Tsukika held back the excitement threatening to spill over. A little heart floated in her eyes. Seeing the confusion on Li Wei’s face, she forced herself to calm down and smiled.

“Tsk, tsk. Looks like our recent communication has been pretty effective. Chosen Hero, you understand me more and more now.”

“You guessed what I was thinking right away. You’re not wrong... Even a toy should be properly marked as mine alone. Let alone a treasure as precious as you. I don’t like other people’s marks left on it.”

“But~ Chosen Hero, you seem especially talkative today.”

“This calm little explanation of yours... could it be you’re actually trying to hide how scared you are?”

Li Wei’s heart sank.

The Demon Lord’s train of thought had gone completely off his expectations. If she decided his calm was just an act, then this would turn into a dead end. But if he tried too hard to explain and deny it, wouldn’t that only prove he had a guilty conscience?

“Chosen Hero, not saying a word... did I hit the mark? Are you so guilty you can’t even speak?”

“...”

Li Wei was numb.

So no matter what I do, you’ve got your own explanation ready, huh.

He gave up inside.

There was no way he was dodging this afternoon session. He might as well treat it as tonight’s workout starting early.

With that thought, his body was soon helped into a lying position by Tsukika.

The next moment, Li Wei’s eyelid twitched. He watched Tsukika place that ribbon over his abdomen, then lift her skirt.

Right in front of him, Tsukika smiled and slowly sat down. Once she was fully settled, both body and mind were flooded with an unusually rich sense of fullness.

Li Wei’s breathing stalled slightly. He let out a sigh. “If you’re doing this now, then tonight should count as rest time, right?”

Tsukika tilted her head. Her soft pink lips curled up, half smiling, half teasing.

“After having a snack, does Chosen Hero skip dinner?”

“...I can skip it.”

Li Wei said.

“That won’t do. For Chosen Hero’s health, even if I have to force it in, I’ll make sure you eat.”

Tsukika said.

Li Wei opened his mouth, wanting to say something else. But all of a sudden, no words came out. Even his thoughts seemed to be sucked dry in an instant.

The Demon Lord had started putting in force.

..

After Yue Lin left the room, she actually didn’t go very far. She stayed outside the door, nervously waiting for the result.

She quietly pressed her ear against the door and listened for quite a while.

Good children weren’t supposed to eavesdrop, but if it was about caring for Mom and that man’s relationship, could that really count as eavesdropping?

Yue Lin quickly convinced herself.

Sadly, the room’s soundproofing was a little too good. She couldn’t hear what they were saying at all. She could only catch some muffled noises. In the end, even those became intermittent, then abruptly vanished at a certain point.

Were they done talking?

But if they were, why wasn’t either of them coming out?

Yue Lin blinked blankly. The ahoge on top of her head curled into a question mark.

She lingered by the door for a few more minutes. When she realized there was still no movement inside, she puffed out her little lips in dissatisfaction.

How annoying!

She couldn’t exactly knock and ask why they’d stopped talking.

Otherwise Mom would ask, how did you know it got quiet inside? Were you eavesdropping?

Yue Lin puffed up her cheeks, climbed onto the sofa by herself, and dug out a few of her storybooks.

She opened one with a prince-and-princess theme. In the end, her gaze stopped on an illustration of a candlelit dinner.

Yue Lin tilted her head back and thought for a moment. Then she suddenly ran barefoot with little pattering steps to the cabinet and pulled out a flyer she’d gotten not long ago.

Yue Lin was illiterate—at least when it came to human writing—so she couldn’t read what was on the flyer. But she could tell it showed a very elegant, spotless restaurant. Inside were arrangements similar to candlelight, and there were candles everywhere, along with ribbons and floral decorations all around.

A pair of candles made a candlelit dinner romantic. Then with this many candles, wouldn’t the romance practically overflow?

Saving her parents’ relationship would start with one romantic dinner!

Yue Lin proudly perked up her ahoge and gave herself a mental thumbs-up for being so clever.

。。

In the end, the two of them teleported back and forth to the bedroom several times before Li Wei was finally let off by the Demon Lord.

Li Wei couldn’t really tell whether Tsukika had gotten satisfied early, or whether she was deliberately leaving him some reserves for another round tonight. But this time, she did stop much earlier than before.

Still, no matter what Tsukika had been thinking, Li Wei genuinely felt the benefits of starting to grow stronger again.

If he’d had to empty the magazine every day like he had the past few days, by now he’d probably have dark circles under his eyes and hollow cheeks... This vampire Demon Lord didn’t suck blood, but what she drained was the essence of blood. Who could withstand that kind of consumption?

But now he had held out—

He even felt like he still had some strength left.

So was it possible that Tsukika saw he wasn’t as easy to bully as before, and that was why she chose to stop?

Li Wei comforted himself with that thought. Then he followed behind Tsukika, finished bathing, and changed clothes.

When he returned to the bedroom after the bath, the earlier mess had already been cleaned up. Tsukika was gone too.

And when he looked at the hair ribbon wrapped around his wrist, reinforced with a few fixed spells, his expression turned complicated again.

Tsukika had given him that as compensation after she’d deliberately torn Inona’s ribbon apart during her playful messing around.

Afterward, she’d even made him write the same words on it with her.

Li Wei hadn’t wanted to accept it in the first place. He didn’t think the damaged item needed compensation at all. He’d even complained that “the end of the subjugation” was hardly something a Demon Lord should be joining in on.

But when Tsukika lifted her skirt as if she were about to take something else off, then asked with a half-smile whether he was dissatisfied and wanted to write it on something else instead, Li Wei very decisively took the ribbon she used to tie her hair and wrote the words on it together with her.

Even if, as the Chosen Hero, he did have a habit of collecting spoils from the Demon Lord, he had never once imagined collecting this kind of spoil...

Then again, considering he already had a pair of the Demon Lord’s socks with him, one more ribbon didn’t seem like a big deal.

And besides, one more ribbon was still better than one more pair of panties.

Li Wei really didn’t want the day to come when his trophy stash turned into Tsukika’s underwear drawer.

When he stepped out of the room, what he saw was a warm scene of Tsukika cuddling with her daughter on the sofa.

The freshly bathed, completely refreshed beautiful “boy” walked out of the room. Tsukika shot Li Wei a glance that looked casual, almost mocking. But in truth, her bare, fair little feet couldn’t help tensing up. Her pink toes curled one by one, and she hugged her daughter a little tighter too.

The lingering sensations in her body still hadn’t fully faded.

She’d gotten too excited just now, and that had made her a little too sensitive. She’d nearly fallen into a disadvantage.

She hadn’t dared let this bad man “press the attack,” so she’d ended the campaign early.

Yue Lin gave her mother a strange look. She somehow felt like Mom’s body was both hot and fragrant.

But before Li Wei could walk into the kitchen, Yue Lin quickly snapped back to herself. She suddenly slipped out of her mother’s arms, jumped off the sofa, remembered to put on her slippers this time, and pattered all the way over to Li Wei.

Li Wei looked at his daughter in surprise. After thinking for a moment, he asked, “Is there anything Yue Lin wants to eat tonight?”

This was the first time his daughter had ever taken the initiative like this. Of course... that abnormal state didn’t count.

Yue Lin gave him an awkward look, then glanced at the embrace so close at hand. Resisting the temptation, she took a few steps back before pulling out the flyer she’d collected.

Li Wei looked at the funeral parlor advertisement on the flyer, then at his daughter’s stern little face, and fell into deep silence.

Did this child hate him that much?

Was she trying to send him off already?