretch of the evening alternating between feeding them and ruffling their hair until the low cloud over both of them gradually cleared.
"Kihara-kun, don't worry — I will defend your honour with everything I have!"
"The Sword Princess isn't unbeatable. Lili and Lady Hestia will keep every threat outside the Familia's doors!"
Kihara maintained a diplomatic silence. He did, privately, find Aiz somewhat interesting — specifically the structural design of her right-side breastplate, which seemed to have been engineered with a very particular kind of accessibility in mind. He kept this observation entirely to himself, given that Hestia and Lili had just rallied from genuine distress and he had no intention of undoing that progress.
He listened while they developed their threat assessment framework.
Hestia pressed her fingers to her chin with great seriousness. "First — height restrictions. Any woman taller than us needs to be monitored closely."
"Lady Hestia... Lili is a gnome. Lili is one hundred and ten centimetres tall. Most human children are taller than Lili."
Hestia considered this. The implications became apparent quickly. Setting the alert threshold at Lili's height would place over ninety percent of Orario's female population under active surveillance.
"Then... my height? One hundred and forty shouldn't count as particularly short, should it?"
Lili chose her words carefully. "Among humans, Lady Hestia, you would generally be described as... petite."
"Then what's the right number?"
"Why not ask Lord Kihara?"
Two pairs of large, expectant eyes turned toward him. Kihara provided a reasonable midpoint.
"One hundred and fifty-five centimetres and above?"
"Lili-san!"
Lili straightened immediately. "Yes, Lady Hestia?"
"How tall is that Sword-whatever woman?"
"One moment—"
Lili disappeared to her room and returned with a battered leather notebook covered in adhesive notes, flipped through it, and delivered the answer.
"The Sword Princess is approximately one hundred and sixty-five centimetres."
"Perfect. Any woman above one hundred and fifty-five centimetres with suspicious intentions toward Kihara-kun is to be treated as a priority concern."
"Noted!"
Lili recorded this in a fresh notebook with a feather quill, then raised her hand. "Lady Hestia — what about women who want to join the Familia?"
Hestia's expression shifted. She hadn't considered this angle, and the thought of more women appearing around Kihara produced an immediate, involuntary sourness somewhere in her chest.
"Can't we just... stay the current size?"
"Absolutely not." Lili's tone carried a firmness that didn't leave room for negotiation. "A Familia needs members to grow. We can't ask Lord Kihara to handle dungeon exploration, combat, income, and everything else entirely by himself indefinitely."
Hestia didn't have a counter-argument, and Lili didn't slow down.
"Lili understands that Lady Hestia doesn't want to share Lord Kihara's attention. But if he collapses from overwork, that doesn't benefit anyone. We can't afford to be selfish about this."
Hestia went quiet. Her hand found the hem of Kihara's shirt and tugged it lightly, and when she looked up at him her eyes were glassy.
"I'm sorry, Kihara-kun. I'm a selfish, useless goddess..."
"You're neither of those things."
He raised his right hand and pressed his thumb gently against her cheek, catching the tear before it fell, the touch unhurried and deliberate.
"A goddess who stays up trying to make hash browns for me, who offers to scrub my back when I'm tired — how exactly is she selfish or useless?"
"You're not just saying that to make me feel better?"
A thousand spoken reassurances would have taken longer and landed softer. Kihara drew her in by the waist and kissed her.
Hestia's eyes went wide. Every muscle from her toes to her thighs locked up simultaneously. Her brain received what felt like a direct impact and lost the thread of coherent thought entirely.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Her heartbeat filled her ears and kept accelerating, as though it intended to solve the problem through sheer volume.
He — Kihara — my first—
The realisation arrived clearly only when the need to breathe overrode everything else and her lips parted instinctively — and she felt something that made the tips of her fingers curl and the corner of her mouth pull upward despite all her efforts, warm and soft and tasting faintly of something she didn't have a word for yet.
She understood, in that moment, with complete certainty, exactly how much she liked him. The line between his brows. The focused dark of his eyes. The steadying quality of simply being near him. Even the slightly possessive streak that occasionally made itself known — the part of him that seemed to want to make her rely on him entirely.
She liked every single piece of it.
After a long moment, she placed her small hand against his chest and gently created space between them. The shyness in her eyes was genuine and unhidden.
"Kihara... give me a little time. Let me get ready to give myself to you properly. Is that alright?"
"There's no rush. We have plenty of time. Take as long as you need."
Lili, who had been sitting approximately thirty centimetres away through all of this, inserted half of herself between them with a small pout.
"Lady Hestia. Lord Kihara. Please don't leave Lili out entirely."
Hestia's brain, still not operating at full capacity, processed this sentence and arrived at a spectacular misunderstanding. Her pupils contracted to pinpoints.
"You — you mean the three of us together — I — no — absolutely not — I am a virgin goddess, my first time cannot happen like—"
"...Lili meant she also wanted headpats and a kiss on the cheek."
The silence that followed had a very specific texture.
Hestia sat with the dignity of someone who had just stepped on a rake in public, then abandoned the attempt entirely, covered her face with both hands, and fled upstairs at full speed.
"I'M GOING TO SLEEP. DON'T ANYONE BOTHER ME."
Lili watched her go with a smile that knew exactly what it had done.
"Lady Hestia really is... easy to fluster. Or perhaps just thin-skinned."
Lili revealed a sly smile of triumph, and a fluffy cat tail peeked out from behind her, gently wrapping around Kihara's arm: "Lord Kihara, let's take a bath together. Lili hasn't been your toy in a long time."
...
Thank you for reading.